Serpent (14 page)

He led the way along the passageway to the galley, where Zavala sat at a table drinking espresso and reading a faxed version of The New York Times. The airconditioned sterility was a potent antidote to the desolation at the Place of the Dead. The galley was the standard shipboard decor, Formica and aluminum tables and chairs bolted to the deck. But the aromas coming from the kitchen were not the usual smells of bacon and burger grease that clung to most ships' galleys.

Nina sat down, happy to take the weight off her sore foot. "I must be famished," she said, lifting her chin to inhale. "It smells like a four-star restaurant in here."

Zavala put the paper down. Five-star. We underpaid NUMA types must endure many hardships. The wine list is excellent, but you'll find only California vintages in our cellar."

"This is a U.S. vessel," Austin said in exaggerated apology. "It wouldn't do to have a Bordeaux or Burgundy aboard, though our chef did graduate from Cordon Bleu, if that makes you feel better."

"The dinner choices tonight are steak au poivre and halibut au beurre blanc," Zavala added. "I must apologize for the chef. He's from Provence and tends to go heavy on the basil and olive oil."

Nina looked around at the functional surroundings and shook her head in amazement. "I think I'll survive."

With Nina relaxed, Austin decided it was a good time to bring up an unpleasant subject. First he brought her a tall glass of iced tea. "If you're okay discussing last night again, I'd like to go over what we know in case we missed something," Austin said.

She took a sip of tea as if the brew would fortify her. "I'll be all right," she said, and began to recount again the story of what happened the night before.

Austin listened, eyes half dosed in a sleeping lion imitation, absorbing every word and inflection, tumbling the facts over in his mind, looking for inconsistencies with the first account.

When she had finished he said, "I think you're right not going with Captain Mustapha's bandit theory. Bandits might have killed some of your people trying to rob them, but from what you described this was a deliberate massacre."

"What about Muslim fundamentalist terrorists?" Zavala ventured. "They've killed thousands of people in Algiers."

"Maybe, but terrorists usually like to advertise what they've done. This bunch went out of its way to hide evidence. Why would fundamentalists destroy the stone figure? That's another thing that bothers me, by the way. They'd need specialized explosives to do that."

"Which means they would have known about the statue ahead of time," Zavala said.

"That's right. They came prepared for underwater demolition."

"Impossible," Nina responded. Then, less sure, she said, "I don't see how they could have known about it."

"Me neither," Zavala said. "You're certain they spoke Spanish?"

She nodded emphatically

Austin said, "You can practically walk to Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar from Tangier, and that's not far from here."

Zavala shook his head. "Doesn't mean a thing. I speak Spanish, but I'm a Mexican American who's never been to Spain."

Nina remembered something. "Oh, that reminds me. I forgot about Gonzalez."

"Who is Gonzalez?" Austin said.

"He was a volunteer on the expedition. Actually, he paid to be on it through a nonprofit organization called Time-Quest. I saw him talking to a man, a stranger in a Jeep, yesterday afternoon. Gonzalez said the man was lost. At the time I thought it was peculiar."

"You thought right," Austin said. "It could be nothing, but we'll run a check on Time-Quest and see if they have anything on Gonzalez. I assume he was killed with the others."

"I didn't see him, but I don't know how he could have escaped."

"What about the hovercraft that chased Nina?" Zavala asked Austin. "Maybe there's a lead there."

"From what I could see at water level, it looked like a custom model. Maybe a Griffon made in England. I called NUMA earlier and asked them to run a check on the owners of all

Griffon hovercraft. There can't be too many of them in the world. My guess is they bought it through a dummy corporation."

"Which means they've made it hard to trace."

"Maybe even impossible, but it's worth a try." He stared off into space, thinking. "We're still faced with the main question: why would anybody want to wipe out a harmless archaeological expedition?"

Nina had been sitting with her chin resting on her hand. "Maybe it wasn't so harmless," she ventured.

"What do you mean?"

"I keep coming back to the Olmec figure. It's at the center of things."

I'm still having a problem with the Olmec part. Especially since it was turned into a load of gravel."

"It's not just my evaluation. You've got to remember it was Sandy who ID'd it. She's one of the most respected Meso-american specialists in the country. Sanford's done papers and field work on all the big sites like Tikal and a lot of lesserknown but important finds."

"Okay, let's say you and Sandy are right. Why is the figure significant?"

"It could shake up the archaeological and historical community. For years people have wondered whether there was contact between the Old and New Worlds before Columbus."

"Like Leif Eriksson and the Vikings? I thought there was pretty conclusive evidence of that," Zavala said.

"There is, but it's been begrudgingly accepted. I'm talking about transatlantic contact hundreds of years before the Vikings. The problem has been the lack of any scientifically proven artifact. The Olmec head would have been that artifact."

Austin lifted an eyebrow. "Well, so what?"

"Pardon me?" she said, almost affronted.

"Say this figure does conclusively prove pre-Columbian contact. Fascinating, and certainly controversial. But how important could it be except to archaeologists, historians, and the Knights of Columbus? What makes it something to kill for, in other words?"

"Oh, I see your point," she said, somewhat mollified, "but I can't answer you, other than to say I think my discovery precipitated the attack in some way"

"No one in the camp knew about your find."

"No. They would have known about it in time: Ethically, I should have told Dr. Knox and Fisel the moment I found it I suspected right away that it was Mexican Olmec, but it seemed so fantastic, I wanted corroboration before I stuck my neck out. That's when I contacted Sandy."

"Except for you, your colleague back at the university was the only other person who had seen evidence of the find?"

"Yes, but Sandy would never tell anybody. Thank goodness the preliminary data are secure in her hands." She paused. "I have to get home as soon as possible."

"We're heading to the Yucatan peninsula to check out the impact area of the asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs. We've got another day of survey here before we leave," Austin said. "We'd love you to be our guest for that time, then we can drop you off at Marrakech, where you can catch a plane to New York It would give you some time to rest and consolidate your thoughts."

"Thank you," Nina said. "I'm still pretty jittery, but I feel safe here."

"You'll be more than safe, you'll be well fed."

"There is one thing. I've got to notify the university about the expedition and Dr. Knox. The anthropology department will be devastated. Dr: Knox was an institution. Everybody loved him."

"No problem," Zavala said. "I'll take you to the radio room."

Austin got a glass of iced coffee and brought it back to the table. He poured in a dollop of half-and-half and stared at the dark liquid as if the answer to Nina's puzzle lay in the swirling curlicues. None of the story made much sense, and he was no nearer enlightenment when Zavala returned with Nina a few minutes later.

"That was fast," Austin said. "Didn't you get through to the university?"

Zavala was uncharacteristically somber. "We got through immediately, Kurt."

Austin noticed Nina's eyes were moist with tears.

"I talked to the administration," Nina said, her face ashen. "They didn't want to tell me at first, but I knew they were holding back something." She paused. "Good God! What is happening?"

"I don't understand," Austin said, although he suspected what was coming and wasn't totally surprised when Nina said:

"It's Sandy. She's dead.

8 AUSTIN LAY IN HIS BUNK AND stared at the ceiling, listening with envy to Zavala's soft snores from across the cabin. As predicted, the chef had gone heavy on the herbs and oil, but Austin's stomach was fine. It was his brain keeping him awake. Like a busy file clerk, it was sorting out the day's events and wasn't about to let him rest.

The shakedown cruise on the Nereus was supposed to be a milk run, a chance to take a break from the NUMA team's more strenuous probes into the strange and sinister enigmas on and under the world's oceans. Then Nina appeared with the hounds of hell snapping at her heels and practically ran into his arms. Maybe he was really being kept awake by thoughts of the lovely young woman in the next cabin.

He glanced at the glowing hands of his Chronosport wristwatch. Three o'clock. Austin remembered a doctor telling him that three A.M. was when most deathly ill people give up the ghost. That got him out of bed. He pulled on a pair of heavy sweatpants and a nylon windbreaker and slipped into battered boat shoes that fit like gloves. Quietly leaving Zavala to his slumber, he stepped into the passageway and went up four decks to the bridge.

The wheelhouse door was open to admit the night air. Austin stuck his head inside. A young crewman named Mike Curtis was on the early morning watch. He sat in a chair with his nose buried in a book

"Hi, Mike," Austin said. "Couldn't sleep. How would you like some company?"

The crewman grinned and put the book aside. "Wouldn't mind a bit. Things get pretty boring up here. Want some coffee?"

"Thanks. I like mine black."

While Mike poured two steaming mugs Austin picked up the geology book "Pretty heavy reading for the graveyard shift."

"I was just boning up for the Yucatan survey. Do you really think that a meteor or comet wiped out all the dinosaurs?"

"When an object as big as Manhattan slams into the earth, it's going to shake things up. Whether the big lizards were already on the verge of extinction is another question. This plankton survey should settle a lot of arguments. It's ironic in a way, having little one-celled animals telling us what happened to the biggest life form ever."

They chatted until Mike went to attend to routine duties. Austin drained, his mug and walked through the radio shack to the chartroom at the rear of the bridge. With its big wrap-around windows the space doubled as an aft control room the crew could use when maneuvering the ship in reverse.

Austin spread a chart of the Moroccan coast on the navigation table and marked an X in pencil to show the ship's present position. Lips pursed in thought, he studied the chart, letting his eyes travel along the 'occipital bulge in the skullshaped African continent from Gibraltar to the Sahara. After a few minutes of study he shook his head. The chart told him nothing. A hovercraft could have come from land or sea.

He dragged a chair over, put his feet up on the table, and read the entries in the ship's log from the start of the trip. It had been a picture-perfect cruise up to now. A swift and uneventful voyage across the Atlantic, a brief stopover in London to pick up a batch of European scientists, a pleasant couple of weeks in the Mediterranean testing the submersible, and then the Moroccan stopover two days ago.