Sacred Stone (Oregon Files 2)

Reaching for the phone again, he dialed his hangar.

“Get my plane ready for a trip to London.”

“AHOY,” MEADOWS SAID to the man on the deck of the catamaran.

“Ahoy,” the man answered.

The man was tall, a shade over six foot four inches in height, and slim. His face was framed by a trimmed goatee and a tangled mess of graying eyebrows, and his eyes were clear and twinkled as if possessing a secret no one else knew. The man, who appeared the wrong side of sixty years of age, still had his hands inside the torpedo-shaped object.

“Permission to come aboard?”

“Are you the sonar guy?” the man said, grinning.

“No,” Meadows said.

“Come on aboard anyway,” the man said with a trace of disappointment.

Meadows climbed onto the deck and approached the man. He looked vaguely familiar. Then Meadows placed the face. “Hey,” Meadows said, “you’re that author, that—”

“Retired author,” the man said, smiling, “and yes, I’m him. Forget about that for a moment—how are you with electronics?”

“My oven is still on daylight savings time,” Meadows admitted.

“Damn,” the author said, “I blew the motherboard in this sonar and I need to get it fixed before the weather clears and we can go out again. The repairman was supposed to be here an hour ago. He must be lost or something.”

“How long have you guys been docked here?” Meadows asked.

“Four days now,” the author said. “Another couple more and I’ll need to spring for new livers for my team—they’ve been sampling the local flavor. That is, except for one guy—he swore it off years ago and now he’s hooked on coffee and pastries. The question is, where do I find these guys? These expeditions are like a floating insane asylum.”

“Oh, yeah,” Meadows said, “you like to do underwater archaeology.”

“Don’t say ‘archaeology’ on this vessel,” the author joked. “Archaeologists are on the same plane as necrophilia on this boat. We’re adventurers.”

“Sorry,” Meadows said, smiling. “Hey, we’re looking into a theft on these docks a couple of nights ago. Did you guys lose anything?”

“You’re an American,” the author said. “Why would you be investigating a robbery in England?”

“Would you believe national security?”

“Oh, sure,” the author said. “Where were you when I was still writing? I had to make everything up.”

“Seriously,” Meadows said.

The author considered this for a moment. Finally he answered. “No, we didn’t lose anything. This boat has more cameras on it than a Cindy Crawford swimsuit shoot. Underwater, above water, down in the cabins on the instruments, hell, probably in the head for all I know. I rented it from a film crew.”

Meadows looked astonished. “Did you tell the Brits that?”

“They didn’t ask,” the author said. “They seemed a lot more interested in explaining to me that I hadn’t seen anything—which I hadn’t.”

“So you didn’t see anything?”

“Not if it was late at night,” the author said. “I’m over seventy years old—if it’s past ten at night, there had better be a fire or a naked girl if you want to wake me.”

“But the cameras?” Meadows asked.

“They run all the time,” the author said. “We’re making a television show about the search—tapes are cheap, good footage is precious.”

“Would you mind showing them to me?” Meadows asked.