The Deep

by Peter Benchley

  Treece did not bother to remove the artillery shell. He dug around it, and when the air lift exposed another piece of ordnance—a long, thicker brass canister—he simply avoided it, too. Soon, however, he could not avoid the shells; they were everywhere, mixed in with thousands of ampules. Treece signaled for a move to the right, and pushing off the bottom with his left hand, he floated six or eight feet away. Sanders followed directly behind him.

  It took Gail several seconds to realize they were gone. She stared at the hole in the sand, thinking vague, dreamy thoughts, enjoying the pretty yellow air hose that snaked through the water after David. Her eyes followed the hose, and when at last she saw the two men, she ambled casually along the sand, letting her light play on the colors in the reef.

  She didn’t want to shine the light in the new hole Treece was digging; she preferred to watch two yellow fish that cruised around the reef and glowed when the light struck them. But she saw Sanders look at her and point insistently at the air lift, so she swung her body around and drifted to the bottom. She yawned, feeling wonderful—warm and cozy in the black water.

  Sanders worked within the beam of his own light, intent on gathering the ampules as fast as he could, face pressed close to the bottom.

  It was Treece who first noticed that the radius of light was too small. He raised his head from the hole and saw Gail’s light bobbing aimlessly in the water, beam swinging from surface to bottom and side to side.

  By the time Sanders thought to look up, Treece had already sprung. He kicked violently toward Gail’s light, tearing the Desco mask off his face as he moved. He wrenched the light from Gail’s hand and shone it on her face; her eyes were closed, her head hung limply. Treece dropped the light and reached for her head, pulled the regulator out of her mouth, and knocked off her mask. Then he put a hand behind her head and forced her face into the Desco mask. He raised his knee and, carefully, shoved it into her stomach.

  Sanders didn’t know what was happening; all he saw was the beam of the other light, lying in the sand. He swung his light upward and found motion, fixed on it, and pushed off the bottom. Treece’s hands surrounded Gail’s head. Weak streams of bubbles—from the mask, from Gail’s regulator, and from Treece’s mouth—shepherded them to the surface.

  Treece reached the diving platform, exhaled the last of his breath, and let his mask fall from Gail’s face. He pushed her onto the platform, face down, and, while he hauled himself after her, began to press rhythmically on her back.

  Sanders’ head broke water. He saw Treece kneeling, heard him saying, “Come on . . . give me a hearty one . . . come on . . . there we go . . . there we go . . . whups!” There was a gagging sound, a splash, then Treece’s voice again, “There we go . . . one more time . . . there we go . . . okay . . . there’s the girl . . . one more time . . . that’s a good one.” Treece sat back on his heels. “Sonofabitch! That was frightful close.”

  Through a fog of semiconsciousness, Gail felt a scratchy pain in her throat and tasted acid, watery vomit. She was nauseous; a heavy, throbbing ache filled her skull. She groaned feebly and heard Sanders say, “What happened?” Then she felt herself being lifted, and Treece’s voice saying, “Know in a minute.”

  Treece lay her on the deck, on her side. He bent over and opened one of her eyes with his thumb. “Okay?”

  The other eye felt heavy, but she forced it open and whispered, “Yes.”

  Treece picked up her regulator hose and held the mouthpiece under his nose. He pushed the purge valve, and air from the tank squirted up his nostrils. “Lordy.” He grimaced. “By rights, you should be having tea with the Angel Gabriel.”

  “What is it?”

  “Carbon monoxide.”

  “Exhaust?” Sanders said. “From the compressor?”

  “Not from the compressor. I told you, it’s vented right.”

  “From what then?”

  “Someone knew what he was doing, probably backed a car up to the air intake.”

  “Tried to kill her?”

  “Her or you or me. I don’t imagine they cared which.”

  Sanders looked down at Gail. She had propped herself on one elbow and her head hung limply, as if she expected to vomit.

  He turned to Treece and snapped, “That is it!”

  “That’s what?”

  “The end! It’s finished! We’ve lost, and that’s too damn bad! You turn this goddamn thing around and get us out of here!”

  “We can’t,” Gail said weakly. “There’s no . . .”

  “Oh yes, we can! Let him have it all. The gold too. Who gives a shit? It’s better than . . .”

  Treece said, “Calm down.”

  “I won’t calm down! Suppose they had killed her. What then? Calm down? Too bad?” Sanders felt his hands shaking, and he clenched his fists. “No thanks. Not again. He’s not gonna get another shot at her. We’re getting out of here!”

  Sanders walked forward to the wheel and searched the instrument panel for the starter button. He had seen Treece start the boat a dozen times but had never paid attention to the mechanics. He pushed one button after another, and nothing happened.

  “You have to turn the key,” said Treece. His voice was toneless, matter-of-fact.

  Sanders reached for the key, but he did not turn it. He looked at Treece standing placidly in the stern.

  “There really is no way out, is there?”

  “No.”

  The two men faced each other for a few seconds. Then Treece bent down and touched Gail’s shoulder and said, “How you feeling?”

  “Better.”

  “Stay topside; breathe deep. The shotgun’s by the wheel. Let me show you something.” He helped her to her feet, led her to the compressor, and pointed to a wing nut on the side of the machine. “See that? If you see a boat coming or you hear something—if anything happens you don’t like—turn that nut half a turn to the right. It’ll shut off the compressor. We’ll be on the surface in a fine hurry, I promise you.”

  “Okay.” Gail hesitated. “I meant to ask you . . .”

  “What?”

  “What will you do with Adam?”

  “Leave him where he lays. Nothing we can do for him; he’s gone where he’s going.”

  “What about the police?”

  “Look, girl . . .” There was a hint of testiness in Treece’s voice. “Forget all the law-and-order nonsense. There’s no one going to help us. We survive, it’s thanks to us; we don’t, it’s our own fault. Tomorrow morning, somebody’ll find Adam and call the police, and they’ll come, all efficiency, and cart him away and write in their little pads that Adam went wandering out to the cliffs at night—drunk, they’ll say—and fell overboard. We go to the police, they’ll come to the same damn conclusion, only—for appearances—they’ll make us spend days answering dumb-ass questions from the paper-pushers. Police are a waste of time.” Treece motioned Sanders aft to the diving platform.

  When the two men had assembled their gear, Sanders said to Gail, “You’ll feel better if you lie down.”

  “I’m okay. You be careful.” She smiled.

  Treece made the thumbs-up sign, Sanders responded, and they jumped backward into the water.

  Gail watched Sanders’ light as it descended toward the light that lay on the bottom, her light. That light was picked up, and the two beams moved together across the bottom, stopped and fuzzed as the mist of sand permeated the water.

  She shivered and raised her eyes to the dark cliffs. She tried to envision what Coffin’s body looked like, crumpled in the sand. She shook her head to rid herself of the thought, walked forward, and took the shotgun from the shelf in front of the wheel. She sat on the transom, cradling the gun in her lap—hating it, afraid of it, but grateful for it.

  A noise behind her: splash, bump. She jumped off the transom and spun, cocking the gun and aiming it at the water. A hand broke the surface and reached for her; it held a canvas bag full of ampules. Gail put the gun down and, trembling, reached for th
e bag.

  Sanders lifted the bottom of his mask. “You all right?”

  “Yes.” She emptied the bag onto the tarpaulin on the deck. “I almost shot you, that’s all.”

  “If they come, I don’t think it’ll be in a submarine,” Sanders said. He took the empty bag from her and dropped below the surface.

  Gail knelt on the deck and began to count ampules, groping for them in the dark.

  With only two divers working, the collecting went slowly. Each time Sanders surfaced, Treece stopped digging in the hole, for fear of unearthing ampules that would be swept away in the tide. Waiting for Sanders to return, he moved to the reef and probed with the air lift. He dug at random, finding ampules in one spot, artillery shells in another, nothing in another. He came to a small pocket in the reef, where the coral receded about five feet from the reef face and formed a kind of cove. He concentrated on the cove, touching the air lift to the bottom and watching the sand vanish up the tube.

  Sanders returned and tapped Treece on the shoulder. Treece nodded, intending to return to the field of ampules, and routinely checked his watch. The wet-suit sleeve covered the dial, so, to read it, Treece had to cradle the air lift under his right arm and use the fingers of his right hand to peel back the left sleeve. It was eleven o’clock. Treece let the sleeve fall back into place and moved his right arm away from his side, to drop the air lift into his hand. He missed it; his bandaged, rubber-covered hand did not respond quickly enough, and the air lift fell to the bottom. It hit the sand and bucked; Treece lunged for it with his left hand, caught it, and wrestled it under control. Then he saw a gleam.

  As it bounced on the bottom, the tube had moved to the right side of the little cove and, always hungry for sand, had gouged a hole on its own. The gleam was at the bottom of the hole.

  Treece gave Sanders his light and motioned for him to train both lights on the hole. Then, like a surgeon exploring an incision, Treece lowered the air lift to the gleam. His left hand hovered near the sand, to catch the object if it was wrenched free and flew toward the tube; his right held the tube a foot off the bottom, diluting its power to a point where it barely disturbed the grains of sand.

  It was a pine cone, about the size of a tennis ball, perfectly shaped of gold. Each of the countless ridges on the pine cone was topped with a tiny pearl.

  Delicately, Treece plucked the pine cone from the sand and held it beneath the lights. Motes of sand passing between the pine cone and the light made the gold shimmer.

  A canvas bag hung off Sanders’ wrist. Treece reached into the bag, set the pine cone gently on the canvas bottom, and resumed digging.

  Another gleam: a half-inch circle of gold. Treece pinched it between his lingers and pulled; it would not come. He stripped more sand away and saw that the circle was connected to another circle, and that one to still another: a chain of gold.

  When twenty links were exposed, Treece was able to pull the rest of the chain free with his hand. It was seven or eight feet long. Treece pointed to a clasp at the end of the chain. Sanders looked closely and saw the engraved letters “E.F.”

  Treece dug for a few more minutes and found nothing. He put the gold chain in the canvas bag and pointed upward.

  “Careful with that,” Sanders said as he handed the bag to Gail. He passed her one of the lights. He heard Treece surface beside him and said, “How come we’re quitting? Maybe there’s more.”

  “Maybe, but it’s too late to get it all now, and I don’t want to do a half-ass job and leave a bloody great ditch down there for someone else to spot.”

  “It’s incredible!” Gail said, shining the light on the pine cone in her palm.

  “Turn off that damn light!” Treece said. The light snapped off. “Someone on the cliffs with glasses could pick that out clear as day.”

  Treece climbed aboard, turned off the compressor, told Sanders to haul in the air hoses, and started the engine. He looked back at Sanders, who was coiling the hoses neatly on the deck.

  “Don’t bother with that. Just throw it on board. Soon’s you’re done, take the wheel.”

  Treece stepped onto the gunwale and walked forward, impatiently nudging the dog out of the way.

  Sanders brought the air lift aboard and hauled on the hose.

  “Take the wheel,” Treece called.

  “Just a sec.”

  “Now, dammit!”

  Sanders looked at Gail and handed her the hose. “Here. You finish it.” He took the wheel.

  “Put her in gear,” Treece said, “and give me a bit of throttle. Want to run her up the anchor line.”

  Sanders obeyed. Treece hauled the anchor aboard and came aft. As he dropped into the cockpit, Sanders said, “What’s the rush?”

  Treece did not reply. He relieved Sanders of the wheel and pushed the throttle full ahead.

  There was no conversation on the way back to St. David’s. Treece stood at the wheel, preoccupied. David and Gail coiled hoses and counted ampules.

  Nor did Treece say anything when they reached the house a few minutes before one o’clock. He poured himself a glass of rum, put the pine cone and chain on the kitchen table, and pulled a box of documents out of a closet. He nodded when the Sanderses said good night.

  At four o’clock that morning, Treece identified E.F.

  C H A P T E R

  X

  He refused to accept the first shred of evidence. He sat at the kitchen table for almost two more hours, cross-checking documents and making notes. When finally he had removed all doubt, he rose, poured himself another glass of rum, and went to wake the Sanderses.

  Gail came into the kitchen first, and Treece said, “How you feeling?”

  “Okay. No one tried to murder me in my bed. I’m grateful for that.”

  “Feeling rich?”

  “What do you mean? Should I?”

  Treece smiled mischievously. “Wait till David gets here.”

  Gail looked at his face, at his red eyes and the pouches beneath them. “Have you had any sleep?”

  “No. Been reading.”

  Then she knew. “You found E.F.!”

  In the bedroom Sanders stepped into a pair of bathing trunks. A polo shirt hung over the back of a chair. He reached for it, then stopped and thought: The hell with it; I’ll just be taking it off in an hour. He looked at himself in the mirror and, pleased, slapped his flat stomach. He was brown and lean, and he felt good. Even his feet felt good, tough and callous; he couldn’t remember when he had last worn shoes. He went into the kitchen.

  Gail and Treece were sitting at the table, cradling cups. As he walked toward the stove to pour some coffee, Sanders said, “Morning.” They didn’t answer him, and passing the table, he saw them exchange a glance. Annoyed, he thought: Now what?

  He sat at the table and said, “Well?”

  “Feeling rich?” Treece said.

  “What?”

  Gail could not contain herself. “He found E.F.!”

  Now Sanders understood, and he smiled. “Who is he?”

  “She,” Treece said. “You remember, a while back, when you found the medallion, you said, ‘Maybe it was a present for somebody.’ ”

  “Sure. And you said, ‘Not a chance.’ ”

  “Aye, but then other things didn’t make any sense. A man might have worn the medallion, but he wouldn’t have worn the cameo you found; that was a lady’s piece. And certainly the pine cone was. Perhaps it was being carted home to a wife or lady friend; what you said made me think of that. I went through all the papers again, and I came up dry; there’s not a bloody E.F. among them. A captain of one of the naos, a cargo ship, was a Fernández, but he went down off Florida.”

  “So who was it?”

  Treece ignored the question, sipped his tea. “The pine cone got me thinking, that and the crucifix. It wasn’t possible for goodies like that to go unrecorded—the man who made ’em, the man who sent ’em, the man who commissioned ’em, somebody would have made a note of them. I figured I was
nosing around the wrong alley, so I put all the New World papers aside for a while and went back to the history books. That’s where I found the first hint.”

  “What?” Gail said. “The name?”

  “Aye, and a shopping list. If I’m right”—Treece looked at Sanders—“and by now I know I’m right, what’s down there—flush up against enough live explosives to make angels out of half the human race—is a treasure the likes of which no man has ever seen. It’s beyond price. Men have been looking for it for two hundred and sixty years; people have been hung over it; and a King of Spain stayed randy all his life for lack of it.”

  Sanders said, “Is it El Grifón?”

  “Aye. It has to be. Listen. In 1714 King Philip the Fifth’s wife died. She wasn’t half stiff before Philip took a fancy to the duchess of Parma. He’d probably fancied her for quite a while, but now that his wife was gone he could bring the good duchess out of the closet. He asked her to marry him. She agreed, but she wouldn’t sleep with him until he had decked her out with jewels—quote—unique in the world. Philip must have had a fearsome lust, because he snapped off a letter to his man in Havana. The chap copied it in his diary, which was included in the appendix of a ratty old book about the decline of Spain in the New World in the eighteenth century. Anyway, Philip’s letter was a shopping list of jewels to be made in the New World and shipped back to Spain. Below the copy of the letter, the fellow listed what he had assembled.” Treece recited from memory: “Item: two ropes of gold with thirty-eight pearls on each. Item: a gold cross with five emeralds. And so on and so on. It spills over to the next page of the book, which some idiot tore out a hundred years ago.”

  “No pine cone?”

  “No, and no crucifix like ours, at least not on the page that’s still there. But there is a reference to a three-lock box.”

  Sanders said, “That isn’t conclusive, is it? You said yourself that they used those boxes all the time.”