Shelter Rock

by MP Miles

  Angel thought grimly of the work ahead but then cheered. He’d go out to Hartbeespoort Dam at the weekend, stay over at a lodge on Harties and get some exercise, take a long hike in the rocky ridges of the Magaliesberg. He knew a safe place to leave Elanza’s wreath, somewhere with a wide view south, a view over the clean grasslands of the highveld. He’d go to Shelter Rock.

  The British Virgin Islands

  2017

  Epilogue

  The yacht Pacific Wave, wide in the beam but powerfully rigged, effortlessly pushed aside sixty tons of blue water. On her stern the name had been softly highlighted with a white shadow, along with the home port – London. She was five thousand sea miles from home, enjoying tropical water.

  Ralph, his face tanned under a wide hat, sat with two fingers on the wheel. The yacht sailed herself, the wind forty degrees off the port bow, the main and runner on hard, a turn or two on the big genoa just to keep her balanced.

  Through a gap in the reef past Mosquito Island the North Sound opened wide, the water sheltered on all sides and almost completely flat off the yacht club dock at the east end of the bay. Ralph came alongside the long YCCS pontoon and threw lines.

  A dark-haired girl climbed up the companionway steps wearing a bikini and sarong, a phone in her beach bag beeping as though someone had summoned her. They stepped off together and walked through gardens to a bar and a pool looking over Eustatia and Necker Islands.

  The barmaid lived locally, in the Valley on Virgin Gorda.

  “Hey, guys.”

  “Hi, Ginny.”

  The Yacht Club Costa Smeralda remained quiet outside of regattas. Curious boaters would often dinghy past, unsure if they could visit. Ginny’s only customer looked to be an old man sitting at the bar. He had very short greying hair and a clean-shaven face, mid-sixties but still powerful. Ralph thought he might be a retired US Marine or a fit New York stockbroker. In his experience they were either one or the other. A look passed between him and the girl, but then everyone looked at her twice.

  “I’ll grab some loungers by the pool. Get me a drink,” she said.

  Ralph smiled at Ginny.

  “Two glasses of Minuty and a big bottle of Pelegrino, please, Ginny.”

  At the bar the man sat looking at his glass.

  “Nice yacht,” he said.

  Ralph couldn’t place the accent. He’d become very good at it. He could now surprise Canadians by saying which city they came from. But he had been wrong about the old man. Not military or a stockbroker. And not New York, not the US – much further east.

  “Yeah, she’s okay. Got used to her now,” said Ralph.

  “Yours?”

  “Well, technically she’s owned by a company.”

  “Ah, for tax reasons.”

  “No. Nothing to do with tax. She’s owned by a British company, not a British Virgin Islands one. It’s to limit the liability.”

  The man seemed to understand.

  “In case someone goes overboard?”

  “In case I poison someone with a dodgy burger.”

  They both laughed.

  “You charter, then?”

  “When we can. Not enough.”

  “Mmmm… I get it,” said the old man. “Americans?”

  “Yep, mostly. Boston or Austin. Don’t know why.”

  “Works out okay?”

  “Oh yes. Love ’em. Shouldn’t be allowed to use the radio, though. They all sound like they’re a moon shot talking to Houston. Brits are just as bad. Some of them have voices that have sparked revolutions.”

  “Like mine?”

  Ralph had embarrassed himself. Of course. Excellent accented English.

  “You sail around here?” he asked.

  “Mostly. Pick up in St Thomas and do a tour up to Virgin Gorda and back. Usually a week’s trip. We’re quiet in the summer. Our guests are usually in Maine or Rhode Island on their own boats then.”

  “What, from Memorial Day to Labour Day?”

  “That’s right. Funny that back home we’d say summer lasted from Chelsea Flower Show until Cowes Week.”

  The man smiled.

  “Any pirates?”

  “Loads. They all run chandleries.”

  Ginny brought Ralph his drinks.

  “There you go, man,” she said.

  “Thanks, Ginny.”

  “Local?” the man asked.

  Ralph had become used to the questioning. For the past fourteen years he’d been watching the world go by at a sedate eight knots, and he felt he’d mentally slowed down to that pace. Nothing bothered him very much.

  “Sort of. Been here a while now.”

  Fourteen years. Ever since a London lawyer interrupted you during a typically difficult day at work and surprised you with a letter from a dead woman in Johannesburg and a big cheque. Sign here please, Mr Phillips, and have a lovely life. I hope you kept the letter.

  “Learnt a lot, I guess?”

  “For sure. There’s loads that I know now that I wish I’d known then,” agreed Ralph.

  “Such as?”

  “Umm, naked Twister.”

  The man laughed and muscles quivered in his neck.

  “You?” asked Ralph. “Where are you from?”

  “All over.” The man smiled. “It’s complicated.”

  “Passing through?”

  “Yes. Just passing through.”

  “Need a yacht? No. Not this time, right?”

  “No. Not this time. It sounds fun, though. I met a bloke at the airport in Antigua. Hell of a delay. What’s that airline called?”

  “Leave island any time.”

  “Yeah. That must be it. He worked in London. Had a vacation here on a boat. He loved it. Zac someone.”

  “Sadly not with us. I don’t know anyone called Zac.”

  Good for you. You still lie very well. Didn’t answer too quickly. No fumbling or looking away. Well done. You’ve had years of practice, of course. Must have come in useful for work, with all that foreign travel. What did you do? Oh yes. A vegetable trader. Excellent. Perfectly understandable justification for moving freely around the countryside. Brilliant ‘living cover’. Follow the sun to find the sweetest corn in Morocco, Senegal or Israel. Maybe somewhere cooler for cheaper broccoli. Where would that be? China? Chile? Ukraine? Take a few photos of irrigation booms, harvest rigs, cold stores, factories. Take a few more while looking at Egyptian potatoes, not that you ever bought potatoes as the job had been done to death, but the fields were enticingly close to those interesting tunnel entrances at a huge construction site in the middle of nowhere. Take a sneaky picture of those Italian-speaking businessmen with the silent pouting hookers, a tango of memory stick swapping taking place with an impatient sweating waiter in that fancy Buenos Aires restaurant while you sit the other side of the room discussing garlic prices. And some more of the guardhouse and security to that Turkish co-located ‘civil’ and military airport, the one with no name, that you took through the window of the hire car on a drive-by while you distracted the farmer who talked anxiously of his pesticide application records, the airport that he knew nothing about even though his leek fields went up to the shiny razor-wire fence glinting in the Anatolian sunshine. You’d take pictures of anything they asked you for. Anything Zac needed.

  Ralph paid for his drinks from an old brown leather wallet. The man saw it and smiled.

  “Good luck with the boat.” He looked at the girl on the lounger. “And everything else.”

  Ralph walked away but then turned and went back to the bar, still holding the drinks.

  “I’m sorry. Have we met before?” Ralph asked.

  “No, I don’t believe so.”

  Ralph fumbled glasses and a bottle held by the neck onto the bar top.

  “My name’s Ralph.” He pointed tow
ard the dock. “And the boat is called Pacific Wave. Just in case you change your mind.”

  “Okay. I’ll remember.”

  “And your name?”

  The man got up to leave.

  “Mr Rock.”

  “Rock,” Ralph repeated.

  Halfway back to the lounger Ralph looked back, Angel Rock already walking down a path towards the sea.

  “Who were you talking to?” the girl asked.

  “Some bloke. Talking about the boat.”

  They could see the boat from where they sat by the pool. Four people in a dinghy were taking pictures of her. She had that effect. It had been the reason he’d bought her. If she looked right, she’d go right.

  “Did he come from the US?”

  “No, England. A big lawyer, I should think, here to open some offshore accounts. Or empty them. But there may have been something else in his voice as well,” he said.

  The girl opened a tablet and started to read. Ralph looked over the pool to the bay. Kite surfers were flying in a billionaires’ playground.

  “Have you got a thing on that to translate?”

  “Sure,” she said. “What language?”

  Ralph wondered. He’d never forgotten the man in Uganda with surprising and unmistakably accented English. What do they speak in Swaziland? Swazi? English? His name had sounded more German. Rots. Danish? Dutch?

  “English to Afrikaans.”

  She hesitated.

  “What word?”

  “Rock.”

  She tapped away and then laughed.

  “Funny. It’s similar but you would never guess it.”

  “I think I could.”

  He looked at her and then out over the bay.

  She put the tablet down and stared at him before felinely stretching in the sun on the lounger.

  “I’m hot. Take me back to the boat.”

  Ralph looked at her curiously.

  *

  Angel walked from the bar to a helipad at a nearby hotel. A canary yellow Robinson rocked while waiting for him, chirping, its rotors already turning. He climbed in and put on headphones.

  “All done, Mr Rots?” asked the pilot.

  Angel had debated coming, but in the end had decided that Ralph was an essential part of his memory of Elanza. Ralph wasn’t important to him personally, or to the Intelligence Service. He’d been a topic of conversation with Elanza, a relaxing diversion to their own problems in the way one might ask, ‘I wonder what old so-and-so is up to these days?’. Angel’s job, and his access to the Owl Sight communication interception technology at Rietvlei, had made it easy for him, almost as a leisure pursuit, to follow Ralph as he stumbled through his life. Continuing to keep a curious trivial eye on him helped to remind Angel of the woman he’d loved.

  “Yes. Everything done.”

  The helicopter took off over a beautiful bay of blue water and small islands with perfect beaches. Angel looked out of the window.

  “Magnificent.”

  “Angels’ view,” said the pilot.

  Angel looked at him.

  “What?”

  “What the angels must see. Retiring soon, I hear.”

  “Yep, just tidying up some loose ends while I can.”

  “When did you join the Service, sir?”

  “At the beginning. 1980.”

  “At NIS? With Professor Lombard and Nick Roux?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll have seen some changes in thirty-seven years.”

  Angel thought of what he’d just left at home. A fourteen-year-old boy shot in Soweto by a foreign national that had led to xenophobic violence against foreign shop owners. The Nkandla report showing that President Zuma had stolen millions of tax dollars for his new home. Leaked documents. The spy cables. Senior politicians in nuclear talks with Iranian officials.

  “Same shit. Different colour,” said Angel.

  “Think you’ll be coming back to the BVI?”

  Angel looked down at the exquisite Oil Nut Bay, natural beauty unspoiled by development.

  “If needed,” he said. “I’ve eyes on the ground. If needed I’ll get a call.”

  *

  Ralph and the girl walked back down the pontoon. As she stepped on board, a helicopter passed overhead and she glanced up.

  Before the hill cut off his view, Angel saw her. It appeared to him that they looked straight at each other, but quickly the helicopter lifted over Gorda Peak and the girl, Ralph and Pacific Wave were gone, replaced by the blue of the channel leading from the BVI towards St John.

  Acknowledgements

  Many encouraged me, probably without realising, and it was always unexpected. I would especially like to thank: Katie & Will, and Kathleen M-B; Viv & Nicola and Simon & Carol from Milton-on-Stour schooldays; Ian, Mark B and Dr Katherine from SGS/SHS; Heather in South Africa; Will B, David in Cumbria, Andy & Gina, and Julian (especially Julian) from Harper Adams; PK and Vera in Portugal; Tim, Toley, Calum, Hamish, Ros, Caru and Ellie, all from G’s; Dogga; John & Lyndon from the sailing club; Len in the Virgin Islands; structural editors Philippa and Parul; Helene for persisting with an early draft; the captains and crews of British Airways Gatwick based ‘triple seven’ fleet who talked aeroplanes and entertained in St Lucia; Bob in Grenada; Sabina for allowing me to stay at The Stone House, Marigot Bay and quietly finish everything off; Fern and Sophie at Troubador Publishing; and Lynn for putting up with it all every day.

  Coming soon...

  Easter Farm

  By MP Miles

  Easter Farm is a romantic thriller set in Portugal in 1996 with characters taken from Shelter Rock, the story of a boy’s journey through Africa.

  Apartheid has ended, and Angel Rots is progressing his professional career by fighting corruption in arms procurement - in this case mothballed Israeli jets sold as new to the highest bidder in a deal brokered by his nemesis the one-armed Nels.

  Ralph Philips, now farming in Portugal and falling in love, comes to Angel’s attention after tipping off customs about a suspected drugs haul. With smuggling gangs threatening Ralph’s vegetable growing business, and his new girl, Angel once more must personally intervene to protect the English boy.

  On the plains of the Alentejo, Angel’s professional and personal worlds spectacularly collide.

  About the author

  MP Miles is from a small town in Dorset. Aged eighteen, he escaped and walked alone through Africa from Cape Town to Cairo, the subject of much of his debut novel, Shelter Rock.

  He is a pilot, a diving instructor and an award-winning chef. A lifelong sailor, he now lives in the Caribbean onboard a yacht called Pacific wave.

  mpmiles.com