Far From The Sea We Know (24 page)

Instead she walked around and around the
deck like a penned-in animal. Still, it was better than the
treadmill she had tried using earlier. The acrid stench of dried
sweat in the small hold they had stuffed it into had driven her
away. She wasn’t cut out for life at sea and had always known that.
She had no regrets as she had no desire to follow in her father’s
long shadow, anyway.

After three times around the deck, she
decided to do a session of stretches. At the end of her last set,
as she came to her feet, she had to suppress a cringe. Lorraine
Hart, the TV reporter, was coming her way. The meeting was still
going on, but here was Lorraine, wrapped in bed sheets, her once
well tended blond hair now a mass of frizz. Without her layers of
makeup, she at least looked human.

As she approached, Lorraine’s gaze met hers.
There was a certain look to her, and it was in her body as well. It
was as if she had been inhabited by someone else. It brought back
the memory of a Maasai tribeswoman Penny had met years ago while
doing fieldwork on the African veldt. As the young woman had moved
through the grass, each step was like a sacrament that kept her in
perfect synch with her world.

Lorraine strolled up but remained silent, a
faint smile on her unpainted lips.

“You okay?” Penny said.

Lorraine barely nodded. She remained almost
motionless yet not at all stiff. More like a still pool standing
upright.

She finally spoke. “And you, Penny?”

“A good night’s sleep helped a lot.”

Lorraine didn’t say anything, just stood
there, somehow looking as if she were seeing everything.

“You’ll have a whopper of a story to bring
back,” Penny said to break the silence. “Should be a boost to your
career. If anyone believes it.”

“I’m not going back to my job.”

“Why not?”

Lorraine reached out for her hand, and Penny
was so off guard that she let her take it. She didn’t know why, but
she closed her eyes. After a moment, Lorraine said, “He will come
back to you. Remember when you first met? Become each other.”

When she opened her eyes, Lorraine had a
smile shimmering on her face. Not the smile of the ambitious TV
newswoman who had arrived several days ago. It was as if she had
slowed down and caught up with herself. All the hurly burly was
gone. The sensation of Lorraine's hand flowed into Penny’s until
she could not distinguish it from her own. The silence went on and
she couldn’t break it, nothing came to say. A lump formed in her
throat and a feeling in her chest that she hated. “No…damn it.” She
began to cry. Lorraine put her arms around her. Penny sobbed
quietly for a long time, but it may have only been minutes.

When it was all gone, Lorraine tenderly
released her and took a step back. She lifted up the edge of the
sheet. “Use this.”

Without thinking, Penny dabbed the remaining
tears from her eyes and face.

“The nose, too. I’ve got another, and this
one is due for a wash.” She laughed. “Come on!”

She blew her nose.

“Our secret,” Lorraine said, and glided off
without a sound. There was some kind of enticing scent following in
her wake, but it wasn’t perfume.

Penny was sleepy. It just came over her, so
she headed back to her cabin to lie down. She didn’t want to think,
had no desire to. It felt good to let go, and she drifted off
without a thought, glad to forget everything, if only for a
while.

Penny awoke and looked at the clock to find
it was now late afternoon. She had only had coffee and a little
toast all day. That was the problem: low blood sugar. The cabin
hatch swung not quite shut as she left.

Mateo pulled together a meal for her from
leftovers in the galley. While she was picking at it, Andrew
appeared and said, “Lieutenant Chiffrey will be back soon from some
meeting on the frigate.”

She quickly finished eating and went with
him to the aft deck. “Matthew’s off somewhere,” she said.

“Let him recover.”

“I am,” she said. “But right now I want to
know where you are with Chiffrey.”

Andrew didn’t move a muscle. He stood as if
welded to the railing. Perhaps his eyes blinked as he peered out
across the water, but with his perpetual squint she couldn’t
tell.

“We don’t have to trust Chiffrey,” Andrew
said at last. “Just have to work with him. Either that, or they
move in and move us out. He’s the only thing keeping them back.
Their hope is we come up with something they’ve missed.”

“Damn, he’s here already,” she said,
glancing over his shoulder. A Navy launch had just come into view
and was cutting over the swells toward them.

“We’ve got a few minutes,” Andrew said.
“Anything you want to say before he boards?”

“I’ll save it.”

Andrew barely nodded. She knew he wouldn’t
say anymore. They waited.

A minute after the launch left, with
sunlight flashing on the sea behind him, Lieutenant Chiffrey
sauntered up and leaned on the bulkhead opposite them.

“So we three meet again, but the weather
foul not be,” he said, spreading his arms and looking up in
gratitude. “Beautiful day, actually…”

“Stow the glee,” Penny said. “Let’s have
it.”

“Well someone missed their sprinkling of
fairy dust the other day,” he said, winking. Then he noticed her
expression. “Okay, so first off, they still haven’t a clue how
those ships lost their propellers. As I predicted, some of the
decision makers up the chain are not at all happy about the
intentional aspect. If they had something to shoot at, they
probably would be pulling the trigger now.”

“I hope this is not your way of trying to
put us at ease.”

“All that, and we have a new development,
and this has really got them confounded. You noticed they sent down
divers to inspect the props, right?”

“Yes,” she and Andrew said
simultaneously.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that
speaking-at-the-same-time thing. Did you know, when I just saw
Emory and Malcolm they—”

“Could you just get to the point for once!”
Penny said, almost yelling.

“Easy now. What happened was they didn’t
come up. They sent other divers down after them, and they didn’t
come up either.” He paused, as if for effect. “Finally, they rigged
some nets and fished them out. No one was hurt, thankfully.”

“What, did they pass out or something?” she
asked.

“More like mesmerized. They had sent down
video cameras with the divers and got enough to show that there was
something going on with the propeller shafts. The ships had two
each and when the propellers were sliced clean off, the face of
each shaft was cut smooth as glass. They could tell the divers were
in trouble, since they were just floating in front of the shafts,
gazing in awe. Then the cameras fried—yes, a little too
convenient.”

“How could they get hypnotized by a piece of
metal?”

“We have no idea. These divers had throat
mikes, which stayed on, and they were just speaking…well, I heard
it. Stream of consciousness. Almost poetic. Maybe it was poetry.
Hmm, we should check that out…”

“Did all this happen while the frigate was
blocking our view?”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, come now. Earlier this morning, they
got between the cruiser and us. They intentionally blocked us from
witnessing the incident with the divers, didn’t they?”

“I don’t think so. They may have been where
they were for a good reason.”

“Keep on believing it,” she said.

“Now you’re the one who seems a little
paranoid.”

“If we are going to get anywhere, we need
the full deck, remember?”

“I’m filling you in now, aren’t I? And, by
the way, your concern for our divers was touching. I did hear you
express concern, didn’t I?”

“Back off,” Andrew said. “Both of you. While
on this ship, you all agreed to be under my command. Need to work
together on this.”

“I apologize, Captain,” Chiffrey said.

“It wasn’t just you,” Andrew said.
“Penny?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Andrew looked them both over for a moment.
“How are the divers now?”

“To the eye, they’re physically okay, but
they seem to be in a state of ecstasy. They’re on that salvage
ship, which is really a research vessel.” Chiffrey pointed across
the water. “Over there, with the cranes on the aft deck. It’ll be
towed soon, along with the cruiser, but apparently there is some
discussion as to just where they should go.”

“They want a place to hide them,” she said.
“Come on, it’s obvious.”

“Frankly, I don’t blame them and neither
should you. You can’t tell me you’d prefer those men and the ships
become a tourist attraction? I saw the video of the divers
underwater.” Chiffrey stopped for a moment and closed his eyes.
“Light was coming out of the ends if the propeller shafts. You
could see it shining on the diver’s face. The camera swung head-on
at one point, and the screen just went white. The camera was still
sizzling when they brought it up! Time’s like that, I wish I hadn’t
given up smoking sixteen years ago. Yeah, I was twelve. Grew up on
a North Carolina tobacco farm. Loved the smell.”

A gull came out of nowhere and swooped so
close they ducked. It rode the air wake of the ship for a few
moments, then peeled away and vanished on the other side.

Chiffrey looked puzzled. “Are there always
so many birds this far out, Captain?”

“No, but not unheard of. What’s the Navy
going to do?”

“They aren’t going down to look at the
shafts again until they have a more controlled situation. We’ve
been assembling a science team to investigate, but the immediate
reality is that the people I report to are having a hard time
coming to grips with what I am sending back. And the people
they
report to are really not getting it. Many of them don’t
even accept what has happened. It will take a while longer before
the dominoes fall far enough down the line to get a full reaction.
That’s good for us, since they’ll leave us alone for a while.”

“But they have their own proof now,” Penny
said. “The divers, the prop shafts.”

“For the divers, mass psychosis will always
do. The prop shafts are harder, but some have suggested the ships
must have hit some underwater obstacle, maybe containers from a
cargo vessel. A thousand of those floating around, and some are
tracked, but many are submerged just a few meters below the
surface.”

Penny laughed and said. “So it was just a
crate of TVs from Korea that disabled the ships? Now I can breathe
easier.”

“The container problem is real enough,”
Andrew said, “but we all know that’s not what happened.”

“They’re just looking for something that
makes sense,” Chiffrey said.

“I’d like to move on.” Andrew said. He
fished some papers out of his windbreaker and handed them to Penny.
“Have a look at this from your father.”

“What is it?”

“Missing pieces of our puzzle.”

Chiffrey smiled. “This time, I’d be happy to
let you have the honor of the telling, Captain.”

Without returning the smile, Andrew began.
“Another story just broke on TV. Same station that sent Lorraine
Hart and her team.”

“About Matthew?” Penny asked.

“Not this time. Transcripts of interviews
with some people from a private yacht. One of those luxury white
composites with all kind of chrome. Supposedly out fishing, though
doesn’t make sense given where they were.”

She guessed at his meaning. “Slumming?”

“People do it,” Andrew said. “Get out of
sight of land to feel like real sailors.”

“At any rate,” Chiffrey said, “they were out
there when something went down. Seven days before Matthew’s last
trip on the
Eva Shay
.”

“Then why did the TV station wait so long to
run the story?” she asked.

“The people on the yacht were extremely
confused,” Chiffrey answered. He looked at them and shrugged. “Yes,
kind of like some of the people on the
Eva Shay
. And some of
your people here.”

“The point is,” Andrew said, “this was
before Matthew’s incident.”

“Exactly,” Chiffrey said. “It may even be
when this whole thing began. The people from the
Honey
Pot
—that was the name of the yacht—could not agree at all about
what really happened. Then the TV station wanted more time to
verify certain aspects of the story.”

Penny rustled the papers. “Says here the
crew talked about witnessing a big explosion, but further down it
notes there had been no reports of any accidents.”

Chiffrey yawned. “Excuse me. I was on the
sat-phone—my secret one that you all know about—most of the night.
Slept about two hours.”

“Need a break?” Andrew said.

“I’ll get some shuteye after this.”

Andrew scrutinized him for a moment, in a
way that one almost didn’t notice because it was so obvious.

“Further down,” Penny said, glancing at the
papers in her hand, “they indicate the Air Force wanted to hush the
whole thing up.”

Chiffrey grinned.

“You got me. I confess. Guilty as charged!”
He looked up at the sun, eyes closed, then said, “Listen, folks,
not everyone appreciates being told the truth, especially when it
leaves them no longer knowing what they’re supposed to believe, let
alone do. That’s almost the definition of hell.”

“Whom do you work for?” Penny asked.
“Really?”

“You all, of course. You pay my salary, too,
and with the pension I’ll get, I expect to wind up in a one-room
walkup somewhere. Or hopefully back in the hills, where one room
would suit me fine.”

“Just tell it straight,” Andrew said. “The
transcripts indicate you spent considerable time interviewing these
people.”

“Then let them go,” Chiffrey said. “And the
truth is, the first thing they did when they left us was to go back
to the TV folks and use our contact with them to leverage the
validity of their tale. Fortunately, the station didn’t feel there
was enough to sustain a credible report, so the story dried
up.”