Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  “Don’t call me baby,” she said. “Before you hit the shower and shave your head, hon, could you get me a cup of java from the lobby? They advertised free doughnuts and coffee for breakfast.”

  He closed the laptop. “Bad coffee comin’ right up, sweet cheeks.” He ducked out the door before she could throw something at him.

  * * * * *

  Sam waded along the shoreline to take an uncomfortable seat on a gnarled root next to Eduardo. At least her perch was in the shade. She morosely watched the tour group snorkel over Devil’s Crown, a sunken volcanic crater. Should she join them? She might be able to get another underwater photo for Zing’s post today. Then she realized that she hadn’t brought the waterproof housing for the camera. Or her snorkel gear. Given the amount of wine she’d consumed last night, she was surprised she could still walk and talk.

  Eduardo’s gaze was fixed on his Teva-shod feet resting on the sand beneath the water’s surface. He looked wrung out, just like she felt. He probably had a hangover, too.

  “I see Paige Sanders decided to join the group today,” she remarked to him. “Jon doesn’t seem too interested in the tour.”

  Eduardo shrugged. “The captain tells me that Mr. Sanders has been here before.”

  That seemed odd. “Then why would he go on a tour?”

  Eduardo turned to face her. His eyes were streaked with red. “His wife Paige is new.”

  She thought about the deferential way that the captain and first mate had greeted the Sanderses, and about how Jon had been drinking late with the captain. “Sanders seems like an important man.”

  Eduardo nodded. “A rich man.”

  A rich man who seemed to be friendly with Captain Quiroga, although it was hard to imagine what the two might have in common. Sam resolved to look into Sanders’s background later.

  A shout from Maxim broke up her thoughts. He stood waist-deep in the middle of the lagoon with a face mask pushed onto his forehead. Sam caught only the name Roberson. Maxim held his hands out in a questioning gesture. He had to be looking for Jerry or Sandy.

  Eduardo pointed to a cluster of rocks dotting the water’s surface near the east side of the bay and yelled, “Por las rocas!”

  Maxim nodded, then pulled his mask into place. Before his expression was concealed by mask and snorkel, Sam noted the look on the young guide’s face. Dark squint, rigid jaw. “Is Maxim mad at you, Eduardo?”

  Eduardo fixed his gaze on his young colleague, who was now swimming toward the rocks. He sighed. “Somebody dies in your tour group, it might hurt your job, you know? I am only one month from retirement, the first Galápagos naturalist guide to work for a full thirty years, the first to get a pension.” He paused to flick his foot at a small crab that was advancing underwater toward his toes. “Maxim, he is a guide for only two years; he is worried for his reputation.”

  After a minute, she asked, “Eduardo, do you think it’s possible that someone here wanted to kill Dan?”

  His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “Who wants to kill him?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “Illegal fishermen? They might be worried about his reports.” About the poaching that she, writing as Zing, had made public.

  “They wouldn’t kill him.” Eduardo looked at his clasped hands for a long moment. “I tell the police . . . I stress . . . it must be an accident.”

  “I saw Daniel, Eduardo. His regulator mouthpiece was missing, his throat was slashed. Why would you say it was an accident?”

  He replied without meeting her gaze. “Because it has to be.” His voice broke on the last word. He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. A tear slid down his weathered cheek.

  She touched his arm. “We both lost a friend.”

  The way Eduardo emphasized the word kill made her wonder what they might do instead. She understood that she might be discussing local fishermen. They could be his friends, his neighbors, or his relatives. Galápagos is a small community. But she was getting fed up with this laissez-faire attitude of the locals. The world would be a terrible place if everyone simply looked the other way while their neighbors committed crimes. If Dan had died because of what he’d found, and she stopped the count and the Internet reports, then Dan would have died for nothing. And they, whoever the hell they were, would win. And thousands more animals would die in this place that was supposed to be a sanctuary. She couldn’t let that happen.

  It was just her and Zing now. She rubbed her forehead, trying to smooth away the ache that had settled there. “Eduardo, we are close to Ola Rock, the next site on Dan’s list. I want you to take me there.”

  His chin jerked up. “Alone? I could not let you dive alone. Especially now.”

  “We missed the site we were supposed to survey yesterday. I have to do Ola Rock today if we’re going to Puerto Ayora tomorrow.”

  Eduardo didn’t respond.

  “I’ll ask the captain to dive with me,” she said. “Or Tony.” Although the thought of being alone underwater with either of those men gave her the chills.

  Eduardo immediately shook his head. “No. The captain would not approve.”

  “Of what?” Continuing the fish count, or of himself or a crew member coming with her?

  He turned his face back to the bay, watching the group. “Dan should not dive alone.”

  Eduardo’s use of the present tense jarred her. She bit her lip, wanting to correct the sentence to should not have been diving alone. Was Eduardo implying that she had somehow let Dan down? Had she? Finally, she said, “But that’s what he decided to do. And now I have no choice but to dive alone, too.”

  Eduardo’s gaze flicked back to her. The creases across his forehead and around his eyes were deep. Had he slept at all? He pulled his mirrored sunglasses down over his eyes and shook his head. “No. We cannot. It is too dangerous.”

  “You made the deal, Eduardo,” she said quietly. “You already took the money. Dan told me you were an honorable man. The captain took Dan’s money, too.” That last part was a guess on her part, but Eduardo did not deny it. Who else had been in on the deal to bring them on board? And perhaps more important—who else knew about the deal, but had not profited?

  Eduardo sighed heavily. Then he pointed out to the water. “Look.”

  A dark shape approached the beach, swimming just beneath the water’s surface. Sam tensed, trying to identify it. Too narrow for a turtle. Didn’t seem graceful enough for a ray or a dolphin. A beachmaster?

  The creature erupted from the shallows in a flurry of black neoprene. Jerry Roberson spat out his snorkel and shouted to his wife, “Sandy! I saw a manta ray!”

  As Roberson slipped back underwater, Sam slid off the mangrove root and stood knee-deep in the shallows, watching the man’s rapid progress underwater. “Wow. Jerry can really swim. I can’t hold my breath for even half that time.”

  “Oh yes,” Eduardo responded. “He tells me he was a diver for the United States Army.” He pursed his lips together for a moment, then corrected himself. “No, the Navy. Like heroes in the movies. He was a Navy Seal.”

  Sam stared at Roberson’s shadow gliding beneath the dappled surface. She wrapped her arms around herself, thinking about Dan out there somewhere, drifting with the current. She wondered what else she didn’t know about Jerry Roberson. And about everyone else on board Papagayo, for that matter.

  A confusion of thoughts lapped at her brain like the aquamarine water swirling around her knees. What would happen if Dan’s body was never found? What would happen if it was? How could she force the police to give her passport back? She hated this feeling of just . . . waiting.

  Why in the hell did Chase have to go undercover, right when she needed his help more than ever? What good was having a lover if you couldn’t even find him when you needed him? Was he in danger, or was he having the time of his life? She reached for her satellite phone, then realized she’d left it on the boat. Chase could be calling her right now.

  The aspirin ha
d worn off, and her head throbbed again. She felt like an idiot. Had she been an idiot to take this assignment?

  Eduardo, who was Dan’s friend too, sat only inches away. Nine other people were within shouting distance, and even more waited back on Papagayo. They might be sympathetic strangers, but they were strangers nonetheless. And there was a chance that one or more might be a killer. She’d never felt more lonely.

  As if Eduardo had read her mind, he touched her shoulder lightly. “Sam, you are not alone. When the others go to the highlands this afternoon, I will take you to Ola Rock.”

  12

  Sam was grateful to see there was almost no current flowing past Ola Rock, at least not one visible at the ocean surface. It was easy to understand why the formation had been given the Spanish name for “The Wave.” The small islet was a thick gray upright fin that culminated in a curlicue twenty feet above the water line, giving it the appearance of a wave frozen into stone. There was no beach. Eduardo shifted the motor to idle and the dinghy bumped against the intersection of rock and turquoise sea. The water-smoothed lava rock sloped steeply down and disappeared into the surrounding ocean. Sam hoped a sheer vertical wall did not await her below.

  She backflipped off the dinghy, painfully aware that she was diving alone for the first time. She had checked the oxygen content of her tank before attaching the regulator, and now, as the face of her dive computer lit up in the water, she was relieved to see her equipment was functioning normally. She floated on the surface for a few minutes, checking the area below to make sure no sharks lurked close by. The water was a murky green; she couldn’t see beyond a few feet. She was in the midst of an algae bloom. Wonderful. Anything could be down there. Her imagination instantly conjured up a great white swimming toward her with open jaws.

  She reminded herself that she had been underwater in a blackout before: her one night dive in the pitch-black, frigid waters of Puget Sound. By comparison, this daylight dive in warmer water should be a piece of cake. Of course, she had been with four other divers then, and they had a dive master to guide them. No matter, she tried to reassure herself; bubbles always travel upward and she had a compass and depth gauge built into her dive computer. She couldn’t really get too disoriented, could she?

  Enough with the dithering, she chided herself. Just do it, Zing.

  She rolled upright next to the dinghy’s bumper and held out her hands for the camera. Eduardo acted as anxious as she felt, holding the camera a little out of her reach as he said, “Please to be extra careful.”

  “That’s my plan,” she promised. “I’ll count, I’ll take a few photos; I’ll make this dive as short as I can.”

  He handed her the camera. She clipped the camera strap to a ring on the front of her BCD, then let the last of the air out of the vest and exhaled. As the water closed above her head, she fought an urge to jet back up to the surface. Never dive alone. How many times had she seen those words in dive manuals? If she hadn’t been along on their first dive together, Dan would have died.

  If she’d been with him on his last dive, would he have lived? Or would they both have died?

  She couldn’t afford to think about any of that at the moment. She had a job to do. Expert divers went out by themselves all the time. Since she wasn’t anything close to an expert, she would be extra vigilant. The noise of the dinghy motor reverberated so loudly through the water that she would have no difficulty locating it again. She took a deep breath and pinched her nose to equalize pressure as she slowly descended. Her mask fogged. She tweaked it to break the suction, let in a trickle of water to clear the fog inside, then sealed it to her face again, exhaling through her nose to prevent mask squeeze.

  The visibility remained poor for twenty feet below the surface. The late afternoon sun filled the water with light, but the layer of suspended algae was so thick that she couldn’t clearly make out any objects beyond a couple of yards. It was like swimming through lime gelatin, but a whole lot creepier. She could squint into the green distance all day and still not be able to distinguish any creature, large or small, harmless or ferocious, that might be waiting for her. Fish could detect movement with their electrical sensors. All she had were her eyes and ears, and both were almost useless in this environment. You still have your brain. Stay calm, do your best. Do it for Dan. After filling her lungs with air, she blew it out slowly, streaming loud bubbles up through the algae fog. Go, Zing.

  Turning facedown and hovering two feet above the bottom, she followed the sloping rock face downward, stopping at a depth of sixty feet. At least the visibility was slightly better at this depth; she could see fish twenty feet away. She had decided the way to survey a tiny islet like Ola Rock was to circumnavigate it at one depth, then rise to another level and repeat the process, slowly spiraling up toward the surface.

  According to Dan’s notes, Ola Rock should be a prime feeding area for sea cucumbers and shellfish. She swam slowly, counting and identifying as best she could while she circled the small island. Carrying both Dan’s handheld computer and her camera would have been next to impossible. Instead, she’d strapped a small slate and attached pencil to her left wrist. She scribbled on the slate periodically, letting her camera dangle down from the strap attached to her vest. The arrangement was awkward, but it was the best she’d come up with.

  After the first ten anxious minutes, she started to find the experience of diving solo rather tranquil. No one was watching and judging her skills. She exhaled and sank a few inches, inhaled and rose. The more she relaxed, the more easily she could hover motionless in the water. She was finally getting the hang of neutral buoyancy.

  The black volcanic rock floor transitioned to a bright green plane of slick algae, interrupted periodically by olive-drab seaweed streamers and yellow and orange sponges. She took photos to send to NPF. The area looked like it should be an ideal grazing ground. Hundreds of starfish of various colors crawled among the algae, along with clusters of black-spined urchins, but she counted only four sea cucumbers, three lobsters, and nine crabs. A small school—she counted eight—of yellowtailed surgeonfish grazed on the algae, moving ahead each time she swam forward. She stopped to capture an image of a spiraled fuchsia ribbon anchored to a rock. She knew the neon pink coil was the egg mass of some creature, but she’d have to match it with one of her reference books.

  Although it made for boring composition, she snapped a couple of pictures of the nearly empty green plane stretching away from her. Was this barrenness the result of poaching? Having never been here before, she had no way to tell. It would be up to the scientists at NPF to make a comparison.

  She’d always imagined that the underwater world would be absolutely silent. Instead, she heard not only the sounds of her own breathing, but a melody of clicks and gurgles and metallic pings as the water moved against various surfaces and marine creatures signaled to each other. These noises overlaid the background rumble of the idling panga motor.

  On the windward side of the islet, the rock was more rippled, and the algae had been mostly swept away. She found a few more crabs and lobsters and fish among the rock formations. A giant fish ball comprised of hundreds of small silver fish, swimming so close together that she couldn’t see through them, hung in the water like a solid sphere. She’d seen this on television, but it was amazing to see up close. Did the fish naturally travel in a ball formation, or were they swarming to protect themselves against a predator she hadn’t yet spotted? The last thought was unsettling.

  She abruptly realized she could no longer hear the sound of the motor, and felt a swell of panic. Had Eduardo left? No, he wouldn’t, she reassured herself. Maybe he had turned off the motor to save fuel. She checked her computer readout. She had slightly more than 1000 PSI left—plenty of air and therefore plenty of time. Channeling Zing again, she continued on course and picked up the rumble of the motor again after a few more yards.

  The fish ball did not move away as she approached. The swirl of fish was so extensive she had little
choice but to swim through it. The fish flitted out of her way as she finned through their midst, then closed ranks behind her. Fortunately, no sharks or other monsters appeared in the midst of the silver cloud. Amazing. On the other side, she snapped a few photos of the living sphere, made up of at least five hundred fish. She’d identify the species later.

  She was on her second circumnavigation at forty feet and 700 PSI when she found a fishing line snagged on a ragged lump of lava. The nylon cord streamed off in a horizontal line, vanishing into the distant gloom. It was disturbing to think that if she had been swimming only a foot lower in the water, she might have become entangled without ever noticing the line floating above her.

  She released air from her BCD and knelt on the rocky bottom, letting the camera dangle from its strap. Gingerly taking hold of the line, she reeled it in, wrapping it around her left hand. Her dive gloves were fingerless so she could work the camera buttons, but she was glad to have the protection of the thin neoprene between the line and her hands. The first hook, strung on a secondary line that dangled off the main, was wickedly sharp but blessedly empty. Just as she feared, she was pulling in a section of a longline, a fishing device that was illegal within the marine sanctuary.

  As far as Sam was concerned, longlines should be illegal everywhere. Longlines, attached to floats at the surface, typically stretched for a mile or more, dangling hundreds of hooks. In her home area of the north Pacific, longlines were usually set by commercial halibut fishing boats. But too often boats that deployed them failed to recover the whole line, leaving sections to float and “fish” on their own. They weren’t as destructive to the ecosystem as bottom trawling with nets, but longlines senselessly killed all kinds of creatures attracted to the bait. As she continued to reel in this line, she felt something heavy but as yet invisible in the pea-soup distance. The weight didn’t pull back, so odds were that it wasn’t alive. She couldn’t help recalling the horrific vision of Dan’s corpse. When a large mass surged toward her out of the murk, two long black limbs trailing behind, she held her breath.