The Nautical Chart
THE NAUTICAL CHART
'Spanish galleons and sunken treasure have been the stuff of adventure novels since Robert Louis Stevenson sent the man with the black spot into the bar of the Admiral Benbow.
The Nautical Chart
succeeds in proving that in the right hands they can still inspire romance and intrigue in the 21st century ... A clever, well-crafted literary adventure story: a romantic intrigue for all fans of the intellectual thriller'
The Times
'Powered by an infectious joy in storytelling, [Perez-Reverte’s] vessel speeds to a surprising and satisfying destination. This is literature that is unembarrassed also to be entertainment, and is thus a noble tribute to its salty forebears of centuries past...
As an adventure yarn,
The Nautical Chart
is near-irreproachable'
Guardian
'Perez-Reverte places his adventure within an exciting tradition of maritime storytelling... Tanger Soto has a determination that reminds me of Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla'
Independent
'This vivid and colourful tale of lost treasure, love and betrayal on the high seas is a work that conjures the shade of past masters of nautical adventure. Conrad, Melville and Stevenson are in this heady brew, but not one of those masters ever produced something quite as rich and strange as Perez-Reverte's utterly individual narrative' Barry Forshaw,
Amazon.co.uk
A classic of its genre, equal to the best of Eric Ambler and Patrick O'Brian - and, beyond genre, not far below the levels and depths plumbed by Melville and Conrad themselves ... In a virtually perfect fusion of absorbing action and precise, intricate characterisation, Perez-Reverte magically sustains the tension and suspense over a span of almost 500 pages'
Kirkus Reviews
'In the most marvellous way,
The Nautical Chart
makes the wind of the high seas blow once more'
Le Monde
'O'Brian himself would envy Perez-Reverte s gift for storytelling and his nautical savvy
Le Figaro Magazine
ARTURO
PEREZ
-
REVERTE
was born in 1951 in Cartagena, Spain. He was a television journalist who has appeared on some of the world's most dangerous crises. He is the author of
The Flanders Panel, The Dumas Club, The Seville Communion,
and
The Fencing Master.
A
RTURO
P
EREZ-
R
EVERTE
THE NAUTICAL CHART
A
NOVEL
OF
ADVENTURE
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
PICADOR
Firstt published 2001 by Harcourt, Inc., New York
First published in Great Britain 2002 by Picador
This paperback edition published 2002 by Picador an imprint of Pan Maaniilan Ltd Pan MacmiUan, 20 New Wharf Road, London ru 91m Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN
0330486179
Copyright © Arturo Perez-Reverte 2000 English translation copyright O Margaret Sayers Peden 2001
The right of Arturo Perez-Reverte to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The right of Margaret Sayers Peden to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
© Map pages viii-ix: Carlos Puerta O Map pages x-ii: Reproduced under permission of the Instituto Hidrogrifico de la Marina. Not valid for navigational purposes.
Please note the disinterested collaboration of the Instituto Hidrografico de la Marina.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
579864
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,
or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A nautical chart is much more than an indispensable instrument for getting from one place to another; it is an engraving, a page of history, at times a novel of adventure.
JACQUES
DUPUET
40
LET
US
observe the night. It is nearly perfect, with Polaris visible in its prescribed location, to the right and five times the distance of the line formed between Merak and Dubhe. Polaris will remain in that exact place for the next twenty thousand years, and any sailor watching it will be comforted by seeing it overhead. It is, after all, reassuring to know that something somewhere is immutable, as precise people set a course on a nautical chart or on the blurred landscape of a life. If we continue perusing the stars, we will have no difficulty finding Orion, and then Perseus and the Pleiades. That will be easy because the night is so clear, not a cloud in the sky, not a hint of a breeze. The wind from the southwest eased at sunset, and the dock is a black mirror reflecting the lights of the cranes in the port, the lighted castles high on the mountains, and the flashes—green on one side and red on the other—from the lighthouses of San Pedro and Navidad.
Now let us turn to the man. He stands motionless, leaning against the coping of the wall. He is looking at the sky, which appears darker in the east, and thinking that in the morning the easterly will be blowing, raising a swell out beyond the harbor. He also seems to be smiling a strange smile. Lighted from below by the glow of the port, his face is less hopeful than most, and perhaps even bitter. But we know the reason. We know that during the last weeks, at sea and a few miles from here, wind and waves have been decisive in this man's life. Although now they have no importance at all.
Let us not lose sight of him, because we are going to tell his story. As we look over the port with him, we can make out the lights of a ship moving slowly away from the dock. The sound of her engines is muffled by distance and the sounds of the city, along with the throb of propellers churning the black water as the crew hauls in the final length of mooring line. And as he watches from the wall, the man feels two different types of pain. In the pit of his stomach is a pain born of the sadness evident in the grimace that resembles—soon we will understand that it merely resembles—a smile. But there is a second pain, sharper and more precise, that comes and goes on his right side, there where a cold moistness makes his shirt stick to his body as blood seeps down toward his hip, soaking the inside of his trousers with each beat of his heart and each pulse of his veins.
Fortunately, the man thinks, my heart is beating very slowly tonight.
Lot 307
I
have swum through oceans and sailed through libraries. HERMAN
MELVILLE
,
Moby Dick
We could call him Ishmael, but in truth his name is Coy. I met him in the next-to-last act of this story, when he was on the verge of becoming just one more shipwrecked sailor floating on his coffin as the whaler
Rachel
looked for lost sons. By then he had already been drifting some, including the afternoon when he came to the Claymore auction gallery in Barcelona with the intention of killing time. He had a small sum of money in his pocket and, in a room in a boarding-house near the Ramblas, a few books, a sextant, and a pilot's license that four months earlier the head office of the Merchant Marine had suspended for two years, after the
Isla Negra,
a forty-thousand-ton container ship, had run aground in the Indian Ocean at 04:20 hours... on his watch.
Coy liked auctions of naval objects, although in his present situation he was in no position to bid. But Claymore's, located on a first floor on calle Consell de Cent, was air-conditioned and served drinks at the end of the auction, and besides, the young woman at the reception desk had long legs and a pretty smile. As for the items to be sold, he enjoyed looking at them and imagining the stranded sailors who had been carrying them here and there until they were washed up on this final beach. All through the session, sitting with his hands in the pockets of his dark-blue wool jacket, he kept track of the buyers who carried off his favorites. Often this pastime was disillusioning. A magnificent diving suit, whose dented and gloriously scarred copper helmet made him think of shipwrecks, banks of sponges and Negulesco's films with giant squid and Sophia Loren emerging from the water with her wet blouse plastered to her body, was acquired by an antique dealer whose pulse never missed a beat as he raised his numbered paddle. And a very old Browne & Son hand-bearing compass, in good condition and in its original box, for which Coy would have given his soul during his days as an apprentice, was awarded, without any change in the opening price, to an individual who looked as if he knew absolutely nothing about the sea; that piece would sell for ten times its value if it were displayed in the window of any maritime sporting-goods shop.
The fact is, that afternoon the auctioneer hammered down lot 306—a Ulysse Nardin chronometer used in the Italian Royal Navy—at the opening price, consulting his notes as he pushed up his glasses with his index finger. He was suave, and was wearing a salmon-colored shirt and a rather dashing necktie. Between bids he took small sips of a glass of water.
"Next lot:
Atlas Maritimo de las Costas de Espana,
the work of Urrutia Salcedo. Number three oh seven."
He accompanied the announcement with a discreet smile saved for pieces whose importance he meant to highlight. An eighteenth-century jewel of cartography, he added after a significant pause, emphasizing the word "jewel" as if it pained him to release it. His assistant, a young man in blue overalls, held up the large folio volume so it could be seen from the floor, and Coy looked at it with a stab of sadness. According to the Claymore catalogue, it was rare to find this edition for sale, since most of the copies were in libraries and museums. This one was in perfect condition. Most likely it had never been on a ship, where humidity, penciled notations, and natural wear and tear left their irreparable traces on navigational charts.
The auctioneer was opening the bidding at a price that would have allowed Coy to live for half a year in relative comfort. A man with broad shoulders, a clear brow, and long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, who was sitting in the first row and whose cell phone had rung three times, to the irritation of others in the room, held up his paddle, number n. Other hands went up as the auctioneer, small wooden gavel in hand, turned his attention from one to another, his modulated voice repeating each offer and suggesting the next with professional monotony The opening price was about to be doubled, and prospective buyers of lot 307 began dropping by the wayside. Joining the corpulent individual with the gray ponytail in the battle was another man, lean and bearded, a woman—of whom Coy could see only the back of a head of short blond hair and the hand raising her paddle—and a very well-dressed bald man. When the woman doubled the initial price, gray ponytail half-turned to send a miffed glance in her direction, and Coy glimpsed green eyes, an aggressive profile, a large nose, and an arrogant expression. The hand holding his paddle bore several gold rings. The man gave the appearance of not being accustomed to competition, and he turned to his right brusquely, where a dark-haired, heavily made-up young woman who had been murmuring into the phone every time it rang was now suffering the consequences of his bad humor. He rebuked her harshly in a low voice.
"Do I hear a bid?"
Gray ponytail raised his hand, and the blonde woman immediately counterattacked, lifting her paddle, number 74. That caused a stir in the room. The lean bearded man decided to withdraw, and after two new raises the bald, well-dressed man began to waver.
Gray ponytail raised the bidding, and caused new frowns in his vicinity when his phone rang once again. He took it from the hand of his secretary and clamped it between his shoulder and his ear; at the same time his free hand shot up to respond to the bid the blonde had just made. At this point in the contest, the entire room was clearly on the side of the blonde, hoping that ponytail would run out of either money or phone batteries. The Urrutia was now at triple the opening price, and Coy exchanged an amused glance with the man in the next seat, a small dark-haired man with a thick mustache and hair slicked back with gel. His neighbor returned the look with a courteous smile, placidly crossing his hands in his lap and twirling his thumbs. He was small and fastidious, almost prissy, and had melancholy, appealing, slightly bulging eyes, like frogs in fairy tales. He wore a red polka-dot bow tie and a hybrid, half Prince of Wales, half Scots tartan jacket that gave him the outlandishly British air of a Turk dressed by Burberry. "Do I have a higher bid?"
The auctioneer held his gavel high, his inquisitive eyes focused on gray ponytail, who had handed the cell phone back to his secretary and was staring at him with annoyance. His latest bid, exactly three times the original price, had been covered by the blonde, whose face Coy, more and more curious, could not see no matter how hard he tried to peer between the heads in front of him. It was difficult to guess whether it was the bump in the bidding that was perturbing ponytail or the woman's brassy competitiveness.
"Ladies and gentlemen, is this the last bid?" asked the auctioneer, with great equanimity.
He was looking at ponytail, without eliciting a response. Everyone in the room was looking expectantly in the same direction. Including Coy.
"Then at the current price, going once— At this price, going twice—"
Gray ponytail thrust up his paddle in a violent gesture, as if he were brandishing a weapon. As a murmur spread through the room, Coy again looked to the blonde. Her paddle was already up, topping his bid. Once again the tension built, and for the next two minutes everyone in the room followed the rapid duel's intense pace as if watching a fight to the death. Paddle number 11 was no sooner down than 74 was up. Not even the auctioneer could keep up; he had to pause a couple of times to sip from the glass of water sitting on the lectern.
"Do I have a further bid?"
Urrutia's
Atlas
was at five times its opening price when number 11 committed an error. Perhaps his nerve faltered, although the error might have been his secretary's; her phone rang insistently and she passed it to him at a critical moment, just as the auctioneer was holding the gavel high in expectation of a new bid, and gray ponytail hesitated as if reconsidering. The error, if that is what it was, might also have been the fault of the auctioneer, who may have interpreted the sudden movement, the turn toward the secretary, as a capitulation and an end to the bidding. Or perhaps there was no error at all, because auctioneers, like other human beings, have their hang-ups and their phobias, and this one might have been inclined to favor ponytail's opponent. Whatever the case, three seconds were all that were needed for the gavel to bang down on the lectern. Urrutia's
Atlas
was awarded to the blonde woman whose face Coy still hadn't seen.
LOT
307 was one of the last, and the rest of the session proceeded without emotion or drama, except that the man with the ponytail did not bid on any other item, and before the end of the auction he stood up and left the room, followed by the hastily tapping heels of the secretary—not, however, without first directing a furious glare at the blonde. Nor did she lift her paddle again. The thin, bearded individual ended up in possession of a very handsome marine telescope, and a gentleman with a stern expression and dirty fingernails, sitting in front of Coy, obtained for only slightly more than the opening price a model of the
San Juan Nepomuceno
that was almost three feet long and in quite good condition. The last lot, a set of old charts from the British Admiralty, remained unsold. The auctioneer called an end to the session, and everyone got up and moved to the small salon where Claymore treated its clients to champagne.
Coy looked for the blond woman. In other circumstances, he would have devoted more attention to the smile of the young receptionist, who came up to him with a trayful of goblets. The receptionist recognized him from other auctions. She knew that he never bid on anything, and was undoubtedly aware of the faded jeans and white sneakers he wore as a complement to the dark navy-blue jacket with two parallel rows of buttons that at one time had been gold and bearing the anchor of the Merchant Marine, but now were a more discreet plain black. The cuffs showed the marks of the officer's stripes they had once sported. Coy was very fond of the jacket—when he wore it he felt connected with the sea. Especially at dusk when he made the rounds of the port district, dreaming of the days when just calling at hiring offices you could pick up a ship to sign on to, times when there were remote islands that were a man's haven, reasonable republics that knew nothing of two-year suspensions, and where arrest warrants and subpoenas from naval tribunals never arrived. He had had the jacket made to order fifteen years earlier, with regulation trousers and cap, at the tailor shop of Sucesores de Rafael Vails. After he passed the examination for second officer, he would sail everywhere with it, wearing it on the ever rarer occasions in the life of a Merchant Marine officer when it was obligatory to wear correct attire. He called that ancient treasure his Lord Jim jacket—still very appropriate to his present situation—because it dated from the beginning of what he, an assiduous reader of seafaring literature, denned as his Conrad period. In that vein, Coy had previously lived a Stevenson period and a Melville period. Of the three, around which he ordered his life whenever he decided to take a glance back at the wake that every man leaves behind him, this one was the least happy. He had just turned thirty-eight, and was feeing twenty months on suspension and a captain's examination that had been postponed without a set date. He was stranded on land, burdened by a court action that drew a frown from the hiring officer of any shipping company whose door he darkened, and the boarding-house near the Ramblas and his meals at Teresa's were mercilessly devouring his savings. A couple of weeks more and he would have to accept a berth as an ordinary seaman aboard some rusting freighter with a Ukrainian crew, Greek captain, and Antillean registry, the kind that ship-owners scuttle for the insurance from time to time, often with a bogus cargo and no time to pack your seabag. Either mat or give up the sea and look for a job on dry land. The mere idea nauseated him, because Coy—even though it had been of little use aboard the
Isla Negra
—possessed the principal virtue of every sailor: a certain sense of insecurity that took the form of mistrust, something comprehensible only to someone who has seen a barometer drop five millibars in three hours on the Bay of Biscay, or has found himself being overtaken by a half-million-ton, quarter-mile-long oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz, at closer and closer quarters. It was the same vague sensation, or sixth sense, that woke you at night when there was a change in the throb of the engines, that raised apprehension at the sight of a black cloud on the far horizon, or when unexpectedly, and for no real reason, the captain appeared on the bridge to give a look around, as if he had nothing particular in mind. A feeling that was normal, on the other hand, in a profession in which the usual procedure when standing watch was to make minute by minute comparisons between the gyroscopic and magnetic compasses; or, to put it another way, to verify a false north by means of another north that itself was not true. And as was the case with Coy, that sense of insecurity was paradoxically accentuated as soon as his feet touched the deck of a ship. He had the misfortune, or the good luck, to be one of those men who was happiest ten miles from the nearest coast.