Gannon shone the light down onto the sea bag and opened it and took out the twenty-pound weight. Then he adjusted his buoyancy and floated and swam up to the ridge with the bag.

Arriving at the ridge, he peeked over at the shelf of rock he had noticed when he had explored the chamber with the professor. When he placed the heavy sea bag down onto the shelf, it fit almost perfectly, but it kept floating up a little. After a few more failed tries of stuffing it down, he swam down to the cathedral’s floor, retrieved the weight, swam up and put it into the bag.

Gannon paddled back a little bit and looked with the light at the almost-invisible ridge of rock. He smiled around the regulator in his mouth.

The money bag was settled now. Invisible.

Better than a Swiss vault, he thought.

Gannon was squeezing into the pipe-sized tunnel out of the cathedral when he realized the green cloth fishing rod bag was still taped to his leg. He backed into the cathedral chamber and cut the tape with a knife from his ankle and held the bag in his hand as he looked around.

Just above the tunnel exit he found a rock ledge, and he took the narrow tube-shaped cloth bag and dug it down into the silt and rocks there.

Now we’re done, he thought.

13

“Okay, here we go. Which famous English writer was called ‘the prophet of British Imperialism’?” a tall, skinny coast guard sailor at the next table read off a Trivial Pursuit card.

“Harry Potter,” somebody called out in the bright sunny bacon-scented room. Then somebody called out “Joe Mama” in a funny voice, and they all cracked up.

Ruby put down the beat-up Nicholas Sparks paperback she’d found in the lounge next to the mess and looked out at the bright light coming through the big window at the other end of the cafeteria.

They were shore bound now, still in the Bahamas on Andros Island on a US naval base called the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center.

She had actually heard of it. It had some deep ocean trench close by off its coast where they supposedly tested submarine stuff, sonar and torpedoes and missiles and depth charges and who knew what else.

As if she could care what they did here, she thought, checking her watch and seeing that it was coming on two in the afternoon.

Why the hell was she here?

It wasn’t clear. Three hours after Lieutenant Martin had received his babysitting orders, a navy salvage ship called the USS Recover had arrived.

When the navy ship had relieved them, she had thought they would head back to base in Miami. Silly her. Lieutenant Martin had been ordered south directly to Andros Island to dock here at the obscure base until further notice and that was all.

Or at least, Ruby thought, that was all she was being told.

She lifted up the paperback again but then put it down, stood, went to the window and looked across the base yard at the USS Recover.