Page 23

22

HAVEN

Thursday

T he next morning, when I called the Archivio Marittimo di Napoli to inquire about the Aquila , a young woman answered. After an awkward exchange in which I told her, to the best of my ability, that I knew only elementary Italian, she reluctantly resorted to English. I gave her my name, and she gave me hers, Chloe.

“How can I help you?” she eventually asked, her tone cool and curt. In the background, I heard her nails drumming.

I got right to it. “I’m looking for information on a ship that sank off the coast of Positano, near Li Galli. The vessel’s name was Aquila .”

“When did it sink?” Chloe asked.

“I—I’m not sure.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Do you know what…century? Or the name of the shipbuilder, or owner, or any of the crew?”

I placed my hand over my face, glad she couldn’t see me. “No,” I replied. “None of that. Just the ship’s name.”

“One moment.” I heard Chloe typing away. “Well,” she said, “there are fourteen vessels with the name Aquila in our records.”

“Fourteen?”

“Right. A few records from the late 1700s, a handful from the 1800s…” She continued typing. “The rest from 1912.”

“Do your records indicate whether a ship was retired or scrapped or sank?” I asked.

She huffed. “Our database is somewhat limited. I’d need to pull the records for each vessel to see what information we have.”

“I see.” I paused, hesitant to ask more. She was one of the more irritable archivists I’d encountered. But the Aquila was important—the very wreck, I thought, that my father might have been diving when he’d spotted the loot. And I wouldn’t forget his sage advice: Sometimes the answers aren’t in the water, but out of it.

“Can I come into the archive, then?” I asked. “I’m perfectly happy to sort through the records myself.”

Her tone softened, albeit not by much. “Of course. We’re open until five o’clock on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.”

Today was Thursday.

“So,” Chloe continued, “if you can’t make it in today, we can make an appointment for next week.”

I scratched the back of my neck, disappointed. I’d have much rather gone on another dive today, particularly since Conrad would be out there. But I didn’t want to wait another four days to learn about this ship.

“I’ll be there in a couple hours,” I told her, already reaching for my bag.

***

From Positano, I took a bus into Naples. During the trip, I’d texted Enzo, telling him I couldn’t make our afternoon dive. When he asked what I was up to in Naples, I kept it vague. Visiting a few archives , I said, and if there’s time, Museo del Mare —the Museum of the Sea.

The Archivio Marittimo di Napoli was located in central Naples, a few blocks north of the main shipping port, down a narrow cobblestone side street. It was two stories high, with a peach-colored stucco facade and a few barred windows. I approached the arched stone doorway, twice my height, and pushed open the door.

Sitting at a desk in the low-lit front room was a woman. The small placard in front of her read Chloe . “Hi,” I said, hoping she was a bit more friendly in person. “I’m Haven. I called earli—”

“Yes, hello,” she interrupted, pulling her gaze from the screen.

Chloe was small-statured, with platinum-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. She invited me to sign into the visitors’ log, then she slid a form across the desk—the front was in Italian, but the back was in English—and asked me to fill it out. Afterward, she took me through a door and down a hall. The deeper we went into the building, the darker and cooler it became. I fought off a chill, wishing I’d brought a sweater.

Eventually, Chloe opened yet another door, and into the archive room we went.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, coming to a standstill.

She smiled, her first sign of warmth toward me. “We hear that a lot here.”

I was not in a single room, not really. Instead, it was a deep row of adjoining rooms, each separated by an archway. Along the walls were enormous floor-to-ceiling metal shelves crammed with books and manuscripts wrapped in brown kraft paper. A ladder was mounted to each wall for ease of accessing the upper shelves.

A quick glance at a nearby shelf told me the archive was well-managed. Security cameras were mounted throughout, and a digital thermostat read nineteen degrees Celsius.

Chloe led me to the next room, which was identical to the first, with the exception of a large vent mounted to the ceiling. A dehumidifier, Chloe explained, before leading me to the last room, where a pair of outdated computers sat on a wide desk. After showing me how to use the database—which was entirely in Italian—she left me alone, reminding me that the archive closed in three hours.

I sat down at the computer, watching the cursor blink above an entry field. When I’d studied Italian before this trip, I’d worried mostly about conversational phrases—how to get around, what to order at restaurants. I hadn’t learned anything as technical as this. Sighing, I pulled out my phone and opened the Google Translate app, trying to make sense of the database.

Eventually, I managed to plug the word Aquila into a search field, and I was relieved when the number of records returned: 14. Just as Chloe had said on the phone.

The record identifiers were, I assumed, tied to the actual documents in the archive rooms. I’d been to many archives before, but I had to admit, this felt a bit foreign: I was surrounded by documents in a language I didn’t know, tied to a database I couldn’t understand, with a single unfriendly employee I wasn’t keen to ask for help.

For each of the fourteen records, I jotted down what seemed to be the room number, the cabinet code, and the shelf identifier. I went in search of the first record, climbing a ladder to reach the uppermost shelf. I was thoroughly delighted when I spotted a brown paper bundle bearing the code I’d been searching for.

I brought the bundle back to the desk. After untying the cord wrapped around it, I discovered it was a manifest of more than two thousand passengers, dated 1912. There was no way the hull I’d spotted was this large. Even a crew of a hundred would be pushing it.

I rewrapped the bundle and returned it to its spot.

I pulled a few more records from various rooms, discouraged when they, too, related to the 1912 Aquila . As well-labeled as the archive seemed to be, I would have thought they’d put all records relating to a single vessel in one place. Still, I worked quickly down my list, determined to make this visit worth my time.

As I worked, I wasn’t thinking of Conrad or Enzo or even Project Relic. Instead, I thought of my father. He’d be proud of me for digging into this. Mal would be proud of me, too, for thinking outside the box.

Finally, I unwrapped the records for a different Aquila . This next bundle consisted of blueprint and shipbuilding plans, nearly three dozen of them, all dated 1798. Though written in Italian, they detailed the vessel from various angles and cross sections. But tucked behind the blueprints was a certificate indicating the ship had been retired and scrapped in the mid-nineteenth century. In Gothenburg, Sweden.

It wasn’t a match.

I pulled a few more records. Two were in German; another was in Spanish. In one of the bundles, I found an illegible journal and a tiny comb, both marked with a label bearing the word relitto , or flotsam. This was briefly encouraging, as this indicated the ship had sunk, but after a few more minutes, I put my elbows on the table and bent forward, frustrated. This particular ship had sunk in the Adriatic Sea. Another nonmatch.

I began to mull on the very real possibility that the Aquila I’d spotted underwater did not have any records, at least at this particular archive. There was only one record left to pull.

Fighting a sense of defeat, I brought the last bundle of documents to the desk and untied it. It was just after four o’clock, and with the way things were going, I’d be headed back to Positano in a few minutes’ time.

I was shocked, then, when what I saw first was a leather pouch with a thick overlay of tar and a tiny, faded engraving on the front:

***

Voyage Journal of Holmes Foster

Boston, Massachusetts

A few folded documents were also in the bundle, but I went first for the pouch. I carefully pried it open, withdrawing the leather-bound journal inside. Both pouch and journal were badly stained, the leather bleached and rigid in places. Heavy water damage.

Like the engraved title on the cover, it was written in English, though in many places, the handwriting had faded so badly, the words were illegible. Still, many of the passages were clear, and I quickly gleaned that the author—Holmes—had been a sailor on a brig called the Aquila in 1821. I chose an entry at random, learning that he hated his fellow crew, whom he thought belligerent and unprincipled. There were multiple references to the Mazza brothers —I jotted this down in my notebook—and their bad business dealings, which Holmes called deplorable .

I set the journal aside, then studied the other document in the bundle, a newspaper article laminated in a thin plastic covering. It was dated May 1, 1821, and written in Italian. L’Aquila Affonda , the headline began. Causa Sconosciuta. I pulled out my phone, navigated back to Google Translate, and hovered it over the article. Instantly, the app translated the headline: The Aquila Sinks, Cause Unknown.

I tried this same technique with the rest of the article, but the typeset was small, and the laminated cover caught the glare of the lights overhead. Still, I was able to glean that the Aquila had gone down in precisely the spot I’d gone diving: the doomed waterway skirting the Li Galli islets.

I sat back in my chair, feeling confident—albeit not positive—that this article related to the wreck my father and I had both found.

I skimmed what little else the app had translated. Twenty-five men had perished in the sinking. One sailor, Nico, had been gravely injured before the sinking—but how news of this had reached the mainland was unclear. His injuries, the article stated, were the result of an incident blamed on another crew member.

And then, my jaw fell: the guilty party, according to the article, was none other than Holmes Foster. He’d been imprisoned in the brig’s hold, with the intention of placing him under arrest upon disembarkation in Positano.

A feeling of excitement rose in my chest. This ship had sunk in precisely the right location. The deplorable bad business dealings, the incident onboard… I couldn’t help but wonder if all of this had to do with the goods onboard.

Goods or… loot . Gems.

I glanced back at Holmes’s diary. Guilty or not, he hadn’t even made it to Positano. None of them had. They’d gone down, along with whatever else was on that boat.

I touched the waterproof pouch again. A few flakes of black waxy coating dislodged and stuck to my fingers, but otherwise it had sufficiently protected Holmes’s journal within. It must have been recovered as flotsam, eventually—the tales of a man lost at sea. I was overwhelmed with a sudden urge to curl up on a chair and read every last page.

I glanced at my phone. The archive would be closing in less than half an hour. It wasn’t enough time to read the journal, and I didn’t want to make multiple return trips to Naples. I couldn’t photograph every page, either—that would take hours, not to mention the added headache of sorting through hundreds of images.

So I did the next best thing. I hit the Record button, held my cell phone over the journal, and began to turn the pages. Later, I could rewatch the video, pausing as needed to read the journal at my own pace.

An automated recording played overhead, announcing the archive was about to close. I snapped a few additional photos, including the waterproof pouch and the news article, then I carefully rewrapped the bundle and returned it to its place.

When I returned to the entry hall, Chloe was gathering her things to leave. She gave me a nod. “Find what you were looking for?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think so.” I took a few steps toward the door, then paused, remembering what I’d written down in my notebook. “Have you ever heard of the Mazza brothers?” I asked. “I came across their name in one of the records.”

She chuckled. “Every historian in Naples has heard of the Mazza brothers. In the early 1800s, two-thirds of the ships in and out of Napoli were owned by them.”

“Wow,” I said. “Impressive.”

“Eh,” she said, cringing. “They were bad men—ran around with thieves, corsairs. Always packing their ships with stolen goods. They were swindlers, too, known for pulling tricks and planting decoys.” She grabbed her purse, flung it over her shoulder. “They often stuffed their real goods in unexpected places.” She shrugged. “Entertaining for us archivists, to be honest. We have plenty of records on the Mazzas, should you need them.”

I thanked her, said goodbye, and stepped outside.

Always packing their ships with stolen goods , she’d said. I glanced at the azure sky, thinking of my father.

I was onto something, I felt sure of it.