The Nautical Chart

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  He felt faint, and everything around him whirled. Then he heard Tanger's voice and he thought: Poor girl, it's her turn now. He tried to get to his feet, to give a hand to that brassy little witch. To see that they didn't touch a hair of her head as long as he had the strength to open and close a fist. But he was in no shape to close a fist, or dose anything except the swollen eye—and then he hit the pavement like a prizefighter seeing birdies. Still, he couldn't leave her, not in the hands of Palermo and the Berber, even though in her way she was worse than the two of them put together. So with one last supreme effort, resigned, desperate, he choked back a moan and staggered to his feet. Only then did he remember El Piloto's knife. He felt for it in his back pocket as he cast a quick look around, like a pugilist whose bell had been rung. He saw his two challengers standing docilely side by side. Their eyes were on Tanger, who was still standing quietly by the railing; like her, they were not moving, as if mesmerized by some powerful attraction.

  Coy focused his good eye. What had captured their attention was something Tanger had in her hand, holding it out as if she was showing it to them. He told himself that he must be in worse shape than he thought, really punch-drunk, because the thing glinted like metal and looked very much like—he didn't want to confirm something so unthinkable—a huge, menacing handgun.

  TANGER said little, or at least nothing meant expressly for Coy, in the few brief words she had spoken up there at the overlook before they hurried to their car, leaving the other two behind at the railing like little Christmas shepherds gloriously petrified by the vision of the hardware Tanger had exhibited as if against her will. "It's your fault," she informed him, less in a tone of reproach than as simple information, while she manipulated the wheel and gearshift, her handbag in her lap and the headlamps lighting the hairpin curves descending the Rock. He was coughing like a tubercular heroine in a film, like Marguerite Gautier, and a few drops of blood escaped the tissue and hit the windshield. A thug. He was a thug, and none of that had been necessary, she added later. Totally unnecessary; all he had done was complicate things. Coy frowned as much as his bruises allowed, exasperated. As for the last lines of the dialogue conducted between Tanger and Nino Palermo under the somber nose of the silent Berber, they had been of the nature of "This man is a lunatic," from the treasure hunter, while she tried to lighten the highly charged atmosphere with "Coy is impulsive by nature and tends to solve things his own way.

  'And you, Palermo, you're an imbecile."

  The revolver, a heavy, snub-nosed .357 magnum that Coy had never seen in Tanger's possession, helped Palermo digest those words without making too bad a face. What about the deal, he'd said then. I have to think about it, was her response. At the moment, she added, she couldn't tell him yes or no.

  Palermo, who seemed to have recovered the use of his ‘th's’, told her that she and the mother who bore her could blow it out their ass. That was exactly what he said: she and the mother who bore her, and this time he seemed truly apoplectic. You're not going to lead me down the garden path, bitch, he spat at her from the railing, visibly regaining lost ground before the silent approval of his chauffeur. All that, vocalized several feet from a pocket cannon with six acorn-size bullets in the cylinder, placed Palermo at a creditable, almost admirable, level for brass. Though fuzzy-headed and with a face like a road map, Coy could appreciate the performance out of pure masculine solidarity. "I will send you my answer," she said, looking like a model of propriety with the black sweater tied around her waist. She would have given the impression that she had never broken so much as a plate if she hadn't had that threatening piece in her hand. He remembered that Palermo had said Tanger was the kind of woman who could sink her teeth in you without opening her mouth. Now she was holding these twenty-eight ounces of iron without aiming, arm at her side, barrel to the ground, almost as if wishing she were elsewhere; and that, curiously, gave her more credibility than if she were adopting a stance from a detective flick. I will tell you whether or not we have a deal she said. Just give me a few days. And Palermo, who still didn't believe her and maybe never would believe her, or maybe had caught her sarcasm, let fly with a string of extremely baroque and Mediterranean curses, no doubt related to his Maltese blood. The mildest among them was that he was going to trim the rigging of her lunatic sailor. All that was floating in the air behind Tanger as she walked to the Renault, after putting a hand on Coy's shoulder and getting a grant in answer to her question of how he felt.

  "Like shit," he said, when Tanger asked a second time, on the road down. Suddenly she burst out laughing. The laugh of a light-hearted, self-contained happy child that he heard with amazement as he examined her profile with his one good eye.

  "You are truly incredible," she said. "You nearly blew everything, but you are incredible." She laughed again, and was still laughing, with admiration, when she turned and shot him a quick glance of sympathy. "Sometimes I think I love watching you fight."

  The reflection of the headlights laid a lamina of steel in her eyes, but that steel shone as if in bright sunlight. She took her hand from the gearshift and rested the backs of her fingers on Coy's neck, touching the stubble of his unshaved chin, puffy now from the fists of Palermo and the Berber. And Coy, exhausted and surprised, leaned back against the headrest. He felt a warmth where her fingers lay, and also in the place where soap operas say the heart is. He would have smiled like a goofy kid, had his swollen lips permitted.

  FREE of the last line, the Carpanta parted slowly from the quay. Then the deck vibrated softly while the sailboat sat motionless in the light reflected in the water, until El Piloto revved the motor and the boat gradually moved forward. The port lights marched slowly by, more quickly as the boat picked up speed, bow pointed toward the open sea. In the distance the lights of La Linea, the San Roque refinery, and the city of Algeciras marked the outline of the bay. Coy finished coiling the line in the bow, secured the end, and moved back to the cockpit, holding onto the shrouds when—now they were outside the protection of the port—the boat began to pitch in the slight swell. The lights of Gibraltar still illuminated the Carpanta, silhouetting El Piloto at the wheel, the lower part of his face red in the glow of the binnacle, where the needle of the compass was turning gradually toward the south.

  Coy breathed the air with pleasure, sniffing the proximity of open sea. From the first time he had stepped onto the deck of a ship, the moment of leaving port had produced in him a sensation of singular calm, something very like happiness. The land lay behind, and everything he could need was traveling with him, circumscribed by the tight limits of the ship. At sea, he thought, men traveled with their houses on their backs, like the knapsack of an explorer or the shell that moves with the snail. All you needed was a few gallons of diesel and oil, sails, and a favorable wind, for everything that dry land provided to become superfluous, dispensable. Voices, noises, people, smells, the tyranny of the clock had no meaning here. To sail out until the coast fell far behind the stern—that was one goal met. Facing the menacing and magical presence of the omnipresent sea, sorrow, desire, sentimental attachments, hatreds, and hopes dissolved in the wake, dwindling until they seemed far away, meaningless, because the ocean brought people back to themselves. There were things that were unbearable on shore—thoughts, absences, anguishes—could only be borne on the deck of a ship. There was no painkiller as powerful as that. He had seen men survive on ships who would have lost their reason and tranquillity forever anywhere else. Course, wind, waves, position, the day's run, survival; out there only these words had meaning. Because it was true that real freedom, the only possible freedom, the true peace of God, began five miles from the nearest coast. "Everything OK, Piloto

  "Everything's OK. In half an hour we'll clear Punta Europa."

  Motionless at the stern, Tanger was watching the lights they were leaving behind. She had put on her sweater and was holding one of the backstays beside the lazily flapping pennant. She was looking up toward the top of the dark mass of the
Rock, as if she couldn't leave behind things that were worrying her. The bow of the Carpanta was now pointing directly south, and behind them on the port side were the luminous garlands of the main port, the ships moored at the docks, the black line of the breakwaters, and the white flashes, one every two seconds, of the large beacon on the south dock.

  El Piloto maneuvered to avoid a large anchored merchant ship and then set the engine at 2,500 rpms. In the binnacle the needle of the electronic log established their speed as five knots, and the

  pitching became more pronounced. Coy went to the cabin to turn on the radio, Sailor VHP. He set channels 9 and 16 to transmit and receive. Then he went to the stern to join Tanger. The stern light suffused the straight line of the boat's wake with phosphorescence.

  "Palermo's right," said Coy.

  "Don't start," she replied.

  And said nothing more. She was still focused on the heights of the huge dark rock, which looked like a threatening cloud hovering over the city.

  "He can squash us if he puts his mind to it," Coy insisted. 'And it's true that he has ways to locate the Dei Gloria. His offer..."

  "Look...." She was profiled in the light they were leaving to port, towards the fin of the sailboat. "I did all the work. Let's see if you can get that in your head. That ship is mine."

  "Ours. That ship is ours. Yours and mine." Coy pointed to El Piloto. 'And now it's his, too."

  Tanger seemed to mull that over.

  'All right," she said after a second. "He needs to do his thing,

  and you do yours_____ But Palermo isn't your business."

  "If there are problems, Palermo will be everyone's business."

  "If anyone's causing problems, it's you. You and your macho fits." She laughed, but not pleasantly. "The only time you seem happy is when someone's bashing your face in."

  Well now, he thought. LOE: Law of Opposing Enticements. One a carrot and the other a stick. Now you're not putting your hand against my neck, beautiful, or smiling. Not right this minute. Not when you're cool as you are now, and you start thinking that my blunders alter your plans.

  All Coy said was, "You still think you can handle everyone, don't you?"

  "I still think I know exactly what I'm doing."

  Her eyes were back on something high on the dark rock. Coy took a look for himself. Farther down on the side, a tiny blue spark seemed to be climbing upward, while higher up something glowed red, like a bonfire. I hope, he thought, that the Berber has driven the car over the side and they're both sizzling like popcorn.

  "Where did you get that gun?" As he said the word "gun" he felt a twinge of irritation. "You shouldn't be carrying something like that around."

  "I can if I choose to."

  Coy touched his injured eye and turned toward the luminous wake of the Carpanta, trying to think of an adequate answer. At the first opportunity, he decided, that bit of equipment is going overboard. He didn't like handguns, or guns in general. He didn't even like knives, though El Piloto's unused Wichard was still in the back pocket of his jeans. A person who carries that kind of utensil, he thought, does so with the clear intention of piercing, stabbing, or slashing. Which means that he's either very frightened or not a very nice guy.

  "Weapons," he concluded aloud, "always create problems."

  "They also get you out of them when you act like a fool."

  He half-turned. Wounded.

  "Hey. You said you like to see me fight."

  "I said that?"

  Now the glow of the distant city and the stern light in the wake revealed the angle of a smile forming beneath the shining tips of her windblown hair. Coy felt his irritation draining away into other feelings.

  "Easy," she said, and laughed. "I'm not planning to use it against you."

  THE southern lighthouse was visible now off the port beam —five seconds of light and five seconds of darkness. The swell was making the Carpanta pitch more violently, and atop the mast, weakly sketched by the running lights, the wind vane and the blade of the anemometer were spinning intermittently, at the whim of the swaying boat and the absence of wind. By instinct Coy, back in the cockpit, calculated their distance from land, and glanced toward the starboard quarter, where a merchant ship that had been closing on them from the east was now in a free lane. With his hands on the helm—a classic six-spoke wooden wheel nearly three feet in diameter, located in the cockpit behind a small cabin with a windshield and canvas awning—El Piloto was gradually changing course, heading east and keeping the lighthouse in his peripheral vision. Without needing to consult the lighted repeater of the GPS over the binnacle beside the automatic pilot, or the patent log or the echo sounder, Coy knew they were at 36°6'N and 5°20'W He had drawn courses toward or away from that lighthouse too many times on nautical charts—four of the British Admiralty and two Spanish—to forget the latitude and longitude of Punta Europa.

  "What do you think of her?" he asked El Piloto.

  He didn't look at Tanger. She was still clinging to the backstay and contemplating the black Rock behind them. El Piloto took a while to answer. Coy didn't know whether he was considering the question or consciously delaying the answer.

  "I suppose," El Piloto said finally, "you know what you're doing."

  Coy twisted his lips in the darkness. "I'm not asking for my sake, Piloto. I'm asking for her." "She's one of those people who's worth more when they stay ashore."

  Coy was about to say the obvious: But she hasn't stayed ashore. He could also have added: She's the kind all sailors tell about or invent for their pals, in the cabin or in those old-time forecasdes. The kind that all of them had met in some port somewhere. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't say it. Instead, he stared at the black sky above the swaying mast. Most of the stars must be out, though the glow from the coast obscured them. "We could run into problems, Piloto."

  El Piloto didn't answer. He kept correcting the course, spoke by spoke, keeping a wide berth between them and the point. Only after several minutes did he tip his head a little, as if he were checking the echo sounder.

  "There are always problems at sea," he said.

  "This time it won't only be the sea."

  El Piloto's silence communicated his concern.

  'Any risk of losing the boat?"

  "I don't think it will go that far," Coy reassured him. "I'm referring to problems in general."

  El Piloto seemed to think it over.

  "You said there might be some money," he said finally. "That would be welcome. There's not a lot of work around." "We're going after treasure."

  El Piloto didn't react to that revelation. He kept his focus on the helm and the lighthouse.

  "Treasure," he repeated at last in a neutral tone.

  "That's right. Emeralds from a long time ago. They're worth a bundle."

  His friend nodded, implying that all old emeralds must be worth a bundle, but that he wasn't thinking about that. He released the wheel long enough to reach for the wineskin hanging from the binnacle, throw his head back, and take a long drink. Then he gripped the wheel again, wiping his mouth with the back of the other hand before passing the wineskin to Coy.

  "Remind me some time," he said, "to tell you the stories I've heard about treasures."

  Coy repeated Piloto's motions, holding up the wineskin, gauging the rocking of the boat to prevent spilling wine on himself. He recognized it. An aromatic, fresh red wine from near Cartagena.

  "This story is pretty convincing," he said before taking his last swallow. 'And I think we can locate the wreck."

  "Wreck from when?"

  "Two hundred and fifty years ago." Coy put the stopper in the skin and hung it up. "Mazarron bay. Not down very far." El Piloto shook his head, skeptical.

  "She must have broken up. Fishermen spend their lives snagging their nets on old wrecks________ Sand will have covered everything. What there was to find has already been found, or is lost for all time."

  'Ah, you're a man of little faith, Piloto. Li
ke your soul mates at the Sea of Galilee. Until they saw the man walk on water they didn't take him seriously."

  "I don't see you walking on water."

  ^No, I guess not. Or her either."

  They both looked at Tanger, motionless at the stern, still outlined against light from the coast. El Piloto had taken a cigarette from his jacket and put it in his mouth.

  "Besides," he said, seemingly on a tangent, "I'm getting old."

  Or maybe it wasn't a tangent. El Piloto and the Carpanta were getting old in the same way that schooner in the port of Barcelona was rotting away, that in the Graveyard of Ships With No Name the frames of merchant ships cut up for scrap were rusting in the rain and sun, corroded by salt, licked by waves on the dirty sand. Just as Coy himself had been rotting as he wandered around the port, tossed up on the shore from a rock in the Indian Ocean that wasn't on any chart. Although, as El Piloto himself—though maybe he wasn't the same Piloto now—had told him more than twenty years ago, men and ships should always stay out to sea, and sink there with dignity.

  "I don't know," Coy said, sincerely. "The truth is, I don't know. It may be that in the end we'll end up with a fistful of nothing. You and me, Piloto. Maybe even her."

  El Piloto gave a slow affirmative nod, as if that conclusion seemed the most logical. Then he took his lighter from his pocket, struck the wheel on his open palm, blew on the wick, and held it to the tip of the cigarette in his mouth.

  "But it isn't the money, is it?" he murmured. 'At least you're not here for that."