Authors: Margaret Truman
“Like the fox.”
“Look at me. Bear would be more like it. Have a good day, miss, and enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you; now I know I will.”
“Have a good day?” Eric Edwards asked as he came to the terrace where Collette was sitting. She’d bathed and slipped into her caftan, found a glass pitcher in the refrigerator filled with a dark liquid and decided to try it. “What is this?” she asked Edwards as he joined her at the table.
“Oh, you found my daily supply of
maubi
. The housekeeper whips it up for me. It’s non-alcoholic, but if you let it age long enough it ferments into something that knocks your socks off. It’s got tree bark, ginger, marjoram, pineapple, stuff like that in it.”
“It’s delicious.”
“Yeah, only I’m ready for a real drink. Let me get it and I’ll brief you on the next couple of days of your vacation.”
When he returned, he carried a large vodka martini on the rocks. “How would you like a
real
sail?” he asked.
“I’d love it,” she said. “What does a
real
sail mean?”
“Two days and a night. Jackie’s provisioning the boat first thing in the morning. We’ll spend the day with sails up and I’ll really show you the BVI. We’ll find a pleasant place to anchor overnight, and spend the days catching beautiful
winds and seeing one of God’s gifts to the world. Sound good?”
“Sounds religious,” she said. This didn’t reflect what she was thinking at first. The sail would mean being out of touch, particularly with her contact at Pusser’s Landing. Somehow, that brief encounter had been comforting.
Still, she knew that her job was to stay close to Edwards and to find out what she could. So far, she’d been successful only in discovering that he was handsome, charming, and a generous host.
He took her for dinner that night to the Fort Burt Hotel, and they stopped for a drink at Prospect Reef before returning to the house. She assumed this warm, pleasant evening would culminate in some attempt at seduction. Later, she had to laugh quietly in bed when she realized that the absence of any attempt at seduction left her ambivalent. She didn’t want to be seduced by Eric Edwards. On the other hand, there was a side of her, part psychological and part physical, that yearned for it.
She heard Edwards walking about the house and tried to determine from her bedroom what he was doing. She heard him go outside, then return, listened to the dishwasher start and begin its cycles. She closed her eyes and focused on sounds from outside her window. The tree frogs were especially noisy. A pleasant sound. She allowed waves of contemplation of two days on that magnificent yacht to carry her into a blissful sleep.
Edwards, who’d poured himself a glass of rum over ice, sat on the terrace. The harbor below was peaceful and dark, except for occasional lights shining through tiny portholes on the yachts docked there. One of those lights came from his Morgan. Inside, Edwards’s shipmate, Jackie, was putting the finishing touches on a vegetable tray she’d prepared for the sail. She covered it with plastic wrap and placed it in the galley’s refrigerator along with the other food and drinks Edwards had ordered.
She went to the companionway, took two steps up, and surveyed the deck and dock. Then she returned to the cabin
and went to a low door that led to a large hanging locker containing extra gear, flotation cushions, and snorkeling equipment. She opened the door. A flashlight’s movement threw a sudden ray of light on her. “Are you done yet?” she asked.
A young native scrambled toward her on his knees, shone the light on his face, and nodded. She motioned for him to come. He took a final look back into the black corner of the stowage locker. She, of course, could hear nothing, but if he concentrated hard enough, he could hear the regular, rhythmic ticking in the silence of the night.
He joined her in the main cabin and they turned out the interior lights. She went up the companionway again, looked around, saw that it was clear, waved for him to follow, and they quickly climbed onto the dock. They looked at each other for a moment, then separated, Jackie heading in the direction of the main buildings, the young man following a narrow strip of wooden walkway until he reached a small beach and disappeared into the trees.
“Good job, Jackie,” Eric Edwards said, as the slender girl in tight shorts and a T-shirt tossed him the last line from the dock.
She smiled and waved.
Once Edwards had backed the yacht away from the dock and was proceeding toward the same water they’d traveled two nights ago, he turned over the wheel to Cahill. This time she took it with confidence, eager to guide the sleek vessel with enough proficiency to make him proud.
“I don’t know how much you know about sailing,” Edwards said, “but you’re going to have to help me.”
“I don’t know much,” Cahill said, raising both hands in defense, “but I’ll do what you tell me to do.”
“Fair enough,” Edwards said. “Let’s kill that noisy engine and get some sail up.”
The difference between sailing up Sir Francis Drake Channel in the daytime and at night, Cahill realized, was literally as different as day and night. The sun on the water turned it into a glistening turquoise and silver fantasy. She sat at the helm and watched Edwards, who wore only white duck pants, scurry back and forth over the coach roof and
foredeck adjusting halyards and running rigging. The huge white sails billowed in the wind, the sound of them flapping against the yacht’s spar like a giant bird’s wings. When Eric was satisfied, he stood, hands on hips, and looked up at the full white sheets pressed into perfect symmetry by the 20-knot Caribbean breeze. Like something out of a movie, Cahill thought, as she took deep breaths and raised her face to the sun. A spy movie—or a romance?
“Where are we going?” she asked as he joined her at the wheel.
“We’ll go right up the channel past Beef Island—that’s where you flew in—and then up through the Dogs.”
“The dogs?”
“Yeah. Why they’re called that depends on who you talk to. Somebody told me once Sir Francis Drake dropped his dogs off on them. Some people think the islands look like dogs. The way I figure it, they named them the Dogs the way they name most things down here. Somebody just liked the name. There’s three of them. Once we’re past them, we’ll be up off the northwest tip of Virgin Gorda. I thought we’d come around and go into Mosquito Island.”
Was he testing her? Cahill wondered. Looking for a sign of recognition when he mentioned Mosquito Island? It didn’t seem that way because the minute he finished telling her of their sailing plans, he left her side and busied himself again up front.
They reached the Dogs a little after three and anchored near Marina Cay, where they took a swim in the warm, incredibly clear water and had lunch. Eating made her sleepy, but once they were under way again, her spirits and energy picked up and she threw herself into the role of mate. They sailed between West Dog and Great Dog, came around a tiny bump in the water that Edwards said was Cockroach Island, then sailed almost due east toward Anguilla Point, which jutted out from the Fat Virgin. Far in the distance was Mosquito Island.
“See that island over there?” Edwards said, pointing to his left. “That’s really the dogs, or gone to the dogs.” Cahill shielded her eyes and saw a small island dominated by a large house built on its highest point. Edwards handed her
a pair of binoculars. She peered through them and adjusted the lenses until the island and its structure were sharp. Virtually the entire island was surrounded by a high metal fence, with barbed wire stretched along its top. Two large black Dobermans ran along the perimeter of the property. On top of the building were elaborate antennas, including a huge dish.
She lowered the binoculars to her lap. “Is that a private island?”
Edwards laughed. “Yes, privately owned. The owner leased it out to the Soviet Union not long ago.”
Collette feigned surprise. “Why would the Soviet Union want an island down here?”
Another laugh from Edwards. “They say it’s to provide rest and recreation for its top bureaucrats. There’s some debate about that.”
Cahill looked at him quizzically. “Do people think it’s a military installation?”
Edwards shrugged and returned the binoculars to the clip on the taffrail. “Nobody knows for sure,” he said. “I just thought you’d be interested in seeing it.”
“I am,” she said.
He guided the vessel around Anguilla Point and approached Mosquito Island from the south. He went below and called Drake’s Anchorage, the only resort on Mosquito, on VHF Channel 16 to inform them they would be mooring in the bay and would like a launch to bring them in for drinks and dinner. The pleasant female voice asked Edwards what time he estimated dropping anchor. He looked at his watch. “About an hour, hour and a half,” he said. He flicked off the microphone switch, said to Cahill, “Feel like another swim before we go ashore?”
“Love it,” she said.
“Make it an hour and a half,” Edwards said to the young woman on the other end of the radio.
Ordinarily, Edwards would have brought the Morgan in closer, but he wanted Cahill to see a prime snorkeling reef a few miles to the east, near Prickly Pear Island. He headed for it, dropped anchor, went below, opened the door to the stowage locker, and pulled out two sets of masks and flippers.
He helped Collette fit her feet into her flippers, adjusted the mask on her face, then put on his own set. “Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Let’s go.”
Edwards climbed up onto the stanchion and threw himself over backwards into the water. Cahill managed a minor variation on the technique and soon they were paddling along, side by side, toward the coral reef he’d pointed out.
Edwards moved in front of her and began pointing beneath the water to a spectacular staghorn reef, its multicolored polyps beckoning as though they were millions of fingers. A thick school of yellow snapper appeared from behind the reef and crossed below them, so close that Cahill was able to probe the middle of the school with her hand.
Edwards brought his head out of the water and spit the breathing tube from his mouth. Cahill raised her head, too. He said, “Let’s go around the reef that way,” indicating the direction with his head. “There’s a great …”
The sound started with a low rumble that was more felt than heard from where they were. Thunder? On such a day? They looked around, then back in the direction from which they had come. A microsecond later, Edwards’s 46-foot Morgan rose into the brilliant blue BVI sky in a giant, ferocious fireball. Out of the top of the cloud came thousands of shreds and shards of what had been a magnificent sailing vessel.
The explosion was deafening, but more potent was what the impact did to the water below the surface. Cahill and Edwards were suddenly engulfed in a swirl of water gone mad. She was flipped on her back and water rushed into her mouth. Her arms and legs flailed for something to grab on to, something to help her combat the violent force in which she was trapped.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the water’s surge ebbed. Debris rained down from the sky above, flaming pieces of the yacht hitting the water with a vicious sizzle, large hunks of fiberglass and wood, steel and plastic falling like meteorites. A piece of burning material struck Cahill on her back, but she quickly turned over and the pain was gone.
She’d now regained enough of her senses to begin to think about what had happened, and about what to do next. She looked for Edwards, saw him close to the reef. He was on his side. One hand reached into the sky as though looking for a hook to grasp. There was blood coming from the exposed side of his face, and his mouth was open like that of a dying fish.
Cahill swam to him. “Are you all right?” she asked foolishly, her hand instinctively going to the wound on his temple.
His whole body heaved as he discharged water from his mouth and throat. He shook his head and said, “I think my arm is broken.”
Cahill turned in the water and looked back to where the yacht had been. All that was left were random pieces, smoke drifting lazily from them. A large motor launch pierced the smoke, skirted the debris, and came directly at them.
The three young natives in the launch helped Cahill into it, then carefully brought Edwards on board. Cahill looked at his arm and asked, “Can you move it?”
He winced as he tried to extend the arm. “I think I can. Maybe it isn’t broken.”
Now, safe in the launch, Cahill was suddenly assaulted by the mental and physical horror of what had happened. She fell against the back of one of the wooden seats and began to breathe deeply and quickly. “Oh, my God. My God, what happened?”
Edwards didn’t answer. His eyes were wide and fixed upon the remains of the Morgan.
“We take you back?” one of the natives asked.
Edwards nodded and said, “Yes, take us to the island. We need to make a phone call.”
After Cahill applied first aid to his arm and head in the manager’s office of Drake’s Anchorage, Edwards made a call to his office on Tortola and told them to send a motor launch to pick them up on Virgin Gorda. The Mosquito Island shuttle boat took them there and they went to a clinic where more sophisticated aid was given Edwards, including an X-ray of his arm. It wasn’t broken. The gash on his head, the result of a falling piece of metal, was deeper than they’d realized. It took eleven stitches to close.
They were driven to a dock where one of Edwards’s native staff was waiting with a large powerboat. An hour later they were back at Edwards’s house.
Throughout the return to Tortola, they said little to each other. Collette was still in mild shock. Edwards seemed to have his wits about him, but he made the journey with his face set in a pained, brooding expression.
They stood together on his terrace and looked down on the harbor.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah, sorry, me, too,” she said. “I’m just glad to be alive. If we hadn’t taken that swim …”
“There are a lot of
ifs
,” he mumbled.
“What could have caused it?” Cahill asked. “A gasoline leak? I’ve heard about that happening with boats.”