“In and around Zanzibar?”
“Of course.”
“I’m assuming you have salvage
experience or else they wouldn’t have hired you.”
“I have experience.”
“The people you work for . . . what’s their specific interest?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Something of monetary value, I assume?” Sam asked. “Something the Ophelia carried in her hold when she went down?”
“That would be a safe assumption.”
“And you think whatever we may have found belongs to the Ophelia.”
“It’s a possibility my employers would like to explore.”
Sam nodded thoughtfully. For the past few minutes Sam had been trying to get Rivera to commit himself, to make statements he and Remi could then use in doing their own research.
Sam said, “This must be one hell of a prize you’re after. You bribe the captain of a Tanzanian gunboat to first intimidate, then surveil us; then, when night falls, you sneak into the lagoon and board our boat with knives drawn.”
This caught Rivera off guard. He took a deep breath and let it out with a frustrated sigh.
Sam said, “We watched the whole thing.”
“From where?”
“Does that really matter?”
“No, I suppose not. Please accept my apologies. My friends are ex-soldiers. Some habits are hard to break. The excitement of the job got the better of them. I’ve already chastised them.”
“All three of them.”
“Yes.”
Of course, Sam didn’t buy Rivera’s mea culpa, but he said, “Fair enough. What was your plan? To steal whatever you think we found?”
“At that point we didn’t know what you’d found.”
Sam paused for a long ten seconds, then said, “I can’t decide if you think we’re idiots or if you’ve got a short-term-memory problem.”
“Pardon me?”
“You’re sitting here because of the sign I left on the crate. You found that crate because of the notations we left next to a diagram of a bell you found on our boat. You think we found a ship’s bell. Why not just come out and say it?”
“Consider it said, then.”
“I can tell you this: The bell we found doesn’t belong to the Ophelia.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”
“Will I?” Sam asked.
“I’d like to inspect the bell myself.”