The Devil on Chardonnay (17 page)

Boyd sat shirtless in the heat of the cabin.  Wolf, shirtless also, had provided some kind of Swiss sunburn balm for Pamela to apply to her rosy breasts before covering them with a wet T-shirt to ease the pain.  Now he sat next to her glowering at Donn and Mikki.

“You will have to share the guest room.  With three, it should be interesting.  No?” Mikki said with a gay smile.

“We can sleep in shifts,”  Boyd had volunteered, delighted that their escapades had made them seem an essential part of the crossing back to Europe.  Only passing entertainment for a rich girl tired of her musclebound lover, true, but on board for the next leg.

Now that Pamela was packing, Donn returned to his room and found some Alka Seltzer, which he dropped into a hotel glass of water and offered it to her.

“Thanks.  I wish you guys would stop me when I get over the line like yesterday.” Pam said, coming out of the bathroom where she had hurriedly dressed.  She gulped down the Alka Seltzer and made a face.

“You did great,” Boyd said. “Wolf couldn’t keep his eyes off you all day.  Did you find out anything?” 

Boyd swung her filled suitcase out onto the waiting bellman’s cart in the hall.

“The two seamen are from an island called Faial in the Azores.  Mikki said she plans to give them a couple of days there before going on.  There’s a sailors bar there, Peter’s, supposedly quite the place for transatlantic sailors.  She may be meeting someone there.  She said she had to be there by the 20th.” 

“Very good, Pam.  When did you get that?” 

“On the beach, while you three big men were playing in the waves like kids.”

“Anything from your end?”  Boyd asked Donn, pushing the cart toward the elevator.

“She’s a stock manipulator.  Said she’d just as soon let her cousin manage the real estate and banking business.  She likes action.”

“Well, she likes action of a nonfinancial nature, too,” Boyd said as they waited for the elevator.  “Don’t get too caught up in the fun.”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

The Atlantic

“That’s the sea breeze, laddie.  Wait 'til we get into the Atlantic.  You’ll see.  We’ll have the wind.  She rides the wind!”  Neville seemed glad to be gone from Charleston.  They had hurriedly taken on more provisions with the addition of three guests to feed and entertain, and had set sail by 8.

“We must be 10 miles from shore, I can’t see the land,” Boyd said, turning to look back at Charleston.  As far as he was concerned, this was the open Atlantic.  They were headed northeast, with the east wind crossing to starboard.

“This is coastal water.  See, it’s brown,” Neville said. “That breeze, it rushes from the sea, which is cool, toward land, which warms up early in the day and sends the air over it higher.  In two hours, we’ll be in the open sea.” 

The captain walked forward into the doghouse to light his pipe and look at some charts.

Boyd sipped his coffee and enjoyed the feel of Chardonnay through the wheel as he stayed on the course of zero six five, designated by the captain.  One of the Portuguese seamen had begun sanding a teak railing nearby.  Donn and Pamela were leaning out over the railing of the bow, laughing.  Wolf and Mikki were below, checking inventory in the storeroom. 

“We’ve got a blow, lads.  In the south,” Neville said, returning from the doghouse a half hour later, addressing Boyd and the Portuguese sailor.

Candido Mendes stepped over to see the paper the captain held in his hand.  He was a short man with narrow shoulders and hips, black hair and a bushy mustache.  His deeply tanned skin was wrinkled and leathery, indicating years at sea.

The paper was a weather fax of the southern North Atlantic.  The East Coast of the United States was visible on the western edge of the map, with open ocean in the center.  A spiral of clouds was evident west of the Cape Verde islands, off Africa on the eastern edge of the map.

“Is that a hurricane?”  Boyd asked, seeing the familiar pattern of the clouds.

“No, the winds are only 50 knots or so.  Not well organized enough to call a hurricane, but more than we want to be near,” Neville said, still looking at the FAX. 

“Not a place to be sailin’,” Mendes said in perfect, unaccented English.

“You sound American,”  Boyd said.

“I am.  I grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts,” the dark-skinned man answered.

 Everything about him looked European – the clothing, the hair, the mannerisms.  He smiled at Boyd.

 “There are a lot of Azoreans in America.  I left Faial when I was 10, when my father moved here to work on his brother’s fishing boat.  When I got my seaman’s card, I worked tuna boats for a while.”

Neville, running a pipe cleaner down the stem of his momentarily cold pipe, said, “The Portuguese, and especially the Azorean Portuguese, are consummate sailors.  Candido and his cousin have been with Chardonnay for 20 years.”

“So, do you live in Fall River?”

“No.  I moved back to Faial.  My wife wasn’t happy.  Her family is all on Faial and Pico, the next island.  You’ll see it.  It’s beautiful there.” 

As if suddenly realizing his reason for mixing with the guests was the fax, now examined, he smiled and moved away.

“So, is this a problem?  Looks like that storm is about 3,000 miles away,” Boyd said, returning to the fax.

“The northeast trade winds blow to the west below 30 degrees latitude.  This storm should track well south of us.  We’ll be north, above 30 degrees to catch the prevailing westerlies back to Europe.” 

Neville tapped the map above Bermuda and well north of their present position.

The wind died over the next hour, and noon found them wallowing in an oily smooth sea with minimal swells.  Sensing the loss of power, Mikki came up from the doghouse, looking at the NavStar GPS printout of their position.

“Are we far enough north for the westerlies?”  she asked Neville from the doghouse.

“Aye.  Should pick it up here, may have to wait.”

“We’ll give it two hours.  Start the diesel then if we don’t get wind.”  She turned and went down the stairs.

There was no doubt who ran this ship.

Before long, a wisp of breeze blew out of the west.  Neville nodded to Candido, who needed no further instructions.  He quickly rigged a jib from the mainmast to the tip of the bowsprit.  Meanwhile, Neville allowed the mainsail and mizzen some slack as the wind from the southwest caught them, pushing them across the deck to the port side.  Chardonnay’s sails tightened and she leaned to port and began to move northeast.

*********

Dawn lit the eastern horizon with a red glow as Wolf climbed the steps carrying a tray of hard rolls, liver sausage, white cheese, butter and jelly, and two steaming cups of coffee.

“In Switzerland, we have a big breakfast,” he announced, obviously in a fine humor and looking forward to his eight hours of watch.

Boyd had volunteered to pull the first night shift.  Wolf had turned in early the night before to be ready for the morning relief.  Chardonnay had scarcely needed the autopilot to keep her at zero eight zero course through the night.  The steady west wind had been most dependable.  Boyd had charted the course hourly, logging 109 miles during his shift.

Freed by the autopilot from having to stay by the wheel, Boyd had spent the night walking the deck, watching the stars and doing some calisthenics.  Though liver sausage wasn’t his idea of breakfast, he tried some in the spirit of Wolf’s good humor, later adding jelly to ease it down.

“Neville wanted us to stay on zero eight zero, but looks like we’ll have to change a few degrees to the east or we’ll miss Bermuda,” Boyd said, showing Wolf his record of their course during the night.

Wolf added two slices of cheese to the liver sausage on a generously buttered roll and looked over Boyd’s shoulder, nodding.  He took a big bite, nodded some more, and stepped back onto the deck.  He scanned the horizon in all directions while chewing his first bite.

“Neville is eating.  He’ll change the course when he comes up,” Wolf said, breathing deeply as he smelled his coffee, and then washed down the first bite with a big gulp.

Boyd finished his coffee watching the sun rise out of the Atlantic and then went below.

Mikki sat on the bench behind the table in the saloon, drinking coffee and looking at another weather fax.  She nodded but didn’t speak.

“Guess my compatriots are still in the rack,” Boyd said, looking toward the closed door to the guest stateroom.  He was tired and wanted to sleep.

“Take any bed,” Mikki said, sliding out and trotting up the steps.  Halfway up she began to speak to Wolf in French.

Neville shrugged, smeared some jelly on a roll and stood to refill his coffee from the pot on the bar.  He went above.  Boyd found some cereal and milk and sat looking at the fax.  The storm didn’t look as dense as it had the night before and was tracking due west, just as Neville had predicted.  It was no threat.  He heard a shower start in the guest room.

Pamela emerged, hair up in a towel, wearing the robe she had charged to her room at the Omni in Charleston.

“Hey, it’s a fine day.  You guys sleep OK?  I tried to avoid all the bumps,” Boyd said cheerfully.

“I slept fine.  Don’t know about Casanova. He bunked with our hostess.”  Pamela entered the galley and opened the refrigerator, taking out some eggs.

Mikki came down the stairs, crossed the saloon and refilled her cup.

“Want an omelet?”  Pam asked, bright, unaffected.

Boyd  quickly stepped into the bedroom, hoping to avoid the confrontation that seemed inevitable.

“Yes!  Eggs for breakfast. I am fond of them,” Mikki said, ignoring Boyd as he closed the door.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Mikki

The fight may have come as a complete surprise to Boyd, but Mikki had known it would happen since that rainy night in Charleston when he’d held the umbrella for her.  Before, actually, for she’d brought Wolf to her bed the first night out of Cannes with the expectation that in America, a delicious conflict might arise.

She had enjoyed watching Wolf’s confidence build until there was hope that he’d become more than just the bodyguard, hired by a cautious old man to watch his precious granddaughter.

Mikki had been able to claim the hearts of handsome, wealthy men since she was 12.  It was so predictable as to be without pleasure.  The thrill was when someone risked something for her.  As a teen, it was older men as they risked disgrace and the retribution of her grandfather by slipping into her room or trysting with her in all manner of semipublic places.  Being caught in flagrante delicto produced an especially intense pleasure.

Later, as an adult, with her own residence and the freedom to travel as she pleased, scandal, divorce and ruin followed in her wake across the capitals of Europe.  Her mere presence in a resort created a ripple of anticipation among the cognoscenti, as they speculated about who it would be this time – lured, trapped, exposed.

Conflict bred danger, and danger fed the insecurities of a doting old man.  He hired bodyguards to protect her from the consequences of scandal.  Bodyguards introduced Mikki to a new game.  Now the stakes could be more than just divorce or disgrace.  Now the stakes could be death.  The exquisite intensity of sex with a man who had just risked death in combat over her took Mikki’s pleasure to a whole new level of intensity.  The fights so far had been stopped before death occurred.  The playgrounds of the wealthy are always well policed.  But, on Chardonnay, in the middle of the Atlantic, with only a geriatric captain and two smallish seamen to step in in the name of authority, there would be no stopping a fight between two big men, men who knew danger, men who liked the feeling death left when it passed close by.

There was another element now, too.  Life without struggle is boring.  The plan her grandfather had hatched had seemed, at first, just a way to settle some old scores and to consolidate their control over a business she didn’t understand.  Then, somehow, it became clear.  They were going to destabilize equatorial Africa and, in the chaos, seize control of the diamond business.  The power to change the course of world history had sharpened Mikki's senses, given her a new energy and increased her need for the kind of fun her guests could provide.

Mikki loaded the gun by inviting the Americans for the crossing back to Europe.  She cocked the hammer when she took Donn to bed, displacing Wolf.  She pulled the trigger in international waters 200 miles west of Bermuda, an hour before dawn.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Donn had had the late watch the night after Boyd had taken his turn.  He turned with a start.

“Oh.  Better put on some clothes.”

“No.”

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

The Fight

“Wolf!  No!”

The scream woke Boyd.  The thud on the deck above started the adrenalin flow.  He leaped from the bed he had shared with Pamela, curled in a blanket at the opposite end.  Fully dressed already by the agreement that allowed him to sleep in the guest suite instead of on the couch in the saloon, he took the stairs two at a time.  It was still dark
,
and the scene on deck was illuminated by a full moon.

“Stop!”  Mikki, nude, flapped ineffectually on Wolf’s huge shoulders while he hammered and tore at a limp Donn Wilde like a dog killing a rat.  Donn was clinging to life on the starboard railing. In another moment was going to release his hold and be gone over the side.

Charging forward, Boyd ducked under a flailing Mikki and grabbed Wolf’s legs, pulling them forward.  Wolf fell backward onto Mikki who screamed in pain.  Donn rolled off of the railing onto the deck.  Blood flowed freely from his nose, and his upper lip was open on the left side, teeth in disarray showing through the gap.  Jumping to his feet, Boyd found himself forward of the mainmast, with his back to a furled and jacketed jib, and the bowsprit.

Wolf regained his feet quickly and kicked Mikki away.  He faced Boyd.  In the week Boyd had known Wolf, he’d faced him in his imagination a dozen times.  Wolf was past his prime by five years.  He was 40 pounds overweight and had taken steroids to build those huge arms and shoulders.  Though impressive, the price paid for them was loss of flexibility.  Boyd had noticed when Wolf walked he carried his elbows slightly bent, and he could barely reach above his head.