The Devil on Chardonnay (21 page)

“Yes, sir.  There are drones on board the Kearsage.  They can fan out with drones and the Osprey and the helicopters and cover a pretty wide swath of ocean.  They’ll be at Bermuda tomorrow night, 17 September, and on 21 September they’ll be 200 miles south of the Azores.  They can loiter in the Azores for three days, then they need to move through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Med on the 27th.”

“We don’t know how this is going to play out.  What do you have after that?”

“Well, sir, the Nimitz is coming back to Norfolk from a deployment,” Lestrange said, looking at a computer printout in his hand.  “They’ll pass south of the Azores on 30 September, but they can’t loiter.  They need to be in Norfolk on 5 October.”

“I don’t think we need the Nimitz.  That would be a bit much for our mission.”

There was a chuckle through the room.

“OK.  State Department, what have you got?”

A casually dressed young staffer from the State Department stood and replaced  Lestrange at the head of the room.

“Sir, we have notified the Portuguese that Chardonnay may be carrying biologic materials bound for Africa.  We also explained that the ship was searched in Bermuda and nothing was found but that our team believes it is there.  They would prefer we try to get the material off the ship while it’s in port rather than try to board it at sea.  They do have a Portuguese frigate in their port at San Miguel.”

“OK.”

“They want to know exactly when it will get there and which port we expect it to enter.”

“Where’s Faial?”

“That’s one of the islands, sir.  It’s popular with transatlantic sailors, and the port is named Horta.”

“Ok, guys.  When will Chardonnay get to Horta?”  He turned to his staff.

“We figure they left Hamilton, Bermuda, on the morning of 11 September.  Their top speed is 12 knots, but most cruising sailboats don’t achieve that because it takes so much time to rig the sails, so figure 10 knots per hour for a day.  That storm hit on 12 September, and the usual procedure would be to turn into the wind, furl the sails and use the diesel to ride out the storm.  We figure that took 12 September and then 13 September to recover the lost time.  They have about 1,800 miles of ocean to cover.  Most sailors shut down at night and chug along on the diesel, making 8 knots, say average 10 for the 24 hours if they’re really diligent sailors.  They’d make Horta in about 7 days – 21 September.”

“OK.  Tell the Portuguese to start looking for them on 19 September.”

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

17 September

A fish exploded from the wake to grab the shiny plastic lure and nearly tore the rod from Boyd’s hands.  He quickly recovered and set the hook with a mighty, torso twisting yank.

“Eno pa’.  Grande atum!”  Candido shouted, reeling in his line to make room for Boyd to play his fish.

Diving, the fish caught up with Chardonnay and began to go beneath her.  Boyd resisted, and the surf rod he held bent nearly double, line singing out of the reel.

Candido had awakened Boyd before dawn with the exciting news that the sonar depth finder had suddenly gone from near infinity to only 30 meters.  They’d arrived on the Princess Alice Banks, a rich and unspoiled fishing paradise near Faial.  The water, made shallow by the volcanic activity that formed the Azores, allows the bottom feeders to live close to the surface where the sunlight causes the lower life forms to thrive.  It was the higher life forms Candido and Boyd were after this day.

Tiring from the constant pull of the rod and the 10 knots Chardonnay was making in the light breeze, the fish was brought alongside where Manuel gaffed it and brought it aboard.

“Wow.  That’s a beauty.  What’s an atum?”  Boyd asked, admiring his catch.

The bullet-shape fish had a beautiful silver-blue luster, with a mouth filled with teeth and a powerful forked tail.  Clearly, this fish made its living in the open sea, swallowing smaller fish.

“Yes!  Very good fish,” Candido said, laughing at Boyd’s enthusiasm. “It’s a tuna.”

They’d caught fish all morning, but none as worthy as this one.  Candido and Manuel seemed to know just when to set the hook and how to keep the fish on the line.  Boyd had lost several fish before landing this one.  They quickly flicked the 6-inch silver Rapalas back in while Manuel emptied the rest of the ice in the ice maker into a large Coleman cooler and laid Boyd’s catch in with their half-dozen smaller fish.

“Land ho!  Hey, we’re there.”  Barefoot and tan, his sculpted hair beginning to go shaggy, Donn jumped down from the doghouse where he’d been watching the horizon and descended the stairs with his news.

Pico, dominated by the 7,000-foot cone of an extinct volcano in its center, was visible on this clear day 75 miles away.  Its pointed top poked through a layer of clouds that lay like a laurel around its midsection.  The base of the island was a smudge beneath the clouds.

Candido and Manuel chattered in Azorean Portuguese as they crowded Donn for a turn with the binoculars.  Each man laughed when he saw their home island, Faial, in the foreground shadow of Pico. 

Neville’s only acknowledgement of the landfall was the plume of pipe smoke circling his head and streaming behind them like a contrail.  He’d been at the wheel all morning, checking the GPS reading with every relighting of his pipe and watching his crew catch fish.

The storm hand chased them across the North Atlantic.  They had left Hamilton, Bermuda, on the afternoon of 10 September to try to outrun it.  With steadily increasing winds from the west, Chardonnay had made unprecedented speed and distance before tropical storm Norbert nearly caught them 500 miles east of Bermuda.  Neville had made the decision to press ahead, risking disaster if the storm overran them, as the extreme winds would push Chardonnay’s bow into the waves, sinking her. 

But just at the last moment, when the barometer began to drop precipitously and they were all crowded around the satellite feed of the Bermuda radar watching the storm move east, the storm drifted north.  It spit them out toward the Azores and dissipated in the cold North Atlantic between Bermuda and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.  Within a day, the sky was blue and the breeze was warm. 

The Azores are nine volcanic islands 900 miles due west of Lisbon, Portugal.  The prevailing westerly winds that bore Chardonnay across the Atlantic have brought sailors back to Europe from the New World since men have gone out into the ocean in boats.  Thus, the Azorean Portuguese are renowned sailors.  Yachtsmen making a transatlantic crossing use the prevailing winds for transport, and after a week or more at sea from Bermuda are happy to pull into the first island they encounter: Faial. 

Faial’s port city, Horta, boasts a spacious leeward harbor tucked under a daunting cliff.  Pico, the volcano, dominates the island of Pico, located across a protected 4-mile-wide channel from Faial. 

Five hours after Donn first sighted Pico, they pulled into the harbor at Horta.  The yacht basin sports docking facilities for scores of cruising yachts in the 30- to 40-foot range, and dozens in the 60-foot range, but they were mostly vacant.  Smart yachtsmen had called the season over and headed to the mainland.  The experience of the past week was a lesson the crew of Chardonnay would never forget about September on the North Atlantic.

Chardonnay, at 119 feet, was regal as she furled her sails and passed under the cliff at the entrance to the harbor.  The crew felt the eyes of the entire port on them as their ship, a one of a kind, a queen of the high seas, had taken the challenge of the North Atlantic and succeeded. 

Mikki emerged from her stateroom transformed.  She wore a neatly pressed khaki safari jacket and slacks with calfskin leather boots.  Her makeup was in place, and Boyd could smell the fragrance he hadn’t noticed since that first night in Charleston. 

“Boyd, would you go with me into Horta?  I have some business,” Mikki said, pleasantly.  “We can take Candido and Manuel with us.  When we return this afternoon, the rest of you can go ashore.”

A short, well-fed Portuguese Harbor Master reviewed their papers and took a modest anchorage fee.  Their business was conducted in Portuguese, in which Mikki was fluent.  Boyd wondered how.  Within five minutes they were back out into the bright sun. 

“Peter’s Bar is right over there.  I need to go there before we return to Chardonnay.”

Mikki was cool. 

Odd, Boyd thought.  Their night of passion was just that, a one-nighter. 

The sidewalk was a mosaic of small black and white paving stones.  They crossed a small park, climbed steps to the main street along the harbor, and made for a bar in the center of the block.  “Café Sport” was carved into a wooden scroll hung across the front of the building, and wooden whales hung over each of the two doors.  The bottom floor of the three-story building was painted blue, the only nonwhite building on the block, and the wooden shutters on all the windows gave it a Cape Cod look. 

Boyd and Mikki ducked as they stepped down into the darker interior.

“Mikki!”  The bartender called out.

“Jose!  Como vai?”

The small man came around the bar and hugged her, then called into the kitchen.

“This is Jose Enrique Azevedo,” Mikki said, waiting with Boyd.  “And his father, also Jose Enrique.”

An older man, also small, came from the kitchen and hugged her.

“Jose the elder was a boy when my grandfather sailed Chardonnay through here in the '40s.  My father caught a world’s record swordfish off the Princess Alice Banks in 1970, the year I was born.”

Boyd shook hands with the two men, who were beaming at Mikki’s arrival.  The small bar seemed dark because of the rich, wood-paneled walls, festooned with the flags from dozens of yachts.  A large carved eagle with outstretched wings and flags in its talons hung over the bar.  The half-dozen customers seemed to be locals, and they ignored the visitors.  Aromas, both garlicky and greasy, wafted from the kitchen. 

Boyd listened with interest to Mikki’s tales of her childhood on Chardonnay and at Horta.  As she laughed and talked with the Azevedos, the years seemed to drop away.  They lapsed back into Portuguese, and Boyd walked over to the bar to get a beer.

Another bartender had taken Jose’s place and he smiled as he filled a glass with Especial beer, then he tensed.  Mikki had asked a question, and mentioned a name.  Was it Constantine?  Boyd had never heard the last name before.  He glanced in the mirror and saw shadows cross the faces of father and son.  The bartender moved away.

“You’ll want a prego.  It’s their specialty here – marinated thin slices of beef, fried, served on a poppaseca, the local bread,” Mikki said, returning to his side after the Azevedos had gone back to the kitchen. 

“I’ll need another beer.   How do you say that in Portuguese?”  Boyd asked.

“Dos giraffe, por favor,” she said, still standing behind Boyd, looking at the menu, then added, “Un prego, uh, sardinhos, grelhado.”

The two draft beers arrived in gigantic frosted mugs, at least 30 ounces of beer each.  They dwarfed the smaller 8-ounce draft Boyd had gotten from the bartender.  Mikki sat and hefted hers with both hands, smiling as they silently enjoyed the cold local brew.

The shadow told Boyd someone had entered behind him.  The furtive glance from the bartender told him it was the person Mikki had asked about.  He turned to see a barrel-chested, fair-skinned man dressed in khaki shirt and pants standing there, glaring at him, then breaking  into a faint grin when he saw Mikki. 

“Constantine!  Senti tanto a sua falta!”  She rose to meet him and threw her arms around his neck, but then stiffened ever so slightly.

Constantine’s towering presence dwarfed the waiter and caused Boyd to stand.  Constantine was taller by an inch.

“Boyd, this is my old friend Constantine Coelho.  Constantine, Boyd is a banker from America who has agreed to work in my bank.  It is his first Atlantic crossing,” Mikki said gaily.

Nothing that she said seemed to be welcome news to Constantine, who made a wooden attempt at a smile, ordered a giraffe, and sat across from Boyd at their table.   He was soon engaged in conversation in Portuguese with Mikki.  She seemed to be filling him in on events since their last meeting, not too long ago it seemed to Boyd.

Though a small bar, Peter’s has two doors a dozen feet apart.  As Constantine had entered one, two Portuguese came in the other.  Their eyes on Boyd made him wary.  Now another fair skinned man entered, staring at Boyd and Mikki, he took a seat alone.

“Constantine is my business contact in the Portuguese colonies in Africa,” Mikki said.

“Former Portuguese colonies,” Constantine added darkly in heavily accented English.  “Angola and Mozambique have gone their own way.”

Mikki took a sip of her beer, then leaned back into her chair.  As she did so, her shoulder brushed against Boyd’s.  A moment later there was another touch, and he felt the warmth of her closeness.  Constantine was older than Wolf, and larger, though not as completely developed.  His large hands made his arms appear smallish, though not in any sense weak.  His voice was loud and grating.  He finished the beer in half a dozen gulps and ordered another.

Another shadow caused Boyd to turn to see another Portuguese enter and take a seat behind him.  The man was small and swarthy like the fishermen having their lunch at a nearby table.  Though he didn’t look at Boyd, just his presence behind him made Boyd uneasy.

   Jose the younger returned with a picture he’d taken years before of a huge wave hitting the barrier cliff at the mouth of the harbor and splashing 180 feet into the air.  He pointed out that the splash made a perfect face of Neptune, god of the sea.  Mikki stood next to Boyd, arm draped casually across his shoulders as they looked at the picture.  Hair bristled on the back of his neck.  He knew this game.  When he sat, he moved a bit around the table, getting his back away from the Portuguese along the wall. 

“Boyd saved my life,” Mikki said to Jose as he gathered up his picture.  “A wave nearly this big washed me into the sea.  I don’t know how I can repay him.” 

She held Boyd’s arm, her breast against him.  Her leg brushed the length of his.