The Drift (A Hans Larsson Novel Book 1) (22 page)

P
enny
sat in Salgadeiras sipping her drink, peering at the ocean’s darkened horizon
as the dulcet tones of Cesária Évora crooned from speakers above the bar. A sleek-lined
Mercedes pulled up, the café’s rainbow lighting reflecting off the vehicle’s
polished black paintwork. A young and smartly suited mestizo stepped out and
made a beeline for her.

“Good evening, madam. I am Paulo, and your transport is here.”

He led her to the car and ushered her into the backseat.

Lying back against sumptuous leather with the air conditioning
sobering her thoughts but leaving them confused, Penny wondered what part the
driver played in the global shenanigans.

After a while, “Are you with the
Concern?” she
tendered.

“Concern, madam?” The driver’s greeny-brown eyes squinted in
the rearview mirror. “I’m with the chauffeur company.”

Penny felt stupid and wished she hadn’t asked.

They drove north along the coast road for a quarter of a
mile. Penny screwed her hands together, craning over her shoulder every few
seconds to scan the blackened seascape.

“Er, are we going far?” She sensed her element of control
sapping with every yard and wished she were back at the café bar.

“We are here, madam.” The chauffeur tapped the windshield, pointing
out an impressive pastel-cream-stone building jazzed up with stainless steel and
glass. Set apart from far less striking contenders by tropical trees and scrub,
it was tiered back against the hillside like an Aztec pyramid. “The Grande Verde.”

After turning off the highway, Paulo headed up a palm-lined
boulevard, the improvement in road surface immediately apparent as the Mercedes’
tires purred against the smooth tarmac. He pulled up by an impressive floodlit
fountain in front of the hotel. A woman wearing a dark-blue dress suit and jade
cravat and heels stepped forward and opened the car door, introducing herself as
Branca, the concierge. From Branca’s olive complexion and nasal tones, Penny
guessed she was of Portuguese descent. A porter approached, but Penny held up
her small daypack containing the toiletries she had bought at the marina’s convenience
store, and Hans’ sandals and Jessica’s sarong, then smiled and politely waved
her hand.

Branca led her under a gold chrome surround and through a
smoked-glass revolving door into what had to be the most magnificent lobby she
had ever seen – a white marble floor inlaid with black, purple and blue
Arabic-pattern mosaics, natural stone walls, an abundance of mahogany, and burnished-leather
seating surrounding a gently bubbling pool of brightly colored koi.

Penny’s passport was aboard
Future
,
not an
issue as Branca chaperoned her toward a futuristic elevator that spoke better
English than she did. As they ascended, Branca engaged her in polite chitchat,
letting slip enough information to reassure Penny she knew of the yacht’s
disappearance and that moves were in place to set a search in motion.

Penny assumed she would be ushered into a single room with a
view out over scrub and rocks. When the elevator’s digital readout climbed
through one to twelve and rolled over onto “P,” the electronic female voice
announcing “Penthouse suite,” Penny shot Branca a look.

“Penthouse? Am I really in the penthouse?”

“Oh, Miss Mast— Sorry,
Penny.
Your friends have
booked out the penthouse and half of the floor below.”

“Er . . .” Penny struggled to find words. Everything
suddenly seemed surreal, and she had to remind herself this was about Hans and
Jessica and not some exotic vacation she had won in a competition.

Sensing Penny’s distress, Branca took her hand and, with a
sincere smile of her perfectly painted lips, said, “Don’t worry. We look after
our special accounts.”

To take Penny’s mind off the situation, Branca gave her a
tour of the suite. Palatial would be an understatement. They passed through a
vast lounge furnished in chesterfield leather, Persian rugs covering a rich
wooden floor, a seventy-inch television and vividly painted abstracts by Figueira
hanging on walls papered in Jean-Paul Charles, to enter a kitchen fitted with
state-of-the-art equipment, two fully stocked refrigerators and a touch screen
for ordering specific items or ingredients.

“So much technology!” Branca joked as she demonstrated how
to scroll through the electronic menu.

Beneath a crystal chandelier, the dining room’s French-polished
table was large enough to entertain twenty people, and, as if this were not decadence
enough, Branca led her past a bar circuited by optics, wines and snacks and
into a cinema, complete with reclining chairs and a popcorn machine. Penny’s
mind flicked to the opera they’d enjoyed in Plymouth. She shuddered at the
thought of watching a movie alone.

“Feeling fit?”

Branca attempted to keep the mood light as she showed Penny
a gymnasium packed with fitness apparatus and a virtual running machine. Penny
managed a half smile, exercise the last thing on her mind.

A swish office and computer station fronted a conference
room with video linkups and interactive presentation board. A poolroom offered additional
options of game consoles, roulette, a cards table and darts. Four spacious
bedrooms enjoyed spectacular ocean views, one of which accessed a glittering
master bathroom tiled in gold-flecked charcoal, with an adjoining wet room and sauna,
and a hot tub nestled amongst tropical flora on its veranda.

“Fit for King Midas,” Penny murmured.

“Ah yes.” Branca thought for a moment. “But – how you say?
Gilt
plate, no?” Stepping back into the bedroom, “Penny, I took the liberty of
ordering you some essentials.” Branca nodded to an emperor-size bed on which
lay a neatly arranged spread of toiletries, pajamas, flip-flops and a prepaid cell
phone. “And if you come down to the boutique in the morning you can pick out some
fresh clothes. I’ve asked our on-call doctor to pop up in case you need
something to help you sleep. I’ll leave you to settle in, and if there is
anything else you require – or even just to chat to someone – dial reception
and Michelle, our night manager, will be happy to assist. You’ll like Michelle.
I’ve informed her of the situation.”

“B-b-but, I-I . . .” Penny burst into tears and collapsed on
the huge mattress.

“
Calma, amiga
. You’re in good hands and everything’s
going to be fine.”

The hug couldn’t have come at a better time.

When Branca left, Penny attempted to pull herself together, once
again reminding herself this was about Hans and Jessica and that she needed to
be on the ball. First, in a symbolic gesture, she hung Jessica’s sarong up on a
hanger in the warehouse-sized wardrobe, placing Hans’ sandals on the rack
below. Then, realizing she hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, she went to
the refrigerator, but just the thought of her last meal with Hans and Jessica
saw her dissolve into tears once more. Spying shelves packed with smoked meats,
caviar, foie gras and other delicacies, she slammed the door and went to the
bar. She grabbed an ice-cold bottle of beer, then slid open the doors to the
balcony and stepped outside.

The warm air provided a welcome break from the hotel’s
sterile air-conditioned atmosphere, and as Penny gazed out over the
uninterrupted view of the ocean, she prayed that one of the many lights bobbing
upon it belonged to
Future
. Unbeknown to her, the red, white and green
navigation lights soaring out low over the sea were those of the coastguard’s Dornier
light aircraft as it raced toward
Future
’s last known coordinates.

To the far left of the vista, the marina edged into view,
and on a whim Penny went back inside with the intention of calling reception to
ask if, perchance, they had a set of binoculars. As her hand closed around the receiver,
the telephone rang, giving her a start. It was the coastguard’s office informing
her they had received permission from a higher authority to initiate a search.
A plane was in the air and liaising with the
Tatiania –
Cape Verde’s patrol
ship – as well as a Lynx helicopter from the British warship HMS
Fortitude
.
In Creole tones, the woman on the line added that they had established
communications with the United States Africa Command, based in Stuttgart,
Germany, and moves were in place to coordinate NATO ships in the area to join
in the pattern.

Penny put the phone down, breathed a sigh of relief and then
downed the remaining beer. Her mind flicked to the conversation she had with
Muttley little over an hour and a half ago.

Boy, these people work fast.

H
ans
stared at Mickey Mouse’s smiling face. Jessica’s souvenir beaker was one of the
items that had floated to the surface as the yacht went down. Remembering
better days, he bailed out the life raft and used his T-shirt to mop up the
remaining brine.

Leaning out of the entrance, Hans screamed across the blue
void, “We are a lively society that happens to be on this island!”

Zerbinetta’s line from Strauss’
Ariadne auf Naxos
,
one of his late wife’s favorite operas, had become something of a family
mantra, starting as a joke when they vacationed on Hawaii. Why he was shouting
it now, Hans had no idea.

The raft consisted of two inflatable rubber tubes, one on
top of the other, with a third narrower tube arching overhead to support the
nylon canopy. Glued to the bottom of these was a rubberized groundsheet that undulated
with the movement of sea like a seventies-kitsch waterbed. Around the inside of
the tubes ran a canvas webbing strap to hold on to in bad weather and a series
of nylon-mesh pockets to store equipment.

Hans was glad he had packed lightweight sleeping bags in the
ditch kit. They now lay on top of the canopy, drying in the already intense
morning rays. He hoped they would not need them again, that a local fishing
vessel would pick them up before the morning was out, seeing them sleeping in
clean and pressed hotel linen that night.

In reality, with the EPIRB and radio missing, the likelihood
of a swift rescue was slim. They were already far from Cape Verde, and the
trade winds blew them further out into the Atlantic every passing second. Their
best hope lay in reaching the New York-to-South Africa shipping lanes far to
the west, where a passing freighter might intercept their drift.

Hans made a mental inventory of their equipment and
supplies. Water was a priority – moreover, the means to produce it. The raft
came stocked with ten plastic-capped cans, a pint in each, and they had a gas can
containing an additional gallon in the ditch kit. This should have been more
than enough to last them until rescue had the goalposts not shifted. Now they
would have to ration their reserve and rely upon the raft’s solar power still
to supplement it. Decanting a quarter of a pint of the precious commodity into
the Disney mug, Hans wondered what had become of the hand-cranked desalinator
and other items.

Sitting at
Future
’s helm during night watches, he’d
run through the abandoning ship drill countless times in his mind. Unlike many
sailors, who paid lip service to safety considerations, he knew from experience
to prepare for every eventuality down to the last detail and that the best laid
plans can still go awry – as had been the case when the yacht went down.

A calm and controlled evacuation was simply not possible when
the hull ripped apart and several tons of seawater flooded the cabin. The idea
of firing flares, broadcasting a Mayday, launching the life raft and then
having time to load it with both crew and supplies would now have been
laughable if the situation were not dire. Still stowed in the yacht’s forepeak
were their survival suits and a large Perspex box containing additional food,
water, clothing and a comprehensive first aid kit. As for the expensive flare
gun, it sat in a cupboard just inside the companionway, along with the
cartridges. They would have to make do with what was in the ditch kit and
equipment bag, along with the few bits and pieces from
Future
that had
surfaced close enough to the raft for Hans to retrieve – the box containing
Penny’s jewelry-making kit and the cockpit’s foam cushions among them.

The cushions proved invaluable. In his haste to board the
raft, Hans had landed on the ditch kit, forcing a razor-edged filleting knife
through its plastic scabbard and piercing several holes in the rubberized
floor. Although not immediately life threatening, the punctures resulted in a
permanent state of wetness, and the cushions kept him and Jessica above the
worst of this.

“Etch A Sketch?” she whispered.

“No, no Etch A Sketch.”

“Bleeding.”

“Huh?”

Fingering his temple, Hans felt a deep gash, one requiring
stitches – one not even superglue could fix. They had neither. His thoughts
flicked to the vials of penicillin, syringes and sutures in the first aid kit
lying on the ocean floor. In the tropics, seawater teamed with bacteria, and even
the slightest cut turned septic within hours. He put this out of his mind,
opened the ditch kit and returned to the inventory.

Assorted cordage of varying thicknesses, fishing gear,
diving mask and snorkel, sea survival handbook, whistle, a week’s worth of
energy bars and snacks, the gallon can of water, a strobe light, duct tape, Silva
compass, notepad and pens, ziplock plastic bags, chopping board, filleting
knife, cigarette lighter and a few other essentials. In the equipment bag a basic
first aid kit, seasickness tablets, hand pump, underwater drogue, ten-pint cans
of water, miniature can opener, wooden paddle, signaling flares, sponge, foldout
radar reflector, solar still, collapsible basin, hundred foot of rope, maritime
charts, pencils, dividing compass, rudimentary directional compass, flashlight,
signaling mirror, fishing line and single hook, and the raft’s repair kit.

Basic navigation would be possible, though the thought
depressed Hans. “Navigation” suggested control over one’s destiny, something
circumstance denied. He wished there had been enough time to grab the handheld
GPS from the chart table drawer. He wished for many things.

“They’re dead.”

“I know.”

“Are we gonna die too?”

“No, we’re not.”

Hans opened the repair kit and pondered how to fix the leaks
in the floor. The rubber glue and patches would be no good, what with the
punctures constantly hemorrhaging seawater.

Perhaps the quarter-inch-diameter screw-in aluminum
plugs?

But that would mean boring out the holes in the groundsheet with
a knife to ensure a snug fit, and if the plugs got the slightest knock – highly
likely with all the movement aboard – they would rip out and unleash an even
bigger flow. He resorted to placing the sponge over of the seeping slits and
weighing it down with six cans of water lashed together with cord. It meant
having to wring the sponge out every few minutes, but it was better than marinating
in brine.