Chapter 1

Reunion Island, Southern Indian Ocean

The island of Reunion—or La Réunion , as the locals called it—sat in the tropics five hundred miles east of Madagascar and nearly two thousand miles due south of Saudi Arabia. A domain of France, it was a natural paradise as dramatic and beautiful as the famed island of Tahiti. It boasted stunning volcanic peaks, rainforests of brilliant green, and smooth, black sand beaches made from eroded lava that had been ground to dust by the waves.

Despite the appearance of a deserted tropical isle, Reunion was home to nearly a million French-speaking citizens. It drew tens of thousands of tourists every month and, according to some, nearly as many sharks.

Because of its location, Reunion acted like a rest stop on an oceanic path linking the waters of Australia and those of South Africa. Marine biologists called the route Shark Highway, as it was traveled heavily by great whites, bull sharks, makos, and hammerheads. As a result, the little French island in the Indian Ocean had become the shark attack capital of the world, dealing with dozens of attacks every year and scores of fatalities.

Unhappy with the nickname their island had earned, Reunion’s government took action, stringing nets around certain beaches to cordon them off from the sea while imposing strict no swimming/no surfing rules outside the protected zones. The program reduced the number of attacks dramatically, eventually culminating in a full year without any fatalities.

It was a stunning success, but no one really believed the ocean-dwelling predators were gone. No one, that is, except an American named Kurt Austin.

Kurt was a tall man of around forty, with broad shoulders and a lean build. He was the director of Special Projects for an American government agency known as NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, which operated around the world performing scientific research, locating sunken ships, and working with other nations on issues involving the sea.

In a joint effort with the University of Reunion, Kurt and his colleague Joe Zavala had spent the last six weeks in, on, and under the waters around Reunion, running a study on the shark population. Strangely enough, they’d had a hard time finding any, traveling farther and farther out to sea in search of significant examples to tag.

Bait hadn’t drawn the sharks. Recorded sounds of struggling fish hadn’t drawn them in. Even buckets of blood and a floating tuna carcass they’d come across hadn’t brought anything larger than a few juveniles to the table. It was as if the rest stop had closed its doors and all the adult sharks in the community had moved on.

It was a puzzling discovery, one that Kurt wrestled with even as he stood in the main departure lounge in Roland Garros Airport, waiting for the arrival of the long-haul aircraft that would take him and Joe off the island and away from the mystery. Had there not been other obligations waiting for them back in Washington, he would have canceled the trip home and stuck around in search of answers.

A tap on the shoulder broke his reverie. Turning to look, he found no one behind him, only a small metal pointer with four rake-like fingers protruding from it. The telescoping device led back to his closest friend, Joe Zavala, who sat at a high-top table with a hefty club sandwich and a stack of pommes frites in front of him.

Having drawn Kurt’s attention, Joe retracted the lightweight aluminum back scratcher and tucked it in his pocket. Kurt recalled Joe buying the device for five dollars at a kiosk the day they arrived. “I can’t believe you got through security with that thing.”

“ This ,” Joe insisted, “is a useful tool. It’s made my life easier in every way. For example, I didn’t even have to get off my seat to bother you.”

“Not sure that’s a good thing.”

Joe had short dark hair, dark brown eyes, and a fit build. He seemed to be perpetually smiling, as if life, good or bad, was always grand. He motioned toward the plate in front of him. “You want a bite of this sandwich?” he asked. “Number one rule of travel: never skip a meal; you don’t know when you’ll get another chance to eat.”

Kurt shook his head in mild amazement. Joe was ten years younger than Kurt and several inches shorter, but he still looked like the middleweight boxer he’d been during his time in the Navy. Somehow, he seemed to eat all day long and never gain a pound.

“I’m sure they’ll feed us on the plane,” Kurt said. “Besides, not everyone has your enviable, overactive metabolism. You know, we’ve been here six weeks, and I can’t actually remember a time when you weren’t eating.”

“That’s the key,” Joe said. “A constant supply of food keeps the energy level high and burns more calories.”

Kurt wasn’t sure the science held up on that, but at the buzzing of his phone, he let it go.

Pulling the device from his pocket, he tapped in a password and looked at the screen. A text had appeared, but there was no name, email address, or phone number attached to it.

The cynic in him figured it for spam. And if the phone had been an off-the-shelf, commercially available unit, that would have made sense. His friends were always complaining about robocalls and phishing texts, and the endless numbers of attractive foreign women who apparently wanted to spend time with them. But Kurt’s phone was a NUMA-issued device, specially designed to avoid any such pitfalls. All communications to and from the phone went through NUMA’s satellites and a highly secured computer system back in Washington, D.C., which should have made it impervious to such intrusions.

As Kurt studied the message he sensed something else odd about it. Not only was there no sign as to who the sender might be, but the message wasn’t complete. As he watched, additional letters were appearing one at a time, as if being keyed in by the world’s slowest typist. When the last letter appeared, the message read cryptically.

I’ve sent them to you…Find them…Their fate lies in your hands…

The idea that he was looking at spam fell away. There was no link to click, no invitation to write back, no offer of any kind. Just the odd phrases and a lengthy string of numbers and letters that looked like a password or the product code for a computer program.

Making the entire episode even stranger, the message vanished right before his eyes. He searched for it in various programs and applications, but found no record of it. It was just gone.

Joe looked over and noticed the irritation on Kurt’s face. “What’s the matter? Can’t figure out today’s Wordle?”

“No,” Kurt said. “Phone seems to have a ghost inside. Have you been getting any weird messages?”

Joe shook his head.

“I need to call our tech gurus,” Kurt said. “Something odd is going on here.”

Before he could place the call, a commotion at the security checkpoint caught his eye. Three policemen and two men in suits had come rushing into the building, cutting the lines and then badging their way past the screening crew. Now on the boarding side of the terminal, they pushed through the sparse crowd of passengers and came directly toward Kurt and Joe.

“Excuse me,” the policemen demanded. “Excuse me, please step aside.”

Kurt put the phone away as the men came closer. “I’m sure this is about that back scratcher.”

The trio of uniformed policemen arrived first, flanking Kurt and Joe, as if to keep them from running off. The men in suits arrived seconds later. The leader of the two was a man of perhaps sixty. He had curly gray hair and wore a white linen suit. He was perspiring and winded. He stopped to wipe his brow before addressing them.

“Are you Kurt Austin?”

Joe turned away and took a bite of his sandwich. “I wouldn’t answer that,” he said under his breath with a mouth full of food.

“I am,” Kurt said. “And this is Joe Zavala, my associate.”

“Really?” Joe said, turning around. “You couldn’t leave me out of this?”

Kurt grinned at Joe’s pretend frustration.

“You two men work for NUMA,” the man in the suit said. “The American marine biology agency?”

Close enough , Kurt thought. “That’s right,” he said. “What can we do for you?”

“My name is Marcel Lacourt,” the man said. “I am the prefect here on Reunion. What you Americans would call the island’s governor. I officially request your assistance.”

“To do what?” Kurt asked warily.

“There’s been a mass stranding of whales on the far side of the island,” Lacourt said. “I’m being told there are a large number of other sea creatures swimming in the bay and close by offshore. More whales. And schools of fish. The tide is high right now, but it will change soon. The volunteers are afraid more animals will strand themselves during the night.”

It was late in the afternoon.

“How many whales?”

“One very large and the others smaller,” Lacourt said. “I must tell you, this doesn’t happen here. We have sharks. We have whale watching. But we’ve never had a mass beaching of these magnificent creatures. We’re not equipped to deal with such a thing or even certain how to handle it. We’re hoping you can help.”

Nothing more was needed. While Joe wolfed down the last part of the sandwich, Kurt grabbed his backpack off the seat and nodded toward the exit. The flight back would have to wait.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll make plans along the way.”