Harbor of Spies

by Robin Lloyd

  “¿Qué pasa aquí? What’s going on with all this noise?” Salazar asked menacingly. “And what is that Negro doing?”

  “He was just checking on some sails we may need,” Townsend lied. “Winds picking up. A storm may be threatening. Might have to change one of the jibs.”

  Salazar approached Hendricks, grabbed him by the arm, and pushed his body up against the side of the cabin house.

  “What did you hear, negrito?” Salazar jeered as he thrust his nose close to Hendricks’s face, pushing the man’s head up against the cabin house. “I know you were listening.”

  Something snapped inside Townsend’s head. He jerked Salazar’s hand away from Hendricks and pushed the Spaniard away.

  “Lay off, Salazar,” Townsend said angrily.

  Salazar stepped up, his pale blue eyes visibly glistening in the moonlight.

  “This Negro is a spy,” he hissed. “He has been snooping outside the cabin door and now like a rat we find him inside the sail locker.”

  Townsend stood his ground, barely able to control his anger. For months he had been keeping himself in check, but he’d reached a breaking point. Salazar had crossed a line Townsend could no longer ignore.

  “Never touch one of my men again, Salazar. And be careful what accusations you make. You may be the supercargo and the shipping representative, but I am the captain of this ship. These men are my responsibility, as is this ship. The next time you have a problem with one of my sailors, you bring that problem to me. ¿Me escuchas? Do you hear me?”

  “Perhaps you are a spy as well, Capitán Townsend,” Salazar retorted snidely.

  Townsend stood his ground as Salazar brought his face closer to his.

  “Tengo mis sospechas. I have my suspicions about you, Captain. There has always been something about you I didn’t like. Perhaps there is more than one rat on board ship. Maybe this is a ship filled with Yanqui rats?”

  The Spaniard glanced over at the shadowy figures of the men who were clustered together in the bow of the ship. The noise had woken up all the sailors in the forward house. Nolo emerged from down below. He was carrying what looked like his carved handspike in one hand, the other hand resting on the handle of his sheathed knife. Higgins and Bertrand stepped up onto the quarterdeck alongside Red Beard, who had one hand on his suspenders. All three held belaying pins in their hands. The air simmered with hostility.

  “I smell trouble, Cap’n,” growled Red Beard as he pulled and snapped the suspenders.

  “Ready to assist, Cap’n,” volunteered Higgins.

  It was a standoff that seemed ready to spiral out of control. Nobody moved for a few tense moments until the man called the Colonel put a hand on Salazar’s shoulder.

  “Settle down, boys. It’s late. Let’s be done with this business, y’all hear me?”

  Eventually each man went back to their cabins and their berths until only the Colonel and Townsend stood in the moonlight.

  “My friend, that’s a right keen-lookin’ nigger you got. Might be you spoil him too much, and he needs some lookin’ after. If I ketch him prowlin’ around our cabin again, I won’t give him a whippin’. I’ll jest shoot him. You should know I have no great affection for niggers, but I have an even greater disregard for Confederate traitors and Yankee spies. I’ve got my suspicions that you’ve got both on this ship.”

  Townsend clenched his fists. He wanted to hit this man square in the face and let him know that he wasn’t about to take orders from some unidentified passenger on his ship. But instead he bit his lip, and thought about Savage.

  “I certainly understand your concerns,” Townsend replied. “I regret to say I didn’t get your full name.”

  “That’s because I didn’t give it,” the man shot back.

  “I will need it when we arrive in Matamoros to present our papers to the Mexican authorities.”

  “I believe Sr. Salazar will take care of those matters,” he replied, cutting off a chew of tobacco from a black plug and popping it into his mouth.

  When all was quiet, Townsend slipped a becket on the wheel to assure the ship stayed on course, and then motioned for Hendricks to walk up to the bow where they could speak without any danger of being overheard. Hendricks spilled out what he could remember.

  “They wa’ talkin’ ’bout a ship,” he said. “Some steamship they gon’ pick up in Matamoros just off the Rio Grande.”

  Townsend thought about what this meant. A mystery ship falling into the hands of the Confederates in a deal clearly brokered by Don Pedro. Hendricks explained from what he could hear, it sounded like the ship would be reflagged as a Mexican ship with a fake Mexican owner. It would be ready to leave the Gulf to go to sea within two to three weeks. It would come to Havana to recoal, and then sail for Andros Island to exchange cotton for some English cannons. They also mentioned something called La Compañía. Townsend mulled that over in his mind. The Company. He had never heard of La Compañía.

  The next morning they arrived to a staggering sight off the mouth of the Rio Grande. For Townsend, it was unreal. There were at least two hundred ships, a vast fleet of steamers, schooners and tall ships from all nations, all waiting to pick up Confederate cotton that had been hauled across the parched deserts of Texas in ox-drawn cotton wagons. They were anchored three to four miles from land in what looked like the open sea. With the winds picking up, ships rolled and tumbled in the choppy waves, pulling at their anchor chains like runaway rocking horses, their foreign flags snapping and fluttering from the mastheads. He had heard that Lincoln and the Department of State did not want to antagonize foreign powers by attacking shipping off the Rio Grande, but he wondered what the secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles would say if he could see this. As closely as Townsend scanned the flat sandy shoreline, he could find no trace of a port, only a huge shoal with breakers between the fleet and the shore.

  “That thar’ is the smugglers’ cove of Baghdad, Mexico, Cap’n,” Red Beard cried out as he pointed out the masts of some small schooners, indicating where the Rio Grande emptied into the Gulf. “They call that swill hole the back door of the Confederacy. Home to swindlers, scoundrels, drunken sailors, and every kind of no-account mongrel known to steal and pilfer. Matamoros and Brownsville are just upriver, but Baghdad is where the trading and loading is done.”

  Townsend had heard about this place at the mouth of the Rio Grande from sailors in Havana. As filthy a hellhole as you could find anywhere, he’d been told.

  “As you can plainly see, Cap’n, thar’s no way we can git through them breakers. The water over the sandbar is only four and a half feet deep. We’ll have to stay out here at anchor like the rest of these ships and unload the cotton onto lighters.”

  Townsend noticed that Salazar was standing amidships with Nolo and the two passengers and they were all looking in the opposite direction from the shore, scanning the fleet of anchored ships with field glasses. They were pointing and gesturing toward a screw-propeller steamship anchored farther out to sea. Townsend picked up his own glasses to take a look. It was a blue water sail-steamer with three masts, a tallship about two hundred feet long with one funnel in the center of the ship. She was flying the Spanish flag. Townsend could see a lone figure on the decks looking back at them through his glasses. Salazar walked back to the quarterdeck and with a resentful glare told him to thread his way through the fleet and anchor near that ship. Townsend asked why. Salazar replied curtly, “Business,” but didn’t explain further.

  They luffed up the schooner and dropped anchor near the mystery steamship. Sailors on board the steamer had already begun lowering one of their launch boats. It was clear the steamship had been expecting them. Townsend had Bertrand and Olsen throw down the ship’s rope ladder in preparation. Townsend could see eight sailors in the launch rowing toward them and what looked like the captain standing in the stern. When they pulled in their oars and brought the launch
up against the Gaviota’s sides, Townsend was struck by how little was said. The captain mumbled something to Salazar in Spanish. Then he nodded graciously to the two Southerners, who clambered down the rope ladder. All of this had obviously been arranged beforehand. Before leaving the ship, Salazar said he and Nolo would be back in the morning. They were traveling to Matamoros to address some business matters for Don Pedro. He would send the Mexican customs authorities out to the Gaviota and would contact the local shipping representative to see to the unloading of the cotton.

  Townsend watched as the launch boat disappeared into the swarm of anchored ships, the oarsmen struggling to keep a coordinated cadence due to the choppy waves. Moments later, another launch boat was lowered from the steamship with as many as ten sailors clambering in—shore leave. Townsend decided to release his own men—he and Hendricks would stay behind. Once they’d gone, Townsend turned to Hendricks and announced he was going to row over to the steamship as soon as it was dark to see if he could see the ship’s name and homeport. Hendricks tried to dissuade him, but when that effort proved fruitless, the Bahamian sailor reluctantly agreed to go with him.

  Together in the darkness they rowed the yawl boat around the big steamship, slowly and quietly, looking up at the high wooden wall of the ship’s sides. There were only a couple of lights aboard the ship in the foredeck area. The main cabin that loomed above them was dark. To reduce any noise, they’d wrapped the blades of the oars with some rags from the galley. They dipped and pulled in the darkness, making no sound as they approached the stern. There on the ship’s transom he could see that the name had been rubbed out. It was a ship with no name. He could barely make out its homeport, Cadiz, Spain.

  They continued rowing quietly, staying close to the sides of the ship so they would be out of sight. Someone on board cursed loudly in Spanish, and they both reflexively pulled down their wide-brimmed hats. They rowed around the side until they came to a rope ladder that had been left down.

  “Wait in the boat while I take a look around,” Townsend whispered to Hendricks. “Be ready with the oars when I come back.”

  Townsend was barefoot and unarmed except for his sheath knife and a belaying pin. As he climbed the steps, he could now hear the strumming of a guitar and some of the Spanish sailors singing up forward. When he pulled himself over the bulwarks, he scanned the empty decks. Then seeing no one, he crouched down, walking soundlessly with his bare feet. Lights were burning in the forecastle in the front of the boat so he went back to the main cabin area. The door was locked. He walked to the other side and passed by some open grates leading to the center cargo hold. He stopped to look inside and was greeted by a vile, putrid smell of human waste. He covered his nose with one hand and tried to peer inside. In the moonlight, he could just barely make out the faint gleam of metal. There were hundreds of iron chains and manacles attached to the floorboards. The memory of those poor emaciated souls crawling ashore on the beach with their legs and arms in chains rushed back and he felt his stomach roil.

  Townsend barely had time to think about what he was looking at when he heard a shout. “¡Alto!¡ Alto!” Someone had spotted him. “¡O paras o disparo!” Someone was yelling in Spanish for him to stop or they would shoot. Townsend ran to the side of the ship and clambered down the rope ladder, jumping into the boat.

  “Row, Hendricks row!” he cried out.

  A gunshot tore through the air. He heard yelling and shouting behind them. He could hear the shouts of ladrones. They thought they were thieves. Townsend saw a few shadowy figures up against the ship’s looming stern looking down at them. He saw one man raise a rifle, and Townsend warned Hendricks to fall backwards on the seat. They heard the crack of the rifle and a splash of water next to them.

  “Keep rowing,” he shouted as he grabbed one of the oars.

  Soon they pulled around to the other side of the Gaviota where they couldn’t be seen by the men on the steamship. That’s when he noticed the rising water inside the yawl boat. They were sinking. One of the shots had hit the floorboards. They pulled alongside the Gaviota. Townsend reached for the rope ladder and told Hendricks to start climbing.

  “What ’bout the yawl boat?” Hendricks asked.

  “Let it sink. We’ll say it was stolen.”

  When they got back on board, Townsend had to catch his breath. “It’s a damn slave ship.”

  Hendricks’s eyes grew wider in alarm.

  “Wha’ kind of trouble you got me in now?”

  26

  Two weeks later they were back in Havana, and with all the cargo unloaded, Townsend was on his way to a clandestine meeting with Savage. It was nearly 7:30, and the hot morning sun blazed across Havana’s rooftops. Volantas filled with finely dressed ladies in colorful silk clattered by, pushing him onto the two-foot-wide sidewalk. The metallic clanging of church bells echoed through the city’s narrow streets. Townsend hugged the walls as groups of black-robed priests holding their prayer books walked by in perfect formation like squadrons of pelicans gliding silently over the surface of the ocean. It was Sunday morning and everyone was on their way to mass.

  Townsend hadn’t been able to escape the scrutiny of Salazar and Nolo easily. A few days earlier Nolo had followed him all the way to where the lottery vendor was selling tickets. Townsend had heard the salesman’s falsetto cry before he saw him. “¡Lotería!¡Lotería!” Townsend had walked nonchalantly up to the dwarf, who was standing on a box, and asked him in Spanish if he was Gutiérrez.

  “Who wants to know?” the short man answered suspiciously.

  “A friend of mine named cocuyo,” Townsend replied.

  Gutiérrez extended his hand with a lottery ticket as Townsend handed him a few gold coins. Tucked underneath them was a tightly folded note to Savage. Townsend had kept it simple. “Confederate agents acquiring steamship in Matamoros through Don Pedro. Ship en route to Havana soon.” All of this had happened under the watchful eye of Nolo, who did not appear to suspect anything. Everyone in Havana bought lottery tickets. Townsend went back the following day and pretended to buy another lottery number for Savage’s brief reply. The note said that the vice-consul general would meet him at the old cathedral on Sunday. High mass was always at 8:00 a.m. Townsend had memorized the exact instructions, and then burned them as he lit a cigar. When Nolo approached him to ask why he had bought another ticket, Townsend had shrugged. As he puffed away on his cigar, he smiled at the Spaniard. “The vendor said I would be lucky if I bought a ticket today.”

  Despite his calm demeanor, the young captain anticipated problems from the two Spaniards. He sensed from Nolo’s threatening stares that there was trouble brewing. Clearly they didn’t believe his story about the stolen yawl boat. He knew they would be reporting their suspicions to Don Pedro, but he told himself not to worry. After walking in and out of several churches to elude anyone who might have followed him, Townsend emerged in Havana’s old cathedral square with its well-worn cobblestones and picturesque arcades. The huge bronze bells in the larger of the two towers were ringing in earnest, calling people to confession. In the opposite tower there was a nearly one-hundred-year-old English-made clock that despite its age was still working. He squinted his eyes to check what the time was. Quarter to eight.

  Townsend walked up the stone steps through the massive wooden doors of the old cathedral, pausing for a moment to take in the soaring marble columns and the blinding sunlight pouring through the windows near the top of the huge vaulted ceiling. He stepped to one side and found a shadowy spot near the door where he could look around to see if anyone might be watching him. He noted with interest a few of the early arrivals. Elegantly dressed ladies in flowing, fluted trains of silk and velvet, with their faces veiled, their hair partially concealed by scarves of Spanish lace. They walked in with their black servants dressed in calico with yellow and red turbans following closely behind.

  He stood there in the shadows near
the big entrance doors, enjoying the symphony of organ music and bells. He watched as the house slaves spread out rugs on the marble floor and brought caned seats for their mistresses to sit on. It always amazed him that there were no pews in Havana’s many churches, only a few benches. He heard the sound of soldiers marching outside and he became more alert. His new life was one full of risks. He even put Hendricks in danger. He pushed those concerns aside as he quietly repeated Savage’s instructions to himself. His note had said for him to walk up to the chancel and look at the white marble tablet in the wall that marked the resting place of Columbus, gaze at the altar and the frescoes as if he were a casual visitor, and then walk back to the second large column and turn left. He would find him there up against the wall in the shadows.

  Townsend slowly walked by the array of flickering candles toward the richly carved mahogany altar. The priests were waving censors of sweet-smelling incense, which sent clouds of aromatic smoke upwards like wispy plumes of sea fog. He focused on one of the priest’s glittery fingers sparkling with emeralds and rubies. As his eyes wandered to the old decaying frescoes above the altar and around the church, an image stayed with him—a painting of the Mother Mary holding the infant Child, rising above the flames of purgatory, even as the sinners below reached upwards, imploring her for forgiveness.

  Townsend stopped in front of the white marble tablet in the wall as he had been instructed, and reached out to touch Columbus’s tomb as any casual visitor might do. Outside he could hear more clearly the sound of a military band marching down the street, a rich mix of trombones, bugles, cymbals, and drums. He wondered what the great explorer would have thought about his remains being left behind on this island, Spain’s most faithful colony. He turned and walked back toward the front door entrance, stopping to gaze upwards at the large dome. Townsend scanned the doorway, looking for any sign of someone following him. There were several top hats to be seen, but nothing he found suspicious. In the dark corner up against the wall he could see the shadowy form of a man wearing a formal coat and a top hat. He was standing by a small side altar with a carved statue of the Crucifixion.