Medusa

“Was spontaneous remission a possibility?” Gamay asked.

“Dr. Lee presented reports of a flulike plague that rampaged through the fleet then. Judging by its speed and ferocity, as well as influenza’s high mortality rate, I’d say spontaneous remission was not likely.”

“You said the crewmen all told the same story,” Gamay said. “Wouldn’t that strengthen the account of what happened?”

“A whaling vessel was a small community unto itself. I think they developed a shared story line.” He paused. “Only the first mate had a different version.”

“Did he contradict the crew’s version?” Gamay asked.

“No. In fact, the first mate supplemented it. He recalled the ship dropping anchor at an island, even going ashore with the captain. He also remembered seeing glowing blue lights and feeling a stinging sensation in his chest. He woke up feeling as if he had never been sick.”

“That’s interesting about the sting,” Gamay said. “Do you think he was talking about a primitive version of inoculation?”

“He seemed to have been going in that direction. He said all the surviving crew and officers had a reddish mark on their chests. The lights could have been hallucinations or the electrical phenomenon known as Saint Elmo’s fire and the marks insect bites. In any case, inoculation can prevent disease but isn’t known to cure it.”

“Did the Harvard team take blood samples from the men?” Gamay asked.

“Yes. The samples were subjected to microscopic analysis. There was apparently some unusual antigen activity, but you have to understand that the optical instrumentation then was primitive by today’s standards. The science of immunology is comparatively young. Je

“Could the blood samples be analyzed today?” Gamay asked

“Sure, if we had them. Apparently, the samples were thrown out or just plain lost.” He handed the report to Gamay. “In any event, I’m sure you will find it fascinating reading.”

The Trouts were walking back to their car when Paul’s cell phone trilled.

He listened for a moment, then said, “Okay.” He clicked the phone shut, and said, “Guess we owe our friend Brimmer an apology.”

“He’s found some papers from Caleb Nye’s traveling show?” Gamay asked.

“Better,” Paul said. “Brimmer’s got the 1848 logbook from the Princess. He’ll meet us at his workshop to turn it over.”

HARVEY BRIMMER PUT THE phone down and eyed the four Asian men in his office. They were in their twenties, dressed identically in black leather jackets and jeans, and all wore black headbands with Chinese characters in red on them. They had arrived in New Bedford not long after Brimmer had made the call about the logbook. Their leader, a thin-faced youth with a scar ru

“They’re on their way,” Brimmer said. “Why do you want to see them?”

The leader pulled a gun out of his shirt. He smiled, revealing a tooth inlaid with a gold pyramid.

“We don’t want to see them, old man,” he said. “We want to kill them.”

He ripped the phone line from the wall, then ordered Brimmer to hand over his cell phone, which he pocketed.

Brimmer’s blood ran cold. He was smart enough to figure out that, as witness to a double murder, he would not be allowed to live. As he sat behind his desk, he thought about the spare cell he kept locked in one of its drawers. When he saw his chance, he would make his move.

CHAPTER 36

LIKE MANY OLDER BOATS CONSTRUCTED BEFORE BUILDERS were sure how thick to make a hull with the then-new fiberglass, the battered twelve-foot-long skiff Austin had rented on the Kolonia waterfront was built like a battleship. The wide-beamed craft was powered by a pitted fifteen-horsepower Evinrude outboard that belonged in a museum of nautical artifacts.

Austin was glad to see that the scuba gear he’d rented was in far better shape than the boat or the motor. He inspected the regulator, hoses, and tank and found all the equipment had been well maintained. As an afterthought, he purchased a throwaway underwater camera encased in plastic. Then, after stowing the dive-gear bag, he helped Song Lee into the boat. After a couple of pulls on the starter cord, the Evinrude hiccupped and caught. Once it got going, it proved to have a stout mechanical heart as it powered the heavy boat through the water at a slow but steady pace along the coast.

Nan Madol was about forty-five minutes by boat from Kolonia. As they came up on the city on the southeast shore of Tenwen Island and caught their first glimpse of the enigmatic islets, Austin reached back into his memory trying to recall what Whittles had told him about the ruins years before. The place had been a ceremonial center going back to the second century A.D., but the megalithic architecture did not start to take shape until the twelfth century.

The city served as a residence for nobility and mortuary priests, and its population never went beyond a thousand. The mortuary spread over fifty-eight islands in the northeast part of the city, a sector called Madol Powe. Whittles had taken Austin there and shown him the islets where the priests lived and worked. Madol Pah was the administrative sector on the south-western part of Nan Madol. That was where the nobles lived and the warriors were quartered.

Nan Madol’s builders had put up seawalls to protect the city from the Pacific’s whims. The rectangular islets were all basically the same. Retaining walls, built by stacking heavy, prismatic basalt columns log-cabin style, surrounded cores of coral rubble. Once the walls reached several feet above sea level, platforms were built on top as foundations for living areas, or temples, or even crypts. The more elaborate of these islets, like the spectacular mortuary at Nandauwas, had two twenty-five-foot walls enclosing the royal compound.

In the drawing Whittles had sketched out for Austin, the temple of the Cult of the Healing Priests was in the mortuary sector of Nan Madol. It was a smaller version of Nandauwas, which suggested that the islet had some importance among the inhabitants. The temple was entered through a portal in the outer wall, which enclosed a courtyard, then through another portal in a second wall.

Following Whit’s map, Austin steered the boat into the city, cruising past crumbling walls that seemed out of place in the remote location. They waved at the passengers in a couple of open tour boats carrying camera-toting tourists protected from the tropical sun by colorful canopies. Nan Madol had become a popular destination for day trips, and the boat went past a guide leading several kayaks like a row of ducklings.

Consulting the map, Austin left the main area of tourist activity and turned onto a quiet, dead-end canal lined on both sides by basalt walls and palm trees. In bygone days, the temple of the Healing Priests would have presided over the terminus of the canal, but the only sign it had ever existed was a jumbled pile of columns that stuck a foot or so above the surface. Austin killed the engine, let the boat drift to within yards of the debris, and dropped anchor.

Austin had purchased a Hawaiian surf-print bathing suit at the dive shop, flaming orange-red with hula dancers, the only thing that the shop had in his size. He tucked his wallet and phone in the waterproof dive-gear bag and slipped into the buoyancy compensator, weight belt, tank, and fins. He rolled over the gunwale into the tepid water, came up and gave Song Lee a quick wave, then bit down on the regulator mouthpiece and did a surface dive that took him down several feet into the slow-moving brownish green water.