Hawkins lay next to Kalliste inside an enclosed life raft. He wiped water from his eyes and in the light of an electric torch, the faces of Captain Santiago and his son Miguel came into focus.
“You’re okay now,” the captain said.
Kalliste accepted Miguel’s offer of a jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. The jacket was wet, but it at least offered some insulation.
“How did you find us?” she said through clacking teeth.
The captain said, “We are floating around inside the life raft when I hear voices. Someone talking about dinner. So I open the door and shine the light. There you are on the big bubble.”
“I thought you had gone down with the boat,” Hawkins said.
“Close,” Miguel said. Fear danced in his eyes.
His father nodded. “We’d be dead if we were in the pilot house. Miguel called me down to the deck to help him. We launched the life raft before the Panza went down.”
“What happened to Rodriguez?”
“He disappeared,” the captain said. “One second he is running back and forth on the stern. The next, he is gone. Lots of blood.”
Hawkins remembered the suspicious call Rodriguez had made before they were hit.
“Too bad,” he said. “I would have liked to talk to him. I’m sorry for the loss of your boat, Captain.”
“Thank you. As the great Cervantes said, ‘Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched.’ I have worked on the sea for many years without a scratch. It was inevitable that the ocean would show her claws one day.”
“I turned on my Mayday broadcaster,” Hawkins said. “Help should be here in a while.”
The son cocked his hand behind his ear. Audible above the slosh of waves against the raft was the low grumble of engines. Then the raft was bathed in the glare of a floodlight.
A grin came to Santiago’s lips. “No, Mr. Hawkins,” he said. “Help is here now.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Spanish Coast Guard cutter plucked the survivors from the life raft a few minutes later. The refugees from the Sancho Panza each enjoyed long, scalding showers before heating their insides with hot soup. Wearing jeans and shirts on loan from the friendly crew, they climbed into a shuttle van back in Cadiz. The vehicle drove the captain and his son home and dropped Matt and Kalliste at a hotel where she had reserved rooms for them to use as a base. They crawled into her king-size bed with their clothes on and slept soundly until they were awakened by the telephone.
It was Captain Santiago calling. The cutter’s captain had radioed his superiors, reporting that a government official named Rodriguez was missing and presumed dead. A police officer named Garcia had called Santiago asking to speak with everyone who’d been on the boat. Santiago had suggested the hotel for the meeting.
Kalliste had kept her suitcase in the room and had fresh clothes to change into. Hawkins had lost his bag when the salvage boat sank. He was still in his borrowed Coast Guard clothes and hadn’t shaved, when he and Kalliste joined the Santiago’s to, hopefully, find out more information about what on earth had happened the night before.
Sergeant Garcia signaled with a wave of a hand for them to take their seats. The sergeant was a big man, with most of his bulk centered in his substantial girth, a product of too many stakeouts and not enough exercise. He was tall as well, more than six feet in height. Simply sitting at the table in the hotel conference room, he presented an imposing figure. He often used his formidable physique to intimidate those he interrogated. With others, he took the opposite tact, beguiling them with his sympathetic tone and large brown eyes. He wasn’t sure how he would proceed with this group.
The father and son were Spaniards. They were respectful in answering his questions, although the older man’s deference seemed less than sincere. The American scientist had not been the timid academic Garcia expected. He was built like a longshoreman. His level gaze had an unnerving hardness that didn’t match the smile he wore on his unshaven face.
The Greek woman was attractively middle-aged. In another setting, he would have flirted as well as questioned her. But she had displayed a quick temper after he’d asked for her version of events the third time. It was a routine police procedure; have a witness repeat his or her story and look for discrepancies, but her patience had run out.
She crossed her arms in front of her. “We have told you the story twice already.”
“But you may have missed something.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Sergeant Garcia, you have two… ears, and I think there is a brain resting somewhere between them, so you have heard what I have to say and presumably have understood me by now.”
Garcia had been embarrassed since childhood by his prominent ears and wore his black hair long to disguise them. He wagged his forefinger at the Greek.
“This is a serious matter.”
Lowering her head like a charging bull, she wagged back.
“Then I suggest you bring in someone who does not need stories repeated again and again like an idiot child.”
Which was when Hawkins intervened. Speaking in a quiet voice, he said, “Excuse me, Sergeant Garcia. May I make a suggestion?”
The raised fingers remained poised. Eyes were locked.
“What sort of suggestion?”
“We’ve gone through an exhausting ordeal and may not be as calm and patient as we normally would be. Maybe you could just ask questions about areas that concern you.”
Garcia wasn’t about to yield. And neither was the stubborn Greek. Hawkins must have seen the need for dramatic intervention because he turned to the captain. “To quote the great Cervantes….” He raised his eyebrows as a cue.
Captain Santiago smiled. Spreading his arms wide, he declared, “As the great Cervantes said, ‘honesty is the best policy.’ ”
Kalliste and Garcia stared at the beatific smile on the captain’s face, then slowly lowered their fingers.
“I would be the last person to argue with Cervantes,” the sergeant said. “To be perfectly honest, some of what I have heard is very hard to believe.” He consulted his notepad. “You told me you wished to examine an old ship on the bottom of the sea. Senora Kalchis and Senor Hawkins go down into the sea in a submarine. You find the ship. You hear noises. Then a boat almost… falls on you.”
“My boat,” the captain reminded him. “The Sancho Panza, a name from the great Cervantes.”
The sergeant sighed. “Yes, Cervantes. Tell me again why your boat sinks, young man.”
Garcia had hoped to take advantage of Miguel’s youthful lack of guile. Miguel glanced at his father, who nodded, then said, “The boat explodes. First the pilot house, then the hull.”
“Was the boat carrying any explosives?”
Kalliste broke in. “This was an archaeological project. We had a permit from your government to look at a ship. Why would we carry explosives?” she spoke with slightly veiled contempt.
“To blow up the ship. Maybe you’re looking for gold?”
Kalliste smiled seductively. The sergeant took her reaction as a gesture of personal interest.
He didn’t know Kalliste well enough to realize that she was actually looking for an unflattering physical attribute she could use as a cudgel to distribute a whack to his ego.
Hawkins cut in. “No explosives on board. I think the boat was hit by missiles.”
“But you heard no missile launch?”
“That means nothing. They could have come from a distance. Or their rocket motors might have been muffled.”