The Devil on Chardonnay

by Ed Baldwin

  “Sir, I am Oyay Ajak, Mariam’s uncle. We mean you no harm. Greetings.”

  The man was huge; tall, wide, thick, with shining black skin and wire-rim glasses. He wore a khaki bush jacket, and the two men with him, equally large and younger, wore work pants and T-shirts.

  Davann cowered between the bed and the wall, backing further into the corner. There was no way he could jump up on the bed and leap out of the window, that fused hip just wasn’t the tool for that trick. Still, no guns. What was that about greetings?

  “Davann! Uncle Oyay is my father’s brother, and your friend.” Standing in the door to the toilet, dressed, Mariam spoke perfect English. He’d been surprised at first, thinking all these Africans spoke Swahili or Arabic or some strange dialect he’d never master. But, English is the official language in South Sudan, and Mariam, from Juba, had studied it since grade school.

  Did they do shotgun weddings in Sudan? Davann relaxed a little. At least it wasn’t a kidnapping, a common tool of Arabs for vengeance or ransom. These were not Arabs.

  “Sir, I apologize for entering your home this way, but you’re being watched. It was the only way to speak to you alone.”

  The man had a civilized look to him, much more so than his two companions who looked like laborers from the street.

  Davann had had his share of girlfriends and had been on friendly terms with a few brothers, and an uncle or two. His homeys didn’t talk much about marriage; this would be quite the twist. Then he noticed that he was naked and everyone else in the room was dressed. The two muscle guys seemed to have a slight smirk. He grabbed the sheet.

  “You won’t need this,” Mariam said as she removed his M9 from his trousers and laid it on the table, and then brought the trousers across the room. She knelt in front of him and held them for him to step into. He leaned against the wall while he zipped up and fastened his belt. She retrieved his cane.

  “I must get a message to your president.” Oyay Ajak said, seated at Davann’s kitchen table sipping tea hurriedly prepared by Mariam. His two bodyguards slumped in chairs, also drinking tea. Davann had coffee.

  “Why tell me?”

  “You are CIA.”

  “Me? No.”

  “Yes. We’ve watched you. You fly American agents with equipment. You smuggle people in and out of Kenya. You have contacts with others in Zanzibar and Ethiopia.”

  “It’s just contract work. They pay, we fly.”

  “How about Colonel Smith and Captain Chailland. You flew them with their equipment into the Congo Basin and were gone for two months. That was no ordinary contract flight.”

  “We didn’t fly them into the Congo Basin. We flew them …”

  Davann paused. This was well into classified activities, and the whole Indian Ocean trip was best left out of this talk.

  “… someplace else, well away from here.”

  “Your Arab hosts believe you are CIA. They watch everything you do.”

  “I believe that. But they’re wasting their time.”

  Actually, the Arabs weren’t wasting their time. After selling the Albatross back to the United States, relieving Raybun and Davann of their airplane mortgage payment and insurance, operating the Albatross was now quite cheap. Their contract called for six months of payments, and those were still coming in just like any government entitlement check. They had enjoyed their foray into the Indian Ocean and their quarantine on Diego Garcia drinking beer and fishing. Raybon planned to negotiate an extension of the contract to allow the CIA or any other government agency to hire them out for whatever clandestine activity might be needed. It was fun.

  “We need to get a message to Mr. Obama.”

  “Don’t you have an ambassador?”

  “He stays in Nairobi. If it comes from you, he will listen.”

  Davann was stumped. Oyay was educated, cultured, yet naïve. Davann felt himself to be buried so deeply beneath the rubble of human activity as to be inconsequential. Yet here was this request to get a message to the president of the United States. He wrinkled his brow, confused, unable to respond.

  “Mariam says you are a good man, an important man.”

  That hit a nerve. Mariam was more than just a woman of his acquaintance. She had a sense of dignity and self-worth that set her apart from other young women he’d known. His grandmother was a woman of dignity. A Memphis schoolteacher, she’d allowed no profanity or foolishness in her presence. Now an arthritic old woman, she still dressed every day in a carefully ironed dress and heels as if she were in front of her high school English class. He was both attracted to her and afraid of her sometimes-harsh principles.

  As a young man, he’d pursued the easy girls and shirked his grandmother’s rigid rules of scholarship, and he’d gotten into trouble. The Marines offered a quick exit, one that earned an appreciative nod from the other tough guys in his South Memphis neighborhood. At Parris Island the drill instructor must have taken notes during one of his grandmother’s English classes. It was all about respect – respect for self, respect for the Corps. There is no more rigid code of honor than in the Marine Corps, and Davann was a Marine.

  Davann may have been guilty of overstating some of his exploits in an attempt to impress Mariam. She didn’t topple the moment he expressed an interest in her, unlike most of the women he’d known. Mariam had been courted.

  “What’s the message?”

  “Do you know our country?” Oyay relaxed a bit and reached into a briefcase by his side, extracting a map. He placed this on the table between them.

  “Mariam has talked about South Sudan,” Davann responded.

  “We’re a new nation, but Sudan is an old one, composed of two very different peoples. The north is desert,” he said, gesturing toward the map and the tan expanse of Sudan. “The Arabs have lived there since antiquity. Here,” he said, pointing to South Sudan, “is forest, and swamp, and grazing lands. Tribes from the mountains and the Congo Basin moved onto the plains long ago. We are herders.”

  He straightened the map and pushed it closer to Davann. His thick, wide finger punched down on Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

  “These are Muslim. We are Christian, or worship our ancestors. These are Arabs.” The finger punched back at Khartoum. “We are African,” the finger punched at Juba.

  “Mariam has told me about the fighting.”

  Oyay waved his hand as if to dismiss the concept of fighting.

  “We have won our independence, and with the help of the United States, and others, have the weapons to keep it.”

  “But, there’s still fighting.”

  “Yes,” Oyay responded casually. “Tribes steal livestock and women. It’s the way of the desert. You hear about this tribe or that tribe breaking out, making threats. It’s nothing new. We know these people.”

  “They want your oil. That’s what the news says,” Davann said, already beginning to dismiss this as tribal maneuvering for more help.

  “No. It’s not about oil. It’s never been about oil. The Arabs have plenty of oil, and the dribble that we produce isn’t of any interest to them. It’s water.”

  Oyay’s finger came down again on the map, again at Khartoum.

  “The Nile! The Blue Nile comes from Ethiopia, here,” he traced his finger from the mountains of Ethiopia down to Khartoum and on toward Cairo. “The White Nile is bigger, and it comes from here,” the finger stabbed down south of South Sudan onto the mountains of Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo. “Our birthright! Our gift from God! We have been blessed with the water. Water for our animals, water for our crops, water for our forests!”

  Oyay stood now, towering over Davann, eyes bulging, sweat popping out in beads on his forehead.

  “The White Nile flows here, into the Sudd wetlands, our breadbasket, our pasture, the foundation of our civilization! They have a plan, the Jonglei Canal Project, to drain the Sudd and divert our water to Cairo!”

  “Oh?” Davann said politely, wondering whether he could get on Mariam again this aftern
oon if he was cordial to her uncle. “But, there’s something new?” There must, after all be some purpose to this visit.

  “Yes.” Oyay punched a finger down on the border between Sudan and South Sudan.

  “Here. Men we have not seen before -- Bedouin, Palestinian, Iraqi, Turk, Saudi, Omani, Pakistani, Afghan. We killed some. Then we captured some. They are jihadists, and they talked of a new offensive: the Wind of Allah. It will be a new weapon, and they, the jihadists, will sweep across us in triumph. They are very confident, and some of our fighters, superstitious people, are beginning to worry.”

  “We saw some of that in Afghanistan. They pump those guys up with all sorts of tales to get them to go on suicide missions. How would you like to travel a thousand miles down into the worst desert in the world to fight dudes you’d never seen?”

  “No, it’s more than that. They are expecting something unusual.”

  “So they say.”

  Oyay reached into the briefcase again.

  “They have these.”

  He brought out a picture of a truck speeding through a desert town, stacked four high with crates of live monkeys.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  An Invitation

  Michelle Meilland swept off the elevator on the executive floor of Planters National Bank, entourage in tow, like the principal of a major European merchant bank, which she was. Cooper Jordan had met her at the street and given her a brief tour of his bank. Now they were heading to his office to execute papers designating Planters National Bank and Meilland Freres as correspondent banks, empowering each to transact business for the other in their respective locations. This had all been hurriedly arranged a day after her grand arrival in Charleston.

  Cameras from WCBD, WCIV and WCSC, the network affiliates in Charleston, had caught the entry downstairs and were clamoring off the other elevator to set up for the signing in Jordan’s office. The reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier was already snapping photos. This was news because of the perception, planted by Cooper Jordan, that a correspondent agreement with a European merchant bank meant Charleston was the up and coming U.S. East Coast port. Boyd thought it might have other implications.

  “… and representing First Bank of Oklahoma City, in Charleston for this momentous occasion, is Mr. MacDonnald Wilde.”

  Boyd’s head snapped around as he heard an enterprising TV reporter begin an interview. The reporter had hurriedly set up his camera while his competition was idling during the final preparation of the papers. There was Donn Wilde facing the camera in full regalia, with his banker’s suit and beaming smile in front of the floor to ceiling window overlooking Charleston Harbor.

  “Thank you, Ray,” Wilde said to the reporter as he beamed into the camera. “It’s such a pleasure to be here in fair Charleston and to be a part of this historic occasion as Planters National Bank bursts onto the scene of world commerce. As the people of Charleston know, ships from here take goods to the four corners of the world and bring back the bounty of other lands and nations to enrich the lives of Charlestonians.”

  Boyd marveled at how a man who had been in prison only a week before could be pontificating on television on a subject he knew next to nothing about. That he pulled it off so well, delighting the young reporter who had thought to quickly set up to catch this interesting looking character, made Boyd wonder how many other local experts were slinging bullshit.

  “Boyd?” Mikki approached him from behind, the signing over and the reporters leaving.

  From her lips, his name came out as a single syllable, like a bubble bursting.

  Boyd turned to face her, the magnetism causing him to stop. She leaned close, and her fragrance drew him in. The eyes were luminous, laughing. Whatever she wanted from him, he was game.

  “Could we ride back to Chardonnay? Neville St. James, my captain, has taken our car to the market.”

  “Mais oui, mademoiselle,” he replied, in terrible high school French.

  *********

  Capt. St. James was supervising the loading of boxes of food from the trunk of a Chrysler Town Car onto a dolly to cart it down to the launch. Two swarthy crewmen, remarkably alike enough to have been twins, or at least brothers, were busy lifting the cases of mineral water, canned food, beer and dried provisions. Chardonnay was riding high in the Ashley River where she had dropped anchor the night before.

  “May I see your boat?” Boyd asked.

  “Of course,” Mikki answered.

  “It’s a ship, mate. A boat is that little dingy there.” Neville’s Scottish brogue was pleasing, even though clearly annoyed by Boyd’s lack of respect for his vessel. His reddish hair was speckled with gray, and his ruddy face was freckled and peeled from years in the weather. His only acknowledgement of the warmth of the mid-September afternoon was to pull up the sleeves of his wool sweater.

  Boyd grabbed a case of tomato sauce and added a case of beer onto it and turned toward the launch. Wolf ignored the seamen and the load and walked with Mikki, empty-handed, behind Boyd.

  Chardonnay had a sense of simplicity and elegance that made her as compelling as her owner. Polished brass, carefully varnished teak and spotless glass were the only surfaces other than the deck. Putting down his load, Boyd walked to the front, the deck rough and warm on his bare feet. He stared at the long bowsprit.

  “You are a sailor?” Mikki was trailing behind him, carrying her shoes, full skirt gently wafting in the breeze.

  “No. I’m a securities salesman. I used to be a pilot.”

  “Chardonnay is a very old ship. Her keel was laid in 1909, and she has been in my family since then. My grandfather sailed her around the world when he was a young man, and my father was born on her on a channel crossing to England.”

  “That must be some story,” Boyd exclaimed, looking up from the bow.

  “Perhaps some other time. The story is not entirely pleasant,” she said, passing him and stepping out onto the bow, balancing, looking down through the net beneath the bowsprit.

  Boyd thought she looked like a child, standing there with her shoes in one hand, intent on her balancing.

  “The bowsprit is what you notice. They don’t put those on ships any longer. With modern materials, sails no longer need to extend beyond the deck. Yet, we can put up three jibs. The power is … I wish you could feel the power.” She seemed wistful.

  Was it a question, he wondered. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “We’re leaving the day after tomorrow,” she said sadly.

  “Why so soon?”

  “This is a holiday, really. I have business in Europe in two weeks. I must be back.”

  “Does someone have to go out there when the ship is underway?” Boyd asked, stepping up onto the railing as it met the bowsprit and pointing to the end of it about 30 feet in front of the ship. It was clearly made to traverse, as the top was flat and the net was there to catch someone who might fall from it.

  “Of course. We set the jib. That's a small sail that attaches to the mainmast there, and bowsprit. It adds a great deal of power and is easy to rig. Two can attach at the end, and one here,” she said, indicating the forestay.

  Boyd’s eyes followed the steel cable from its attachment at the bow upward to its attachment two-thirds of the way up the mainmast, towering more than a hundred feet above them.

  “Does anybody go up there?”

  “Not often. The mainsail is self-furling. There is an electric … how do you say it? Engine?”

  “Motor?”

  “Exactly. An electric motor pulls the sails up. We go up only if they jam. We can furl them in a storm and not even have to leave the pilot house.”

  “Where’s that?” Boyd looked back along the largely bare deck.

  Behind the mainmast, which was well forward, was a waist-high storage box for sails 6 feet long. Behind that was a large air intake that looked like the mouth of some great horn. It was set on another waist-high, polished teak structure. Louvered windows allowed some sunlight int
o the compartment below, and the modest extension gave someone below additional headroom. Farther aft were several other extensions with louvered glass and vents, but they were modest in comparison with other ships he’d seen pictures of. Most of the sailboats in the yacht basin had sacrificed virtually all of their deck to have additional room below.

  “In bad weather, we put up canvas around the wheel. Also, we can set the autopilot.”

  “Like a plane? Just set it and it takes you where you want?”

  “No, it just keeps a heading,” she responded as they walked aft, toward the ship’s stern.

  The tallest structure was chest-high and located midway between the masts. It had small rails on its top, indicating a likely place to catch some sun, though the highly polished teak would discourage putting any furniture there. Through louvered windows, Boyd could see down into an elegant saloon, with an oriental carpet and more polished teak and brass. Aft, double doors opened onto stairs descending into the saloon, through a small radio and instrument room. Mikki paused as she stopped to look down.

  “That is called the doghouse,” she said gaily. “We can enclose this area in canvas when there is weather.”

  She pointed to the area aft of the wheel, which was just aft of the smaller mast.

  “So, this is a schooner?” Boyd asked, looking at the two towering masts.

  “No. A schooner has the smaller mast in front of the mainmast. This is a ketch, with the smaller mast just in front of the wheel, which is over the rudder. A yawl would have the smaller mast back further, behind the wheel.”

  “What do you call the smaller mast?” Boyd asked, looking up the smaller mast, 60 feet above them.

  “The mizzenmast. Its sail is the mizzen – the mainmast has the mainsail, and the jib is rigged from the mainmast to the bowsprit.”