Hatteras Blue (24 page)

The tapered stern, tilted up from the sea floor, displayed a complex arrangement of skegs and screws to view. The aft torpedo doors yawned open, blackness within. He wondered which of them had murdered the men on the
Arnold.

Charlene
banked, dropped, and scraped to a halt on the afterdeck of the wreck. The two divers moved awkwardly to extricate themselves from the cockpits. When he was free Caffey swam to the deck, trailing the vehicle's safety line behind him. He half-hitched it to a rusty grating. Galloway finned after him. When he reached the sub he paused to unwrap a flat package. The end of a line drifted up. He seized this and tied it off before pulling the toggle.

They watched the buoy soar upward, trailing line, until it was out of sight. Caffey looked at him.

—Let's go forward, Tiller waved. His partner nodded, switched on his hand light, and moved slowly after him toward the conning tower.

Their first stop was some thirty feet aft of it. Galloway sank flat on muddy steel and aimed his light at the underside of the engine room hatch. The handwheel looked clean. No wires, nothing that looked suspicious. He shifted his position and examined the hinge, then aimed the torch straight down. He grinned suddenly, wondering if the ghosts of the crew were watching, and if so thinking how funny the two of them looked. The Kraut ghosts had gone a long time between laughs.

He shook his head in annoyance. The nitrogen was getting to him. He half-rolled to one side and pulled his tank gauge up. Another 1100 pounds. He motioned Caffey closer and checked his. My God, he thought, the kid breathes air like it was free. He was almost at reserve pressure. He pointed back at the vehicle, rapped his tanks, held up two fingers, pointed to himself.

—Change your tanks. Bring me a fresh pair too.

The boy mimed a salute and Galloway returned his attention to the hatchway. He had worked his head and shoulders a couple of feet down into the trunk when a loop of wire froze him. Probably a switch, he thought, something to indicate to the diving officer whether the hatch was closed. But would permanent wiring hang loose like that? Confused, he backed out clumsily.

Aluminum bonged against rusty steel. It was Caffey, struggling with the new tanks. Galloway bit into a fresh regulator, cleared it with a puff and tentatively asked for air. It came, dry as a fine wine. He struggled out of the old pair and strapped on the new. He glared at Jack, who stared back, eyes puzzled.

At last he fished the grease pencil out of his vest and wrote laboriously on the deck: BREATH SLOW CONSRV AR. He pointed it out to his cousin. Caffey examined it like an archaeologist reading Cretan, then motioned for the pencil. He painstakingly added two Es and an I.

Galloway made a rude gesture. Caffey returned it. They swam upward together.

The conning tower hatch was flanked by the bases of the periscopes so closely he had to wriggle between them. It was halfway open. Jammed? He put his gloves on it, set his fins on either side, and yanked.

He almost blacked out with the sudden storm of pain in his back. An involuntary scream lost him his regulator and got him a mouthful of cold salt water. He grabbed for it, releasing a storm of bubbles, and got it back in and cleared. The pain receded and, single-minded as a drunk, he looked back down at the hatch. It hadn't moved.

He shook his head at Caffey and pointed forward. The forward torpedo-loading hatch was next. His cousin, in the lead, hardly bothered to look before pulling himself inside. Galloway had the presence of mind to grab his ankle before he disappeared. When he backed out Galloway shook his finger at him, thinking The kid's blotto. He doesn't care about the risks anymore. Got to keep a cool head down here. He examined the inside of the trunk very carefully. To hell with this, he thought then. If we go in here we'll have to crawl ail the way aft to get where we want to be. He motioned to Jack to follow and swam over the deck edge and around the curved expanse of the hull.

Waving the boy clear, he approached the blown-out hole. He played the light around and inside the edges, noting the positions of the wires and pipes as carefully as his numbed mind would allow
¹
. At last he shoved off from the hull, sank to the level of the hole, and cautiously approached it.

The first barrier was a tangle of brownish, smooth-looking cable. When he shoved it aside the motion detached the brown coating; it slid off in curved fragments and then dissolved into roiling silt, further obscuring the interior. Following his light he moved forward cautiously, right hand advanced. It found the rusty edge of what seemed to be a second, interior hull. More wire, muddy skeins, barred his path and he wriggled under them, reaching back to keep them from fouling on his tanks.

On past a jagged pipe, under a twisted beam. The water cleared a little and he found himself with slightly more room. The pale yellow cone of his light rested for a moment on dials, handwheels. He was inside. The dbuble hull, he thought, must have been either ballast or fuel tanks.

Pausing to breathe, he held the lamp to his air gauge and then his watch. Only five minutes' bottom time left, another ten on this set of tanks. We're both using air too fast, he thought. It must be the cold; his lips and cheeks were numb with it; even his fingers, in heavy cotton gloves, were growing stiff. He took a consciously slower breath and drifted upward, pointing his light down a kind of corridor. The patch of brightness wavered over crowded, angular, confusing shapes, then steadied on a black oval: an open door, beyond which lay nothing that gave back light.

Something tickled his neck, and he spun slowly to look. It felt sticky. It followed his head. As he turned it slid downward, clinging viscously to his ears, his hood. He drifted a last inch upward. The back of his head bumped gently into the overhead.

He reached up, into something soft. It clung to his arm. When he tried to shake it off he drew it down across his cheeks and his lips, clenched tight on the mouthpiece. It burned, and a sticky dense taste filled his mouth.

He recognized it then. Fuel oil seeping from ruptured tanks and floating here, trapped within the top of the pressure hull. He tried to scrape it from his face, but succeeded only in spreading the jellylike mass. The interior seemed to have grown darker; he looked around, waving the light in his free hand. Nothing, only night. Either his light had failed or the mess had covered his mask. Ah, hell, he thought drunkenly. What a nuisance.

He was thinking about how he'd have to clean it off his wet suit now when his regulator made a peculiar sucking noise, and jammed.

fifteen

B
ERNIE LINGERED BY THE GUNWALE AFTER Galloway and Caffey submerged, watching their breath foam and break on the slick surface of the sea. The old torpedo boat stirred beneath her, a slow roll like a rocking cradle. Aydlett gruffly asked her to check him out. She did and a moment later he went in too, holding a length of rope. When she lost sight of him she straightened, stretching sensuously in the growing heat of cloudless morning.

Only then did she realize that she was alone with Keyes, and would be for at least an hour while Tiller and Jack were below.

She shivered and dropped her arms, looking round the deck. The blond man, in shorts and sandals and with his chest bare, was replacing the unused gear in the lockers. When he caught her glance she dropped her eyes.

"Looks like we have some time on our hands."

"I guess so."

"Getting warm up here. Want something cold to drink?"

"No, thank you. I'm going to—" she had been about to say sunbathe, but changed that to "—work on the deckhouse. Some fresh paint."

He nodded, though his glance was sharp, then bent to his own chore. She walked by quickly, trying to keep her body from betraying her. He did not look up as she passed and she exhaled in relief and hurried down the companionway.

In the chain locker she selected sandpaper, brush, and a half-full can of Cawlux yacht white. She was about to leave when her eye fell on a paint chipper. A foot long, steel, with a sharp edge. She hesitated, then took that too. She hauled the can up after her by a line on the handle, to avoid going aft again, and carried it to the top of the pilothouse.

From twenty feet up she could see for miles. A white speck danced on the waves a few hundred yards away. She watched it for a moment, shielding her eyes, then concluded that the men below had sent up a buoy. At last she bent to work with sandpaper and then brush. She did a square meter and then another. The day grew hot. Patches of sweat appeared at her back and arms and crotch, but she kept her shirt and jeans on.

Despite the discomfort, work gradually ceased to occupy her mind. She still sanded and painted, but her mind went on to other concerns. Such as a cigarette. Since her conversation with Ruderman she'd gone back up to a pack a day. Luckily she'd bought a carton in Morehead City. But they were belowdecks, and
he
was there. She decided to think about something else. About Galloway, for example.

Yes, about Tiller. If there's really gold down there, she thought, he's the one to get it up. Despite his drinking, which she had counseled him about, she knew he was an excellent diver. He could do anything underwater.

But prison, or his guilt about his father, had robbed him of something central. He had the ability and skills to make an honest living; no, he was capable of far more; he could start a company, for example, as her father had. But he didn't want to. The easy dollar was all he cared to take, enough to buy fuel for the boat, liquor for him, and drinks ashore for the women he brought aboard from time to time.

That made her angry, even thinking about it. Of course there was no requirement for parolees to be celibate. And Nags Head in summer was one vast singles bar. But it irritated her.

She knew why. She had accepted at last that she was attracted to him. Her decision to come back aboard, after what Ruderman had told her, meant nothing else.

She smiled to herself. He was so transparent. He acted so masculine, rude and callous and competent. But that was only a defense mechanism. His loneliness and torment were obvious to anyone who took the time to get to know him.

But he didn't respond. And that was frustrating. Galloway seemed not to care about love or involvement, just as he was indifferent to success.

Jf only he
wanted
something, she thought, battering fiercely with the tool at a patch of blistered paint. But he didn't. He seemed content to drift through life alongside a stinking wharf in a half-rotten boat and run fishermen and divers out a few times a month. Enough money for food and whiskey and transient women. That was all Tiller Galloway seemed to want.

But in the last few days—she twirled the brush slowly in the can as the idea struck her—he
had
been different. More involved with people. And he was drinking less. Straeter had brought him a challenge. Something out of the ordinary. Certainly it had the lure of easy money. But that, she hoped, wasn't all Tiller saw in it.

It was hard, inexperienced as she was, to know what to do. There were written guidelines you could follow; Moulton had given them to her. But Tiller was not an average client. Perhaps she should have advised him against further work for Keyes as soon as she suspected the mkn. Or at least gone ashore herself.

But it was too late for her to back out now.

Look on the bright side, Bern, she thought, watching sweat drip from her forehead onto fresh white paint. Between you and Ruderman maybe this will turn out all right. You can't foresee everything.

But it was dangerous. Not only to her but to all of them. When the gold was aboard ... she pictured the transmitter in her mind, now hidden in a roll of clothes at the foot of her bunk.

She hoped the old man came quickly when she made her call.

Something cold touched her foot, and she jumped. It was a bottle of apple juice from the ice chest. She took it silently from Keyes's extended hand. He stood on the ladder, looking around.

'You going to paint the whole thing today?"

"Thanks. Well—as much of it as I can."

"There's no hurry."

"I want to get it done."

"All right," he said equably. "I'll give you a hand." He came the rest of the way up the ladder, chest gleaming with sweat and pale hair, and stepped onto the unpainted section of deck.

She moved back against the freshly painted rail, trying to mask fear with a smile. "Sure. I mean, if you want, that's fine."

He took the brush from her and their hands touched. She turned away from him after a frozen second and knelt to her work again. She felt his eyes on her back as she began sanding around the new antenna mount. Sound casual, she thought. Keep it light. But all she could think of to say was, "How long have they been down, Dick?"

"About thirty minutes." His voice was friendly. "Say. Tell me something. Bernie."

"What?" /

"Do you find me attractive?"

The rasp, rasp of sandpaper stopped, then resumed.

The noise seemed loud to her in the silence that had come over the sea. "That's ... an odd question for you

to ask."

"It has to do with your behavior, which is also odd. At first you seemed to be attracted to me. But since we went into Morehead you take every chance to avoid me. Is that two sides of the same coin, I ask myself. Yes, it could be. But there could also be some other reason. So I'm asking you now: Which is it?"