Riptide

go to the Community College. He's the only man I've ever met who would never tell a lie, no matter how much the truth might hurt.'

'So what happened?'

Claire sighed and dropped her chin onto her knees. 'I'm not sure, exactly. Over the years, he seemed to shrink somehow. Small towns can be deadly, Malin, especially for someone like Woody. You know how it is. Stormhaven is its own little world. Nobody cared about politics here, nobody cared about nuclear proliferation, about starving children in Biafra. I begged Woody to leave, but he's so stubborn. He'd come here to change this little town, and he wasn't going to leave until he did. Oh, people tolerated him, and looked on all his causes and fund-raisers with a kind of amusement. Nobody even got mad about his liberal politics. They just ignored it. That was the worst for him—being politely ignored. He became more and more—' She paused, thinking. 'I don't know how to say it, exactly. Rigid and moralistic. Even at home. He never learned to lighten up. And having no sense of humor made it harder.'

'Well, Maine humor can take some getting used to,' Hatch said as charitably as he could.

'No, Malin, I mean it literally. Woody never laughs. He never finds anything funny. He just doesn't get it. I don't know if it's something in his background, or his genes, or what. We don't talk about it. Maybe that's one reason he's so ardent, so unmoving in the things he believes in.' She hesitated. 'And now he has something to believe in, all right. With this crusade against your treasure hunt, it's like he has a new cause. Something he thinks Stormhaven will care about.'

'What is it about the dig, anyway?' Hatch asked. 'Or is it the dig? Does he know about us?'

She turned to look at him. 'Of course he knows about us. A long time ago, he demanded honesty, so I told him everything. Wasn't all that much to tell.' She gave a short laugh.

Serves me right for asking, Hatch thought. 'Well, he'd better start looking for another cause. We're almost done.'

'Really? How can you be sure?'

'The crew historian made a discovery this morning. He learned that Macallan, the guy who built the Water Pit, designed it as a kind of cathedral spire.'

Claire frowned. 'A spire? There's no spire on the island.'

'No, no, I mean an upside-down spire. It sounded crazy to me, too. But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. He was explaining it to me.' It felt good to talk. And Hatch somehow knew that he could trust Claire to keep a confidence. 'See, Red Ned Ockham wanted this Macallan to build something that would keep his treasure safe until he came back to retrieve it.'

'Retrieve it how?'

'Through a secret back door. But Macallan had other ideas. In revenge for being kidnapped, he designed the Pit so that nobody, not even Red Ned, could get at the treasure. He made sure that if Red Ned ever tried, he'd be killed. Of course, Red Ned died before he could return to claim his hoard, and the Pit has resisted attack ever since. But we're using technologies Macallan never dreamed of. And now that the Pit is drained of water, we've been able to figure out exactly what he built. Macallan designed churches. And you know how churches have a complex internal and external buttressing to keep them from falling down, right? Well, Macallan just inverted the whole scheme, and used it as the supports for his Pit during its construction. Then he secretly removed the most important supports as the Pit was filled in. None of the pirates would have guessed anything was wrong. When Ockham returned, he'd have rebuilt his cofferdam, sealed his flood tunnels and pumped out the Pit, if necessary. But when he tried to actually retrieve the treasure, the whole Pit would have collapsed on him. That was Ockham's trap. But, by re-creating the cathedral braces, we can stabilize the Pit, extract the treasure without fear.'

'That's incredible,' she said.

'Yes, it is.'

'Then why aren't you more excited?'

Hatch paused. 'Is it that obvious?' he laughed quietly. 'Despite everything that's happened, I guess there are times when I still feel a little ambivalent about the whole project. Gold, or the lure of gold, does strange things to people. I'm no exception. I keep telling myself this is all about finding out what happened to Johnny. I'd planned to put my share into a foundation in his memory. But every now and then I catch myself thinking about what I could do with all that money.'

'That's only natural, Malin.'

'Maybe. But that doesn't make me feel any better about it. Your Reverend gave all his away, remember?' He sighed. 'Maybe he's a little bit right about me, after all. Anyway, he doesn't seem to have caused much damage with his opposition.'

'You're wrong about that.' Claire looked at him. 'You know about the sermon last Sunday?'

'I heard something about it.'

'He read a passage out of Revelation. It had a huge effect on the fishermen. And did you hear he brought out the Curse Stone?'

Hatch frowned. 'No.'

'He said the treasure was worth two billion. That you'd lied, telling him it was worth much less. Did you lie to him, Malin?'

'I—' Hatch stopped, uncertain of whether to feel more angry at Clay or at himself. 'I guess I got defensive, the way he cornered me at the lobster festival like that. So, yes, I lowballed the number. I didn't want to arm him with more information than necessary.'

'Well, he's armed now. The haul is down this year, and in the minds of the fishermen he's linked that to the dig. He really was able to split the town over this one. He's finally found the issue he's been looking for these twenty years.'

'Claire, the haul is down every year. They've been overfishing and overlobstering for half a century.'