The ninth book in the Paul Madriani series, 2008

May

Curaçao, the Dutch Antilles

The sugar-white powder was so hot on their feet that they skipped and took long strides across the distance to the darker sand cooled by the surf. Here incoming waves piled up small pieces of sharp, broken coral and created a steep shelf in the shallow water.

Arthur Ginnis had trouble hobbling through the ankle-deep waves and nearly fell as his feet slid down the coral shelf into deeper water. To someone still recovering from hip surgery, the warm, clear salt water of the Caribbean was like therapy. He moved out until it was up to his chest, at which point he slipped his mask and snorkel on top of his head and started to pull the swim fins onto his feet.

The sun glinted off the aquamarine surface of the sea. Behind them a large four-masted schooner was tied up to the dock at the end of the jetty, full of tourists on a trip to one of the other islands. Another, larger vessel, a research ship, was moored farther back in the lagoon. The island was dotted with deep lagoons and coves cut into the coral rock by eons of erosion. It was a smuggler’s paradise.

But Ginnis and his young friend had another mission in mind. Locals had told them about a small tugboat sunk on the reef several hundred yards out. Hip or no hip, Ginnis was determined to dive on it. The doctors wouldn’t allow him to use tanks any longer. They told him he was too old. So he was relegated to free diving with a mask and snorkel. The tug was said to be in shallow water, not more than twenty feet down. It was perfect, even though his wife had protested, raised hell as only she could, and told him she wasn’t happy, that he was being foolish. Ginnis was tired of being housebound, after months of recovery from the surgery. If this was a vacation, he was going to enjoy it.

The hot sun and tropical images triggered all the senses of the imagination, of adventure and romance. At seventy, Ginnis was an irrepressible romantic. Whenever he had time to read for pleasure, which wasn’t often, Treasure Island remained from his youth as one of his favorite books. It was for this reason that he always returned to the islands at least once each year. The vacation house they owned on St. Croix had been damaged the previous year in a hurricane. So this year they’d rented a house in Curaçao. It was perfect, since nobody on the island knew who he was. Even the local paper was published in Dutch. It was something from a pirate fantasy. It kept him close to the dreams of his childhood-the adventure of tropical seas and the lure of finding something of history buried in the sand. As foolish as it might appear for a grown man, particularly someone of Ginnis’s stature, these surroundings gripped his imagination and held him captive.

He considered it a major coup that he’d managed to ditch the U.S. Marshals Service, his usual companions. He had accomplished this with the help of Alberto Aranda.

Aranda was in his early thirties, old for a court clerk. But then he had gone to law school late, after serving a stint with the Peace Corps in Africa, in, of all places, the Sudan. He was as tough as a marine, and an expert diver. Ginnis didn’t tell anyone, but it was one of the reasons he’d hired Aranda, that and the fact that he liked him.

As always, Ginnis was thinking ahead, in this case planning for the summer. After all, he was on light duty from the Court. They didn’t expect to see him back full-time for at least six months. Time to have some fun.

“You can count this as one of the better perks of clerking.” Ginnis puffed a bit. He was out of shape, the result of his long recovery. With the new hip, he now had as much metal in his body as your average robot.

Aranda, six feet and slender, looked at him, smiled, the kind of expression Ginnis might have expected from the son he never had. His only regret was that Aranda had not been on staff in the same year as Trisha Scott, the surrogate daughter he’d had as a clerk the year before. Aranda was the kind of man Trisha needed, not that fraud Scarborough, a counterfeit intellectual addicted to self-promotion. Ginnis spit into his dive mask and worked it around. The whisper of a smile lingered on his lips as he considered what was about to happen.

“You sure you’re up to this?” Aranda interrupted the reverie. “First time in open water since the surgery, you should take it easy. That’s what the doctor said. Go slow.”

“I’m fine. And the doctor isn’t here. Just try to keep up.” Ginnis pulled the strap behind his head and dropped the mask over his face. He mouthed the snorkel, took a few deep breaths, then launched himself headfirst into deeper water.

He was stiff as a board. The muscles in his legs ached from lack of exercise. He had tried to stay fit all his life. With hardly an ounce of fat, he was as sinuous and wiry as in his youth. It was true that many of his generation, given the advances in medicine, genetics, and the new drugs, might well live past one hundred. And given the political knife’s edge, what passed for balance on the Court these days, there were members of Congress who prayed daily for judicial immortality.

Visibility in the clear water made it seem as if he were looking through air-infinite. Large oval masses of brain coral loomed up from the bottom as Ginnis glided over them, flicking the fins on his feet, his arms trailing along at his sides, like flying in a liquid sky. A small camera in a sealed plastic case hung from a cord around his right wrist. He snapped pictures as he went, stopping to catch coral growths, some angelfish, and at one point the smiling face and large eyes of Alberto Aranda peering out through his dive mask.

A hundred yards out, three massive mooring platforms anchored to the bottom marked their path of travel. They had gotten detailed directions to the sunken tug from the dive shop on the jetty. As they swam between the first two mooring platforms, the bottom dropped away.

Ginnis floated through a mass of bubbles rising to the surface, then saw two divers beneath him, their tanks emitting used air from the regulators. It was difficult to tell how deep the divers were. The magnification caused by the clear water played funny tricks with depth perception. It looked as if Ginnis could reach out and touch them, but the two figures appeared to be in miniature. Ginnis knew they were farther down than they looked from the surface, perhaps thirty feet, maybe more.

As he passed the third mooring platform, the surface began to take on the undulations of the sea. They were now approaching the point of land where the inlet to the lagoon poured into the open sea. Here the water was rougher. Curling white ribbons of froth capped some of the waves. The afternoon trade winds were kicking up. Ginnis struggled against the current as the neglected long muscles of his legs burned. Still he pushed himself. It was the only way to full recovery, and Ginnis was determined to recover all his former strength and agility. At his age he knew that anything conceded was gone forever.

He lifted his head from the water, dropped his feet, and did a slow pirouette looking for Aranda. He didn’t see him. He put his face back into the sea, scanning beneath the surface. As he did, seawater entered the open end of his snorkel. Ginnis panicked. He struggled to keep it from entering his mask as he coughed up salt water.