Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

Max rolled his eyes. “Well, that part’s obvious.”

“Which means he is able to hear what we’re saying.”

“You mean when we’re on the phone?”

“Possibly. But that doesn’t explain how he knew where we’d be in Jamaica. The only time we discussed that was on board the Oregon.”

“Oh, come on! You mean Kensit has the Oregon bugged?”

“

When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

“We’ve swept the ship three times. No listening devices.”

“Talk to Arthur Conan Doyle, not me,” Murph said.

“In any case, I’m glad Juan didn’t tell us where he’s going. It’s time for us to get a leg up on Lawrence Kensit.”

“We’re still not done searching here.”

“Have you seen anything?”

Murph rubbed his eyes. He’d been going for three hours straight without a break. “Except for a few broken teacups and a pair of eyeglasses, nothing.”

He was piloting the smallest remotely operated vehicle they had on the Oregon, the ROV called Little Geek. Murph was using it to explore the parts of the ship that were too dangerous for the divers to search.

An umbilical fed the video signal back to the Oregon. Even at a depth of one hundred and fifty feet, the vibrant colors illuminated by the ROV’s lights were astonishing. Sea whips, urchins, sponges, butterfly fish, triggerfish, and a host of other sea creatures had taken up residence on the artificial reef. More than a hundred years of exposure to the warm seawater had rusted holes in the steel where it hadn’t been covered by coral. The only traces of humanity that remained untarnished were the occasional ceramic or glass object, both materials that were impervious to the corrosive effects of saline.

Max thought Perlmutter’s assertion that a photo container could still be intact was dubious at best. Their only hope was that the glass photo plates had been stored in tins with a zinc layer sufficiently oxidized to prevent the underlying metal from disintegrating.

Max watched as Murph steered the ROV through a tight cavity with little expectation of finding anything useful. He hoped Juan’s end of the search would yield actionable data. He just wished he had a clue what Juan was looking for.

“Huh,” Murph said, which got Max’s attention.

“Did you see something?”

“A dull reflection. Let me back up.”

He edged the ROV backward and turned it to the left. The camera panned across a zigzag crisscross of thin metal that was covered with green algae. Below it was the glint of glass in the shine of the LEDs.

“Something about that looks familiar,” Murph said.

“I know what you mean. See if you can clear away some of the debris.”

Murph used the ROV’s small manipulator arm to pull away an encrusted piece of steel.

The needle on the Geiger counter jumped.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Max said, and laughed. “Perlmutter came through for us.”

They waited for the swirling debris to settle and saw that more of the glass had been uncovered, enough to identify it.

“That’s a lens,” Murph said.

“Perfectly circular and convex. Like one you might find in, say, a turn-of-the-century camera?”

Murph traced the zigzag outline of the metal next to it with his finger on the screen. “That’s the collapsible articulation frame for a high-end camera of the time. You know, the thing they would use to move the lens in and out of the box? The canvas accordion material must have rotted away decades ago.”