“Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is Shadow Mobile.”
A few seconds later the radio crackled to life. “Shadow Mobile, where the hell are you?”
“Switch?” he said, and the voice acknowledged. They switched to the VHF radio channel they always used. He didn’t want to broadcast his location in case they were listening. Once Cole explained how he had arrived, his first mate grudgingly agreed to pump up the spare dinghy and come ashore to pick him up.
Twenty minutes later, he heard the oars splashing as his mate struggled to row the tiny boat in through the cove’s small surf. In the deepening dusk, he could make out neither the man’s dark skin nor the black rubber dinghy against the dark water of the bay.
“Over here,” Cole said, stepping out of the shadows.
The dinghy ground onto the shore and Theo Spenser stumbled onto the beach, the rope in the bottom of the tiny inflatable dinghy wrapped around one of his long legs. When he managed to disentangle himself and straighten up, he stood almost half a foot taller than Cole.
“Quite a landing, Theo.”
“Mon, I hate this boat,” Theo said in his clipped, British-sounding English. “It scares the crap out of me.” He adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses on his face and peered down at Cole. “Is that a skirt you’re wearing?”
“I’m starting a new fashion craze.”
“The Scots beat you to it.”
“That’s me. Always a day late and a dollar short.” Cole bent over the small rubber dinghy and began to adjust the oarlocks.
“I’ve heard people call you ‘a few cards short of a full deck,’ but the day late one is a new addition to your repertoire.”
Cole stood up with the dinghy line in his hand. He smiled. “I’m always striving to upgrade.”
“What did you do with the Whaler, anyway?”
“It’s a long story.”
“As usual. And where did you get the radio?” Theo took it from Cole’s hand and held it close to his face to examine it. “It’s a rather nice one,” he said nodding. “Waterproof.”
“I’ll tell you the story when we get out to the boat.” Cole put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And on the way out, I’ll row.”
Once off the beach, the swells were gentle rollers, so Cole took the opportunity to row facing forward and admire his boat as they approached. Shadow Chaser was sixty-four feet overall, a former shrimper he’d bought in Fernandina and then spent six months converting over to a research and salvage vessel. Her navy blue hull was barely visible against the dark foliage across the bay, but the accommodation lights in the wheelhouse reflected off the water. From her business-like raked bow the lines of her hull swept aft with a slight hollow in her sheer to the lovely rounded transom. God, she was a beauty. She still had her big A-frame crane aft and the outriggers in place, so she looked like the work boat she was, not like some Ivy League asshole’s yacht. But it was Theo who had really done magic with the money they raised.
The kid was amazing. Cole had been teaching in the Maritime Studies program at East Carolina when he met him on the docks at Ocracoke. Theo had arrived one morning as a crewman on a gleaming white motoryacht. Cole was down in the launch, trying to clean the carburetor on an old Johnson outboard when this tall, gangly black kid came over and asked if he could have a look. From Cole’s vantage point, squinting up at the young man, he couldn’t make out any features in his face. The sun behind his head made him look like he had a brilliant celestial aura, and he spoke with an Oxford accent that sounded more like it belonged on Masterpiece Theatre than on a greasy, salt-baked dock on the Outer Banks.
“You know anything about outboards?” Cole asked. “‘Cuz I’m just about ready to give up on this one.”
When the young man jumped down into the wooden tender, Cole saw his skin and hair were the brownish black of one who’d spent hours in the sun. His hair was close-cropped, his white shirt and shorts threadbare but clean and pressed, and behind his gold-rimmed glasses were dark, bright eyes full of intelligence. He shook Cole’s greasy hand and took the wrench without a word. Ten minutes later, the jets were clean, the motor reassembled and the exhaust was producing clouds of bluish smoke as the stranger gunned the engine.
Cole shouted, “Nice work. What’s your name?”
The young man shut down the engine and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a clean handkerchief. “Theophilus Spenser. Just call me Theo.”
“Where you from, Theo?”
“Dominica. It’s an island.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The young man hopped easily up onto the concrete pier and looked down at Cole with a sigh. “Not the Dominican Republic.”
Cole laughed. “Yeah, I know. My old man spent some time down in the Caribbean. On Dominica and Guadaloupe.”
Theo inclined his head in approval. “Very good. All right. Cheerio.”
Cole watched as the fellow began to head back toward the yacht that had arrived that morning. Did people really still say that? Cheerio? “Hey Theo,” he called out. “You know diesel engines, too?”
In Okracoke, the big yacht left, but Theo stayed, and Cole had seen it as his chance to go out on his own, to say, “See ya’” to that world of academia that never would accept him anyway. Cole started Full Fathom Five Maritime Explorations, and thanks to the support of their one big, then-anonymous donor and a handful of guys who’d made a bundle in Internet start-ups, he bought his own boat, and fitted her out. Theo even designed and built their Remote Operating Vehicle or ROV that had an underwater video camera and a mechanical arm. Cole had named it Enigma. It was better than the one he’d been using at the university. Together, they had turned Shadow Chaser into a state-of-the-art vessel for the search and recovery of archeological artifacts. To their investors, that translated as a treasure hunter.
Once aboard Shadow Chaser, both men headed for the galley, and Cole filled the coffee pot while Theo walked forward to the pilot house to check the gauges on the Cummins generator he’d left running. He brought the chart back and spread it out on the Formica dinette table. Cole slipped into his cabin to change into a pair of shorts. He was about to lift the woman’s shirt off his head, but when the fabric was across his face, he stopped and inhaled. There it was, that citrus smell somewhere between orange and lime. He’d smelled it in her hair when he’d brushed close to her, and again, down in the head on her boat. He smoothed the olive-colored fabric down across his chest. No need to dirty another clean shirt just yet.
Back in the galley, he turned off the stove. When they both had steaming mugs of thick black coffee, they slid onto the red vinyl bench seats of the galley dinette and looked at the chart.
“I’m waiting,” Theo said.
“Okay. I was diving out here,” Cole said, his finger tracing a line off the southwest coast of the island.
Theo didn’t say anything.
“I had the handheld GPS and I was over the coordinates where we’d got that last reading from the magnetometer. I drew a blank, though. Didn’t see a thing.”
Theo rubbed his chin. “So, I suppose there are two possibilities, then. Either the sub broke up into pieces that are now so covered in coral you couldn’t see them — or we still haven’t broken the code right, and the magnetometer got those readings off some other kind of trash.”
“I don’t care if it’s been more than sixty years, we should be able to see something from a sub that in her time was the biggest submarine in the world. Coral wouldn’t cover it that fast.” Cole shook his head. “We haven’t got it right yet. But I know it’s here.” He wasn’t sure if he was referring to the code in the journal or the submarine itself — or both. “Anyway, after I’d exhausted a couple of tanks just chasing fish around, I took the dinghy into this little cove where there’s a spring.” He finished the story, telling Theo about the men who arrived, his escape up and off the cliff, and how he’d been picked up by the Bonefish.