The Navidad Incident (20 page)

For the entire thirty-minute flight, the pilot holds forth on his favorite subject: what a waste it is for the government to keep a plane like this all to itself when it only flies full capacity, what?—three, four times a year? And there's the redundancy of separate government bureaus flying twice in one day to the same island on different errands. Turn this into a national airline and carry civilian passengers, why they could almost operate in the black. Navidad only needs to lay out the venture capital, then leave it to him to run; he guarantees much cheaper, more convenient air service than now. A win-win proposition the way he tells it.

“So you buy another plane this size and hire two more pilots, because you gotta pump it up first. But in the long run, you'd be saving the country money, and I'd be making some myself too. The demand is there … Ah, look, there's Brun.”

Sure enough, up ahead under a wisp of cloud is a long, thin land form. The pilot eases the throttle and gradually brings the plane down closer to the reef.

Brun is a ring formation broken in one place, a very misshapen ring, with the widest patch above sea level at the point furthest east from the break. It's here that a few fishing families live. A kilometer away is a simple landing strip; otherwise it's just a handsbreadth of empty land and coco palms. Inside the reef are two or three tiny unoccupied islets, used only for fishing operations. Today there's not a single wave; the waters around the atoll are absolutely calm. A single car can be seen moving along the lone stretch of road that runs up the bare backbone of sand. As instructed, the pilot flies three complete circles above the reef. According to the diagrams included in Suzuki's plan, the oil depot would be built inside the ring, to the immediate right of the break. That's where they say they can moor deep-draft tankers with only minimal dredging.

A pickup truck is waiting beside the landing strip. Two wardens from the government outpost watch the plane land, their expressions immediately changing when they spy the President on board. One of them shouts an apology as he runs up to the Islander while the engines are still roaring. “We only heard someone was arriving from the capital. We didn't know His Excellency was coming. We only have this truck.”

“Doesn't bother me. You two ride in back,” the President tells the executive secretary and Home Office man. Améliana he seats up front before getting in next to her. The two Brun wardens take a minute to discuss the situation, then one takes the driver's seat and the other climbs in back. The dirt road glares white in the blazing sun. Once the plane's engines die down, everything goes absolutely still, the better for the pilot to take a noonday nap in the shade before the return trip.

The President instructs the driver where to go. They drive for twenty minutes, with the sea to either side, until the road gives out. The President gets out and prompts Améliana to follow. The three men from the back of the truck dust themselves off as they set foot on the white coral ground. By the side of the road is a hut, whose only occupants, children, peer out startled by the sudden visitors. Their clothes are ragged, but they themselves look bright and cheerful. There seems to be no adult around. No boat tethered to any post where nets hang drying near the water, so maybe the father is out fishing. But where's the woman of the family?

The executive secretary and Home Office man stand by idly, looking utterly confused. What made the President want to come here to this godforsaken place? Matías ignores them and walks off down a footpath into a coconut grove. He disappears among the trees, with Améliana close behind. The other four men have no choice but to follow. And twenty paces back, their curiosity piqued, the children tag along cautiously.

Several hundred meters through the coco palms, the President emerges onto a beach. Before his eyes the coral steeps pure blue in the crystalline waters, but across the lagoon he can see a dark gray line. To the right must be the exit to the open sea, not quite visible from this position. This side of the mouth is a small deserted islet, concealing the opening on the other side. There's not a boat anywhere inside the reef. Probably all gone out after big fish at this time of day. Most fish school on the outer shoals, right where the reef drops off into deep water.

The President sits himself down on a toppled coco palm. The trunk is still rooted and arches up into the air, so his short legs dangle. The four men look on from a distance, hesitating to go near. Améliana, however, approaches and leans on the tree trunk. Matías mops his forehead with a handkerchief and gazes at the sea before him. The sea breeze is wonderful.

According to Suzuki's plan, the projected facility is to be built between that deserted islet and this side of the reef. Ten tankers all moored together in a row, and right about here on this beach they'll build an office in an Island Security compound. The road will need to be extended up to here from back at that hut. The crew for the facility will probably sleep on board ship, so other personnel will have to commute back and forth by motorboat. No way for them to build a bridge across. A floating causeway perhaps? The biggest issue is the dredging. A good mooring depth is one thing, but if they have to dredge the channel to bring in the ships, it'll be a huge undertaking. Rip into the reef and fishing will suffer.

The President calls over his two men and asks them to tell the local wardens to go take a hike somewhere. Améliana stands behind the President. The children hide among the coco palms a safe distance away.

“This is where the Japanese want to build an oil base,” Matías tells his three companions. “They proposed it the other day, and I'm considering the ramifications.” He has to speak up over the breeze that blows Améliana's hair in waves. “See that little island? Between there and this beach here, they want to moor ten thirty-thousand-ton tankers.”

“That Japanese visitor the other day?” asks Jameson. He's good.

“The very same. As he explained it, Japan has been readying reserve oil for a long time now, and apparently this amount here would give them some measure of security. We lie nearby the shipping lanes from the Middle East, and politically we're stable. Our ties with Japan go way back. So it's ideal, he says. The annual maritime leasing fees would generate a sizeable income. Though of course, by the same token, we'd also become much more closely tied to them. Still, all in all, not a bad scenario, I'd say.”

“The scale of the operation would be tremendous,” says the executive secretary.

“Absolutely—it would take five years to complete.”

“Who would be assigned to it on our side?” asks the Home Officer staffer. A typical green young bureaucrat's question, straight to the technicalities.

“How about setting up a new coordinating office especially for the project? After all, it would involve the Home Office and Foreign Office and Bureau of Outer Islands.”

“Right, there may be difficulties negotiating with the locals here,” Jameson comments. “Even with a massive settlement, folks around here aren't going to budge.”

“That's where you boys come in. It's up to you to do something about that,” says the President. “I don't want any opposition in the capital. The legislators will go along with it. The Tamang faction has been quiet lately. No real grounds for ordinary citizens to get up in arms either.”

Yes, but what about those strange handbills pasted up around town?
he remembers.
Whoever's been doing that just might try something.
But supposing Island Security gets that backing from Japan a little earlier—that would make it much easier to squelch any opposition movement. Actually, once this project gets under way, it should facilitate things politically.

“And have you already committed to this plan?” asks the Home Office staffer, his tone polite but heavy with innuendo. He has no personal objections to the President's directives and never really expected to be taken into consultation anyway. All he wants to know is where things stand, a practical career concern.

“I wouldn't say so,” Matías responds evasively, walking a few steps toward the lapping water's edge. Well,
has
he made up his mind? One thing and one thing alone is clear: the decision will be his. He's only talking up the plan to the two of them now so that when the time comes, they'll be able to move on it as required; he's not asking their opinion. So what will it be? He sees Améliana sitting on a rock not far away. What does she make of this setting? Or won't she say? She just sits there staring at the sea, not a thing written on her face. Matías walks across the sand toward her. A hermit crab scurries out of the way of his feet. He does not see the creature, but Améliana's eyes race after it. She cringes slightly. Matías sits down next to her.

“What do you see here? Won't you tell me?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes, if there's something you see.”

“Up to now you've closed your eyes to what you did not want to see. Isn't that so?”

“Meaning what?”

“Exactly what I said. Sometimes not knowing is better.”

“No, I want to know. For better or worse, I want to know everything.”

“Oh. That's brave of you,” says Améliana. There's not a trace of irony in her voice. The matter-of-fact words are whisked away in the wind. She takes up his hand from where it rests on the rock beside her and grasps it firmly. She looks out to sea.

Matías looks out at the same sea, his hand in hers. Inside the reef all is still, nothing moves even on the further shore. And beyond, above a horizon hidden from view rise layers of stratus cloud. But that is far, far away. Overhead there's not one single cloud, only the sun slowly, patiently heating the earth below. Let the palm trees put out all the shade they can, the tree trunks would still be baked through to the core.

Matías wipes the sweat from his forehead with his linen suit sleeve.

His mind dives beneath the lagoon. As far as the eye can see, the inner reef is alive with schools of tiny brightly colored fish. A shadow slants down as a big fish passes above. In a flash, fingerlings light off in all directions, and for one brief instant, the water shimmers with countless invisible scales. When was the last time he saw such a scene with his own eyes? Even as president, Matías still feels the urge to go diving. Not with those overblown scuba tanks, but just mask and fins and snorkel. Here, on a quiet shore far from the Presidential Villa, his hand entrusted to a young woman, gazing on a silent sea. More silent than silence.

Something comes into view above the surface. He watches as a large dark
presence
looms into view between the beach and the far shore. Perhaps several hundred meters out. What can it be? With no discernible shape, it just hovers there, motionless to the naked eye. No, it's not moving. Just a chain of black shadows cast darkly upon the surface of the sea. The sun beats down as harshly as ever, his forehead still beads with sweat, yet everything suddenly goes dark, his body is enveloped in a strange chill. As if he's been shut inside something. The shadows grow darker and increasingly real; their weight almost ripples the calm sea.

Matías strains to see as there before him, slowly, very slowly, the shadows take on substance, becoming a line of long objects. Ships. A cordon of ships squatting low in the still waters. Immobile bulks, never to budge. They've made their last voyage and come here to die. After logging so many thousands of leagues back and forth from the Persian Gulf to the Far East, bellies filled amid desert sand and salt tides, they sailed off past Kharg Island, withstood the fiery wastes of the Indian Ocean, squeezed through the narrow Malacca Strait to prow northward time and again, only to end up here for eternity, their final mooring. It almost makes Matías feel sentimental. He's not himself. What does he know about tanker routes?

The shock of realization brings ten massive tankers into menacing focus. He knows he's sitting on a beach hundreds of meters away, and yet he can see each ship in amazing detail. There's a bridge with railings jutting out from both sides. The round portholes of each officer's cabin. The vestigial smokestacks of the gas turbine engines. The huge pipes that run the length and breadth of those vast hulls, the countless valves and pumps, the catwalk extending over the bow, the rigging all so impossibly clear. Men stripped to the waist, running laps on the deck. Anything to relieve the endless boredom. Well, how much work can there be for the crew of a stationary ship? They hardly speak as they slouch past one another.

On closer observation, Matías can make out reddish spots of rust on the broad sides. The crew have grown sloppy, it's been ages since anyone did any hard work and scraped the hulls. He remembers how much he himself once enjoyed the task, yet here no one lifts a finger … And now they're gone, there's not a soul left on board. The jogging crewmen have all disappeared and left the ships deserted. Little by little the rust encroaches, no longer just on the pumps and pipes and gadgets, but penetrating deeper and deeper into the very structure. Sea spray and oxygen join forces, sending feelers into the cracked paint, corroding the toughest iron. Below the waterline, the decay advances even faster; seawater presses at every nick and dent, drawing ever nearer to the tonnage inside through some magnetism of liquid to liquid, enticing the crude to come out.

Then one day, two ships burst their bottoms. Winds whip the lagoon, and the oil spreads slowly but surely out to sea. It may take a year or three times that long for it all to leak out, but that's nothing compared to the tens of the thousands of years that oil and water are fated to commingle.

Soon the other ships join in, their hulls ravaged by gaping holes, the metal plates emitting a sulfurous stench. The bombs come flying over the reef from distant seas and are followed in turn by satellite-guided missiles. The rumble of explosions is heard in Baltasár City, black smoke rises into the stratosphere, visible for hundreds of kilometers around. Citizens tremble in fear. It was all quite foreseeable: hoarding so much here in one place was practically asking someone to steal or burn or sink it. No need to look very far for a motive either; if the intention was to deal a major blow to the pride and economic might of a hated power, the locals can readily oblige. The notion that the other man's gains come at one's own expense is as old as humanity.