"Besides, you're going too fast, Coy. I never said anything about treasure."
She hadn't spoken for at least five minutes. Now she was out of the car, beside him, staring at the sea and the coast of Africa. "That's true," he conceded. "But you're running out of time.
You're going to have to tell me the rest of the story when we get there."
The white wake of the tanker traced a slight curve toward the European shore in the Straits below. The watch officer had thought it prudent to give sea room to the closing merchant ship. Ten degrees to starboard, Coy calculated No officer touched the controls unless the captain authorized it, but correcting by ten degrees and then returning to course was reasonable.
"We're not," she said in a low voice, "there yet."
THE offices of Deadman's Chest Ltd., were at 42B Main Street, on the lower floor of what looked like a colonial building with white walls and window frames painted blue. Coy looked at the plaque screwed to the door, and after a brief hesitation rang the bell. Tanger had refused to meet with Nino Palermo in his office, so he had been charged with the exploratory mission, and, if the signs were favorable, with setting up a meeting for later that day. Tanger had given him precise instructions, detailed enough for a military operation.
'And what if they beat me to a pulp?" he'd asked, remembering the rotunda of the Palace.
"Palermo puts business before personal matters," was her answer. "I don't think he'll try to settle accounts. Not yet."
So there he was, staring at his stubble-covered face in the brass plaque, breathing as if preparing for a death-defying dive.
"Senor Palermo is expecting me."
The Berber standing inside the open door looked even more menacing in the daylight, his funereally black eyes dissecting Coy, recognizing him before he stood aside to let him pass. The vestibule was small and paneled with precious woods, with a few nautical touches. There was an enormous ship's wheel, a diving suit, and a model of a Roman trireme in a large glass case. Also a desk of modern design, and behind it the secretary Coy remembered from the auction in Barcelona and the Palace rotunda. A comfortable chair was positioned beside a coffee table with copies of Yachting and Bateaux, and there was a straight chair in one corner. On that chair sat Horacio Kiskoros.
This wasn't a gathering in which you smiled and said "Hello," so Coy did neither; in fact, he did nothing but stand quietly in the entryway, expectant, while the Berber closed the door behind him. The three pairs of eyes focused on him were not exuding excessive human warmth. The Berber, stolid and unthreatening, mechanically and efficiently patted Coy down, starting at his ankles.
"He never carries a weapon," Kiskoros offered from his chair, in an almost amiable tone.
Now is when they begin to push me around, Coy thought, with the memory of the Berber's solid efficiency. Now they begin to give me mine back, with a few extras thrown in, until I'm tender enough for the grill, and then they'll drag me out of here—if in fact I get out of here—with my teeth in a little cone of folded newspaper. LWGACA: Law of What Goes Around Comes Around.
"Well, look what we have here," said a voice.
Nino Palermo was at a just-opened door on the opposite side of the room. Dark brown trousers, blue-striped shirt with the cuffs turned back, no necktie. Expensive moccasins.
"I'll give you this much," he said, surprised to see Coy. "God almighty, you've got balls."
"Were you expecting her?"
"Of course I was expecting her."
The bicolor eyes of the seeker of sunken ships were hard, hypnotic as a snake's. His nose was still slightly swollen and he had the remnants of two black eyes. Behind his back Coy heard the soft footsteps of the Berber, saw the look that Palermo directed over his shoulder, and involuntarily tensed his muscles. Nape of my neck, he thought. That SOB is going to chop me on the neck.
"Come in," said Palermo.
Coy stepped inside and his host dosed the door, walked across the room, and leaned against the edge of a mahogany table covered with books, papers, and nautical charts filled with penciled notes, which Palermo covered discreetly with a copy of the Gibraltar Chronicle. An antique bar of silver weighing four or five pounds acted as paperweight. In order to look at anything other man Palermo's face, Coy studied an oil painting on the wall. It depicted a naval battle between a North American and an English ship, two frigates battering each other, their rigging nearly destroyed. The plate on the lower edge of the frame read "The Java—Constitution fight." Smoke from the cannonade was blowing in the right direction, as dictated by the clouds, waves, and set of the sails. It was a good painting.
"Why did she send you alone? She should be here."
The green eye and the brown eye were observing Coy with more curiosity than rancor. He didn't know where to direct his gaze, but finally decided on the brown eye. It seemed less unnerving.
"She doesn't trust you. Which is why I am here. Before she sees you, she wants to know what you have in mind." "Is she in Gibraltar?" "She's where she should be."
Palermo slowly shook his head. He had picked up a small rubber ball from the table and was squeezing it. "I don't trust her either." "Nobody trusts anybody here."
"You're a... God almighty." As the left hand squeezed, ballasted with rings and the enormous gold watch, the muscles in Palermo's forearm contracted. 'An idiot. That's what you are. You're a puppet and she's pulling your strings."
Coy concentrated on the brown eye.
"Mind your own business," Coy said.
"This is my business. It was mine alone until that bitch stuck her nose in. My good will..."
"Cut the shit with that stuff about 'my good will.'" Coy decided to try the green eye for a change. "I saw what your dwarf did to her dog."
The hand squeezing the ball froze, and Palermo shifted his position against the edge of the table. Suddenly he seemed uncomfortable.
"I want to tell you, I never... God almighty. Horatio went too far. He's used to measures... There in Argentina... Well..." He stared at the ball as if suddenly it was objectionable, and set it back on the table beside an ivory letter opener with a handle in the shape of a naked woman. "I think that in his country he went over
the edge___ And then there was the business of the Malvinas.
Horatio came out on the cover of Time with his English prisoners. He's very proud of that cover, and always carries a copy.... When democracy came in, he had to...You can imagine. Too many people had recognized him, thanks to that blessed photo, as the one who attached the electrodes to their genitals."
He paused and shrugged lightly, implying that he wasn't responsible for Kiskoros in that period. Coy nodded. Palermo hadn't offered him a chair, so he was still on his feet.
'And you gave him a job."
"He was a good diver," Palermo admitted. "So here you have
him, tiny as he is, an efficient bastard for a certain kind of...
Well..." Again he shifted position, gold chains and medallions clinking. "I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Besides, I've always preferred efficient employees to enthusiastic volunteers. A well-paid mercenary doesn't leave you twisting___ "
"It depends on who pays the most."
"I pay the most."
Palermo inspected the gold coin he wore on the finger of his right hand. Then automatically he polished it on his shirt.
"Horacio is a complex little sonofabitch," he continued. "Former Argentine military with a Greek father and an Italian mother, who speaks Spanish and thinks he's English. But he's, a well-mannered sonofabitch. And I like well-mannered people. He even supports his elderly mother in Rio Gallegos, sends her money every month. Just like the tango ballads, you know? How about that."
His hand rose slightly, as if he were going to touch his face, but he immediately interrupted the gesture.
'As for you..."
Now the brown eye expressed rancor, and the green one menace. But only for an instant.
"Listen," he said. "This has ballooned into
something absurd. We're all overreacting, aren't we? All of us. Her. Me too, maybe. Horacio is even killing dogs, which is— God almighty. Over the top. And you, of course. You..."
The seeker of sunken ships stumbled to a stop, hunting for a term that would define Coy's role in the intrigue.
"Look!" He picked up a key and opened a drawer, then took out a shiny silver coin and threw it on the table. "You know what that is? It's what we call a columnar in my trade—an eight reales silver coin minted in Potosi in 1739 by order of King Philip V. You're
looking at__ Take a good look. That is one of the famous 'pieces of eight' that figure in all the stories of pirates and treasures."
He took out a larger coin and tossed it beside the first. This was a commemorative medal with three figures, one kneeling, and an inscription. Coy picked it up and read "The pride of Spain humbled by Vernon." On the obverse side were a number of ships and a second inscription: "The capture of Carthagena April 1741" He set the medal on the table beside the piece of eight.
"It was an empty boast, because they didn't ever take Cartagena," Palermo explained. "Admiral Vernon withdrew, defeated, without ever sacking the city. The person falsely kneeling on the medallion is the Spaniard Bias de Lezo, who never knelt—among other reasons because he had only one arm and one leg. But he defended the city with tooth and claw, and the English lost six ships and nine thousand men. Vernon had brought medals already struck for the triumph, but now he had to get rid of them. And he did, except for the ones that went to the bottom of the bay. Hard to find."
He put his hand in the drawer and pulled out a handful of different coins, which he hefted before dropping them with a metallic clatter. Gold and silver glittered as it spilled through his ting-laden fingers.
"I got that one from a sunken English ship," said the treasure hunter. "That one, these, and many others: silver coins of four and eight reales, the columnars, pre-1850 coins, gold doubloons, ingots, jewels___ I'm a professional, you understand? I know the miles of shelves in the Archivo de Indias, and the archives in the English Admiralty as well. I know the palace of the Inquisition in Cartagena de Indias, Simancas, Viso del Marques, Medina-Sidonia____
And I'm not about to let a couple of amateurs... God almighty. Blow a lifetime of work."
He picked up the piece of eight and the Vernon medal and returned them to the drawer. His smile made him look like a white shark who had just been told a joke about shipwreck victims.
"So I'm going to be in this to the end," he stated. "With no mercy and no misgivings. I'm going to____ I swear to you. And
when I'm done, that woman... she'll see. And as for you, you must be mad." He locked the drawer and put the key in his pocket. "You don't have the faintest idea of the consequences."
Coy scratched his unshaven face.
"So did you send that asshole dwarf to Cadiz to make us come and listen to this?"
"No. I asked you to come in order to propose a final deal. Last chance. But you..."
He left the sentence unfinished, although the meaning was clear. He didn't consider Coy qualified to carry out the negotiations. Neither did Coy, and they both knew that.
"I only came to check the lay of the land," he said. "She's agreeable to meeting you."
Palermo's eyes were slits, but a gleam of interest shone through.
"When and where?"
"She thinks Gibraltar is fine. But she won't come to the office. She prefers neutral ground."
The smile now revealed teeth that were strong and white. The shark was swimming in his own waters, thought Coy. Catching a scent.
'And what does that woman consider neutral ground?" "The viewpoint on the Rock that looks down on the airport would be fine."
Palermo reflected.
"Old Willis? Why not? What time?"
"Tonight, at nine."
Palermo glanced at his watch and thought a second. The cruel smile began to take shape again.
"Tell her I'll be there__ Will you come, too?"
"You'll know when you show up."
The less than friendly eyes studied Coy from head to toe, and the treasure hunter laughed a disagreeable laugh. He didn't seem even slightly impressed.
"You think you're a tough kid, don't you?" Suddenly his tone was more intimate, but much less pleasant. "God almighty. You're a puppet, like all the others. That's what you are. They use us like... Use us and throw us away. Oh yes. That's what they do. And you...
I know your situation. I have my ways____ Well... You know what
I'm saying. I know your problem. After Madrid I made it my job to find out. That ship in the Indian Ocean. Two years' suspension is a long time, isn't it? I, however... What I mean is that I have friends with ships who need officers. I could help you."
Coy frowned. Palermo's words made him feel intruders were going through all his drawers. The sense of turning to a window and finding someone there, spying.
"I don't need help."
"Sure. I see...." Palermo looked him over again. "But you're not fooling anyone, you know? You must think you're different,
but__ God almighty. I've seen a hundred like you. Wise up. You think you're the only one who reads books and goes to movies? But these aren't Asian ports, and you're not... Your story wouldn't make a good B-movie. Peter O'Toole had a lot more class. And when she... Well. She'll set you adrift, like those plundered ghost ships whose crews have vanished— In this novel there aren't any second chances. Let's see if you can get that straight. In the mystery of this lost ship the captain loses his license permanently. And the girl. Shit. The bitch spits in his face____ No, don't look at me like that. I don't have any power to see into the future. But your problem is so elementary it makes me laugh."
He didn't laugh, however. He was somber, still leaning against the table, gripping it. The green and the brown eyes were focused somewhere beyond Coy, absorbed.
"I know them inside out," he said. "Bitches."
He shook his head. For a while he seemed to be in a trance, then he looked around, as if recognizing where he was. His own office.
"They play," he added, "with weapons we don't even know exist. And they're much cleverer than we are. While we were
spending centuries talking in loud voices and drinking beer, going off to Crusades or football games with our pals, they were
right there, sewing and cooking and watching___ "
Gold clicked as he went to a small cabinet and took out a bottle of Cutty Sark and two short, wide glasses of heavy crystal. He took ice from a bucket, poured a generous shot of whiskey into each glass, and returned with them.
"I know what you're reeling," he said.
He kept one glass and set the other on the table in front of Coy.
"They have been, and still are, our hostages, you know? He took a drink, and then another, his eyes never leaving Coy. "That means that their morals and ours are... I don't know. Different. You and I can be cruel because of ambition, lust, stupidity, or ignorance. For them, though... Call it calculation, if you want. Or necessity... A defensive weapon, if you get my meaning. They're bad because they gamble everything, and because they need to survive. That's why they fight to the death when they fight. The damned whores have no fallback position."
The shark's smile was back. He pointed to his wrist.
"Imagine a watch... a watch that has to be stopped. You and I would stop it like any other man—smash it with a hammer. Not a woman. No. When she has the opportunity, she takes it apart piece by piece. Lays out every single part, so no one can ever put it back together. So it will never tell time again. Ever. God almighty. I've seen them— Yes. They take even the most manly man's works apart, with a gesture, or a look, or a simple word."
Again he drank, and his lips twisted. A rancorous shark. Thirsty.
"They kill you and you keep walking, not even knowing you're dead."
Coy resisted the impulse to reach out for the untouched glass on the table. Not just for the drink, which was the least of it, but t
o be drinking with the man there before him. Crew Sanders was too far away; he was tempted by the ancient male ritual, and after all, he reflected, it was only logical he would be. He was now desperately nostalgic for bars filled with guys spouting incoherent words with alcohol-thickened tongues, bottles turned upside down in ice buckets, and women who didn't dream of sunken ships or had stopped believing in them. Blondes who weren't young but were bold, like the ones in the song of the Sailor and the Captain, dancing alone, not caring that lots were being cast for them. Refuge and oblivion at so much an hour. Women who didn't have silver-framed photos of themselves as little girls, times when dry land was habitable for a brief while, a kind of stopover before returning past cranes and sheds gray in the pale morning light to any ship about to cast anchor, while cats and rats played hide and seek on the dock. I went ashore, the Tucuman Torpedoman had said once in Veracruz. I went ashore, but I only got as far as the first bar.
"Nine o'clock at the viewpoint," said Coy.
He was filled with an uneasy, desolate self-loathing. He gritted his teeth, feeling the muscles of his jaw tighten. Then he turned on his heel and walked to the door.
"You think I'm tying?" Palermo asked to his back. "God almighty. You'll find out before long— Damn it to hell, man. You should be at sea. This is no place for you. And you'll pay for it, of course." Now his voice was exasperated. "We all pay sooner or later, and your turn is coming. You'll pay for what happened at the Palace, and you'll pay for not wanting to listen to me. You'll pay for believing that lying bitch. And then it won't be a question of
finding a ship, but of finding a hole to crawl into___________ When she, whatever she has in mind, and I, have both finished with you."