The Ruins

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I want to thank my wife, Elizabeth Hill, my editor, Victoria Wilson, and my agents, Gail Hochman and Lynn Pleshette, for their very generous assistance in the completion of this book. The following people also read the manuscript in a still-unfinished state and offered criticism and comments that were invariably helpful: Michael Cendejas, Stuart Cornfeld, Carlyn Coviello, Carol Edwards, Marianne Merola, John Pleshette, Doug and Linda Smith, and Ben Stiller. I thank them all.

They met Mathias on a day trip to Cozumel. They'd hired a guide to take them snorkeling over a local wreck, but the buoy marking its location had broken off in a storm, and the guide was having difficulty finding it. So they were just swimming about, looking at nothing in particular. Then Mathias rose toward them from the depths, like a merman, a scuba tank on his back. He smiled when they told him their situation, and led them to the wreck. He was German, dark from the sun, and very tall, with a blond crew cut and pale blue eyes. He had a tattoo of an eagle on his right forearm, black with red wings. He let them take turns borrowing his tank so they could drop down thirty feet and see the wreck up close. He was friendly in a quiet way, and his English was only slightly accented, and when they pulled themselves into their guide's boat to head back to shore, he climbed in, too.

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