Part 13 (1/2)

”She thinks Gibraltar is fine. But she won't come to the office. She prefers neutral ground.”

The smile now revealed teeth that were strong and white. The shark was swimming in his own waters, thought Coy. Catching a scent.

'And what does that woman consider neutral ground?” ”The viewpoint on the Rock that looks down on the airport would be fine.”

Palermo reflected.

”Old Willis? Why not? What time?”

”Tonight, at nine.”

Palermo glanced at his watch and thought a second. The cruel smile began to take shape again.

”Tell her I'll be there__ Will you come, too?”

”You'll know when you show up.”

The less than friendly eyes studied Coy from head to toe, and the treasure hunter laughed a disagreeable laugh. He didn't seem even slightly impressed.

”You think you're a tough kid, don't you?” Suddenly his tone was more intimate, but much less pleasant. ”G.o.d almighty. You're a puppet, like all the others. That's what you are. They use us like... Use us and throw us away. Oh yes. That's what they do. And you...

I know your situation. I have my ways____ Well... You know what I'm saying. I know your problem. After Madrid I made it my job to find out. That s.h.i.+p in the Indian Ocean. Two years' suspension is a long time, isn't it? I, however... What I mean is that I have friends with s.h.i.+ps who need officers. I could help you.”

Coy frowned. Palermo's words made him feel intruders were going through all his drawers. The sense of turning to a window and finding someone there, spying.

”I don't need help.”

”Sure. I see....” Palermo looked him over again. ”But you're not fooling anyone, you know? You must think you're different, but__ G.o.d almighty. I've seen a hundred like you. Wise up. You think you're the only one who reads books and goes to movies? But these aren't Asian ports, and you're not... Your story wouldn't make a good B-movie. Peter O'Toole had a lot more cla.s.s. And when she... Well. She'll set you adrift, like those plundered ghost s.h.i.+ps whose crews have vanished- In this novel there aren't any second chances. Let's see if you can get that straight. In the mystery of this lost s.h.i.+p the captain loses his license permanently. And the girl. s.h.i.+t. The b.i.t.c.h spits in his face____ No, don't look at me like that. I don't have any power to see into the future. But your problem is so elementary it makes me laugh.”

He didn't laugh, however. He was somber, still leaning against the table, gripping it. The green and the brown eyes were focused somewhere beyond Coy, absorbed.

”I know them inside out,” he said. ”b.i.t.c.hes.”

He shook his head. For a while he seemed to be in a trance, then he looked around, as if recognizing where he was. His own office.

”They play,” he added, ”with weapons we don't even know exist. And they're much cleverer than we are. While we were spending centuries talking in loud voices and drinking beer, going off to Crusades or football games with our pals, they were right there, sewing and cooking and watching___ ”

Gold clicked as he went to a small cabinet and took out a bottle of Cutty Sark and two short, wide gla.s.ses of heavy crystal. He took ice from a bucket, poured a generous shot of whiskey into each gla.s.s, and returned with them.

”I know what you're reeling,” he said.

He kept one gla.s.s and set the other on the table in front of Coy.

”They have been, and still are, our hostages, you know? He took a drink, and then another, his eyes never leaving Coy. ”That means that their morals and ours are... I don't know. Different. You and I can be cruel because of ambition, l.u.s.t, stupidity, or ignorance. For them, though... Call it calculation, if you want. Or necessity... A defensive weapon, if you get my meaning. They're bad because they gamble everything, and because they need to survive. That's why they fight to the death when they fight. The d.a.m.ned wh.o.r.es have no fallback position.”

The shark's smile was back. He pointed to his wrist.

”Imagine a watch... a watch that has to be stopped. You and I would stop it like any other man-smash it with a hammer. Not a woman. No. When she has the opportunity, she takes it apart piece by piece. Lays out every single part, so no one can ever put it back together. So it will never tell time again. Ever. G.o.d almighty. I've seen them- Yes. They take even the most manly manly man's works apart, with a gesture, or a look, or a simple word.” man's works apart, with a gesture, or a look, or a simple word.”

Again he drank, and his lips twisted. A rancorous shark. Thirsty.

”They kill you and you keep walking, not even knowing you're dead.”

Coy resisted the impulse to reach out for the untouched gla.s.s on the table. Not just for the drink, which was the least of it, but to be drinking with the man there before him. Crew Sanders was too far away; he was tempted by the ancient male ritual, and after all, he reflected, it was only logical he would be. He was now desperately nostalgic for bars filled with guys spouting incoherent words with alcohol-thickened tongues, bottles turned upside down in ice buckets, and women who didn't dream of sunken s.h.i.+ps or had stopped believing in them. Blondes who weren't young but were bold, like the ones in the song of the Sailor and the Captain, dancing alone, not caring that lots were being cast for them. Refuge and oblivion at so much an hour. Women who didn't have silver-framed photos of themselves as little girls, times when dry land was habitable for a brief while, a kind of stopover before returning past cranes and sheds gray in the pale morning light to any s.h.i.+p about to cast anchor, while cats and rats played hide and seek on the dock. I went ash.o.r.e, the Tuc.u.man Torpedoman had said once in Veracruz. I went ash.o.r.e, but I only got as far as the first bar.

”Nine o'clock at the viewpoint,” said Coy.

He was filled with an uneasy, desolate self-loathing. He gritted his teeth, feeling the muscles of his jaw tighten. Then he turned on his heel and walked to the door.

”You think I'm tying?” Palermo asked to his back. ”G.o.d almighty. You'll find out before long- d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l, man. You should be at sea. This is no place for you. And you'll pay for it, of course.” Now his voice was exasperated. ”We all pay sooner or later, and your turn is coming. You'll pay for what happened at the Palace, and you'll pay for not wanting to listen to me. You'll pay for believing that lying b.i.t.c.h. And then it won't be a question of finding a s.h.i.+p, but of finding a hole to crawl into___________ When she, whatever she has in mind, and I, have both finished with you.”

Coy opened the door. Only one voyage will you make without cost, he remembered. The Berber was there, quiet and threatening, blocking his way. The secretary peered with curiosity from her desk, and in the background, on his chair, Kiskoros was cleaning his fingernails as if none of it had anything to do with him. After consulting his boss, questioning and silent, the Berber stepped aside. As Coy walked out the door, the treasure hunter's last words echoed in his ears.

”You still don't believe me, do you? Well, ask her about the emeralds on the Dei Gloria. Dei Gloria. a.s.shole.” a.s.shole.”

ACCORDING to navigation manuals, the reckoning point was when all the instruments on board failed, and there was no s.e.xtant, moon, or stars, and you had to find the s.h.i.+p's position by using the last known position along with the compa.s.s, speed, and miles sailed. d.i.c.k Sand, the fifteen-year-old captain created by Jules Verne, had used that method to steer the schooner to navigation manuals, the reckoning point was when all the instruments on board failed, and there was no s.e.xtant, moon, or stars, and you had to find the s.h.i.+p's position by using the last known position along with the compa.s.s, speed, and miles sailed. d.i.c.k Sand, the fifteen-year-old captain created by Jules Verne, had used that method to steer the schooner Pilgrim Pilgrim during the course of its troubled voyage from Auckland to Valparaiso. But the traitor Negoro had put a sliver of iron in the compa.s.s, throwing off the needle, and so young d.i.c.k, in the midst of furious storms, had sailed past Cape Horn without seeing it and had mistaken Tristan da Cunha for Easter Island, finally running aground on the coast of Angola when he thought he was in Bolivia. An error of that magnitude had no equal in the annals of the sea, and Jules Verne, Coy had decided when he read the book as a young seaman, didn't know the first thing about navigation. But the distant memory of that story came to mind now with all the force of a warning. Sailing blind, basing everything on reckoning, did not present grave problems if a pilot was able to fix a position from distance traveled, drift, and deviation, and apply that information to the chart to establish the supposed position. The problem only became serious as you approached landfall. Sometimes s.h.i.+ps were lost at sea, but much more often s.h.i.+ps and men were lost on land. You touched pencil to chart, said I am here, and in fact you were during the course of its troubled voyage from Auckland to Valparaiso. But the traitor Negoro had put a sliver of iron in the compa.s.s, throwing off the needle, and so young d.i.c.k, in the midst of furious storms, had sailed past Cape Horn without seeing it and had mistaken Tristan da Cunha for Easter Island, finally running aground on the coast of Angola when he thought he was in Bolivia. An error of that magnitude had no equal in the annals of the sea, and Jules Verne, Coy had decided when he read the book as a young seaman, didn't know the first thing about navigation. But the distant memory of that story came to mind now with all the force of a warning. Sailing blind, basing everything on reckoning, did not present grave problems if a pilot was able to fix a position from distance traveled, drift, and deviation, and apply that information to the chart to establish the supposed position. The problem only became serious as you approached landfall. Sometimes s.h.i.+ps were lost at sea, but much more often s.h.i.+ps and men were lost on land. You touched pencil to chart, said I am here, and in fact you were there, there, on a shoal, on reefs, on a lee sh.o.r.e, and suddenly you heard the crunch of the hull splitting open beneath your feet. And that was the end of it. on a shoal, on reefs, on a lee sh.o.r.e, and suddenly you heard the crunch of the hull splitting open beneath your feet. And that was the end of it.

Of course, there was a traitor on board. She had put a bit of iron in the compa.s.s, and once again he found he had badly processed the information available to him. But what once had been less important, and even lent emotion to the game, now, in the uncertainty of approaching land, seemed disturbing. All the alarms in Coy's maritime instincts were blinking red as he walked along the wood quay of Marina Bay. There was a breeze blowing across the isthmus, ringing the halyards of the sailboats against the masts, a background to Tanger's calm voice. She was talking with incredible serenity about emeralds, as cool as if it were something they'd alluded to many times. She had listened to Coy's recriminations in silence, not responding to the sarcastic remarks he had prepared during the walk from Nino Palermo's office to the marina where she was awaiting his report. Later, after he had exhausted his arguments and was standing looking at her, furious, barely able to contain himself, demanding an explanation that would keep him from tying up his bedroll and cutting out that minute, Tanger had begun talking about emeralds as if that were the most natural thing in the world to do, as if for days she had only been waiting for Coy's question to tell him everything. He wondered whether everything everything was everything this time. was everything this time.

”Emeralds,” she had said by way of introduction, thoughtfully, as if the word reminded her of something. She had fallen silent, contemplating the waters of that very color that filled the semicircle of Algeciras Bay. Then, before Coy started cursing for the third time, she began her disquisition on the most precious and most delicate of stones. The most fragile, and the one in which it was most difficult to find the desired attributes combined-color, clarity, brilliance, and size. She'd even had time to explain that, along with the diamond, sapphire, and ruby, the emerald was one of the basic precious stones, and that like the others it was crystallized mineral. But while the diamond was white, the sapphire blue, and the ruby red, the color of the emerald was a green so extraordinary and unique that in order to describe it you had to fall back on its own name.

Coy stopped walking after this peroration, and that was when he blasphemed the third time. A sailor's curse, short and direct, that took the name of the Lord in vain.

'And you,” he added, ”are a f.u.c.king liar.”

Tanger stared at him, unblinking. She seemed to weigh those six words one by one. Her eyes were hard again, not like the fragile stone she had just described with such sangfroid, but like the dark stone, sharp as a dagger, that lies hidden beneath the breakers.

Then she turned toward the end of the quay where the mast of the Carpanta Carpanta rose among others, the mainsail carefully furled on the boom. When she turned back to Coy, her eyes were different. The breeze blew tendrils of hair across her face. rose among others, the mainsail carefully furled on the boom. When she turned back to Coy, her eyes were different. The breeze blew tendrils of hair across her face.

”The brigantine was carrying emeralds from mines the Jesuits controlled in the Colombian beds at Muzo and Coscuez____________ They were sent from Cartagena de Indias to Havana, and then taken on board with all secrecy.”

Coy stared at his feet, then the wood planks of the quay, and paced nervously. He stopped and stared at the sea. The bows of the boats anch.o.r.ed in the bay swung slowly into the breeze from the Atlantic. He shook his head, as if denying something. He was so dumbfounded that he kept refusing to admit his own stupidity.

”The emerald,” Tanger continued, ”has two weaknesses: its softness, which makes it vulnerable as it's cut, and inclusions- opaque areas, spots of uncrystallized carbon sometimes trapped in the stone, spoiling its beauty. That means, for example, that a one-carat stone is more valuable than a two-carat one if the first has better attributes.”

Now she was talking smoothly, almost sweetly. The way you explain something complicated to a slow child. A military plane took off from the nearby airport, the sound of its engines thundering in the air. For a few seconds the noise drowned out Tanger's words.

”... for the faceted cut made by specialized jewelers. That way, a twenty-carat emerald with no inclusions is one of the most valuable and sought-after gems.” She paused, then added, 'It can be worth a quarter of a million dollars.”

Coy's eyes were still focused on the sea, above which the airplane was gaining alt.i.tude. At the other end of the bay rose the smoke of the Algeciras refinery.

”The Dei Gloria,” Dei Gloria,” said Tanger, ”was transporting two hundred perfect emeralds, from twenty to thirty carats each.” said Tanger, ”was transporting two hundred perfect emeralds, from twenty to thirty carats each.”

A new pause. She moved to stand facing Coy and looked him straight in the eye.

”Uncut emeralds,” she insisted. ”Big as walnuts.”

Coy could have sworn that her voice trembled slightly this once. Big as walnuts. It was only a fleeting impression, because when he focused on her, he found her as self-controlled as ever. She was indifferent to his accusations, free of the need to utter a single word of apology. It was her game and she made the rules. It had been that way from the beginning, and she knew that Coy knew. I will lie to you and deceive you. On that island of knights and knaves, no one had promised the game would be clean.

”That cargo”-she was emphatic-”was worth a king's ransom. Or, to be more exact, the ransom of the Spanish Jesuits. Padre Escobar wanted to buy the Conde de Aranda. Maybe the cabinet of the Pesquisa Secreta Pesquisa Secreta as well. Perhaps the king himself.” as well. Perhaps the king himself.”