Vineyard Enigma

by Philip R. Craig

  Zee and the kids were also garbed for the beach, the June sun was rising higher into a powder-blue sky, and there was no reason to linger, so we didn’t.

  We drove through Edgartown and went on to Katama. There, early-rising June people, intent upon getting in a full day of their expensive island vacations, were already gathering on the beach, putting up their umbrellas, spreading their blankets, and testing the water with their toes. We didn’t join them, but instead got into four-wheel drive, took a left, and drove over the sand to Chappaquiddick.

  To our left, beyond the waters of Katama Bay, we could see the white buildings of Edgartown; to our right, a mile or so offshore, there was a fishing boat, its spreaders making it look like a giant insect walking over the water.

  We saw gulls, terns, plovers, oyster catchers, and an osprey before we got to Chappy. We also salvaged a float that had washed up onto the beach and thus were guaranteed, before we even wet a line, that we’d not go home empty-handed; the float would join the dozens of others we’d found on the beach over the years and which now adorned the walls of the shed out in back of our house and gave the place a perhaps excessively Vineyardish cachet.

  We fetched the Dyke Bridge and followed East Beach south toward Wasque. On the horizon we could see the faint irregularity that was the island of Muskeget, the westernmost part of Nantucket. Farther north, across the sound, was the misty outline of Cape Cod’s south shore, running east toward Chatham. There were Jeeps scattered along the beach, surrounded by chairs and beach blankets and fronted by fishermen and -women making casts out into the water. Over the earth and sea the sky arched blue and cloudless beneath the summer sun.

  The beach at Wasque Point grows and shrinks according to the whims of the wind and sea. That year it was wide and long. The rip was arching out from the line of surf and there were Jeeps ahead of us with bluefish lying under them out of the sun. The rods of the fishermen were bending with a happy regularity.

  I found a spot to park and Zee was out of the truck in a flash.

  “Come on!” she cried.

  She snagged her rod from the roof rack, trotted down to the surf, and made her cast. Her green Roberts arched far out and splashed on the edge of the rip. A moment later I saw the white swirl of a striking fish and the bend of her rod. She looked back, laughing, then turned and began to reel.

  A thing of beauty is a joy forever. I leaned on the steering wheel and watched her bring the fish in.

  “Come on, Pa! Help us get our rods!”

  Joshua and Diana were too short to reach the roof rack. I got out and took down their rods, and they ran down to the water.

  Their casts were straight but far too short; however, they kept at it while Zee landed her fish and brought it up to the truck, grinning. A nice five pounder, flopping and twisting.

  “Get down there!” she said. “You won’t catch them with your rod on the rack!”

  I took her fish by the gills and removed the hook from its mouth. “I’ll be right there. Catch another one.” I picked up the fish knife and cut the fish’s throat and tossed it under the truck. Zee gave me an odd look and went back to the water.

  I went down to where the kids were casting and reeling. “I think they’re out too far for you,” I said. “If you want, I’ll see if I can get your lure out farther. Then you can reel in.”

  “Here,” said Diana, while Joshua gave my offer thought.

  Her rig was so small and light that I couldn’t get much length to the cast, but I put it out a little farther than she could, and gave the rod back to her. “Be patient,” I said. “There have been days when everybody around me was catching fish and I couldn’t catch a cold. When you get your line in, I’ll cast it again.”

  “Okay, Pa.”

  Zee was on again. I could hear the line sing as her rod bent. The water had become alive with fish, and rods were bent as far as I could see down the beach.

  Joshua allowed me to cast his plug. I did better with his gear than I had with his sister’s, but I still didn’t get the lure out where the fish were. “Keep at it,” I told him. “Sometimes the school gets closer to shore. If that happens, you should be in the middle of them.”

  The children reeled and I cast their lines. Zee made those long, lovely casts of hers and soon had a half dozen fish under the truck. Finally she put her rod in one of the spikes on our front bumper, got my rod off the roof, and brought it down to me.

  “Here. You fish for a while and I’ll cast for the sprats. I think they’re moving in; I got that last one about half a cast out.”

  “Okay.”

  I loosed the redheaded Roberts from the guide, walked a few steps away, and made my cast. The lure splashed and I reeled it in. There was a swirl of white, but the fish missed. I slowed my reeling. Another swirl and this time I felt the brief touch of a fish that had almost but not quite made a solid hit. I reeled in and made another cast. More swirls as the voracious blues snapped at my lure but passed without taking it.

  On the third cast one got his teeth around it, and I set the hooks and pulled him in, lifting the tip of the rod high, then reeling down as he fought to stay free, twisting and leaping and racing away, but was brought slowly, fatally, to the shore. I timed the surf to let the last wave help me sweep him up onto the sand, then got a hand in his gills and carried him, flopping and jerking, up to the truck. A fighter to the very last. I got the lure out of his mouth and cut his throat.

  “Very nice,” said a voice I recognized.

  John Skye’s Jeep had pulled in beside ours, and he, Mattie, and Mahsimba were busy unloading beach gear. I hooked my lure in a guide and set my rod in a spike beside Zee’s.

  “Where are the twins?” I asked. “I thought they’d jump at the chance to brown the meat on a day like this.”

  “The girls, I’m happy to say, are gainfully employed this summer, working as waitresses in some of the island’s favorite watering holes. Both are on noon shifts today, so only the old folks get to play.”

  Mattie gave me a kiss and Mahsimba shook my hand and peered under the truck.

  “You have caught some nice fish.”

  “All but this last one are Zee’s,” I said.

  “Ah. I should have guessed that she is an excellent fisherman. Oh, look at your son!”

  I turned toward the water and I saw that Joshua’s rod was bent almost double. He was on!

  “He has himself a very nice fish,” said Mahsimba as Joshua was yanked toward the surf and staggered back again.

  “Perhaps he can use some assistance.”

  Zee was watching Joshua closely but keeping her hands away from his rod. I could see her lips moving as she advised and encouraged him. “He has all the help he needs,” I said.

  Mahsimba nodded, and we watched the drama unfold before us, with Joshua hauling back and trying to reel down before his fish threw the lure. Slowly he began to gain line, and on both sides of him other fishermen reeled in and stood watching him. I remembered catching my own first good-sized fish, and was filled with a wild joy as Joshua backed away from the water, hauling the fish closer and closer to shore. Then the fish was racing back and forth in the surf and I held my breath, for many a fish has been lost right there in the last inch of water.

  But this one wasn’t lost. Flipping and thrashing, he came slithering out of the last wave and up onto the shining sand, and Zee was on him in a flash, making sure he stayed caught. She put a bare foot on his side, grabbed him by the gills, and carried him up onto the dry sand, where her exhausted son stood panting and beaming, so tired that he was shaking. She put her arm around her boy’s shoulders and, laughing and brilliant-eyed, brought him and his fish up to the truck as the other fishermen, smiling, turned back to the sea and made their casts.

  “Pa! Pa! Joshua’s fish is huge!” Diana’s voice was full of joy and wonder as she came running up from the water, carrying her own little rod.

  Huge enough. I weighed the fish out at seven and a half pounds.

 
; “Well done,” I said to Joshua.

  “I thought he was going to pull me in,” said Joshua. “I didn’t think I could hold on any longer.”

  “You did just fine. I’m proud of you. We’ll have this guy for supper, if that’s all right with you. Stuffed bluefish again.”

  He nodded happily, still panting.

  “You’d better get some rest,” I said. “Your fishing muscles are probably pretty tired.”

  “Okay, Pa. Can I have a soda? I need a drink.”

  “You bet. You know where the cooler is. Help yourself.”

  “Me, too, Pa?”

  “Sure, Diana.”

  The children put their rods in spikes and headed for the beach blanket and the cooler.

  I turned and saw Mahsimba, John, Mattie, and Zee talking and laughing as they looked at Joshua’s fish under the truck.

  I opened the back of the Land Cruiser, then, two by two, surf-rinsed sand from our blues and put them in the box on top of the crushed ice. We had plenty of fish.

  I walked over to the grown-ups.

  “You should be proud of your son,” said Mahsimba, smiling. “He fought a mighty battle.”

  “I am proud of him,” I said. “Are you a fisherman yourself?”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Zimbabwe is famous for its fishing,” said John. “Trout in the mountains and tiger fish in Lake Kariba.”

  “But no surf casting as you do here,” said Mahsimba. “We fly-fish for trout and use boats for tiger fish, which, if one may boast, fight as fiercely as your bluefish and have as many teeth.” He held out a hand and I saw a thin scar along one finger. “A memorial to a careless moment removing a hook. I’m fortunate to have my finger at all. Tiger fish are related to piranhas.”

  “Let’s take a walk up the beach,” I said. “You can see how different people make their casts. If you look closely, you’ll see a few scarred fingers among the locals, too.”

  “I would enjoy a walk,” said Mahsimba.

  “And while you two are gone,” said Mattie, taking my wife’s arm, “Zee will bring us up-to-date on all the latest gossip. People in the ER know all the juicy stuff!”

  “We’ll be back in time for the first beer of the morning,” I said.

  Zee hesitated, then looked quickly at Mattie as Mahsimba and I turned and walked away.

  23

  “Your island is lovely and varied. This spot is very different from the villages I’ve seen.”

  Mahsimba was strolling barefoot beside me, carrying his shoes in one hand. His shirt and shorts were neat and pressed, unlike mine.

  We looked at the line of fishermen as we passed behind their trucks going westward toward the wooden walkway and stairs that led to the parking lot on the top of the bluffs overlooking the Swan Pond. Different fishermen used different motions when they cast and when they reeled in. Some, like me, brought their rods straight back before casting; others threw sidearm. Some used every muscle in their backs and arms; others made seemingly effortless flips. Some reeled with their rod tips high; others kept their tips close to the water. Some reeled hard and fast; others reeled slowly, gently. All of them were catching fish.

  “Is it possible that there are fish here like this every day?” asked Mahsimba.

  “No. This is a blitz. The fish may be gone any moment, or they may stay here for hours. Some days you can cast here from dawn to dusk and never see a fish.”

  “In Africa it’s the same. There are always fish and there are always fishermen, but the two are not necessarily in the same place at the same time.”

  A universal truth, no doubt.

  We ducked under the rope barrier that prevented Jeeps from going farther west, crossed the board walkway, and went on, leaving the trucks and the fishermen behind us.

  “You wish to speak with me, J.W.”

  “Yes.”

  “About your wife, perhaps?”

  I looked into those unfathomable golden eyes. “No, not about her.”

  He arched a brow. “What, then?”

  “About you and David Brownington.”

  “Ah. What would you like to know?”

  “The truth.”

  He cocked his head slightly. “And what truth is that?”

  “The one about the relationship between you and Brownington. The one about the people you really work for.”

  We walked on. To our left the dancing waves of the Wasque rip curved out to sea. On the far horizon by Porky’s Island the surf was white.

  “Tell me your thoughts,” said Mahsimba.

  “My thoughts are that you work or at least worked at one time for the UN and maybe for Interpol and that your onetime friend David Brownington once did the same before creating a consulting firm and hiring out his skills to the other side. My thoughts are that right now, you may be working for yourself, not for the UN or Interpol or the Zimbabwe government. My thoughts are that you may not have actually lied about who you are and what you’re doing, but that you deceived me and John Skye and Stan Crandel from the beginning. My thoughts are that I don’t like being lied to by the people I work with.”

  We walked on. “I see,” said Mahsimba. “You have resources I had not anticipated, J.W.” He gave me his smile. “I apologize for underestimating your capacities.”

  “But not for deceiving me.”

  “I regret that I did so. Deception is a tool of my work, I fear, but in this case its use was clearly an error.”

  “But only because you were found out.”

  “Indeed, that is so. It has been my experience that most people are more trusting and speak more freely if one is understood to be an employee of a museum or an agent for a law enforcement agency rather than if one is an independent contractor working for a private organization. There are exceptions, of course, of which you are perhaps one.”

  Everybody lies at one time or another. Amateurs do it to deceive themselves and others who affect their everyday lives; professionals do it for business reasons.

  At the west end of Swan Pond we turned and walked back.

  “I have to know what’s going on,” I said. “I don’t want to walk into trouble that I can’t anticipate.”

  “Does this mean that you might continue working with me?” Mahsimba’s voice held a note of mild surprise.

  “Maybe. Are you really an independent contractor, or do you still have links to Interpol and the UN?”

  “I have been granted leave from my official duties with Interpol, and have taken temporary employment with a private firm which, in turn, has been hired by the government of Zimbabwe.”

  “To find the eagles.”

  “Yes. And to return them to my country.”

  “Tell me about Brownington Limited.”

  Mahsimba gave himself some time to consider his reply. Then he said, “David was and perhaps still is my friend, so his new life is of more than just professional interest to me; it’s personal. The organization that has employed him also wants the eagles. So far, David has been one step ahead of me in the search, so he found Matthew Duarte before I did.”

  “Which may have been a fatal mistake. How do you know so much about Brownington’s activities if the two of you aren’t on the same side?”

  He held an imaginary cell phone to his ear. “Modern technology not only allows people to communicate rapidly over great distances, but also allows others to sometimes intercept those communications. Both the lawful and the lawless have those capacities.”

  “What makes the people who hired Brownington so anxious to get their hands on the eagles?”

  Mahsimba smiled. “A curious combination of greed and sentimentality. After the mercenary, Parsons, stole the eagles from Crompton, the white farmer whose family had owned them for so long, Crompton soon found himself without a farm, too. His land was taken by the successful revolutionaries.

  “Being a resourceful businessman with a knowledge of African art, Crompton went into the import-export business, specializing in the intern
ational sale of art objects. In the last thirty-five years he has built a very successful organization. Much of his trade, need I say, is in illegal objects, and Interpol is doing its best to put him in jail.”

  “So far in vain, I take it.”

  “So far. But even while Crompton has been thriving economically, he has never forgotten the eagles. He thinks they are rightfully his, and he wants them back. His feelings were very hurt when Parsons stole them, and when he could afford to do so, he began to look for Parsons. He hired David Brownington and David found him. You know the rest.

  “I’ve been told by Sergeant Agganis, to whom I showed my identity card as a member of Interpol, that blood samples from members of Brownington’s family have arrived in Boston and that DNA tests will soon determine whether your Headless Horseman is indeed my friend David.”

  “I take it that Interpol and the organization you now represent have the same interests in the eagles.”

  “Indeed. Interpol works closely with governments to curtail international crime, including trade in stolen artifacts. The interests of the organization by whom I’m currently employed are those of Zimbabwe, which believes the eagles are its property and wants them back.”

  “And your interests are purely economical?”

  “It’s true that I’m making more money at the moment than when I am on salary for Interpol, but I’m also a Zimbabwean and have a personal interest in having the birds returned to their homeland.

  “My supervisor at Interpol, who is always complaining about a shortage of money, is pleased to have me on this temporary private assignment because the costs of my search are being borne by my employers.”

  Head cops are always complaining about their departments being short of money.

  “A tangled web,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you give me any reason to believe anything you’ve just told me?”

  “I cannot. Eventually the truth will be clear to anyone interested, but until then you must trust your instincts.”

  We came to the line of trucks and I saw that only about half of the fishermen were still casting. The others had their rods in spikes and were gathered in clusters, talking.