Medusa

  “Wasn’t Brimmer the guy Song Lee contacted when she was looking for the logbook?” Paul asked.

  “I’m sure that was his name,” Gamay said. “Maybe we’ll have more success than she did.”

  After leaving the Dobbs mansion, the Trouts drove toward the waterfront. The former heart of the world’s whaling industry had dwindled through the centuries to several blocks of historic buildings. Connected by cobblestone streets, the old banks and ship’s chandleries that had serviced the sperm-oil industry now overlooked the fishing fleet and processing buildings that lined the Acushnet River.

  Brimmer’s shop was on the ground floor of a three-story clap-board building. The peeling red paint revealed the gray primer underneath, and the black wooden sign over the door was so faded it was almost impossible to make out H. BRIMMER ANTIQUE BOOKS, MAPS, AND DOCUMENTS.

  The Trouts stepped into the shop and adjusted their eyes to the dim light. Several filing cabinets lined walls that were covered with paintings showing various aspects of the whaling trade. At the center of the room were a large wooden table and a couple of green-shaded banker’s lamps. Dozens of maps of all sizes covered the top of the table.

  A door at the back of the shop opened in response to the jingling of the bell hanging on the front door, and a thinly built man stepped out. He stared at the Trouts from behind thick glasses.

  These visitors didn’t fit the mold of the scholarly collectors or occasional tourists who were his usual patrons. At six foot eight, Paul was taller than most men, and Gamay had a magnetic presence more striking than beautiful.

  “Good afternoon,” the man said with a smile. “I’m Harvey Brimmer. May I be of some assistance?”

  Brimmer could have played a country druggist in a Frank Capra film. He was of less than average height, and he stooped slightly at the shoulders, as if he spent a long time bending over a desk. His thinning pepper-and-salt hair was parted slightly off the middle. He was dressed conservatively in gray suit pants and a white dress shirt. He wore a whale-motif blue tie knotted in a Windsor.

  “I’m Paul Trout, and this is my wife, Gamay. We’re looking for any material you might have on Caleb Nye.”

  Brimmer’s watery blue eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed bifocals.

  “Caleb Nye! Now, that’s a name you don’t hear very often. How did you come to know about our local Jonah?”

  “My wife and I are whaling-history buffs. We came across Caleb’s name in connection with Captain Horatio Dobbs. We were on our way to the Whaling Museum and saw your sign.”

  “Well, you are in luck. I can put my hands on some brochures from his traveling show. They’re in storage at my workshop.”

  “We wondered if there were any logbooks available for the Princess that may have survived the Nye mansion fire,” Gamay said.

  Brimmer frowned.

  “The fire was a tragedy. As an antiquarian, I can only guess at the rare volumes he had in his library. But all is not lost. I may be able to get my hands on a Princess logbook. She sailed for many years before she became part of the Stone Fleet, sunk off Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. The logbooks were dispersed to museums and private collectors. I’d need a finder’s fee up front.”

  “Of course,” Gamay said. “Would you be able to find the logbook for 1848?”

  Brimmer’s eyes narrowed behind his bifocals.

  “Why that particular log?”

  “It was Captain Dobbs’s last whaling voyage,” she replied. “We’d be prepared to pay whatever it takes.”

  Brimmer pinched his chin between his forefinger and thumb.

  “I believe I may be able to help you,” he said.

  “Then the log wasn’t destroyed?” Paul asked.

  “Possibly not. There’s a little-known story about Caleb Nye. He married a Fairhaven girl, but the family was not pleased at her betrothal to someone considered a freak, rich as he was, and they kept the matter quiet. The Nyes even had a daughter who was given some of the books from the library as a dowry. I have contacts I can check with, but I’d need a few hours. Can I call you?”

  Paul handed Brimmer a business card with his cell-phone number on it.

  Brimmer saw the logo.

  “NUMA? Splendid. A query from your renowned agency might open doors.”

  “Please let us know as soon as you hear something,” Paul said.

  Gamay signed an agreement and wrote out a check for the large finder’s fee. They shook hands all around.

  HARVEY BRIMMER WATCHED through the window of his shop until the Trouts were out of sight, then he hung a CLOSED sign on the door and went to his office behind the showroom. The documents and maps in his shop were actually overpriced prints of originals or low-end antiques for the tourist trade.

  Brimmer picked up the phone and dialed a number from his Rolodex.

  “Harvey Brimmer,” he said to the person at the other end of the line. “We talked a few days ago about a rare book. I’ve got some buyers interested in the same property. The price may go up. Yes, I can wait for your call. Don’t be too long.”

  He hung up and sat back in his chair, a smug expression on his face. He remembered the first time someone had asked about the Princess logbook of 1848. The call had come in years before from a young woman at Harvard. He told her he would put out the word, but she said she would have to wait because she was going home to China. He hadn’t thought about the inquiry again until a few weeks ago when an Asian man dropped by the shop looking for the same item. The man was an unlikely customer, young and tough-looking, and he didn’t hide his irritation when he was told the book was not available.

  Brimmer could not have known that the visit from the young man had been instigated when Song Lee called Dr. Huang from Bonefish Key and mentioned the story of the New Bedford anomaly. She told her mentor that she was convinced that the medical curiosity had a bearing on her work and she was thinking of going to New Bedford to see an antique book dealer named Brimmer when she had time.

  As instructed, Dr. Huang had passed along the details of every conversation he had with the young epidemiologist. Within minutes, a call had gone out to a social club in Boston’s Chinatown with orders to visit Brimmer’s shop. Soon after that, the leader of the local Ghost Dragons chapter walked into Brimmer’s shop and said he was looking for the 1848 logbook of the Princess.

  Now the couple from NUMA.

  Brimmer didn’t know what was going on, but there was nothing a dealer liked better than to have collectors bidding against one another. He would go through the motions and make a few calls. He would keep the finder’s fees from all three parties and offer them something else. He was a master of bait and switch. Business had been off lately, and this promised to be a profitable day.

  What he didn’t know was that it would be his last day.

  THE TROUTS STEPPED FROM the dim shop into the afternoon sunshine and walked up Johnny Cake Hill to the Seamen’s Bethel. They tossed a few bills in the donation box and went inside the old whaling men’s church. The pulpit had been rebuilt in recent years to resemble a ship’s prow, as it had in Herman Melville’s time.

  Paul waited for a couple of tourists to leave and then turned to Gamay.

  “What did you think of Brimmer?” he asked.

  “I think he’s a slippery old eel,” she said. “My advice is not to hold our breath waiting for him to come through. He’ll dig out the first logbook he can get his hands on, forge a new date, and try to sell it to us.”

  “Did you see his expression change when we mentioned Captain Dobbs’s 1848 logbook?” he said.

  “Couldn’t miss it!” she said. “Brimmer forgot his Mr. Friendly impersonation.”

  Paul let his eye wander to the marble tablets hung on the wall that were inscribed with the names of captains and crews lost in the far corners of the world.

  “Those old whalers were tough as nails,” he said.

  “Some were tougher than others,” she said, “if you can believe Song Lee’s stor
y about the New Bedford pod.”

  Paul pursed his lips.

  “That medical phenomenon is a link between the past and the present. I’d love to read the paper that Lee wrote at Harvard.”

  Gamay slipped her BlackBerry out of her handbag. “Do you remember the name of Lee’s professor?”

  “How could I forget?” Paul said with a smile. “His name was Codman.”

  “Trout . . . Cod . . . Why are practically all you New Englanders named after fish?”

  “Because we didn’t have wine connoisseurs for fathers.”

  “Touché,” she said.

  She called up the Harvard Medical School on her BlackBerry, thumb-typed Codman’s name into a person finder, and called the number shown on the screen. A man who identified himself as Lysander Codman answered the call.

  “Hello, Dr. Codman? My name is Dr. Gamay Morgan-Trout. I’m a friend of Dr. Song Lee. I’m hoping that you remember her.”

  “Dr. Lee? How could I forget that brilliant young woman? How is she these days?”

  “We saw her yesterday, and she’s fine. She’s working with some NUMA colleagues of mine, but she mentioned a paper she had done at Harvard and submitted to you. It has something to do with a medical phenomenon called the New Bedford anomaly.”

  “Oh, yes,” Codman said. Gamay could hear him chuckling. “It was an unusual subject.”

  “We told Song Lee we’d be in the neighborhood, and she asked if my husband and I could swing by and pick up a copy for her. She’s lost the original.”

  The professor had no reason to have kept a paper from one of hundreds of students who had passed through his classroom, but he said, “Normally, I wouldn’t hold on to a student’s paper, but the subject was so bizarre I kept it in what I call the Book of the Dead, as Charles Fort termed subjects that can be neither proven nor disproven. I’m sure I can put my hands on it.”

  Gamy gave Paul a thumbs-up.

  “Thank you very much, Professor. We’ll be there in a little over an hour, if that’s convenient.”

  She jotted down directions to Codman’s office in her BlackBerry, and then she and Paul walked from the whaling chapel to the car. Minutes later, they were heading north out of the city.

  Unknown

  NUMA 8 - Medusa

  CHAPTER 34

  THE VOICE OF THE PILOT CRACKLED OVER THE CITATION X’s cabin intercom.

  “Sorry to wake you folks up, but we’re making our approach to Pohnpei and will be on the ground in a few minutes. Please make sure your seat belts are buckled.”

  Austin yawned once and looked over at Zavala, who could sleep through an earthquake. Then he glanced out the window at the landing strip on Deketik Island and the mile-long causeway that connected it to the main island. The sky was clear except for scattered clouds.

  “Welcome to Bali Ha’i,” Austin said to Song Lee, who was rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  Lee furrowed her brow, confused by Austin’s reference to the mystical island that figured in South Pacific. She pressed her nose against the Plexiglas window. The island below was roughly circular, surrounded by a thin barrier reef enclosing a vast lagoon of intense blue. Luxuriant green forests laced with waterfalls covered the soaring peak towering over the island.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “I stopped here on a NUMA research ship a couple of years ago,” Austin said. “The tall volcanic peak is Mount Nahna Laud. It inspired European explorers to call the place Ascension Island. It seemed to to them to rise right up to heaven.”

  “Is there any place in the world that you haven’t been to?” Lee asked.

  “If it touches an ocean, I’ve been there,” Austin said. “Look, you can see the ruins of the old city at Nan Madol on the southeast coast of the island. They call it the Venice of the Pacific. Maybe we can explore the place after we’re through with our other business. Tell you what, I’ll take you out to dinner with a water view and introduce you to sakau. It’s the local firewater that the locals make from pepper plants.”

  Song gazed with curiosity at Kurt’s rugged face. He was as excited as a schoolboy at the prospect of returning to Nan Madol. The fact that he faced a Herculean task and held the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in his hands didn’t seem to faze him. His self-assurance must be catching, she thought, because she said, “Yes, I’d like that. Perhaps we could make that visit to Nan Madol sooner than later. I’ve been thinking that it might have a bearing on this other ‘business,’ as you called it.”

  “In what way, Dr. Lee?”

  “It’s a strange little story from the first mate of the Princess. The island the ship sailed to when the crew became sick was known to be unfriendly to whalers. So, after dropping anchor, he and the captain went ashore briefly to see if there were any natives there. They didn’t see anybody, but they did come across some ruins. The captain remarked on the strange carvings, and said they were similar to those he’d seen on a temple at Nan Madol.”

  “So if we can find an island that has ruins like Nan Madol,” Austin said, “then there’s a chance the Princess stopped there.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Lee said.

  “How does that help us find the lab? Don’t forget, Dr. Lee, that’s our primary reason for being in Micronesia.”

  “Yes, I know. But when I was at Bonefish Key, I heard that the field lab was running short of blue medusae and that a new supply had to be found.”

  “Kane said that a mutant strain had been developed,” Austin said. “Why would they need more of the original species?”

  “There was no assurance at the time that the mutant would be the answer,” Lee said, “in which case other avenues would have to be explored. There was a plan to collect medusae from a newfound source. If the lab is still working on the vaccine, it would need medusae. Which means that if we find that source, the lab may be nearby.”

  “Wouldn’t Dr. Kane know where this new source was located?”

  “Not necessarily. He had pretty much left the day-to-day operations to Dr. Mitchell.”

  Austin thought about it for a moment, then said, “I know a guide named Jeremiah Whittles who lives in Kolonia, which is the capital of Pohnpei and the biggest town on the island. Whittles took me out to the ruins the last time I was here. He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of Nan Madol. I think it might be worth talking to him to see if he knows anything that might help.”

  The Citation X circled one last time, then glided in for a perfect landing, hitting the single strip for landings and takeoffs with a soft jounce. Near the end of the strip, the jet made a U-turn, using the strip to taxi up to the terminal.

  The moveable staircase thumped against the fuselage. Austin pushed the door open and stepped out of the plane, filling his lungs with warm air laden with the heavy scent of tropical flowers. It was like stepping into a steam room, but nobody complained about the heat or humidity after being cooped up for so many hours in the temperature-controlled cabin.

  The pleasant-mannered customs officer stamped their passports and welcomed them to the Federated States of Micronesia. Lee had left her passport back on Bonefish Key, but a State Department call ahead to Honolulu had produced temporary paperwork that would get her in and out of Micronesia.

  The lobby was deserted except for a man holding a square of cardboard with NUMA printed on it. He wore a baseball cap, baggy cargo shorts, sandals, and a white T-shirt emblazoned with an azure blue rectangle enclosing four white stars, Micronesia’s flag.

  Austin introduced himself and the others in the party.

  “Nice to meet you,” the man said. “I’m Ensign Frank Daley. Pardon my disguise. The locals are used to seeing Navy personnel around, but we’re trying to keep this operation low-key.”

  Despite his attire, Daley’s ramrod-straight bearing, razor-precise crew cut, and chin so close-shaven that it shined all marked him as a military man.

  “You’re pardoned, Ensign,” Austin said. “What do you have planned f
or us?”

  “We’ve got a chopper waiting to take you to Search Command on my ship, the cruiser Concord.”

  As they walked out to the gray Sikorsky Seahawk that had been awaiting their arrival, Austin asked Daley the status of the search.

  “We’ve covered hundreds of square miles using surface and air,” the ensign said. “Nothing so far.”

  “Have you dropped sonobuoys to listen for underwater movement?”

  Daley patted the nose of the Seahawk.

  “This bird was built for antisub warfare. It’s got the latest in acoustic detection. The info from the sensors is transmitted back to the ship and goes into a network computer system. All negative so far, sir.”

  “Has the lab site been thoroughly investigated?” Zavala asked.

  “As thoroughly as can be done with an ROV,” Daley said.

  “I heard that there’s a NUMA ship helping with the search,” Zavala said. “I’ll see if I can borrow their submersible and give the lab site a closer look.”

  Austin had been thinking about his conversation with Lee.

  “Dr. Lee has a lead we’d like to pursue on the island,” he said. “Could you give Joe a lift out to the ship and pick us up in a few hours?”

  “I’ve been told that the entire Navy is at your beck and call, Mr. Austin,” Daley said. “The chopper does two hundred miles an hour. We can be back on the island in no time.”

  Austin turned to Zavala, who had started to load their bags onto the helicopter.

  “Song has unearthed some interesting stuff about Nan Madol,” he said, “and it might have a bearing on the lab. Can you ride herd on the search operation while we take a quick look?”

  “Hold on, Kurt. You go off with the lovely Dr. Lee and I muck around in the mud. What’s wrong with that picture, partner?”

  “Nothing as far as I can see, partner,” Austin said.

  “I’ll have to admit you’ve got a point there,” Zavala said with an easy grin. “See you in a few hours.”