Hatteras Blue (30 page)

Aydlett grunted something. Galloway ignored it, still speaking to Keyes. "Anyway, it's obvious you can't control yourself. I'm no angel. But I'm not going to let you murder people on my boat."

"You know she's ruined our chances."

"Not necessarily. Not if we move fast. You caught her transmitting. Do you think she got through?"

"I don't know."

"Assume she did. The closest base to us is Ocracoke. That's four, five hours for a cutter, even if they start right away. It'll be light soon. Maybe we can finish this up before the Coast Guard arrives."

Keyes rubbed his head again and looked at his hand. "Nice job. No blood. You really think we can get it up that fast?"

"Maybe not all of it. A good part, maybe. What have we got to lose? Jack and I will work as fast as we can."

Keyes stood up. "Jack and you and I."

"No. I'm going to lock you and Shad in here, Dick."

"No, you're not. Listen, Galloway. You don't know who you're dealing with. I advise you, don't do this to me." He moved forward, his hand open.

The safety of his father's gun made a loud click as it released. Keyes stiffened as the muzzle moved to point at him. The two men were close enough to touch.

He sat slowly back down on the deck beside Aydlett.

Galloway got up and went to the hatch. He paused there, turning to meet the others' eyes. "Listen. Both of you. Bernie may have done the best thing for all of us. She called before any of it came up. There's no way the Guard can prove we didn't intend to call them once we were sure it was there. If they'd caught us with it underway it would have been a prison term. A long one.

"But now, whatever we have on deck when they arrive, that's legal salvage. I propose we split the salvor's

fee three ways. If Jack and I hump hard, Dick, when the legalities are over you'll have expenses and a substantial profit; Shad, you'll have a clear third. What do

you say?"

The two men sat on the deck, one blond and blue-eyed, the other black. But the hatred glittering in their eyes was just the same.

"All right, have it your way," said Galloway finally. "Stew away down here and be damned. But don't try to wreck the engines, or open a sea cock. You'll drown, as they say, like rats."

Keyes nodded then. He cleared his throat, and with immense effort seemed to tamp down what was raging within him. "Can I say something?"

"Fire away."

'You're not thinking very well, Tiller. She didn't call the Coast Guard, as you seem to think."

Galloway lowered the rifle fractionally. He waited.

"I think she's working for someone else."

"Who?"

"Most likely, those South Americans I told you about.

The Nazis."

"What?
You're paranoid as hell, Keyes, you know that? She's Jewish! She's also a first-term parole officer fresh out of college. Working for
them?
That's not even worth a laugh."

"Then where did the transmitter come from?"

Galloway stopped. He remembered it in his hands.

"That's not Coast Guard style, is it? Okay, maybe it isn't
Die Spinne,
but it's somebody shady. Whoever they are, if they get here and we're still around, we get nothing, Tiller. We don't get a cut. We don't get a salvor's fee. In fact—"

'Yeah," said Galloway slowly, looking at him. Much as he hated to admit it, the man had hold of something. "The bomb at Harry's. I don't think she'd work for Nazis. At least knowingly. But she—well—damn it, who
would
she do something like that for?" "I don't know, but you see what it means. Whoever they are they wouldn't want press attention, official attention any more than we do. Instead there'll be an accident.
Victory,
motor vessel, missing off Cape Hat-teras, no survivors."

Galloway stared at the oiled darkness of the carbine barrel. "You're starting to make sense."

"Good."

"Except for the fact that I need this to keep you from killing somepne. Maybe me."

Keyes stood up. He stretched casually and looked up at the bulb. Its stark radiance left pools of shadow under his eyes. "You forget that I need you, Tiller. I can't run
Charlene.
And you need me, to expedite and convert what we recover ashore. A parolee can't travel. Nor can he walk into a bank and ask for change for a bar of bullion. Can he?"

"No." Galloway stared at him. "Maybe you're right."

"Try me."

"What about Shad? Since he seems to be working for you now? Why, I don't know."

"We understand each other," said Keyes. "He's a good man. But maybe he'll give us his word as well."

"My word for what?"

"Not to attack Tiller again."

"If I said that I'd be lyin'," said Aydlett.

"Shad, Shad." Keyes smiled sadly at Galloway. "He's too honest for his own good."

Caffey came back and stood just inside the door. He had pulled his cutoffs on, but still looked scared. "How is she?" Galloway asked him.

"Getting cleaned up."

"Good." Galloway nodded at Aydlett, who had squatted motionless through the conversation, his eyes shuttling between Keyes and Galloway. "Shad here's decided he wants to be tied up belowdecks. There's some seizing wire in the tool cabinet there."

When the waterman's wrists were satisfactorily bound to the engine block Galloway relaxed slightly. "Let's get one more thing into the deal, Keyes. Hirsch. You don't touch her. If you so much as talk to her, that's it. The partnership's dead."

"She betrayed us, Tiller. Don't you think you're being too concerned about her?"

'You heard me. Bother her again and whoever gets here after we leave finds you face-down in the water."

"That's blunt enough," said Keyes. "That's the way men should talk. All right, I agree." He held out his hand.

Galloway didn't take it; but he did, after a long moment, drop the muzzle. Turning away, he led them up the companionway to the deck. The other man's footsteps were close behind.

I knew this moment was coming, he thought, feeling the hair prickle on his back. I always felt it when I was with him. It was like looking across the bars of a zoo into the yellow eyes of a wolf. It was caged for a time; but someday it would not be. There was always that feeling that someday the bars would be down between him and me.

But he'd made his decision. He was through hedging his bets. He'd have to let this one ride, and right or not, live—or die—with the roll.

Topside a new day was beginning. The eastern sky was opalescent and a low haze lay between the sea and the last dying star.

"Jack?"

"Here." Caffey came back from the bow.

"Here's the plan. We're going to get as much up as we can in one dive, then move out quick. We'll figure out what to do after that."

Caffey looked worried, but he nodded. "I'm with you, Tiller."

"Thanks, partner. We'll hit the water Soon as we can dress out. Get
Charlene
ready." He looked at his watch. It was a little after five. "Where's Bernie?" "Up there." He pointed toward the flying bridge. As far away from us, Galloway thought, as she can get. He climbed the ladder carefully. Raising his arms sent pain shooting upward into his neck and shoulders.

She came into his view, silhouetted against the opal sky in cotton drawstring shorts and one of Caffey's cropped Nags Head Divers sweatshirts. She was smoking a cigarette, sitting stiffly upright on the fresh paint of the flying bridge.

"Bernie?"

She didn't move. He said to her back, "I don't know what's going on in your head. I don't know why you did what you did. But I figure you did it for one reason: You thought it was the right thing. Am I right?"

She looked away from him, off to where the horizon was lighting with rose and orange.

Galloway gritted his teeth and pulled himself over the edge. When he stood above her she looked up. He could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry and hard now.

"So. You saw what he did to me, and then you had your talk. What did you decide?"

"I'm going down."

"With him?"

"Yes."

She lowered her eyes from his face. There was no more liking, no more respect in her look. In the space of a few seconds she had become a different person, one who would spend her life hating him.

He hunkered down and unslung the carbine and laid it beside her. "Here. I'm leaving this with you."

She glanced down, then up. "I don't like guns."

"You don't have to. Listen. It's already loaded. To use it push in this button here and then pull the trigger. It's full auto, it'll keep firing till you let go."

She glanced at it again, as she would at a snake, but put her hand on it. "Why are you giving it to me?"

"To protect you." "Who from? Him—or you?"

"I guess I deserve that, in a way. Okay." He stood up, his voice final. "If you want to use it on me feel free."

"Tiller. Wait."

"I've got to dress out."

"This won't take long. What are you trying to do? Get it up before they arrive, then run?"

"Something like that."

"It isn't right, Tiller. What's down there isn't yours."

"Whose is it?"

"The people it was taken from."

"What? They're dead, Bernie. They've been dead for a long time."

"To their heirs, then."

"Look." He glanced around the horizon, then squatted again. "Look, damn it! Who the hell are 'their heirs'? That gold came from all over Europe. Who knows who it belongs to? As far as I'm concerned, if it's in U.S. waters, it's free salvage. It belongs to whoever brings it up."

"Don't you think Israel has the most right to it?"

"Israel." He stared at her for a long moment. "Jesus,

I never thought of them____So Keyes was right. Okay,

Hirsch, let's have it. The full story."

She looked away. "They contacted me in Morehead City. A man named Ruderman. I wasn't sure I agreed with him at first. Now, seeing what it's doing to you, I think he's right. But you didn't answer me, Tiller. Don't they have more right to it than you and Straeter?"

Galloway frowned. "Who?"

'Tour new partner. He's a Nazi, an SS killer. I tried to tell you."

"He's pretty far gone, but Keyes is no German—he's one of our own far-right nuts. I think—"

"Galloway!" The voice came from below, unmasked and hard-edged now. "Tiller! You up there?"

"What do you want?"

"Jack and I are dressed out. We're waiting."

"Be right down." He put his hand on her shoulder; he felt her stiffen under the thin cloth. "We'll talk about it later, all right? Maybe we can work something out with part of the money. To square things a little. But I can't do things the way you want and wait here for them. Frankly I don't trust them any more than I do him. And one more thing."

"I thought you were a decent man," she whispered.

"Listen, damn it! If anybody—
anybody
—shows up while we're down there, don't let 'em aboard. Make them wait until we surface."

He waited for acquiescence, even a nod, but she did nothing. She was looking out to sea, and the hating look had come back. He squeezed her shoulder again and went to the ladder.

"And I thought I loved you."

It wasn't loud, but Galloway heard it. He stood by the ladder for a moment, looldng back at her bowed neck. Then he turned and went below.

The water seemed colder than it had before. Galloway shivered as it flooded between his suit and his skin. The dawn light turned to ice as
Charlene
dipped her nose into aquamarine. He switched the motor on to increase their downward speed. The propeller began to thrum and water tugged at his mask. He wriggled lower in the seat and brought them around, spiraling round the line as they descended.

He shivered again. He could still feel Keyes behind him. He knew now he'd seriously underestimated the man. He was far more dangerous than he'd thought. Cleverer. And more persuasive. Now that the spell of his personality was wearing off, Galloway regretted he hadn't kept him locked up aboard. He'd acted stupidly. The man behind him couldn't be trusted as a diving partner, couldn't be trusted at all. Those pale, slightly bulging eyes induced a kind of narcosis, like breathing nitrogen at seven atmospheres.

Somehow he'd won Aydlett over too. No—Galloway understood suddenly; that had taken no hypnotic spell. The man sitting behind him had simply told Shad point-blank that the fire in the little house had been no accident, that Galloway had killed his father as well as his brother Meshach.

Galloway wished then he'd had time to find out exactly what game Hirsch was playing. She was young, but she had a kind of toughness. She hadn't meant harm. Like most people her age she thought that what was right ought to be done because it was right, because that was how life ought to be lived.