The Explorer's Code Read Free

Joel, put her soup mug down on a gear locker, picked up her skin suit, and walked to the railing to wring it out. She squeezed it extra hard, out of frustration with Joel.
    “Delia, you’ve been working seven days a week for ten months straight,” said Joel, as he jumped down and reattached his flip-flops to his feet, hopping on one foot and then the other.
    “So have you, Joel.”
    “ I haven’t been invited to Monaco.” Joel looked determined.
    “Come on, Delia. You can’t refuse to go if it’s an award for your great-great-grandfather,” Susan added. “Unless there is someone else who can accept it?”
    “No . . .” said Cordelia. “I’m the only one left in the family. Except for a distant cousin in England.”
    “You really should go. It’s not like Monaco is that hard to get to. You could be back in less than a week.”
    “I guess I could check the dates . . .” Cordelia wavered.
    “Look,” said Susan, “I know what you’re worrying about. I can take care of the manipulators.”
    The clawed pincers on the sub were not extending to their full seventy-four inches. A critical component of the submarine, they were used like hands to deploy instruments and pick up marine samples.
    “That one stern thruster is not right either,” Cordelia added. “We can’t turn the way we should.”
    “I know. I’ll check all six thrusters. I promise,” said Joel.
    “You have to swear to call me if there is anything major.”
    “Hey, you can count on it,” Joel agreed, hastily.
    “And, Susan, the pumps for the seawater need to be checked; the variable ballast has been sluggish.”
    “Right. I’ll check it.”
    “It’s decided then,” Joel said, walking away quickly, his flip-flops flapping against his heels. Cordelia glared after him. She wanted to clobber him.
    He stopped and turned back. “Oh, I just remembered, you have another message. I forgot to write it down. Your lawyer in New York—Jim Gardiner. He says to call him, it’s urgent.”

Villa San Angelo, Anacapri, Capri, Italy
    C harles Bonnard looked away from the majestic view of the sea and saw the light blinking on his cell phone. He retrieved it from the stone parapet and sat down in the alcove. After looking at the water, his eyes had to adjust to the shade. It took a moment to register the number of the missed call.
    John Sinclair’s international cell number—that was odd. They weren’t supposed to talk until the end of the week. He pressed the voice-mail retrieve button and listened.
    “Charles, I’m heading to Monaco a few days early . . .”
    Sinclair was going back to Monaco already? There could only be one reason: a five-foot-eleven, 118-pound bundle of destruction named Shari. What stunt could she be pulling now? Poor guy. Sinclair sure knew how to pick them—each one worse than the last.
    Charles sighed and walked back into his house. He had better go meet Sinclair. But he really didn’t want to go back to Monaco and leave this little piece of paradise.
    Villa San Angelo was built high into the hills of Capri and stood apart from the mayhem of the fashionable and famous down below. While the glitterati enjoyed their international watering holes in town, above them on the hillside Charles gloried in monastic isolation. Three hundred meters above the sea, his villa claimed the spectacular views that had been enjoyed by the ancient Romans when they built upon this spot. Charles had planted the Mediterranean garden out back. With his own hands, he had unearthed bits of Roman artifacts buried in the soil. Those marble fragments now held places of honor on the walls of the villa.
    He walked into his bedroom to pack. The Villa San Angelo’s beautifulwhitewashed rooms had the pure décor of a monastery. It dated back to the late nineteenth century. When he first bought the house, the locals had repeated the legend of an angel who had been seen sitting on the cliff side looking out to sea. It was his favorite place in the world,