Devil Ship: Devil Ship Series Book 1

Chapter 6: Gold Fever

It soon became obvious that Sara and Joe would struggle to find anywhere quiet to sit and talk in Port Louis. The bars, restaurants, and coffee shops of the small town were now packed with tourists.

The reason was clear enough. A huge, white and gray cruise liner was moored off the port’s only pier. It was a floating hotel, but to the locals, it was also a treasure ship. The Hansens knew that the ship’s visit would be half a day at most. But during that time, Port Louis’ population would treble, maybe quadruple. And every other tourist was looking for somewhere to sit and have a drink or a meal.

“We can just walk and talk,” Joe suggested.

They turned off the harbor boulevard into a shady side street.

“Okay,” she asked. “What’s all this about gold?”

Joe smiled, and she recognized it as his clever smile, the one he produced when he thought he had been smarter than the other guy. It was not his most endearing quality. They walked on and came to a miniature park, a kind of public garden with a statue and a drinking fountain. There was a vacant bench. Once they sat down, both took out their bottles of water and rehydrated. Then Sara waited for Joe’s revelation.

“That ship off the reef?” he began. “It’s a salvage vessel, the Deep Star.

 Registered in Liberia but owned by an American outfit. It’s got state of the art gizmos on board, including those remote-controlled mini-subs.”

“Gold,” Sara reminded him. “Are we talking pirate treasure?”

“No,” said Joe, sounding slightly irritated. “Forget pirates and all that crap. This is real history. A British ship sank somewhere around here during the First World War. It was carrying half a ton of bullion from the Bank of England, a bribe to the Mexican government.”

Seeing Sara’s frown, Joe went on hastily.

“Yeah, I was surprised, but I looked it up. Mexico was negotiating with the Germans for much of the war. If German U-boats had been able to operate from Mexican ports, it would have been a disaster for the Brits. So, they paid off some top generals and the like. Or they tried to. But the ship, a cruiser called the Sunderland, disappeared in a hurricane. Most people think it went down in deep water, out in the Atlantic. But there’s another school of thought that says the Sunderland tried to reach Refuge Bay and damn near succeeded. Some claim that, at the height of the storm, a ship was seen near Wreckers Reef.”

Sara protested at that.

“But somebody must have looked for it since then.”

Joe shrugged.

“Firstly, there are similar stories told on other islands, and none of them seemed particularly credible. Secondly, the water gets really deep off the reef, the bottom falls away fast—we’re perched on the very edge of the continental shelf. Old-fashioned salvage gear couldn’t cut it, but this high-tech stuff can. However, the best evidence for what the Deep Star is up to comes from this.”

He held up his phone to reveal a picture. It was a satellite image, mostly consisting of blue. Sara could just make out a pale, rectangular shape with one pointed end. A ship at sea. It was alongside an irregular band of white.

“So that’s the Deep Star?” she hazarded. “Off Wreckers Reef?”

“Correct!”

Joe put his phone away and glanced around, though there was nobody within earshot. Sara automatically followed suit. She glimpsed movement in a clump of flowering bushes nearby. A roaming cat, probably, watching the small birds that perched on the statue or hopped near their bench.

“Anyhow,” Joe continued. “Satellite images show the Deep Star began by cruising along the reef, that’s maybe three miles. That was about a month ago. But lately, it’s been zeroing in on a much smaller area. If there’s nothing there, fine, but it seems to me that they think they’re close to the Sunderland. The gossip in the bars says they are, too. These salvage guys have to get a drink somewhere, after all. They’re tight-lipped, but somebody always tends to drop a heavy hint after his fourth beer.”

Sara thought this through.

“Okay, I get it,” she said after a few moments. “If this was a legit operation, we would all know about it. So, what’s shady about it? They have no permit?”