Fluke or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings - By Christopher Moore Page 0,115
worst that happens? You go to sea and do your best to find Nate and you fail? How many people ever did their best at anything? You can always sell the ship later. Where is it now anyway?"
Just then the screen door fired back on its hinges and smacked against the outside wall with the report of a rifle shot. Kona came tumbling through the door waving pages of copy paper as if they were white flags and he was surrendering to everyone in the general Maui area.
"Bwana Clay!" Kona threw the pages down on Clay's suitcase. "It's the Snowy Biscuit!"
Clay picked up the pages, looked at them quickly, and handed one to Clair. Over and over the message was repeated:
41.93625S 76.17328W -623 CLAY U R NOT NUTS AMY
Clay looked at Kona. "This was imbedded in the whale song."
"Yah, mon. Blue whale, I think. Just came in."
"Go back and see if there's more. And find the big world map. It's in the storeroom somewhere."
"Aye, aye," said Kona, who had begun to speak much more nautically since Clay had purchased the ship, making his bid to go along on the voyage to search for Nate. He ran back to the office.
"You think it's from Amy?" Clair said.
"I think it's either from Amy or from someone who knows everything about what we're doing, which means it would have to be someone Amy talked to."
"What are the numbers?"
"A longitude and a latitude. I'll have to look at the map, but it's somewhere in the South Pacific."
"I know it's a longitude and a latitude, Clay, but what's the minus six hundred and some?"
"It's where pilots usually express altitude."
"But it's a minus."
"Yep." Clay snatched the phone off of his night table and dialed the Old Broad as Clair looked quizzically at him. "Equipment change," he whispered to Clair, covering the receiver with his hand.
"Hello, Elizabeth, yes, things are going really well. Yes, they've picked up considerably. Yes. Look, I hate to ask this - I know you've done so much - but I may need one other little thing before we go to look for Nate and your James."
Clair shook her head at Clay's blatant playing of the missing-husband-shoved-up-a-whale's-bum card.
"Yes, well, it may be a little expensive," Clay continued. "But I'm going to need a submarine. No, a small submarine will be fine. If you want it to be yellow, Elizabeth, we'll paint it yellow."
After fifteen minutes of cajoling and consoling the Old Broad, making calls to Libby Quinn and the ship broker in Singapore (who offered him a quantity discount if he bought more than three ships in one month), Clay stood over a world map that was roughly the size of a Ping-Pong table, which Kona had spread out over the office floor, pinning the corners down with coffee cups.
"It's right there, off the coast of Chile," Clair said. She taught fourth-graders, and therefore basic world geography, so she could read a map like nobody's business. Kona placed a bottle cap on the spot where Clair was pointing.
"We'll need nautical charts and the ship's GPS to be exact, but, basically, yep, that's where it is." He looked at Kona. "Nothing else since that message?"
"Same thing for five minutes, then just normal whale gibberish. You think the Snowy Biscuit is with Nate?"
"I think she knew me well enough to know that I'd be thinking I was crazy to be looking. I also think that even if I believe the Old Broad's story about her husband, that doesn't explain how Amy was able to stay down for an hour on fifteen minutes' worth of air, so there was something going on with her that could be connected to this weirdness. She obviously knows more than we know, but - most important - we have nowhere else to look."
Kona looked at Clair, as if maybe she would answer his question. She nodded, and he resumed drinking his beer.
Clay got down on his hands and knees on the map. "The ship broker says there's a deepwater three-man sub here, in Chuuk, Micronesia, that's about to finish up with some filming they're doing of deep shipwrecks."
Kona put a bottle cap on the atoll of Chuuk, Micronesia.
"The owners will let me lease it for up to two months, but then a research team has it reserved for a deepwater survey in the Indian Ocean. The Clair is here, just north of Samoa." Clay pointed.