“Jellified spine, is it, Threader?”
I watched Blake Threader’s face tighten with defiance. He killed the engine and stepped in front of me, the gun barrel two inches from his chin.
“Adams, you ain’t got the guts to shoot me.”
“Turn it around, Threader. Now!”
“Stuart!” Niki shrieked. “What are you doing? Put the gun away!”
A thin smile came on Threader’s face, his unflinching eyes showing no sign of fear. Then, in a quick, single motion, he grabbed the barrel of the rifle and planted a fist in the middle of my mouth. I stumbled backward to the deck. Stunned, it took a couple of headshakes to reengage my brain. I started to stand, but Niki was on me before I could get to my feet.
“Stop!” she screamed in my face. “If you want to fight, go back to the Rock and fight Giacopetti. We will not fight amongst ourselves!” She turned to Threader. “Captain. Put the gun away. Now!”
Threader hesitated, and then he stepped over and slipped the Winchester under the seat. He came back and glowered down at me over Niki’s shoulder.
“All right,” I said, relaxing under Niki’s weight. “It’s over.”
She stood slowly, poised to spring again if necessary. I propped myself on an elbow and wiped blood from the side of my mouth. Threader’s withering stare softened when he leaned down and offered me a hand.
“I owed you that one, pal,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “I ain’t forgot that little scrap we had on my boat.”
My head swirled. My jaw hurt.
Father Jon, his face pale as death, made another sign of the cross. He stepped toward the bow, either wringing his hands or poising them for prayer; I wasn’t sure which.
What the hell had I been thinking? I’d never pulled a gun on a man in my life. I wiped another trickle of blood from the corner of my mouth and used my tongue to check for loose teeth.
“Guess I owe everyone an apology,” I said, finding all teeth secure. “It was a stupid mistake.”
“Stupid is right,” Niki said. “Stupid beyond belief.”
She had an uncanny talent for driving the point to unsounded depths.
“Now that we got that settled,” a victorious Threader said, “let’s get the hell outta here.” He started for the cockpit.
“No!” Niki planted both fists at her waist.
Threader stopped and turned, his face contorted in confusion. “No? But I thought we just—”
“If Stuart thinks the scroll is there,” she said calmly, pointing to Kyropos, “then we will go.”
It took quite a long time for Niki’s message to travel from Threader’s ears to his face. When it finally arrived, his skin tone turned the color of a piece of spoiled bologna.
“But … but, Niki,” he began to plead, “do you know what you’re asking? I mean, it’s not like—”
She cut him off. “I am asking Captain Blake Threader to reach deep down inside of himself and pull out the great bravery that I know is there. You yourself chided Stuart for a momentary lapse of courage, did you not?”
Threader and I exchanged glances, his bolognafied complexion still intact. I was sure he detected in my eyes the satisfaction of knowing he was getting the well-deserved spanking that he wasn’t going to forget any time soon.
He made a lame attempt to defend himself. “Well, yeah, but that was dif—”
She cut him off again. “You are the Captain Threader that I trusted to bring us on this voyage, the same Captain Threader that my father knew and trusted, the same Captain Threader that I have seen spit in the very eye of danger. You are the Captain Threader that I know fears nothing, not even death.”
Threader was working real hard to remember that person Niki had just described.
“Oh cripes! Niki, don’t do this to me. Look.” He pointed to Kyropos. “Look at that thing. It’s gonna blow any second. I want you to have your scroll, I really do. But hell, your daddy, he’d never forgive me if I let something happen to you.”
He was trying to make it look as though he cared more about her life than his own. It wasn’t going to work, not with Niki. I glanced at Father Jon; he was standing silent, his eyes closed, knowing it wasn’t going to work. Even Threader, his eyes shifting every which direction, knew it wasn’t going to work. Nothing short of doing what Niki wanted was going to work. Everyone knew it. Threader was going down. He needed to accept it.
“If my father were alive, he would not turn away from that stinking mountain. You know that. And if he were here, you would not turn away either.”
Threader had the whitish face of a child badly scolded and shamed into submission. Everything about him said he knew he’d have better luck convincing Kyropos to settle down.
“Damn, girl,” he said with a capitulating laugh. “I believe you’re just as stubborn as your daddy.” He turned and stared at that evil gray-black cloud that roiled from the cone of the volcano. Then, I saw a resigned shake of the head. “Hell, if I’m gonna die, I might as well do it with dignity—at the helm of a damn good boat.”
Niki stepped in front of him, her eyes filled with premeditated admiration. On tiptoes, she delivered a peck to his cheek, a bit of salve for the welts she’d laid across his ego.
“You are indeed a brave man, Captain Threader. Whatever happens, I will think of you in this way. Always.”
Father Jon, still standing alone at the bow, one wrist clasped behind his back, had turned to watch Kyropos. I figured he’d turned away to spare Threader the humiliation of knowing he’d had an audience at his lashing.
Niki called out to him. “And you, Father, you are with us as well?”
I watched the father make one of those contemplative, chin-on-the-shoulder half turns, as though he hadn’t noticed the brutality that had just occurred. He let a few seconds pass before he lifted a fresh cigar, still wrapped in cellophane, from his shirt pocket. He turned and ambled over the rolling deck to rejoin us.
Something told me he knew how to answer Niki’s question.
“I was going to save this for the trip home,” he said, tossing the cellophane to the wind and hoisting the cigar, “but perhaps now is the better time.” He lit up and took a couple of puffs. “I told you that I made a vow to seek the Truth, wherever it may lead. Well, my search has led me here, to this place. Captain Threader, I understand your reluctance. Believe me, I too, like any man facing such uncertainty, have fears, even doubts. Yet, I am prepared to risk all, everything. And for what? For this thing that may not even exist? Yes. And I tell you why.” More puffing. “Think of it—the ancient wisdom of Atlantis, passed down for countless generations, possibly crossing into an entirely different culture, embraced by a great Essene teacher, and given to the very Master himself. I swoon with the possibilities. If this scroll is there”—he stabbed the cigar toward Kyropos—“then what can I say? I, Father Jon Basil Andros, was a mere five kilometers from such a treasure, and I did not attempt to retrieve it? No! I do not think so. I am not a brave man, but how can I fear the loss even of my own life, when I have already given it for the sake of Truth? Yes, Niki. I am with you. In the name of Truth, in the very name of our holy God, I am with you.” With his cigar hand, he made another sign of the cross, leaving a smoke artifact of the sacred symbol dangling in the air. “And may God be with us.”
I looked at Threader, surprised to see tears streaming over his cheeks.
“Damn, Father,” he said, blinking, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, “something tells me I’m in the company of a very great man.” He stepped up to Father Jon and engulfed him in a hug. Then, he took a step back and looked at us all as if we were some second-rate crew he’d been forced to take on. “What the hell are we all doing standing around gawking? We got to go get us a scroll!”
Threader maneuvered Penelope two miles from a sheer cliff face that made Kyropos inaccessible by sea. The doomsdayer fanatics were least likely to post a lookout on this side of the volcano. Here we waited for the cover of darkness.
Threader and Father Jon busied themselves repairing the Zodiac, while Niki and I sat on the deck watching Kyropos spew ash so thick it created its own lightning. Thin fingers of lava oozed down the face of the cliffs and dripped in a hissing fury into the sea. The mountain grumbled like a red-eyed pit bull, teeth bared, ready to attack.
A plan began to form in my mind. To minimize our risk of being spotted by the fanatics, Father Jon and I would paddle in on the Zodiac. Niki and Threader would stay on board, keeping Penelope rigged and ready for as quick a getaway as a sailboat would allow.
The hardest part of the plan would be to convince Niki to stay on board Penelope. She knew better than anyone that Threader could handle the boat alone. Watching her face in the softness of the waning daylight, I could tell that she was pumped, ready to go, strong and brave, capable as anyone of carrying out the task at hand. Unfortunately, the strongest, bravest, most bullheaded person in the world was no match for a bullet, and I assumed those fanatics, overly anxious to meet their Maker, were of a mind to shoot first and ask questions later. The situation made me realize how much I cared about what happened to her, bullheaded or not. Maybe it had to do with my traditional upbringing, or that protective male instinct so deeply embedded in my genetic makeup, but I was determined to do everything within my power to keep her out of harm’s way.
She turned and caught me looking at her. I didn’t look away.
“Well, Stuart, you finally get your wish: a full view of an active volcano. How does that make you feel?”
My eyes lingered in hers while I thought about it. Strange how fear of fanatics and volcanoes so easily melted. I was safe in her gaze, and she was safe in mine, secure in that mystical aura of familiarity that gently wooed and caressed our souls like the ticking waves that lapped at Penelope’s hull. There was a lot about my feelings for Niki that I did not understand. She was different from other women, and I wanted time to know what made her that way.
“I suppose if I was a volcanologist,” I said, pulling out of her gaze and turning back toward the spectacle of Kyropos, “I’d be on the verge of an orgasm about now. Terrifyingly beautiful—that’s the closest I can come to describing it.” I didn’t look at her when I added, “Reminds me of someone I know.”
I could feel her eyes still on me when she slipped an arm through mine. The warmth of her bare skin on my arm made me tingle. I could think of no immediate reason to resist. Marion was an abstraction, a floating piece of last night’s dream that bore no connection to the living pulse of this electric moment.
“I never thanked you for what you did today,” she said, a fingertip playing gently with the hair of my arm. “You saved my life.”
With the possibility that Niki was right about Marion leaving me, the barriers between us were crumbling; red lights were turning green, though I still carried enough of that weight of responsibility for Marion to keep plenty of flashing yellows going.
“Don’t thank me yet. This day’s not over.”
“Then I have time to decide how I will thank you.”
Her playfully seductive tone disarmed me and sent my mind careening through intimate possibilities. Suddenly I had us in bed together, kissing, caressing, making love under the blanket of a warm sea breeze. What a delight that would be. I had to make a conscious effort to look up at the yellows still flashing, urging me to douse that vision and proceed with caution.
“Right now I’d settle for a glass of wine in one of those quiet little beachfront tavernas on Santorini, watching the sun go down.”
“That would be nice.” Her hold on my upper arm tightened ever so slightly. “I would be sitting with you?”
Nothing would have pleased me more, but I couldn’t get myself to say it, not out loud, not to her. Time to lighten things up a bit. “You buying the drinks?”
“Perhaps,” she said, with an eyebrow cocked in a way that said she understood what I was doing.
“Perhaps? Doesn’t sound like you’re sure you want to be there.”
“Me? Not sure? Yes, I buy. You have my word. Do you wish for me to sign a contract?”
Her annoyance at my petty humor was delightful; it made her so cute I wanted to throw an arm around her and give her a good squeezing. “Okay, you’d be there.”
“And when we finish the wine?”
Instantly, we were back in bed, engaged in the full array of bedroom pleasantries. She was on tiptoe, trying to peek into my mind as if it were an open window. I quickly drew the shade and threw the problem back on her. “You’re the one doing the thanking.”
She slipped into a momentary silence, head tilted, the corner of her mouth raised into enough of a smile to show that I was supposed to be in the spot she was in.
“I will have to think about this,” was all she said.
With the Zodiac patched and sitting high in the water, Threader called everyone around the table to outline his plan. I hoped it’d be better than mine.
“This is Kyropos,” he said, pointing to a map he’d scrawled on a piece of cardboard. “We’re somewhere out here on the western side. That band of yahoos is most likely gathered right here.” He drew a circle indicating the spot. “Now here, in the cliff wall, there’s a string of caves.”
“I remember,” I said, images of the caves and their loitering, robe-clad occupants suddenly impinging on my mind.
Threader, annoyed, was doubtful. “How the hell can you remember caves you ain’t never seen?”
“There’s a big cluster of boulders right here.” I tapped the point on the map. “It’s a feeling, Threader.”
Threader studied me as if I were a two-headed goat. He made an X at the spot. “Don’t tell me how the hell you know it, but you’re right. Now, if we can get here”—he pointed to the X—“we can see what’s going on and figure out what to do next.”
“Not we, Threader,” I said, recalling my plan. “Father Jon and I will go in. You and Niki will stay with the boat and keep it ready for our exit.”
“Is that right, Adams? Thought we settled the authority issue a while ago.”
I’d gotten a few more details of the plan worked out. “Think about it, Threader. No one knows how to handle this boat as well as you. You get us in close; the father and I paddle the Zodiac to shore. You and Niki circle out here and wait. We signal with the flashlight when we get the scroll, we paddle back out, you swoop in and pick us up, and we head home.”
A few moments passed as everyone considered the plan. Niki was the first to speak.
“It is a good plan, Stuart Adams. But you leave out one thing.”
“You’re not going,” I said, anticipating her response. “You’ll be safer on the boat with Threader.”
“Ha! You will not tell me what I will or will not do. How about if you stay on the boat and I go? Then I would know that you would be safe. You think the whole world should take your orders? I do not take orders from you. If you go, I go. It is final.”
She crossed her arms and glowered at me like a five-year-old brat refusing to eat spinach. I glowered right back, knowing I’d have better luck staring down a marble statue of the Great Mother.
“All right,” I said, finally. “You want to go? Fine. But when we get to these rocks”—I drove a finger hard into the map—“that’s where you’re staying. You’re going to watch us go in, and you’re going to signal Threader when we start coming out. Now you either agree to that, or I’m going to hog-tie you, put a gag in that mouth of yours, and lock you in your cabin.”
She leaned forward, her eyes fixed murderously on mine. She spoke in slow, lethal tones.
“You will not be hog-tying me.”
For a long time I held her beautifully scorching glare. If anything happened to her … I didn’t finish the thought, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. If she was set on going, no one was going to change her mind. I just slumped back in my seat, closed my eyes, and laughed out a defeated breath of consent.
J Douglas Bottorff 