Artifact: A Daredevils Club Adventure Part 23

Centering the piece on his desk, he stared at it, shook his head as if to clear it, and closed his eyes. After counting to five, he reopened them and refocused on the object.

Nothing had changed; his nausea and the illusion of the artifact's curious reflection of itself remained.

36.

Not much outside of restaurants and bars stayed open on the island on Carnival Monday. The occasional minibus driver picked up a load of pa.s.sengers, the police and fire stations stayed on alert, and the clinic opened its doors, which was fine with Peta. She had no urge whatsoever to partic.i.p.ate in Carnival, particularly after her experience with the Jab Jab Mola.s.si. She had no interest in watching the parade or in following it to Grenada National Stadium for the calypso finals and the crowning of the king and queenof the Carnival.

It was well into the afternoon before she finished seeing her patients, which was perfect because Ralphie was rarely around before then. His routine was absolute unless he was ill or off-island. He disappeared after his morning sea bath, and appeared again on Morne Rouge Beach in the late afternoon with his knapsack. Settling himself against the fence in front of the house nearest to Gem Holiday Beach Resort, he carved black coral, smoked the occasional joint, and engaged in brief conversations with pa.s.sers-by.

Mostly, he kept to himself.

Always, she knew where to find him.

She had brought her party clothes from home, figuring she would use the bathroom at her clinic to dress.

If it weren't for carnival, she'd have gone home, then down to the Carenage and hailed a water taxi to take her to Ralphie at Morne Rouge Bay and back to Blue Lagoon Marina. Today, however, was not the day to do that-not with all the drunks and tourists jockeying for s.p.a.ce on the Carenage.

At about four-thirty, she made her last patient notes and dressed-or more precisely, undressed-to kill, in a miniskirted black T-strap dress.

Praying that Ralphie would have her replica ready, she threw a pair of silver stiletto-heeled sandals onto the front seat of the car and, barefoot, drove her Honda down the hill to Gem. He was not yet at his post, so she stopped in for a brief h.e.l.lo with the hotel manager, a woman whose string of children Peta had delivered, picked up a c.o.ke at the beach bar, and walked onto the sand. She could smell the aroma of fresh seafood cooking in the perpetual pot that was kept going by the beach folk. One of them, still dripping from his dive, cracked open a sea urchin and offered it to her. She could not resist the treat. He wouldn't take any money, so she tossed him a couple of cigarettes.

Attracted to the sight of the giveaway, a jailbird con artist whom she knew only as Coconut asked for a smoke. She tossed him one.

He grinned and stuck it between his lips before motioning with his hands as if he were striking a match.

"Seen Ralphie?" she asked, pulling a disposable lighter from her purse.

Coconut shook his head. "Not for a few days. Maybe he go off-island."

Peta pointed at the small pile of green coconuts at his feet. He pulled his machete from the sand, picked up one of the nuts, a little smaller than an American football, and began the ritual he would have to complete before she could ask him any more questions. Twirling the coconut in his left hand, he expertly swung the machete across the end, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g away the green husk and exposing the soft interior sh.e.l.l.

With a final whack he lopped off the end and handed it to her.

She exchanged it for the lighter and drank down the liquid inside the coconut, relis.h.i.+ng its cool sweetness.

When she'd finished, she handed it back to Coconut, who chopped it open and returned the two halves, along with a shaving from the husk. Using the shaving like a spoon, she scooped out the white, gelatinous insides that off-islanders never saw in the old, dried-out nuts they bought at the supermarket.

"Ralphie has to be around somewhere," she said, throwing the empty sh.e.l.ls into the nearby tin drum that pa.s.sed as a trash can.

Coconut grinned. "I find him for you-cost you a pack of smokes."

Peta sat down on one of Gem's beach chairs. "Sure." She brushed away a family of no-see-ums that were settling on her arm in antic.i.p.ation of sundown. "Why not."She adjusted the chair, lay back, and fell asleep. The steel-drum sounds of the New Dimensions, a local reggae and soca group, awakened her an hour later. Their music came from the Rhum Runner, a tourist-filled catamaran making a stop on its daily sunset round. Two old ladies sat under a palm tree near the cat, trading baskets of T-s.h.i.+rts. A third had thrown a row of brightly colored towels over the fence.

She sat in front of them braiding a tourist's hair with the help of her granddaughter, a pretty girl of no more than nine.

"Ralphie come soon." Coconut plopped himself down on the sand next to her and held out one hand for payment. "I find him wa-a-y down Grand Anse."

"I don't see him," Peta said.

"He come along slow."

"Why should I believe you?" Peta asked, amusing herself.

Coconut lifted his machete and grinned. She took a small purse out of her pocket and counted out $1.30 Grenadian, enough for a pack of 555s at the supermarket up the road or a half pack at the bar.

"I'm thirsty for beer," Coconut said.

Peta shook her head. "Don't push your luck."

He shrugged congenially, as if he had expected no different. "You be at Fantazia tonight for Calypso Night?" he asked, pointing at the building attached to the back of Gem's beachside restaurant, Sur La Mer.

"Maybe," Peta said, though she had absolutely no intention of partying there or anywhere else, with the exception of her obligatory appearance on the a.s.segai.

"Good enough." He took off for the bar just as Ralphie strode into view. "See," he called out. "I told you."

"Hey, Ralphie."

"Hey, Miss Peta."

"You finished the job I gave you?"

"I finished it." He moved off toward the fence. She stood up and followed him. He settled himself on the sand, took out a piece of coral and a small knife, and began to carve. She sat down next to him and waited in companionable silence, knowing he would give her what she wanted in his own time and not before.

After half an hour or so, he dug into his bag and pulled out the replica, set in the original gold bezel, and the loose real fragment. She took them from him and examined them closely.

There was no way to tell visually which one was the duplicate and which the real thing.

The only way she knew the difference was by feel. The original fragment seemed to draw the heat from her hand, making it tingle like pins and needles. The other felt like any piece of carved coral.

"Amazing job, Ralphie. I don't know how to thank you. You just might have saved my life."

"Then I have all the thanks I need," he said gravely, and refused all offers of payment."I have one more favor to ask." She held out the original toward him. "I don't want to have this with me tonight. Will you hold it for me until tomorrow?"

He nodded and took it from her.

"Aren't you curious about this?" Peta asked.

"I'm curious about how the universe works," he answered.

Peta smiled at him. He was really something, her friend Ralphie. He could have followed in his family's political footsteps. He could have lived like a rich man. Instead, he carved coral and sought the secrets of the universe. She thought about Frik, about how his search for the same secrets was motivated by a desire for self-aggrandizement.

She leaned over and kissed Ralphie on the cheek. "If for some reason I don't come back and get it from you, find Manny Sheppard and give it to him."

"You go to come back," he said, as if he knew.

As Peta neared Blue Lagoon, she heard again the sounds of the New Dimensions. They were doing well for themselves, she thought, wondering if Frik had also hired Bosco, as he usually did. She had known Grenada's one-man band all of her life, and enjoyed seeing him. He was an event unto himself, playing ba.s.s and keyboard, percussion and drums, doing his own arrangements, and playing pan and singing.

Cute and fun, he was much in demand.

She parked her car outside the marina so that, if necessary, she could leave in a hurry, and footed it the rest of the way. The area was alive with music and people. Rum punch was being poured liberally and everyone was having a high old time, drinking, toking, dancing to the lively steel drums of the local musicians who had apparently forgone their usual gig at the Grenada Grand Beach Resort to oblige Frik.

She waved at the musicians and made her way through the crowd. Hiking up her miniskirt, stilettos dangling from her hand, she climbed onto the a.s.segai. The wooden table had been removed from the deck to make room for a spotlit dance floor.

As one song ended and another began, a circle of partygoers gathered around Peta. Some of them began to dance. She slipped into her sandals and moved to the irresistible rhythm of her favorite local calypso, Marsha MacDonald's "Going Under."

"Go, girl," someone yelled. Someone else turned the spotlight on her.

Frik.

She had noticed him among those who preferred to watch. Now she saw that his gaze was riveted on the pendant she was wearing around her neck.

At the end of the song, the musicians closed their set.

Frik moved toward her, took her arm, and guided her down into the cabin, where a huge black form lay growling.

"Quiet, Sheba!"

The dog sent out one more test growl, objecting to the invasion of her territory, then stopped.Peta followed the Afrikaner through the boat's small galley and forward to his private study. The cozy wood-paneled cabin curved with the prow of the a.s.segai until it formed a point. Cus.h.i.+oned benches lined both walls, broken only on the starboard side by a locked cabinet which she knew contained an entertainment center and his communications equipment. Where the curving walls brought the benches together, a low trapezoidal wooden cabinet served as a display table. Standing in the middle of it was the small wire frame which held the two pieces of the artifact that Frikkie had so far recovered.

"Thank you, again, for coming," he said. "And for bringing the piece." Safely out of sight of the revelers, he reached out toward the pendant.

"Not so fast," Peta said, enjoying the look on his face as she backed away. Smiling, she asked him to give her the privilege of placing the fragment into the model herself. "Just a whim," she said. "Humor me."

A trifle impatiently, Frik agreed.

Heart pounding, praying that Ralphie's work was as perfect as she thought it was, she removed the pendant from around her neck, pushed the fragment out of its bezel and into the s.p.a.ce he indicated.

It slid in and-Thank you, Ralphie-connected perfectly with the real pieces of the artifact.

"That just leaves Selene's fragment," Frik said. "And the one that's in New York with Arthur's effects."

"I'm curious," Peta said, trying to sound casual. "How did you know about that one?"

"Ray told me just recently," Frik said. "Is that a problem? It is mine, you know."

"A problem? N-no. I don't suppose it is." She had never been completely sure that Frik knew about the piece in New York or, if he did know, just how he had learned about it. Her suspicions about the Daredevil stuntman returned tenfold.

"Ray says the piece is in New York, with Arthur's effects. I'd like to go and get it," Frik went on, his voice carefully benign.

d.a.m.n it, Peta thought. How was she going to get out of this one? "It can be released only to me, personally."

"So I understand. Why don't you let me fly you there. We can-"

Peta held up her hand. "I have a practice. I have students at the medical school coming in this week to begin the new semester and I need to prepare. There's no way I can leave Grenada right now."

"But-"

"Don't pressure me, Frik. I'm not one of your flunkies." Her anger finally overrode her caution, adding heat to her words. "I give you my word I'll retrieve the piece in time for the New Year's Eve meeting in Vegas. That'll have to be good enough."

37.

On the night of the August new moon, Terris McKendry stood on the Valhalla platform and wondered if he would ever again be able to trust a night of such darkness. To him it seemed that the world was holding its breath, waiting to unleash some hidden terror. His uneasiness had returned each month since the night on the Yucatan when he and Joshua had first encountered Green Impact-the night that had cost Keene his life and made him into a cold-blooded murderer who would shoot a woman in the back.Restless, he walked the metal decks at the wellhead level, high as a skysc.r.a.per above the placid water.

Level after level, he climbed from one yellow-painted staircase to another, pacing, working off his nervous energy as he stared out into the night.

His heavy boots rang loudly in his ears, even against the hiss and thrum of the ever-working mechanisms of the production platform. The rig was a constant drone of machinery, effluents hissing through pipes, waste-gas flames crackling at the long ends of boom derricks.

McKendry gripped the warm metal railings and peered a hundred feet down to the water. Valhalla produced too much background noise, too much light and sound. It cast a bubble of restless civilization around them, like a campfire driving off predators in the wilderness.

Pacing around to the western corner of the platform, he saw the two exhaust flares extended like spitting dragons into the darkness, bleeding off belches of unwanted gases from the simmering oil well deep under the waters. On the opposite side, the living quarters rested under the helideck. At this time of night most of the workers would be off s.h.i.+ft, playing billiards, watching action movies, cheating each other at cards. Separate from the habitation modules, the shack of the radio room was lit; undoubtedly Hercules, the Trinidadian man on duty, was chatting with radio pen pals from across the world.

As his uneasiness built, he strode to one of the phones that allowed communication between the distant parts of the rig and punched in the code for the small coffee room where his security men often took a break. "Gonzales. Get everyone outside. No more breaks this s.h.i.+ft. Do your rounds every fifteen minutes tonight, not every half hour. I want all of you to keep an eye out."

"What's wrong, sir?" Gonzales said.

"Just do it. There's nothing wrong with being on your toes." McKendry made sure his men did their jobs, but never bothered to get cordial with any of them. He couldn't imagine why the guards would rather sit in a confined room on plastic chairs drinking sour coffee instead of walking around the rig decks in the warm night and stretching their legs. In the Tropics he had found that some men just plain took pride in their laziness.

On the other end of the line, Gonzales grumbled to the others in the coffee shop, "It's the dark of the moon. Makes him paranoid."

McKendry scowled and said in a gruff voice, "You can complain to Mr. Van Alman if you don't like my orders. I'm sure he'll be happy to let you find another job." Angrily, he hung up. Maybe he was being overcautious, but it only took one mistake, as the captain of the Yucatan had discovered.

He walked to the edge of the platform and again scanned the vast stretch of water between the rig and the invisible mainland of Venezuela.

Why did he really care what happened to the Valhalla? Because he'd promised Frikkie that he'd protect the rig? It wasn't as if Frik was much of a friend. After the a.s.sault on the Green Impact camp, the billionaire had been concerned only with the recovery of his mysterious artifact. The dead mercenaries on his side and the half dozen dead terrorists on the other didn't matter to the man. All he cared about was that somehow Selene Trujold had gotten away, even though she had been shot.

After what the terrorists did to Joshua, McKendry thought, it matters to me.

Drifting across the water like a black fly on a dark lily pad, Joshua Keene closed the distance to theValhalla platform. He moved without lights, circling his motorized inflatable raft to the Trinidad side of the rig so that he could come in opposite the additional glow of the exhaust flares at the ends of their extended booms.

As he turned the Zodiac toward the rig, he cut the motor. In the ensuing silence he could hear the industrial buzz, even from a distance of more than a mile.

Entering the rich, warm waters around the Valhalla, he trailed streamers of potent shark repellent. Though sharks rarely attacked inflatable rafts, he wanted to avoid any commotion at all.

It took a long time for him to paddle the raft up to the elephantine concrete legs that held the huge production rig high above the calm water, but he didn't dare use the puttering outboard. If all went well, he would be calling enough attention to himself in a little while. He tied up to the emergency ladder built onto the closest concrete strut, the same one he and Terris had used the night his friend died. Before climbing out of the Zodiac, he secured all of his weapons around his legs, chest, and back, fastening packages of compact explosives, his igniters, and grenades. He even had the knife that had killed Selene: the most appropriate weapon to use while destroying Oilstar, he thought.