Absolute Pressure Read Online Free Page B

to keep client confidentiality. He knew if the lawyers talked, he could sue them. He also wantedto hire them to help him keep the rest of the treasure once he found it.”
    â€œIt doesn’t seem like the lawyers kept it much of a secret,” I said.
    â€œYou’re right. But the guy died just after hiring them. He didn’t have a family or anything. No will. Once he died, these three lawyers figured they might as well look for the treasure themselves.”
    â€œTreasure,” I said. “Real treasure. Not like the toy treasure I hid in the wreck for you yesterday.”
    â€œReal treasure. Big, big treasure. Because when the lawyers found out more about the coins...”
    Uncle Gord leaned across the table. His voice became a whisper. “Ian, they had a professor look at the coins. They’re from a Spanish ship that came here in the 1700s. It was delivering gold from the king of Spain. Pirates hit the ship and took everything. A week later, the pirate ship went down in a hurricane off the coast of Florida. The coins today would be worth over ten million dollars.”
    It took me a second to realize I was sucking air through my straw. I had been listening so closely, I had drunk all my iced tea without knowing it.
    â€œYou know this for sure?” I asked.
    â€œFor sure,” he said. “The lawyers paid for careful research in libraries and museums. These coins were made for a special occasion. The birth of the king’s daughter. They could have only come from one ship.”
    â€œBut how did the guy find the coins when he was scuba diving? Didn’t he find the ship too?”
    â€œThe last hurricane,” he said.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou know, the biggest storm to hit Florida in two hundred years. These lawyers figure the storm moved some sand around in shallow water. The same sand that was covering the pirate ship. Their guess is that the storm caused the coins to spread out from the ship.”
    Uncle Gord took a paper napkin. With a pencil from his pants pocket, he began todraw the different islands around Key West. He also drew some arrows going south to north.
    â€œHere’s the Gulf Stream,” he said, pointing at the arrows. “You know how strong it is.”
    I did. All divers did. The stream was caused by water heating in the south and flowing north toward the poles of the earth, where the water cooled again.
    â€œThese lawyers had weather scientists make charts,” Uncle Gord continued. “The charts showed the currents and the storm movement of the hurricane. The charts showed how strong the current was during the storm and how fast it moved. From those charts and from where the coins were found, they tried to track how far the coins would have moved.”
    I became excited. “Because if they can track the coins, they can track them backward to where they came from.”
    Uncle Gord grinned. “Now you know why I agreed to help them. They have narrowed the search to an area twenty mileslong and half a mile wide. Right where the Gulf Stream is the strongest.”
    His grin became a frown. “But twenty miles long and half a mile wide is still ten square miles. That’s a lot of ocean floor to explore. The four of us have been doing it on weekends. We look around and mark off the area on our map so that we don’t go back to it again. We figure it might take a year or two to search all of it.”
    Thelma was coming toward us with our French fries. I waited until she was gone before I said anything.
    â€œThat’s why you wanted people to think you were spear fishing,” I said. “You don’t want anyone else looking for it.”
    Uncle Gord dipped one of the fries into ketchup. “Exactly,” he said. “Night is a great time to do it. We have good lights for underwater, and fewer people can see us. But from what you said, it’s not much of a secret anymore. And that’s bad news for two