The Pirate's Daughter (37 page)

“Definitely unexpected,” Wilson said.

“That's exactly the idea,” Lieutenant Peavy said. “If we're taken by the BPF or the APF or any of those chaps we can say, ‘Here we are on holiday in our fancy dress uniforms in a blue boat with a glass bottom,' and hope they put us down as eccentric Englishmen and let it go at that. Pretty good plan, don't you think?”

It was not a question that expected a reply. The lieutenant withdrew to the stern, and Wilson went below to check on Tulj and Colonel Saba, resting on cots in the hold. They were ashen-faced and green around the edges, and the tight compartment smelled strongly of bile.

“I am an officer of infantry,” Colonel Saba said in a weak voice. “I am not much of a sailor.”

Tulj moaned and rolled his eyes. “I agree with Saba,” he said. “The navy is not for me.”

Wilson went to the first aid station and found the Dramamine. He waved the green bottle of seasickness pills in their direction. “Try a couple of these,” Wilson said.

“I prefer organic remedies,” Colonel Saba said. “Western medicine is no good for the spirit.”

“I became a vegetarian last year,” Tulj said. “Do these pills contain any animal fat?”

“Let me put it this way,” Wilson said. “This stuff does nothing for your soul. Then again, yonowpe does nothing for your stomach.…”

By the time they came aboard the cruiser, the Africans were feeling better. But there was no boatswain's whistle, no official greeting. The three of them were hustled past a few curious sailors, through a hatchway and down a metal ladder into a windowless briefing room deep in the superstructure. On one wall was a large map of Africa stuck with pins; on another a recent photograph of the queen looking like someone's grandmother, which in fact she was. Down the center, a long dun-colored table, coffee ring stains marring its surface.

Tulj slumped at the table and put his head down. Wilson studied the map of Africa and the portrait of Elizabeth and paced the room. There wasn't much else to see. The ship's nuclear engines hummed beneath them. Colonel Saba seemed nervous. He sat down, then got up and sat down again. He lit a cigarette and put it out.

“I don't like this at all,” he said. “Why are they taking so long?”

Tulj lifted his head. His eyes looked red and tired. “Don't worry, Saba,” he said. “These people are working for the unification of Bupanda, as are we.”

“Why is that?” Saba said, and his voice sounded strained. “Did you ever ask yourself that, Ra'au? What do they want?”

“They want what they wanted a hundred years ago,” Tulj said wearily. “They want a ready market for their manufactured goods. They want our raw materials, tin, diamonds, that sort of thing. And
in exchange they want us to stop killing ourselves so we can work happily in their factories for cut-rate wages. Didn't they make you read Karl Marx in the APF?”

“You're thinking of the MPF,” Saba said, shaking his finger. “The Anda Popular Front was never Marxist. We were social democrats.”

“I don't care what you were,” Tulj said. “And I don't care what the British want this time, not really. Call them neo-imperialists, postcolonialists, whatever you like. As long as they can help stop slavery and end the slaughter.”

A few minutes later Lieutenant Peavy came in accompanied by a smartly dressed officer with the gold caduceus in his collar.

“This is Acting Staff Commander Tombs, our medical officer,” Peavy said. “You will be deloused, and he will examine you. Then you will each be debriefed by Acting Captain Worthington.”

Peavy left, and Tombs went to work. “Don't want any nasty tropical diseases brought aboard,” Tombs explained, and the three of them were sprayed and showered and poked and prodded and issued new underwear and starched cotton jumpsuits.

As a mark of military deference, they came for Colonel Saba first.

“I do not like this,” he said as he was led out the hatch by Lieutenant Peavy. “What if they ask me about the Bandali stadium?”

“Go on.” Tulj waved airily. “Just answer their questions politely. These are the British. Afterward, I assure you, there will be tea.”

Saba went off, placated.

“He still hears the screams of the women and children at night in his dreams,” Tulj said when Saba was gone. “It is time we all forget the screaming in our head and attempt to start over.”

“For that I recommend yonowpe,” Wilson said.

Tulj grinned.

An hour later, when Lieutenant Peavy returned for Tulj, the African came around the table and took Wilson's hand in both of his
own. He started to speak, then his eyes brimmed over with tears, and he enveloped Wilson in a big African bear hug.

“Thanks for saving my skin back there,” Wilson said.

“Where will you go after you have spoken to the British?” Tulj said.

“I don't know,” Wilson said. It was the first time he'd thought about what he would do with the rest of his life. The idea seemed strange. “I guess I'll go home.… Here, let me give you my address. Write and tell me how the war is going.”

Wilson took a mechanical pencil and a matchbook cover from Lieutenant Peavy and wrote down the address of his old apartment overlooking the Harvey Channel, now inhabited—for all he knew—by a witch.

“My friend,” Tulj said, folding the matchbook cover into the pocket of his starchy overalls, “God has given me the chance to repay you for my life and for my brother's life, and I am grateful. I may not see you again in this world. But I hold out the firm hope that one day I may buy you a fine meal—kif, na-kif, kif-tu, the works—and many bottles of tejiyaa in a Bupanda free from war and suffering.”

“I'll look forward to that,” Wilson said.

When Tulj was gone, Wilson sat alone in the briefing room staring up at the map of Africa stuck with pins. Then, without thinking, he removed the pins and rearranged them in the shape of a great question mark that spread from the west through the Congo, across the Hilenga Delta, over river and lake and morass and mountain range and savanna and desert—as if the continent itself held the solution to his future.

The captain's stateroom was large and carpeted, with three brass portholes, an imposing desk of burnished teak, and built-in mesh-fronted bookshelves full of weighty-looking volumes. Age-darkened paintings of naval scenes were bolted to the bulkhead. Wilson saw Nelson dying in Hardy's arms at Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland, Sir Richard Grenville's
Revenge
fighting a hundred Spanish ships single-handedly off the coast of Sño Miguel in the Azores.

The acting captain, a gangly young man just a year or two older than Wilson himself, seemed uncomfortable with the position of authority into which fate and virus had pushed him. He was all knots and bones, his uniform didn't fit well, and his hair stuck up like the feathers of a bird. The effect would have been comical except for his eyes, which were large and penetrating and full of a fierce intelligence.

“Mr. Wilson? Worthington here, acting captain, HMS
Gadfly
, Blockade Squadron.” He stepped out from behind the desk and shook Wilson's hand.

“The name is Lander, sir. Wilson Lander.”

“Ah?” The acting captain seemed momentarily confused. “Lander … that name has a very familiar ring. Where can I have heard it before?”

“You're the second person to ask recently,” Wilson said. “I don't know. It's fairly unusual.”

“Ah, yes?” the acting captain said absently.

“This may sound like an unmilitary request, Captain,” Wilson said, “but I've got to do a lot of talking about some pretty difficult stuff. A stiff drink would help.”

“Of course. We'll conduct this interview like gentlemen.”

The acting captain produced a bottle of scotch, a siphon, and glasses from the desk and mixed two scotch and sodas. Wilson took
the drink and sat back in a red leather easy chair tacked with brass studs and began to talk. He talked for two hours straight. He told the acting captain everything he could remember: about the
Compound Interest
and Cricket, about Quatre Sables and the slave trade, about the Bupus and the Andas and the Iwos and the slave station at M'Gongo epo.

Acting Captain Worthington listened in grave silence. He mixed another round of drinks, and when Wilson finished talking, he offered a cigarette out of an engraved silver case, and the two of them sat smoking in contemplative silence. Beyond the portholes the light over Africa went from green to lavender. A storm was coming on. The
Gadfly
shifted nervously beneath them in the waves like a racehorse at the starting gate.

“Tell me once more about the … incident at M'Gongo epo,” the acting captain said at last. “Try to remember every detail.” Wilson gulped the rest of his drink and described again the horrors of that place. The acting captain took out a yellow pad and took a few notes; then he stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray shaped like a hardtack biscuit, and he walked around the teakwood desk and began pacing back and forth as an angry lavender light filled the stateroom. Beyond the portholes whitecaps were stirring in anticipation of the storm to come.

“This is something of a breach of security, I suppose,” he said at last, then he stopped pacing and turned toward Wilson. “Naturally you must hold any information in the strictest confidence.”

“O.K.,” Wilson said.

“Are you familiar with the activities of the Blockade Squadron?”

“No,” Wilson said.

The acting captain took a deep breath. “The original Blockade Squadron was a fleet of British warships in the last century whose job it was to put an end to the slave trade. The squadron stopped suspicious-looking vessels coming out of Africa and searched them for slaves. If slaves were found, they were confiscated and set free in Sierra Leone. The crews were taken into custody and hanged; the
slave ships, scuttled. In 1840 thousands of slaves were exported illegally from West Africa to the Americas. By 1860, through the diligent efforts of the Blockade Squadron, this number had been reduced to a mere trickle. By century's end the slave trade had been completely suppressed—we had hoped for all time. You see, the squadron was never officially decommissioned. This is a technicality, but it is important, one of the reasons why we are here now, off the Bupandan coast. The commissioning orders, signed by Queen Victoria herself, were never rescinded and still exist in the vaults of the Admiralty in London. They specify that British warships must stand ready to interfere with any renewed slaving activity and that these warships may be sent out at any time without a direct act of Parliament. In any case, a few years ago British intelligence began hearing strange reports from our agents in Bupanda—men like your friend Tulj Ra'au—”

“Wait a minute,” Wilson said. “Tulj is a spy?”

“Spy is an ugly word,” the acting captain said. “Mr. Ra'au is not a traitor to his country, if that's what you mean. He passes information through us to MI5 in London. I think you are familiar with his motivations. He wishes to stop the war in Bupanda. You may agree that the best way to stop the war is to stop the slave trade.”

“I guess so,” Wilson said.

The acting captain opened his mouth to speak. He stopped himself and gazed for a moment out the porthole where the sky had deepened from lavender to lush purple. He turned from this mesmerizing color and came back over to the desk and lit another Navy Cut. When he switched on the lights, a revealing glare filled the stateroom, and Wilson was surprised to see anger and frustration in the man's eyes.

“Modern political reality is a great disappointment to us,” the acting captain said. “Regardless of our original commission, the Blockade Squadron has no standing mandate for action. The current interpretation of ‘interfere' is rather bloodless, I'm afraid. We just sort of hang about, observing. We can't really do anything. If I so
much as fired a pistol without the nod from Whitehall, the Squadron would be recalled immediately, and the officers court-martialed to a man. Believe me, Mr. Lander, I weep when I hear of the atrocities you have witnessed. That sort of thing cheapens the value of human life for everyone, everywhere. But my government regards Bupanda as a sovereign territory. Any sort of military action on Bupandan soil will have to be referred to the United Nations for endless debate in the Security Council. By the time the politicians resolve to act”—he made a hopeless gesture—“the pirates and slavers will have moved on and set up shop elsewhere.”

Acting Captain Worthington swallowed hard. Wilson watched the Adam's apple in his throat move back and forth. In the next moment the man was actually wringing his hands.

“We are practically helpless against this great evil,” he said, so softly that Wilson barely heard his voice. “I am only the acting captain. Last week I was a lowly staff commander. I don't even have the authority to spit out that porthole. Been at the game for a few years now, but if you ask me, never have been quite suited for the naval life. Studied Shakespeare at Oxford, you know. Didn't want to teach. ‘Why not go to sea for a year or two, like your father,' my mum said, ‘figure things out?' So I joined the navy, and here I am, right now feeling like a damn helpless fool.”

Wilson was quiet for a minute. He looked up at one-armed, one-eyed Nelson dying on the lantern-lit gundeck of the
Victory
. What would Nelson have done?

“How many ships in the Blockade Squadron?” Wilson said.

“Two,” the acting captain said. “The
Gadfly
and the
Hyperion.
”

“How many men between them?”

“Roughly six hundred.”

“Listen to me, sir,” Wilson said, and he fancied his voice held the quiet strength of his convictions. “Quatre Sables is not sovereign territory. It is not part of Bupanda. Long ago, before there was a Bupanda, the island was given by the Portuguese king to the man who discovered it. That man's descendant is in possession of the
place, which he leases as a base for slavery and piracy and other atrocities. Think of Quatre Sables as a rudderless, rotten hulk, full of rats and disease swept by the currents. Would you sink that hulk or let it crash into the nearest beach?”