The Nautical Chart (33 page)

"Weapons," he concluded aloud, "always create problems."

"They also get you out of them when you act like a fool."

He half-turned. Wounded.

"Hey. You said you like to see me fight."

"I said that?"

Now the glow of the distant city and the stern light in the wake revealed the angle of a smile forming beneath the shining tips of her windblown hair. Coy felt his irritation draining away into other feelings.

"Easy," she said, and laughed. "I'm not planning to use it against you."

THE
southern lighthouse was visible now off the port beam —five seconds of light and five seconds of darkness. The swell was making the
Carpanta
pitch more violently, and atop the mast, weakly sketched by the running lights, the wind vane and the blade of the anemometer were spinning intermittently, at the whim of the swaying boat and the absence of wind. By instinct Coy, back in the cockpit, calculated their distance from land, and glanced toward the starboard quarter, where a merchant ship that had been closing on them from the east was now in a free lane. With his hands on the helm—a classic six-spoke wooden wheel nearly three feet in diameter, located in the cockpit behind a small cabin with a windshield and canvas awning—El Piloto was gradually changing course, heading east and keeping the lighthouse in his peripheral vision. Without needing to consult the lighted repeater of the GPS over the binnacle beside the automatic pilot, or the patent log or the echo sounder, Coy knew they were at 36°6'N and 5°20'W He had drawn courses toward or away from that lighthouse too many times on nautical charts—four of the British Admiralty and two Spanish—to forget the latitude and longitude of Punta Europa.

"What do you think of her?" he asked El Piloto.

He didn't look at Tanger. She was still clinging to the backstay and contemplating the black Rock behind them. El Piloto took a while to answer. Coy didn't know whether he was considering the question or consciously delaying the answer.

"I suppose," El Piloto said finally, "you know what you're doing."

Coy twisted his lips in the darkness. "I'm not asking for my sake, Piloto. I'm asking for her." "She's one of those people who's worth more when they stay ashore."

Coy was about to say the obvious: But she hasn't stayed ashore. He could also have added: She's the kind all sailors tell about or invent for their pals, in the cabin or in those old-time forecasdes. The kind that all of them had met in some port somewhere. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't say it. Instead, he stared at the black sky above the swaying mast. Most of the stars must be out, though the glow from the coast obscured them. "We could run into problems, Piloto."

El Piloto didn't answer. He kept correcting the course, spoke by spoke, keeping a wide berth between them and the point. Only after several minutes did he tip his head a little, as if he were checking the echo sounder.

"There are always problems at sea," he said.

"This time it won't only be the sea."

El Piloto's silence communicated his concern.

'Any risk of losing the boat?"

"I don't think it will go that far," Coy reassured him. "I'm referring to problems in general."

El Piloto seemed to think it over.

"You said there might be some money," he said finally. "That would be welcome. There's not a lot of work around." "We're going after treasure."

El Piloto didn't react to that revelation. He kept his focus on the helm and the lighthouse.

"Treasure," he repeated at last in a neutral tone.

"That's right. Emeralds from a long time ago. They're worth a bundle."

His friend nodded, implying that all old emeralds must be worth a bundle, but that he wasn't thinking about that. He released the wheel long enough to reach for the wineskin hanging from the binnacle, throw his head back, and take a long drink. Then he gripped the wheel again, wiping his mouth with the back of the other hand before passing the wineskin to Coy.

"Remind me some time," he said, "to tell you the stories I've heard about treasures."

Coy repeated Piloto's motions, holding up the wineskin, gauging the rocking of the boat to prevent spilling wine on himself. He recognized it. An aromatic, fresh red wine from near Cartagena.

"This story is pretty convincing," he said before taking his last swallow. 'And I think we can locate the wreck."

"Wreck from when?"

"Two hundred and fifty years ago." Coy put the stopper in the skin and hung it up. "Mazarron bay. Not down very far." El Piloto shook his head, skeptical.

"She must have broken up. Fishermen spend their lives snagging their nets on old wrecks________ Sand will have covered everything. What there was to find has already been found, or is lost for all time."

'Ah, you're a man of little faith, Piloto. Like your soul mates at the Sea of Galilee. Until they saw the man walk on water they didn't take him seriously."

"I don't see you walking on water."

^No, I guess not. Or her either."

They both looked at Tanger, motionless at the stern, still outlined against light from the coast. El Piloto had taken a cigarette from his jacket and put it in his mouth.

"Besides," he said, seemingly on a tangent, "I'm getting old."

Or maybe it wasn't a tangent. El Piloto and the
Carpanta
were getting old in the same way that schooner in the port of Barcelona was rotting away, that in the Graveyard of Ships With No Name the frames of merchant ships cut up for scrap were rusting in the rain and sun, corroded by salt, licked by waves on the dirty sand. Just as Coy himself had been rotting as he wandered around the port, tossed up on the shore from a rock in the Indian Ocean that wasn't on any chart. Although, as El Piloto himself—though maybe he wasn't the same Piloto now—had told him more than twenty years ago, men and ships should always stay out to sea, and sink there with dignity.

"I don't know," Coy said, sincerely. "The truth is, I don't know. It may be that in the end we'll end up with a fistful of nothing. You and me, Piloto. Maybe even her."

El Piloto gave a slow affirmative nod, as if that conclusion seemed the most logical. Then he took his lighter from his pocket, struck the wheel on his open palm, blew on the wick, and held it to the tip of the cigarette in his mouth.

"But it isn't the money, is it?" he murmured. 'At least you're not here for that."

Coy smelled tobacco mixed with the acrid scent of the wick, which the breeze, beginning to freshen from behind Punta Europa, rapidly carried west.

"She needs..." He stopped suddenly, feeling ridiculous. "Well. Maybe 'help' isn't the word." .

El Piloto took a long pull on his cigarette.

"You're the one who needs her, is more like it."

In the binnacle, the compass needle showed 070 °. El Piloto touched the corresponding key on the repeater of the automatic pilot, transferring the course to it.

"I've known women like that," he added. "Um-hmmm. I've known a few."

'A woman like that... What do you mean, like that? You don't know anything about her, Piloto. There are still a lot of things I don't know myself."

El Piloto didn't answer. He had abandoned the wheel and was checking the automatic pilot. Beneath his feet he felt the hum of the direction system correcting the course degree by degree in the swell.

"She's bad, Piloto. Real bitching bad."

The master of the
Carpanta
shrugged and sat down on the teak bench to smoke, protected from the breeze blowing stronger from the bow. He turned toward the motionless figure at the stern.

"Well, she must be cold, with only that jersey."

"She'll put something on."

El Piloto sat smoking in silence. Coy was still standing, leaning against the binnacle, leg slightly spread and hands in his pockets. The night dew began to collect on the deck and seep through the ripped seams in the back of his jacket, the collar and lapels of which he had turned up. In spite of everything, he was relishing the familiar rocking of the boat, his only regret was that the headwind was preventing them from setting the sails. That would lessen the motion of the boat and eliminate the annoying sound of the engine.

"There aren't any bad women," El Piloto suddenly announced. 'Just like there aren't any bad boats... It's the men on board who make them one way or the other."

Coy said nothing, and El Piloto fell silent again. A green light was swiftly slipping up between them and the land, approaching the port quarter. Against the light from the lighthouse Coy recognized the long, low silhouette of an HJ turbolaunch run by Spanish customs. Based in Algeciras, this was a routine patrol to interdict hashish from Morocco and smugglers from the Rock.

"What are you looking for in her?"

"I want to count her freckles, Piloto. Have you noticed? She has thousands, and I want to count all of them, one by one, trace them with my finger as if she was a nautical chart. I want to trace a course from cape to cape, drop anchor in the inlets, and sail every inch of her skin, hugging the coast the whole time. You understand?"

"I understand. You want to get her in bed."

From the customs launch a light exploded, casting for the name of the
Carpanta,
for the registration number and port of registry on her sides. From the stern, Tanger asked what they wanted. Coy told her.

'Jack-offs," El Piloto murmured, cupping his hands above his eyes, dazzled by the spot.

He never had anything bad to say, and Coy had rarely heard him swear. He had the old upbringing of humble, honorable people, but he couldn't abide customs officers. He had played cat and mouse with them too often back in the days when he would row his little lateen-rigged sailboat, the
Santa Lucia,
to round off the day's work by picking up boxes of blond tobacco thrown overboard from merchant ships to people signaling with a flashlight, hidden outside Escombreras island. One part for him, another for the Guardia Civil on the quay, and the main portion for the people who hired him and never ran the risks. Tobacco could have made El Piloto rich had he worked for himself, but he was always satisfied with enough for his wife to have a new dress on Palm Sunday, or to get her out of the kitchen and invite her to a fish fry in one of the cafes around the port. Sometimes, when friends pushed hard and there was too much blood boiling and too many devils to get rid of, the fruit of one whole night's risk and labor fighting a murderous sea would be shot in a few hours' time, on music, drinks, and commercial ass in the dives of Molinete.

"That isn't it, Piloto." Coy couldn't take his eyes off Tanger, lit now by the customs spotlight. 'At least, it isn't just that."

"Of course it is. And until you go to bed with her you'll never
clear the decks____ Supposing you ever get anywhere with her."

"This woman's got balls. I swear."

"They all do. Think of me. When I have a pain, it's my wife who takes me to the doctor's office. 'Sit right here, Pedro, the doctor's coming....' You know her. But let me tell you, she would bust before she'd say a word. There are women who if they were heifers would give birth to nothing but bulls for the ring."

"It isn't just that. I saw an old snapshot. And a dented silver cup. And a dog licked my hand, and now it's dead."

El Piloto took the cigarette from his mouth and clicked his tongue.

"Out here, anything you can't put in a logbook is useless," he said. "You have to leave all the rest on shore. If you don't, you lose ships and men."

Its inspection complete, the customs launch changed course. The green light on its side turned to white at the stern, and then red when it swerved and showed its port side before cutting all lights and getting on more discreetly with the night's hunt. Seconds later, it was nothing more than a shadow moving rapidly west in the direction of Punta Carnero.

The
Carpanta
gave a heavy roll, and Tanger appeared in the cockpit. In the rolling of the swell she was moving at the pace of a toddler, trying to get a careful grip and maintain her balance before taking each step. As she moved past them, she put her hand on Coy's shoulder, and he wondered if she was getting seasick. For some perverse reason, the thought amused the hell out of him.

"I'm cold," she said.

"There's a slicker below," El Piloto offered. "You can use it." "Thank you."

They watched her disappear down into the well. El Piloto continued to smoke for a while in silence. When finally he spoke, it was as if he were renewing an interrupted conversation.

"You always read too many books— That can't lead to any good."

X

The Coast of the Corsairs

You put your life within three or four fingers" width of death, the thickness of the ships wood hull. DIEGO
GARCIA
DE
PALACIOS
,
Instruction nautica para navegar

The east wind was blowing onshore, though it turned as soon as the sun rose a little above the horizon and they were again heading directly into it. It wasn't very strong, barely ten or twelve knots, but enough to change the heavy swell into rough, choppy waves. Pitching and propelled by the motor through a spray that sometimes left traces of salt on the cockpit windshield, the
Carpanta
passed to the south of Malaga, reached parallel 36°30 and then set a course due east.

At first Tanger showed no sign of being seasick. Coy watched her sitting quietly on one of the wood seats affixed to the rail at the stern, wrapped in El Piloto's warm slicker with the lapels turned up to hide half her face in the darkness. A little after midnight, when the swell grew stronger, he took her a self-inflating life jacket and a security harness and fastened the carabiner to the backstay himself. He asked her how she was; she replied fine, thank you, and he was amused remembering the box of Drama-mine he'd just seen tying open on the bunk El Piloto had assigned her in a stern cabin when he went to get the jackets and harnesses. Sitting where she was, the night breeze in her face would make her feel less queasy. Even so, he told her she would be better off sitting on the port fin, farther away from the exhaust fumes. Tanger said that she was just fine where she was. He shrugged and returned to the cockpit. She held on another ten minutes before moving.