There was no chart table as such; the paper image of the western Mediterranean was spread across the wooden dash to one side of the binnacle where Mario could read it while standing with one hand on a wheel spoke. He was using compass and chart to dead-reckon from lighthouse to lighthouse. The sea had lifted, an hour before sunset, to a nine-foot chop and had not become any calmer in the hours since; the chunky round-bottomed hull made heavy going of it and Mario had to tack at five-minute intervals against a sea that was running quarter to his course—Southwest by Cabo de Gata, then west around the headlands toward Almería. The weather was running in from the Straits, slanting against the shore. A rough night for seafaring—there were very few boats out, the only lamps were buoys.
It was Cesar who had proved the worst sailor and Mario felt remotely vindicated by that: he knew they all held him in contempt but Cesar was the most arrogant of any and it was satisfying to see him green with mal de mer. The malaise had infected Peggy to a lesser extent; she and Cesar were glued to their bunks in the after cabin. Alvin and Sturka were forward, below with Clifford Fairlie, probably trying to indoctrinate him by the dialectic exchange. A stupid pursuit—you couldn’t change their minds once they’d gone over the hill. Mario had learned that at home. Mezetti Industries destroyed the environment from day to day with the willful malice of a Genghis Khan and you pointed this out to your father and he came back with engineers’ lies contrived to prove it was all Communist propaganda.
Mario knew the others held him in low esteem because he wasn’t terribly smart and his Maoism was more doctrinaire than practical. None of them really liked him, Sturka especially, but it didn’t matter. Mario was useful; it was important to be useful. Not just the money he could provide but other things as well—like the seamanship they demanded of him now. An ignorant sailor would have swamped the boat in cross-seas a dozen times by now, or run aground on coastal shoals.
The thing that mattered was the liberation of the human race and if you contributed anything at all, regardless how small, your existence was justified. One tiny chink in the endless battering that would destroy the walls of Amerika. One effort to fuck the robber barons whose institutional violence perpetuated the power of the few.
He saw a distant beacon off the starboard bow and he timed the intervals between its flashes. “Right on,” he said aloud, pleased with his navigation. He judged the sea and found it safe to drop the retaining loop over the wheelspoke; with the rudder locked he put on his Halloween mask, went down the five-step ladder to the door of the forward cabin and banged with his knuckles.
Sturka pulled the narrow door open, stooping with his thin face close against the ceiling deck. The light was poor, a single low-watt bulb somewhere behind Sturka.
Mario said, “Almería.”
Sturka checked the time. “We’re behind.”
“In this weather you don’t keep tight schedules.”
“We wanted to make Málaga before dawn.”
“You’ll never make that. It’s a hundred miles.”
Sturka registered no emotion. “Well stop wasting time. Take us in.”
Behind Sturka he had a glimpse of Alvin—the neo-Alvin, fuzz-wigged, belly and cheeks rounded by stuffing, makeup that made him non-Alvin, jaws riding up and down with the chewing gum he had never used before. Fairlie wasn’t supposed to be able to identify any of them. Sturka said it was security—suppose Fairlie got loose?—but it was possible Sturka actually meant to turn him loose and Mario hated the thought.
Sturka was shrouded in a burnous, his face almost invisible; Fairlie behind him sat pale on the pitching bunk gripping its edge. He looked scared and that gave Mario a savage joy.
Hot behind the silly mask Mario went up to the wheelhouse and stripped it off; unlocked the wheel and turned a few points to port. The slight correction increased the roll underfoot and he gripped the red rich walnut spokes of the three-foot wheel.
The red buoy passed astarboard and Sturka came up into the wheelhouse stripping off his Arab headgear and robe; in Levi’s and T-shirt Sturka sat down in the canvas chair abaft the locker trunk. “Recite for me Mario.”
He was obedient. “Sure. I bury the raft, and walk in, and call the Mezetti office in Gibraltar and tell them to send a car to Almería for me. I take the recorder and the radio into Gibraltar with me. Tomorrow I spend the day making sure things are set up—the Citation and the pilot, refueling stops at Tunis and Bengasi. Friday morning I set up the radio and the recorder with the timer. Then I go over to——”
“What time do you set it for?”
“Eight o’clock Friday night. Right?”
“Go on.”
“Friday morning I set the timer and then I go to the bank. I cash the cashier’s checks.”
“How much do you cash?”
“A hundred thousand dollars.” He had been watching the sea—the lights of Almería moving up ahead, the headland sliding up to port. Now he slid a glance at Sturka. “What do we need that much for?”
“Grease.”
“What?”
“To persuade some people to keep quiet about us.”
“Who?”
“Some people in Lyon and Hamburg. And where we’re going, in Lahti.” Sturka pronounced it with the hard gutteral Finnish “h.”
Mario indicated his understanding. The Cessna Citation was a seven-place executive jet with a range of twelve hundred miles; they would have to set down twice for refueling and someone had to provide the landing areas and the fuel at Lyon and Hamburg.
The harbor lights moved off the starboard quarter and Mario kept them there, aiming for the dark beach west of Almería. Depth markings on the chart showed it to be an easy beach; the surf would not be strenuous behind the headland and he would be able to drive the raft right up on the sand. He would have to walk a couple of miles but that didn’t bother him.
“Continue your recitation.”
“We take off at eleven Friday morning. When we’re in the air and out of the traffic pattern I switch the radio off the way Alvin told me and I put my gun on the pilot. I tell him to land at the place you’ve picked here.” He gestured through the salt-crusted windows; the field was fourteen miles inland from Almería, a pocket in the foothills. “If the pilot gives me trouble I shoot him in the leg and tell him to land us fast so we can give him medical attention before he bleeds to death. If he still tries to turn around and get back to Gibraltar or land in Almería I shoot him in the other leg. Then I tell him I’ll kill him and take my chances landing it myself.”
“Do you think you can?”
“If I have to, I guess. Alvin’s coached me a lot.”
After the landing they would kill the pilot and bury him. Get everyone aboard and head out into the Med, flying up the channel between Ibiza and Majorca; across the coastline east of Marseille and hedgehopping to avoid the coastal radars. But that leg and the rest would be Alvin’s responsibility; all Mario had to do was get the plane from Gibraltar to Almería.
He kept the throttle up, triangulating with his eyes to judge the shore; he would see the combers in time and he had to keep the screw turning in the strong following sea. “I can do it. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not,” Sturka said. “But you have the telephone number in Almería. Did you forget that?”
“No. I phone you every two hours. I let it ring exactly four times and hang up.” Sturka would be within earshot of that telephone and would be waiting for its ring at even-numbered hours. If it did not ring he would have to assume Mario had been discovered. There was no reason to suspect they would discover him. As far as Mezetti Industries was concerned Mario was traveling on the continent on company business. While the rest of them—Sturka, Alvin, Peggy, Cesar—had journeyed clandestinely to Lisbon aboard a tramp freighter Mario had spent four days at home in New York and then had flown quite openly to Marseille aboard a scheduled Air France flight out of Kennedy Airport. It had been a test and Mario had been willing to undergo it: his passport had not been questioned at the airport, no one had detained him, and therefore he was not a suspect.