Buried At Sea (27 page)

"They carry a lifeboat. If their ship is sinking and the crew is sufficiently sober and the davits haven't frozen with rust from inattention to maintenance, they might be able to launch in half an hour. At which point, if they are very lucky, the motor will start. If they are not very lucky, not only will their motor not start, but their lifeboat will sink because they forgot to screw down the bilge plug—pursuit was not an option?'

"Did they happen to notice which way the sailboat was headed?"

"It changed course when it sighted my ship and bore away to the south. But before they changed course they were headed south by southwest. Their exact compass course was two hundred and twenty degrees, magnetic, and the boat was making five and a half knots, under full sail."

McVay shook his head. "Wouldn't you say that that's suspiciously precise? Sounds to me like they're trying to make up for their failure to seize the yacht?"

"The freighter's captain served under me in the old days," Admiral Rugoff replied evenly. "He may have lost the stomach to whip a crew into shape, but he has not forgotten his seamanship."

"Well, what does that all mean? Where are they headed?"

"Two hundred and twenty degrees, magnetic, would put them on course for Rio de la Plata. They could be headed for Montevideo or Buenos Aires."

"And you're reasonably sure it fit the profile?"

"Would you like to see a photograph?"

"You're joking?"

"I don't joke about my foreign friends who deposit large sums of cash in my London bank." The admiral slipped a liver-spotted hand into his lizard-skin attache and left it there until Val McVay said, "We have the account number."

"Thank you. The captain, having stopped drinking recently, has taken up photography as a hobby. And he purchased a very long lens, duty-free, somewhere. Of course, the radio fax isn't so precise."

The fax copy was overly exposed, and the yacht was just disappearing into the mist. But the tall mast and the businesslike sliver of the cabin roof matched the photos from Hong Kong. And the sailboat had changed course when it sighted the ship. He passed it to Val, who nodded at once.

"Under a magnifying glass, you can see the wooden helm," Admiral Rugoff said. "It's him, all right. Bound for the River Plate. You got a lucky break, my friends. You'll find him in Buenos Aires or Montevideo."

Two nights after he dodged the Russian ship, Jim lost the wind. The southwest monsoon had grown weaker by the hour and quite suddenly it was gone. Hustle wallowed on a confused sea for half the night, sails banging in the dark. Jim braced for another bout of seasickness. And then, just as suddenly as the monsoon had died, the southeast trade wind filled the sails.

He put the boat back on course, trimmed to a port reach, and lay down to rest. He woke to a changed ocean—a crisp blue sea different from any he had seen. From Barbados on the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea, across the Atlantic to the Saint Paul's Rocks, on to Africa, into the Gulf of Guinea and out again, he had sailed only tropical waters, where a hot pearly sky often hovered like a lid on a pot and the horizons bunched close in the thick air.

Now, well into the South Atlantic, crossing the eighth parallel a hundred miles east of Ascension Island, Jim noticed that the sky was sharper and brighter and bigger than on the clearest day in the tropics. The vistas lengthened. The horizons seemed more distant yet more distinct—

dark blue sky and darker sea in sharp divide. It looked as if infinity loomed near. The southeast trade wind bore a hint of far-off cold. Jim rummaged around for the sweatshirt he had packed in Connecticut and found it smelling damp and moldy. He hung it from the boom to air. When he checked on Will, the old man was huddled under a sheet. Jim draped his bony back with a blanket he found among the winter things kept in cedar drawers under the bunk. Will muttered gratitude.

"Who's Cordi?" asked Jim.

"What?"

"You said, 'Thanks, Cordi.' "

Will opened his eyes. They were red from fever, swollen, and flickering with confusion.

"I thought I was somewhere. . . . Oh, my head is spinning and spinning and spinning."

"How's the shoulder?"

"Tender as hell . . . Where are we?"

"Eight degrees south, thirteen west," said Jim. He watched anxiously as Will tried to fix latitude and longitude on the chart he carried in his head. The fever and the massive doses of antibiotics he was ingesting were scrambling his mind. His condition had been vacillating between good days and bad. Today was beginning to look like a bad one. But Will surprised him.

"Make sure you don't run into Ascension Island." "Good. Feeling better?"

"The Brits lease out an air base there. They, or their American tenants, might take offense."

"Maybe we should go there, Will. If they have a base they'll have a hospital."

"Can't do that."

"Why not? I doubt they'll attack you on a British island." Will shook his head. "I wouldn'

t put it past the bastards, but that's not it."

"So why not? Let's do it. We could be there by tomorrow morning." Will was shaking his head.

"Why not?"

"I had a bit of a mix-up in London several years ago. An equities situation. Purely a misunderstanding—but there were charges and I thought it best to leave British territory.

"

"By 'equities situation' you mean a stock swindle?"

"Absolutely not. Water over the dam as far as I'm concerned. But Johnny Law has a long memory. And John Bull a long reach."

Annoyed, Jim backed out of the cabin. The crisp new light pouring through the ports revealed the little scratches, bangs, and dings in the once-pristine woodwork that spoke of too many months at sea. By the time they reached Argentina, Hustle would be long due for a visit to a shipyard.

"I'll make us some breakfast. Will you eat?"

"I better. I feel like hell."

"And while I'm doing that, maybe you could write me a list of countries where you're not being chased by the cops or the robbers?'

"Very funny."

"It shouldn't take long."

Will surprised him by nodding. "There's truth in that, son. Truth in that." The southeast trades grew stronger. Steadying up, they gave Hustle her first twohundred-mile run, averaging more than eight knots for the next twenty-four hours. Jim spent nearly all that time on deck, fine-tuning the sails and basking in the pleasure of the speed and the sheer beauty of the blue, blue ocean and the black and starry night. Around the time of the false dawn, he fell into a deep sleep on the cockpit bench, cocooned in a hooded windbreaker. He was ripped awake by a loud and steely bang. His first thought was that something had broken. He swung his bare feet to the deck in a panic, his mind shuffling groggy hopes that when he located the parted line or the slipped fitting or the torn sail that Will would be in a condition to diagnose the problem and show him how to fix it before a crisis turned into a disaster.

He saw, silhouetted against the pale sky, a halyard swinging from the masthead, angling down through the main hatch. He heard the busy click-click-click of winch and then, to his disbelief, one of the Schwinn spinners came banging and smashing up the companionway. It was swinging with the boat's motion, gouging wood and fiberglass.

"Belay that!" yelled Will, and now Jim saw him at the mast, a ghostly shadow in the halflight, madly cranking the winch halyard.

"What are you doing?"

"Belay that!"

Jim rushed to obey.

"Not with your hands. You'll lose a mitt. Wrap a line on it!" Jim scrambled, grabbing a loose sheet end and flipping the line around the wildly swinging bike.

"Cleat it."

He threw a turn around the nearest cleat and tied it off so that the heavy bike was immobilized at the side of the hatch. "What the hell—"

"Spinning class!"

Jim headed forward along the narrow deck beside the cabin, then onto the cabin roof and face-to-face with Will Spark. In the shadowy half-light Will wore a stiff, twisted expression. His eyes seemed to glow, lit from within, unfocused and confused. And when he tried to speak, the words sprayed like water from a broken faucet. Gently but firmly Jim removed Will's hands from the winch, made sure the halyard wouldn't slip, then gripped his shoulders. Will cried out, flinching with pain.

"Sorry. Sorry. Okay, let's just go back—"

"You're not putting me below."

"I just want to help you lie down, Will."

"You're not locking me up. No one's locking me up." His body stiffened and he brought up his fists.

"Will."

"No one's sending me below?'

"No. Not below. I just need your help in the cockpit." "What's wrong?"

"We got a problem with the . ." He tried to think of a boat problem—the auto-helm was slipping lately as the gears wore. "The auto-helm. You gotta help me with the auto-helm.

"

Will said, "You new kids, you're so dependent on high-tech."

"That's right, Will. I need your help. Come on back and give me a hand. . ." They began inching their way back between the cabin

roof and the safety lines. Suddenly, Will grabbed Jim's arm

with a clawlike hand. "Jim, what's wrong with me?" "You're okay."

"No, I'm losing it. I'm losing my mind."

"You'll be better in the morning."

"Jim?"

"What?"

"Promise me something."

"What?"

"This is really important. If I die—"

"You're not going to die. Jesus, you better not. I'd be fucked."

"If I die, you have to promise me that you will deliver my body to Buenos Aires."

"You're not going to die. Come on back to the cockpit before we fall overboard."

"Promise!"

"Okay, I promise."

"The doctor. You have to take me to the doctor." "What doctor?"

"The one who's going to remove this thing from my head." Suddenly, Will wasn't sounding so crazy anymore. "What's the doctor's name?"

"Her name is Angela Heinman Ruiz. Dr. Angela Hein-man Ruiz. Her address is in my book. Promise."

"I promise. Now, let's go. Let's just swing past here—careful of the winch—and down into the cockpit."

"Hey, where the hell did that come from? What are you bringing the spinning bike up for in the middle of the night? Are you crazy?"

Jim looked at him. The brightening eastern sky revealed a face that was returning to the planet. He said, "I just got this impulse, Will. I was feeling stiff. I thought I'd spin it out."

"Yeah, well, next time, wake me and I'll give you a hand. You belted the hell out of the boat. Look at these gouges. Next time you call me, okay?"

"You bet, Will."

"Do you remember the doctor's name?"

"Dr. Angela Heinman Ruiz."

"She's part English, part German. Married a porteno--that's a Buenos Airesian—lovely woman. Used to be a real looker—prefers Rio—has a practice there, too. Plastic surgeon. Her husband was a shrink. They had a hell of a business going." Just to determine to what extent Will was once again making it up as he went along, Jim asked, "Why does she prefer Rio?"

"Buenos Aires is like a second-rate European city—very white, Italian-Spanish, no blacks, no Indians. Too many intellectuals who're afraid they're in the wrong hemisphere."

Jim found himself in touch with Dr. Ruiz sooner than he had expected. It started with an e-mail message to Will, which was encrypted like the messages from his cavemen. He wondered when Will had e-mailed the woman. Apparently, the sick old man drifted around the boat, as silent as a ghost, while Jim was up on deck or sleeping. He carried the laptop into Will's cabin and left him alone for a moment while Will entered the decode command.

Dear One,

It sounds like you're in en awful fix and of course help. But I most emphatically do not recommend an "operation" at see unless you have no other option for treatment—

meaning, can you get to a hospital? Neither a lancing," to use another of your quaintly old-fashioned terms, performed by your young man nor, God help us. one you perform on yourself could fall

remotely within the definition of a medical procedure. That said, I've reviewed everything you wrote me.

The knife surely penetrated the pleural cavity, causing the pneumothorax that collapsed the lung. As you are no longer experiencing shortness of breath, apparently your collapsed lung has self-corrected as I hoped it might. But, yes. your wound is almost certainly infected. Yes, draining the abscess now, rather than later, is paramount. I'm particularly concerned that the abscess might break and travel down the path of the knife into your lung. So. despite my many reservations, I am prepared to assist from this great distance.

Love.

Angela

YOUNG MAN, READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY.

Your goal is to incise and drain an abscess. Once you have enlarged the opening of the wound, you will use your gloved finger to break up the loculation—little pockets of pus—into a unicameral single cavity pocket of pus. which you will push out through the larger hole you are making....

His stomach churning, Jim read it three times. Will, propped up on pillows, watched with a faint smile.

"My good gal loves me,

Everybody knows.

'Cause she paid a hundred cash dollars. Just to buy my suit of clothes."

"I presume I'm the young man," said Jim.

"Are you up to it?"

"I've taken a whole mess of first-aid courses. CPR and all that."

"That's why I hired you. Next best thing to sailing with a doctor."

"Not quite. I've never cut anybody open."

"No problem," said Will. "I'm open already. Little Margaret really had a way with a shiv."

"What do we do about the pain?"

"I swallow morphine. You shoot the area around it with Marcane."

"You have Marcane?"

"Of course I have Marcane. This is a blue-water boat. I can't call an ambulance three thousand miles from the middle of nowhere."

Jim was still trying to get his mind around a picture of his cutting Will's flesh. "Yeah, well, just in case it's not enough, maybe I better strap you down somehow so you can't start thrashing around in the middle of it."