Buried At Sea

by Paul Garrison

  Jim flinched from what he could only call Will's charm assault. "Can I ask you something?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Why'd you have to be a crook?"

  Will looked at him. "What is your problem, Jim? You're taking my past mistakes personally. You didn't even know me then. Why are you making it personal? You are the most exasperating kid."

  "Wasn't sailing enough, goddammit?"

  "Why are you so upset!"

  "I'm not upset. I'm merely asking."

  "You're clenching your fists."

  "I look at what you do—the way you and the boat are one, and how you can fix anything and read the water and feel the wind and know so much—and I think, If I could be that good at something, I'd be completely satisfied."

  "Jesus H. Christ. You're making me into a role model."

  "I'm just trying to—"

  "I told you, I've been messing around in boats since I was a kid. Sailing's like breathing.

  And breathing, young fellow, while vital, is not satisfying. Nor does it pay the bills:'

  Jim blundered out of the cabin, ran up the companionway, and stood in the cockpit turning around and around in confused circles. From below he heard Will's music start again, then cut off abruptly as he plugged in his headset.

  He had to go below to answer Shannon's e-mail. But instead, he jumped out of the cockpit and hurried along the narrow side deck to the bow, where he gripped the thick forestay and leaned out over the water. Then he hurried back to the stem and leaned over the bubbling wake. He felt trapped on the boat: trapped with Will, trapped with himself and his disappointment.

  He walked forward again, and on sudden impulse began to haul himself up the jackstay, climbing one-armed pull-up by one-armed pull-up to the top spreader fifty feet above the deck. He stood on it, breathing hard, his arms burning with lactic acid.

  Jesus, he was out of shape. His pees and biceps were shrinking. He was so busy running the boat that he was neglecting his workouts. He had to do more curls and winch the spinner up and push his body.

  "Again," he said to himself. "Here and now. Do it!" He went down in slow reverse, arm-drop to arm-drop, his body growing stronger as his muscles heated, then immediately climbed again. Standing on the spreader he looked out at the sea. A gust heeled the boat.

  His perch leaned far out over the water. Suddenly, he could see past the foresail.

  "Jesus Christ!"

  A huge ship lay dead ahead—waiting for them.

  THE SHIP WAS a dirty red and built slab-sided and square as a factory. Containers stacked high from bow to stern made it look even bigger than it was. And closer, Jim realized, as his adrenaline-speared panic threatened to paralyze him. It was three miles off, he guessed. No, closer in the haze. Another two miles he'd have run smack into it. It had a single funnel, painted blue and white. A blue and white ensign flew from its telemetry mast. Russian merchantman colors, Will had drilled into him.

  Hustle was sailing straight at the Russian, close hauled on a starboard tack, mainsail and fully unfurled jib pulling six and a half knots from the southwest monsoon.

  "What am I doing?"

  He descended the wire as fast as he could, burning his hands, and hit the deck running.

  There was no point in dousing the sails: even if the Russians had posted a blind lookout they'd have seen him by now. His fastest move was to fall off the wind and flee south on a broad reach. He steered off the wind, let out both main and jib sheets, and started the diesel. The engine gave him another knot.

  The ship had a lifeboat hanging from the big house in the

  stern. He focused hard with the binoculars and saw the propeller. Motor driven. If they lowered that boat, he was dead.

  "Hey," Will called through his cockpit port. "What's with the engine?"

  "There's a ship."

  "What kind?"

  "Russian."

  He heard the fear in his own voice and thought, I'm as paranoid as he is now.

  Will climbed the companionway, slowly and painfully. His pale face was sleep-wrinkled.

  He reached for Jim's binoculars, braced his elbows on the cabin roof, and studied the freighter.

  "A goddamned Russian—why isn't he moving? Did he spot us?"

  "I don't see how he could miss us. I wonder why he isn't chasing us."

  "Probably stopped for repairs."

  "I just hope he doesn't send that lifeboat after us."

  "So do I," said Will. "So do I." He descended painfully down the companionway and when he struggled back up, he was holding the little silver derringer.

  "I doubt that will stop them," said Jim.

  Will weighed the gun in his hand. "It's not for them. It's for me."

  "You're going to kill yourself?"

  "I'll leave you the second bullet."

  Slowly, the three miles increased to four. At five, the monsoon haze softened the boxy silhouette. At six, they were alone on the sea.

  "Back on course?"

  "Let's give him a few more miles."

  "Good idea," said Jim. "God, that was close. What if we ran into him at night?"

  Will asked, "How long before you changed course?" "What do you mean?"

  "How long did the Russian see you before you saw him?" "I'm—I'm not sure. Why?"

  "Long enough to determine our course?"

  "Long enough to see we're heading for the River Plate?" "I don't know. Maybe we better not go to Buenos Aires." "I'm running out of places, son. I've got to go there. Jesus, what a lousy break."

  Dear Shannon.

  I got your letter and I confronted Will. Will Spark and that Billy Cole are definitely the same guy. But even though Will is the con man you say he is. I don't believe that he's dangerous in the sense of being violent or anything. Maybe I wouldn't buy stock from him. But I'm not afraid to turn my back on him either.

  Jim studied what he had written. Wasn't he, in fact, "buying stock"? Hoping for a piece of the microprocessor in payment for helping Will sail to Argentina?

  Shannon wasn't fooled, either.

  Dear Jim.

  But you *ere* buying "stock" from him. You're "investing" your safety by helping Will sail to Argentina, for which you're hoping to be paid a piece of his so-called microprocessor. You're risking your life sailing that far with a sick man. You're risking your life by making a bargain with the devil. You're buying stock with your life. And the worst thing is you're buying stock from a con man. How can you be so sure that Will Spark will keep his side of the bargain? There may not be any stock. There may not be a microprocessor. What makes you think that Sentinel isn't as phony es CanCure.com?

  That was, of course, the big question ever since Shannon had first called Will a con man.

  Hoping against hope, Jim had to know the truth. So he waited until Will's defenses were low to pop the question.

  Right after they saw the Russian, Will's fever had bounced to 103. He'd been too wasted to eat. Jim rigged another saline drip and sat on the edge of Will's bunk as the old man lay with his eyes closed. He had come to realize that Will had the ability to put himself in a state somewhere between waking and sleep, like meditation—a word Jim hated, as he associated it unhappily with his mother's self-improvement mania.

  It was as if Will could transport himself into a healing state where his body took the opportunity to repair damage. Jim was reminded of a time when Shannon's cat won an awful fight with some animal and had slept for days, healing, just as Will was now. For a second so intense that he had to drive the thoughts from his mind, he missed Shannon and home so deeply that it hurt.

  "So, Will. Can I ask you something?"

  "Shoot," he whispered, his eyes still beneath lids so thin that they molded the orbs like a coat of paint.

  "Is the microprocessor any better than CanCure.com?" "What do you mean?"

  "Is Sentinel real? Or is it just another scam?"

  Will was quiet. After a while Jim feared that he had slipped from a meditative state into a deep sleep.
As he started to leave him, the old man spoke, eyes still closed.

  "Jim, I spent my whole life trying to hit a home run. Other men my age have built something solid, accumulating achievements until they've got something they can bank on, something they can point to and say, This is me. But I was always swinging for the fences. Fouling out, striking out, starting from scratch every day. But now it's my turn.

  Sentinel is my home run."

  He opened his eyes and smiled at Jim, and the expression on his face was suddenly so hopeful that Jim didn't have the heart to ask again whether it was just another scam. But when he looked away, Will knew what was in his mind.

  "Is Sentinel real?" Will said. "Why don't you ask Lloyd McVay? Or Val McVay? Or Andy Nickels. They think Sentinel's real enough to kill for it."

  WHAT IS THAT horse doing?" asked Admiral Rugoff.

  The McVays' private dining room overlooked pastureland that was turning green with spring. The Russian had called an hour ago and invited himself to lunch, which could only mean he had something good on Will Spark. Avuncular-sounding on the telephone, he was a harder man in person, and it took no great leap of the imagination to picture him, more than a decade ago, as a flag officer of the second most powerful navy in the world.

  "That is a Tennessee walking horse," explained Lloyd McVay. "Their smooth gait allowed southern planters to tour their vast plantations!'

  "A horse bred specifically for American aristocrats?"

  "Not quite," Val corrected him. "Walking horses were developed for the nouveau riche.

  King Cotton created many a wealthy man who hadn't been brought up to ride."

  The admiral laughed. "I have always said that the strength of your nation lies in its contradictions:'

  Impatience flaring in his daughter's coal-fire eyes prompted Lloyd McVay to refill Rugoff's glass and ask, "To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence in our remote corner of New Jersey, Admiral?"

  "Coincidence," said Rugoff. "I happened to be doing business in Port Elizabeth, when one of my captains reported that he had sighted a yacht that fit your profile in the South Atlantic."

  "Sighted? Why didn't he seize it?"

  "His ship had broken down. He was dead in the water, making repairs."

  "Well, couldn't he have sent a boat after it? They carry lifeboats, don't they?"

  The old admiral looked at him curiously and McVay realized that his nerves were showing. He glanced at Val. She was waiting, as still as an ice sculpture. "I mean—"

  "They carry a lifeboat. If their ship is sinking and the crew is sufficiently sober and the davits haven't frozen with rust from inattention to maintenance, they might be able to launch in half an hour. At which point, if they are very lucky, the motor will start. If they are not very lucky, not only will their motor not start, but their lifeboat will sink because they forgot to screw down the bilge plug—pursuit was not an option?'

  "Did they happen to notice which way the sailboat was headed?"

  "It changed course when it sighted my ship and bore away to the south. But before they changed course they were headed south by southwest. Their exact compass course was two hundred and twenty degrees, magnetic, and the boat was making five and a half knots, under full sail."

  McVay shook his head. "Wouldn't you say that that's suspiciously precise? Sounds to me like they're trying to make up for their failure to seize the yacht?"

  "The freighter's captain served under me in the old days," Admiral Rugoff replied evenly. "He may have lost the stomach to whip a crew into shape, but he has not forgotten his seamanship."

  "Well, what does that all mean? Where are they headed?"

  "Two hundred and twenty degrees, magnetic, would put them on course for Rio de la Plata. They could be headed for Montevideo or Buenos Aires."

  "And you're reasonably sure it fit the profile?"

  "Would you like to see a photograph?"

  "You're joking?"

  "I don't joke about my foreign friends who deposit large sums of cash in my London bank." The admiral slipped a liver-spotted hand into his lizard-skin attache and left it there until Val McVay said, "We have the account number."

  "Thank you. The captain, having stopped drinking recently, has taken up photography as a hobby. And he purchased a very long lens, duty-free, somewhere. Of course, the radio fax isn't so precise."

  The fax copy was overly exposed, and the yacht was just disappearing into the mist. But the tall mast and the businesslike sliver of the cabin roof matched the photos from Hong Kong. And the sailboat had changed course when it sighted the ship.

  He passed it to Val, who nodded at once.

  "Under a magnifying glass, you can see the wooden helm," Admiral Rugoff said. "It's him, all right. Bound for the River Plate. You got a lucky break, my friends. You'll find him in Buenos Aires or Montevideo."

  Two nights after he dodged the Russian ship, Jim lost the wind. The southwest monsoon had grown weaker by the hour and quite suddenly it was gone. Hustle wallowed on a confused sea for half the night, sails banging in the dark. Jim braced for another bout of seasickness. And then, just as suddenly as the monsoon had died, the southeast trade wind filled the sails.

  -

  He put the boat back on course, trimmed to a port reach, and lay down to rest. He woke to a changed ocean—a crisp blue sea different from any he had seen.

  From Barbados on the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, across the Atlantic to the Saint Paul's Rocks, on to Africa, into the Gulf of Guinea and out again, he had sailed only tropical waters, where a hot pearly sky often hovered like a lid on a pot and the horizons bunched close in the thick air.

  Now, well into the South Atlantic, crossing the eighth parallel a hundred miles east of Ascension Island, Jim noticed that the sky was sharper and brighter and bigger than on the clearest day in the tropics. The vistas lengthened. The horizons seemed more distant yet more distinct—dark blue sky and darker sea in sharp divide. It looked as if infinity loomed near.

  The southeast trade wind bore a hint of far-off cold. Jim rummaged around for the sweatshirt he had packed in Connecticut and found it smelling damp and moldy. He hung it from the boom to air. When he checked on Will, the old man was huddled under a sheet. Jim draped his bony back with a blanket he found among the winter things kept in cedar drawers under the bunk. Will muttered gratitude.

  "Who's Cordi?" asked Jim.

  "What?"

  "You said, 'Thanks, Cordi.' "

  Will opened his eyes. They were red from fever, swollen, and flickering with confusion.

  "I thought I was somewhere. . . . Oh, my head is spinning and spinning and spinning."

  "How's the shoulder?"

  "Tender as hell . . . Where are we?"

  "Eight degrees south, thirteen west," said Jim. He watched anxiously as Will tried to fix latitude and longitude on the chart he carried in his head. The fever and the massive doses of antibiotics he was ingesting were scrambling his mind. His condition had been vacillating between good days and bad. Today was beginning to look like a bad one. But Will surprised him.

  "Make sure you don't run into Ascension Island." "Good. Feeling better?"

  "The Brits lease out an air base there. They, or their American tenants, might take offense."

  "Maybe we should go there, Will. If they have a base they'll have a hospital."

  "Can't do that."

  "Why not? I doubt they'll attack you on a British island." Will shook his head. "I wouldn'

  t put it past the bastards, but that's not it."

  "So why not? Let's do it. We could be there by tomorrow morning."

  Will was shaking his head.

  "Why not?"

  "I had a bit of a mix-up in London several years ago. An equities situation. Purely a misunderstanding—but there were charges and I thought it best to leave British territory.

  "

  "By 'equities situation' you mean a stock swindle?"

  "Absolutely not. Water over the dam as far as I'
m concerned. But Johnny Law has a long memory. And John Bull a long reach."

  Annoyed, Jim backed out of the cabin. The crisp new light pouring through the ports revealed the little scratches, bangs, and dings in the once-pristine woodwork that spoke of too many months at sea. By the time they reached Argentina, Hustle would be long due for a visit to a shipyard.

  "I'll make us some breakfast. Will you eat?"

  "I better. I feel like hell."

  "And while I'm doing that, maybe you could write me a list of countries where you're not being chased by the cops or the robbers?'

  "Very funny."

  "It shouldn't take long."

  Will surprised him by nodding. "There's truth in that, son. Truth in that."

  The southeast trades grew stronger. Steadying up, they gave Hustle her first two-hundred-mile run, averaging more than eight knots for the next twenty-four hours. Jim spent nearly all that time on deck, fine-tuning the sails and basking in the pleasure of the speed and the sheer beauty of the blue, blue ocean and the black and starry night. Around the time of the false dawn, he fell into a deep sleep on the cockpit bench, cocooned in a hooded windbreaker. He was ripped awake by a loud and steely bang.

  His first thought was that something had broken. He swung his bare feet to the deck in a panic, his mind shuffling groggy hopes that when he located the parted line or the slipped fitting or the torn sail that Will would be in a condition to diagnose the problem and show him how to fix it before a crisis turned into a disaster.

  He saw, silhouetted against the pale sky, a halyard swinging from the masthead, angling down through the main hatch. He heard the busy click-click-click of winch and then, to his disbelief, one of the Schwinn spinners came banging and smashing up the companionway. It was swinging with the boat's motion, gouging wood and fiberglass.

  "Belay that!" yelled Will, and now Jim saw him at the mast, a ghostly shadow in the half-light, madly cranking the winch halyard.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Belay that!"

  Jim rushed to obey.

  "Not with your hands. You'll lose a mitt. Wrap a line on it!"

  Jim scrambled, grabbing a loose sheet end and flipping the line around the wildly swinging bike.