The Deep

Below the copy of the letter, the fellow listed what he had assembled.” Treece recited from memory.

“Item: two ropes of gold with thirty-eight pearls on each. Item: a gold cross with five emeralds. And so on and so on. It spills over to the next page of the book, which some idiot tore out a hundred years ago.”

“No pine cone?”

“No, and no crucifix like ours, at least not on the page that’s still there. But there is a reference to a three-lock box.”

Sanders said, “That isn’t conclusive, is it? You said yourself that they used those boxes all the time.”

“For real high-priority goods. But you’re right; it isn’t special to El Grifon. So it was back to the papers.” He sipped his tea.

“The usual way for the King’s treasure to be transported was in a chest in a strong room near the captain’s cabin aboard the capitana. For some reason, Philip didn’t trust Ubilla, the commander. The King’s letter to Havana said that the jewels were to be shipped with the most trustworthy of all the fleet’s captains, and no one else comno one-was to be aware of their existence. Philip didn’t realize it at the time, but that last provision was a bad mistake.”

“Why?” Gail asked.

“Think, girl. It’s what we were talking about before, about Grifon. Up comes a storm; most of the ships go down. Only two people in the world know who had the jewels, the captain who had them and the man in Havana who assigned them to him. The captain survives, makes a deal with the man in Havana, who writes the King that he assigned the jewels to one of the captains who went down and was—poor chap—killed. Then he and the captain split the goodies. The captain waits awhile, rechristens his wreck of a ship, loads it with a relatively worthless cargo, and sets sail for home. If he makes it, he’ll never have to sail again. He’ll have enough to keep himself and his family and two or three small countries afloat. I don’t have even half the list of jewels, but the bit I do have lists more than fifty pieces. The only flaw in the plan was that the ship didn’t make it home. Got caught in a blow and seized up on the Bermuda rocks. Nobody knew there was anything on board worth worrying about.”

Sanders said, “Did the man in Havana admit this?”

“Hell, no! He makes all manner of lugubrious references to the sinking of the fleet and the loss of the King’s jewels. That put me off for a while.”

“I think you’re reaching: he might have done this, he could have done that. It’s all supposition.”

Treece nodded. “I thought so, too, until about four o’clock this morning.” He paused, enjoying the game. “What was the King of Spain’s name?”

“Come on,” Sanders said, feeling manipulated.

“Philip.”

“Aye. And what was his new wife’s name?”

Sanders sighed. “The duchess of Parma.”

“No!” Treece smiled. “Not her title, her name.” He waited, but they had no answer.

“Her name was… Elisabetta Farnese.”

It took a second for the initials to register.

Gail’s mouth dropped open. Sanders was stunned.

Treece grinned. “There’s still one unanswered question.”

Sanders thought for a few seconds, then laughed and said, “I know.”

“What?” The grin lit up Treece’s face.

“The question is, Did King Philip ever get laid?”

“Right! And about that, you contentious bastard,” he said, slapping Sanders” shoulder, “I would not presume to make a guess.”

Sanders tried to share Treece’s joviality, but his mind was crowded with conflicting images: jewels and drugs and explosives, the sight of Coffin’s twisted body, the tattered linen doll, the leer on Slake’s face. “How much is it worth?” he said.

“No telling. Depends what’s still down there, what we can get at, how much was lost, and how much the man in Havana made off with. What we have now is worth, I’d say, somewhere near a quarter of a million dollars-that is, once we can firm up the provenance. We have to find at least one jewel that’s on the list I’ve got, for the provenance to be perfect.”

“What are we going to do about the drugs?” Gail said.

“I’ve thought about it. There’s not a chance of our getting the lot up, not before Cloche makes his move. You know the numbers. What do you figure the value of the ampules we’ve got now is?”

“I don’t know for sure how many ampules we have, but take a round figure-say we get a hundred thousand altogether. That’s over a million dollars, maybe two million.”

“That leaves a bloody heap of glass out there for him. But of course, he doesn’t know that, does he?” Treece was talking more to himself than to them. “He doesn’t know what we’ve got and what’s still there.”

“So?”

“So we’ll go for the jewels; they’re much more important. Let him think we’re digging for glass.”

“We can’t just leave the rest of the drugs for him.”

“No, we won’t, but you have to weigh your risks.