The Aztec Heresy by Paul Christopher Page A

habit, but he was a stubborn advocate. One of these days he was going to find himself being the last smoker on the planet.
    He lifted the glasses again and looked out at the Zodiac. Finn, his lordship, and the Dutchman were all in the water; the little inflatable was empty. It was safe enough though; there were two buoys bobbing in the water on either side of the rubber boat, each flying the distinctive red and white ‘‘Diver Down’’ pennant.
    He moved the glasses over the water. It was uniformly shallow, sunlight reflecting easily back from the sandy bottom, the terrain mottled with darker areas showing a few deepwater trenches and one or two of the circular formations called blue holes, which were relatively common in the Bahamas Banks.
    The holes had been formed before the last ice age when the entire Bahamas Plateau had been above sea level, the limestone formations creating sinkholes as the rock weathered naturally over time. Because of the poor circulation of water in most Blue Holes, the water was anoxic—sometimes completely devoid of any free oxygen at all and utterly devoid of any marine life. According to the side-scanning sonar, the wreck Finn and the others were investigating was only a few yards from one of the formations. A little bit to one side and the ship would have slid into the hole and vanished, never to be found again.
    Hanson refocused the binoculars and looked a little farther out. According to the information Finn and Lord Billy had been given by the antiquarian book dealer in Paris, the San Anton had gone down on a line between the shoals on the upper end of North Bimini Island, now called the Bluff, and a limestone formation three hundred yards out and only visible at low tide called North Rock.
    According to the detailed charts, the water varied from twenty to thirty feet over most of the area, sloping upward to shoals at the island end and dropping off abruptly into water hundreds of feet deep on the Florida Strait side.
    The captain’s log of the San Anton said the ship had been blown into the shallows during the hurricane, foundered on the shoals, and sank just offshore. Also according to the log, the San Anton had been carrying a small cargo of spices, mostly pepper, and had not been worth attempting any kind of salvage operation. On the other hand, as Lord Billy had pointed out, if the ship had no cargo worth salvaging, why had the captain made such a detailed report of exactly where she had gone down?
    Hanson put down the glasses and lit another cigarette. The whole thing was beyond him; he was still getting used to a regular paycheck and a tropical home base, not to mention the joys of not having to deal with cargoes of banana chips, raw rubber, and once, a nightmarish load of liquid guano. He lifted the glasses and made another careful sweep of the surface.
    There was nothing to see except the sun glinting brilliantly off the small turquoise waves stretching to the horizon. He closed his eyes and let his senses hold the moment. He smiled to himself, feeling the warmth of the tropical sun on his tanned, handsome face. This was what he needed, clear sailing and nothing looming on the horizon.
    Finn floated above the wreck while Billy and Guido did a photographic survey, Billy using one of the big Nikonos digital cameras and Guido holding a two-meter graded survey stick for scale. Before giving up his job as a corporate lawyer in Amsterdam, the muscular Dutchman’s idea of adventure had been thrice-weekly visits to the gym. He hadn’t even known how to swim.
    Like everything else he did, however, Guido never took on a challenge by halves. Eighteen months later and he swam better than Finn and was an expert diver to boot. On top of that he was reading anthropology and archaeology texts by the bushel, and was getting Briney Hanson to teach him celestial navigation.
    Finn stared down at the shape in the sand beneath her. There was no doubt in her mind that it was the San Anton, lost