“Coffee is brewing,” a young man said.

“A cookie would be nice,” I said.

“Cookies for everyone.”

“Right away, sir.” DeMarcus startled me and I jumped. I hadn’t noticed his presence or his arrival. He left the bridge, passing through a bulkhead door.

“He’s amazing, isn’t he?” Sill said.

“He’s a ghost,” I said, nodding in agreement even though Sill was not looking at me. The bridge crew acted as if they were in a business office in downtown Providence rather than under the sea. They applauded when DeMarcus returned with an assortment of cookies on a large platter.

“DaMarcus’s sugar cookies are especially good,” Sill told me. “And much enjoyed by the crew.”

“Thank you, sir,” DeMarcus said. “Will that be all?”

Sill gave a dismissive wave and DeMarcus was again gone.

“So, what are we doing out here?” I asked.

“Gloria, what kind of activity do we have on the surface?” Sill looked to the woman with the afro.

Gloria took a bite of chocolate chip cookie. “Five or six cruise ships, the usual smattering of smudges.”

“That’s what we call anything less than ten meters,” Sill said.

“More yachts than usual,” Gloria continued. “Gates’s boat is up there. In her usual spot.”

“Ostentatious bastard,” Sill muttered. “Do-gooder.”

“And what have we here?” Gloria said. She finished her cookie. “The signature reads as a Sentinel-class cutter.” She looked at her screen. “One hundred fifty-four feet long, a fast-response patrol boat.”

“That wasn’t here last week,” Sill said.

“Nope,” said Gloria.

Sill looked at me. “Last time we were out, they had some hulking tub that looked like the Minnow.”

“The Minnow?” I asked.

“I forgot who I was dealing with.” He turned back to his crew. “Do they know we’re here?”

“I don’t think so,” a bespectacled man said.

“Well, alert them to our presence. Give a ping.”

“One ping,” the man said and that cliché sound of every submarine film I had ever seen sounded. “That got their attention.”

“How far out?”

“Six hundred meters and closing,” Gloria said. “Bearing one-zero-five.”

“What’s the top speed of that thing?”

She looked at her screen. “Twenty-eight knots.”

“Make speed twenty-eight knots,” Sill said. “Let’s allow her to chase us for a while. We’ll head up into the bay and make her dodge some smudge, then pop out like we’re headed to Cuba.”

“Why are we doing this?” I asked.

“Because, Mr. Bond, we can.” Sill and the crew laughed.

5

When we arrived back at the submarine bay, I had the brief and unsettling thought that perhaps none of any of that journey was real, that it was all faked. We could have been sitting right where we were now, docked, the boat, if it was that and not a prop, rocking on the water. All on a soundstage. There were no windows through which to see out. The screens were all simply screens and could show anything one wanted. I didn’t, at any time, feel the least bit motion sick, but I never had before anyway and, for all I knew, submarine travel perhaps didn’t make anybody feel nauseated. But why would he fake such a thing? Certainly not for my benefit. The bridge crew exited the boat with us. Gloria and I shared eye contact as we walked separate ways, she toward what looked like a lab of some kind and I, stepping in Sill’s tracks, back to the elevator that had brought us down. We said nothing in the moving room until it stopped.