Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

“I’m almost relieved to know the ship has been beached somewhere all this time,” he told her. “Makes not finding her on the bottom a little easier to take.”

Gamay smiled and told him about the incidents that had occurred since the discovery. Fredricks seemed surprised by what he heard but mentioned that odd theories and occurrences had always surrounded the ship.

“A psychic once held that they’d made land and started a new civilization,” he explained.

“Closer to the truth than we might have guessed,” Gamay said, though it was pretty clear that the passengers never made land.

“One of the strangest stories took place in 1987,” he said.

“When you thought you’d found the wreck?” she asked.

“No, that was years later,” he said. “Back in ’87 an old, double- end lifeboat was found adrift off the coast of Maputo Bay, Mozambique. By some fisherman, if I recall. There were three people in it. A woman and two boys. The woman had a slight bullet wound, but it was not fatal. Unfortunately, dehydration was . . . for all three of them. They were identified as part of a family that had been abducted years before. Authorities thought they’d escaped from somewhere up the coast. Somalia was the prime suspect. It was a pretty lawless place even back then.”

“Sounds terrible,” she said. “But what does that have to do with the Waratah?”

“The old lifeboat they were in was rotted half to the core. It had been hastily patched and sealed with household items and wouldn’t have lasted much longer, had it not been found. Several experts insisted it was a design used and built from 1904 to 1939. Years later, someone did a computer analysis of the photos taken then and claimed to discover the remnants of lettering still visible on the highest plank, basically because the layers of paint had limited the erosion. I truly can’t remember how they did it, but in the photo the writing could have been interpreted to spell Waratah.”

Gamay sat back, stunned. “You’re joking.”

He shook his head. “At the time, everyone assumed it was a hoax. Like that alien autopsy video. But now, after what you’ve found, there is a possibility it might be true.

“And then there was the Klaar River Gang,” he said, moving on to a new subject.

“I was just reading about them,” she said.

“Some think they bribed their way aboard the ship,” he told her.

“Really?”

“Yes. And then drowned when it went down.”

“Except that it didn’t go down,” Gamay noted. “Could this gang have hijacked the ship?”

“From what I’ve read, they were ruthless,” he told her. “If the ship was taken over, they would have been just the kind of people to do it.”

Gamay found her mind swirling. She wanted to investigate everything this man had told her. But before she could do anything, her phone buzzed. A text message requested that she return to the laboratory, where the samples were being analyzed.

“I have to go,” she said. “I would love to talk more when I have some time.”

“Anything for NUMA,” he said, handing her a business card and shaking her hand.

Gamay left the library and returned quickly to the lab. The biologist who’d led the team summarized the results.

“Have you been able to give us some idea of where the ship might have been?” she asked.

“You’re in luck, Ms. Trout,” the biologist told her. “You’ve found several species that exist in only one place on Earth.”

He showed her the skeleton of a small animal that one of Paul’s deckhands had dug up during the excavation. She thought it looked unique when she was putting the remains in the plastic case.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A fossa,” he said, showing her a picture of the animal.

“It looks like a cross between a cat and a kangaroo,” she said, looking at the picture.

“It’s actually a type of mongoose,” he replied. Next he showed her a large moth—it had been just emerging from a cocoon when Elena had spotted it. Neither of them could believe how large it was.

“This is a moon moth,” the biologist said, before moving over to the spiders they’d found on the first night. “Golden orb-weaver spider,” he explained. “While there are many species like this around the world, what we found in its web is unique.” He pointed to an insect, one that had been wrapped up in spider silk. “Giraffe weevil,” he explained, handing her a magnifying glass.