The room was almost pitch-black. An open rear window allowed in just a hint of ambient light, revealing that both back bedroom doors were closed. It was better than he had hoped.
The intruder slipped into the house and closed the door behind him. He took a tentative step forward — and a bright floor lamp snapped on. Wheeling around, he squinted toward it. Through the spots dancing in front of his retinas, he saw Dirk sitting in a chair facing him, holding a speargun in his lap. A row of empty beer bottles on an adjacent coffee table testified to the patience of his ambush.
“It’s quite a nice weapon,” Dirk stated. He pointed the loaded speargun at the man. “A KOAH. They cost about six hundred dollars in the States. Not the tool I would expect a simple fisherman from Trelawny Parish to carry, let alone leave behind in his boat.”
“They pay me well, Mr. Dirk.” Samuel’s bright teeth gritted in anguish.
“How about you drop your gun,” Dirk said. It was a command, not a request.
Samuel nodded, pulling a Smith & Wesson revolver from his waistband and setting it on the floor.
“I like you and your sister,” the Jamaican said, rising slowly. “I not come to hurt you.”
“But you would for a price.”
“No.” Samuel shook his head.
“I don’t think your friends had the same conviction. Are they both dead?”
Samuel gave a solemn nod.
Dirk swung the speargun toward the coffee table. Partially hidden by the beer bottles lay the red journal of Ellsworth Boyd. Dirk placed the tip of the speargun on the book and nudged it toward Samuel. “Here’s what you’re after. Go ahead and take it.”
Samuel hesitated.
Dirk glared at him. “If you would have asked a few more questions while we were drinking at the Green Stone Bar, you could have saved us both a lot of trouble.” The fatigue of the day’s events, along with the beer, showed in his bloodshot eyes.
Samuel extended an unsteady hand toward the journal.
As his fingers grazed the cover, Dirk slapped down the speargun’s tip. “One thing I need to know first. Who’s paying you?”
“A man in Mo Bay I work for sometimes.”
“What’s his name?”
Samuel shook his head. “He’s my cousin. Just middleman, not important to you.”
“Then who’s paying him?”
Samuel shrugged. “The top boss man? He’s from Cuba. And he likes antiquities and shipwreck artifacts, like you. That’s all I know.”
“A Cuban, you say?”
“Yes. He flew here in Army plane, not stay long.”
Dirk nodded and released the journal.
Samuel gently picked it up and tucked it under his arm. “I got to know,” he said. “Where’s the stone that everybody wants?”
“Most likely, in an American museum. Where your Cuban friend won’t be able to touch it.”
Samuel shrugged. “I hope you find it first, not him. My cousin says he’s crazy.”
The Jamaican backtracked to the door and turned the handle. “Good-bye,” he said, his eyes staring down in shame.
“Good-bye, Samuel.” Dirk clicked on the speargun’s safety and set it down.
Samuel closed the door behind him.
A minute later, Summer emerged from her bedroom wearing an oversized Scripps Institute of Oceanography T-shirt. She covered a yawn. “I thought I heard voices.”
“I just gave Samuel the journal.”
“You what?”
“It’s what Díaz was after. Now he doesn’t need to kill us in our sleep.”
“Juan Díaz, the Cuban we met in Mexico?”
“One and the same. He hired Samuel to monitor us and paid for the thugs in the pickup. No doubt he’s behind the theft of the stone at Zimapán.”
“Díaz…” A look of bitter disappointment crossed her face. “He was the leader of the thieves who took the stone? How could I have been so blind?”
“We met him only briefly. You told me they all wore disguises and that the top guy hardly spoke.”
“Still, I should have recognized him.” She sat on the couch in shock. “He’s responsible for the death of Dr. Torres. But why would a Cuban archeologist kill over an Aztec artifact?”
“He may not even be an archeologist. It could be he’s operating an artifact smuggling operation. There’s big money in black market antiquities. Both sections of the stone together could be worth a lot of money to a collector… Or it could be something else.”
“What’s that?”
Dirk stared at the speargun with a faraway gaze. “Perhaps, just perhaps, Díaz knows exactly what the Aztecs were carrying when they sailed to Aztlán.”
PART III
CUBA LIBRE
32
Dirk and Summer had barely stepped aboard the Sargasso Sea when the engines rumbled to life and the research vessel sailed out of Montego Bay’s sparkling waters.
“No R and R for the crew in sunny Jamaica?” Summer asked her father after greeting him with a warm hug.
Pitt shook his head. “We’re headed for the north side of Cuba and I want to get there as soon as possible.”
“He’s a regular Captain Bligh,” Giordino said.
Pitt shifted his eyes toward Giordino. “There might be certain crew members who can’t be trusted on a rum-producing island like Jamaica.”
Giordino shook his head. “Ye of little faith.”
“We got your email describing the dead zones,” Dirk said. “Have you learned anything more?”
Pitt led them to the wardroom, where poster-sized photos were taped to a corner bulkhead. “These are seafloor images of the three dead zones we surveyed. Photomosaics, actually, stitched from individual images recorded by the AUV. As you can see, there is a symmetrical depression at the center of each zone. We didn’t identify the source of the toxicity until Al and I took the Starfish down for a closer look at one of them and found a hydrothermal vent at its center.”
“The thermal vents we’ve explored in the Pacific are rich in minerals and highly acidic,” Dirk added, “but not broadly toxic.”
“These are. They are in relatively shallow water for a thermal vent, less than a thousand feet, which may contribute to the problem. We’re finding methyl mercury plumes over ten miles long.”
“Mercury?” Summer asked.
Pitt nodded. “Surprising, but it shouldn’t be. The largest source of mercury in the environment comes from the volcanic eruptions. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, give or take a few weeks, the seas were completely poisoned by mercury from volcanic activity, to the extent that virtually all marine life was killed off. Hydrothermal vents, we know, are nothing more than a vestige of underwater volcanic activity. For whatever reason, the mounts and ridges in this part of the ocean are rife with mercury.”
“Now that you mention it,” Dirk said, “I recall reading about an underwater volcano off the southern tip of Japan that’s spewing a high concentration of the stuff.”
“Same principle in effect here,” Pitt said.
Summer pointed at one of the photos. “It’s odd that there’s a similar depression around each of the thermal vents.”
“That’s no coincidence,” Pitt said. “We’re quite sure the craters were formed by man-made explosions.”
“Why would someone blow up a thermal vent?” she asked.
“Someone,” Giordino said, “was plowing up the bottom in the name of subsea mining.”
“Of course.” Summer nodded. “Hydrothermal vents are often surrounded by rich sulfide ore deposits.”
“Looks like somebody tried panning for gold in a serious way,” said Dirk.