“I’ve never heard about them.”

“The mainstream media doesn’t cover them, not here, not anywhere. Ever since P.T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid in 1842—which was the head and torso of a juvenile monkey sewn onto the back half of a fish—merfolk have fallen back into the realm of myths and legends. Nobody wants anything to do with them.”

“Was Aquaman a merfolk?” she asked, apropos of nothing.

“Aquaman had legs, Rad,” Marty told her lightly.

“How do you know merfolk don’t have legs if you’ve never seen one?”

“I don’t know that conclusively. It’s what the science suggests. Legs are meant for walking, not swimming.”

“Turtles have legs.”

“Well, they walk around on land sometimes, don’t they?”

“But you believe merfolk have arms?”

Marty nodded. “Arms—and hands, with opposable thumbs—helped primates develop better defense systems, such as throwing rocks and wielding sticks. They allowed primitive humans to use and to create tools. If merfolk have a powerful piscine tail to propel them through the water, which I believe they do, there would have been no reason to surrender their arms and hands for fins.”

“I can almost picture a merfolk king sitting on a golden throne with a crown and scepter.”

Marty smiled at her. He knew her too well, and he wasn’t going to be dragged into a farcical discussion. He went back to booking his plane ticket.

The silence that followed was protracted and awkward.

“Well!” Jacky said abruptly, getting to her feet, “it’s late, and Marty and I have an early flight tomorrow. I think I’m going to call it a night.”

“Likewise,” said Rad, standing. “I’ll walk you to the street.”

“You’re not coming back to the Oannes?” Marty asked.

“The Oannes,” she said, saying the word as if for the first time. “Why do I have the feeling your secret identity has been staring me in the face this entire time?”

“In Babylonian mythology,” he told her, “a water god was depicted as having the upper body of a man and the lower body of a fish—the first recorded reference of a merman. The Greeks called him Oannes.”

“Of course,” she said dryly. She held her elbow out for Jacky. “Shall we?”

Chapter 5

MARTY

When Marty returned to the Oannes, he found he was too wired to sleep. In the salon he took the bottle of Johnny Walker he’d been drinking earlier from the liquor cabinet, changed his mind, and exchanged it for a bottle of Glenfiddich. He dumped too much whiskey into a tumbler and went to the foredeck, where he lit his pipe and paced beneath the gibbous moon. He was thinking about the video of the skull Jacky had shown him.

And tomorrow I’ll be holding it in my hands, seeing it with my eyes.

He dialed Pip’s number.

“Marty?” she answered sleepily. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, and sorry for calling so late. Something extraordinary has come to my attention.”

He explained.

“Mon dieu!” Pip exclaimed when he finished. “This is amazing, Marty! Will we sail to Mirissa tomorrow then?”