The Tears of Dark Water (7 page)

“We’re ready,” Quentin said after a time, stowing the winch handle in one of the cockpit lockers and clipping his safety harness into the port-side jack line.

Daniel gave his son a careful look. “Are you sure you want to ride this out on deck?”

“I’ll go below if you do,” Quentin said.

Adolescent bravado
, Daniel thought, but he couldn’t blame his son. There was nothing quite like the thrill of a storm at sea.

They saw the first gust of wind before they felt it. It stirred up whitecaps on the water and changed its color from cobalt blue to resin gray. “Here comes a blow!” Daniel exclaimed, gripping the helm with one hand and the deck with the other.

The gust struck the
Renaissance
like an invisible hand, and the sailboat heeled over hard. Daniel held on tight, his legs bent and feet wide apart, and watched as Quentin did the same. The wind gauge peaked at twenty-six knots before dropping back to seventeen.

The waves came next. In a matter of minutes, they built from three feet to ten, hitting the
Renaissance
on her aft quarter and setting her rolling like a pendulum. Daniel fought to keep her on a southerly course, but there was only so much he could do.

The clouds trundled in, effacing the sun, and the wind gusted harder, driving the anemometer above thirty-four knots before stabilizing at twenty-five. Daniel watched as the rain approached, blotting out the sky. The drops were huge and struck at an angle, pelting the sailboat and their bodies like rubber bullets. The waves were now fifteen feet and climbing, and the winds were holding at 30 knots. Daniel gripped the helm tightly as the
Renaissance
bobbed like a cork in the tempestuous sea.

Over the roar of the storm, he heard Quentin whoop with frenzied joy. The heavens answered with a crackle of lightning and a crash of thunder. The skies darkened and the winds blew ferociously, driving the rain sideways. The waves grew to eighteen feet, then twenty, heaping up like walls of water, their crests strewn with spindrift. When the wind gusts passed forty knots, Daniel decided to run off before the storm. He brought the
Renaissance
about and headed southeast with the swells.

“Do you want the drogue?” Quentin yelled, his voice muted by the torrential rain.

For a split-second Daniel considered it. The drogue was a cone-like sea anchor that deployed from the stern, protecting a sailboat against its greatest nemesis—a large breaking wave. He glanced at the anemometer and saw that the winds had topped out at forty-two knots. The storm was a fresh gale, a Force 8 on the Beaufort scale. It was nasty weather, to be sure, but not deadly. He shook his head and Quentin nodded in understanding.

The next fifteen minutes confirmed Daniel’s instinct. It was the decrease in sound that first alerted him to the passing of the storm. The relentless roar of the raindrops slackened to a growl, and the winds began to abate, falling to thirty knots, then twenty, then ten. The waves tossed and frothed for a while, but soon they dropped off, too, bringing an end to the roller coaster ride. Suddenly, the clouds opened up and the sun bathed their sodden skin with light.

Daniel wiped his face and slapped Quentin on the shoulder. “That’s lucky number thirteen,” he said with a smile. “Not too much worse than the last.”

Quentin patted the bulkhead beside him. “She hardly seemed to notice.”

Daniel turned the helm and pointed the
Renaissance
south again. “Let’s get the sails up. I’ll check our position. I don’t think we lost too much ground.”

While Quentin hoisted the mainsail and let out the boom, Daniel went below and assessed the damage. Apart from a few pillows and chart books on the floor, the cabin looked as he had left it. He went through the cabinets and storage lockers and found a cracked water glass and a bookshelf in disarray. After straightening up, he opened the seacocks again and checked the bilge. The water level was higher than normal, but the pump was doing its job. He turned on the audio system and selected a playlist on his iPhone, listening as the ethereal opening bars of Sting’s “Desert Rose”
filled the cabin. “Sailing requires a soundtrack,” his father had always said. His words were nowhere truer than on the open ocean. Without music, a sailor could drown in the silence.

Daniel went to the nav station next and fixed their position with GPS. The storm had driven them five miles to the east. It would take them an hour to make up the distance. He felt his stomach rumble and checked his watch. It was 12:32 p.m., almost time for lunch. He updated the logbook and then removed his laptop from the chart table drawer. He checked his email by satellite and saw the bulletin from the UK Maritime Trade Organization. The subject line made his skin crawl: “
WARNING: PIRATE ATTACK SOUTHEAST OF SEYCHELLES
.” His sense of foreboding grew as he read the text.

TO THE MASTER OF THE SV RENAISSANCE:

At 06:44 Local time (02:44 GMT) today, Somali pirates attacked the container ship MV Jade Dolphin approximately 280 nm southeast of Victoria, Seychelles. They approached the vessel in two skiffs, carrying heavy weapons. The vessel returned fire and destroyed one skiff. The second skiff was last sighted at 09°04´45˝S, 056°52´34˝E. Its current whereabouts are unknown.

Please be advised that sailing vessels are extremely vulnerable to pirate attack. We strongly recommend that you return to Victoria. If you proceed through the High Risk Area, please take precautions to avoid attack and keep this office regularly informed of your course and position.

Daniel felt a burning sensation in his gut. He read the warning a second time and plotted the site of the attack on GPS. They were 150 nautical miles away, but their current course would bring them within fifty miles of the last known position of the second pirate skiff. Mahé Island was 140 nautical miles to their north. They could reach Victoria by sunrise at top speed. But where would the pirates go in the same period? They were hunting for a ship in the Seychelles. What was more perilous: sailing closer to the inner-island group, with its high density of shipping, or farther out to sea?

He stood up and paced the length of the cabin, wracked by frustration and guilt. He saw Quentin lounging in the cockpit, typing away on his iPhone—likely sending Ariadne an email about the storm. By some miracle, the girl had turned him into a conversationalist.
Damn it all to Hell!
he thought, remembering Vanessa’s words and the vow he had made when she agreed to the circumnavigation.

“I’m not concerned about you,” she had said, standing on the terrace beside the swimming pool, her arms crossed to ward off the cold. “Whether or not you come back is your decision. But if you put my son in danger and he gets hurt, I’ll never be able to forgive you.”

“You have my word,” he had promised. “I’ll keep him safe.”

At once, Daniel returned to the nav station with an idea. He used the laptop and GPS to collect some information and ran a few calculations. The nearest landmass was the island of Coëtivy, home to a shrimp-processing plant and 250 residents—exactly the kind of place the pirates would avoid in their search for a valuable target. He went topside and took the helm.

“Change in plans,” he told Quentin, starting the engine and turning the yacht to the west. “Somali pirates attacked a container ship a hundred and fifty miles to the southeast. They’re still out there.”

Quentin blanched, his mouth agape. “Shit,” he said, then: “Sorry.”

“You’re not kidding.” Daniel pushed the throttle to the stops, and the rumble of the engine drowned out the sounds of the sea. “We need to get the sails down. They’re too visible.”

He took the main sheet in hand and brought in the boom. After a pause, Quentin followed his lead, retracting the headsail and lowering the main. When they finished, Quentin took a seat again.

“Where are we going?” he asked, his tone nervous and uncertain.

“Coëtivy Island. We’re going to find an anchorage and figure out what to do.”

Quentin was still for a long moment. Then his expression transformed, his jaw clenching and his blue eyes darkening. Almost unconsciously, he brought his knees to his chest. It was a posture Daniel had seen countless times but never since they had sailed out of Annapolis harbor. It was a protective mechanism, a shell Quentin deployed whenever the world spun out of control.

Daniel felt a spark of anger. The confidence his son had gained in their months at sea was genuine. Yet it was also fragile, like sea turtles hatching beneath the predatory gaze of gulls. He made a promise then to Quentin and to himself:
You’re a new person. You’re not going back. I’m not going to let you.

They reached Coëtivy just before sunset. The wind had died down to a whisper, and the water around the island was as tranquil as glass. Daniel made the approach from the west, keeping his eyes on the depth gauge and aiming the bow toward a beach lined with palm trees. They didn’t have a chart for these waters, only cryptic comments in a nautical book. He saw waves breaking on a reef to the southeast, but here they were breaking on the sand.

When they reached a depth of thirty feet, he put the throttle into neutral and nudged his son. “Are you going to help me?”

Quentin snapped out of his trance faster than Daniel expected. “Sure,” he said, scampering toward the bow and dropping the anchor.

Daniel put the engine in reverse and let out a long length of chain. When the plumes bit into the bottom, he tested the hold and then shut off the engine. The
Renaissance
swung slowly around until it faced toward the west and the sun. They were alone in the anchorage, the beach fifty yards behind. Daniel saw movement on the shore—a man combing the sand. He waved, and the man waved back.

Before long, Quentin returned from the foredeck. Daniel examined his face and saw that it had changed. There was a light in his eyes again. Daniel started to speak, but his son preempted him.

“I’ve thought about it, and I want to go on,” Quentin said. “Anything else means we give up.”

Daniel felt the pride down deep, but he knew the difference between courage and carelessness. He met his son’s eyes. “Going back to Mahé isn’t the same as going home.”

Quentin was skeptical. “I don’t follow you.”

“It’s simple. We’ll hire a deliveryman, somebody like François who won’t mind a little hazard pay. We’ll meet up with him in Réunion and make the passage to South Africa on schedule.”

Quentin frowned. “You mean we’ll fly to Réunion.”

Daniel heard the hesitation in his son’s voice. “Just this leg. After that, we’ll go on as planned.”

Quentin’s displeasure deepened. “And how do you know we won’t get hijacked between here and Mahé? If they’re looking for another ship, isn’t that where they’ll go?”

Daniel shrugged. “We’ll get the coast guard to escort us.”

“How are you going to do that?” Suddenly, Quentin grimaced. “Don’t tell me you’re going to get Grandpa to pull strings.”

Daniel took a breath and let it out. “Do you have a better plan?”

Quentin nodded. “It’s called finishing what we started. We chose this route with full knowledge of the pirate problem. We change it now and we
are
giving up.”

There was truth in what he said. They had agonized over the passage from Thailand to South Africa, weighing the danger of venturing into the High Risk Area against the reward of visiting the Maldives and Seychelles. They had agreed to avoid Zanzibar, much to Daniel’s chagrin—the waters off Africa’s east coast were still treacherous. But the ocean route from Sri Lanka to Réunion by way of Malé Atoll and Mahé Island was different. The ocean was vast, the chance of an attack in such remote waters negligible. They had decided to take the risk.

“You’re right,” Daniel replied, softening his tone. “And I admire you greatly for saying it. But things have changed. I made a promise to your mother.”

Quentin clenched his fists. “This isn’t about Mom. This is about
me
.” His voice broke with sudden emotion. “You have no idea . . . You have no idea how humiliating it was when they caught me with the drugs.
Goddammit!
I was just doing Hans a favor. I wasn’t a dealer. I wasn’t even a user.”

Daniel felt every ounce of his son’s misery. “I know.”

Quentin’s eyes shined with tears. “You
don’t
know. I thought my life was over. Getting suspended was bad enough, but the police treated me like a fucking criminal. They told me I’d go to prison if I didn’t help them out.”

At this point, Quentin made a confession that cleaved Daniel’s heart in two. “Do you know how close I came to ending it all? I was going to do it that morning I took the
Relativity
down the bay. I even wrote a note. But you caught up to me. You said you’d work it all out. I didn’t believe you. I kept the note. Then you told me about this crazy idea you had . . .”

Quentin struggled to hold himself together. “This trip saved my life, Dad. Literally. I didn’t expect it to change anything, but I gave it a chance. When I met Ariadne, she saw past all of it. She just wanted to be with me. I promised her . . . I promised
myself
that we’d finish the trip.”