seductive…
Even righted as she was, she had suddenly seemed to loom before him. The lake bed made the water so dark at eighty feet.
Just eighty feet! She’d been there all along, so damned close to Chicago!
He didn’t feel any cold through his dive suit, but he was numb. A shiver of excitement reverberated through his limbs. All around him, the water danced in the wavy shadows of the eighty-foot depths, and he became intensely aware of the sound of his own breathing again, the pump and flow of his regulator. He wanted to shout with happiness and share his discovery with the world. Of course, he would do that soon enough, and if any of his team had followed him out today, they’d already know that he’d been right. Everyone would know that he’d been right, including every salvage diver who had ever dreamed of finding her.
He laughed inwardly, smiling around his regulator. He was pretty sure someone had been behind him. Not that everyone on Lake Michigan had to be following him, but he thought he’d seen a research vessel in the distance when he’d come down.
His coworkers might be angry that he’d jumped the gun, but Amanda had already sold the story of their search to a film producer, who was going to document and finance their historic discovery. He’d supplied money for the search based on Brady’s theory. Now they could begin to chart out and rope off the ship and show the world the remains of the Jerry McGuen. Others interested in pursuits far less esoteric than theirs would be stopped at the gate. No more worries about Landry Salvage or Simonton’s Sea Search beating them to the punch!
He could imagine the treasures in the hold. Priceless Egyptian artifacts, the still-sealed coffin of the high priest known as the Sorcerer of Giza, the sarcophagi, the army of golden figures, the canopic jars, the ancient stones…
Underwater for more than a century, he reminded himself.
But even the Egyptologists of the nineteenth century had known about preservation. Sure, they hadn’t reckoned on toxins and gases, but they knew all about waterproofing—gunpowder and the pursuit of war had certainly furthered man’s knowledge of that!
Of course, the hold might have been compromised, a zillion things might have happened and still…what they might find!
He—they—didn’t seek treasure or the fortune it could bring. The treasures they discovered always went to museums, and he felt a thrill rush through him as he imagined the headlines when they returned the jeweled sarcophagus of Amun Mopat to the Egyptian people. Amun Mopat would be back where he rightfully belonged, and the name Brady Laurie would be revered in Cairo’s museum. Yes, yes, yes!
The Jerry McGuen.
She lay there—exposed! He was so elated his heart seemed to stop.
He checked his air gauge. He had at least another ten minutes to take a quick look at his momentous discovery, another ten minutes to explore, and then time to decompress at thirty-three feet and safely reach his research vessel on the surface.
The Jerry McGuen appeared huge, her forward section still pitched slightly into the lake bed, as if she’d taken a dive while sinking. Parts of the hull were broken, exposing staterooms and a passenger lobby, and what had been the purser’s office. Brady knew the ship; he had studied her plans time and time again. She was a steel-hulled ship, built by the American Stuart Company of Chicago and launched on October 2, 1888. One hundred and eighty-six feet long, thirty-two feet wide, and twelve feet in depth. Her gross tonnage was four hundred and eighty-six, and when she sailed the seas, she’d been powered by a triple-expansion steam engine and two Scotch boilers. There had been fifty-two cabins for guests, captain’s quarters, first mate’s quarters, four cabins for officers and a bunk room, down in the hold, for crew. The ship, chartered by the very rich Gregory Hudson, had been a state-of-the-art beauty.
Her ballast for the trip had been stones—great stones taken from the tomb of Amun Mopat. Before Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb, the discovery of Amun Mopat’s tomb right in the Valley of the Kings had been one of the most important events in the annals of Egyptology. But the treasures had come aboard the Jerry McGuen, and just a few months after that, those treasures and their history had been lost to the ages. They were soon forgotten by the world at large as new findings occurred and the age of Egyptology moved on.
But now…
He eased himself slowly along the hull, fumbling at his dive belt for his underwater camera. As he began to snap photos, the sound of the shutter whirred softly in the water. The flash illuminated bits and pieces of the ship. There it was—the grand salon, exposed by a gaping hole in the port side, encrusted in weeds and grasses, occupied by fish, large and small. The treasures would be down below.
Yes!
The hull was ripped open belowdecks, as well. He didn’t have much time. Just minutes left now, but he could slip through the great tear in the port side, move along the length of the ship….
It was dark within. Eerie. Time had stolen any vestiges of life that might have remained; the cold and the elements would have eaten away at organic fabric—and human bodies.
He found the hold and moved past giant crates, some protected by tarps that had withstood the years. Before him was a door, which swung open when he pushed it. The door hadn’t been sealed, which might have aided in the flooding that had brought about the ship’s demise, he thought, distracted. He didn’t care at that moment how the ship had sunk. He’d nearly reached the treasure….
As he kicked his flippers and swam through, the dive light strapped to his head suddenly went out.
He muttered to himself, tapping the light. It came back on.
He saw the boxes—huge crates, really, wrapped and sealed in waterproof tarps!—and in the midst of them, he could see the giant box with the label peeling and nearly gone, and yet…he could still read the name on it.
Amun Mopat.
There it was! The box containing the sarcophagus holding the inner sarcophagus and then the mummy. It had survived; the men who’d discovered the treasure had stolen it away carefully sealed….
Over there, boxes of jackals and sphinxes and funerary artifacts, bows, quivers—
His light went out again. Cursing silently, he tapped it. As he did, he heard a curious sound. A noise so deep in the water was different from what it would be on the surface, and yet…
It sounded like the hold door was closing on him!
The light came back on.
He stared in horror.
He opened his mouth to scream. Losing his regulator, he sucked in air, and his scream was silent.
He was stunned, terrified….
The curse! The curse, silent, unspoken in these depths…
It was real!
Yes, he had found the Jerry McGuen.
But he would not live to tell the tale.
1
“Amun Mopat,” Katya Sokolov said to Logan Raintree. “You’re kidding me, right?”
The
