The Ghost of the Rock, page 8
“Josette...let me help you.”
“I've searched everywhere but can't find her. I think he threw her out there.”
She looks toward the rushing surf. Then she starts walking.
“Josette, no! Stop!” Gerard breaks into a run, but so does Josette, and before he reaches the water's edge, she has already plunged into the surf and started swimming out to sea.
Gerard follows her into the water, the coral cutting his feet, and suddenly he feels something bump into him. While he scours the black water around him for dorsal fins, he hears a single sharp cry, abruptly cut off and swallowed by the pounding surf. Behind him, Padrille begins to shout.
“Come back, Gerard! Do not go any farther! She is gone! The sharks have her!”
Gerard makes his way back to shore. A shaken Padrille joins him, along with two worried-looking crew members.
“We saw her run into the water. Why in God's name did she do it?
Gerard shakes his head and sits down hard. Sutton, Jesse and the others arrive. Sutton's mouth falls open at the number of crabs swarming the area.
“What happened?” Jesse asks. “What's going on?”
“Josette ran into the water,” Padrille answers. “To the sharks.”
With a sickened face, Padrille touches Gerard's shoulder. “You could not stop her, my friend. She was too fast and too far ahead of you.”
Sutton kneels beside Gerard. “Did she say anything?”
“She said someone had strangled her baby and thrown her out there.”
Sutton and Padrille look at each other.
“Her?” Padrille says. “But Josette's iguana was male, and it was shot, not strangled. She has it in a crate behind her tent.”
“I don't think Josette was herself,” Gerard says.
Padrille nods and speaks slowly. “I think you are right. I heard a child laughing again. I came out of my tent and saw you, Gerard, leaving camp with a lantern. I thought you must have heard it too. Then I saw the woman in the distance, and it was not until you called her by name that I realized it was Josette instead.”
“Instead? I don't understand. Who did you think you were looking at?” Jesse asks.
“A woman who was not Josette.”
Padrille watches as Sutton and Gerard move in and out of Josette’s tent the next morning, packing Josette's belongings in a crate while Paul sits outside in his camp chair, waiting to claim the tent as his own. Paul's hair looks even wilder, and a dusting of white powder decorates his nostrils.
“Make sure the dead iguana is removed,” he orders. “I have no wish to add that stench to the list of daily odors we must endure.”
“I'll have the men remove it,” Padrille tells him.
“The French authorities will conduct a formal inquest regarding Ms. Lavigne's death, of course,” Paul says.
The captain nods. “I will cooperate fully, as will Gerard.”
“Yes, well, I understand there was mention of a knife. Where did it come from? Did it belong to Josette?”
“I have no idea. Possibly it was a tool from her collection kit.”
“Keep Sutton away from Josette's clothes. No one should touch her things.”
Gerard hears and grows irritated. “No one is going to touch them. Wipe the cocaine off your nose and get the hell out of the way.”
Paul blinks in surprised alarm and rubs furiously at his nose as he gets up and moves his chair. Then he stiffens. “It was guano, of course, not cocaine. I was sprayed again this morning and just happened to inhale the dried matter. The birds seem to have targeted no one else on the island.”
Gerard ignores him and returns inside Josette’s tent.
Sutton stares at something in her hand and Gerard moves to see her holding a prescription bottle. “What is it?”
“Prolixin,” Sutton answers. “It's an anti-psychotic.” She sinks down on the cot. “This is a powerful, high-intensity drug. And it's a full bottle.”
“Interesting.”
“This is the reason she smiled so much. She must have stopped taking her medication at some point and lapsed into a psychotic episode. It explains a lot.”
“Maybe,” Gerard says. “But it doesn't explain why you heard The Moldau and Padrille heard Chopin, or why I heard crying and he heard laughing.”
Sutton stares at him. “You think we're seeing and hearing ghosts.”
“I didn't say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“This island breeds psychosis. The heat, the ammonia from the guano, the unstable surface, the constant noise of the birds and the surf…” He picks up Josette’s pillow. “I think all of these things, coupled with her grief and a day or two of missed meds, made Josette vulnerable to suggestion.”
Sutton's gaze becomes unfocused. “You told me what she was saying. She said she gave everything she had to get help and instead of helping, he strangled her daughter and threw her body—and maybe the diamonds given to him—into the ocean. Exactly what a seriously unhinged individual would do. That wasn't psychosis, that was history. That’s what happened here on the island.”
“So you think we're seeing and hearing ghosts.”
She turns and looks at him. “I'm only psychotic during storms.”
He takes her by the arm and pulls her up toward the tent opening. “I’m well enough. Let’s go diving.”
At base camp, Padrille loads a cooler while Jesse ties a bandanna around his head and indicates that the remaining crew should follow him. “Vamanos. We have a drill to move.”
The unhappy crew follows, several of them looking around themselves as if expecting to see, hear, or be set upon by the unnatural at any moment.
At the lagoon, Sutton and Gerard squeeze into their wet suits and check their tanks and equipment while a scratching, swatting Paul stands nearby and fidgets. Gerard hands him a miniature foghorn alarm. “If either of us have trouble, push this button twice and Padrille will know to come quickly and help. This button.”
Paul snatches it from Gerard. “Yes. I'm not a complete idiot, you know.”
“Sutton, tuck in your hair,” Gerard instructs. “I told you what's down there.”
“What?” Paul wants to know. “What's down there?”
“Enough hydrogen sulfide to split all our ends,” Gerard says. “Are you ready, Sutton?”
Sutton's ready. Gloves, head, face, everything covered with thick black rubber. Gerard looks at Paul one last time. “Fifteen minutes, then we're up. Look at your watch now.”
Paul looks, and Gerard and Sutton enter the murky water of the lagoon holding their lights and tools, collection bags strapped to their waists.
Underwater they swim into a black void, with the beams of their lights illuminating thousands of tiny moving life forms that thrive in the brackish water of the lagoon. Gerard and Sutton swiftly cover the same area the first divers scoured before moving apart and sifting methodically through the silt until they meet each other again.
Sutton points over her shoulder, deeper into the lagoon, and Gerard checks his watch before nodding his head okay. They scan the bottom, stopping occasionally to sift through the muck when something looks unusual or out of place. Suddenly there is a dip in the lagoon, a much deeper pocket, leading to what resembles an entrance to an underground formation of some sort. The area teems with thick, angled vines of dead vegetation and Sutton hacks at it with her knife for several minutes while Gerard concentrates on a formation above her.
She cuts layer after layer away and sees she will have to hack deeper still to create an opening. Sutton focuses intently on one tiny area and finally makes an entrance large enough for her head and arm. She feels a tap on her shoulder after she pokes her head through.
Gerard points at his wristwatch. Sutton holds up a finger. Just one minute. He grips her arm firmly. NO.
She points meaningfully inside the hole and pulls at him to look. He puts his head in, takes it out and brings the light in to look. His eyes widen inside his mask.
He brings the light out again, and keeping his hand on her arm, pulls her away from the opening and back toward shore.
Paul steps forward when he sees them rise out of the water. He moves to look at their collection bags as they sit down and take off their masks and gear. He holds his nose at the stink.
“What did you find? Anything?”
“More than we wanted to,” Gerard says.
Sutton glances at Gerard and Paul looks suspiciously at them. “What was it? What has happened? Was there a problem?”
Gerard looks at Sutton. “The water was ten to fifteen degrees hotter inside that hole. That's where one of Cousteau's men was supposedly blinded by the hydrogen sulfide.”
“But you did see what I was trying to show you?” Sutton wants to make sure Gerard saw.
“I saw,” he confirms. “Dubois, tell me again why the French were so eager to lay claim to this island thousands of miles from anywhere.”
Paul stares at them. “What are you talking about?”
“Inside that hole, about thirty feet down and hidden under a wall of vegetation are dozens of barrels. Scary ones.”
“Barrels?” Paul says.
“I think Cousteau found them years ago and was told to keep his mouth shut.”
Paul is irritable. “What are you talking about?”
“I'm heading for the shower,” Sutton says. “I don’t want radiation poisoning.”
“That's ridiculous!” Paul spits. “You're making it up. You've found something else down there and you're trying to fool me with this story of scary barrels.”
They move by him and finish stripping out of their wet suits while he looks suspiciously at the lagoon.
At the new site, with the drill finally anchored in place, Jesse successfully produces his first chips. He shows the results to the captain and Padrille claps him on the shoulder. “Well done, Jesse.”
Jesse smiles. “Thank God. After the first one fried I thought we were finished.”
They watch the drill in action and then Padrille points toward the men. “I must get back to camp. They are hot, thirsty, and tired. Are you staying?”
“Yeah. Send Brach to me, would you? I want to make sure I have the settings right.”
“Yes, of course.”
At the portable shower, Sutton carries a towel, bath gel, and a loofah inside the four-walled tarpaulin set up and then opens her mouth to complain when Gerard follows her inside.
“There's plenty of water,” she tells him. “You can wait.”
He ignores her. “Turn it on.”
Sutton turns on the water, keeping her back to him. Gerard drops his trunks and steps under the spray.
“Are you worried about contamination?”
“I don’t want to, that’s why we’re doing this.”
“You said Cousteau's man went blind because of hydrogen sulfide.”
“He had to say something to keep other divers out.”
Sutton looks over her shoulder. “Then why would anyone allow us to dive there?”
“I don't know. Hand me some soap.”
“All I have is shower gel. Vanilla.”
“Wonderful. I’ll smell like cake. Give me that loofah.”
He puts shower gel on her loofah and scrubs at his front, chest, groin, legs, arms and feet, going easy around his wound. Then he hands it to her as she finishes shampooing her hair.
“Get my back?”
She takes the loofah and her mouth twists as she scrubs his broad back. “What if even the French don't know those barrels exist? What if it wasn't them that talked Cousteau into keeping quiet?”
“You mean the U.S. government.”
“Yes. Maybe they promised him they would clean it up. They could've told him anything.”
“Well the cat's out of the bag now.” Gerard shakes his head. “One more international incident for my resume. Give me that thing.”
He takes the loofah from her and moves to scrub her back. She winces at the force of his scrubbing. “You're hurting.”
Gerard leans in to kiss the flesh between her shoulder blades and Sutton shudders at the warmth of his mouth.
“You know that's probably where the Clipperton UFO stories come from,” Gerard says.
“I didn't know there were any Clipperton UFO stories.”
“An underwater UFO base, shining lights in the sky while sailing by, that sort of thing. Shit, it's probably U.S. submarines cruising by to check a nuclear dump site.”
She turns around to look at him, covering herself with her hands. Her expression is frightened and serious. “Then we should leave here now. We need to get off this island.”
His gaze drops to the parts she can’t cover. “Without any more diamonds?”
“Let's give them to Paul. I don't care anymore. Not after what happened to Josette, and not after what we found today.”
Gerard lathers up his hair. Sutton presses on. “This isn't me running away. I'm being safe.”
He nods and continues to scrub. “I agree. When Padrille comes back I’ll ask him to take you to the ship.”
“Me?” she says. “Aren’t you coming?”
He moves under the spray to rinse. “Not until I get core samples from The Rock. It's why we came here.”
“You know there are no diamonds,” Sutton says. “I don’t want anything else to happen. Not to anyone.”
Gerard finishes rinsing and reaches past her for the towel he hung on the side of the tarp. “Me either. See you at dinner.” He kisses her forehead, picks up his trunks and leaves the shower.
Sutton watches him go, feeling both vulnerable and disappointed.
Padrille and the men trudge back toward camp when one of the men gives a hoarse shout. Padrille's head comes up and he looks where the man points. The other men back away. One man begins vomiting on the beach.
Josette's naked torso, arms and legs ripped away, abdomen riddled and shredded, has washed up on the shore, providing a feast for the crabs. A booby bird lights nearby to examine the meal, but hops away from waving pincers.
Padrille's eyes close in horrified dismay and he quickly crosses himself.
Gerard enters his tent and finds Paul rifling through his collection case. Paul turns with a guilty start. Then he holds up the two cut diamonds he found inside and sneers. “Starting your own private collection?”
Gerard drops his towel and pulls on some trousers. “Those came from the lagoon. I can beat the shit out of you now or you can put them back and get the hell out.”
“Did you think I wouldn't know?”
“I'm thinking Ed De Berg's the one who doesn't know, and probably won't be happy about the fact that what he's financing is a French treasure-hunting expedition.”
“What are you talking about? That's insane!”
Gerard pulls a freshly laundered t-shirt over his head. “Ed probably jumped when he heard ‘fourteen-carats’, and when you saw just how high he jumped you decided to omit certain details about the find. What are you getting out of this?”
Paul smooths back his flyaway, guano-dried hair and smiles crookedly as he attempts to regain composure. “Nothing but the gratitude of my countrymen. Where are the other diamonds? There must be more than these.”
“I'm sure there are. You're welcome to pick through the silt and muck for yourself.”
“I'll do that. And I’m taking these. These diamonds are the property of the French government.”
Gerard nods in acknowledgment and walks over to snap shut his case. “Sutton had every intention of giving them to you. She's ready to go back to the ship.”
Paul stares. “But there hasn't been any drilling. What will she say to her father? He'll want to know why there's been no drilling.”
“Don't panic, Dubois. We'll drill.”
“I'm not panicking! I'm only trying to protect Sutton. I am still married to her, even if I'm not the one showering with her.”
“You won't be married for long.”
“Don't believe it. Signed papers mean nothing to Edward De Berg. He'll snap his fingers and make them go away.”
“Signed papers maybe. But not filed papers.”
“She didn't file, she has them with her. She told her father so.”
“She lied. She filed.”
Paul's look becomes speculative. “Thank you for the information. I'm sure De Berg will be glad to receive it when I radio him later.”
Gerard's nostrils flare and he steps forward, but Padrille enters the tent. His weathered face is pale with shock and sorrow. “Josette's remains washed up on shore. The men have removed them and they wish very badly to return to the ship before nightfall. At this point, I am in complete agreement, Gerard. I am sorry.”
“Don't be,” Gerard says. “Take Sutton with you.”
“And me,” Paul says. “I want to go back to the ship. I'll take the lagoon samples with me.”
Padrille frowns, knowing he has missed something. He turns to Gerard. “Jesse has asked for you, Gerard. He made the drill work at last and requires your assistance on the settings.”
Paul looks relieved. He pushes past them and leaves the tent. Gerard nods to the captain. “I'll go now. Call for an early supper then load everyone on the launches.”
“You may want to check on Sutton first,” Padrille suggests. “She met us as we brought Josette back. I tried to stop her seeing, but…” He lifts his hands in helplessness.
Paul places the two diamonds under the magnifying lamp on the sample table. His eyes light up with amazement as he examines the blue diamond. “My God, that's got to be a twenty-carat!”
He holds it under the light and the room brightens as someone behind him enters, opening the tent flap and letting bright sunlight into the tent. Paul doesn't look up, but continues murmuring as he concentrates on his find. “If we can prove any of these came from—”
A hammer descends on the back of Paul's head and interrupts his sentence. His eyes roll back as he crumples to the floor. The diamonds fall out of his fingers and an anonymous hand picks them up.
