Oracle (26 page)

Here it comes, thought Hodges
. Carrot or stick? He’s going to make me beg for it.
“Unless?”

“
I know that your motives are ideological. Or maybe a better word would be personal. I suspect you would gladly endure imprisonment or any other fate because you think your cause is just. Whether you believe it or not, I feel the same.” He stared past Hodges, a wistful expression alighting on his arrogant face. “Though I will admit to having a weakness where my sister is concerned.”

He brought his eyes back to Hodges.
“Ophelia is a crazy dreamer, chasing after fairy tales. Unfortunately, she’s just told me that she’s not going to give up the search, and there’s a very real possibility that she’ll find what she’s looking for. That presents a problem for us all. I love her, but she’s out of control, and yes, if it comes down to it, I’m willing to do what has be done. I’d prefer it not come to that, but there it is.”

“
Unless?” Hodges repeated, the word grating from his throat.

“
Do what you were sent to do. Make this problem go away. It’s as simple as that.”

“
As simple as that?”

Doerner took something from his pants pocket. He held up his fist and with a snick, a two-inch long blade appeared.

Switchblade,
thought Hodges.
This guy is a real piece of work.

Doerner leaned over him and sawed apart the zip ties.
“We both know Andres was to blame for what happened here. I’ll see to it that the local authorities forget your name. It goes without saying that the Group will take care of you.” He took a step back. “Do we have a deal?”

“
What about your sister?”

“
I would prefer that she come to no harm, but as you say, no victory without sacrifice.” Doerner’s eyes glinted like the steel of his blade. “But if it should come to that, do yourself a favor and kill yourself, because I won’t be that merciful.”

Nassau, Bahamas

Jade felt a
sudden misgiving as she stepped out onto the pier at the Nassau Harbor Marina. Directly ahead, moored at the first slip, was the bright yellow outline of the
R/V Quest Explorer,
a two hundred-fifty foot search and recovery ship owned and operated by Quest Maritime Incorporated. QMI billed itself as a private marine archaeological venture, but they were essentially treasure hunters on a grand scale, and not above renting their services out to paying customers; especially customers with the kind of money that Ophelia brought to the table. Yet, it was not the nearness of the search vessel that had shaken Jade’s confidence, but rather the enormous, city-sized cruise ships that were docked just beyond the
Quest Explorer
. There were three of them; eight hundred foot long behemoths, each capable of carrying nearly three thousand passengers and crew. These ships came and went daily, bearing tens of thousands of tourists, some arriving by sea, others flying into nearby Lynden Pindling International Airport, where Jade herself had landed only forty-five minutes earlier. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of visitors, roaming what were, if sensational reports were to be believed, the most dangerous waters on earth.

Somehow, the Bermuda Triangle didn
’t seem quite so mysterious when you were in it. What had seemed like an earthshaking revelation just two days earlier, now felt more like a histrionic juvenile fantasy.

Did I get this wrong?

She cast a sidelong glance at Professor, whom she knew had spent the last two days undertaking a comprehensive review of incidents attributed to the Bermuda Triangle in an effort to focus their search. He had promised to present his findings as soon as they were aboard. His faintly smug expression told Jade there was an
I told you so
in her future.

A slender man with prematurely silver hair, wearing a bright red polo shirt with QMI emblazoned on the left breast, awaited them at the gangplank. He stepped forward and introduced himself, conspicuously directing his comments to Ophelia as if the rest of them were just hangers-on.
“Welcome to Nassau. I’m Cliff Barry, VP in charge of special projects, and the Chief Mate aboard the
Explorer.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry about trying to remember all that. We all wear a lot of hats. If you need anything, just ask the first person you see wearing a shirt like mine, and if they can’t help you, they’ll find someone who can. Your equipment arrived earlier this morning, so we’re ready to cast off. The sooner we get on board, the sooner we’ll find what you’re looking for.”

Barry seemed more interested in getting everyone aboard than in learning names, so Ophelia merely thanked him and motioned for him to lead the way. Two crewmen met them at the top of the ramp and took their luggage, while Barry ushered them into the superstructure to a lavishly appointed salon that looked like a cross between the lounge of a five-star hotel and a nautical museum.

“Nice place,” Jade remarked.

“
We had to dress it up a bit for the cameras,” Barry said with an airy wave. “I’m afraid the rest of the ship is a bit less luxurious.”

“
Cameras?”

Barry
’s friendly manner seemed to grow a few degrees cooler. “For the television series.” He gave an indifferent shrug. “If you want to get settled here, I’ll let Mr. Nichols know that you’re aboard so we can get underway.”

After he left, Jade turned to Professor.
“Television series?”

He laughed.
“Ask a red shirt.”

“
QMI also produces a cable television series about marine archaeology,” Ophelia supplied. “Don’t worry. I don’t think it’s still on the air, and in any event, I’ve been assured that there are no cameras aboard. We don’t need to be worried about showing up on the History channel.”

“
I’m a little more worried about the Norfolk Group putting in a surprise appearance,” Jade said. “This is all a little high-profile.”

“
My brother has assured me that we need not worry about them anymore,” Ophelia said.

Jade did not feel assured, but before she could express her concerns, a faint vibration began to rise up from the deck. She felt a gentle rocking motion as the
Quest Explorer
began moving.  Through one of the small porthole windows, which Jade suspected were more decorative than functional, the harbor and surrounding landscape moved by more quickly as the ship picked up speed.

A few minutes later, Barry returned, accompanied by two men. Both were older and had craggy weathered faces that bespoke a lifetime spent working in the elements. One man was tall and broad, with a mane of white hair, and wore a blue denim shirt that looked like working attire, but sported a conspicuous designer label. The other man was balding, and the gin blossoms flecking his nose made his already ruddy complexion look ever redder. He had the start of a paunch, which strained the lower buttons of his white uniform blouse with black epaulets.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Barry began, “This is Mr. Kit Nichols, president and founder of QMI…” The man in the denim shirt waved.

“
And Spencer Lee, Master of the Ship.”

Lee
’s demeanor was aloof, but Nichol’s effusive manner more than made up for it.

“
Ms. Doerner. I’ve heard a great deal about you, but nobody told me how lovely you are. A pity we’re not filming. You’re about the prettiest sight I’ve ever seen on this old tub. And who else do we have with us?”

Ophelia began the introductions.
“This is Dr. Chapman…”

The two men shook hands.
“Call me Professor. Everyone does.”

“
Love the hat. Professor of what, exactly?”

“
Oh, this and that.”

Nichols laughed heartily.

“This is Dr. Dorion,” Ophelia continued. “He’ll be handling most of the technical aspects of the search.”

Nichols shook Dorion
’s hand. “Just give Cliff your laundry list. And who is this?” He stopped in front of Jade and stared at her with a mischievous grin. “Saved the best for last.”

Ophelia started to answer, but Jade spoke first matching the older man
’s smile. “I’m Jade,” she said simply, eschewing the use of titles. She kind of liked Nichols, but decided to reserve judgment on the others.

Nichols executed a half-bow,
then gestured to the ship’s master. “Captain Lee here probably remembers when it was considered bad luck to have a woman on board a ship. Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times, but all the same, I hope that the presence of two lovely ladies doesn’t prove distracting to the crew.”

“
I’m not the crusty old barnacle that Kit seems to think I am,” Lee said without much enthusiasm. “But if it’s all the same, I’d like to get down to business. I need to know exactly where we’re going.”

Ophelia gestured to Professor.
“You have the floor, Dr. Chapman.”

Professor approached Lee and handed him a slip of paper.
“Captain, set course for these coordinates. I’ll explain the reasons as soon as I get my computer set up.”

Lee departed, evidently more concerned with where they were going than why.

A few minutes later, they were all staring at a map of the North Atlantic region off the east coast of the United States. There was a conspicuous red triangle connecting Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda.

Jade
sensed a lecture coming on.

“
This is the so-called Bermuda Triangle,” he said. “Or at least one version of it. These borders are arbitrary. From what I can tell, the term Bermuda Triangle first appeared in an article written by Vincent Gaddis in a 1964 pulp magazine; maybe the idea of a definite shape was sexier or something. In any case, the name stuck and people have been selling the myth ever since. The reality is a little more prosaic.”

Here comes the
‘I told you so,’
Jade thought.

“
According to the most sensational reports, over a thousand ships have been lost in this region—which incidentally is an area of about a million and a half square miles, or more than twice the size of Alaska—in just over five hundred years of record keeping. Now, a thousand sounds like a big number, but if you average it out, that’s just two a year. When you consider that this is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and that Hurricane Alley runs right through it, two ships a year makes it a pretty safe area, statistically speaking.

“
What’s more, a lot of the reports have been exaggerated, duplicated or simply fabricated from whole cloth. Many of them are simply stories that have been repeated so many times that there’s no way to go back and source them. If you cull the record down to disappearances of ships and planes that remain officially unexplained, you’re looking at maybe two dozen, but even most of those have a simple, mundane explanation.”

He touched a key on his computer and the map was replaced by a black and white photograph of a ship.

“The disappearance of the USS Cyclops in 1918 is a prime example of what I mean. The Cyclops shows up in almost every account of the Bermuda Triangle as proof of unexplained phenomena, and yet the facts of the case are that the Cyclops was overloaded, had lost one of its engines, may have been structurally unsound, and probably got hit by a storm. Any one of those factors could have doomed her. But that explanation is too boring for Triangle nuts.”

“
That’s not all that’s boring,” Jade muttered.

“
I heard that young lady.”

“
Can’t you just give us a handout, or assigned reading?”

“
It gets better, I promise.” Professor clicked another key and the image changed to a picture of several World War II era planes flying in formation. Jade sat up a little straighter. Maybe this wasn’t going to be an
I told you so
after all.

“
Flight 19 is what really started people talking about mysterious phenomena. On December 5, 1945, a squadron of torpedo planes took off from Fort Lauderdale on a training exercise. I’ll spare you the tedious details, but the bottom line is that the pilots got lost in a place where they shouldn’t have gotten lost. It’s like those stories where people wander around in a blizzard and die within twenty feet of their front door. There was bad weather, but the squadron was in radio contact with the mainland for most of the flight. All they had to do was turn west and they would have found Florida, but they didn’t. The Navy was able to pinpoint their last known location to within fifty miles, but a massive search effort turned up nothing. The planes just vanished.

“
Now, there are a lot of reasons why we shouldn’t make too much of this story. This was 1945 after all. Those pilots didn’t have GPS. The planes didn’t even have radar. Someone could have made a mistake calculating their position, which would mean that the searchers were looking in the wrong place. But if we accept the premise that there might be an unusual phenomenon at work in this region, then Flight 19 is the best place to start looking.”

“
One of the big problems with conspiracy theories is that their proponents try too hard. In the case of the Bermuda Triangle, speculative writers gathered a lot of extraneous evidence to support the idea that there was this big zone of mystery, but because so much of their evidence can be refuted, it has the opposite effect. Instead of lending weight to their argument, the ninety percent of incidents with a mundane explanation obscure the remaining ten percent that we should be looking at. The first thing we need to do is get the idea of the Triangle out of our heads and focus instead on the area where Flight 19 first began encountering trouble. Somewhere between Florida and the Bahamas.”

He clicked the computer again and the screen changed to a picture of a lighthouse.
“Which brings us to an incident that isn’t as well-known as these others, but is still pretty darned spooky.

“
This is the lighthouse at Great Isaac Cay, northeast of Bimini and about sixty-five miles due east of Fort Lauderdale. The lighthouse is automated now and most of the buildings have crumbled into ruins, but in 1969, there were two lighthouse keepers stationed there. According to local lore, after Hurricane Anna swept through the islands in early August of that year, the lighthouse went dark. When officials went to the island to investigate, they discovered that the two lighthouse keepers had vanished without a trace.”

Nichols chuckled.
“Swept away by the hurricane, no doubt.”

Professor gave patient smile.
“That would be a very plausible explanation, but why didn’t the men just hunker down and ride out the storm. I checked the weather data and it turns out that there was no Hurricane Anna. Anna was a tropical storm that peaked on July 29 with maximum sustained winds of seventy miles per hour, and the closest it got to Great Isaac was three days later when the eye passed almost four hundred miles to the east.”

“
Four
hundred?
”