The Nautical Chart

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  LIGHT from the porthole was seesawing on Tanger's naked skin, a small square of sun bobbing up and down with the movement of the boat, slipping down her shoulders and back as she lifted herself from Coy, still breathless, gasping like a fish out of water. Her hair, which days at sea had faded almost white at the tips, was stuck to her face with sweat. Dribbles of sweat ran down her skin, leaving tracks between her breasts and beading on her upper lip and her eyelashes. El Piloto was eighty-five feet below them, working his dive. The nearly vertical sun had turned the cabin into an oven, and Coy, sitting on the bench beneath the companionway to the deck, let his hands slip down Tanger's sweaty flanks. They had made love right there, impulsively, when he had taken off his diving vest and was looking for a towel after his half hour at the site of the Dei Gloria and she walked by, brushing against him accidentally. Suddenly his fatigue was gone and she was quiet, looking at him the way she sometimes did, with that silent thoughtfulness, and an instant later they were locked together there at the foot of the companionway, attacking one another furiously, as if the emotion they shared was hate. Now he was leaning against the back rest, drained, and slowly, inexorably, she was withdrawing, shifting her weight to one side and freeing Coy's moist flesh. That small square of sun was sliding down her body, and her gaze, which was again metallic blue, dark blue, navy-blue, the blue of blued steel, was directed toward the light and the sun tumbling through the opening from the deck. From where he was still sprawled on the bench, Coy watched her walk naked up the ladder, as if she were leaving forever. Despite the heat he felt a chill crawl across his skin, precisely in those places that held a trace of her, and the thought came: one day it will be the last time. One day she will leave me, or we'll die, or I'll get old. One day she will walk out of my life, or I out of hers. One day I won't have anything but images to remember, and then one day I won't even be alive to reconstruct those images. One day it will all be erased, and maybe today is the last time. Which was why he was watching her closely as she climbed up the companionway and disappeared onto the deck, engraving every last detail in his memory. The last component in the image was the drop of semen that slid down the inside of a thigh, which, when it reached her knee, reflected the amber flash of a ray of sun. Then she was out of his field of vision, and Coy heard the splash of someone diving into the sea.

  THEY spent that night anchored above the Dei Gloria. The needle of the wind gauge fluctuated indecisively atop the mast and the mirror-flat water reflected an intermittent spark from the Cabo de Palos lighthouse seven miles to the northeast. So many stars were out that the sky seemed right on top of the sea, so many it was actually difficult to see individual stars. Coy was sitting on the stern deck, studying them and tracing imaginary lines that would allow him to identify them. The summer triangle was beginning to rise in the southeast, and he could see tendrils of Berenice's hair, the last to disappear of all the spring constellations. To the east, bright above a landscape black as ink, the belt of the hunter Orion was very visible, and following a straight line from Aldebaran to him, above Canis Major, he saw light that had traveled eight years from Sirius, the most brilliant binary star in the heavens, there where the Milky Way trailed to the south toward the regions of the Swan and the Eagle. All that worid of light and mythic images moved slowly overhead, and he, as if in the center of a unique sphere, was part of its silence and infinite peace.

  "You're not teaching me the names of the stars anymore, Coy."

  He hadn't heard her until she was at his side. She sat close but not touching him, her feet on the stern steps.

  "I've taught you all the ones I know."

  Water splashed as she put her feet in the water. At regular intervals the flicker from the lighthouse affirmed the hazy outline of her shadow.

  "I wonder," she said, "what you will remember about me." She had spoken quietly, her voice low. It wasn't a question, but a shared confidence. Coy thought about what she'd said.

  "It's too soon to know," he replied finally. "It isn't over yet." "I wonder what you will remember when it is over." Coy shrugged. They sat in silence.

  "I don't know what more you expect," Tanger added after a while.

  From the cabin came the sound of the VHF radio. It was ten-fifteen and El Piloto was listening to the weather forecast for the following day. Tanger's shadow was motionless.

  "There are voyages," she murmured, "we can only take alone."

  "Like dying."

  "Don't bring that up," she protested.

  "Dying alone, remember? Like Zas. Once you told me that you're afraid that will happen to you." "Don't say it."

  "You asked me to be there with you. To swear it." "Don't say it."

  Coy leaned back until he was lying flat on the deck with the dome of the heavens above him. A dark shadow leaned over him, a black hole in the stars.

  "What could you do?"

  "Give you my hand," Coy replied. "Be with you during that journey, so you don't have to go alone."

  "I don't know when that will happen. No one knows."

  "That's why I want to be with you. Looking after you."

  "You would do that? You would stay with me and look after me? So I wouldn't be alone when the time comes?"

  "Of course."

  The dark silhouette was no longer there. Tanger had moved to one side, away from him. "What star is that?"

  Coy looked in the direction indicated by the outline of her hand.

  "Regulus. The foremost claw of Leo."

  Tanger looked up, trying to see the animal sketched in the lights blinking high above them. A moment later she was paddling her feet in the water.

  "Maybe I don't deserve you, Coy."

  She said that so low he almost didn't hear. He closed his eyes and slowly let out his breath. "That's for me to say." "You're wrong. It isn't for you to say."

  Again she was silent, the only sound her feet in the sea, stirring the black water.

  "You're a good man," she said suddenly. "You truly are."

  Coy opened his eyes, to fill them with stars and to bear the anguish radiating from his chest. All at once he felt helpless. He didn't dare move, as if he feared that the pain would be unbearable.

  "Better than I am," she continued, "and everyone I've known. Too bad that..."

  She interrupted herself, and her tone was different when she spoke again. Harder, and unemotional. And categorical.

  "Too bad."

  A long silence this time. A shooting star fell in the distance, to the north. A wish, Coy thought. I should make a wish. But the tiny streak faded before he could organize his thoughts.

  "Where were you when I won my swimming cup?"

  That she'll stay with me, he wished finally. But there were no shooting stars in the icy firmament now, he knew. The stars were fixed for eternity, and implacable.

  "Living," he replied. "Getting ready to meet you."

  He spoke with simplicity. There was a faint light on Tanger's dark face. A vague double reflection. She was looking at him.

  "You are a good man."

  With those words, the shadow moved toward him and he felt her moist lips on his.

  "I hope," she said, "you find a good ship soon."

  THE lead frame of a window still retained shards of glass. Coy moved away for a moment from the blinding sediment and then went back to work. He had come to a place in the cabin where sand quickly filled the space he had just emptied, and he had to make constant trips back and forth with the short-handled spade to throw what he had just dug overboard. It was exhausting work and it made him use more air than he wanted. Bubbles were rising at a much faster rate than normal, so he set the spade aside and swam to a jutting frame, holding onto it to rest and to convince his lungs not to demand so much. Beneath his feet was a cannonball and a piece of chain shot, one of those used to destroy the enemy's rigging, which El Piloto had unearthed during his last dive. It was in better than usual condition, thanks to the sand that had protected it for two and a half centuries. Maybe
it had been fired from the corsair, and had ended its trajectory here after doing damage to the brigantine's rigging and sails. He bent down a little to get a better look—what men devise to destroy their fellows, he was thinking—and then, through an opening at the base of a bulkhead, he saw the protruding head of a moray. It was huge, nearly eight inches thick, and a sinister dark color. It opened its maw, angered by the intrusion of this strange bubbling creature. Coy prudently retreated from the open jaws that could take half an arm in one bite, and swam to get the harpoon from its place on the line with their tools and uninflated floats. He cocked it, stretching the elastic, and returned to the moray. He hated to kill fish, but it was not a good idea to work around rotted planking with the threat of those hooked and poisonous teeth clamping on the back of his neck. The eel was still standing guard beneath the bulkhead, defending the entry to its domestic refuge. Its evil eyes were fixed on Coy as he approached and pushed the harpoon before the open maw. Nothing personal, friend, just your bad luck He pressed the trigger and the impaled moray thrashed wildly, furiously snapping at the steel shaft protruding from its mouth, until Coy unsheathed his knife and cut the eel's spinal cord.

  He went back to work in a pile of wood and debris in the corner of the cabin. Again and again sand filled the space his hands had dug. Snails and bits of ragged metal had shredded his gloves —this was the third pair he'd worn out—and his fingers were a pitiable mass of cuts and scratches. He found the barrel of a pistol whose wooden butt had disappeared, and also a black and crusted crucifix that looked as if it might be silver and a nearly intact leather shoe. He pulled away some planks that broke in his hands, again thrust up above the swirling sediment, and when he came back saw a dark block covered with rusty and brown concretions. At first view it looked like a very large, square brick. He tried to move it, but it seemed to be stuck to the bottom. It's impossible, he told himself. Treasure chests have lids that open to reveal a glittering interior of pearls and jewels and gold coins. And emeralds. Treasure chests do not have the innocuous look of a rusty, lime-covered block, nor do they have the grace to turn up under an old shoe and splintered boards. So it is not possible that this thing I have before me is what we are looking for. Emeralds big as walnuts, Devil's irises, and things like that. Too easy.

  He scrabbled at the sand around the encrusted block, shining the light directly on it to bring out the actual colors. It was about sixteen inches long, sixteen inches wide, and not quite that deep, and it still had bronze cornerpieces that had stained the agglomeration of tiny snails green. The rest of the block was covered with a hard, brittle crust, and splinters of rotted wood and rust-colored stains. Bronze, wood, and corroded iron, Tanger had said, and she had also said that in case they found anything matching that description, it must be handled with care. No hammering or digging into it. The emeralds, if it was the emeralds, would be stuck together in a calcareous block that would have to be dissolved with chemicals. And emeralds were very fragile.

  Coy easily freed the block from the sand. It did not seem very heavy, at least in the water, but there was little question that it was a chest. For almost a minute, he didn't move, breathing quietly, releasing bubbles at a slower and slower rhythm, until he calmed down a little and his temple stopped pounding and his heart was beating normally beneath the neoprene vest. Take it easy, sailor. Chest or no chest, take it easy. Be Mr. Cool for once in your life, because nerves are not compatible with breathing at eighty-five feet compressed air under two hundred atmospheres of pressure. So after resting there a while, he removed one of the plastic floats, made a basket of sorts from some fine net, tied it to the parachute lines of the float, and secured the whole thing to a shackle with a bowline knot, then from his mouthpiece he fed a little compressed air into the float. Despite Tanger s instructions, he pried a little into the block with his knife point, breaking off a bit of the crust, without spotting anything notable. He dug a little deeper, and a chunk about the size of half his fist came loose from the rest. He picked it up to examine in the beam of the torch, and a fragment of the chunk broke loose and drifted slowly to the sand. It was an irregularly shaped, translucent stone with polyhedral planes. Green. Emerald green.

  XVI

  The Graveyard of Ships With No Name

  Have you, as always, deceived and conquered that innocent with tricks?

  APPOLONIUS RHODIUS, Argonautica

  They could see the city clustered beneath the castle in a mist of whites, browns, and blues heightened by light from the west. The sun was about to take its rest behind the massive silhouette of Mount Roldan when the Carpanta, on the port tack under Genoa and single-reefed mainsail, passed between the two lighthouses and beneath the empty embrasures of the old forts guarding the inlet. Coy held his course until he had the Navidad lighthouse and white heads of the fishermen sitting on the blocks of the breakwater on his stern fin. Then he turned the wheel to weather, and the sails flapped as the boat luffed, slowing in the tranquil water of the protected dock. Tanger was turning the crank of a winch, gathering the jib, as he freed the clamp on the mainsail halyard and the sail slid down the mast. While El Piloto fastened it to the boom, Coy started the engine and set their bow for El Espalmador, toward the cut-up hulls and rusting frames of the ships with no name.

  Tanger had just finished taking in the sheets and was looking at him. A long look, as if she were studying his face, and he responded with the hint of a smile. She returned the smile, and went to lean against the companion, facing the bow where El Piloto had opened the anchor well. Coy looked toward the commercial dock, where the Felix von Luckner was anchored beside a large passenger ship, and lamented that they had to be so secretive. He would have liked to fly a victory signal at the mast, the way German submarine commanders flew pennants on their conning towers announcing the tonnage they'd sunk. "Returning from Scapa Flow, mission accomplished." I announce that treasures exist, and that we are carrying one aboard.

  The emeralds were on board the Carpanta. The block of limy accretions that contained them had been wrapped in several layers of protective foam, packed in an innocent-looking tote bag. They had cleaned their find carefully before wrapping it up, disbelieving what they saw before them, marveling at the accomplished reality of the dream Tanger had long ago as she studied a file of old documents—"Clergy/Jesuits/Various n°356." It was as if they were floating on a cloud, so unreal that Coy hadn't dared tell El Piloto the approximate value the dirty, rocklike block rescued from the sea would bring on the international black market. El Piloto hadn't asked, but Coy knew him well, and he picked up an unusual excitement beneath the sailor's apparent indifference. It was a particular gleam in his eyes, a different kind of silence, a curiosity tempered by the self-restraint of men of the sea, who are at ease in their world but uncertain, timid, and suspicious of the traps and temptations of terra firma. Coy was afraid he would frighten him if he told him that those two hundred raw emeralds, even if badly marketed by Tanger and sold for a fourth of their value, would produce, at the minimum, several million dollars. An amount that El Piloto would never be able to picture in spite of his good imagination. At any rate, the plan was to wait while Tanger negotiated with the middlemen, and then split the profits—seventy percent for her, twenty-five percent for Coy, and five percent for El Piloto—which they would spread around discreetly to avoid suspicion. Tanger had already researched the appropriate mechanisms during the visit she had made months before to Antwerp, where her local contact had connections with banks in the Caribbean, Zurich, Gibraltar, and the English Channel Islands. Nothing would stand in the way, for instance, of El Piloto's later buying a new Carpanta, registered in Jersey, or Coy's collecting a salary from a hypothetical shipping company in the Antilles while he waited for his license to be reinstated. As for Tanger herself, she had replied to Coy's question—without looking up from the brush she was using to clean away the encrustation on the block of emeralds—that that was no one's affair but her own.

  Under the chart-tabl
e light, they had discussed these matters the night before, after they had carefully hauled the Jesuits' chest aboard the Carpanta. They washed in it fresh water, and then, with patience, the proper instruments, and several technical manuals, Tanger went about removing the outer calcareous layer with chemical solvents in a plastic tub, while Coy and El Piloto watched with reverential respect, not daring to open their mouths. Finally they had seen a cluster of crystals—sharp protuberances and indications of hexagonal formations, still uncut and with their original irregularities—which in the cabin's light cast bluish-green reflections as clear and transparent as water.

  They were perfect, Tanger had murmured, fascinated, working persistently, with the back of her hand wiping away the sweat beaded on her forehead. She had one eye closed and a jeweler's loupe held to the other, a small, slender ten-power loupe. Bent over the block, she was examining the interior of the stones at a distance of an inch or two, lighting it from various angles with a powerful Maglite torch. Translucent green, literally Be3Al2Si6O18, ideal in color, brilliance, and clarity. She had studied, read, and patiently asked questions for months to be able to make that announcement now. Raw emeralds, between twenty and thirty carats, with no inclusions or flaws, clean as drops of oil. Once they were studied for the most beautiful color and refraction, skillful jewelers would cut them into rectangular and octagonal facets, converting them into valuable jewels that ladies of high society and wives and lovers of bankers, millionaires, Russian mafiosi, and oil sheiks would flaunt in bracelets, diadems, and necklaces. They would never question their provenance nor the long road traveled by those unique formations of silica, aluminum, beryllium, oxides, and water for which men throughout time had killed and died, and would forever continue to do so. Perhaps, as happens, among a certain few initiates the word would spread that some of the emeralds, the very best, had been salvaged from a ship documented to have sunk two and a half centuries before, and the price of the best pieces, the largest and most beautifully crafted, would shoot up on the black market to the limits of madness. For the most part, the stones would again sleep a long sleep in obscurity, this time in safe-deposit boxes around the world. And someone, in a discreet workshop on a street in Antwerp, would quadruple his fortune.