The Island (28 page)

He reached open water and saw a flashlight beam playing, over his head, on the outboard breakwater. He rowed north for about fifty yards and turned another corner, putting a new barrier between himself and any searching lights.

The voices were louder now, more distinct. They had reached the cove.

He raised the sail. The wind was fresh from the southeast, pushing him northwest into deep ocean water. As long as it held fresh, he had a chance of keeping his lead.

The little pinnace hissed swiftly through the water; tiny waves tapped against the wooden planks in the bow. He brought the sail close in. The boat heeled over, and the tapping of the waves on the bow grew sharper, more urgent.

Then, suddenly, the bow seemed to settle in the water. The boat’s motion lost its crispness. The waves no longer tapped against the bow; they splashed, sluggishly, sloppily. From the darkness forward came a gurgling sound.

Maynard cleated the sheet and used its tail to lash the tiller. He moved forward on his knees, and immediately he felt water rising in the boat. He groped blindly for the leak; if the hole was small, he could plug it and bail the boat and keep sailing.

His finger probed beneath the bow thwart, and felt a rush of sea water. The bow planks had separated, all of them. He withdrew his hand. His fingertips were sticky. He held them to his nose: molasses.

Manuel had covered all his bets: He had scraped the caulking from the bow and replaced it with molasses. Even if Justin had not fled and raised the alarm, even if he and Maynard had not been pursued, the pinnace was guaranteed to sink, with wind and tide pushing them into the open ocean.

Maynard looked toward the island: In the moonless dark all he could see was a faint pale stripe of beach. He dove overboard and swam for shore.

C H A P T E R
1 5

M
ichael Florio stood on the bridge of the Coast Guard cutter New Hope, nursing a cup of coffee and gazing idly at the crowd of children who had gathered on the dock since first light to gawk at this great war machine that had slipped into South Caicos during the night.

Florio was tired and annoyed—tired because he had had almost no sleep since leaving Florida two days before, annoyed because he was convinced he was on a fool’s errand.

There was no reason to believe that Brendan Trask was anything but safe. He had not been heard from in several days, but his silence was hardly cause for alarm: He was aboard a large, well-stocked, fully crewed motor-sailor with transatlantic capability, and he had said—publicly—that he had no intention of contacting anybody. He had not filed a float plan, but that was a rule observed more often in breach than compliance.

The weather had been calm and clear. There had been no significant thunderstorms—not even tiny of the routine, brief-but-violent local tempests that might have jammed or garbled a radio distress call. And if the boat had sunk, there would certainly have been news of her by now, for she carried a dinghy, towed a Boston Whaler, and had strapped to the deck four push-button-launched, self-inflating life rafts. All the auxiliary craft were equipped with powerful transmitters that pulsed unmistakable signals on marine and aviation distress frequencies.

But the world was evidently unwilling to believe Trask’s declaration of retirement. What he said on television was universally accepted, but when he said he didn’t want to speak on television any more, there had to be an ulterior motive. He could not be permitted to escape without explanation—or, at least, without observers to capture his words of wisdom and to chronicle the twilight of his extraordinary career. It was almost as if the public and the media resented him, felt they had made him a star and they alone should determine when he would fall from orbit.

And so, when days had passed without word from, or sight of, the Most Trusted Man in America, the public—enamored of conspiracy, thirsty for melodrama—had demanded proof that Trask was alive and well. Unsubstantiated rumor had changed the public’s perception of his voyage: It had begun as a sailing trip, but now it was a disaster.

They want reverse news, Florio thought. They want a headline that says: “Trask Okay.” That’s like a headline saying: “No Plane Crashes Today” or “Tiffany’s Not Robbed.”

Someone at Today Publications had called a couple of congressmen because one of their stringers had flown over a big sailboat and couldn’t state positively that it wasn’t Trask’s boat. The congressmen had called somebody in the Pentagon. Then someone at Trask’s network, which still hoped to negotiate for his return to duty, called the Secretary of Defense.

A friend had alerted Florio at 2:30 in the morning, and be had immediately called his commanding officer and volunteered to lead the search. He argued that he was the only officer with both sea experience and up-to-date knowledge of boat disappearances, and his request had been granted. But now, after forty-eight hours of aimless, fruitless cruising, he was ready for a change of clothes and a night’s sleep.

The captain of the
New Hope,
a young lieutenant j.g. named Mould, climbed to the bridge and stood beside Florio, taking deep, therapeutic breaths of cool morning air.

“You look awful,” Florio said.

Mould nodded. “The goddamn sound man did it again. At the dock, for chrissakes! This time he fell in it.”

The network had pulled strings and gotten permission to send a television crew on board the ship, to record the epic search for the missing anchorman. The correspondent, Dave Kempe, was a slick, leisure-suited New Yorker, but arcane union regulations had prescribed that the crew itself—cameraman, sound man, lighting man—be recruited from Atlanta. None of the three had ever been to sea. The cameraman’s hobby was mountaineering, the lighting man kept bees, and the sound man’s avocation was hypochondria. He was short, bald, rotund, and at least sixty. By his own account, he was afflicted with corns, sciatica, gas, angina pectoris, sinusitis, seborrhea, and what he called nerves. It was impossible to tell which of his ailments were fancied, but since leaving Florida he had added to his catalogue of ills chronic—volcanic—
sea
sickness. And as if subconsciously intending to force others to share his misery, he refused to go outdoors even to puke.

“He won’t take a pill,” Mould said. “Says it might react with his other medicine.”

“Why don’t you fly him out? The guy who brings the water can probably get him on a plane.”

“He says he won’t go. Doesn’t want to lose overtime.”

Florio shook his head. “Dumb bastard’s gonna rupture something.”

Ahead, on the bow, two seamen slopped water on the deck and began their matutinal swabbing. A third seaman removed the canvas cover from the .50-caliber machine gun mounted beside the bridge and oiled it with a rag.

Florio looked at the machine gun. “When was the last time that was fired?”

Mould hesitated before saying, “Not under my command.”

“Bullshit, Lieutenant.” Florio smiled. “Flying fish are targets too sweet to pass by.”

The seaman oiling the gun grinned.

Mould blushed. “Well . . .”

A leaky, decrepit tank truck rattled along the dock and stopped, and the driver got out and passed a hose to a seaman below.

A policeman with a clipboard disembarked from the other side of the truck. He was sleepy-eyed and rumpled and having trouble being officious. He consulted his clipboard, cleared his throat, and spoke to the bridge. “Purpose of visit?”

“Water,” said Mould. “Have you heard anything . . .?”

“Weapons?”

“What?”

“Are you carrying weapons?”

Mould exchanged glances with the seaman, who continued to rub the barrel of the machine gun. “Um, y’see, friend . . .”

“All weapons must be placed in bond with the constable.”

“We’ll be here ten more minutes.”

“I can order a search of the vessel.”

“Is that so?”

“Any weapons?”

Mould looked at Florio. “No.”

“Very well. Any narcotics or prescription drugs?”

“How many questions have you got?”

“Twenty in all. I can order your vessel impounded.”

Mould whispered to Florio, “I’m gonna tell him to fuck off.”

“I wouldn’t,” Florio said. “Someday—God knows how—it’ll get back to Washington, and some enemy you didn’t even know you had will find a way to kick your ass with it.” A buzzer sounded. “Talk to the man. I’ll get it.”

Florio walked to the front of the bridge, pressed an intercom button, and said, “Bridge.”

“Got a bullet from Miami,” said the voice of the radio operator. “Trask just pulled into Annapolis.”

“Annapolis?”

“Generator froze up on him. They told him it’d be a month before they could fix it in the Bahamas. He figured he could get home and back before then.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Florio laughed.

When the water was loaded and paid for, and the ship made ready for sea, Florio said to the policeman, “You ever see an American around here, a skinny guy with a kid?”

“People come and go. He on a boat?”

“No. He came in on the plane that crashed.”

“Prob’ly long gone.”

Mould was looking at a chart of the Turks and Caicos group. “Do I really have to go south before I can turn north?” he asked the policeman.

“How much you draw?”

“Nine feet.”

The policeman chuckled. “Man, you try to take nine feet across them banks, you gonna be there for-
ever
. There’s six feet at the highest high tide, and nobody live out there to pull you off.”

The
New Hope
left the dock and steamed south, along the edge of the Caicos Banks.

“When I retire,” Florio said, “I’m gonna get a boat and come down here and spend a summer shipwrecking. Those banks are supposed to be loaded with Spaniards.”

“Is that what that guy did?” Mould asked.

“What guy?”

“The one you asked about, the one with the kid.”

“No, he came down here to look into a story for
Today
and poof! Gone.”

“Today?
Good riddance. It’s one of those bastards got us sent off on this asshole jaunt.”

Maynard lay, half buried in dirt and brush, on the top of the hillock that overlooked the cove He had crawled there in the darkness, had arrived and buried himself just as the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. It was, perhaps, foolhardy of him to return so close to the community, but he had concluded that to hide away from people would be suicide. He would not know how or when or where they planned to look for him; capture would be inevitable. So he could not wait. He had to overhear and anticipate and actively evade until he could decide how to trap and subdue Justin, how to steal a boat (this time without Manuel’s help), how to escape with enough of a lead so he would not be overtaken, how to . . . The questions were endless, the answers nonexistent, but he was confident that, given time, he could formulate a plan.

His best hope for time was that he would be given up for dead.

There was no wind. The bugs had been bad since first light, and as the morning warmed they grew more ferocious. Maynard plucked some berries from a bush by his head and mashed them into a paste that he smeared on his face. He didn’t know what was in the berries—sugar, for all he knew—but the paste provided a shield against the tiny gnats. He watched the cove, and listened.

Nau and Windsor and the two boys waited in the cove as Jack the Bat and Rollo rowed a pinnace to the beach. Aboard they had the mast and sail from the pinnace Maynard had abandoned.

“He could sail,” Jack the Bat said as he beached the boat. “He might have made it if she hadn’t sunk under him.”

“Where is he?” asked Nau.

“Never saw him. I ’spect he went overboard and slipped under.”

Windsor said, “You didn’t see him at all?”

“No. It was dark as a hog’s ass. But we looked when light came. He’s not out there.”

Nau was satisfied. “He’s gone, then.”

“No!” Windsor shouted. “He’s here.”

Maynard saw Windsor stab a finger at the ground, then wave his arm at the hillock. Reflexively, Maynard ducked his head, as if avoiding an extrasensory detector in Windsor’s wave.

Don’t believe it, Maynard thought. Why would I come back here?

“Why would he return?” Nau said. “He was not mad; he did not seek pain.”

“You have his child,” said Windsor.

Nau paused, pondering. He put a hand on Justin’s shoulder. “This was his child no longer; he knew it. This is Tue-Barbe.”

Justin smiled and repeated, “Tue-Barbe.”

“We are many,” Nau said. “He is one and weak and . . .”

“And an enemy. You must find him and kill him.”

Nau said to Justin, “You are excused.”

“No,” Justin replied. “I can hunt.”

Maynard heard Justin speak, and for a second he regretted having returned to the island, only to be hunted down and killed by his own child. But he forced away his rage: As long as he was alive, he would not accept the loss of his son.

“All right, Doctor,” Nau said. “We will gather the company and sweep for him. We will begin with the rocks beyond the hill”—he pointed directly at Maynard—“and sweep the island clean. If he is here, we will find him, even if he has used wizardry to shrink to the size of a shoat.”

Nau ordered Rollo to remain with the boats, then led Windsor and the boys away from the cove, inland.

In a few moments, Maynard heard the hollow sound of the horn, calling the company together. His plan—such as it would ever be—had to wait: Now he must run, hide, avoid the searchers. They could not cover the whole island. There had to be a cave or a ditch or a treetop they would overlook.

He heard footsteps and voices, heading north toward the tip of the island where he had come ashore. He waited until all the sounds had faded, then brushed the sand and dirt off his body, crawled away from the lip of the hillock overlooking the cove, got to his feet, and ran south. He still had Jack the Bat’s knife with him, and he clutched it as he ran.

The searchers were practiced and thorough. They coated the island like a brush fire, missing nothing. They walked side by side, strung out from one shore of the island to the other. Their pace was set by the slowest member: If someone had to stop to shake a tree or lift a rock or pick apart a pile of brush, the others waited. Nothing would filter through the seine.