Morton stepped forward and formally bowed. "Welcome to the Ocean Wanderer, sir."
There was no shaking of hands. Specter tilted his head back and stared up at the magnificent structure. Though he had taken a personal interest in its design from conception to construction, he had yet to see it fully completed and moored in the sea.
"The appearance exceeds my most optimistic expectations," Specter said in a soft melodious voice with the barest hint of an American southern accent that did not fit his appearance. When Morton first met Specter he expected him to speak in high-pitched, scratchy sounds.
"I'm sure you will be more than pleased with the interior as well," said Morton in a patronizing tone. "If you will please follow me, I will give you the grand tour before escorting you to the royal penthouse suite."
Specter merely nodded in reply, and began trundling across the deck to the hotel with his retinue bringing up the rear.
In the communications room across a wide hallway from the executive offices, an operator was monitoring and relaying the satellite calls that were coming in from Specter's main headquarters at his company-built city in Laguna, Brazil, and offices around the world. A light blinked on his console and he answered the call.
"Ocean Wanderer, how may I direct your call?"
"This is Heidi Lisherness from the NUMA Hurricane Center in Key West. May I speak to the director of your resort?"
"I'm sorry, but he is busy escorting the owner and founder of Ocean Wanderer on a private tour of the hotel."
"This is extremely urgent. Let me talk to his assistant."
"Everyone in the executive office is on the tour also."
"Then will you please," Heidi pleaded, "please, inform them that a Category Five hurricane is headed in the direction of the Ocean Wanderer. It is traveling at incredible speed and could strike the hotel as soon as dawn tomorrow. You must, I repeat, you must begin evacuating your hotel. I will give you frequent updates and will stand by at this number for any questions your director may have."
The operator dutifully jotted down the Hurricane Center's number and then answered several other calls that came in while he was talking with Heidi. Not taking the warning seriously, he waited until he was relieved two hours later before he tracked down Morton and relayed the message.
Morton stared at the message typed out by the operator's voice printer and reread it thoughtfully before handing it to Specter. "A weather warning from Key West. They report that a hurricane is heading in our direction and suggest we evacuate everyone in the hotel."
Specter scanned the warning message and lumbered to a large view window and gazed toward the east across the sea. The sky was free of clouds and the water surface looked quite calm, the wave crests reaching no more than a foot or two in height. "We'll make no hasty decisions. If the storm follows the usual hurricane track, it should veer north and miss us by hundreds of miles."
Morton was not so sure. A cautious and conscientious man, he preferred to be safe rather than sorry. "I do not believe, sir, it would be in our best interest to risk the lives of our guests or employees. I respectfully suggest that we instruct everyone to begin evacuation procedures and arrange transportation to a safe haven in the Dominican Republic as soon as possible. We should also alert the tugboats to launch an operation to tow us from the worst of the storm."
Specter stared out the window again at the serene weather as if reassuring himself. "We'll wait another three hours. I do not wish to harm the image of Ocean Wanderer with stories of a mass flight the news media will blow out of proportion and compare to the abandonment of a sinking ship. Besides," he said, throwing up his arms as if embracing the magnificent floating edifice like a balloon with long thin ears, "my hotel was built to resist any violence the sea can throw at her."
Morton briefly considered mentioning the Titanic, but thought better of it. He left Specter in the penthouse suite and returned to his office to begin preparations for the evacuation he was sure would come.
Fifty miles north of Ocean Wanderer, Captain Barnum studied the meteorological reports coming in from Heidi Lisherness and unconsciously stared toward the east the way Specter had. Unlike landsmen, Barnum was wily to the ways of the sea. He was aware of the slowly increasing breeze and the rising waves. He had weathered many storms during his long career at sea and knew how they could creep up on an unsuspecting ship and crew and engulf them in less than an hour.
He picked up the phone and hailed Pisces. An indistinct, garbled voice answered from under the water. "Summer?"
"No, this is the brother," Dirk replied humorously as he adjusted the frequency. "What can I do for you, Captain?"
"Is Summer inside Pisces with you?"
"No, she's outside, checking the hydrolab oxygen tanks."
"We have a storm warning from Key West. A Category Five hurricane is coming down our throats."
"Category Five? That's a brutal one."
"As ferocious as they come. I saw a Category Four in the Pacific twenty years ago. I can't imagine anything worse."
"I low much time do we have before it's on us?" asked Dirk.
"The center predicted six in the morning. But updates show it's coming on much faster. We have to get you and Summer out of Pisces .and onto Sea Sprite as soon as possible."
"I don't have to tell you about saturation dives, Captain. My sister and I have been down here four days. It will take us at least fifteen hours of decompression before we can be recompressed to ambient water pressure and come to the surface. We'll never make it before the hurricane is on us."
Barnum was well aware of the threatening situation. "We may have to terminate our topside support and run for it."
"At this depth, we should be able to weather the storm comfortably," Dirk said confidently.
"I don't like leaving you," Barnum spoke grimly.
"We may have to go on a diet, but we have generating power and enough oxygen to last us four days. By then the worst of the storm should have passed."
"I wish it was more."
There was a pause from Pisces. Then, "Do we have an option?"
"No," Barnum sighed heavily. "I guess not." He looked up at the big digital clock above the pilothouse's automated ship's console. His greatest fear was that if Sea Sprite was driven far off its position by the storm, he might not get back in time to save Dirk and Summer. He feared he was faced with a no-win situation. If he lost Dirk Pitt's children to the sea, there was no telling the wrath that would explode from NUMA's special projects director. "Take every precaution to extend your air supply."
"Not to worry, Captain. Summer and I will be snug as bugs in a rug in our little shack down in coral gulch."
Barnum felt uneasy. The odds were also long that Pisces could survive intact if the reef was pounded by hundred-foot waves generated by a Category 5 hurricane. He stared through the bridge windows to the east. Already the sky was filling with threatening clouds and the seas had risen to five feet.
With much regret and a deepening sense of foreboding, he gave orders for Sea Sprite to pull up the anchor and lay a course away from the predicted path of the storm.
When Summer reentered the main lock, Dirk gave her a rundown on the nasty weather coming their way over the horizon. He ran through instructions for conserving food and air. "We should also batten down any loose objects in case high seas knock us around down here."
"How soon before the worst of the storm reaches us?" asked Summer.
"According to the captain, sometime before morning."
"Then you have time for a final dive with me before we're cooped up in here until the weather clears."
Dirk looked at his sister. A lesser man, captivated by her beauty, would have fallen under her spell, but as her twin brother he was immune to her Machiavellian wiles. "What's on your mind?" he asked casually.
"I want to take a closer look inside the cavern where I found the urn."
"Can you find it again in the dark?"
"Like a fox to its lai
r," she said, cocksure. "Besides, you always enjoy seeing different species of fish on a night dive that you can't see during the day."
Dirk was hooked. "Then let's make it quick. We have a lot of work to do before the storm hits."
Summer put her arm through his. "You won't regret it!"
"Why do you say that?"
She stared up at her brother from those soft gray eyes. "Because the more I think about it, I believe there is a greater mystery than the urn waiting to be found inside the cave."
6
With Summer in the lead, they dropped out of the entry lock, checked each other's equipment and then moved into the sea that was as black as deep space. Together, they switched on their dive lights and startled the nearby night fish who had emerged after dark to feed in their coral domain. Above, there was no moon to sweep the surface with shimmering silver. The stars were cloaked by ominous clouds, the precursors of the vicious storm soon to come.
Dirk stroked his fins behind his sister, following her into the dark void. He knew she enjoyed the underwater world by her graceful, languid movements. Her bubbles rose in clusters of balloons indicating the comfortable breathing of an expert diver. She looked back at him through her mask and smiled. Then she pointed to her right and kicked off over the coral illuminated by her dive light in a maze of muted colors.
There was nothing sinister about the silent sea beneath the surface at night. Curious fish were attracted by the dive lights and came out of their coral hiding places to study the unfamiliar and awkward swimming creatures intruding in their midst who were carrying sealed housings that beamed like the sun. A huge parrot fish swam at Dirk's side, staring at him like a curious cat. Six four-foot barracudas materialized out of the gloom, their lower jaws protruding beyond their noses and displaying rows of needle-sharp teeth. They ignored the divers and glided past without the slightest sign of interest.
Summer finned through the coral canyons as if she was following a road map. A little blowfish, startled by the glare of the light, puffed its body into a round ball with spikes protruding from its sides like a cactus, making it impossible or extremely unlikely a big predator would be dumb enough to attempt to swallow such a throat-ripping morsel.
Their lights threw eerie, flickering shadows against the distorted coral whose surface varied from jagged sharpness to round and globular. To Dirk, the complex hues and shapes took on the look of a continuous abstract painting. He glanced at his depth gauge. It read forty-five feet. He glanced ahead as Summer suddenly dropped down into a narrow coral canyon with steep sides. He descended in her wake, noticing a number of openings in the coral leading to shallow caves and wondering which one had attracted her the day before.
Finally, she hesitated before a vertical opening with squared corners sandwiched between a pair of unnatural-looking columns. Turning briefly to see that her brother was still following, Summer swam unhesitatingly into the cavern beyond. This time, with a dive light in hand and the security of her brother beside her, Summer penetrated deeper into the cavern, past the place in the bottom sand where she had discovered the urn.
The cave was not crooked or irregular. The walls, ceiling and floor were almost perfectly flat, stretching into the darkness like a corridor without twists and turns. Deeper and deeper it led them on.
Becoming lost in a cave system is the number one cause of cave-diving fatalities. Mistakes prove deadly. Here, fortunately, there was no problem of orientation. This was not a dangerous cave dive, nor was there a fear of becoming lost in a complex system of adjoining caves. The chamber had no side openings or separate shafts that could cause them to lose their way. To regain the entrance, they had only to reverse their course. They were thankful there was no fine silt on the bottom that when disturbed could cloud vision for an hour before it settled again. The floor of the coral shaft was covered with coarse sand too heavy to swirl in the water if disturbed by their fins.
Abruptly, the shaft ended in what teased Summer's imagination. Though infested with marine growth, it seemed as if the shaft rose with a flight of steps. A school of angelfish twirled in a corkscrew above her head, then darted past as she began to ascend. Her skin and the nape of her neck suddenly tingled with expectation. Her earlier feeling that there was more to the cavern than met the eye came back with a rush.
The coral thinned this far under the reef. With no light to encourage marine growth the encrustation on the walls of the shaft was less than an inch thick and consisted more of slimy growth than hard coral. Dirk took his gloved hand and brushed away the greasy coating and felt his heart quicken as he recognized grooves in granite rock that he theorized were put there by ancient hands when the sea was lower.
Then, through the water, he heard Summer utter a distorted squeal. He kicked upward and was stunned when he broke the surface of the water into an air pocket. He looked up as Summer's light swept over a domed ceiling of seemingly chiseled stones fit tightly together without mortar.
"What have we got here?" Dirk spoke through his underwater communications system.
"It's either a freak of nature or an ancient man-made vault," Summer murmured in awe.
"This is no freak of nature."
"It must have been submerged after the melting of the Ice Age."
"That was ten thousand years ago. Impossible to be that ancient. More likely, the vault sank during an earthquake like the one that struck Port Royal, Jamaica, the pirate haven that slipped into the sea after a massive tremor in sixteen ninety-two."
"Could it be a forgotten ghost city?" asked Summer, her excitement mounting.
Dirk shook his head. "Unless there is much more buried under the surrounding coral, my gut instinct is this was some sort of temple."
"Built by ancient natives of the Caribbean?"
"I doubt it. Archaeologists have found no evidence of stone masonry in the West Indies before Columbus. And the local natives certainly didn't know how to forge a bronze urn. This was built by a different culture, a lost and unknown civilization."
"Not another Atlantis myth," Summer said sarcastically.
"No, Dad and Al put that to rest in the Antarctic several years ago."
"Seems incredible that ancient peoples of Europe sailed across the ocean and built a temple on a coral reef."
Dirk slowly ran his gloved hand on one wall. "Navidad Reef was probably an island back then."
"When you think about it," said Summer, "we must be breathing air thousands of years old."
Dirk deeply inhaled and then exhaled. "Smells and tastes good to me."
Summer pointed over her shoulder. "Help me with the camera. We must get a photo record."
Dirk moved behind her and removed an aluminum carrying case attached to a clip beneath her air tanks. He pulled out a minidigital Sony PC-100 camcorder mounted inside a compact Ikelite clear-acrylic housing. Setting the controls on manual mode, he attached the arms for the floodlights. Since there was no ambient light there was no need for a light meter.
There was an illusive grandeur to the submarine chamber and Summer was more than proficient enough with a camera to capture it. The instant she flicked on the floodlights the bleak cave came alive in a montage of green, yellow, red and purple hues from the growth on the sheer walls. Except for a mild distortion, the water was nearly as clear as glass.
While Summer photographed the vault below and above the water, Dirk dove down and began exploring the floor along the walls. The lights from Summer's camera cast weird quivering images in the water as he slowly worked his way around the perimeter.
He almost passed by without seeing a space that opened up between two walls. It was a corner entrance no more than two feet wide. Dirk barely shouldered through with his air tanks, keeping the hand gripping the dive light extended in front of him. He entered another chamber slightly larger than the outer one. This one had recessed seats in the walls and what looked like a large stone bed in the center. At first he thought it was empty of artifacts but then his light revealed a roun
d object with two large holes on the sides and one smaller hole at the top lying on the bed, like armor that covered the torso. A gold necklace rested on the stone above the object with two coiled armbands placed on each side. What looked like an intricate metal lace headpiece sat above the necklace and above it an ornate diadem.