Coy was asking himself the same question, aware of a strange hollow feeling in his stomach. Tanger hadn't moved from the foot of the companionway, her hand still on the railing. Slowly it dawned on him: this wasn't a ruse, she was actually going to leave.
"What is happening," she said very slowly "is that here is where we all say good-bye."
The void inside Coy spread to his legs. His blood, if in fact it was circulating, must have been moving so slowly that his pulse was imperceptible. Without realizing what he was doing, he gradually slumped down, until he was sitting on his haunches with his back against the bulkhead.
"Why, you sonofabitching..." Palermo spit out.
He was looking at Kiskoros as if hypnotized. The reality had finally set in. And the more his legs trembled, the more contorted his face became.
"You're working for her," he said.
He seemed more astounded than indignant, as if the first thing to be denounced was his own stupidity. Still silent and unmoving, Kiskoros let the pistol pointed at the Gibraltarian confirm that view.
"For how long?" Palermo wanted to know.
He had asked Tanger, who in the reddish light of the torch seemed about to disappear in the shadows. Coy saw her make a vague gesture, as if the date the Argentine had decided to turn coat was of no importance. Again she consulted her watch.
"Give me eight hours," she said to Kiskoros in a neutral tone.
He nodded, his vigil of Palermo never relaxing, but when El Piloto made a casual movement the pistol moved and covered him as well. The sailor looked at Coy, stupefied, and Coy shrugged. The line dividing the two sides had really been clear to him for some time. On his haunches in the corner he was examining his feelings. To his surprise, he wasn't experiencing anger or bitterness, but rather the materialization of a certainty he had often sensed but ignored, like a current of icy water that penetrates the heart and begins to solidify in layer after layer of frost. It had all been there, he realized. It had all been clear from the beginning, in depth readings, coastlines, shoals, and reefs marked on the strange nautical chart of recent weeks. She had given him the information that should have prepared him, but he hadn't known how—or hadn't wanted—to interpret the signs. Now it was night, with a lee shore, and nothing was going to get him out of this.
"Tell me one thing," he said, crouched against the bulkhead, unaware of the others, his words for Tanger alone. "Tell me just one thing."
He asked with a calm that surprised even him. Tanger, who had started up the steps, stopped and turned toward him. 'All right, one," she conceded.
Perhaps I owe you at least one answer, the gesture said. I've paid you in other ways, sailor. But maybe I owe you that. Then I will walk up this companionway, and everything will follow its course, and we will be at peace.
Coy pointed to Kiskoros.
"Was he already working for you when he killed Zas?"
She didn't answer, merely stared at him. The dancing light of the paraffin lamp cast dark shadows on her freckled skin. She turned, as if to leave without answering him, but then seemed to change her mind.
"Do you have the answer to the riddle of the knights and the knaves?"
"Yes," he admitted. "There are no knights on the island. Everyone lies."
Tanger considered that for an instant. He had never seen her smile such a strange smile.
'It may be that you arrived on the island too late."
Then she went up the stairs and vanished into the shadows. Coy knew that he had already lived that scene. A ray of sun and a drop of amber, he remembered. He saw Kiskoros's pistol, Palermo's desolate expression, and El Piloto s taciturn immobility before he again rested his head against the iron bulkhead. Now his certainty and his loneliness were so intense they seemed perfect. Maybe, he reflected, he was wrong after all, and the line between knights and knaves wasn't all that dear. Maybe, in her own way she had been whispering the truth all the time.
ALL things considered, betrayal held a unique pleasure for the victim. He dug into the wound, relishing his own agony. And like jealousy, betrayal could be more intensely savored by the one who suffered its consequences than by the one responsible for it. There was something perversely gratifying in the strange moral liberation that came from being betrayed, or in the painful memory of noting the warnings, the perfidious satisfaction of confirming suspicions. Coy, who had just discovered all this, thought about a lot of things that night, sitting beside El Piloto and Nino Palermo with his back against the bulkhead in the hold of the half-scrapped bulk carrier, and facing the pistol of Horatio Kiskoros.
"It's a question of patience," the Argentine commented. 'As a compatriot poet of mine said: With the dawn, every thief is with his aged mother."
Nearly an hour had passed. When his former boss had stopped insulting him and reproaching him for his deceit, the hero of the Malvinas had relaxed a little, and perhaps in memory of old times he had revealed a few confidences, speaking in a low voice, aided by the torch, the place, and the long wait. It wasn't, Coy decided, that he was so loquacious, but that like everyone else he had a certain need to justify himself. They learned how when Kiskoros had taken Palermo's first message to Tanger, she had changed the panorama of his loyalties with admirable skill and convincing reflection during a long conversation—man to man, Kiskoros emphasized—in which she expounded the mutual advantages of their working together. Palermo would be out of the picture, and thirty percent of the profits would go to the Argentine, if he agreed to act as a double agent. Because, as Kiskoros pointed out, life was a trade-off, et cetera, et cetera. And most of all, because hard cash is hard cash. Not to mention the fact that she was a real lady. She reminded him of another rebel he had met, in 1976, in the barrio silvered by the moon of ESMA. After a week of the electric prod, they still hadn't got her real name out of her. Coy had no trouble imagining the scene. The military mustache of ex-CPO Kiskoros twisted in a grimace of nostalgia, and the stench of singed flesh mixed with the aroma of beefsteak around the corner at La Costan-era, and the music of Viejo Almacen, and the girls of calle Florida. Cajhe Florida was how it came out in Kiskoros s Buenos Aires accent, as he stretched his suspenders mournfully. But that—he interrupted himself, not without effort—was another story. So, going back to Tanger—such a lady, he insisted—every time Nino Palermo sent him to watch her or put pressure on her, he actually passed on information. Beginning to end; subject, verb, object. And that included Barcelona, Madrid, Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Cartagena. Tanger always knew how dose they were, and Kiskoros was punctually informed of every step she took with Coy. Well, nearly every step, he qualified delicately. As for Palermo, his assassin— supposedly his assassin—had kept him drugged with partial information, until the man from Gibraltar, fed up with pampas tunes, decided to take a look for himself. That very nearly threw a wrench into the works, but fortunately for Tanger the emeralds were already on board the Carpanta. Kiskoros had no choice but to ride along with Palermo. The difference was that now instead of Coy and El Piloto being alone in the hold, the treasure hunter was keeping them company. Three birds with one stone. Although, in that respect, Kiskoros was sure he would not have to throw it.
"This won’t end here," said Palermo. "I will find you wherever Goddammit. Wherever you go. I will find her and I will find
you."
Kiskoros did not seem to be overly concerned.
"The lady is totally in control, and she knows how to take care of herself," he replied. 'And I plan to be far away. I may go back to my country—wrinkled and weary, as the tango says—and buy myself an estancia in Rio Gallegos."
"Why does she want eight hours?"
"Obvious. To put the emeralds in a safe place."
'And leave you holding the bag."
"No." Kiskoros denied with the barrel of the pistol. "Our arrangement is clear. She needs me." "That bitch doesn't need anyone."
The Argentine jumped to his feet, frowning. His bulging eyes shot sparks at Palermo.
"Don't t
alk about her like that."
The seeker of sunken ships stood staring at Kiskoros as if he were a green Martian.
"Don't shit me, Horacio. Don't... Come on. Don't tell me she's brainwashed you too."
"Shut up."
"This is a very serious matter."
Kiskoros took one step forward. The pistol was pointing direcdy at the head of his former boss.
"I told you to shut up. She is a total lady."
Ignoring the gun, the treasure hunter shot Coy a sarcastic glance.
"You have to admit," he said, "that skirt has.. .Well. Lots of appeal. Roping in you and your friend, I suppose, wasn't too hard. As for me... God almighty. That's a little tougher. But sucking up to this sonofabitch Horacio... You know? That's a piece of work."
He sighed, respectful. Then he reached for his jacket and took out his pack of cigarettes. He put one in his mouth and said thoughtfully, "I'm beginning to think she actually deserves the emeralds."
He looked for his lighter, absorbed in his thoughts. Then he smiled mockingly.
"We're idiots, all of us."
"Don't include me," Kiskoros demanded.
'All right. I take it back. These two guys and I are dumb. You're the idiot."
At that moment, the siren of a boat entering the inlet pierced the bulkhead—a hoarse, brief blast from the bridge warning a smaller vessel to clear the lane. And, as if that one toot were the culmination of a long process of reflection that had consumed Coy for the last hour—in reality, he had been thinking about it unconsciously much longer—he saw the rest of the game laid out in its entirety. He saw it in such dear detail that he almost blurted it out. Every one of the dues, suspicions, and questions he had been aware of during the last few days took on meaning. The part Kiskoros was playing at that moment, the eight hours, the selection of this hold as a temporary jail, all of it could be explained in few words. Tanger was getting ready to abandon the island, and they, betrayed knaves, were being left behind.
"She's leaving," Coy said in a loud voice.
They all looked at him. He hadn't opened his mouth since Tanger disappeared through the hatchway to the deck
'And she's dumping you," he added for Kiskoros's benefit, "just like us."
The Argentine stared at him, Then he smiled, skeptical. A neat, slick-haired frog. A self-congratulatory dandy. "Don't give me that shit."
"It's all so dear. Tanger asked you to hold us till daylight, isn't that right? Then you dose the hatch, leave us here, and join her. True? At seven or eight in the morning at such and such a place.
Tell me if I have it right so far." The Argentine's silence and expression said that in fact he did. "But Palermo is right. She isn't going to be there. And I'm going to tell you why. Because by that time she will be somewhere else."
Kiskoros didn't like that. His expression was as dark as the black hole of the barrel.
"You think you're very clever, don't you? Well, you haven't been so smart up to now."
Coy shrugged.
"Maybe," he conceded. "But even a fool can understand that a newspaper opened to a certain page, a certain kind of question, a postcard, a couple of trips, a matchbook cover, and information Palermo unknowingly provided some time ago in Gibraltar, all lead to one particular place. You want me to tell you, or shall I be quiet and wait for you to discover it yourself?"
Kiskoros was playing with the safety on the pistol, but it was obvious his thoughts were elsewhere. He frowned, uncertain.
"Go ahead."
Never taking his eyes from Kiskoros, Coy again rested his head against the bulkhead.
"We begin," he said, "with the fact that Tanger doesn't need you now. Your mission—play the double agent, keep Palermo in control, convince me that she was helpless and in danger—ends tonight, with you guarding us while she leaves. You don't have anything to give her. So what do you think she'll do? How can she get away with a block of emeralds? At airports they check the hand luggage with X-rays, and she doesn't dare to risk destroying such a fragile fortune in a checked suitcase. A rental car leaves a paper trail. A train means borders and cumbersome changes. Does any alternative occur to you?"
He sat quietly, waiting for an answer. Saying those things aloud he had experienced a strange sense of relief, as if he were sharing the shame and bile he felt boiling inside. This night there's something for everyone, he thought. For your boss. For poor Piloto. For me. And you, blockhead, it's not all roses for you, either.
But the answer came from Palermo before Kiskoros could speak. He slapped his thigh.
"Of course! A ship. A goddamn ship!"
"Precisely."
"God in heaven. Clever as hell." "That's my girl."
Stunned, standing at the foot of the companionway, Kiskoros was trying to digest the news. His batrachian eyes went from one to the next of them, wavering among scorn, suspicion, and reasonable doubt.
"That is too many suppositions," he protested finally. "You think you are intelligent, but you base everything on conjecture.
You don't have anything to confirm a ridiculous story like that
No proof. Not a single fact to hold on to."
"You're wrong. There is." Coy looked at his watch, but it had stopped. He turned to El Piloto, still quiet but alert in his corner. "What time is it?"
"Eleven-thirty."
Coy looked at Kiskoros with amusement. He was laughing quietly, and the Argentine, unaware that in truth Coy was laughing at himself, did not seem to appreciate the joke. He had stopped fiddling with the safety and was pointing the gun at Coy.
'At one o'clock this morning," Coy informed him, "the cargo ship Felix von Luckner, of the Zeeland line, sets sail. Belgian flag. Two trips a month between Cartagena and Antwerp, carrying citrus fruits, I think. She accepts passengers."
"Fuck," muttered Palermo.
"Within a week"—Coy's eyes never left Kiskoros—"she will have sold the emeralds in a certain place on the Rubenstraat. Your former boss can verify that." He invited Palermo with a nod of his head. "Tell him."
"It's true," Palermo admitted.
"You see." Coy laughed disagreeably once again. "And then you also have the postcard she sent you."
This time the blow hit home. Kiskoros's Adam's apple bobbed wildly in a confusion of convoluted loyalties. Even swine, Coy thought, have a soft spot in their hearts.
"She never said anything about that." Kiskoros was glaring at Coy, as if he blamed him. "We were going to..."
"Of course she didn't say anything." Palermo was trying to light his cigarette. "Cretin."
Kiskoros's spirits plunged.
"We had a rental car," he muttered, confused.
"Well," suggested Palermo, "now you'll be able to return the keys."
He couldn't get his lighter to work, so the treasure hunter bent down toward the flame of the paraffin lamp, cigarette in his mouth. He seemed to be amused by the splendid joke of which they all were the butts.
"She never..." Kiskoros began.
WE may just get there in time, thought Coy. As they scrambled up the ladder the night air struck his face. There was a multitude of stars, and the scrapped ships were ghostly in the glow from the port. Behind them, lying on the floor of the hold, the Argentine was no longer moaning. He had stopped moaning when Palermo stopped kicking him in the head, and the blood bubbling from his seared nose was blending with the rust of the floor and sputtering as it hit his smoking clothing. He had lain writhing at the bottom of the companionway, jacket blazing, screaming, after Nino Palermo, leaning forward to light his cigarette, had thrown the lamp at him. The arc of flames whirred through the darkness of the hold, passed Coy, and hit Kiskoros dead in the chest, just as he was saying "She never..." And they never learned what it was she hadn't done or said because at that instant the paraffin spilled over Kiskoros, who dropped the pistol when a lick of flame touched his clothing and raced upward to engulf his face. An instant later Coy and El Piloto were on their feet, but Palermo, much quicker than they,
had swooped down and picked up the pistol. The three of them stood there, looking at each other unblinkingly as Kiskoros twisted and turned, lost in flames and emitting bloodcurdling screams. Finally Coy grabbed Palermo's jacket and put out the flames, first slapping at them and then throwing the jacket over Kiskoros. By the time he removed it, Kiskoros was a smoking ruin. Instead of hair and mustache he had blackened stubble and he was braying as if he were gargling turpentine. That was when Palermo had landed all the kicks to the Argentine's head, in a systematic, almost bookkeeper-like fashion. As if in farewell he were laying money on a table for his indemnification. And then, holding the pistol but not pointing it at anyone, and with a not-at-all-amused smile on his face, he sighed with satisfaction and asked Coy if he was in or out. That was what he said—"in or out"—looking at Coy in the gleam of the last flames from the spilled torch on the floor, his face that of a night-prowling shark about to settle a score.
"If you hurt her, I'll kill you," Coy replied.
That was his condition. He said it even though it was the other man who had the chrome and mother-of-pearl pistol in his hand. Palermo didn't object; he just grinned that white-toothed shark's grin and said, "Okay, we won't kill her tonight." Then he put the pistol in his pocket and hurried up the ladder toward the rectangle of stars. And now the three of them—Coy, Palermo, and El Piloto—were running along the dark deck of the bulk carrier as across the port, under the illuminated cranes and dock lights, the Felix von Luckner was preparing to cast off her mooring lines.
THE light was on in the window of the Cartago Inn. Coy heard Palermo's exhausted-dog, snuffling laugh beside him. "The lady is packing her bags."
They were standing beneath the palms along the city wall, with the port below and behind them. The lighted buildings of the university shone at the end of the empty avenue.
"Let me talk with her first," said Coy.
Palermo touched the pocket that held Kiskoros's pistol.
"Not a chance. We're all partners now." He kept staring up, his smile somber. "Besides, she would find a way to convince you again."
Coy bunched his shoulders.