Coy exchanged a glance with El Piloto, and saw the same resigned decision. I'm with you. We'll meet in La Obrera and toss down a few rums. Or somewhere. As for Tanger, from this point on there was nothing he could do except make it easier for her to get up the ladder to the deck. After that, everyone had to swim for himself. In the end she would have to manage without his hand when her turn came in the dark. He was going to cast off long before that. He was going to do that right now, backed by El Piloto, who he knew was waiting, ready for the fight.
"Don't even think about it." Palermo had guessed his intention and shot a warning look at Kiskoros.
Coy calculated the distance separating him from the Argentine, his pulse pounding and his stomach hollow. Two yards was two bullets, and he didn't know whether with all the ballast in his body he could reach the dwarf, or what condition he would be in if he did. As for El Piloto, Coy was sure Palermo wasn't carrying a weapon, but when the moment came, neither El Piloto nor Palermo would be his concern anymore. Tanger had said it beside Zas's body: We all die alone.
"We've wasted too much time," Tanger said suddenly.
To everyone's stupefaction, she started walking toward the companionway as if she had decided to leave a boring social gathering, ignoring Kiskoros and his pistol. Palermo's hand, which at that moment was raising the cigarette to his lips to take a drag, froze in midair.
"Are you crazy? Don't you realize ... Wait!"
By now Tanger was at the foot of the companionway, hand on the rail, and there was no question that she was ready to take her leave. She had half turned and was looking around, ignoring Palermo, as if wondering whether she'd forgotten something.
"Stay right there or you'll regret it," said the Gibraltarian.
"Leave me alone."
Palermo raised the hand with the cigarette, motioning Kiskoros not to fire. The Argentine's face was a somber mask in the light of the paraffin lamp. Coy looked at El Piloto and got ready to make his move. Two yards, he remembered. Maybe, thanks to her, I can cover those two yards without getting shot.
"I swear..." Palermo was saying.
Suddenly the words stopped, and the cigarette dropped from his hand to the floor. And Coy, who was prepared to lunge forward, felt his muscles freeze. Kiskoros's pistol had described a precise semicircle and was now pointed at Palermo. Palermo was stuttering a few indistinguishable sounds, something in the vein of, What the hell are you doing? and What the fuck is going on? without completing a single word, and then he stood inanely staring at the cigarette smoldering between his feet, as if it might provide an explanation, before looking back toward the pistol, prepared to confirm that it was all a trick of his senses, and that the weapon was pointing in the right direction... But the black hole of the barrel was still on a line with the belly of the treasure hunter, and he was looking at each of them in turn—at Coy, El Piloto, and last Tanger. One by one, taking his time, as if waiting for someone to clarify in detail what this was all about. Then he turned to Kiskoros.
"May I ask what the fuck you think you're doing?"
The Argentine did not change expression, elegant and fastidious as ever, not moving a hair, with the chrome and mother-of-pearl pistol in his right hand, his diminutive silhouette projected onto the bulkhead by the torch. His face was not that of an evil man, or a traitor or lunatic. Very decorous, very calm, with his slicked-back hair and his mustache, looking more dwarfish, more tango-world Buenos Aires, and more melancholy than ever, confronting his boss. Or, by all indications, his ex-boss.
Palermo again looked down the row, but this time he stopped on Tanger.
"Someone... God almighty. Can anyone tell me what's going on here?"
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.
A
LL
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 talk 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.