The Pirate's Daughter

by Robert Girardi

  “The name is Lander, sir. Wilson Lander.”

  “Ah?” The acting captain seemed momentarily confused. “Lander … that name has a very familiar ring. Where can I have heard it before?”

  “You’re the second person to ask recently,” Wilson said. “I don’t know. It’s fairly unusual.”

  “Ah, yes?” the acting captain said absently.

  “This may sound like an unmilitary request, Captain,” Wilson said, “but I’ve got to do a lot of talking about some pretty difficult stuff. A stiff drink would help.”

  “Of course. We’ll conduct this interview like gentlemen.”

  The acting captain produced a bottle of scotch, a siphon, and glasses from the desk and mixed two scotch and sodas. Wilson took the drink and sat back in a red leather easy chair tacked with brass studs and began to talk. He talked for two hours straight. He told the acting captain everything he could remember: about the Compound Interest and Cricket, about Quatre Sables and the slave trade, about the Bupus and the Andas and the Iwos and the slave station at M’Gongo epo.

  Acting Captain Worthington listened in grave silence. He mixed another round of drinks, and when Wilson finished talking, he offered a cigarette out of an engraved silver case, and the two of them sat smoking in contemplative silence. Beyond the portholes the light over Africa went from green to lavender. A storm was coming on. The Gadfly shifted nervously beneath them in the waves like a racehorse at the starting gate.

  “Tell me once more about the … incident at M’Gongo epo,” the acting captain said at last. “Try to remember every detail.” Wilson gulped the rest of his drink and described again the horrors of that place. The acting captain took out a yellow pad and took a few notes; then he stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a hardtack biscuit, and he walked around the teakwood desk and began pacing back and forth as an angry lavender light filled the stateroom. Beyond the portholes whitecaps were stirring in anticipation of the storm to come.

  “This is something of a breach of security, I suppose,” he said at last, then he stopped pacing and turned toward Wilson. “Naturally you must hold any information in the strictest confidence.”

  “O.K.,” Wilson said.

  “Are you familiar with the activities of the Blockade Squadron?”

  “No,” Wilson said.

  The acting captain took a deep breath. “The original Blockade Squadron was a fleet of British warships in the last century whose job it was to put an end to the slave trade. The squadron stopped suspicious-looking vessels coming out of Africa and searched them for slaves. If slaves were found, they were confiscated and set free in Sierra Leone. The crews were taken into custody and hanged; the slave ships, scuttled. In 1840 thousands of slaves were exported illegally from West Africa to the Americas. By 1860, through the diligent efforts of the Blockade Squadron, this number had been reduced to a mere trickle. By century’s end the slave trade had been completely suppressed—we had hoped for all time. You see, the squadron was never officially decommissioned. This is a technicality, but it is important, one of the reasons why we are here now, off the Bupandan coast. The commissioning orders, signed by Queen Victoria herself, were never rescinded and still exist in the vaults of the Admiralty in London. They specify that British warships must stand ready to interfere with any renewed slaving activity and that these warships may be sent out at any time without a direct act of Parliament. In any case, a few years ago British intelligence began hearing strange reports from our agents in Bupanda—men like your friend Tulj Ra’au—”

  “Wait a minute,” Wilson said. “Tulj is a spy?”

  “Spy is an ugly word,” the acting captain said. “Mr. Ra’au is not a traitor to his country, if that’s what you mean. He passes information through us to MI5 in London. I think you are familiar with his motivations. He wishes to stop the war in Bupanda. You may agree that the best way to stop the war is to stop the slave trade.”

  “I guess so,” Wilson said.

  The acting captain opened his mouth to speak. He stopped himself and gazed for a moment out the porthole where the sky had deepened from lavender to lush purple. He turned from this mesmerizing color and came back over to the desk and lit another Navy Cut. When he switched on the lights, a revealing glare filled the stateroom, and Wilson was surprised to see anger and frustration in the man’s eyes.

  “Modern political reality is a great disappointment to us,” the acting captain said. “Regardless of our original commission, the Blockade Squadron has no standing mandate for action. The current interpretation of ‘interfere’ is rather bloodless, I’m afraid. We just sort of hang about, observing. We can’t really do anything. If I so much as fired a pistol without the nod from Whitehall, the Squadron would be recalled immediately, and the officers court-martialed to a man. Believe me, Mr. Lander, I weep when I hear of the atrocities you have witnessed. That sort of thing cheapens the value of human life for everyone, everywhere. But my government regards Bupanda as a sovereign territory. Any sort of military action on Bupandan soil will have to be referred to the United Nations for endless debate in the Security Council. By the time the politicians resolve to act”—he made a hopeless gesture—“the pirates and slavers will have moved on and set up shop elsewhere.”

  Acting Captain Worthington swallowed hard. Wilson watched the Adam’s apple in his throat move back and forth. In the next moment the man was actually wringing his hands.

  “We are practically helpless against this great evil,” he said, so softly that Wilson barely heard his voice. “I am only the acting captain. Last week I was a lowly staff commander. I don’t even have the authority to spit out that porthole. Been at the game for a few years now, but if you ask me, never have been quite suited for the naval life. Studied Shakespeare at Oxford, you know. Didn’t want to teach. ‘Why not go to sea for a year or two, like your father,’ my mum said, ‘figure things out?’ So I joined the navy, and here I am, right now feeling like a damn helpless fool.”

  Wilson was quiet for a minute. He looked up at one-armed, one-eyed Nelson dying on the lantern-lit gundeck of the Victory. What would Nelson have done?

  “How many ships in the Blockade Squadron?” Wilson said.

  “Two,” the acting captain said. “The Gadfly and the Hyperion.”

  “How many men between them?”

  “Roughly six hundred.”

  “Listen to me, sir,” Wilson said, and he fancied his voice held the quiet strength of his convictions. “Quatre Sables is not sovereign territory. It is not part of Bupanda. Long ago, before there was a Bupanda, the island was given by the Portuguese king to the man who discovered it. That man’s descendant is in possession of the place, which he leases as a base for slavery and piracy and other atrocities. Think of Quatre Sables as a rudderless, rotten hulk, full of rats and disease swept by the currents. Would you sink that hulk or let it crash into the nearest beach?”

  “Quatre Sables,” the acting captain said.

  “Yes,” Wilson said.

  The acting captain began to pace the stateroom again, and when he stopped pacing and turned around, his eyes held the answer.

  “Lander,” he said lightly. “I believe I know where I’ve heard that name before. He was the chap who traced the river Niger from its source to the sea, Richard Lander. A bookish, quiet sort from Cornwall who just picked up one day and went off to Africa. He succeeded where dozens of others had failed. Went to Sokoto with Clapperton in 1832. When Clapperton died, he reached the coast on his own. Captain Morris had the man’s book somewhere.…”

  The acting captain went to the shelves and extracted a thick volume with a red leather binding and marbleized flyleaf. Wilson remembered it almost immediately from his childhood, from among the dusty volumes in the library at his great-aunt’s house. He took it and opened to the title page: The Journey of Richard Lander from Kano to the Sea—Along with a Record of Captain Clapperton’s Last Expedition to Africa with the Subsequent Adventures of the Author. The volum
e felt right in Wilson’s hand. He tried to remember something that his great-aunt had told him about an ancestor who had traveled and written a book, but her voice in his head faded out, enveloped by the static of the years. Perhaps Africa had been in his blood all along.

  “Would be something if you were related to that chap,” Acting Captain Worthington said. “Quite ironic, really—”

  There was a flash of white light from the darkness beyond the porthole, and a few seconds later the distant crash of thunder. Thirty-foot waves hit the side of the ship as the storm bloomed out of Africa. But HMS Gadfly was sturdy and fast. They weighed anchor and sailed beyond the dirty weather into the open sea.

  12

  Quatre Sables revealed itself in morning light as a dark bundle on the horizon. Just before dawn, a faint wind blew from the direction of the island, and Wilson caught the familiar stench of the place, and it was as if a cold hand had grabbed his gut from pubic hair to belly button.

  A hundred yards off the port bow, HMS Hyperion mirrored the Gadfly in dark silhouette. Coded signals flashed back and forth between the two ships; flags snapped in the ocean breeze. The jet engines of the Sea Harriers started with a wheeze, then warmed into a steady scream. Men in camouflage fatigues and combat gear moved purposefully across the deck. Despite the noise and motion, Wilson could hardly keep his eyes open; he had never been a morning person—then, suddenly, he was wide awake and the sea breeze was sharp and fresh in his nostrils, and he was ready for whatever would come.

  At 0500 hours, the sky began to brighten in the east. Acting Captain Worthington assembled the crew on the main deck below the superstructure. He wore combat fatigues and camouflage paint on his face but eschewed the heavy armament of his marines and carried only a pistol at his side. He spoke through a small microphone attached to his tunic, and his words were carried electronically to the Hyperion riding the waves in the near distance.

  “Sailors and marines of the Blockade Squadron,” he said, “I will be brief as we have a job ahead of us today. We look around and see a world sliding back into ruin and savagery. Five thousand years of civilization, the intellectuals tell us, are at an end—our beliefs exhausted, our achievements in the past. They tell us we are becoming a footnote, going under with all hands and all engines, sinking into the depths with our God and our laws, our academies of natural and applied sciences, our presidents and kings, our literature and legends, our poets and painters and musicians, our critics and the critics of our critics. Perhaps it is true, perhaps our time has come, and the world is making way for something new, and we may hope something better. That is not for me to say. I am a soldier, that is tomorrow’s business, and we are here today. But I will promise you one thing”—he swung around and with a dramatic gesture indicated the white ensign of the Royal Navy flying from the topgallant—“as long as that flag is hoisted every morning to meet the rising wind, chaos will have an enemy!”

  He paused to cough into his hand, and a variety of coughs and sniffles echoed from the men below. “As always, England asks only this of you, that each man do his duty. Good luck.”

  The acting captain turned away. But before he crossed the hatch, someone shouted, “Three cheers for the acting captain!” and the hurrahs of the men ascended into the brightening sky.

  13

  At 0530, the Sea Harriers lifted off the launch pads and streaked low over the waves toward Quatre Sables. For the next hour they rolled and buzzed above the stronghold of the pirates like angry bees. From the deck of the Gadfly, two miles out, the air strikes were silent and beautiful. Plumes of flame shot into the blue; clouds of red and green smoke billowed up like dragons. By 0715 the pirate vessels in the harbor had been sunk beneath half a fathom, the barracoon and wharves were on fire, and a greenish flame burned from the ridge where the fine homes of the Thirty Captains lay in ruins.

  The Gadfly moved in for a close-range bombardment with its 118 mm guns at 0800, then Wilson went out on the motor launch with the second wave of marines commanded by Lieutenant Peavy. He joked with the men; they seemed in good spirits, eager for a little action after dull months of patrol duty aboard ship. Then, as the launch entered the harbor, Wilson saw something he had hoped he would not see: The Dread lay sunk at her mooring near the shipyard. Only the airtight midsection containing the navigational octagon remained afloat, burning quietly, flames reflected in the oily water.

  The wharves were a mess of shattered debris. Fires burned everywhere. The bodies of pirates and dockworkers lay bleeding in the rubble, the innocent side by side with the guilty. Wilson joined Lieutenant Peavy’s marines as they advanced up the slope. They went at a dogtrot through the shanty city, which had not been touched by the morning’s air strikes. He saw the same big-bellied children staring out with hunger-dulled eyes, the same cardboard hovels, the same desiccated corpses lying half buried in garbage in the streets. The stench of this squalid settlement was the stench of a despair that would never go away.

  “The poor are always with us,” Lieutenant Peavy murmured.

  Wilson said nothing.

  The gates of the ridge settlement had been blasted off their hinges. Not two of the homes of the Thirty Captains were left standing. Wilson ran down the shell road to Cricket’s house, now a smoldering, irregular pile of charred bricks and timber. He clambered over the mess afraid of what he’d find. He found a piece of marble bathtub, smoldering lumps of charred clothing, Cricket’s guitar perfectly intact. His old copy of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire lay half burnt beneath a twisted wreck of lawn furniture. It was hopeless. There was no way of telling if Cricket lay beneath the blackened mess. Perhaps it was her tomb.

  His knees felt weak. He sat on a bit of foundation and put his head in his hands. Had it been her fault? What could you expect from a girl raised as a pirate? She had been as beautiful and deadly as a shark in the water. And the deadliness had been part of the beauty; it had not been possible to separate the two. The wind blew black smoke over the sun. The wind smelled of jet fuel and burning rubber. The sound of lamentation came from the shanty city below.

  “Is this your doing, Lander?”

  Wilson turned around and saw Dr. Boursaly stumbling up the pile of rubble. The doctor’s medical coat was torn and greasy, his face a dirty smudge. He looked like he had been hiding under a car. In his left hand he held a broken-necked bottle of gin, his lips cut and bleeding from it, the blood dribbling down his chin. Wilson knew the man was a drunk, but he had never seen him drunker.

  “Had to do it, Lander,” the doctor slurred, and put an accusing finger against Wilson’s chest. “Like a good fucking Boy Scout. Brought in the cavalry, you self-righteous bastard!”

  Wilson felt like hitting him. An explosion went off below. They held their breath, and a hot wind blew up the slope.

  “We had a good thing going here,” Dr. Boursaly said when the air cleared of smoke. “Outside the fucking rules of fucking bourgeois society. Where the hell else is a drinking man going to get a job? I told you to do something about the situation, but I didn’t mean it; that was just to talk. And you married into the Thirty Captains. You were rich!”

  “Slavery,” Wilson said. “Remember, Doctor? Piracy and murder. Those things had to be stopped.”

  “There you go again,” the doctor shouted. “Applying your Boy Scout standards to another culture. Boy Scout! Fascist!”

  “It’s only the fact that I am a Boy Scout that keeps me from punching you in the eye,” Wilson said.

  The doctor smiled bitterly, took a swig off the broken-necked bottle of gin, and cut his lip again. Blood and gin drooled down the glass. The sight was disgusting. Wilson snatched the bottle away and threw it shattering to the rubble.

  Dr. Boursaly gasped. “That was the last bottle of gin on the island,” he said in a tragic voice, and for a moment Wilson thought the man would throw himself to his hands and knees to lap up the drops glittering on the shards. Instead he gurgled helplessly, and his eyes rolled up in his
head. Wilson stepped out of the way, Dr. Boursaly went facedown in the dirt.

  “Need any help up there, Mr. Lander?” It was Lieutenant Peavy with two Royal Marines, just coming over the pile of shattered tiles and masonry that had once been Cricket’s patio.

  “I’ve got someone for you,” Wilson said. “A doctor. He might be able to help with the wounded.”

  At Lieutenant Peavy’s orders, the marines took Dr. Boursaly by the armpits and hauled him down to the shell road.

  “My God,” Lieutenant Peavy said, “you say this man’s a doctor?”

  “Yes,” Wilson said. “Sober he’s pretty good. Drinks like a maniac, though. Just keep him dry.”

  Bloody and pale against the crushed shells, Dr. Boursaly looked dead. But when the marines went to lift him onto a stretcher, his head lolled to one side, and his voice issued forth, high-pitched and hollow as a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  “You think your wife’s buried beneath that crap,” the doctor said. “Wrong, Boy Scout! Minute she put in, she went straight back to him. She’s probably screwing the bastard right now!” Then he laughed and the laugh came out as a bloody bubble that popped on his lips, and he passed out, eyes open, and the marines took him away.

  Another explosion from below lit the sky in white flame above the island. Lieutenant Peavy shielded his eyes. The hot wind sucked the oxygen from the air for an excruciating few seconds.

  “That’s the demolition boys having a go at the oil storage tanks,” the lieutenant said. “Looks like they’re doing a thorough job.”

  “Sow the ground with salt,” Wilson said, half to himself.

  “Not a bad idea from the looks of things,” Lieutenant Peavy said. “But what’s this about your wife?”

  Wilson didn’t answer immediately. He frowned down the shell road in the direction of the jungle.