The Nautical Chart (21 page)

"We don't know the place or year of construction," Gamboa explained, taking a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket, "but we do know that she operated using Algiers and Gibraltar as bases. There are also detailed descriptions of what she looked like, given by her victims or by people who saw her in ports when she was flying British colors—which she changed as the occasion demanded, since she was fitted out by an Algerian businessman and by a Maltese located on Gibraltar. We have evidence that documents the
Chergui's
fortunes between 1759 and 1766. The most meticulous, however," the observatory director consulted his notes, "was that of don Josef Mazarrasa, captain of a small coastal boat, the
Podenco,
which succeeded in escaping a xebec he identified as the
Chergui
in September 1766, after a skirmish near Fuengirola. Since they were on the point of being boarded, he was able to observe her, much to his displeasure, at close quarters. There was a European on her quarterdeck, whose description may coincide with that of an Englishman known as Slyne, or Captain Mizen, and the rather numerous crew seems to have been composed of Moors and Europeans—the latter undoubtedly English." Again Gamboa consulted his notes. "The
Chergui
was a xebec with a jib boom and classic high poop, polacre-rigged main and mizzen masts, and a lateen-rigged foremast; she was relatively swift among ships of her class, some one hundred and fifteen feet in length and with a twenty-six or thirty-foot beam. According to this Captain Mazarrasa, who sustained five dead and eight wounded in the encounter, she was carrying four long six-pounders, eight four-pounders, and at least four
pedreros,
devices for throwing rock and scrap iron. It seems she had been fitted out in Algiers with good bronze pieces, old but efficient, off a captured French corvette, the
Flamme.
That armament made her fearsome against ships of lesser tonnage and more fragile lines, like the
Podenco
and the
Dei Gloria....
Supposing, that is, she did in fact meet up with your ship."

"Of that much I'm sure," said Tanger. "They met."

She had stopped gazing at the domes of the resort and was frowning slightly, with a stubborn set to her jaw. Gamboa folded the paper and gave it to her. Then he raised a hand, as if he was not contesting her conviction.

"In that case, the captain of the*
Dei Gloria
had to be a pretty cool customer. Not just anyone would have stood up under the pursuit, chosen not to take shelter in Cartagena, and engaged the
Chergui
in almost yardarm-to-yardarm combat. And that voyage from Havana without port calls..." Gamboa studied Coy and then the woman, smiling knowingly. "I guess that's what it's all about. Nor

Coy leaned back in the chair over which he had draped his jacket. Why are you asking me, his gesture said She's the one in charge.

"There are things I want to dear up," said Tanger after a brief silence. "That's all."

Very carefully she put the paper with Gamboa's notes into her handbag. Gamboa sent her a penetrating look. For a moment the observatory director's placid expression seemed to lose its innocence.

"A pretty piece of work, anyway," he said, cautious. "Besides, maybe there was something on board— I don't know."

He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Coy observed that he took more time than necessary, as if he had something in mind he wanted to say.

'Although the truth is," he said finally, "that neither the ship, nor the route, nor the period are good indicators if you're looking for treasure."

"No one's talking about treasure," Tanger said very slowly.

"Of course not. Nino Palermo wasn't talking about that either."

Dead silence. They heard the voices of the fishermen below, working on boats in dry dock, or rowing among the small craft anchored bow to the wind. A dog was racing along the beach, barking at a gull that planed undisturbed before winging off in the direction of the open sea.

"Nino Palermo was here?"

Tanger watched the gull grow smaller in the distance, and she voiced her question only when the bird was nearly out of sight. Gamboa bent his head to light a new cigarette, protecting the flame of the match in both hands. The breeze filtered smoke between his fingers as his pale eyes sparkled with amusement.

"Of course he was here. To pick my brain, like you two."

THE
southwester had freshened a couple of knots, Coy calculated. Enough to splash seafoam on the breakwater that ran along the ancient south wall of the city. Gamboa told his story slowly, enjoying the telling. It was obvious he liked the company and was in no hurry. He smoked as he walked between his two companions, pausing from time to time to gaze at the sea, the houses in the barrio of La Vina, the fishermen sitting like statues beside fishing poles lodged among the rocks, contemplating the Atlantic.

"He came to see me about a month ago_____ He came, as they

all come, everything very ambiguous, lots of smoke and mirrors. Asking about this ship and that document, various things that prevent you from getting a good idea of what they're really looking for." At times Gamboa smiled at Tanger, and the gap in his teeth accentuated the smile. "He brought a very long shopping list, and on it, in eighth or ninth place, camouflaged among other things, was the
Dei Gloria.
I already knew you were on that trail, because we'd talked several times by phone. It was obvious that this Palermo was panting after a fresh clue."

He fell silent, watching a fish struggle at the end of a line. A bream. The fisherman, a skinny type with bushy sideburns and wearing a white shirt and suspenders, delicately removed it from the hook and tossed it into a pail, where it lay weakly flicking its tail among other silvery reflections.

"So as soon as Palermo mentioned the
Dei Gloria,
I put it together." Gamboa started walking again. "Then I let him invite me to eat at El Faro, where I listened attentively, nodded, made four or five general comments, gave him information about what I thought were the least important things on his list, and got rid of him."

"What did you tell him about the
Dei Gloria?'
Tanger asked.

The wind pasted the light cloth of her skirt to her thighs and whipped the open neck of her blouse. She was very well favored, but she didn't play the part of the beautiful girl. Or act helpless. Coy liked that. She seemed cool, competent. Talking like old friends with Gamboa: being colleagues, why should we hide anything from each other? Let's talk friend-to-friend. We're civil servants in a hostile world, et cetera, et cetera, and what can I tell you that you don't know? Life is hard and everyone navigates through it as best he can. Of course I'll keep you informed. I owe you that.

She's clever, Coy decided. She's very clever, or maybe so intuitive that it's almost sick, with a sharp sense of ways to manipulate men. He remembered the commander in the Museo Naval in Madrid, his expression as he talked with Tdnger in the hallway outside her office. She's obviously one of ours, Admiral. And it came to mind that things were going the same way with the observatory director. One of ours.

Now Gamboa was smiling again, as if her question was unnecessary.

"I told him what I should," he said. "That is, nothing. Whether he believed me, now that I don't know.... At any rate, he was very guarded." He turned toward Coy, as if he expected confirmation of his words. "I suppose you know Nino Palermo."

"He knows him well," she said.

Too quick to point that out, Coy thought. He looked at Tanger, and she was aware he did, because she turned with exaggerated attention toward the ocean. I may know Palermo, he said to himself, but not all mat well. You said that a little too fast though, darling. You said that probably a second too soon. And that's not good. Not in a clever girl like you. Too bad that at this point you're still making that kind of mistake. That or you take me for a fool.

"Not that well," Coy answered Gamboa. "In fact, I don't know the guy as well as I'd like to."

"Well, you must be the only one in this business."

"He isn't in this business," said Tanger.

The observatory director stood looking at diem. Again he seemed to reflect upon the relationship between them. Finally he spoke to Coy.

"Gibraltarian, with a Maltese father and an English mother... that is, one hundred percent pirate genes. I've known Palermo for a long time, since the time I worked classifying archives in the museum in Cadiz. He made one of the attempts to salvage
the
Santisima Trinidad,
maybe the most serious. In her time the
Trinidad
was the largest warship in the world, a ship of the line
with four decks and a hundred and forty guns; she sank after the Battle of Trafalgar as the English were trying to tow her into
Gibraltar." He pointed somewhere out to sea, toward the south.
"She's out there still, a little off Punta Camarinal. He tried to do what the Swedes did with the
Wasa,
or the English with the
Mary Rose,
but the attempt, like most of these things, foundered because of the Spanish administration's lack of enthusiasm, that is                  "

"Like the dog in the manger," Tanger interjected.

"Exactly. Neither eat nor let eat."

Gamboa threw his cigarette butt into the foam breaking on the rocks of the breakwater, and kept talking. Palermo was quite well known in that area. He had that Mafioso look; Coy would understand what he was talking about, very Mediterranean. Morocco was only a few miles away; from Gibraltar and Tarifa you can see it on clear days. That was the frontier of Europe. Palermo had started Deadman's Chest six or eight years before, and was known for being unscrupulous. He had interests in Ceuta, Marbella, and Sotogrande, and he worked with dangerous people on both sides of the Straits, advised by a legal firm specializing in contraband and shell companies that pulled his chestnuts from the fire when things got too hot.

"No one has been able to prove it, but, among other dirty tricks, he's credited with the clandestine looting of the wreck of the
Nuestra Senora de Cillas,
a galleon out of Veracruz that sank in 1675 in the cove of Sanlucar with a cargo of silver ingots." Gamboa grimaced. "It wasn't a huge fortune, but during the looting the divers destroyed the ship, leaving it useless for any serious archaeological research. He's suspected of more than one despicable act like that."

"Is he efficient?" Coy wanted to know.

"Palermo? Extremely efficient." Gamboa looked at Tanger as if he expected her to confirm what he said, but she said nothing.
"Maybe the best of the guys we see operating around here. He's worked on wrecks around the world, and made money by combining that with salvaging and scrapping sunken ships____ Some time ago he tried to link up with one of the attempts by Fisher, whom he'd worked for as diver on the
Atocha.
They intended to make an all-out effort at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, where they calculated some eighty ships had gone down on their way to unload in Seville with more gold aboard than the Banco de Espana has. But this isn't Florida; they couldn't get official authorization. There were other problems, too. Palermo is one of those guys who defend the classic doctrine of treasure hunters—since they do all the work and the State merely issues the permits, four-fifths of the proceeds should go to the rescuer. But in Madrid they said no way, and he had the same luck with the council of Andalusia."

Gamboa was enjoying the conversation. He was talkative and this was his terrain, and he gave Coy a long lecture on the role of Cadiz in the history of shipwrecks. Between 1500 and 1820, two to three hundred ships carrying ten percent of all the precious metals brought from America had sunk there. The problem was the murky water, the sand and mud covering the wrecks, and also suspicion on the part of the Spanish state. Even the Navy, he added with a twist of his lips, had a good number of wrecks pinpointed. But some old admirals thought of the sunken ships as tombs that shouldn't be violated.

"How did the interview with Palermo go?" Coy asked.

"It was cordial and cautious on both sides." The observatory director studied Tanger an instant before turning back to Coy. "So you know him, then?"

Coy, who was walking with his hands in his pockets, shrugged.

"She exaggerates a little. The truth is we had, uh... superficial contact."

Gamboa looked at him closely, interested.

"Contact, you sayr

"Yes."

"How do you mean, superficial?"

'Just that." Again Coy shrugged. "Limited to the surface."

"He head-butted his nose," Tanger said.

Coy glimpsed a smile through the golden hair the sea breeze was blowing across her face. Gamboa had stopped and looked at them in turn.

"His nose? Go on, you're joking." Now he spoke to Coy with renewed respect. "You have to tell me about that, my friend I'm dying to know."

Coy told him in a few words, with no adornments. Dog, hotel, nose, police station. When he was through, Gamboa studied him, pensive, amused, scratching his beard.

"Hey! And yet, even for someone who doesn't know his story,

Palermo is a dangerous man____ Besides, he has that disturbing

way of looking at you; you don't know which eye to focus on" He hadn't taken his own eyes from Coy, as if evaluating his capacity for punching people in the nose. "Superficial contact, you say. Is that right? Superficial."

He laughed Coy studied Tanger and she held his gaze, the smile still playing on her lips.

"I'm glad someone gave that arrogant bastard a lesson," Gamboa said finally, after they had started walking again. "I already told you that he came by here the way everyone does. Smoke and mirrors, false trails: the Florida Keys, Zahara de los Atunes, Sancti Petri, the Chapitel and Diamante reefs. Even the Vigo estuary and its famous galleons..."

They had left the sea behind and were walking into town along old streets bordering the cathedral, near the brick tower and walls of Santa Cruz. The plaza sloped downhill, with its Christ in a vaulted niche, and lanterns and geraniums and shutters on the balconies of old houses where whitewashed walls, like most in the city; were pocked by wind and dampness from the nearby sea. Almost everything was in shadows, and the light from the setting sun was fading from the tile roofs. The paving of that plaza, Gamboa told Coy, was cobbled with American stones, ballast from ships that plied the route to the Indies.