CHAPTER 65
As they pulled up to the pier of the naval base, the frigate that had been chaperoning them started coming around in a slow circle. It was not going to leave until the Valentina was fully in hand.
Lines were secured and the gangplank extended. Penny stayed on the bridge with Andrew and her father, watching the crew depart in a line. No one they knew was there to meet them, just Navy personnel and a few civilians in government suits. No reporters either. The disinformation machine had been successfully deployed, and nobody knew their whereabouts. It was disheartening. No family, no one.
Chiffrey had at least agreed that Andrew, as captain, would be the last to go. To add a little dignity, she supposed, to what was essentially the impounding of his ship. Once Andrew was gone, a new crew would come on board. “They’ll take good care of her,” Chiffrey had assured her. “I’ll do anything I can to get her back to you someday. If that’s at all possible.” Hedging as always, yet he almost seemed genuinely concerned.
She wanted to wait and go down with Andrew, but he insisted she go with her father. The Captain of the Valentina wanted a last moment alone with his ship.
And now the time had come. They were up on the bridge, Andrew behind the wheel even though they were tied securely to the pier.
“After this,” her father said to him, “things may never be the same, old friend.”
Andrew gave the faintest hint of a smile, a small burning coal in the face of a bitter chill, welcome even though it could do no real good.
“And we have people, too, and they have been busy the last few days,” her father added. “They say it is not completely hopeless. There are options.”
Andrew remained silent, just nodded his head. The last of the Valentina’s crew had boarded a waiting military bus and it now pulled away toward some debriefing center. No one spoke for a while, but it wasn’t awkward. They knew each other too well. Finally Andrew said, “It’s time. They’re waiting.”
“All right, then,” her father said. “We’ll see you sometime.”
“You will.”
“Why don’t we meet after this?” Penny said. “Go have a drink or something?”
Andrew looked past them, out toward the canal. “I have something I need to attend to.”
“Well, perhaps…”
“Certainly. Another day.”
Their bags had already been taken off. Chiffrey’s idea, to simplify things. As Penny went down the gangplank, the occasion seemed to call for a long glance back. Instead, she just kept walking. There was no point in hanging on to what was already gone. The feel of dry land under her feet felt like a quiet room after a long noisy day. She would have liked nothing more than to keep walking for hours, looking for a path into some forgotten woods, except a low thrumming beat that had become as familiar as her own heart’s suddenly reached her ears. The engines of the Valentina were rumbling back to life, sounding as healthy as the day they were forged.
The ship was already in motion when she turned around, but both fore and aft hawsers were still lashed around massive cleats on the pier. Everyone seemed frozen in place. Chiffrey’s mouth hung open in stunned disbelief. The ship glided through still water, seemingly without effort, but the thick ropes failing to yank tight. Instead, the lines simply glided off the decks and into the water, their cut ends splashing impotently. Mateo’s head popped up from behind the gunwales, wearing a smile like the Cheshire Cat. The Valentina immediately turned out to sea. But this wasn’t the sea. They were far up the Hood Canal. What could Andrew possibly achieve by pulling this now?
The Navy guards standing by raised their rifles and looked to Chiffrey. He motioned them down and fixed his gaze on the frigate that had been chaperoning the Valentina. It was already altering course to intercept. Chiffrey walked over to Penny and her father. “I’m sorry this had to happen. You know there is nothing I can do but stop him and take him off.” He looked at the departing ship, and the frigate already narrowing the gap. “Not how I hoped this would play out.”
He hand signaled to some of the guards and said, “We’ll get a radio down here in a minute that can connect to his frequency.” He looked at her father. “I would like you to try to contact him. We don’t want a bad situation to get worse.”
“I…I will do what I can,” was all her father could say. “Be careful. Please…”
Chiffrey nodded. “We’ll do it right.”
The Valentina could make decent headway when she had to, but the frigate was gaining. A couple more minutes and they would pull alongside.
Penny swiveled around toward Chiffrey. “If he is hurt in any way, I will hold you personally responsible. This never would have happened if—hey, listen to me!”
But the look on Chiffrey’s face had changed, and she followed his stare. The frigate had slowed and begun to turn, like a leaf eddying in a stream. The Valentina glimmered until it dazzled like a million shards of glass. There was an in-rush of air as the light abruptly faded. Then only a turbulence of waves and chop remained to mark the place where the ship had been. Soon that was gone as well.
“That damn old rover!” Penny yelled. “He knew!” She stood there and laughed with utter joy.
The Navy guards had collapsed on the ground. One slowly opened his eyes and smiled as he looked up at Chiffrey. The man got to his feet, cleared his rifle of all ammunition, and removed the magazine. He carefully laid everything out on the grass, took off his boots, and walked away, humming. The others then got up, seemingly fully alert, and stood at attention as if waiting orders. As Chiffrey opened his mouth they all did an about face and marched away double time, perfectly synchronized, except they walked with a high stepping lope as if they were trekking across a savanna somewhere and had been doing so all their lives. They raised their rifles in the air with both hands, pumping them up and down in some strange counter-rhythm.
Chiffrey took a few breaths. “Well,” he said, “here we go again. I’m almost getting used to this. And at least the question of whether the transceiver was really gone or still active has been answered. That’d be my guess anyway. Nicely done.”
The frigate continued to slowly turn until it was coasting backwards.
“Must have lost rudder control as well,” her father said.
Chiffrey stared up at a security camera for a moment, but shook his head. It wasn’t at the right angle to have recorded the Valentina’s departure. His gaze returned to the Navy guards marching off to the beat of some other drummer. The group was now twice as big and growing as more personnel spontaneously joined in, including the two remaining government men.
“Got to see what I can do to pick up the pieces and see if anyone is not under the spell around here.” He started to go, but stopped and turned back to them. “Do I seem the same to you? I don’t feel the same at all, and yet I can’t tell one thing different. Never mind. I’d leave quickly before they reboot if I were you. Enjoy your return home. Catch up with you later.” He gave Penny a wink and ambled away.
“Advice we should perhaps take,” her father said. He closed his eyes as if trying to bring some memory back. “The way Andrew’s been lately…a few words, an odd phrase…I had a feeling, but I didn’t expect anything like this. And where on earth is he now?”
“In the place he wanted to be more than any other,” she said. “At least, that is my hope.”
“If you’re right,” her father said, gazing out to the last known location of the Valentina, “he’s earned it, if ever anyone has, no bones about it.”
Dice. Rolling the bones. Bones of the sea…
An image finally burned its way through from the back of her mind, an image of shells, tiny and white, turning slowly, somehow connecting all the way through their lives on an endless string. “Dad, didn’t you once say that shells were the bones of the sea?”
He nodded. “Andrew told me that once. It’s true.” He stared at her and began to look sleepy.
“Dad! Valentina’s necklace was hanging above the compass o
n the bridge. Some silver, but mostly shells. Bones of the sea.”
Her father rubbed his face with both hands and looked at her as if waiting for something else.
“I can’t explain it,” she continued. “I really can’t, but I believe Andrew somehow made a connection to the transceiver through Valentina’s necklace on the bridge. A direct connection.”
Her father still looked bewildered, but made an effort to speak. “The altered transceiver…you mean was some sort of interface? It sounds like magic.”
“A way to access the same forces we have all witnessed, which did seem like magic, but it wasn’t. Just beyond human ken. And it needed something else.”
“Ah, the necklace, I see, except of course, I don’t.”
“Think about Andrew’s rapport with sea mammals, you know it was more than just empathy, it was almost communion.”
“And he has a deep rapport with his ship as well. The Valentina. Still do not really understand, but…”
The look of youthful illumination that had briefly played on his face faded to the sad joy of one who’s seen the consequences of a life played at the edge. His voice now lower, he added, “And he had…has an even deeper connection to the one whose name his ship bore. Valentina, his wife. Lost to the sea with the best. The necklace, yes, a way to…”
He let out a heavy sigh.
“I don’t know, really. It’s completely mad, yet it fits.” He nodded his head for a while and added, “And perhaps someday, in this world where everything we thought we knew has been turned upside down and given a good shake, I will know how it fits.”
Her father looked across the now placid waters and smiled. “A fair wind, old friend.”
Then he shrugged his shoulders. “We’d best leave while we can. While it seems our Lieutenant has realized that justice sometimes flies higher than the law, I doubt if everyone here will be so inclined when they come back to their senses.”
No one stopped them on their way out.