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Moseby’s eyes adjusted even further to the dim light. A
A
The marble bust of the woman…that was a different story. A
A grove of trees had been flattened by the flood, thrown together in a tangle. Beyond the fallen trees, a huge banyan squatted in place, leaves long gone, its branches still sharp. A crumbling stone wall…Moseby angled lower, straining to see.
The wall was made from smooth river rock. Spiky, brightly colored sea anemones festooned the stones, completely covering the south wall where the offshore flow brought the densest stream of nutrients. He jerked back as a sea snake poked out from a hole in the crumbling wall, the creature tracking him with its tiny eyes, working its fangs as it undulated toward him. Yellow with red stripes, four feet long…five feet, six feet at least as it wiggled out of the wall. Moseby drew his knife as he watched the snake, playing with it now, the flat of the blade making lazy rotations around his index finger. The spi
Moseby waited another minute, then slipped his knife back into its sheath, moved on to the house. He slipped gently through a picture window that had been blown out, scattering fish with his presence. The fish returned just as quickly. He switched his face mask lights to the lowest setting, bounced the beam off the ceiling. He saw well enough to navigate.
Tables and chairs were jumbled below, the carpet thick with mud, tiny crabs scuttling through the saw grass. Paintings on the wall hung askew, their surfaces occluded by a dull blue-gray fungus, gilt frames eaten by woodworms. Fish nosed around him, but Moseby ignored them. He lightly wiped a gloved hand across the surface of the largest painting…the paint rolled off in tiny droplets, spun lazily around him as the fish gobbled them down. He kicked on through the house, limpets dotting the walls and ceiling. Stingrays burrowed into the debris, hiding themselves.
He hovered in the doorway of the master bedroom. A huge bookcase had fallen, scattered volumes. Pages swollen, the books gaped on the carpet. The Greek bust lay among the books, toppled off its display stand. He moved inside, eager now; his movements stirred the top layer of mud, but he didn’t care. He wrenched the bust from the pile of books, sent the sodden pages fluttering around him, free of their rotten bindings. He cleared away the fine moss that covered the statue’s features, taking off his glove to feel the smooth marble, not satisfied until she was clean. Moseby looked into her face. She was everything that A
His wrist tracker guided him back to where his boat was anchored 1.3 miles away. He could have tagged the bust and returned for it when he got to the boat. Would have been easier, but the idea of putting aside the sculpture even for a few minutes, after all this time searching for it…Moseby couldn’t do it.
He swam on, shifting the sculpture from arm to arm, more excited than fatigued. By the time the bottom of the boat came into view, he just wanted to load up and be gone. He carefully placed the bust on the hydraulic shelf at the stern, the stone queen’s face gleaming in the sunlight after all those years underwater. Moseby tore himself away from her gaze, grabbed a handhold, and pulled himself quickly onto the boat. Pushed back his face mask. Trouble. He turned.
“Nice morning. A little hot maybe…”
Moseby stared at the man in shorts and a bright Hawaiian shirt leaning against the command console, cleaning his fingernails with Moseby’s boning knife. A muscular bruiser, sweating in the heat. Tufts of short red hair blossomed across his skull. Small, cruel eyes, made worse by the intelligence within, and large, flat, uneven teeth. An albino ape raped by a wild boar would birth something like this man…and then abandon it in disgust. Moseby stood on the deck, dripping water. “What are you doing on my boat?”
The man wandered over to check out the statue. Whistled. “You carried that thing by yourself? You’re a lot stronger than you look.” He gri
“I asked you a question.”
“You know who I am?” the man said softly, working the curved tip of the boning knife deep under his thumbnail. Coarse red hairs on his knuckles waved in the breeze.
“Yeah.”
The man flicked something from under his nail with the knife, looked up at Moseby. “Then you know I don’t need to give you any explanations.”
Moseby had seen the man on video more than once, Gravenholtz…Lester Gravenholtz. He was usually standing behind the Colonel at news conferences, rarely acknowledged, but always there. The Colonel was a bona fide war hero, known as the savior of Knoxville for his tenacious defense of the city. “No retreat, no surrender, no prisoners” was his motto. At the height of the battle he had personally executed nineteen deserters, live-broadcasting the slayings to his troops. A local warlord now-plenty of those in the Bible Belt, where any central authority was always suspect-but the Colonel was the most powerful, a law unto himself. Lester Gravenholtz had been a late edition to the Colonel’s forces, showed up about ten years ago and made himself at home. The Colonel’s imp, hostile preachers had called him…until they disappeared. Two years ago, the president himself had signed a federal arrest warrant for Gravenholtz, citing multiple examples of rape, murder, and the sacking of the government armory in Vicksburg. The Colonel had sent home the federal prosecutor who attempted to arrest Gravenholtz, said he’d rein in Gravenholtz himself. The thirty members of the prosecutor’s armed detail had defected and become part of the Colonel’s private army.