The Nautical Chart

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  "Of that much I'm sure," said Tanger. "They met."

  She had stopped gazing at the domes of the resort and was frowning slightly, with a stubborn set to her jaw. Gamboa folded the paper and gave it to her. Then he raised a hand, as if he was not contesting her conviction.

  "In that case, the captain of the* Dei Gloria had to be a pretty cool customer. Not just anyone would have stood up under the pursuit, chosen not to take shelter in Cartagena, and engaged the Chergui in almost yardarm-to-yardarm combat. And that voyage from Havana without port calls..." Gamboa studied Coy and then the woman, smiling knowingly. "I guess that's what it's all about. Nor

  Coy leaned back in the chair over which he had draped his jacket. Why are you asking me, his gesture said She's the one in charge.

  "There are things I want to dear up," said Tanger after a brief silence. "That's all."

  Very carefully she put the paper with Gamboa's notes into her handbag. Gamboa sent her a penetrating look. For a moment the observatory director's placid expression seemed to lose its innocence.

  "A pretty piece of work, anyway," he said, cautious. "Besides, maybe there was something on board— I don't know."

  He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Coy observed that he took more time than necessary, as if he had something in mind he wanted to say.

  'Although the truth is," he said finally, "that neither the ship, nor the route, nor the period are good indicators if you're looking for treasure."

  "No one's talking about treasure," Tanger said very slowly.

  "Of course not. Nino Palermo wasn't talking about that either."

  Dead silence. They heard the voices of the fishermen below, working on boats in dry dock, or rowing among the small craft anchored bow to the wind. A dog was racing along the beach, barking at a gull that planed undisturbed before winging off in the direction of the open sea.

  "Nino Palermo was here?"

  Tanger watched the gull grow smaller in the distance, and she voiced her question only when the bird was nearly out of sight. Gamboa bent his head to light a new cigarette, protecting the flame of the match in both hands. The breeze filtered smoke between his fingers as his pale eyes sparkled with amusement.

  "Of course he was here. To pick my brain, like you two."

  THE southwester had freshened a couple of knots, Coy calculated. Enough to splash seafoam on the breakwater that ran along the ancient south wall of the city. Gamboa told his story slowly, enjoying the telling. It was obvious he liked the company and was in no hurry. He smoked as he walked between his two companions, pausing from time to time to gaze at the sea, the houses in the barrio of La Vina, the fishermen sitting like statues beside fishing poles lodged among the rocks, contemplating the Atlantic.

  "He came to see me about a month ago_____ He came, as they

  all come, everything very ambiguous, lots of smoke and mirrors. Asking about this ship and that document, various things that prevent you from getting a good idea of what they're really looking for." At times Gamboa smiled at Tanger, and the gap in his teeth accentuated the smile. "He brought a very long shopping list, and on it, in eighth or ninth place, camouflaged among other things, was the Dei Gloria. I already knew you were on that trail, because we'd talked several times by phone. It was obvious that this Palermo was panting after a fresh clue."

  He fell silent, watching a fish struggle at the end of a line. A bream. The fisherman, a skinny type with bushy sideburns and wearing a white shirt and suspenders, delicately removed it from the hook and tossed it into a pail, where it lay weakly flicking its tail among other silvery reflections.

  "So as soon as Palermo mentioned the Dei Gloria, I put it together." Gamboa started walking again. "Then I let him invite me to eat at El Faro, where I listened attentively, nodded, made four or five general comments, gave him information about what I thought were the least important things on his list, and got rid of him."

  "What did you tell him about the Dei Gloria?' Tanger asked.

  The wind pasted the light cloth of her skirt to her thighs and whipped the open neck of her blouse. She was very well favored, but she didn't play the part of the beautiful girl. Or act helpless. Coy liked that. She seemed cool, competent. Talking like old friends with Gamboa: being colleagues, why should we hide anything from each other? Let's talk friend-to-friend. We're civil servants in a hostile world, et cetera, et cetera, and what can I tell you that you don't know? Life is hard and everyone navigates through it as best he can. Of course I'll keep you informed. I owe you that.

  She's clever, Coy decided. She's very clever, or maybe so intuitive that it's almost sick, with a sharp sense of ways to manipulate men. He remembered the commander in the Museo Naval in Madrid, his expression as he talked with Tdnger in the hallway outside her office. She's obviously one of ours, Admiral. And it came to mind that things were going the same way with the observatory director. One of ours.

  Now Gamboa was smiling again, as if her question was unnecessary.

  "I told him what I should," he said. "That is, nothing. Whether he believed me, now that I don't know.... At any rate, he was very guarded." He turned toward Coy, as if he expected confirmation of his words. "I suppose you know Nino Palermo."

  "He knows him well," she said.

  Too quick to point that out, Coy thought. He looked at Tanger, and she was aware he did, because she turned with exaggerated attention toward the ocean. I may know Palermo, he said to himself, but not all mat well. You said that a little too fast though, darling. You said that probably a second too soon. And that's not good. Not in a clever girl like you. Too bad that at this point you're still making that kind of mistake. That or you take me for a fool.

  "Not that well," Coy answered Gamboa. "In fact, I don't know the guy as well as I'd like to."

  "Well, you must be the only one in this business."

  "He isn't in this business," said Tanger.

  The observatory director stood looking at diem. Again he seemed to reflect upon the relationship between them. Finally he spoke to Coy.

  "Gibraltarian, with a Maltese father and an English mother... that is, one hundred percent pirate genes. I've known Palermo for a long time, since the time I worked classifying archives in the museum in Cadiz. He made one of the attempts to salvage

  the Santisima Trinidad, maybe the most serious. In her time the Trinidad was the largest warship in the world, a ship of the line

  with four decks and a hundred and forty guns; she sank after the Battle of Trafalgar as the English were trying to tow her into

  Gibraltar." He pointed somewhere out to sea, toward the south.

  "She's out there still, a little off Punta Camarinal. He tried to do what the Swedes did with the Wasa, or the English with the Mary Rose, but the attempt, like most of these things, foundered because of the Spanish administration's lack of enthusiasm, that is "

  "Like the dog in the manger," Tanger interjected.

  "Exactly. Neither eat nor let eat."

  Gamboa threw his cigarette butt into the foam breaking on the rocks of the breakwater, and kept talking. Palermo was quite well known in that area. He had that Mafioso look; Coy would understand what he was talking about, very Mediterranean. Morocco was only a few miles away; from Gibraltar and Tarifa you can see it on clear days. That was the frontier of Europe. Palermo had started Deadman's Chest six or eight years before, and was known for being unscrupulous. He had interests in Ceuta, Marbella, and Sotogrande, and he worked with dangerous people on both sides of the Straits, advised by a legal firm specializing in contraband and shell companies that pulled his chestnuts from the fire when things got too hot.

  "No one has been able to prove it, but, among other dirty tricks, he's credited with the clandestine looting of the wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Cillas, a galleon out of Veracruz that sank in 1675 in the cove of Sanlucar with a cargo of silver ingots." Gamboa grimaced. "It wasn't a huge fortune, but during the looting the divers destroyed the ship, leaving it useless for any ser
ious archaeological research. He's suspected of more than one despicable act like that."

  "Is he efficient?" Coy wanted to know.

  "Palermo? Extremely efficient." Gamboa looked at Tanger as if he expected her to confirm what he said, but she said nothing.

  "Maybe the best of the guys we see operating around here. He's worked on wrecks around the world, and made money by combining that with salvaging and scrapping sunken ships____ Some time ago he tried to link up with one of the attempts by Fisher, whom he'd worked for as diver on the Atocha. They intended to make an all-out effort at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, where they calculated some eighty ships had gone down on their way to unload in Seville with more gold aboard than the Banco de Espana has. But this isn't Florida; they couldn't get official authorization. There were other problems, too. Palermo is one of those guys who defend the classic doctrine of treasure hunters—since they do all the work and the State merely issues the permits, four-fifths of the proceeds should go to the rescuer. But in Madrid they said no way, and he had the same luck with the council of Andalusia."

  Gamboa was enjoying the conversation. He was talkative and this was his terrain, and he gave Coy a long lecture on the role of Cadiz in the history of shipwrecks. Between 1500 and 1820, two to three hundred ships carrying ten percent of all the precious metals brought from America had sunk there. The problem was the murky water, the sand and mud covering the wrecks, and also suspicion on the part of the Spanish state. Even the Navy, he added with a twist of his lips, had a good number of wrecks pinpointed. But some old admirals thought of the sunken ships as tombs that shouldn't be violated.

  "How did the interview with Palermo go?" Coy asked.

  "It was cordial and cautious on both sides." The observatory director studied Tanger an instant before turning back to Coy. "So you know him, then?"

  Coy, who was walking with his hands in his pockets, shrugged.

  "She exaggerates a little. The truth is we had, uh... superficial contact."

  Gamboa looked at him closely, interested.

  "Contact, you sayr

  "Yes."

  "How do you mean, superficial?"

  'Just that." Again Coy shrugged. "Limited to the surface."

  "He head-butted his nose," Tanger said.

  Coy glimpsed a smile through the golden hair the sea breeze was blowing across her face. Gamboa had stopped and looked at them in turn.

  "His nose? Go on, you're joking." Now he spoke to Coy with renewed respect. "You have to tell me about that, my friend I'm dying to know."

  Coy told him in a few words, with no adornments. Dog, hotel, nose, police station. When he was through, Gamboa studied him, pensive, amused, scratching his beard.

  "Hey! And yet, even for someone who doesn't know his story,

  Palermo is a dangerous man____ Besides, he has that disturbing

  way of looking at you; you don't know which eye to focus on" He hadn't taken his own eyes from Coy, as if evaluating his capacity for punching people in the nose. "Superficial contact, you say. Is that right? Superficial."

  He laughed Coy studied Tanger and she held his gaze, the smile still playing on her lips.

  "I'm glad someone gave that arrogant bastard a lesson," Gamboa said finally, after they had started walking again. "I already told you that he came by here the way everyone does. Smoke and mirrors, false trails: the Florida Keys, Zahara de los Atunes, Sancti Petri, the Chapitel and Diamante reefs. Even the Vigo estuary and its famous galleons..."

  They had left the sea behind and were walking into town along old streets bordering the cathedral, near the brick tower and walls of Santa Cruz. The plaza sloped downhill, with its Christ in a vaulted niche, and lanterns and geraniums and shutters on the balconies of old houses where whitewashed walls, like most in the city; were pocked by wind and dampness from the nearby sea. Almost everything was in shadows, and the light from the setting sun was fading from the tile roofs. The paving of that plaza, Gamboa told Coy, was cobbled with American stones, ballast from ships that plied the route to the Indies.

  'As I said," he continued, "going back to Nino Palermo. I had been warned. So I let him wander around without offering any worthwhile clues."

  "I appreciate that," said Tanger.

  "It wasn't just for you. That sly fox played me a bad turn a while back, when he was on the trail of the four hundred gold and silver bars—though others were talking about a half-million pieces of eight—taken from the San Francisco Javier.... But in those cases, instead of creating an uproar that doesn't do anyone any good, it's best not to say anything about it, and just keep it to yourself. Our paths will cross again."

  They threaded between parked cars blocking the street, passing some rough-looking men along the way. The area was packed with dark little bars filled with unemployed fishermen, scroungers, and beggars. A young boy in sneakers, and with the look of someone who could win the 100-yard dash, followed them for a while, his eye on Tanger's purse, until Coy turned, set his feet in the middle of the street and scowled, at which the boy decided to test the air elsewhere. Prudent, Tanger shifted her purse. Now she carried it tucked against her ribs.

  "What is it exactly that Palermo asked you?"

  Gamboa stopped to light a cigarette. Again smoke escaped through the incense burner of his fingers.

  "Same as you. He was looking for plans." He put away the lighter and turned toward Coy. "In any research involving shipwrecks, plans are of vital importance. If you have them, you can study the structure of the ship, estimate measurements, and all the rest. It isn't easy to get your orientation under water, because what you find, unlike what you see in the movies, tends to be a pile of rotted wood, often buried under sand. Knowing where the bow is, or the length of the waist, or where the hold was, is a big step forward. With plans and a tape measure you can make a reasonable assessment of life down there." He gave Tanger a meaningful look. "Of course, it depends on what you expect to find."

  "It isn't a matter of looking for anything, at first," she said. "This is just research. The operative phase will come later, if it comes at all."

  A thread of smoke filtered from between Gamboa s nicotine-stained incisors.

  "Right. The operative phase." He narrowed his eyes maliciously. "What was the Dei Gloria's cargo?"

  Tanger also laughed softly, placing a hand on his arm.

  "Cotton, tobacco, and sugar from Havana. You know that perfectly well."

  "Sure." Gamboa scratched his beard. "At any rate, if someone locates the ship and goes on to—what did you call it?—the operative phase, everything will also depend on what you're looking for. If it's documents or perishable goods, there is nothing you can do."

  "Of course," she said, as imperturbable as if this were a game of poker.

  "Paper dissolves, and, poof! Arrivederci." "Naturally."

  Gamboa scratched his whiskers again before taking another drag on his cigarette.

  "So... Cotton, tobacco, and sugar from Havana, you say?"

  His tone was teasing. She raised both hands, like an innocent little girl.

  "That's what the cargo manifest says. It isn't great, but it gives you a pretty good idea."

  "You were lucky to find it."

  "Very much so. It came to Spain among the papers concerning the evacuation from Cuba in 1898. Not to Cadiz, where it would have been lost in the fire, but to El Ferrol. From there it was sent to Viso del Marques, where I was able to see it in the Commercial Navigation section."

  "You were lucky," Gamboa repeated

  "I went to see if I could find anything, and suddenly there it was before my eyes. Ship, date, port, cargo, passengers... Everything."

  Gamboa studied her intently.

  "Or almost everything," he said in a bantering tone.

  "What makes you think there's something more?" Coy asked.

  Gamboa smiled calmly. He shook his head.

  "I don't think, friend. I just observe this young woman___ And then I weigh Nino Palermo's interest in
the same matter. And my own sense of it, because I wasn't born yesterday and I've been at this for years. This voyage from Havana to Valencia without a call at Cadiz—never mind the squeaky-dean Havana manifest you found in Viso del Marques—smells of an undercover operation. And if we consider the date and who chartered her, the conclusion is obvious: there was something fishy about the Dei Gloria What that corsair sank was anything but an innocent ship."

  Having said that, the director of the observatory winked and again laughed as dgarette smoke seeped from between uneven teeth.

  "Like her," he added.

  He looked at Tanger. Then Coy saw her laugh in turn, the way she had before, with the same ease—intelligent, mysterious, complitious. Gamboa did not seem the least bit bothered, only amused, like someone tolerant of a naughty little girl who for some reason has your sympathy. And Coy observed that, as in so many other things, she knew how to laugh the right way. So again he felt that vague despair, that sense of being left out of everything, supplanted and uncomfortable. I wish we were already at sea, he thought, far away from all the others, on board ship where she has no choice but to look in my eyes all the time. Her and me. Looking for bars of gold, silver ingots, or whatever the fuck she wants.

  Gamboa seemed to sense Coy's discomfort, for he shot him a friendly grin.

  "I don't know what she's looking for," he said. "I don't even know whether you know. But in any case, very few things survive for two and a half centuries under water. Shipworm goes after the wood, iron corrodes and gets crusted with scale..."

  'And what happens to gold and silver?"

  Gamboa looked at him with sarcasm.