Shock Wave

  "You never saw them again after you and Cochran set sail for Sydney?"

  Scaggs shook his head. "A tearful goodbye it was, too, Betsy and Jess standing on the beach holding their baby boys and Marion's daughter, looking for all the world like a happy mother and father. They found a life that wasn't possible in the civilized world." He spat out the word "civilized."

  "And Cochran, what was to stop him from speaking out?"

  Scaggs' eyes glimmered faintly. "As I mentioned, he also had a secret he didn't want known, certainly not if he ever wished to go to sea again. He went down with the Zanzibar when she was lost in the South China Sea back in '67."

  "Haven't you ever wondered how they made out?"

  "No need to wonder," Scaggs replied slyly. "I know."

  Carlisle's eyebrows raised. "I'd be grateful for an explanation."

  "Four years after I departed, an American whaler sighted the island and stood in to fill her water casks. Jess and Betsy met the crew and traded fruits and fresh fish for cloth and cooking pots. They told the captain of the whaler that they were missionaries who were stranded on the island after their ship had been wrecked. Before long, other whalers began stopping by for water and food supplies. One of the ships traded Betsy seeds for hats she'd woven out of palms, and she and Jess began tilling several acres of arable land for vegetables."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "They began sending out letters with the whalers."

  "They're still alive?" asked Carlisle, his interest aroused.

  Scaggs' eyes saddened. "Jess died while fishing six years ago. A sudden squall capsized his boat.

  Betsy said it looked as if he struck his head and drowned. Her last letter, along with a packet, arrived only two days ago. You'll find it in the center drawer of my desk. She wrote that she was dying from some sort of disease of the stomach."

  Carlisle rose and crossed the bedroom to a worn captain's desk that Scaggs had used on all his voyages after the Gladiator went down. He pulled a small packet wrapped in oilskin from the drawer and opened it. Inside he found a leather pouch and a folded letter. He returned to his chair, slipped on his reading glasses and glanced at the words.

  "For a girl convicted of theft, she writes very well."

  "Her earlier letters were full of misspellings, but Jess was an educated man, and under his tutelage, Betsy's grammar showed great improvement."

  Carlisle began reading aloud.

  My Dear Captain Scaggs,

  I pray you are in good health. This will be my last letter to you as I have a malady of the stomach, or so the doctor aboard the whaling ship Amie & Jason tells me. So I will soon be joining my Jess.

  I have a last request that I pray you will honor. In the first week of April of this year, my two sons and Marion's daughter, Mary, departed the island on board a whaler whose captain was sailing from here to Auckland for badly needed repairs to his hull after a brush with a coral reef. There, the children were to book passage on a ship bound for England and then eventually make their way to you in Aberdeen.

  I have written to ask you, dearest friend, to take them under your roof upon their arrival and arrange or their education at the finest schools England has to offer. I would be eternally grateful, and I know Jess would share the same sentiments, rest his dear departed soul, if you will honor my request.

  I have included my legacy for your services and whatever cost it takes to see them through school. They are very bright children and will be diligent in their studies.

  With deepest respect I wish you a loving farewell.

  Betsy Dorsett

  One final thought. The serpent sends his regards.

  Carlisle peered over his glasses. " `The serpent sends his regards.' What nonsense is that?"

  "The sea serpent who saved us from the great white shark," answered Scaggs. "Turned out he lived in the lagoon. I saw him with my own eyes on at least four other occasions during my time on the island."

  Carlisle looked at his old friend as if he were drunk, then thought better of pursuing the matter. "She sent young children alone on a long voyage from New Zealand to England?"

  "Not so young," said Scaggs. "The oldest must be going on nineteen."

  "If they left the island the early part of April, they may come knocking on your door at any time."

  "Providing they did not have to wait long in Auckland to find a stout ship that made a fast passage."

  "My God, man, you're in an impossible situation."

  "What you really mean is, how can a dying man carry out an old friend's dying wish?"

  "You're not going to die," said Carlisle, looking Scaggs in the eye.

  "Oh yes I am," Scaggs said firmly. "You're a practical businessman, Abner. Nobody knows that better than me. That's why I asked to see you before I take my final voyage."

  "You want me to wet-nurse Betsy's children."

  "They can live in my house until you drop their anchor in the best educational institutions money can buy."

  "The pitiful amount that Betsy made selling hats and food supplies to visiting whaling ships won't come close to covering the cost of several years of boarding at expensive schools. They'll need the proper clothes and private tutors to bring them up to proper learning levels. I hope you're not asking me to provide for total strangers."

  Scaggs pointed to the leather pouch.

  Carlisle held it up. "Is this what Betsy sent you to educate her children?"

  Scaggs nodded slightly. "Open it."

  Carlisle loosened the strings and poured the contents into his hand. He looked up at Scaggs incredulously. "Is this some sort of joke? These are nothing but ordinary stones."

  "Trust me, Abner. They are not ordinary."

  Carlisle held up one about the size of a prune in front of his spectacles and peered at it. The surface of the stone was smooth and its shape was octahedral, having eight sides. "This is nothing but some sort of crystal. It's absolutely worthless."

  "Take the stones to Levi Strouser."

  "The Jewish gem merchant?"

  "Show the stones to him."

  "Precious gems, they're not," said Carlisle firmly.

  "Please . . ." Scaggs barely got the word out. The long conversation had tired him.

  "As you wish, old friend." He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. "I'll call on Strouser first thing in the morning and return to you with his appraisal."

  "Thank you," Scaggs murmured. "The rest will take care of itself."

  Carlisle walked under an early morning drizzle to the old business district near Castlegate. He checked the address and turned up the steps to one of the many inconspicuous gray houses built of local granite that gave the city of Aberdeen a solid if drab appearance. Small brass letters mounted beside the door read, simply, Strouser & Sons. He pulled the bell knob and was shown into a Spartan furnished office by a clerk, offered a chair and a cup of tea.

  A slow minute passed before a short man in a long frock coat, a salt-and-pepper beard down to his chest, entered through a side door. He smiled politely and extended his hand.

  "I am Levi Strouser. What service can I perform for you?"

  "My name is Abner Carlisle. I was sent by my friend Captain Charles Scaggs."

  "Captain Scaggs sent a messenger who announced your coming. I am honored to have Aberdeen's most renowned merchant in my humble office."

  "Have we ever met?"

  "We don't exactly travel in the same social circles, and you are not the kind of man who buys jewelry."

  "My wife died young and I never remarried. So there was no reason to purchase expensive baubles."

  "I too lost a wife at an early age, but I was fortunate enough to find a lovely woman who bore me four sons and two daughters."

  Carlisle had often done business with Jewish merchants over the years, but he had never had dealings in gemstones. He was on unfamiliar ground and felt uncomfortable with Strouser. He took out the leather pouch and laid it on the desk.

&nbs
p; "Captain Scaggs requested your appraisal of the stones inside."

  Strouser laid a sheet of white paper on the desktop and poured the contents of the pouch in a pile in the center. He counted the stones. There were eighteen. He took his time and carefully scrutinized each one through his loupe, a small magnifier used by jewelers. Finally, he held up the largest and the smallest stones, one in each hand.

  "If you will kindly be patient, Mr. Carlisle, I would like to conduct some tests on these two stones. I'll have one of my sons serve you another cup of tea."

  "Yes, thank you. I don't mind waiting."

  Nearly an hour passed before Strouser returned to the room with the two stones. Carlisle was a shrewd observer of men. He had to be to have successfully negotiated over a thousand business ventures since he purchased his first ship at the tender age of twenty-two. He saw that Levi Strouser was nervous.

  There were no obvious signs, no shaking hands, little tics around the mouth, beads of sweat. It was there in the eyes. Strouser looked like a man who had beheld God.

  "May I ask where these stones came from?" Strouser asked.

  "I cannot tell you the exact location," Carlisle answered honestly.

  "The mines of India are played out, and nothing like this has come out of Brazil. Perhaps one of the new diggings in South Africa?"

  "It is not for me to say. Why? Is there a value to the stones?"

  "You do not know what they are?" Strouser asked in astonishment.

  "I am not an expert in minerals. My business is shipping."

  Strouser held out his hands over the stones like an ancient sorcerer. "Mr. Carlisle, these are diamonds!

  The finest uncut stones I have ever seen."

  Carlisle covered his amazement nobly. "I don't question your integrity, Mr. Strouser, but I can't believe you are serious."

  "My family has dealt in precious stones for five generations, Mr. Carlisle. Believe me when I say you have a fortune lying on the desk. Not only do they have indications of perfect transparency and clearness, but they possess an exquisite and very extraordinary violet-rose color. Because of their beauty and rarity they command a higher price than the perfect colorless stones."

  Carlisle came back on keel and cut away the cobwebs. "What are they worth?"

  "Rough stones are almost impossible to classify for value since their true qualities do not become apparent until they are cut and faceted, to enhance the maximum optical effect, and polished. The smallest you have here weighs 60 carats in the rough." He paused to hold up the largest specimen. "This one weighs out at over 980 carats, making it the largest known uncut diamond in the world."

  "I judge that it might be a wise investment to have them cut before I sell them."

  "Or if you prefer, I could offer you a fair price in the rough."

  Carlisle began to place the stones back in the leather pouch. "No, thank you. I represent a dying friend. It is my duty to provide him with the highest profit possible."

  Strouser quickly realized that the canny Scotsman could not be influenced to part with the uncut stones. The opportunity to obtain the diamonds for himself, have them faceted and then sell them on the London market for an immense gain, was not in the cards. Better to make a good profit than none at all, he decided wisely.

  "You need not go any farther than this office, Mr. Carlisle. Two of my sons apprenticed at the finest diamond-cutting house in Antwerp. They are as good if not better than any cutters in London. Once the stones are faceted and polished, I can act as your broker should you then wish to sell."

  "Why should I not sell them on my own?"

  "For the same reason I would come to you to ship goods to Australia instead of buying a ship and transporting them myself. I am a member of the London Diamond Exchange, you are not. I can demand and receive twice the price you might expect."

  Carlisle was shrewd enough to appreciate a sound business offer when he heard one. He came to his feet and offered Strouser his hand. "I place the stones in your capable hands, Mr. Strouser. I trust it will prove to be a profitable arrangement for you and the people I represent."

  "You can bank on it, Mr. Carlisle."

  As the Scots shipping magnate was about to step from the office, he turned and looked back at the Jewish precious-stone dealer. "After your sons are finished with the stones, what do you think they will be worth?"

  Strouser stared down at the ordinary-looking stones, visualizing them as sparkling crystals. "If these stones came from an unlimited source that can be easily exploited, the owners are about to launch an empire of extraordinary wealth."

  "If you will forgive me for saying so, your appraisal sounds a bit fanciful."

  Strouser looked across the desk at Carlisle and smiled. "Trust me when I say these stones, when cut and faceted, could sell in the neighborhood of one million pounds."

  "Good God!" Carlisle blurted. "That much?"

  Strouser lifted the huge 980-carat stone to the light, holding it between his fingers as if it were the Holy Grail. When he spoke it was in a voice of adoring reverence. "Perhaps even more, much more."

  DEATH FROM NOWHERE

  January 14, 2000

  Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula

  There was a curse of death about the island. A curse proven by the graves of men who set foot on the forbidding shore, never to leave. There was no beauty here, certainly nothing like the majestic ice-shrouded peaks, the glaciers that towered almost as high as the White Cliffs of Dover, or the icebergs that floated serenely like crystal castles that one might expect to see on and around the great landmass of the Antarctic and its offshore islands.

  Seymour Island comprised the largest ice-free surface on or near the whole continent. Volcanic dust, laid down through the millennia, hastened the melting of ice, leaving dry valleys and mountains without a vestige of color and nearly devoid of all snow. It was a singularly ugly place, inhabited only by few varieties of lichen and a rookery of Adelie penguins who found Seymour Island an ample source for the small stones they use to build their nests.

  The majority of the dead, buried in shallow pits pried from the rocks, came from a Norwegian Antarctic expedition after their ship was crushed in the ice in 1859. They survived two winters before their food supply ran out, finally dying off one by one from starvation. Lost for over a decade, their well-preserved bodies were not found until 1870, by the British while they were setting up a whaling station.

  Others died and were laid beneath the rocks of Seymour Island. Some succumbed to disease, others to accidents that occurred during the whaling season. A few lost their lives when they wandered from the station, were caught by an unexpected storm and frozen by windchill. Surprisingly, their graves are well marked. Crews of whalers caught in the ice passed the winter until the spring melt by chiseling inscriptions on large stones, which they mounted over the burial sites. By the time the British closed the station in 1933, sixty bodies lay beneath the loathsome landscape.

  The restless ghosts of the explorers and sailors that roamed the forsaken ground could never have imagined that one day their resting place would be crawling with accountants, attorneys, plumbers, housewives and retired senior citizens who showed up on luxurious pleasure ships to gawk at the inscribed stones and ogle the comical penguins that inhabited a piece of the shoreline. Perhaps, just perhaps, the island would lay its curse on these intruders too.

  The impatient passengers aboard the cruise ship saw nothing ominous about Seymour Island. Safe in the comfort of their floating palace, they saw only a remote, unspoiled and mysterious land rising from a sea as blue as an iridescent peacock feather. They felt only excitement at a new experience, especially since they were among the first wave of tourists ever to walk the shores of Seymour Island. This was the third of five scheduled stops as the ship hopscotched among the islands along the peninsula, certainly not the most attractive, but one of the more interesting according to the c
ruise-line literature.

  Many had traveled Europe and the Pacific, seen the usual exotic places travelers flock to around the world. Now they wanted something more, something different; a visit to a destination few had seen before, a remote place they could set foot on and brag about to friends and neighbors afterward.

  As they clustered on the deck near the boarding ladder in happy anticipation of going ashore, aiming their telephoto lenses at the penguins, Maeve Fletcher walked among them, checking the bright orange insulated jackets passed out by the ship's cruise staff, along with life jackets for the short trip between the ship and shore.

  Energetic and in constant motion, she moved about with a concentrated briskness in a lithe body that had seen more than its fair share of vigorous exercise. She towered above the women and stood taller than most of the men. Her hair, braided in two long pigtails, was as yellow as a summery iris. She stared through eyes as blue as the deep sea, from a strong face with high cheekbones. Her lips always seemed parted in a warm smile, revealing a tiny gap in the center of her upper teeth. Tawny skin gave her a robust outdoorsy look.

  Maeve was three years shy of thirty, with a master's degree in zoology. After graduation she took a three year sabbatical to gain field experience studying bird and animal life in the polar regions. After she returned to her home in Australia, she was halfway through her dissertation for a doctorate at the University of Melbourne when she was offered a temporary job as naturalist and expedition leader for passengers of Ruppert & Saunders, a cruise line based in Adelaide and specializing in adventure tours. It was an opportunity to earn enough money to finish her dissertation, so she dropped everything and set sail to the great white continent on board the company's ship Polar Queen.