"Riptide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Douglas)

Hatch parked in the dirt lot above the pier and stepped slowly from the rented car. He closed the door, then paused to look over the harbor, hand still grasping the handle. His eyes took in the long, narrow cove, bound by a granite shore, dotted with lobster boats and draggers, bathed in a cold silver light. Even twenty-five years later, Hatch recognized many of the names: the Lola B, the Maybelle W.
The little town of Stormhaven struggled up the hill, narrow clapboard houses following a zigzag of cobblestone lanes. Toward the top the houses thinned out, replaced by stands of black spruce and small meadows enclosed by stone walls. At the very top of the hill stood the Congregational church, its severe white steeple rising into the gray sky. On the far side of the cove he glimpsed his own boyhood home, its four gables and widow's walk poking above the treeline, the long meadow sloping to the shore and a small dock. He quickly turned away, feeling almost as if some stranger was standing in his shoes, and that he was seeing everything through that stranger's eyes.
He headed for the pier, slipping on a pair of sunglasses as he did so. The sunglasses, and his own inner turmoil, made him feel a little foolish. Yet he felt more apprehension now than he'd felt even in a Raruana village, piled with corpses infected with dengue fever, or during the outbreak of bubonic plague in the Sierra Madre Occidental.
The pier was one of two commercial wharfs that projected into the harbor. One side of the wharf was lined with small wooden shacks: the Lobsterman's Co-op, a snack bar called Red Ned's Eats, a bait shack, and an equipment shed. At the end of the pier stood a rusting gas pump, loading winches, and stacks of drying lobster pots. Beyond the harbor mouth there was a low fog bank, where the sea merged imperceptibly with sky. It was almost as if the world ended a hundred yards offshore.
The shingle-sided Co-op was the first building on the pier. A merry plume of steam, issuing from a tin pipe, hinted at the lobsters that were boiling within. Hatch stopped at the chalkboard, scanning the prices for the various grades of lobster: shedders, hard-shelled, chickens, selects, and culls. He peered through the rippled glass of the window at the row of tanks, teeming with indignant lobsters only hours removed from the deep. In a separate tank was a single blue lobster, very rare, put up for show.
Malin stepped away from the window as a lobsterman in high boots and a slicker rumbled a barrel of rotten bait down the pier. He brought it to rest under a quayside winch, strapped it on, and swung it out to a boat waiting below, in an action that Malin had watched countless times in his childhood. There were shouts and the sudden throb of a diesel, and the boat pulled away, heading out to sea, followed by a raucous crowd of seagulls. He watched the boat dissolve, spectrally, into the lifting fog. Soon, the inner islands would be visible. Already, Burnt Head was emerging from the mists, a great brow of granite rock that leaned into the sea south of town. Surf snarled and worried about its base, carrying to Hatch the faint whisper of waves. On the crown of the bluff, a lighthouse of dressed stone stood among the gorse and low bush blueberries, its red and white stripes and copper cupola adding a cheerful note of color to the monochromatic fog.
As Malin stood at the end of the pier, smelling the mixture of redfish bait, salt air, and diesel fumes, his defensesЧcarefully shored up for a quarter of a centuryЧbegan to crumble. The years dropped away and a powerful bittersweet feeling constricted his chest. Here he was, back in a place he had never expected to see again. So much had changed in him, and so little had changed here. It was all he could do to hold back tears.
A car door slammed behind him, and he glanced back to see Gerard Neidelman emerge from an International Scout and stride down the pier, erect, brimming with high spirits, a spring of steel in his step. Smoke wafted from a briar pipe clamped between his teeth, and his eyes glimmered with a carefully guarded but unmistakable excitement.
"Good of you to meet me here," he said, removing the pipe and grasping Hatch's hand. "I hope this hasn't been too much trouble."
He hesitated slightly before saying the last word, and Hatch wondered if the Captain had guessed his own private reasons for wanting to see the townЧand the islandЧbefore making any commitment. "No trouble," Hatch replied coolly, accepting the brisk handshake.
"And where is our good boat?" Neidelman said, squinting out at the harbor, sweeping it appraisingly with his eyes.
"It's the Plain Jane, over there."
Neidelman looked. "Ah. A stout lobster boat." Then he frowned. "I don't see a dinghy in tow. How will we land on Ragged Island?"
"The dinghy's at the dock," Hatch said. "But we're not going to land. There's no natural harbor. Most of the island is ringed with high bluffs, so we wouldn't be able to see much from the rocks anyway. And the bulk of the island is too dangerous to walk on. You'll get a better sense of the place from the water." Besides, he thought, I for one am not ready to set foot on that island.
"Understood," said Neidelman, placing the pipe back in his mouth. He gazed up at the sky. "The fog will lift shortly. Wind quartering to the southwest, a light sea. The worst we can expect is some rain. Excellent. I'm looking forward to this first look, Dr. Hatch."
Hatch glanced at him sharply. "You mean you've never seen it before?"
"I've restricted myself to maps and surveys."
"I'd have thought a man like you would make the pilgrimage long ago. In days past, we used to get crackpots sightseeing around the island, even some attempts to land. I'm sure that hasn't changed."
Neidelman turned his cool gaze back to Hatch. "I didn't want to see it unless we'd have the chance to dig it." A quiet force lay beneath his words.
At the end of the pier, a wobbly gangplank led down to a floating dock. Hatch untied the Plain Jane's dinghy and grabbed the starter.
"Staying in town?" Neidelman asked as he stepped nimbly into the dinghy, taking a seat in the bow.
Hatch shook his head as he started the engine. "I've booked a room in a motel in Southport, a few miles down the coast." Even the boat rental had been done by an intermediary. He wasn't ready yet to be recognized by anyone.
Neidelman nodded, staring over Hatch's shoulders toward land as they motored out to the boat. "Beautiful place," he said, smoothly changing the subject.
"Yes," Hatch replied. "I suppose it is. There may be a few more summer homes, and there's a bed-and-breakfast now, but otherwise the world has passed Stormhaven by."
"No doubt it's too far north, off the beaten track."
''That's part of it," Hatch said. "But all the things that look so quaint and charmingЧthe old wooden boats, the weather-beaten shacks, the crooked piersЧare actually the result of poverty. I don't think Stormhaven ever really recovered from the depression."
They came alongside the Plain Jane. Neidelman boarded the boat while Hatch tied the dinghy to the stern. He clambered aboard and was relieved to hear the diesel start up on the first crank with a nice, smooth rumble. Might be old, he thought as he eased out into the harbor, but it's well kept up. As they cleared the no-wake zone, Hatch throttled up and the Plain Jane surged forward, slicing through the gentle swell. Overhead, the sun was struggling through the cloud cover, glowing in the remaining mist like a cold lamp. Hatch gazed southeastward, beyond Old Hump Channel, but could see nothing.
"It's going to be chilly out there," he said, glancing at Neidelman's short-sleeved shirt.
Neidelman turned and smiled. "I'm used to it."
"You call yourself Captain," Hatch said. "Were you in the navy?"
"Yes," came the measured response. "Captain of a minesweeper cruising off the Mekong Delta. After the war I bought a wooden dragger out of Nantucket and worked Georges Bank for scallops and flounder." He squinted out to sea. "It was working that dragger that got me interested in treasure hunting."
"Really?" Hatch checked the compass and corrected course. He glanced at the engine hour meter. Ragged Island was six miles offshore; they'd be there in twenty minutes.
Neidelman nodded. "One day the net brought up a huge bolus of encrusted coral. My mate struck it with a marlin spike, and the thing fell apart like an oyster. There, nestled inside, was a small, seventeenth-century Dutch silver casket. That started my first treasure hunt. I did a little digging through records and figured we must have dragged over the wreck site of the Cinq Ports, a barque commanded by the French privateer Charles Dampier. So I sold the boat, started a company, raised a million in capital, and went from there."
"How much did you recover?"
Neidelman smiled slightly. "Just over ninety thousand in coins, china, and antiquities. It was a lesson I never forgot. If I'd bothered to do my research, I'd have looked up the manifests of the Dutch ships that Dampier attacked. They were mostly carrying lumber, coal, and rum." He puffed his pipe meditatively. "Not all pirates were as skillful as Red Ned Ockham."
"You must have been as disappointed as the surgeon who hopes for a tumor and finds gallstones."
Neidelman glanced at him. "I guess you could say that."
Silence fell as they headed seaward. The last wisps of fog disappeared and Hatch could clearly make out the inner islands, Hermit and Wreck, green humps thickly covered with spruce trees. Soon, Ragged Island would become visible. He glanced at Neidelman, looking intently in the direction of the hidden island. It was time.
"We've been chitchatting long enough," he said quietly. "I want to hear about the man who designed the Water Pit."
Neidelman remained silent for a moment, and Hatch waited.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Hatch," Neidelman said. "I should have made myself clear on that point in your office. You haven't yet signed the agreement. Our entire twenty-two-million venture stands on the information we've obtained."
Hatch felt a sudden surge of anger. "I'm glad you have so much faith in me."
"You can understand our positionЧ" Neidelman began.
"Sure I can. You're afraid I might take what you've discovered, dig up the treasure myself, and cut you out."
"Not to put too fine a point on it," Neidelman said. "Yes."
There was a brief silence. "I appreciate your directness," said Hatch. "So how's this for a reply?" He swung the wheel, heeling the boat sharply to starboard.
Neidelman looked at him inquiringly as he gripped the gunwale for support.
Coming about 180 degrees, Hatch pointed the Plain Jane back toward port and throttled up.
"Dr. Hatch?" Neidelman said.