Buried At Sea (34 page)

The guidebooks had not prepared her for how handsome porteños were; even though the poetry got pretty corny, it would have been hard not to smile back. Of course if a woman happened to have her own agenda—and happened to be sitting alone in a tight blouse in the lobby of her hotel—it was like taking candy from a baby.

She let him do all the work. "You're American?" he exclaimed. "I would never have guessed."

"I'm speaking English with an American accent."

"I have traveled throughout America and have never saw a woman so beautiful in your entire country."

"Thank you. But I'm waiting for my boyfriend?' "Not yet engaged?"

"Not yet."

"Then I still have a chance."

Shannon laughed. "Not a chance in the world:'

"My name is Carlos. May I show you Buenos Aires?"

"No thanks." She indicated her forearm crutches leaning against her chair in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel. A turnoff if ever there was one: with its cracked and broken sidewalks and free-for-all high-speed traffic, Buenos Aires was no city for wheelchairs. "I really can't get around too easily."

The porteno didn't blink and his smile actually got bigger. "No matter. My cousin Ramon has a car. A convertible." Carlos gestured long and low. "We will drive you everywhere. And between us help you walk."

He was so cute. He had a big strong nose and the most unbelievably thick curly black hair. Dark eyes. And that todie-for smile. Shannon flashed him one back. "Could we drive to the harbor?"

"Beautiful angel, we would drive you to Tierra del Fuego, if you asked." He shot a thumbs-up across the lobby. Cousin Ram6n shook hands good-bye with the silver-haired man and hurried over. He was even cuter, and he greeted Shannon with what seemed to be the standard welcome: "Buenos dias. So how do you like Buenos Aires?"

"Una masa," said Shannon, which she had learned meant "awesome."

"This glorious angel says that she's waiting for a man who is not yet engaged to marry her. The fool."

Ramón gripped his heart. "It would be a crime—" He searched for a word and lapsed into Spanish. Carlos translated. "Ramón says it would be a crime against the entire United Nations for such a beautiful woman to marry anyone but an Argentine." Jim got worried when he started seeing islands where the chart showed no islands. He studied them nervously through the binoculars, fearing that he would run aground in shoal water.

After being up all night, watching out for ships and spotting channel markers on the radar, he was losing focus. Had he strayed into the shallows? Should he veer northeast?

Or should he turn around and retrace his course? The GPS put him right in the channel, without an island on the chart. Trust it? Keep going? Will always said, "Don't do anything until you know what's going on. Know the score."

Jim climbed the mast to the first spreader and in the rising light of morning saw that the " islands" were clumps of trees dotting a land as flat as the ocean. The trees shaded ranch houses and vast, prosperous-looking barns.

He was getting flaky. He drove out of the channel and, watching the depth finder carefully, ran a mile toward the distant shore, then dropped anchor, lay down on the cockpit bench, and fell asleep. Twenty minutes, he told himself. He awakened, clearheaded, in twenty minutes. It occurred to him that Will's enemies were expecting him to arrive in Buenos Aires by boat. Why not dump the boat now and catch a bus or a train or even hitchhike. He'd get there faster and slip in the back door while they were watching the waterfront.

Jim found out where he was on the chart and reviewed the Sailing Directions. The bay of San Clemente looked like a good possibility. He prepared the anchor and sailed southeast, away from Buenos Aires, on a course that paralleled the shoreline. When it curved to form the bay, he looked for

other sailboats to moor among. A marina with floating docks and a clubhouse with a yellow veranda was home to a cluster of boats, but he wanted a more private landing where he wouldn't have to get into passports and customs. Here and there single boats were moored at the foot of large estates , where lawns flowed from mansions down to the water's edge.

With his eyes glued to the depth finder, he steered for the biggest estate, which had a huge two-masted schooner tied to its dock. A boat that size had to draw much more water than Hustle. And such an estate looked ready-made for Will's rowing-ashore scam. He dropped anchor a hundred yards off, furled the sails, inflated the dinghy and tied it alongside. Then he quickly scrubbed his face, shaved, and combed his tangled hair. His face looked gaunt in the mirror. His torso was still pretty ripped, but he'd lost a ton of bulk in his arms and chest.

He put on the clean polo shirt and jeans he had originally packed for the flight home from Rio. Then he filled his backpack, shut the hatches, and rowed to the dock. Hustle seemed to stand high on the gentle swell, perched like a bird, her fuel and water tanks nearly empty, her stores consumed. With a strange feeling that he would never see his " inheritance" again, he turned the dinghy around to back into the dock. So far, this beat landing in Nigeria. There were no teens with machetes, although the sadfaced middle-aged man hurrying down the lawn did have a gun on his hip.

"Buenos dias," he called. His crisp blue shirt and starched khakis reminded Jim of retired-military clients he had, an impression heightened by stiff posture and a direct gaze.

"Good morning, sir. I don't speak Spanish."

"Yankee! Good morning."

"My name is Jim Leighton."

"Captain Rodolpho Faveros, navy of Argentina, retired. Buenos Bias." Of all the dumb luck: a naval officer who'll probably call

immigration. "Would it be all right if I anchored off your home?"

"Where are you from, Mr. Leighton?"

"I've just come in from Nigeria. I have to meet my girlfriend in Buenos Aires."

"And before Nigeria?"

"I live in Connecticut."

Captain Faveros brightened. "I know it well. I visited the naval school in Groton."

"I live in Bridgeport. You would have driven through on your way from New York?'

"Well, actually, I landed in a submarine. Heave a line. I'll tie you up." The Argentine caught the dinghy's painter, double-flipped an expert clove hitch around a piling, and extended a hand to Jim. "Steady!"

The dock felt like it was rolling. Faveros grabbed his arm.

"This always happens to me," said Jim. "I have the worst inner ear. And when I get back on the boat I'm seasick again."

"The walk to the house will restore your land legs. Though I can't promise you won't be seasick when you get back on your boat."

"Would it be all right if I left the boat while I go to Buenos Aires?"

"It will be safe here. We have our 'pirates,' but they won't fool with the navy." Steadying Jim, Faveros steered him up the lawn. Jim found the colors of grass and flower gardens to be almost painfully intense after so many weeks of sea blues and grays. Faveros's mansion had a tower on one end, topped with a radar dish and weather instruments.

"A gift from my wife when I retired," Faveros explained with a self-deprecating smile. " My 'bridge' as it were: radios, radar, weather fax, and even a small helm. Rather good fun. I'll show it to you . . . have you had lunch? Perhaps my wife . . ." Faveros's voice trailed off and the sad expression darkened his face again. They were nearing the house. Jim

saw a woman watching through the windows. She drifted away like a ghost.

"I ate, thanks," said Jim. "I've got to get to Buenos Aires as soon as possible. Is there a bus? Or a train?"

"Ah." Faveros, apparently relieved that Jim could not stay for lunch but still required hospitality, said, "I'll drive you to the train."

"I hope it's not too far."

"It is nothing."

It turned out to be forty miles, but Faveros wouldn't hear of Jim's hiring a taxi. In the car, a new Audi station wagon, he started talking, and the words were soon gushing as if he had been rehearsing them for days in his head. "If only things were better at home, you would have lunch and dinner and a bed. But my wife—we've had a tragedy. Our son has left. He's searching to find his so-called real parents—he's adopted. But I am his father '

really.' As is my wife his `real' mother. His biological mother is almost certainly dead. This is not uncommon."

Jim, who was dazzled by the speed of the car and the bright colors of the land, nodded politely, trying to follow Faveros.

"What is 'not uncommon'?"

"During the Proceso—you know, of course, about Argentina's Guerra Sucia?

Desaparecidos? The so-called dirty war? The disappeared?"

"I'm afraid I don't know much about it." Whatever you do, Will had cautioned, avoid discussing the last twenty years, particularly the "dirty war" and the "disappeared."

"The juntas, military governments, tried to reorganize the nation. Argentina had many, many terrible problems: inflation, labor unrest, protesters, subversives, and terrorists. In the course of restoring order, many left-wing radicals were killed. They were called the Disappeared, because they were taken away in secret. . . . Prisoners were thrown from airplanes. Into the sea—Desaparecidos. . It happened. We can't change that. No one was blameless."

Not even the victims? Jim wondered: He knew he was staring but couldn't stop himself.

"The church herself has asked for forgiveness," Faveros said staunchly. He looked at Jim. What reply did he demand to his cold-blooded account of bloody history? Jim sat still and silent. To speak or to move would appear to condone.

Faveros gesticulated with his left hand while he shifted gears with his right and steadied the wheel with his knees. "It was a desperate time," he explained. "And desperate times breed desperate measures. . . . Sometimes the desaparecidos left children behind. Orphans. Those children were adopted. Orphans who had nowhere to go were taken in by childless couples. . . . Our child was adopted. My son. Twenty-five years ago. Now he wants his 'real' mother. We gave him everything. My wife's family is wealthy. He was raised like a prince. His mother is surely dead. In the sea." Jim looked at him and was thunderstruck at the transformation. A second ago Faveros had been a monster. Now he was a sad little man, a heartbroken parent. Faveros looked across the steering wheel at Jim. "Is nothing simple, young man? Or is it simply that every act has a consequence?" He gave a desolate shrug.

"So now we spend our days waiting for him to come to his senses. My wife is his mother. She's gone back into therapy. And so have I." He tried to smile. "Psychoanalysis, the Argentine vice. Sigmund Freud is the patron saint of Buenos Aires. . . . We would give our son anything. But all he wants is his so-called real mother. And she is surely dead." Tears trickled from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Then, to Jim's horror, his entire face seemed to crumple. He wept violently, heaving tears, gulping for air. The car skidded. Crying uncontrollably, Faveros slammed on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the road.

"I'm sorry," Jim said, trying to comfort him. "I know—I know what you're going through."

"You can't possibly know. No one who hasn't been here could."

"I've been here," said Jim, surprising himself and wishing instantly that he could take the words back.

"What? What de you mean?" Faveros demanded. "What do you mean, 'here'? You were not here."

"On the other side," said Jim. "On your child's side."

"What are you saying? Oh! You mean you were adopted."

It would be so easy to answer yes. Faveros was calming down and would soon resume driving Jim to the train. Let him think Jim was adopted, if it made him feel better. But the intensity of being on land, the relief of having brought the boat in safely, and the sorrow of Will's death were suddenly overwhelming. Jim felt his eyes burn with emotion.

"No, I wasn't adopted." He couldn't say it.

"You were either adopted or not, young man. Which was it?" Will made me his heir, Jim thought. He taught me stuff. Will was like a father. Suddenly he was on the verge of blurting out a secret he had never told anyone in the world, except Shannon.

"My mother 'confessed' to me once:' He fell silent, swallowed hard. Will, he thought. Will acted like a father. Like a real father.

Faveros was watching him closely.

'"She was very disappointed. My mother. Her life hadn't worked out as she had hoped. She was always searching... anything to make things better. Health food. Meditation. Vitamins. Gurus. . . . Do you know what est was? Did you have it here?"

"It was here. There were some who found it an effective shortcut examination of their soul and/or psyche."

"My mother had done it—before I was born. She told me that my real father—my biological father—was a trainer she'd met on an est retreat. A he-man rugged outdoors type. The exact opposite of my father . . . the man I thought was my father."

"How old were you—when she told you?"

"Fourteen."

"Qué macana! That is terrible. She obliterated your adolescence."

"I don't know if it was quite that bad:'

"Do you have phobias?"

Jim shook his head. Part of him was thinking, Why am I telling Faveros this? He's not even listening. Another part,

the part on the verge of tears, couldn't stop talking. "The thing was, I didn't know what to do with it."

"If you hadn't sailed in single-handed from Africa, I would have predicted that you would detest anything that evoked your mother's outdoorsman lover. Ah! Perhaps you are trying to emulate him. Transference."

"I had this secret. I knew what my mother had done to my father—the man I always thought was my father—but I couldn't tell him. So I didn't do anything about it." Captain Faveros sat up straight and looked Jim directly in the eye. "That was not your job, young man."

"What do you mean?"

"It was not for you to tell, to betray your mother's confidence—misdirected and irresponsible as it was."

"She did worse than betray him. She tricked him into raising a kid who wasn't his."

"Your father had eyes. He should have seen what was going on." Faveros's nostrils flared with indignation. "What sort of man would let his wife go off alone on a 'retreat.' He should have done something about it—he should have confronted her! Ha! Listen to me talking." He laughed bitterly. "The 'father' expert. I couldn't even give my wife a child."