“I could feel panic coming on. The conditions down there were making it worse: mucky water, full of shapes. Fish swirling into my vision. Finally, I went inside the wreck. There was nowhere else he could be. Once I was inside, it didn’t take long to find him. He wasn’t far in: His body was trapped under a gangway inside the main cargo area. There was a gash in his temple. Fish were already making off with bits of flesh.

“I got him up to the surface. Son insisted on resuscitation. But I knew he was dead. He was dead when I found him.”

“And in your opinion, how did he die?”

“It wasn’t the cut—that was superficial. He drowned because something stole his regulator, his mask, his tank, everything. Once he lost his gear, he must have struck his head in a panic, lost consciousness. Without his mask and regulator, it wouldn’t have taken long to die.”

“And his regulator? The tank? The mask? Did you find them?”

The impassivity of the face like a blurred photograph, the tonelessness of the altered voice, brought Lawrence back to the island. To telling this story again and again. To the rangers, to the police, to the reporters. Accusations, disbelief—and, in the end, indifference.

“We never found them.”

“But you searched the ship.”

“No. I didn’t. I lied about that.”

“You lied?”

“I couldn’t go back down there. I told the police we’d looked for his equipment, searched the whole vessel, but … I didn’t look. I was afraid to. There was never a proper search.”

She paused. “I see. And what did you do then?”

“The rival dive shop used the death to drive my customers away. My business began to fail. But in the end, it didn’t matter. Three months after the incident, the evacuation began. For the record—I’m glad you guys bought the island. Now at least I know it will be protected. I knew every inch of Con Dao—every reef they destroyed, every fish they poached. It’s better this way: Get everybody out, cordon off the whole archipelago. Defend it. That’s the only way to protect it. I was one of the first to take your offer and leave. Generous compensation, a new start. It was lucky for me, maybe.”

MAYBE. Walking away from the café in the rain, Lawrence wasn’t so sure. The tamarind trees hissed in the wind. His poncho had a tear in the side of it, and he could feel a damp spot spreading through his clothes, cold on his skin.

“What did you see?” That was what they always asked him—the rangers, the police, the reporters. What did you see?

Nothing. He’d seen nothing. But he couldn’t shake the feeling something had seen him.