“Couldn’t sleep,” he explained brusquely. “Brought you a coffee.” He put the mug beside me, then settled on the opposite thwart. “I’m sorry,” he said as curtly as he had explained his presence. He radiated embarrassment.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked him.
“You’re wondering about Nicole, aren’t you.”
He had not, I noticed, described what worried me, but he knew well enough. “She’s my daughter, David,” I said, “of course I worry about her.”
“Then that’s why I’m sorry.” He was silent for a long time. Water rippled on the hull and the air was cold enough to mist our breath. “I’ve been thinking, Tim”—David broke the silence—“I guessed you might be too upset to be clear-headed, so I decided to make a few decisions on my own.”
“Good. Splendid.” I was hardly making it easy for him.
“What we have to do”—he spoke with the forced enthusiasm of a scoutmaster addressing a particularly obdurate troop—“is sail north, get ourselves to Santiago, and enroll some first-class assistance there. Frankly, we’ve exhausted our options here, and I don’t relish our chances of stirring up real action in Puerto Montt, but I’ve no doubt our embassy in Santiago will listen to us, and I’m sure the Australian government will want to hear the story that girl told us tonight. So, first thing in the morning, I think we should up anchor and sail north. Don’t you agree?”
“I never thanked you for making the coffee,” I said. “So thank you.”
David sighed, but was determined to stay reasonable. “You have something else in mind, Tim?”
“I was just wondering,” I said mildly, “what we planned to do about Nicole?”
“She’ll have to take her chances with the rest,” David said awkwardly.
I turned my head to look at him. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means nothing,” David said. He, like me, was skirting around the mine field of Nicole’s character. “I am sure,” David said heavily, “that Nicole has done nothing, and therefore has nothing to fear from the authorities.”
“She sails a stolen yacht,” I said, “and I’ll bet you next Easter’s collection that the Australian crew was murdered.”
“Oh, come!” David was offended. “We don’t know that! And we certainly don’t know if Nickel was involved!”
“Indeed we don’t,” I said, “which is why I want to find her before I condemn her.” I paused to stare up at the cold stars. “I don’t believe she’s a killer,” I said at last. “I think von Rellsteb is, but not Nicole. I really can’t believe she’s a killer. Not my daughter.”
“So there can’t be any harm in summoning the authorities, can there?” David asked.
“But I want to find out exactly what she is,” I went on as though David had not spoken. “I just want to see her before I loose the dogs on her.”
“It’s not a question of releasing the dogs,” David said very awkwardly, then fell into a moody silence. The thin moonlight showed a pale mist seeping off the black water, so that Stormchild seemed to float in a silver vapor beneath a canopy of silent starlight. The peace was broken by a bird, roosting somewhere on the cliffs above, making a brief, raucous protest. There was a flap of wings, another indignant squawk, then silence again.
“How’s the glass?” I asked suddenly.
David paused, wondering what trick I was playing, then decided to take my question at face value. “It’s still rising. I suspect we’re in for at least one more day of fine weather.”
I rested my head on the safety rail. “If we really intended to run for Santiago, David, we’re too late.”
“Of course we’re not…”
“To reach Santiago,” I interrupted him icily, “we would have to sail to Valparaíso, which would mean weathering Cape Raper. We have now been holed up in this cove for nine hours, which means that the Genesis boats will already be ahead of us, and they know damn well we need to clear the Cape, so they’ll be waiting for us there. I know we can sail far out to sea, and thus try to evade them, but what I’m telling you is that they’ve already positioned themselves between us and the authorities, and getting past them will be risky.”
“We can’t be certain of that,” he said stiffly.
I turned my head to look at him. “You want to bet your life on that uncertainty?” There was no answer. I shrugged. “The settlement will have radioed the mine, and whatever boats were there will have left to track us down. They know we sailed north, so that’s the direction they’ll pursue, and they’ll know that their catamaran is far faster than Stormchild, so they’ll be hoping to overtake us long before today’s dawn. What they don’t know is that we’re holed up here, and that consequently they’ve overshot us.”
“Ah!” David suddenly brightened. “You’re suggesting we sail south to Puerto Natales instead? Good idea! There’ll be a police post there, I’ll be bound, and we can talk to the embassy by phone. Not as effective, perhaps, as bashing on the ambassador’s door, but if we make a fuss they’re bound to listen.”
“No,” I said, “I’m not proposing that we sail to Puerto Natales, but to the mine.”
There was a second’s silence before David exploded in protest. “You’re a fool, Tim! We don’t even know if Nicole is there!”
“She probably isn’t,” I admitted, “but maybe she is. Berenice saw a catamaran a week ago, and we know Nicole sails one of their two catamarans. But even if she isn’t there, it’s the place where I can find out about her life. The mine is Nicole’s refuge, her bolthole, and that’s where I’ll either discover her, or her belongings.”
“And in any case”—David entirely ignored my explanation—“the mine is at the very end of the straits and we’ll be bottled up there like a mouse trapped in a Wellington boot! My dear Tim, I entirely sympathize with your concern, but I must insist that we behave sensibly. We did agree to be prudent, didn’t we?”
“The prudent behavior,” I said very irritably, “was never to have come here at all, but having come this far I’m not going to go for help to the Chilean authorities. Not before I know what kind of future I’m making for Nicole by bringing in the Chilean police.”
David was silent for a long time. His pipe glowed intermittently as he puffed smoke into the rigging, and when he did finally speak his voice had become calm and reflective, as though he knew he could not dissuade me by argument, so would now try a more subtle approach. “Go to bed, Tim. In the morning we’ll decide how to escape this trap.”
I did not move. “The point is,” I said instead, “that I came here to find Nicole, and to talk to her, and it seems very stupid to get this close, then just run away.”
“We are not running away,” David said very firmly. “We’re simply fetching competent assistance. If you discover a wasp’s nest in your garden shed you don’t go after it with bare hands. Besides, just what chance do you think we have of escaping from the dead end of the Desolate Straits? We’ll be trapped there! Come, Tim! Be realistic!”
“I wasn’t thinking of using the Desolate Straits,” I said very mildly. “I rather thought we might try the Canal Almagro instead.”
There were a few seconds of silence as David recalled the chart, then his protest was loud enough to disturb some of the nesting seabirds. “You’re crazy!”