A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  “Do you stay in touch with the old crowd?” said Natsumi.

  Jersey looked at her.

  “Should I?” he asked.

  “I would,” she said, as if entranced by the idea. “Extreme coolness factor.”

  Jersey liked that enough to shift a little in Natsumi’s direction. Desiree then shifted nearly imperceptively closer to her husband.

  “Show how cool you really are and get these folks another round,” she said to him. He took our orders and moved into the crowd, which instinctively opened up to give the big man a clear path to the bar.

  While he was gone, Desiree described their boat’s galley and what Natsumi could expect for provisions. Natsumi paid close attention, asking questions that seemed to solidify her standing as a bona fide ship’s cook. Desiree reported that when Jersey came back with our beers. He gently grilled me on my nautical skills and experience, holding up his end of the screening process. I must have passed muster, because the conversation easily slid from there into a comparison of rum- versus vodka-based cocktails. I was actually far less qualified in that arena, though I held on well enough to take us to closing time.

  Back out in the dark, Natsumi and I walked over to a park where street vendors ran their carts during the day and spent the night playing cards with cab drivers and other folks who had nowhere else to go. We stayed outside the social circle, but close enough to be sheltered within the gentle hubbub through the night and into the next day.

  We managed another five hours of sleep out on the beach that day, and repeated the process over the next twenty-four hours. We had the money to pay for a hotel, but no identification. Cash payment would have probably obviated the need, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

  And it was good discipline. We hadn’t talked about it, but those languid days and nights on the boat had taken the edge off the vigilance that had kept us alive through months of relentless peril and pursuit across half the globe. The capture and interrogation had dragged us painfully back to our exclusive reality.

  “Why did they let us go?” Natsumi asked, not for the first time, as we walked stiffly through the predawn light on the way to That’s A Moray.

  “I still don’t know,” I said.

  She bumped into me as we walked.

  “Come on, theories.”

  “They wanted information from us. Information we didn’t have.”

  “Or didn’t know we had,” she said. “Doesn’t explain why they let us go.”

  “Unless we gave it to them after all.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Drugs. Sodium Pentothal, or some other truth serum,” I said.

  “Does that stuff work?”

  “Not really. If it did, we wouldn’t have a debate on torturing terrorists. We’d just give them a shot and sit back with a notepad.”

  “Say they didn’t get what they wanted. Why let us go?”

  “They aren’t killers.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No,” I said. “There’s another reason.”

  “They want us out here?” she asked.

  I looked over at her in the fresh light coming up from just below the horizon. Her long black hair was in a ponytail forced through the back of a yellow baseball cap. In shorts, running shoes, tank top and lightweight windbreaker, she looked to all the world like a jogger about to go a few miles before her commute down to Wall Street.

  “That’s my best guess,” I said.

  “But we’re out of their control.”

  “Not if they keep track of us.”

  “Tough to do unless they shot GPS monitors up our butts.”

  “Technically, subcutaneous beacons. Those things don’t work either.”

  “So I still don’t get it.”

  “They found us once. They think they can do it again,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  CHAPTER 4

  That’s A Moray wasn’t the newest boat in Cruz Bay, but it looked plenty shipshape. The white hull was polished and the teak brightwork sparkled with fresh varnish. Jersey was directing a pair of island guys loading boxes into an aft hold. I ran up and pitched in. No one spoke a word to me until we’d cleared the docks. Jersey paid the men, then gave me a paper chart that was stuck in a cup holder at the helm.

  “Plot a course to San Juan by way of Dewey,” he told me. “With waypoints.”

  I went below to the nav table where I could lay out the chart and access the onboard GPS chart plotter, marine forecasts and whatever guide books Jersey had lying around. Like all experienced Caribbean captains, he had plenty of reference material, and it took less than an hour to work out a sail plan. It would have taken even less if I hadn’t been distracted by Natsumi and Desiree swirling around the galley, stowing provisions, tossing things in sizzling fry pans and speaking over each other.

  I went back up topside and found Jersey greeting a plump guy in his sixties, with the soft blond hair of a much younger man, in a logo-less polo shirt and ironed khakis. His wife looked like she’d been plucked from a different matched set, considerably younger and darker, thin, fit and a few inches taller courtesy of treacherously high mules.

  She stood back as the men exchanged pleasantries that seemed to go beyond casual familiarity. When Jersey saw me, he also backed away, dropping the other man’s hand.

  “Mr. Cornwall, meet Angus and Angela.”

  “Sounds like a duet,” said Angus, offering his hand. “We should take it on the road.”

  Angus was an actual Scot, so he pronounced road with an extra “r.” His grip was forthright, with a hint of challenge in it. Angela cocked her hips before offering her own hand, as if stabilizing her footing, not unwisely. Her handshake was a warm and fluid thing, as if searching for the proper purchase.

  “I’m sure,” she said, with a contemporary American accent.

  I took their duffle bags and slung them over my shoulder. Angela handed me her pocketbook, then her inappropriate shoes. Her bare feet were long and sinewy, almost arboreal, which she put to good use crossing the gangplank from the dock and into the cockpit. She reached out her hand to me, and I took it, though there was little need. Angus followed less steadily, though under his own control.

  I stowed their stuff in the V berth, a large enough accommodation to be called a stateroom. I noticed for no good reason that his bag was nearly twice as heavy as hers.

  The motor was running when I got back to the cockpit. Jersey had partially released the dock lines, manually held to the cleats until I could get behind the wheel. On my nod he twirled the bow line free and tossed it up to Desiree. I dropped the gear changer into forward and held the boat into the dock until he could stow the gangplank and give us a good shove out of the slip. He walked the stern line down the dock, and at the last rational moment, jumped onto the swim ladder.

  “Ease her out of the bay, Mr. Cornwall, and make for the first waypoint after we’re clear of the ferries,” he said, scrambling up into the cockpit.

  “Aye, Cap,” I said, and a thoroughly satisfying thing it was to say.

  The morning mist had cleared quickly, brushed away by the trades barreling down from the northeast. Outside the bay, the swells rolled by in good order, the low sun lighting the wave tips, painting silver accents on the cerulean sea.

  On Jersey’s signal, I bore up into the wind and he raised the mainsail with a power winch, watching carefully as the halyard slid across the cabin top. I felt the big sail trying to catch the wind, conspiring with the wave action to shove our bow off course. But That’s A Moray was a heavy boat with a deep keel and her engine a muscular Cummins throbbing beneath my feet, and we held our bearing until Jersey dropped his hand like a hatchet through the wind and held it, pointing the way. I fell off the wind and felt the forty-eight footer heeling hard to port, digging into the water and finding her true nature as a boat under sail.

  A female down below, I assumed Angela, had let out a startled whoop when we first lurched over on our side. I hoped no
t because she hadn’t been briefed on a sailboat’s tipping behaviors.

  I killed the motor and watched the speedometer climb quickly up to seven knots. Jersey had left about 20 percent of the sail still gathered on top of the boom, and likewise, kept a reef in the genoa, the parachute-like sail that ballooned out above the bow.

  With the raising of the second headsail, we were fully underway, and I felt through the wheel the force of the wind against the countervailing keel and rudder, and the ease with which the heavy displacement hull cut through the waves. Though less immediately responsive than our thirty-six footer, That’s A Moray was a mannerly vessel, secure to the hand and true to the helmsman’s commands.

  “You’re enjoying yourself,” said Natsumi, before she was halfway up the companionway with a banana and a mug of coffee.

  Her hair flew in all directions, forcing her to twist it into a loose ponytail that she stuck under her windbreaker.

  “How’re the passengers?” I asked.

  “You’ll know as soon as Jersey gives permission for us to come topside.”

  I caught him looking back at us from where he stood near the mast, his hands gripping the fixed rigging, his hair as ill behaved in the wind as Natsumi’s. Interpreting our faces, he gave a thumbsup. His face was alight with the joy of the moment, this Puerto Rican milk run holding all of us in its thrall.

  When we were clear of local traffic and outside the smaller islands that lined the northern boundaries of the US Virgin Islands, he told me to sail past the waypoint and set a new course to the northwest.

  “At this rate, we’ll get there too quickly,” he said. “Let’s give the passengers a bit more of a sail.”

  By then, Angus and Angela were in the cockpit sipping coffee and noshing from a bowl of fresh fruit. Angus was in shorts and penny loafers, Angela in just enough to offer a pretense of modesty. Somewhat understandably, given that her body belonged to a woman half her age.

  Jersey shared the plan to sail in a big V, eventually reaching Dewey on the island of Culebra, the eastern outpost of Puerto Rico, in time to get settled on a mooring for the night.

  The rest of the day involved a lot of eating and lounging by Angus and Angela, and general boat operations by the rest of us. Jersey offered to spell me at the helm, but I never felt the need. The big boat was stable on all points of sail, requiring little in the way of pushing and pulling on the wheel. And I fell gladly into the hypnotic effects, a balm to nerves ignited by the capture and rough handling a few days before.

  In all my life, I never felt the need for conventional entertainment. Learning and research was my work and my play, all consuming. My late wife, Florencia, took it well enough, only occasionally complaining how hard it was for us to go to the movies.

  “All that noise in your head drowns out the dialogue,” she’d say.

  It wasn’t until Natsumi introduced me to sailing that I understood how an experience could decouple the senses from the mind, quelling nettlesome emotions and subduing the frantic deliberations that filled my every waking minute.

  Thus occupied, it was as if waking from a dream when we finally doused the sails, started the motor and crept up to a mooring in the harbor outside Dewey. Only after Jersey signaled that we were secure did I let go of the wheel and return to the realm of the conscious and preoccupied.

  THAT NIGHT was consumed by alcohol. Beginning with gin and tonics and hors d’oeuvres, then bottles of wine over dinner followed by various rum concoctions and straight up whisky Natsumi and I brought up from the galley, our four companions managed to ingest a titanic volume of booze.

  Desiree and Angela were the first to succumb. After a fair amount of hugging and protestations of deep affection, along with surprise that these feelings could arise over so short a time together, they both passed out and were carried below by Jersey, the steadier and stronger of the two survivors.

  Now on their own in the cockpit, Jersey and Angus carried on with the conversation, loud but remarkably lucid. Natsumi and I stayed below in the galley sipping straight tonic water. The talk topside mostly involved asking after old friends and professional acquaintances, so it seemed easy enough for Natsumi and me to drift into a desultory conversation of our own. Until we heard Angus say:

  “Hey galley slaves, come on up and have a drink with management.”

  “Not required, kids,” said Jersey. “Unless you want to, of course.”

  Natsumi made the decision for us by grabbing a half bottle of wine and climbing up through the companionway. I followed with my tonic water.

  “There’s a right girl,” said Angus. “I’m sick of this boring old Yank. Tell us how you ended up in paradise.”

  Custom among the transients and escape artists in the Caribbean frowned on this kind of direct intrusion on personal history. It made Jersey uncomfortable, even though he’d gladly shared his own narrative the night before in the bar. Natsumi came to his rescue.

  “Jonathan’s writing a book. I’m recovering from my psychotherapy practice,” she said. “I wish it was more romantic than that, but there you are.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Angus. “What’s more romantic than writing a book? Could never do it myself. No self-discipline. What’s the topic?”

  “Safe computing,” I said. “For small business.”

  During my career as a market researcher, I’d gained mastery over dozens of arcane disciplines, but after recent years of digital cat and mouse with various organizations—public, private and clandestine—cybersecurity was a subject on which I’d become painfully current. It became my favorite cover story, thus far unchallenged.

  “So you’re in luck,” said Jersey. “That’s what Angus does.”

  “Good gracious, please, no shop talk,” said Angus. “Unless Natalia wants to tell us about nutters. With Jersey’s permission, as the daftest one on the boat.”

  “Everyone’s a little nuts, sir,” said Natsumi.

  “Is that your clinical opinion? And call me Angus.”

  “Yes it is, Angus. For all we know, you’re battier than a March hare. But if I find you out, I promise to be discreet.”

  “And what do you think of Nanoscreen?” he asked me, whipping his head in my direction, his voice full of challenge.

  “Tighter than a gnat’s butt, as the name implies, so it’s effective if you don’t mind what it does to load times,” I said. “The cryptography isn’t all that different from what the Unix guys developed thirty years ago. Just a lot of numbers to the right of the decimal. Breakable by brute force.”

  “Agreed. What about quantum key distribution?”

  “Fine for Bob and Alice as long as Ted and Carol aren’t eavesdropping,” I said, physics code for commentary that would fill a shelf of textbooks. “We all know what happens with those kinds of entanglements.”

  Angus looked at me over the rim of a glass filled with the Bruichladdich whisky, half of which disappeared as he took a long pull.

  “Pretty fancy stuff for a small business, though, wouldn’t you say?” he said. “Not too relevant for readers like yours.”

  “Command of the irrelevant is one of Jonathan’s strong suits,” said Natsumi.

  “Angus has a PhD in computer technology,” said Jersey. “Thinks women find it attractive.”

  “Why else would Angela fuck my brains out?”

  “Therapists never answer rhetorical questions,” said Natsumi.

  “Where did you find these two?” Angus asked Jersey.

  “In a bar. Where else?”

  “Jersey and I did our bar time in the day,” said Angus.

  “Still serving. I think it’s twenty years to life,” said Jersey.

  “Show me a sober spook and I’ll give you a thousand pounds.”

  Jersey didn’t like that.

  “Angus thinks busting junior stockbrokers for buying on a tip from Uncle Billy makes you a spook.”

  “Right. I always get Uncle Billy mixed up with Uncle Osama,” said Angus.
/>   “I understand burnout’s pretty high for therapists,” Jersey said to Natsumi, still trying to change the subject.

  Natsumi never actually had a psychotherapy practice, unless you count her years running a blackjack table. Patient outcomes weren’t trackable, but it did help her learn the trade.

  “We don’t burn out. We simply examine our options, reorder our priorities and then make appropriate life choices.”

  “I choose to have another single malt, thank you,” said Angus.

  “Everyone has stress,” said Jersey. “The only difference is how you handle it.”

  “You’re a good man, Jersey, that was the difference with you,” said Angus. “You have to be a heartless sot like me to enjoy putting people away.”

  “You’re not supposed to enjoy that part,” said Jersey, though without censure.

  “Like I said. Too good a man.”

  Jersey went below to check on Desiree and retrieve outerwear against the cooling night. Angus waited until he was out of earshot to half whisper, half slur, “Putting people away means putting them away.” He used his hand to mimic firing a gun. “Permanent withdrawal from the field of action.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Natsumi. “What the hell did you guys do?”

  “Of course I’m kidding. No one kills anyone anymore over something as silly as national security. Anyway, Jersey’s retired. I’m the one still in harness. Can’t afford to give it up. Angela’s Pilates alone threatens bankruptcy.”

  “But a good investment,” said Natsumi. “From your brain’s perspective.”

  Angus looked at me.

  “What did she specialize in, clever girls therapy?”

  “Clever boys,” said Natsumi.

  Jersey came topside with a handful of sweatshirts. Only Angus felt the need to grab one. Jersey dropped into his seat as if shoved there by an invisible hand and exhaled a cloud of vaporized rum.

  “Fuck, the seas are runnin’ high tonight,” he said.

  “Should I be puttin’ out the Mayday, Cap’n?” Angus asked.

  “I could make coffee,” Natsumi said.

  They looked like she’d offered them a bowl of live insects.