Part 19 (1/2)

”I mean that they're different.”

”They aren't different. They're just survivors.” That stopped Coy. He was surprised by how perceptive the comment was.

”Palermo said that, too.”

Then he pointed at El Piloto with the hand holding the bottle, but said nothing. El Piloto leaned forward and took the bottle. ”Too many books.”

After that he drank a last swallow, corked the bottle, and set it on the deck. Now he looked at Coy, waiting for him to stop laughing.

”What's she defending against?” he asked. Coy raised his hands, evasive. How the h.e.l.l, the gesture said, can I explain?

”She's fighting,” he said, ”for a little girl she knew a long time ago. A sheltered kid, a dreamer, who won swimming contests.

Who grew up happy until she stopped being happy and learned that everyone dies alone_____ Now she's refusing to let her disappear.”

'And what's your part in this?”

”I get a hard-on like anyone else, Piloto.”

”You lie. There are answers for that, nothing to do with her.”

He's right, Coy told himself. When all's said and done I've had hard-ons before, and I never went around acting like a fool. No more than usual, at least.

”Maybe it's like s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing in the night,” he said. ”Have you ever noticed? You're at the rail and a s.h.i.+p you know nothing about pa.s.ses by. No name, flag, or idea where she's headed. All you see is lights, and you think probably someone's leaning on the rail who's seeing your lights.”

'And what color are the lights you see?”

”What does the color...” Coy shrugged his shoulders, annoyed. ”How do I know? Red. White.”

'If they're red, the other s.h.i.+p has right-of-way. Hard to starboard.”

”I'm speaking in metaphors, Piloto. Don't you get it?”

El Piloto didn't say whether he did or didn't. His silence was eloquent, and not very favorable to metaphors of s.h.i.+ps, nights, or anything else. Don't screw up your compa.s.s, his unspoken words said. It's her p.u.s.s.y. Period. Sooner or later everything leads back there. The reason is your business, what makes me uneasy are the consequences.

”So what are you going to do?” he asked finally.

”Do?” Coy paused. ”No idea. Be here, I suppose. Keep an eye on her.”

”Well, you remember the old saying: With women and wind, act with caution.”

After that El Piloto sank into another unsociable silence. His eyes were on the lights in the oily film.

”Shame about your s.h.i.+p,” he added after a long silence. ”Everything was going fine there. But on land it's nothing but problems.”

”I'm in love with her.”

El Piloto was standing now. He studied the sky, seeking a hint of what the weather would bring the next day.

”There are women,” he said as if he hadn't heard anything, ”who have strange ideas in their heads, like others have gonorrhea. And what they do is come along and give it to you.”

He had bent down to pick up the bottle, and when he stood up the lights of the city gleamed in his eyes.

”So after all,” he said, ”maybe it isn't your fault.”

With the wrinkles making shadows on his face, and his short gray hair turned to ash in the dark, he resembled a weary Ulysses, indifferent to sirens and harpies, to p.u.b.escent girls on beckoning beaches, to looks hazy with alcohol, ”come” or ”go,” scornful or indifferent. Suddenly Coy envied him with all his heart. At his age it wasn't likely that a woman would cost him his life or his liberty.

XII.

Southwest Quarter to South This road differs from those on dry land in three ways. The one on land is firm, this unstable. The one on land is quiet, this moving. The one on land is marked, the one on the sea, unknown.

MARTIN CORTES, CORTES, Breve compendiode la esfera Breve compendiode la esfera At dawn on the fourth day, the wind that had been blowing gently from the west began to veer to the south. Uneasy, Coy checked the oscillation of the anemometer and then the sky and the sea. It was a conventional anticyclonic day at the beginning of summer. Everything was calm in appearance- the water riffled, the sky blue with a few c.u.mulus clouds-but he could see medium and high cirrus moving in the distance. And the barometer had dropped three millibars in two hours. After he'd woken up and had a quick dip in the cold blue water, he listened to the weather dispatch, noting in the log on the chart table the formation of a pyramidal center of low pressure moving across the north of Africa, not too far from a stationary high of 1,012 over the Balearic Isles. If the isobars of those two came too close together, the winds would blow strong out to sea, and the Carpanta Carpanta would have to seek shelter in port and postpone the search. would have to seek shelter in port and postpone the search.

He disconnected the automatic pilot, took the wheel, and brought the boat around a hundred and eighty degrees. The bow was again pointed north, toward the sunlit coast beneath the dark shoulder of the peak of Las Viboras. They were beginning to sweep sector number 43 on the search chart. That meant the Pathfinder had already covered more than half the area, with no result. The positive aspect of this was that they had eliminated the deepest areas, where dives would have been complicated and difficult. Coy looked toward Punta Percheles on the port beam. A fis.h.i.+ng boat was casting nets so close to land that it looked ready to sc.r.a.pe the sh.e.l.ls off the beach. He calculated course and distance, and concluded that they would not come too close, although the erratic behavior of fis.h.i.+ng boats macle them unpredictable. Then he glanced skyward again, connected the automatic pilot, and went below to the c.o.c.kpit, where the monotonous drone of the motor beneath the ladder was more noticeable.

”Track forty-three,” he said. ”Heading north.”

The sun was at the meridian, and it was hot despite the open portholes. Sitting at the chart table, near the echo sounder, the radar, and the repeater of the positioning system of the GPS satellite, Tanger was watching the screen like an overzealous student, jotting down lat.i.tude and longitude every time the surface of the ocean floor showed any irregularity. Coy looked at the depth indicator and speed: 118 feet, 2.2 knots. As the Carpanta Carpanta followed the course set on the automatic pilot, the precise profile of the bottom was modified on the Pathfinder screen. They had taken enough turns there by now to be able to identify, without difficulty, the different shades the instrument a.s.signed to features on the floor. Soft orange was sand and mud, dark orange was seaweed, and pale red indicated loose rock and s.h.i.+ngle. Banks of fishes were reddish brown, shutting smudges with green streaks and blue borders, and important irregularities-large individual rocks, say, and the metal remains of an old sunken fis.h.i.+ng boat already on the charts-were imaged as jagged hills of intense red. followed the course set on the automatic pilot, the precise profile of the bottom was modified on the Pathfinder screen. They had taken enough turns there by now to be able to identify, without difficulty, the different shades the instrument a.s.signed to features on the floor. Soft orange was sand and mud, dark orange was seaweed, and pale red indicated loose rock and s.h.i.+ngle. Banks of fishes were reddish brown, shutting smudges with green streaks and blue borders, and important irregularities-large individual rocks, say, and the metal remains of an old sunken fis.h.i.+ng boat already on the charts-were imaged as jagged hills of intense red.

”Nothing,” she said.

Sand and seaweed, the screen said. The echo had turned blood red on only two occasions, tracing significant crests on the underwater relief, hard echoes at respective depths of 158 and 140 feet. They weren't capable of interrupting the run, so they noted the positions and returned very early the next morning, after spending the night, as usual, anch.o.r.ed between Punta Negra and Cueva de los Lobos. Coy was suffering the last effects of a cold, a minor souvenir of his night plunge, but they were enough to make it impossible for him to compensate for pressure on eardrums and sinuses. So it was El Piloto who got into his mended black neo-prene wetsuit and jumped into the water, a compressed air tank on his back, knife on his right calf, and a hundred-yard line tied to a bowline at the waist of his self-inflating jacket. Coy stayed above, swimming at the surface with fins, snorkel, and mask, watching the trail of bubbles ascending from the old Snark Silver III demand regulator with dual rubber hoses that El Piloto still insisted on using because he didn't trust modern plastic. The old equipment, he said, never let you down. The echoes, he informed them when he emerged, were caused by an enormous rock that held tatters of tangled nets, and by three huge metal drums crusted with rust and algae. On one of them you could still read the word ”Campsa.”

Over Tanger's shoulder, Coy looked at the flat bottom the sounder was imaging. Her eyes never left the liquid-crystal screen. A silver pencil was in her hand, the squared chart before her. Her freckled arms were exposed below the short sleeves of the white cotton T-s.h.i.+rt, her back wet with sweat. The rolling of the boat was rhythmically swinging the damp tips of her hair, which was kept in place with a kerchief tied around her forehead. She was wearing khaki shorts, and her legs were crossed beneath the table. Sitting at the rear of the c.o.c.kpit, beside a porthole that cast an oscillating circle of sun on his short gray hair, El Piloto was tying a hook onto his fis.h.i.+ng line, a crested lure he had just fas.h.i.+oned from a bit of old halyard. From time to time he looked up at them from his labors.

”We may get a change in the weather,” Coy said.

Without taking her eyes from the screen, Tanger asked if that meant they would have to interrupt the search. Coy answered maybe. If a wind came up, or heavy seas, the sounder would give false echoes, and besides, they would be very uncomfortable bobbing around out here. In that case, the best thing would be to sit it out in Aguilas or Mazarron. Or go back to Cartagena.

”Cartagena is twenty-five miles away,” she said. ”I'd rather stay around here.”

She was still focused on the Pathfinder and the chart. Although they took turns at the echo sounder, she was the one who spent the most time watching the curves and colors taking shape on the screen, hanging on until her eyes were bloodshot and she had to yield her post. When the slight swell became a little stronger, she would get up, looking pale, her hair stuck to her face with sweat, visible signs that the rolling and the constant roar of the diesel motor were affecting her more than she admitted. But she never said anything, or complained. She forced herself to eat everything, out of discipline, and they would see her disappear toward the head, where she splashed water on her face before lying down a while in her cabin. Her package of Dramamine, Coy observed, was close to empty. Sometimes when they'd finished a series of sweeps, or when they were sick of the heat and continual noise, they stopped the boat and she dived into the sea from the stem, swimming straight out with a slow, steady crawl. She swam with the correct rhythm and breathing, not splas.h.i.+ng unnecessarily with her kick, the palms of her hands cutting like knives with every stroke. Occasionally Coy dove in to swim with her, but she managed to keep her distance, in a way that was casual only in appearance. Sometimes he watched her dive between two waves, her arms pulling strongly, her hair undulating past schools of fish that parted as she pa.s.sed. She swam in a flattering black one-piece suit with narrow straps, cut very low to reveal a V of coppery back. She had long slim legs, maybe a little thin-too tall and skinny, El Piloto had judged. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were not large, but they were as arrogant as Tanger herself. When she took off her bathing suit in her cabin, her body still wet, her nipples made damp circles on her T-s.h.i.+rt, leaving a residue of salt when they dried. At last Coy discovered what was hanging on the chain she wore around her neck-a steel tag with her name, national identification number, and blood type, O negative. A soldier's ID.

The echo sounder registered a change in the reddish tone of the floor, and Tanger bent closer to note the lat.i.tude and longitude. But it was a false alarm. She leaned back again in her chair at the chart table, pencil gripped in fingers with ragged nails that she was now chewing constantly. She still had the serious, focused expression of a model student that Coy so enjoyed watching. Often, seeing how absorbed she was in her notepad, the chart, or the screen, he tried to imagine her with blond pigtails, in a school uniform and white anklets. He was sure that before she used to hide in the bathroom to smoke cigarettes, before she became insolent to the nuns, before she dreamed of Red Rackham's treasure, of nautical charts and corsair booty, someone had tagged her as an exemplary little girl. It wasn't difficult to imagine her with a stubborn expression reciting amo-amas-amat, amo-amas-amat, H2S0>4, ”In a village of La Mancha,” and all the rest. And with flowers for the Virgin. H2S0>4, ”In a village of La Mancha,” and all the rest. And with flowers for the Virgin.

He leaned against the table at her side to look at the charted squares of the search area. On the bulkhead the radio was sputtering on low volume, tuned to receive and transmit. A naval frigate was requesting dock hands to take their mooring line, but no one was appearing. From time to time, a Ukrainian sailor or Moroccan fisherman would reel off long paragraphs in his tongue. The master of a fis.h.i.+ng boat was complaining that a steamer had cut his trawl lines. A patrol of Guardia Civil was blocked because of damage to a bridge in port Tomas Maestre.

”We may lose two or three days,” Coy said. ”But we have time to spare.”

Tanger wrote something and then stopped, the pencil hovering over the chart.

”We don't have time to spare. We'll need every available hour.”

Her tone was severe, almost reproachful, and once again Coy felt annoyed. The weather, he thought, doesn't give a s.h.i.+t about your available hours.

”If we get a strong wind, we won't be able to work,” he explained. ”The seas will be choppy and the echo sounder won't work efficiently.”

He saw her open her mouth to reply, and then bite her lips. Now the pencil was drumming on the chart. On the bulkhead, next to the barometer, two clocks marked local time and Greenwich time. She sat staring at them, and then checked the stainless-steel watch on her right wrist.

”When will this happen?'