Austin realized that he was soaked with sweat. Even separated at a distance of thousands of miles, he had never been so close to pure evil.
“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” he murmured.
Zavala overheard him.
“What was that, Kurt?”
As if awakening from a dream, Austin said, “It’s a quote from the Bhagavad Gita. It popped into my mind just now. Did you jot down the address that thing gave me?”
Zavala held up a sheet of paper.
“What do you want to do with it?” he asked.
“When we get back to the Concord, call Colonel Ming and give him the information. It’s his party from now on. Then fill in Paul and Gamay on what’s happened. Then go pour yourself a stiff shot of tequila, followed by another one, saving some cactus juice for me.”
“Aye, aye, sir. What are you going to do in the meantime?”
Austin rose from his chair and headed for the door.
“Take that long, hot shower I talked about.”
CHAPTER 49
BONEFISH KEY, FIVE WEEKS LATER
SONG LEE WAS SITTING ON THE SUNLIT PATIO IN FRONT OF the lodge going over some notes when she heard the drone of an outboard motor echoing through the mangroves. Recognizing the sound of Dooley’s boat, she looked up and smiled at his impending arrival.
Dooley had been her main contact with the outside world since she had returned to the island to work on her medical text on ocean biomedicine. Returning to Bonefish Key had required determination. But the lab had been at the forefront of a science whose roots went back to the ancient culture of Nan Madol and the Micronesian islands, and it was the most compelling place for her to write.
Lee could not yet muster the courage to visit the barrier beach. She had no desire to see the cove where she had killed a man or to revisit the burned-out hulk of the cabin cruiser that had nearly been her funeral pyre. She still kayaked but stayed closer to the island. She went to bed early and was up with the sun, tapping at her laptop computer in the lab’s research library for hours on end.
The island was practically deserted. With the project at an end, Dr. Mayhew had returned to academia, and his team had scattered to the four winds. A small cadre stayed behind to tend to the specimen tanks, but the guards who had put in double duty as support staff had left. Dr. Lee enjoyed the camaraderie of a handful of technicians as they prepared their own meals.
Dr. Kane had visited the lab once. He had breezed in with a camera crew to film the lodge and lab buildings before he swept out again as if carried on the wind.
Although the governments of China and the United States were still nervous about telling the whole story of their secretive collaboration in stopping the near pandemic, the Herculean effort to stop the virus was big news around the world. Kane basked in his celebrity, flying from interview to interview, consulting with health experts and politicians around the globe. He was using his status as pandemic guru to pry money from Congress to support the type of ocean biomedicine research that had saved the world.
Song Lee had been content to labor in anonymity, but the remoteness of the island had started to get to her and she had been thinking of finishing her book back in China. She often thought of the NUMA people who had swooped in to save her and the world. She missed the Trouts and Joe Zavala, but most of all she missed Kurt Austin. A few weeks after she had arrived on the island, he had called her on one of the lab’s radiophones. He was on Pohnpei, still helping with the recovery of Davy Jones’s Locker, and would be in Micronesia longer than anticipated.
The drone of the marine motor grew louder, and seconds later Dooley’s double-hulled boat rounded the corner of a mangrove island and coasted up to the dock. There were two people in the boat: Dooley, who was at the wheel, and, beside him, a broad-shouldered man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. As they approached the dock, the broad-shouldered man removed the baseball hat from his head, revealing a thick mane of steel-gray hair. Song was already up and running down to the dock by the time Kurt Austin had started to wave his cap in the air. She and the boat got to the end of the dock at the same time.
Dooley tossed her the bow line as the boat bumped up against a piling.
“Brought you some company, Dr. Lee,” he said.
Song barely heard him. Her eyes were fixed on Kurt, who had a wide grin on his bronzed face. The grin grew even wider when he climbed out of the boat and Song threw her arms around him. He returned her embrace with enthusiasm. She planted a kiss on his lips that was warm and long, and might have gone on forever if Dooley hadn’t cleared his throat.
“Pardon me, folks, but I’ve got to get back to the mainland.” He extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Kurt. Call when you want to go back to Pine Island.”
“Thanks for the ride, Dooley,” Austin said. He asked Dooley to toss him his small rucksack.
As the boat disappeared into mangroves, Austin said, “I got back to Washington a few days ago and thought I would hop down here to say hello.”
Lee hooked her arm in Austin’s and led the way toward the lodge.
“I’m glad you did,” she said. “How are Joe and the Trouts?”
“They’re fine. Zavala has found true love with a NUMA cartographer, and the Trouts just got back from New Bedford. The city’s whaling museum was dedicating a room for Caleb Nye’s diorama. It’s part of a special exhibition on the strange voyage of the Princess.”