Bluewater Quest Page 9

  Shellie pointed at the yacht anchored several boat-lengths off their port bow. "Aquila," she said. "I recognize the name. I know it's Spanish for 'eagle,' but I like it because it reminds me of tequila."

  "Do you like tequila?" Liz asked. "We may have some aboard, if you do."

  "No, not particularly," Shellie said. "I just like the word. I have no idea why. What kind of boat is that?"

  "A Beneteau 44," Dani said. "They must have made a zillion of them. They're popular with the bareboat charter companies down here. That one has the logo of the operation that's based in the marina we were in; that's probably where the people picked it up."

  "Bareboat?" Rick asked.

  "As opposed to a crewed charter," Liz said.

  "Ah! So they just rent the boat and sail it themselves?"

  "That's right," Liz said, as they climbed out of the dinghy.

  "Let's just tow the dinghy," Dani said. "We're not going far, and it's all protected water." She climbed aboard and walked the dinghy aft until she could tie it off to one of the backstays.

  "Can you get me online?" Rick said. "There are a couple of things I want to research, while I'm thinking of it."

  "Sure," Liz said. "I'll power up the satellite access while Dani uncovers the sails."

  "Don't get lost in the web, Rick," Shellie said. "You'll miss the sail; it's not far, is it, Dani?"

  "Maybe an hour, anchor up to anchor down. We can do it all under sail, unless you're in a hurry. That might take a few minutes longer, but it's pretty shoreline for a lot of the way."

  "Let's sail," Rick said. "I won't be long on the web, and then I can enjoy at least part of the trip."

  "Good," Dani said, turning her attention to uncovering the mizzen sail. "Do you want to steer, Shellie?"

  "Yes. Is that okay?"

  "Sure," Dani said. "You and I can get started while Liz gets Rick set up on the internet."

  12

  "Hurry," Ed said, as Bert and Leila brought their dinghy alongside Aquila. "They're about to leave."

  "Take it easy, Ed," Leila said. "They're just going around the corner. It's better if we don't follow them. We'll just attract their attention."

  "How do you know where they're going?" Ed asked.

  "We eavesdropped on them while they were discussing their plans. We followed them to a restaurant and got a table near theirs," Bert said. "Relax, and we'll tell you all about it. We can always check the tracker to make sure they're not skipping out."

  They all sat in the cockpit in the shade of the awning, and Bert and Leila summarized the conversation they'd overheard. After about fifteen minutes, Leila said, "and that's about it, I think. Did I miss anything, Bert?"

  "I don't think so, except that the woman who runs the restaurant seemed to know the two women that run Vengeance really well."

  "True," Leila said. "She did."

  "Why do you say that?" Ashley asked.

  "She hugged the blonde one, and called her 'child,'" Bert said.

  "And when we first went in and sat down, they were talking about a birthday party for the old woman," Leila said.

  "Right," Bert said, "and the party was a long time ago, when Dani was a kid."

  "Dani?" Ed asked. "She's one of the women on Vengeance?"

  "Yes," Leila said. "The blonde. She seems to be the skipper. And the woman — they called her Mrs. Walker — "

  "Wait," Ed said. "Aren't both of the women blondes?"

  "The one that's the skipper's got blond hair with some curls. The other one's got reddish blond hair that she pulls back into a bun," Ashley said. "Right?"

  "Yes," Leila said. "The strawberry blonde is Liz."

  "Okay," Ed said. "Got it. Dani's the skipper, Liz is the other one. Use their names from now on, so we keep 'em straight. Go ahead, Leila. I interrupted what you were about to say about Mrs. Walker."

  "Right. Mrs. Walker said Dani had a good memory, just like her father."

  "Dani's father?" Ed asked.

  "Yes, that's right," Leila said. "So she apparently knows, or knew, Dani's father. I'd guess Dani's in her mid-twenties, so if that party happened when she was a kid, we're talking ten or fifteen years. Maybe a little longer."

  "Dani and Mrs. Walker acted like family," Bert said.

  "They did," Leila said, nodding.

  "You think they're related?"

  Bert shrugged and looked at Leila.

  "I kind of doubt it. Mrs. Walker's got some mixed blood. We mentioned the Carib ancestry, and she could also have some African slaves back there, too — hard to say, but her skin tone was darker than I would have thought for an Indian. But maybe they could be related by marriage. Are you thinking leverage?"

  "Maybe," Ed said. "You never know what might come in handy. If they're close, it probably doesn't matter about a blood tie. We could still use Mrs. Walker to make Dani do our bidding, if it comes to that."

  "If it comes to that, I'd go for Everett's wife," Leila said. "That's closer to the one we want to control."

  "That's so," Ed said, "depending on what we need, either option could work. I get the questions about the Caribs, but any clue as to why Everett's interested in whaling?"

  "None," Leila said. "Bert?"

  Bert shook his head. "Think you can get Tehran to check up on that?"

  "I'll try," Ed said. "I'd better go get a report together and send it off. Guess we'll be here tonight. They didn't say what they're planning for tomorrow?"

  "Not that we heard, but they had a few minutes together with Mrs. Walker before we went inside," Leila said. "We watched from the street until they got settled — didn't want to be too obvious. So we might have missed that."

  "No matter," Ed said. "We've got the tracker. Good work, you two."

  "Now we're getting blown along like a leaf in the wind, as you put it the other day," Dani said. They were coasting along the south shore of Admiralty Bay under just the mainsail, running dead before the wind.

  "It's a lot harder to steer than it was yesterday," Shellie said. "And we're rolling from side to side a lot."

  "Imagine what the ride would be like in open water," Liz said.

  "Not fun, I'll bet," Shellie said. "What's that place up on the cliffs?" She nodded toward a collection of structures high up on the hillside to their left.

  "That's called Moonhole," Dani said. "Because there's a natural arch up there that frames the moon sometimes. You can't make out the arch from down here, though."

  "What is it? A resort of some kind?"

  "Yes, of some kind. It was started in the '60s by an architect and his wife who dropped out of the rat race. It has a kind of strange history — almost like a commune, but for wealthy people, I guess," Liz said. "I'm not sure how it all worked. But from the pictures I've seen, it's interesting, architecturally. All the houses are built so they seem to grow out of the natural rock formations, and lots of the rooms are open to the outside — like missing a wall or two."

  "Sounds wild," Shellie said. "Not my kind of place, though."

  "What's not your kind of place," Rick asked, climbing into the cockpit and sitting down facing the shoreline.

  "That place on the hillside," Shellie said. "What did you find on the web? You weren't gone long."

  "Several articles, but I just skimmed them. I downloaded the best ones for later. Didn't want to miss the sailing."

  "It'll get more exciting once we round the point up there," Dani said. "Then we'll fly the headsails and turn up close to the wind. We'll have to beat our way into the anchorage at Petit Nevis."

  "Beat?" Shellie asked.

  "That means we'll be working our way upwind," Liz said. "We'll sail at something less than a 45-degree angle to the direction the wind's coming from, and we'll change sides with the sails every so often, kind of zigzagging."

  "I never realized a sailboat could go upwind," Shellie said. "That's fascinating."

  "Some boats do it better than others," Dani said. "The ships Columbus sailed weren't very good at it. They
were mostly square-rigged, meant to sail off the wind — like we're doing now. Some ships from that era had a few fore-and-aft rigged sails, like we have, but they weren't used for much except maneuvering."

  "I've read that the Arabs developed sails that let them sail upwind," Rick said.

  "They did," Dani said. "Those boats were referred to as 'lateen-rigged,' and they were around for maybe a thousand years before the people in Europe figured out how to marry them to their big, square rigged ships. It changed seafaring during the middle of the second millennium."

  "What were you researching?" Shellie asked.

  "A little bit on the Caribs, but there's not much available. I'm starting to get fascinated by the dearth of information. I don't think they've gotten much attention from academia. But I also had a quick look at the history of whaling. There's quite a bit of information on whaling in Bequia on the web. I downloaded several articles. A couple of things caught my attention. First, the way the people here go about it is almost identical to the approach that the Basques were using in the ninth century. They had lookouts posted on the high ground, just like here. When they spotted a whale, they used the same strategy to kill the animal, and then they towed it to a beach to butcher it."

  "The ninth century, huh?" Shellie asked. "You think there was some influence? That would have been during the period the Moors ruled the Iberian Peninsula. Would they have picked up whaling from the Basques? Maybe brought it to the islands?"

  "That's an intriguing theory," Rick said, "but there's nothing to support it. At least nothing I found. It's more likely that the Basques and the Caribs solved similar problems in similar ways, I think. Mostly, the approach was obvious. I wouldn't leap to any conclusions based on the similarities, but I thought it was interesting."

  "What else caught your eye?" Shellie asked.

  "Whaling in Bequia isn't looked upon with approval by a lot of members of the International Whaling Convention. The IWC sets quotas for what they call Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling. That means what it sounds like. They refer to it as ASW, and there's a big faction that disputes Bequia's right to a quota."

  "Why's that?" Dani asked.

  "The argument is that Bequia's heritage of whaling doesn't derive from the aboriginal people. It grew out of the commercial whaling that Mrs. Walker told us about in the late 1800s. The AWS quotas are supposed to allow people like the Eskimos, for example, to continue doing what they've done for thousands of years. There's never been a claim raised by St. Vincent and the Grenadines that whaling in Bequia predates that commercial period."

  "But it must," Dani said. "Bequia's not even the only place in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines where whales are taken. There are a couple of fishing villages along the west coast of St. Vincent proper that hunt smaller whales and marine mammals."

  "Hmm," Rick said. "I don't know what the right or wrong of it is, but it doesn't appear that the local government has tried to make a case beyond saying they need the protein, and that it's been part of their heritage since the days of commercial whaling."

  "Is the topic of whaling among the Caribs somehow relevant to your project?" Dani asked.

  Rick looked at Dani for a moment, his brow wrinkling. "I'm not sure, Dani. Right now, any information on the Carib culture could be important, even if it just adds context to the question of interaction with the Moors. At this stage, I can't rule anything out. We know so little about the islands before Columbus — the smallest thing could be important in proving or disproving the notion that the Moors were here first."

  "Beyond the academic questions, do you think the answer to the question of the Moors will have an impact on anybody's day-to-day lives?" Dani asked.

  Rick grinned. "Hey, I'm an academic. That question's above my pay grade. Is knowledge worth pursuing for its own sake? Obviously, I think it is. What do you think?"

  "Oh, I'm curious," Dani said. "Don't misread my question. I've been wondering what motivates people to fund research like this, though."

  "Curiosity is one thing that motivates research. Wealth, and a long-term perspective are others. But I don't know what's behind our donors' interest. I've wondered myself."

  Dani nodded. "Thanks, Rick. Sorry, but I just had to ask."

  "It's a fair question. No need for an apology."

  "It's time to come up on the wind and get the headsails out," Dani said. "That's where we're going, right up in there." She pointed to the east. "Swing the helm around, Shellie. Liz can sheet in the main and I'll raise the mizzen. Then we'll roll out the Yankee and the staysail."

  13

  "Mrs. Walker called while you were running them in to the whaling station," Dani said, as Liz tied off the dinghy and climbed aboard.

  "What was on her mind?"

  "Did you notice the couple who came into her place right after us?"

  "The ones she spoke to when she excused herself for a few minutes?"

  "Yes."

  "I saw them, but that's all," Liz said. "What about them?"

  "They cleared in right before we came ashore," Dani said. "They're on Aquila; there are four of them, Americans. Two couples."

  "Okay, but — "

  "They followed us to Mrs. Walker's. They were waiting at the coffee shop just down from customs, and when we passed by, they got up and followed us."

  Liz frowned and shook her head. "Coincidence."

  "I don't think so. They waited outside Mrs. Walker's for several minutes before they came in, watching us visiting with her."

  "Your overactive imagination is — "

  "No, Liz. It's — "

  "Dani, did Mrs. Walker get all of that from her chat with them?"

  "No, she didn't. You know how the coconut telegraph works. The lady who runs the boutique up the way from her place watched them. She called Mrs. Walker after they left."

  "Okay, but I meant did they tell Mrs. Walker about Aquila and the four of — "

  "No. She called the customs office."

  "Mrs. Walker called the customs office?" Liz asked.

  "Yes, after her friend told her about them hanging around watching us. She even got their names from customs."

  "It could still be coincidence, Dani."

  "I don't think so. After that couple finished their breakfast, they stopped in the boutique and pretended to be shopping. They kind of casually mentioned having breakfast at Mrs. Walker's and wondered if the boutique lady knew whether we were regulars or something. They were subtle about it; didn't come right out and ask, but mentioned how nice it was to see the way Mrs. Walker visited with her regular customers, like we were family, almost. They were fishing, Liz."

  "Well, knowing Mrs. Walker and her friends in Bequia, I'll bet they didn't catch anything."

  "No, I don't think so," Dani said. "But they did ask the boutique lady about whaling, so they'd been eavesdropping on us."

  "Maybe, but come on, Dani. Bequia advertises the whole whaling thing pretty heavily. Maybe they even came here because of that."

  "I don't think so. They didn't know enough about it for that to be the case. The lady told them about the whaling museum in Friendship Bay, and they acted surprised."

  Liz shrugged. "I still think you're reading too much into this."

  "Liz, they went back to Aquila for a while after breakfast, but after we left the harbor, they went ashore again and took a taxi to the museum. They asked a bunch of questions about the Caribs and whaling. They had to get that from Rick's conversation with Mrs. Walker. They just now left the museum and walked up the hill to where they could see this anchorage. The woman had a camera with a big telephoto lens. They're probably spying on us, right now."

  "Get a grip, Dani. Calm down. If they were following us, why would they have gone back ashore instead of tailing Vengeance?"

  "Because they overheard us telling Mrs. Walker we were going to spend the night at Petit Nevis," Dani said.

  Liz frowned and shook her head. "What are you thinking we should do, then?"

  "Ask Ri
ck if there's a reason why anybody would be following him, for one thing."

  "Um, why don't you let me feel him out about that. You're kind of edgy, and we don't want to alarm the Everetts. I'll work out a way to do it without upsetting him. You know I'm good at that kind of thing."

  "Okay, that's a good idea. While you're at it, see if you can talk them into going all the way to Ste. Anne tomorrow and then doubling back to Rodney Bay and Soufrière in a day or two. They wanted to go to Martinique anyway."

  "Why? What are you planning?"

  "If Aquila shows up in Ste. Anne, we'll know for sure that they're after us. No bareboat charter's going to pass up Soufrière and Rodney Bay; it's a long trip all the way to Martinique."

  "But there are so many anchorages and so many boats in Martinique," Liz said. "We might never — "

  "I'll get Sandrine to check the customs database."

  Sandrine Davis was a senior officer with French customs in Martinique, and the wife of Phillip Davis, one of Dani's father's business associates.

  "But Dani, Aquila's a common boat name, especially in the bareboat fleets. I've seen several different ones."

  "I have their names, Liz. Mrs. Walker got them from customs."

  "All right, then. I'll work on that change of plans."

  "Are they going to call you when they're ready to come back aboard?" Dani asked.

  "Yes. Thanks for reminding me. I left them the handheld VHF. Reach over and turn on the radio, would you? I hope I haven't missed their call."

  "I don't think so. They're still wandering all over the island," Dani said.

  "Well, that was a waste of time," Bert said. He and Leila had just left Bequia's whaling museum in Friendship Bay.

  "Maybe, maybe not," she said.

  "It was just a tourist place," he said.

  "Yeah, but they said that we can walk up the hill over there and get a look at the whaling station on Petit Nevis."

  "What good's that going to do?"

  "We can see what they're up to," she said.

  "Too far away," Bert said.

  "Not with this." Leila tapped the telephoto lens on the camera that hung from her shoulder.