“In an Internet chat room devoted to lost treasures,” Sloane said. “We’ve been planning and saving for this since last year.”

“And tell me what happened last night.”

“I had gone out to dinner by myself and when I was walking back to the hotel, two men started following me. I ran and they chased me. At one point one of them fired a handgun at me. I made it back to the hotel, which was crowded, and they stopped. One of them shouted that the shot was a warning and I was to leave Namibia.”

“You recognized them as two of the guys on that yacht.”

“Yeah, the two with the machine guns.”

“And who knew you were in Namibia?”

“What do you mean, like friends back home and stuff?”

“No, I mean who knew what you were doing here? Did you talk to anyone about your project?”

“We interviewed a great number of local fisherman,” Tony said.

Sloane overrode him. “The idea was to search areas where fishermen lost nets. The seafloor around here is basically an extension of the desert, so I figured anything that could snag a net must be man-made, ergo a shipwreck.”

“Not necessarily,” Juan said.

“We know that now.” Sloane’s voice was laced with defeat. “We flew over a bunch of possibilities with a metal detector and found nothing.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. The currents have had a few million years to expose bedrock projections that could easily catch a net,” Juan said and Sloane nodded. “So you talked to fishermen. Anyone else?”

Her mouth turned downward as she said, “Luka. He acted as a guide but I never much cared for him. And there was the South African chopper pilot. Pieter DeWitt’s his name. But no one knew why we were asking about nets and we never told Piet or Luka what ship we were looking for.”

“Don’t forget Papa Heinrick and his giant metal snakes,” Tony said tartly. He was trying to further embarrass Sloane.

One of Juan’s eyebrows lifted. “Giant snakes?”

“It’s nothing,” Sloane said. “Just a story we heard from a crazy old fisherman.”

There came a gentle knock on the door. Maurice appeared bearing a plastic tray. Juan had to suppress a smile at the repulsed look on the chief steward’s face.

In a word, Maurice was fastidious, a man who shaved twice a day, polished his shoes each morning, and would change a shirt if he found a crease. He was right at home in the opulent confines of the Oregon, but get him on the public parts of the vessel and he had the look of a Muslim walking into a pigsty.