The Pirate's Daughter

by Robert Girardi

  Then the pirate finished eating and the dishes were cleared away and Cricket and Schlüber came down the companionway and folding chairs were brought up and they joined him at the table. Today, Schlüber wore a pin-striped suit with a red paisley power tie and polished tassel loafers. He flipped open the notebook computer, which made a few noncommittal beeps, and set about fiddling with the thing with the self-important air common to computer people. Cricket seemed clean and rested; her skin showed a healthy glow. She wore a pair of stiff white sailor pants and a short blue naval jacket with gilt epaulets and braiding. Two rows of gold buttons rose over her breasts. She looked like a fresh-faced midshipman just out of the Naval Academy.

  The pirate kissed her cheek as she settled beside him. “Morning, honey,” he said.

  “You need a shave, Dad,” Cricket said, frowning. “And it’s not morning; it’s afternoon. And you should have put on some decent clothes. The Articles insist on the solemn nature of the occasion.”

  “On my ship I am the Articles,” the pirate growled, rolling his one malevolent eye. But he pulled his bathrobe closed and sat forward. “Listen-up, shipmate,” he said to Captain Amundsen. “Any questions before we begin?”

  “Yes, what have you done with Ackerman?” the captain said, his voice a parched croak. “As skipper of the Compound Interest, the man was my responsibility. Did you filthy bastards kill him?”

  The pirate gave a wan smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Mr. Ackerman is worth quite a bit of money to us. He’s quite comfortable right now. More comfortable than you, in fact. For your information, the black flag is a gesture to tradition, as is the plank you see yonder.” He waved in the direction of two Malay crewmen just now coming down the companionway. They carried a long wooden plank like a diving board, which they fixed into a slot in the starboard gunwale with a chain and iron pegs. Wilson shuddered when he saw this thing. It was painted an uneasy shade of turquoise and extended a good twenty feet off the side of the ship, quivering over the water as the Storm Car hawed at anchor in the swells.

  “Killing everyone we capture is a waste of good human resources,” the pirate said. “The Brotherhood needs men, especially qualified ones! Mr. Schlüber, let’s hear the captain’s biography.”

  “ ‘Amundsen, Lars Olaf,’ ” Schlüber read quickly from the screen. “Born Esbjerg, Denmark, 1945. Naturalized United States citizen. Thirty-six years’ active service, Merchant Marine. Fifteen different vessels listed here, including a couple of the big old liners of the United States Line. Second mate USS Constitution, 1967; first mate USS Independence, ’72. Five official commendations for meticulous attention to duty. Navigator’s license, Double Star class. Excellent record. We’ve got a first-rate skipper here.”

  The pirate seemed impressed. He put his fingers together and thought for a moment. Then he ordered Captain Amundsen released from his handcuffs. The captain stood, rubbing his wrists. The pirate offered a glass of orange juice. The captain refused, even though he was half dead with thirst.

  “Then I’ll come to the point,” the pirate said. “The Brotherhood needs good skippers like you. As you can imagine, half our men don’t know the difference between a scupper and a sextant, and the other half are bloody drunken savages from some of the worst places on earth. Last year, we nabbed a smallish trawler about two hundred miles off the coast of Patagonia, and I came across one of my men eating the heart of a captured sailor. It was disgusting. Of course, once you’re in our service, you’re in for life, but I can promise you riches beyond your wildest dreams. Sooner or later, the wealth of the whole world comes through our hands.”

  He gave the captain five minutes to decide. When the five minutes ended, Captain Amundsen drew himself up straight and spoke out in a clear voice.

  “Satan made a similar offer to Jesus in the desert,” he said. “He was promised the kingdoms of the earth in exchange for his immortal soul. I spit on you as Our Lord spit on Satan,” and with this he cleared his throat and expectorated a wad of green phlegm on the deck.

  The pirate sighed. “Mustapha,” he said.

  But as Mustapha leveled the automatic rifle, Captain Amundsen raised a hand. “Wait. I’m a man of the sea and, like you, something of a traditionalist. I ask for the plank.”

  “Suit yourself,” the pirate shrugged.

  The captain buttoned his dress jacket, now soiled and tattered, and turned smartly toward the starboard. When he reached the side, he hesitated a moment, squinting out to sea. Mustapha came up behind and pushed the barrel of his automatic rifle between the captain’s shoulder blades.

  “That’s not necessary,” the captain said in a quiet voice. He stepped up on the gunwale and out onto the length of turquoise wood. Halfway down, he turned for a moment. The sea sparkled bright at his back; the sun stood at two o’clock. The horizon looked blue as a dream.

  “Mr. Wilson,” he called.

  Wilson looked up.

  “My father still lives in Esbjerg. He’s ninety-six. Bishop Ingmar Amundsen. If you survive this nightmare, tell him I died a Christian, and tell him I’m sorry for running away.”

  Then the captain turned back and was gone. He simply disappeared into the bright day. This time Wilson didn’t even hear the splash. Mustapha stepped quickly over to the railing. Shots were fired, a few quick popping sounds, then silence. Wilson hung his head and said a prayer to the unknown God who permitted such atrocities, a prayer for the soul of a brave man who had just left the world.

  At last it was Wilson’s turn. The sun was in his eyes. His mouth tasted like ashes. His wrists were cut and bleeding from the plastic handcuffs. His nose was burnt, the sunblock he’d put on days before had long since worn off. He hadn’t once looked at Cricket during this ordeal. But now he couldn’t help himself, and he raised his eyes from the tombstone shadows of the deck. She stared down at him, her face impassive, her stone green eyes hidden behind black sunglasses.

  A perplexed tapping came from Schlüber’s fingers as he worked the keys of the notebook computer. “I can’t find any record on this fellow,” he said. “Must have signed on after Santa Barbara.”

  “Is that true, honey?” the pirate said to Cricket.

  “Yes,” Cricket said in a flat voice.

  “What’s your name, mister?” the pirate said to Wilson.

  Wilson rose slowly, pushing off the deck with the knuckles of his cuffed hands, his knees creaking. “Wilson Lander,” he heard himself say. “Seventy-Seven Overlook Avenue, top-floor apartment. You take the Rubicon bus across the river, walk a few blocks down Grace Street and take a right on Rubicon.…” His voice trailed off.

  “What’s that?” the pirate said.

  “There’s nothing in the database,” Schlüber said. “He’s not in the Merchant Marine listings. Checking the American Yachting Association …” Wilson heard the machine beep a negative. “Nothing. As far as my records go, he’s not official. Not licensed by any authority in the U.S.”

  The pirate considered for a moment, frowning. “What are you?” he said to Wilson, “Interpol? CIA?”

  “I’m a human being like you,” Wilson said, and he was surprised to find that his voice did not waver. “I was born like you, and will die like you. The world’s a mighty strange place. That’s all I have to say.” When he had finished speaking, he looked over at Cricket. Her coppery hair wisped in the ocean breeze, and Wilson got a sudden flash of their days in bed in the Azores. Even surrounded by these horrors and with her black heart revealed and ugly as a sore, she looked beautiful.

  “Any skills, shipmate?” It was Schlüber’s voice, sounding helpful. “Anything the Brotherhood might find useful?”

  Wilson shrugged. “I have an undergraduate degree in comparative literature with a minor in ancient anthropology from Ashland College in Beaufort. And most of a master’s in archaeology of the Americas from the same institution. I know a good book when I read one. I’ve been told I’m good with children. And I can date a pre-Columbian potsherd to within
a couple of hundred years.”

  “Enough,” the pirate said, cutting him short. “We’ve heard all we need to hear.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Wilson saw the shimmer of the gun barrel, the scarred ridges on Mustapha’s dark skin sheening with sweat. He turned his head toward the sea and tried to think about dignity, but fear turned the horizon red, and he felt like he was going to faint.

  “Wilson!” It was Cricket’s voice, followed by the clattering sound of a chair falling over.

  Wilson looked back. Cricket stood at the table, chair collapsed on the deck behind her. She towered over her father like a goddess over a gargoyle. He scratched his head and squinted up at her. “Honey?” he said, surprised.

  “This man is my property,” she said. “I’m claiming him now.”

  The pirate shot Wilson a dark, furious look; then he reached up and took his daughter harshly by the arm. “Don’t go sentimental on me, girl,” he hissed. “Sentiment is dangerous for our kind. And it’s against the Articles! A membership in the Brotherhood is not to be granted for personal reasons. We’ve got no choice but to throw this one to the sharks.”

  Cricket pulled her arm away. “No,” she said. “He bears my mark. He is mine. I call your attention to Paragraph twenty-one, Section seven, of the Articles of Brotherhood.” She came quickly around to Wilson and tore open his shirt. “Here is my mark,” she said, and gestured to his shoulder.

  There, the brand from the knife, a scraggly pink C, showed raw with new skin.

  “Schlüber?” the pirate said between his teeth.

  The German fiddled with the computer for a long minute. “Got to change databases, sir,” he said. “Wait, here it is. The subsection on spoils, Clause 6 A: ‘Any prize aboard a captured vessel designated or otherwise set aside by a member of the Brotherhood with special mark or signature, prior to capture of said vessel—’ ”

  “Well?” The pirate hit the table with his fist.

  “I’m afraid so, Captain,” Schlüber said. He looked up for a curious beat, registering Wilson for the first time. “Your daughter knows the Articles. This one belongs to her.”

  12

  Cricket’s sparse cabin aboard the Storm Car contained a narrow bunk, a steel sink, a scrap of Aubusson carpet on the floor, and a fan-backed club chair upholstered in red Morocco leather. Wilson sank into this incongruous piece of furniture like a man giving up the ghost. Hot afternoon sun shone a bright oval through the single porthole in the bulkhead.

  “Go ahead, judge me,” Cricket said when she had closed the hatch behind them. “But you can never know what my life has been like. The choices I’ve been forced to make!”

  Wilson felt numb. Dumb happiness at being alive.

  “Water …” He managed a parched whisper.

  For a moment, Cricket looked crestfallen. Her lower lip trembled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being inconsiderate. The thought that you probably consider me a monster made me crazy for a few minutes.” She took a coffee cup from somewhere and filled it with brown water from the sink. It tasted rusty, but Wilson didn’t care.

  “Don’t open the hatch for anyone except me,” Cricket said. “Lock it after I’m gone. I’m going to the galley to get you something to eat.”

  The thought of moving an inch from the club chair set his head spinning. He closed his eyes and listened to the slow rumble of the ship, felt it in his bones. When he opened them again, Cricket was kneeling before him, her hand on his knee. She had changed her midshipman’s outfit for a T-shirt and jeans. Concern showed like flecks of gold in her green eyes. “Do you feel like eating?”

  Wilson nodded yes and sat forward with an effort. She placed a blue plastic tray on his lap. There was a grilled cheese sandwich, a large deli pickle, a pile of barbecued potato chips, and a tall glass of lemonade sweating in the heat.

  “That’s made from real African lemons,” Cricket said. “Good stuff. Drink it slowly.”

  Wilson took small sips of the lemonade and ate half the sandwich. The cheese had an odd sharp taste, not altogether bad.

  “Goat cheese,” Cricket said. “All we’ve got on the island is goats. A few sheep. No cows. Goats will eat garbage, and there’s plenty of that.”

  “The island?” Wilson said.

  “I’ll tell you all about it when we get there.” She handed him a little pillbox full of aspirin.

  He swallowed three of them and a few minutes later felt better.

  “How do you feel now?”

  “Not bad, considering I’ve just had a near-death experience.”

  “I know you’re exhausted,” Cricket said, “and probably still in shock, but I don’t want …” Her voice trailed off. She went over to the porthole, then came back and sat cross-legged on the bunk. “Like I said, I’m not a monster.”

  “So you’re not a monster,” Wilson said. “But you’re not a hell of a lot better. You’re a pirate.”

  “Barely.” Cricket blinked at him. “I’m just a woman who’s had to make some unfortunate decisions. I’m trapped in this life. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

  “What about Captain Amundsen?” Wilson said. “Was that one of your unfortunate decisions?”

  Cricket bit her lip and looked away. “I went to him last night,” she said in a small voice. “They had him down in the hold, tied to a steam pipe so he couldn’t sit or lie down. I untied him, I gave him something to eat. ‘Just go along with us for a little while,’ I said. ‘When Dad asks you to work for the Brotherhood, say you will. You play along now, and later, after a couple of years, when they stop watching you so closely, you’ll have a chance to escape.’ Do you know what he did?”

  “I have an idea,” Wilson said.

  “He spit the food back in my face. Black bean soup. Got in my hair, all over. The captain practically threw himself off that plank, Wilson! Maybe he wanted to prove something; maybe he was tired of life and wanted to go out a martyr. But he did have a choice!”

  “He’s dead now,” Wilson said.

  “Yes.” Cricket’s voice trembled. “And I regret that more than I can say. I really liked the old guy. What makes it worse is this whole operation was about kidnapping Ackerman, not about the captain at all.”

  Wilson was silent. Cricket stared at the oval patch of sunlight as it moved up the bulkhead to three in the afternoon. Finally, she looked over at him, her green eyes dark and fathomless. Then her lip began to tremble again, and she leaned forward, and tears made dark splotches on her jeans.

  “Wilson, don’t hate me,” she said. “I’m so lonely. You can help me out of this nightmare.”

  Wilson shook his head. “How?” he said at last.

  Cricket shrugged miserably. “You’re good. I need your goodness. Sometimes I can’t say what’s right or wrong. My father tells me to do something, and I do it because that’s the way it’s been since I was a kid. It’s always been the family and the Brotherhood against the rest of the world. What’s right for the family has often been wrong for someone else. You’re different. You know what’s right and wrong for everyone.”

  “You’re asking me to be your conscience?” Wilson raised an eyebrow.

  “Something like that,” Cricket said.

  “You don’t need a degree in moral philosophy to figure out making an innocent person walk the plank is not a good thing,” Wilson said. “If you don’t know that, I can’t help you.”

  “But you can help me in another way that’s very important.” Cricket looked up at him, suddenly dry-eyed. “You can gamble.”

  “Why the hell does gambling matter so much to you?”

  “Let’s not talk anymore. You need some rest right now.”

  Cricket stood and helped Wilson over to the bunk. They lay together side by side but not touching as dusk fell, a scarlet dome over green islands and Africa in the distance, and the night came on, full of piteous stars.

  PART FOUR

  QUATRE

  SABLES

  1

  S
mall islands lay close off either bow, half hidden in malarial haze. The reedy channels were full of crocodiles and kingfishers. Knobby-rooted trees, home to birds of every description, grew down to the black water. By 10:00 A.M. the sky burned white with heat, so bright it became impossible to look out the porthole.

  Wilson had never experienced such oppressive weather. Trying to breathe here was like trying to breathe underwater. The Storm Car’s ancient diesels droned loud and soft in maddening, irregular pulses. For hours the two of them lay naked and sweating in the bunk, caught in a sort of erotic torpor. They reached for each other, sweated together for a while, then lay apart and sweated into the moist sheets.

  Cricket rose at dusk, wet a rag in the rusty water of the sink, and sponged Wilson’s flesh. This cooled him for the barest second, till the water evaporated, rising like steam in the moist air.

  “These goddamned islands,” Cricket said, her eyes purple-lidded from the heat. “The climate’s terrible where we’re going, but nothing’s as terrible as this.”

  “Where are we?”

  “The Mojango Archipelago.”

  “It’s not Africa?”

  “Close enough,” Cricket said. “We’re about sixty miles off the Bupandan coast. Dad comes through the Mojangos whenever he’s towing a prize. It’s very private. The islands were declared a wildlife sanctuary by the United Nations about twenty years ago. There’s a no-fly zone overhead because of all the birds, and there’s only one channel through this muck, which is off limits to international shipping. Come here.”

  Wilson got up with some effort and went over to the porthole. Hummocks overgrown with salt grass slid by in the channel below. Tall birds with red and yellow feathers stood on one leg in the muddy shallows, watching the vessel pass with lusterless, uncurious eyes. Blue-tailed African thrushes sat preening themselves on the rusty railing of the companionway, dropping splotches of guano to the deck. Clouds of scarlet wrens swirled through the thick air overhead.