“I didn’t know Moken people had any interest in material things… something about most possessions slowing you down. Did I get that wrong?”
“No. We don’t in general. But gold is different.”
Tom laughed. “Gold is always coveted by man.”
“No. It’s not what you think. The gold attracts fish with its ability to reflect light, meaning we can use it to catch fish. We have little use for most possessions, but our fishing tools are our lifelines, so yes, those possessions we love and cherish more than any child would his toys.”
Tom said, “Okay, so you dived down to retrieve the gold…”
“But it wasn’t gold.”
“What was it?”
“That’s the crazy part.”
Tom urged him, “Go on. What was it?”
“A dome. A glass dome of some sort. The recent changes in weather must have shifted some of the sand which had kept it well covered and hidden for many years.”
“But what was it?”
“I don’t know. A glass dome of some kind. It was big enough that a fully-grown man could easily walk around inside.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me someone was alive inside?”
“Yes. More than that. He was moving around. He seemed disturbed when he saw me, as though he’d been caught out doing something bad.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was moving something. A large canister. There were lots of them down there.”
Tom breathed heavily, his heart racing at the news. “Do you know what was inside the canister?”
Katale shook his head. “No. But it had a strange marking over it.”
“What was the marking?”
“I don’t know,” Katale replied, “but I can draw it for you.”
Tom watched as the kid took a stone and started to scratch it into the soft limestone wall.
Katale scratched a circle with a smaller circle in the middle of it. Between the two circles, he drew three separate triangles, making the shape of a trefoil.
The muscles around Tom’s jaw tightened. “Let me guess, it was colored yellow?”
Katale nodded, “How did you know?”
Tom swallowed down the fear that rose in his throat like bile. “Because that’s one of the most recognizable symbols in the world. It’s an international warning that nuclear radiation is nearby.”
Genevieve said, “I guess that explains why someone was out to kill you.”
“Yeah, if ever there was a motive for killing off an entire tribe, there’s one.” Tom met the kid’s eye. He looked like he was close to tears. “We’d better get going. I think you’d better come with us.”
“Where? There’s no way out and we’re trapped.”
Tom shook his head. “There’s a dry limestone passageway that takes us out to the opposite side of the island. We have a float plane waiting for us. What do you say? Do you want to make whoever’s responsible pay for what they’ve done?”
Katale looked at him, and said, “Hell yes.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
General Louis C. Painter, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked at the single photograph of the obsidian sphere on his table.
He sighed heavily and handed it to the Senator seated across from him.
The Senator glanced at the photo. His brow furrowed. “Where was this taken?”
“At the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Two hours ago.”
The Senator shook his head in dismay. “How did they even find it after all these years?”
“There was some sort of shipping disaster. A submarine volcano erupted, evidently bringing the sphere’s nuclear waste to the surface. A wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur and his crew died. There was an investigation.”
The Senator’s eyes narrowed. “And you let them keep going?”
General painter’s countenance was set firm. “Hell, you think I had any idea what they were going to find down there?”
“Who’s doing the investigation?”
“Sam Reilly.”
That brought silence.
The Senator thought about that for a moment, as he ran his hands across his forehead. “Quick, you’ve got to stop their dive.”
General Painter crossed his arms. “I can’t. It’s already done. They’re down there now.”
“Ah crap. You know what’s going to happen.”
Painter said, “We always knew our past would come back to haunt us sometime. I suppose we should be thankful it took this long.”
“Yes. The question is, now what are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing. I have an agent traveling there now to inspect the site. With any luck, nothing will be left to incriminate us.”
“And what if someone’s still alive?”
“From the original crew of Habitat Zero? You’ve got to be kidding, that’s gotta be what… at least seventy years old!”
The senator said, “They’ll remember what we did to them. And they’re not going to be happy. Hell, the world won’t be happy with what we’ve done.”
General Painter’s lips hardened into a straight line. “Hey, you and I didn’t start this shit-fight.”
“You think the world is going to care about who started this? Or do you think they’re going to remember who failed to stop it?”
General Painter said, “It’s all right. If someone’s still alive down there, my agent will know what to do. They won’t be alive for much longer…”
Chapter Forty
Sam Reilly gripped the submarine’s joystick trying to regain control of Ursula.
He shifted it all the way backward and then all the way forward but nothing happened. He flicked it to the right, but the submarine didn’t respond. Instead, the ship continued to slowly sink toward the artificially leveled seabed below.
Breathing hard, he fought with the buoyancy controls, trying to stabilize the vessel. He glanced at the bathymetric depth sounder, which showed the distance between the bottom of the submarine and the seabed below.
Forty-feet.
Dr. Smyth said, “What’s happening.”
Sam ran his hands across a series of emergency ballast tanks, flicking switches that were designed to send them racing toward the surface. “I don’t know. I’ve lost all controls.”
Thirty-feet.
They continued toward the seabed.
Twenty-feet.
Ten-feet.
“Hold on!” Sam said. “This is going to be a rough landing.”
Five-feet.
Ursula’s twin pontoons crashed lightly into the gray mud of the seabed, and the submarine came to rest.
The mud settled in silence.
Major James Marazzato said, “What the hell went wrong?”
Sam took a slow, purposefully deep breath in and exhaled. “When you severed the communications feed to the surface, you sliced through the main controls module.”
“Meaning?”
“It means that I no longer have any control over the submarine’s controls. AKA — we’re now sitting ducks.”
“We’re trapped, here?” Marazzato shifted uncomfortably on his seat, his eyes staring at the borosilicate dome, as if searching for fine cracks to form. “Stranded on the bottom of the world’s deepest seabed!”
Sam’s lips twisted into malevolent pleasure, as fear crossed Marazzato’s face. “Yes. We’re stranded here because you thought it was a good idea to sever the communications cable with the surface. What the hell did you think you were doing?”
Marazzato opened his mouth to speak, mumbling something inaudible.
Sam said, “What? If we’re going to die down here, you might as well tell me what for?”