Benchley, Peter (25 page)

He’s ready to make his move.”

Sanders said, “What move?”

“I imagine he thinks his divers are ready; doesn’t need us any more. I thought we had a bit of time, but we have got no bloody time at all.” He slammed the gear lever all the way forward. The engine growled, the propeller cavitated, then bit into the sea, and the boat lunged toward the reefs.

When they had reached the reef and set the anchor, Treece said to Sanders, “Can she dive?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll…”

“I can dive,” said Gail. “I can’t be alone up here. I’ll get down all right, if I take my time.”

“I hate like hell to leave us empty topside,”

said Treece. “Charlotte’s not too handy with a shotgun. But I don’t see

we have a choice. He may not try anything else tonight, figure he shook us good enough for one day.”

They dressed, and Gail mounted her regulator on an air tank.

“You two take the lights,” Treece said.

“Keep “em trained on the nozzle of the gun.

Use your free hands to collect the glass. I’ll try not to get ahead of you.” Treece started the compressor and tossed the air-lift hose overboard. “Christ, that monster makes a din. If it weren’t for the bloody gun, we could leave her quiet and use bottles.”

They went into the water and switched on the lights.

Treece looked at David and Gail, nodded his head, and dove for the bottom.

The dog stood on the bow, watching the lights recede into the darkness, sniffing the warm night air.

Sanders and Treece reached the bottom first. Gail lingered behind, descending as fast as her ears and sinuses would permit. There was something different about the air she was breathing; it seemed to have a faint taste, mildly sweet, but it was having no ill effect, so she continued to the bottom.

They were working away from the reef, perhaps ten yards from the little cave, in a new field of ampules.

Sanders” light was steady on the mouth of the air lift, and he picked the ampules out of the hole one by one.

Gail settled across the hole from Treece and lay on her stomach, a canvas bag at her side.

She felt no tenseness at all, no worry; she was surprised, in fact, at how relaxed she felt. Even when the air lift uncovered an artillery shell, her mind registered it as a thing, not a concern.

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.

“Sonofabitchst

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 comfor 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 the 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 fingers 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 where 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.”