The Lost Island

18

Gideon awoke to the sounds of thumping and grunting coming from Amy’s stateroom. She was doing calisthenics. He glanced at the portholes — not even light yet. The clock said five thirty AM.

Rolling out of bed, he pulled on a bathrobe and stumbled into the galley. He was delighted to find a small but expensive Italian espresso machine and grinder tucked into one corner. A few cupboards down he found the beans. He ground them and prepared the machine, wondering if his teetotaling “wife” would be a prohibitionist in the caffeine department as well. He was damn glad he wasn’t married to her for real.

As he filled a tiny cup with hot espresso, a ristretto—the way he liked it — he appreciated even more Garza’s attention to detail.

A moment later the galley door opened and Amy came in, dressed for the day in a work shirt and white pants. “I’ll take a double, black, no sugar,” she said, passing through. “Bring it to me at the helm, please; I’d like to get under way.”

Gideon sipped his own coffee while grinding the beans for hers. He made the double and brought it up to her as the twin engines of the yacht rumbled to life. She took it without comment while poring over a book of charts open on the dashboard next to the helm. He could hear an electronic-sounding voice on the VHF reading out the weather report, winds, and wave heights.

The boat backed away from the berth with a growl, and a minute later they were heading out of the marina and into open water. It was a calm day, fluffy clouds floating above and a rising sun sparkling off the water. As they cleared the port, she accelerated, the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty-five knots. Aruba dwindled on the horizon, the mainland of Venezuela dropping away on their left. Soon they were cruising in open water.

“Los Monjes is about fifty-five nautical miles away,” Amy said. “We’ll be there in two hours.”

Gideon nodded. “Anything you want me to do, Captain?”

She glanced at him. “Another espresso.”

“Coming right up.”

He made another espresso. While he didn’t particularly enjoy taking orders, he had to admit this was a cushy mission. It was also nice in a way, having somebody else making the decisions for a change. He brought up the espresso and she shot it down as quickly as the first.

The boat thundered across the water, sending back a long, creamy wake. For the first hour of travel, the sea was dotted with other yachts, mostly sailboats, but as they went on, the vessels became less frequent until there was nothing but blue sea. So far he’d felt no symptoms of seasickness — thank God.

Gideon did the rounds as he was instructed by Amy: cleaned the head, downloaded email, called up the weather on the Doppler radar, checked the sat-phone printer for messages from EES. Amy, while not exactly warm and friendly, was courteous and professional. And she was clearly very, very smart. Gideon liked that.

On schedule, a distant hump appeared on the horizon, followed by another, farther away and to the north. They approached the more southerly island, a whitened, barren rock about a quarter mile long, with a ruined lighthouse on top, surrounded by cliffs and pounded by the sea. As they came around the end of the island, the Black Bottle appeared: a sea stack of basalt, standing about fifty yards off the tip of the island, roiled by white surf. Amy called up the tiny drawing of clue six from the Phorkys Map on her navigational computer. As the boat circled the island, the sea stack moved into position, the black rock standing out against the white rock of the island.

Suddenly she reversed throttle and the boat rumbled to a stop.

“Incredible,” said Gideon. He could hardly believe how perfectly they matched.

“Get the camera, please, and take some pictures.” Amy seemed almost more surprised than he was.

While Amy held the boat steady in the swell, Gideon snapped a number of photographs with a digital Nikon camera that EES had provided and took a short video.

“I’ll download everything and send it to Glinn,” he said. “Along with a report.”

“Good. And fill in the log the way I showed you, indicating position, engine hours, fuel, water, weather conditions, and a narrative entry. And then you might make us breakfast. Bacon and eggs, please.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Gideon went below. At the workstation in the galley, he emailed the photos and report to Glinn over the satellite uplink. He could feel the movement of the water becoming rougher, the boat pitching and yawing as it rode the waves. To his great dismay, he began to feel queasy.

He stood up, put on a frying pan, and began cooking bacon. The smell filled the galley despite the fan and — rather than sharpen his appetite — made him feel worse. He cracked a couple of eggs, scrambled them, added some cheese and fresh chives from the well-stocked refrigerator. When it was done, he set a place for one at the kitchen table, put on the food, and went above.

“Breakfast is ready.”

“Good. You take the helm.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Use the wheel, not the joystick. The joystick is for maneuvering in the harbor. Keep the heading at two hundred and seventy degrees — the electronic compass is right here — and keep an eye out for floating debris. That’s the one thing you really need to worry about out here. We’re in deep water, no reefs, no other boat traffic. As we approach the mainland, you may note a change in the color of the water. I should be back before that.”

With great trepidation, Gideon took the wheel while Amy went below. The boat rumbled along. The flow of air through the open windows was refreshing and began to drive away his incipient nausea. The chartplotter showed the location of the boat, and overlaid on that was radar data. The sonar indicated a depth under the keel of several hundred feet. The speed was fifteen knots, the heading two hundred seventy degrees. The vessel seemed to be riding well, at least to his inexperienced feel.

So far so good.

A moment later Amy reappeared. “Taking the helm.”

“Already?”

“You don’t waste time eating on a boat. I noticed you didn’t cook anything for yourself.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll take another espresso,” she said. “Before you do the dishes.”

Gideon swallowed his annoyance. Was this really the way they did things on a boat? Maybe he was just being sensitive. No matter, he was going to follow orders and remain pleasant. He went below and reached for some more coffee beans.

“On deck,” came a sharp voice from the intercom.

He came up. Amy pointed west. A low, dark line lay on the left-hand horizon.

“That’s the South American mainland,” she said. “As we go west we’re going to graze the coastline of the upper Guajira Peninsula of Colombia. My idea is to cruise along the shore — as the Greeks would have done, and the Irish after them — looking for whatever the Devil’s vomit might be. In the early days of sailing, before the compass, sailors kept within sight of shore whenever possible. So the vomit should be found along this coastline.”

“Looking for vomit. Great. Knock yourself out. By the way, what’s the next clue after that — number eight?”

Amy brought it up on her navigational computer. The picture showed nothing more than a flat line, rising into a second, sharp line, which pointed in turn toward a rounded line. The clue read: aquilonius.

“Aquilonius?” Gideon asked. “What does that mean?”

“‘Northerly.’ But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

The water had turned a dirty greenish brown. As the coastline loomed closer into view, he left the dishes half done and brought out the binoculars. A distant line of surf appeared in the glass: a long brown beach with a sea of sand dunes behind.

“That is one desolate coast,” he murmured.

“It’s one of the worst coastlines of the entire Caribbean — treacherous as anything. The offshore sandbars shift continuously.”

“I see a wreck. A big one.” His binoculars focused on the remains of what appeared to have been an enormous container ship, skeletonized and broken.

“According to the charts, that’s El Karina. There are wrecks all along this coast.”

“We’d better be careful.”

“The Turquesa draws only three feet and the hull is made of Kevlar. We’re not in much danger.”

Gideon said nothing. The queasiness was returning in force.

They moved into a course parallel to the coast, and Amy slowed to five knots. She kept clue seven displayed on her nav-computer.

“By the way,” Gideon said, “when I was looking at the weather just now it noted there’s a low pressure system developing east of the Cape Verde Islands. The long-term forecast says it might develop into a storm heading into the Caribbean.”

“This time of year, there’s always a low pressure system developing in that area. The vast majority of hurricanes trend north. Very few brush the coastline of Colombia.”

“Just thought you should know…Captain.”

She nodded. “Keep a sharp lookout for something that might resemble an inverted U — a cave, rock formation, anything.”

The coastline was low and featureless, but as they moved along it began to grow rockier, with headlands and black volcanic sea stacks rising up among the sandy wastes. The wind picked up, blowing hard from shore, carrying with it veils of orange sand that stained the water. The air smelled of dust, and as the sun rose the heat became intense. They continued creeping along at five knots, about five hundred yards offshore.

“These swells are bad,” Gideon said, trying to ignore his nausea. The slow speed made the motion worse.

“That’s because we’re in shoaling water.”

“How long is this coastline?”

“About sixty miles from here to Cabo de la Vela. Then it curves back south. I feel fairly confident the Devil’s vomit will be along here somewhere.”

Devil’s vomit. If the swells kept up, Gideon thought grimly, he’d have some vomit of his own to offer the coastline.

The day wore on as they cruised along the endless, barren coast. In one deep bay, sheltered by two headlands, they saw a large boat at anchor, streaked with rust. Gideon examined it through the binoculars.

“Lot of new electronics on that mast,” he said.

“Probably drug smugglers,” said Amy. “Too bad — I was hoping we could anchor in that bay for the night.”

Gideon continued examining the boat. “Looks like they see us.”

“Of course they see us. Let’s hope they’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

The sun was now setting into a scrim of blood-red sky, made hazy by dust. The wind grew even stronger, now blowing hard from the east. The brown sea was covered with whitecaps.

“There’s a headland called Punta Taroa about five miles ahead,” said Amy. “According to the chart, there’s a sheltered bay just behind that.”

Gideon could make out the headland: a massive pyramid of black rock pounded by surf, with a string of sand dunes running away from it inland, in the shelter of a serrated ridge. He looked for something that might resemble the U but could see nothing.

They rounded the point and — as shown on the chart — a shallow bay appeared, with a crescent of orange sand running up into ribbed dunes in fantastical shapes.

“It’s pretty exposed,” said Gideon, thinking of the drug smugglers.

“It’s the best we’re going to find. We’ll do a blackout and set four-hour watches.”

Amy brought the boat in behind the headland, moving slowly and examining the depth finder, the dual diesels rumbling.

“Here’s a good spot,” she called out.

She showed Gideon how to draw the pin on the anchor. In a narrow cove behind the immense rocky bluff, in twenty feet of water, she released it. It ran out and the boat swung around to face the wind, the anchor, as she put it, “setting nicely.” As she killed the engine, the sun dropped behind the dunes and, bloated and wavering, sank out of sight. A dull orange light enveloped everything.

Ten minutes later, as Gideon was airing a bottle of Malbec and whipping up a dinner of lobster risotto, he heard Amy on the intercom.

“Gideon? Go to the gun cabinet and fetch me my 1911. And grab a sidearm for yourself. We’ve got company.”