Bluewater Quest

by Charles Dougherty

  Liz laughed. "You almost like her? You're a mess, Dani. What do you mean, you almost like her?"

  "Why would she be interested in me, Liz?" Dani frowned. "What's her angle?"

  Liz pulled the plug from the sink drain and wiped her hands on the dish towel Dani still held. She took it from Dani and folded it over the towel bar in front of the sink. "Because you're an interesting person, Dani. You've had some unusual experiences."

  Dani shook her head and stared into space while Liz filled two glasses with the wine left from their dinner. "Come on up to the cockpit and tell me about it," Liz said. "Did she make you uncomfortable?"

  Dani took a glass of wine and followed Liz up the companionway ladder. "A little bit, at first," she said, as she sat down across from Liz.

  "But she helped you to get over your reticence?"

  "I guess. She backed off right away when I tried to change the subject. She'd asked about growing up in the islands, and I told her it wasn't what it sounded like, that it was a long story, and it was complicated because my parents were divorced."

  "Uh-huh," Liz said.

  "Her parents were divorced, too. She kind of understood. So she asked how you and I ended up in business together."

  "And pretty soon, you were telling her everything?"

  "Yes, I guess so. She was just so … I don't know … "

  "A good listener?"

  "I guess so."

  "Did she tell you much about herself?"

  "Um … when I asked, she did. She's just really nice. I haven't met many women like that, except you and Connie. You think I screwed up?"

  Liz almost laughed, until she saw the look on Dani's face. "No, you didn't screw up. You had a conversation. That's a good thing to do with our guests. It's good business. How did you leave off with her when I served dinner?"

  "She wants to hear more. I mostly told her about how we met — Mike Reilly, and all that, but not the details. Then that led to Phillip, and Sharktooth. You know. She wanted to hear about how I got to know all of them when I was little."

  "Good, Dani. I've told you before that you have an interesting story and that you should be more open with our guests. Now do you believe me?"

  "Maybe. Anyway, I like her. Do you think I can trust her?"

  "I think so, Dani. But what's the downside? I like her, too. Both of them, for that matter. Give it a try; making friends is a good thing to do."

  "Okay, I will. I'm looking forward to hearing how they're planning to run this quest, or whatever you want to call it."

  "Rick was flipping through some slides on his laptop while I was working on dinner; I didn't want to spy on him, but I think he's got quite a presentation to show us in the morning," Liz said.

  "Good. Maybe this charter will be fun after all. Let's turn in; I don't think we need to wait up for them, do you?"

  "No. Everybody's tired." Liz stood and stepped through the companionway with Dani right behind her.

  4

  "How do you two stay so slim?" Shellie asked, as she finished her breakfast. "I'd gain weight like crazy if I ate like this all the time."

  "Well, there are two things going for us," Liz said. "Sailing Vengeance is physically demanding, and we only eat this way when we have guests aboard."

  "What do you eat the rest of the time?"

  "Fruit and cheese, salads, grilled fish when we catch one."

  "What was the filling in that pastry you served with the eggs?" Rick asked.

  "Salt fish," Liz said. "It's a staple down here, along with pickled meat — pork, or beef. A lot of people in the islands don't have refrigerators."

  "What about fresh meat?" Shellie asked.

  "Chicken, or goat," Dani said. "Fresh pork, sometimes. Most of the islands don't have the acreage to support beef cattle, I guess. I would imagine that hasn't changed much since the period you're studying."

  "I think you're right. I suspect the early explorers had to be flexible in their diets," Rick said. "I don't know about chicken and goats — whether the Caribs would have had them, or any kind of domestic animals."

  "Was there mention of that in the records of this Moorish voyage?" Liz asked. "Their diet?"

  "Not much," Rick said. "That fleet would have been made up of seasoned travelers: sailors, soldiers, itinerant merchants. The man in command was Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn Aswad; he was a wealthy merchant. As best we can tell, he spent more of his life at sea than ashore."

  "I don't think of the Arabs as seagoing people," Dani said, "even though I know they were. But I picture them as poking around the Mediterranean, not crossing the Atlantic into the unknown."

  "That's true to an extent," Rick said. "But Khashkhash would have been driven by the same motives as Columbus."

  "He was looking for a route to Asia?" Liz asked. "I thought the Arabs were already trading in Asia."

  "They were. So were the Europeans, but the land routes were treacherous. Moving goods by ship was more efficient then, just as it is now. If you think about it, the relative advantage was probably bigger back then."

  "I hadn't really thought about that," Dani said, "but you're right. One ship could carry a lot more stuff than a string of camels, or whatever they were using."

  "Exactly," Rick said. "And the Arabs knew their way around; they were ahead of the Europeans in terms of geography and navigation. Finding your way across the desert isn't a lot different from sailing out of sight of land, if you think about it."

  "I can see that," Dani said.

  "So can I." Liz lifted the carafe of coffee and filled everyone's cups. "What's your agenda for the day? How can we help?"

  "Well, I had mentioned giving you our presentation, but we're in a little bit of a time crunch. I got an email last night just before we turned in, and I have an appointment with the curator of the Grenada National Museum in about an hour."

  "At the museum?" Liz asked.

  "Yes. How long will it take us to get there?"

  "Ten or fifteen minutes, if you take a taxi. It's not too far."

  Checking his watch, Rick said, "We'd better delay giving you the presentation, then. It's likely to take us a while, because we'll want time for you to really dig into some parts of it. Is that okay?"

  "Our time is yours," Dani said. "But I thought you wanted our reaction before you went live with the presentation. Could we do a crash version? Would that help?"

  Rick grinned. "Thanks, but it'll work out. I've been trying to line up the meeting with the curator for a while, and he's only blocked out a half hour. We talked about it before we left the States. This will just be a quick, 'get acquainted' session. He's going to set up a meeting with several other people he thinks will want to see the full pitch, maybe tomorrow or the next day."

  "We should be back in time to get through the presentation with you before lunch," Shellie said. "That way, we can explore all the details while we eat. Will that work?"

  "Sure," Liz said. "I'll put together a nice cold seafood salad while you're gone. That way, we can all sit down and go through your material, and when you're ready, we can eat without interrupting our discussion."

  "Sounds good to me," Rick said. "We'd better go below and get ready, I guess. Do we need to reserve a taxi?"

  "I'll take care of that for you," Dani said.

  As Colonel Rahimi had anticipated, his commanding officer had authorized him to proceed with his proposed mission to monitor the Saudis' Caribbean project. Rahimi sat in his office in Tehran, drinking strong tea as he reviewed the new material his research team had assembled over the last 24 hours. He had tasked his cyberespionage team with learning as much as possible about the American professor and the people who were supporting him.

  Thanks to his agent in Riyadh, Rahimi had a name for the American professor, as well as more information about his plans. The Saudis had funded Dr. Richard Everett's venture through a foundation in Washington which concealed their participation. Rahimi's agent in the Saudi prince's organization reported that the profess
or didn't know of the Saudi's interest in his work.

  As best Everett knew, his grant was funded by an anonymous donor with an interest in the possibility of pre-Columbian contacts between Spain or Portugal and the Americas. Western academics, Everett among them, had long speculated that Columbus was the beneficiary of knowledge from earlier explorers, so Everett was pleased to have his research funded.

  The foundation's director and Everett had discussed recent claims by the president of Turkey that Muslims had discovered America some 600 years before Columbus made his voyage. The director had mentioned that the Saudi royal family had procured numerous materials from the period when the Moors occupied the Iberian Peninsula. As a result, the professor had made a request through Saudi diplomatic representatives in the U.S., seeking access to documents related to early voyages across the Atlantic from what is now Spain. The Saudis had pretended some reluctance, but they had allowed themselves to be persuaded by the professor's sincere entreaty.

  Rahimi's cyberespionage group had hacked into the foundation's computers and uncovered Everett's credentials and his travel plans, as well as evidence of the Saudis' manipulation. Everett and his wife had flown to Grenada from the U.S., arriving yesterday. The foundation had wired $250,000 U.S. to a charter yacht broker in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ten days earlier. Surreptitious access to the broker's computer revealed the name of the yacht which had been chartered for Everett's use.

  Rahimi studied the website for the yacht Vengeance. Surprised to see that it was operated by two young women, he made note of their names as he stared at their pictures. Both were beautiful; he wondered if that would cause friction between Everett and his wife. His interest wasn't prurient; he was looking for any possible source of leverage for his surveillance team to use.

  Rahimi wondered about the selection of the yacht. He never assumed that such things were the result of chance. He would rule out all other possibilities before accepting that fate had put the professor on that particular yacht. He closed the report and started typing.

  First, he sent a short email to his research team, ordering background information on the Everetts as well as on the two women who ran the boat. As an afterthought, he asked for information on the vessel's ownership and registration.

  After he sent that email, he composed another one ordering his field operatives to fly to Grenada from Martinique. He provided as much information as he had on the yacht and instructed them to look for it. If they failed to find it, or if the Everetts weren't aboard, their first priority was to locate the professor and his wife. They should maintain surveillance on the Everetts and the yacht. He wanted to know what the Everetts' business in Grenada was.

  Next, he turned his attention to the field operatives' travel arrangements. They should be arriving in Martinique about now. Clicking through airline schedules, he saw that there were a number of inter-island flights on regional carriers. Connections permitting, his team should be on the ground in Grenada in the early afternoon.

  "How was the meeting?" Liz asked, as she poured coffee for everyone. They sat in the shade of the big awning that was stretched over Vengeance’s cockpit.

  "It went well enough," Rick said. "Dr. Johnson is one of the most knowledgeable people around on the subject of early European influence in the islands. I’ve read a lot of his work over the years."

  "He didn’t think a follow-up meeting was necessary, though," Shellie said.

  "No?" Dani asked.

  "Not yet, anyway," Rick said. "He couldn't pull together anybody he thought could contribute to our project. He did steer me to some references, though. I have some new leads to research."

  "Here?" Dani asked.

  "On the web, at least to start with. He ran across some material years ago that he thought might help, but he doesn’t have the references. It was stuff that he didn’t see as relevant to his work at the time."

  "I was surprised by that," Shellie said. "I can’t believe he didn’t chase down those leads."

  "Well, like he said, I guess he thought it would be a distraction. One of the hazards of the publish or perish environment is tunnel vision."

  "Okay, no fair," Dani said. "What are you two talking about?"

  Rick grinned. "Sorry. We’ve been arguing about it since we left him. Shellie and I see it differently. She's less biased than I am." He looked at Shellie. "Why don’t you tell them?"

  She took a sip of coffee and nodded, putting her mug down before she spoke. "After Columbus reported what he'd found, the Spanish focused on the Greater Antilles and North and South America. That’s where the riches were. They weren’t too interested in the little islands, so the French and the English fought over them, along with the Dutch. But mostly the French and the English. They saw an opportunity for agricultural colonies. The Dutch were more interested in trading, I guess. With me so far?" Shellie paused for another sip of coffee.

  Dani and Liz nodded.

  "Okay. Dr. Johnson was interested mostly in Grenada. The French got here first. French missionaries, in fact. Johnson was reading some of their early accounts, which were more like diaries and personal correspondence than anything else. Anyway, the French priest Johnson studied the most was swapping letters with a friend in Martinique. That's where he stumbled across the information he thought might help us. The two priests were debating why it was that the Indians had a number of Spanish words and phrases in their language."

  "Don’t forget the key word, Shellie," Rick said, when she paused for another swallow of coffee.

  "Right," she said. "The priest in Martinique was the one who mentioned that the borrowed vocabulary was archaic. Ancient was the way he described it."

  "Keep in mind that he was writing in the early 1600s," Rick said. "So when he said ancient, we’re talking really old."

  Dani frowned. "But that’s a hundred years after Columbus, when these priests were writing to each other, right?"

  "You’re right," Shellie said. "But you have to realize that the Romance languages went through some fairly rapid evolution after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Before the Moorish conquest, the people on the Iberian Peninsula spoke various dialects of what’s called Vulgar Latin. That was a corrupt, simplified version of Classical Latin, and it evolved into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian."

  "Okay," Liz said. "When the French priests said the Spanish phrases were archaic, were they talking about Vulgar Latin?"

  "Almost. But the branch of Vulgar Latin which had evolved into Spanish by the early 1600s was heavily influenced by the Moors. They invaded Spain in the early 700s, almost a thousand years before the French missionaries were here in the islands. The Moors interjected Arabic and an Arabic dialect of their own, called Mozarabic, into the Vulgar Latin spoken by the people they conquered. There are thousands of words in modern Spanish that come directly from Arabic."

  "Does that mean the missionaries thought the Moors came to the islands before Columbus?" Dani asked.

  "It’s hard to know what they thought. They may have written their thoughts, or they may not have," Rick said. "Johnson didn't know how much of their correspondence survived until now. He wasn't even sure where he picked up that thread. He thought the reference he recalls might have been a secondary source. And we don’t know for sure what they meant by ‘ancient Spanish,’ either. That’s my homework assignment from Dr. Johnson." he smiled.

  "That sounds like a whole different project," Liz said. "You could spend a lifetime trying to track that down, couldn’t you?"

  Rick grinned. "A lifetime, or as long as the funding holds out. It's easy to get sidetracked in this business."

  "I can see that," Liz said.

  "What's next?" Dani asked.

  "Let's get started on our presentation," Shellie said. "We need to think about what we want to accomplish in Grenada, but the presentation's a good start. It'll get you up to speed enough so that you can give us your thoughts on how we should start scouting the islands."

  "Good," said Dani.r />
  "Let's go below. I'll set up my laptop on the dining table," Rick said.

  5

  "Leila, Bert. Have a nice walk?" the man asked, as the couple stopped at his table in the marina's open-air restaurant. He had watched their approach while the attractive blonde sitting with him scanned the dining area.

  "Lovely," the trim, dark-haired Leila said. Her companion, Bert, held a chair for her. She sat down and took a sip of the fruit punch that had been delivered in her absence. Leila Kelley, known within Quds Force as Laleh Kazemi, smiled at the man who had spoken to her.

  "There's a boat here that caught our attention, Ed," Bert said, as he sat down across from Leila.

  Ed, the man who had greeted them, raised his eyebrows and looked around, satisfied that no one was in earshot. It was late enough so that the lunch crowd had cleared out. Ed, named Eshan Gorbhani when he was born, was traveling on a U.S. passport in the name of Edward Gordon. He was in charge of the Quds Force field team assigned to watch Dr. Richard Everett.

  "This place is empty; we can talk. Just watch out for the waitress," Ed said. "You found them?"

  "Yes," Bert said. His birth name was Hirbod Pahlavi, although his U.S. passport identified him as Herbert Parsons. "The boat's name's on the stern in gold leaf. Vengeance. She's a beauty, too."

  "Were the people aboard?" the blonde woman asked, continuing to sweep her eyes over their surroundings. Ashraf Esfahani, or Ashley Stevens, as she was calling herself, was their lookout.

  Leila nodded. "Yes. All four of them. They were lounging in the cockpit when we walked by on our way to the end of the pier. When we came back, they were going below deck."

  Ashley saw the waitress come out of the kitchen with their food. She dropped her napkin and bent to the side to retrieve it. The group fell silent at this prearranged signal. They had worked together for almost a year; they had a well-honed set of nonverbal cues. Posing as two American couples traveling together was a cover that served them well, even when they were working the Arab countries, their normal territory.