Veyron climbed out of the little submarine’s cockpit. “Hey Sam. Anything I can do for you?”
“There might be,” Sam said. “What do you think of the new ship?”
“She’s great. My office down here’s a lot nicer in many ways. In particular, I don’t end up getting soaked every so often by the moonpool like I used to. But all said and done, I’ll miss the old girl. She was a solid and reliable ship.”
“Yeah, she sure was,” Sam said with a sigh.
Veyron climbed off the submarine and gave Sam’s hand a firm shake. “Now, you didn’t come down here just to reminisce about the Maria Helena, did you?”
“No.”
“All right, what is it then?”
“As you know, we’ve been tasked to locate where this mysterious island of pumice — covered in nuclear radioactive waste — originated.”
Veyron said, “I believe a volcano is traditionally where pumice originates.”
“Exactly, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. We’re heading toward the Mariana Trench.”
Veyron nodded, slowly following what he was getting at. “You think a rogue nuclear nation has been dumping its nuclear waste into the depths of the Mariana Trench?”
“That’s the working hypothesis we’re running on,” Sam admitted. “We’ve been tasked to locate the source of the high concentration of nuclear radiation. If it was, as you suggested, dumped in the Mariana Trench, it might have been all right for thousands of years — unless…”
Veyron sighed heavily. “A submerged volcano erupted, sending hundreds of tons of nuclear waste to the surface in the form of volcanic froth — AKA an island of floating, nuclear, pumice.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Which means, you want me to make sure the Triton submersible is ready for a deep dive?”
“Afraid so,” Sam said.
Veyron asked, “All right, when do we arrive?”
“Another forty-eight hours.”
“I guess you want it to carry three persons on board?”
Sam said, “You guess right.”
“Okay, it will be ready.”
Sam stood up. “Thanks Veyron.”
“Hey Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“Will Tom and Genevieve be returning in time for the dive?”
“No. At this stage they’re heading to Horse Shoe Island, within the Mergui Archipelago off the coast of Myanmar.”
“Why?”
“That was the last landfall the Carpe Diem stopped at before cruising on autopilot all the way back to its home port in San Diego Bay — with the exception of a single stop for an hour somewhere in the open waters above the Mariana Trench.”
Veyron thought about that for a moment. “All right. Stay safe. You know we normally count on Tom to stop you doing something stupid.”
“I know. I’ll try my best.”
Sam climbed the series of internal stairs, and headed forward to the command center.
Elise met him in the passageway. “Hey Sam, Aliana Wolfgang’s on the satellite phone. She says she needs to speak to you about the results… something about a blood-stained shirt?”
Sam nodded. “Thank you. I’ve been waiting for them.”
“Where do you want to take the call?”
“Send it through to my quarters. I’ll head there now.”
“Okay.”
Sam made his way to his quarters. The ship used an internal phone system, which could be used to communicate to any section of the ship, as well as being connected to the satellite dish on the top deck.
Aliana Wolfgang was one of the leading microbiologists in the world, a director and highest shareholder of Wolfgang Incorporated and Pharmaceutical Research Lab — and she just happened to share an on-again off-again type relationship with Sam.
There was a time he would have gladly married her. Still would, but she wouldn’t have him. She had said that she would constantly be worried that he wouldn’t come home one day. That the world needed heroes, it really did, but heroes didn’t get to grow old, and that wasn’t how she wanted to live her life. In the end, they had remained close friends, separated by vastly different lives. But every now and again those lives would intersect and they would spend a few wonderful days together.
The red light of an incoming call flashed intermittently.
He picked it up. “Hello, Aliana.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sam waited.
There was a slight delay on the satellite line.
“Sam!” Aliana said, her tone soft. “Where are you?”
“The Pacific Ocean… um… about four hundred miles east of Micronesia.”
“Why?”
“I’m heading to the waters off the coast of Guam, trying to locate where a rogue nuclear nation has been dumping nuclear waste.”
There was a pause, then Aliana’s cheerful voice. “Of course you are. That makes sense.”
Sam asked, “Aliana, did you get my blood-stained shirt?”
“I got it Sam. I did what you asked and had a sample of the blood analyzed and the results compared with the known DNA records of Amelia Earhart to see if they are indeed related.”
Sam found himself involuntarily holding his breath. “What did you find?”
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“The match is close?”
Aliana said, “No. Not close. Exactly the same.”
Sam stared out the translucent wall, watching the waves roll by.
He waited for a moment, as his mind silently processed the new information. “Can you have identical DNA between mother and daughter, or a skipped generation… say someone and their grandmother?”
“No. Not identical. Your DNA is shared between your parents.”
His lips twisted into a wry grin. “What are you saying, Aliana?”
“I don’t know where you got that blood from, but it wasn’t a descendant of Amelia Earhart, that’s for certain.”
He bit his lower lip. “Then what was it?”
“It was Amelia Earhart’s blood.”
With his heart in his throat, Sam asked, “How can that be?”
Aliana said, “I analyzed something else. She has the same type of progressively lengthening telomeres found in the chromosomes of Ben Gellie’s blood sample.” Sam recalled his dreadful kidnapping experience with Ben Gellie recently.
“Are you telling me she’s a descendant of the Master Builders?”
“No. These are decidedly different from Ben Gellie’s. There have been synthetic changes. More like her DNA sequence has been synthetically altered.”
“How?”
Aliana said, “I have no idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Cessna 162 Skycatcher flew high above the Andaman Sea.
The light sports aircraft was never designed to be used as a seaplane, but someone in Myanmar had swapped its wheels for a pair of floats, and the aircraft was now being used as a private transporter to shuttle tourists to the remote atoll known as Horse Shoe Island. It was the low tourist season, and Tom had managed to negotiate hiring the aircraft for a few days.
Horse Shoe Island came into view up ahead. Large limestone mountains curved around to form its name’s shape, enclosing a dense jungle and a white sandy beach at the center, overlooking azure and turquoise waters. The place was home to the Moken people — a tribe of ancient seafarers — who had used the island to fish and collect materials to build their kabangs for hundreds of years. It was said, that the Moken people, who lived most of their lives out at sea, shared an intrinsic relationship with the ocean. If anyone knew about a strange island of pumice in the Mergui Archipelago, it would be the Moken people.