by Rich Johnson
Nicole frowned. “It’s nothing but a gamble. How can you call it an investment?”
“Look, anybody who knows anything about Wall Street will tell you that all investing is the same as gambling. You put your money into something that you hope will pan out. Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. It’s all a gamble. We’re just buying this big box and hoping that when we open it we’ll find something good. Same as investing.”
“So you feel good about it?”
He looked stunned. “Of course I feel good about it. Are you kidding? There might be a sports car in there, or a load of jewels that somebody’s shipping halfway around the world.”
“And if that were the case, what would you do with it?”
He was almost speechless, but finally stammered a response. “Why, why, I’d … I guess I’d … well, actually I’m not sure. I don’t need anything else.” Then his eyes brightened, “But wouldn’t it be great to have all that kind of stuff?”
Nicole patted him on the arm. “Dan. Get a grip. Listen to yourself.”
“Why, what do I sound like?”
“Greed. Lust, envy, covetousness, pride,” – she wrinkled her forehead – “but mostly lustful greed.”
“I don’t think so,” he protested. “It’s for the kids.”
“They don’t need anything else, either.”
Dan stood silent for a moment, thinking about Nicole’s words. The smoke and noise from de la Vega’s boat were closer now. “Are you saying that you don’t want the container?”
Her eyes danced as she broke into a grin. “Are you kidding? I was just giving you a hard time. Of course I want it. There might be a whole load of mink coats in there, or pearls, or oriental dolls. Wouldn’t those look nice in our living room? Maybe there will be some expensive paintings.”
Dan turned toward his wife so he could look her in the eyes. “Nicole Plover, are you playing with my psyche?”
She giggled. “I was just trying to send you off on a guilt trip. Don’t worry. What woman wouldn’t want to open a 40-foot gift package that dropped right out of the blue? My gosh, my gosh! I can hardly wait.”
A sigh escaped Dan’s lungs. “After all these years of marriage, I still don’t know how to read you, sometimes.”
She pinched his cheek and winked. “If I weren’t a mystery, life would be too easy.”
He tweaked her nose. “Well, I do love a challenge.”
“Ahoy there!” a shout rang out across the water.
They looked up and saw a dirty old platform made of wood that looked as if it had been salvaged from derelict dock pilings. Toward the rear of the barge stood a rusted crane, a spool of cable and an engine that appeared to have been yanked out of a dead tractor. A small tug was positioned behind the barge, pushing it ahead, and apparently straining under the load, as Dan looked at Nicole’s pretty dress then nodded toward the captain of the little tug. A cloud of black smoke belched from the exhaust stacks.
“I think maybe you have overdressed. Levis might be more suitable.”
Behind the wheel was a gray-haired old man, bent with age, wearing ragged clothes of dark, indistinguishable color. Between his few rotted teeth he held a limp cigar, dripping saliva from its unlit tip.
Nicole’s face reddened a shade. “I think you might be right.” She hurried off, down the steps into the starboard hull and then into the main stateroom.
“Senor de la Vega?” Dan shouted and waved toward the tug. “Thank you for coming. Have you had breakfast? I think my wife will be fixing something, if you want to join us.”
“A pleasure,” the old man shouted back. “I have had nothing to eat since yesterday. May I raft up to your boat after I set my barge adrift?”
Dan moved to the lifelines. “I will place the fenders and catch your lines.”
It wasn’t long before the boats were lashed together, and the old man climbed into the catamaran, leaving the barge to drift a few hundred yards away on the calm morning sea. Presently, Nicole came into the cockpit wearing Levis and a baggy t-shirt that had obviously been used for painting the bottom of the boat. She handed each of the men a glass of orange juice, smiled at Senor de la Vega and asked, “Now, what may I fix for your breakfast?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
A light swell rocked the boats gently as the men finished their breakfast and their negotiation. “Ah, senor,” Juan Baptista de la Vega droned, “the thousand dollars is my fee to come out and find you and survey the situation so I can see what I can do for you. It is a lot of trouble to hook up my barge and tow it this far, and fuel is very expensive.”
“I think I hear some bad news coming,” Dan said and exhaled loudly.
The old man didn’t pause to listen to the complaint. “Of course, it is customary in the salvage industry that after we get the container back to the island I will expect to receive a percentage of whatever is inside. I know that I am taking a very big chance, because it might be nothing of value. But we are in this together and it is only fair, do you not think?”
No, Dan did not think it was fair. “A deal is a deal,” he argued. “We agreed on a thousand dollars for you to salvage our container. You never said anything about a percentage, and I expect you to be a man of your word.”
“Oh, senor,” – the old man bowed his head as if ashamed – “I am sorry that you think such a thing of me. I am grandfather to twenty-two, father to nine, husband to three … or was it four, I can no longer remember. It cuts me to the heart to hear you say that you think I am not a man of my word. I weep to hear such a thing.”
“Dan,” Nicole whispered loudly through the cabin door, jerking her head for him to come and speak to her.
Irritation was in his voice as he said, “Excuse me, Senor de la Vega. My wife wants a word with me.”
“May she be more kind with you than you are with me,” the old man lamented. Then he held out an empty glass. “When you return, please bring me some more orange juice.”
Dan took the glass and shook his head in disgust as he rose from his place on the cushioned cockpit bench and went to the door. Nicole had a hard look in her eye. “What the heck are you doing? You trying to break this old man’s heart?”
“I’m negotiating,” Dan explained in a hushed voice. “He’s trying to rip us off.”
“Well, don’t be so hard on the poor old man. Look at him, he has nothing. And all he’s trying to do is support his family. My gosh, nine kids and twenty-two grandkids? Think how hard that is. It won’t hurt for us to be a little generous with him.”
Dan handed her the glass. “He wants more orange juice.”
She took the empty glass and stared at it. “I’ll have to make some more. He already drank all we had.”
Dan shot her a sour grin. “We’re trying to be generous, right?” He returned to his seat and Nicole closed the cabin door and headed for the galley. A moment later, she heard Dan exclaim at the top of his voice, “Sixty:forty! That’s robbery!”
As she reached the top of the steps leading from the galley, she heard de la Vega state his terms. “Senor, I am an old man, and my barge might not look like much to you. But it is the only barge within 200 miles. If I go away from here, you will have nothing. And, if you think about it, I can always come back and take this treasure for myself after you are gone. But if I help you, you will at least have something. We will both have something. It makes good business, no?”
“Dan,” Nicole’s voice called from the cabin door again.
“Por favor,” – Dan broke away from the negotiations again to talk with Nicole. “What now? Did you hear what he is demanding?”
She handed him a full glass of orange juice. “I did. I think the whole Caribbean did. It woke the kids and they’re wondering what’s going on. I don’t think all this arguing and bickering is good for them.”
“So? What do you want me to do?” His voice was tense with frustration.
She looked at him with a question in her eyes. “Are we doing this, or not
?”
“You think we should take the sixty:forty split?” he asked, his voice rising to a near falsetto.
She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. Let’s see, last time I checked, sixty beat zero all to heck.”
He looked hard at her for a long moment, and she stared back without flinching. Seeing that she wasn’t softening, he relented. “Oh, all right.” He threw his free hand into the air, nearly upsetting the glass in his other hand, then he turned and went back to his seat in the cockpit, handing the glass to de la Vega before he sat down. The next thing Nicole saw was Dan reluctantly shaking hands with Senor de la Vega.
“Okay.” The old man clapped his leathery hands then held one out, palm up.
“What’s that?” Dan asked.
The old man closed his hand and rubbed his thumb across his forefinger, the universal sign language for ‘pay me’.
“You want your money in advance?”
“Senor, I have already spent several hours of my time, burned a lot of fuel and put wear and tear on my equipment. It is only right that you pay me for my services.”
“And what have I gotten for my thousand dollars?” Dan protested.
“You need not worry, senor. I will load the container on my barge and take it to the island, as promised.” His palm was still out.
The door to the cabin opened, and Nicole stepped into the cockpit. Dan went to meet her and she handed him a stack of $20 bills that she had taken from their onboard safe. “Here,” she said as she approached de la Vega and held out her hand. “Half now, the rest when we have the container safely ashore. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?” She smiled sweetly as she folded then tucked the rest of the stack of bills inside her blouse. “I’ll just hold the rest right here,” – she patted her chest – “for safe keeping.”
For a moment, she thought she detected a flicker of anger in the old man’s eyes, then he took the bills and his expression changed. “Thank you, senora. My wife and children and grandchildren will bless you.” He grunted as he leaned forward to rise from the seat, bracing his hands on his lower back and wincing as he straightened up. “Ah,” he gasped, seeing the concern on Nicole’s face. “It is an old injury from a hard life at sea. But I will be all right. You will not be disappointed. I can still work hard. Did I hear you say you have a son?”
Dan nodded. “We have two kids. A daughter who is 11, and a son who is 17.”
“That is good. I am an old man, and you can see that I am crippled with age. It will go faster if you and your son can help. Why don’t you get him ready for work, and I will go get the barge and come back for you.”
De la Vega struggled to climb over the side into his tug. After a few moments, he started the smoky engine, cast off the dock lines and motored away toward the drifting barge.
Dan let the noisy tug move some distance away before he spoke. “Half now, half later, huh?”
She smiled. “Hey, if we’d given him the whole thousand, what would keep him from chugging away with all the money and then coming back later for the container after we were gone? This way, he’s got some incentive to keep his end of the bargain and get the rest of the money.”
“You’re a smart cookie.” He hugged her.
“Of course, I’m a smart cookie,” she said, “I’m a woman.”
“Your brilliance has never been in doubt,” Dan chuckled. “After all, look who you married.”
“Neither my brilliance, nor my mercy.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. Then she turned quickly and disappeared into the cabin, leaving Dan to ponder that last remark.
Twenty minutes later, the tug was back, pushing the barge before it. Dan and Jacob scrambled aboard and waved goodbye to Nicole and Cadee, as Juan Baptista de la Vega throttled the controls and they chugged north beneath a growing black cloud of diesel smoke. In the distance, the dark profile of the container was silhouetted against the horizon, rising and falling with the swell.
“How are we going to do this?” Dan shouted over the noise of the engine.
“It is not easy,” the old man said, “but I have done this before. There is a big looping current that sweeps around these islands.” He waved his arms in a large circle as he spoke. “It reaches all the way from Panama to Nicaragua and far out into the main current that flows up toward the Yucatan Channel. It pulls in things from way out in the Caribbean Sea. Every now and then, something like this container shows up. So I have experience with this.
“That’s good,” Dan said. “But you’ll have to tell us exactly what to do. We’ve never done anything like this before.”
“No problem,” the old man said. “We will pull the barge alongside and tie up to the container using those ropes,” – he pointed to two piles of line, one on each end of the barge – “then you and your son will climb on it and I will hand you some chain that you must hook to the corners. There are hooks on the ends of the chain, and all you have to do is find a good place to attach it at each corner. We are lucky, because this container is floating pretty high and all the corners are there for us.”
“Then what?” Dan shouted the question.
“Then we will bring the middle of each chain together and I will lower the big hook on the crane cable to you.”
Dan nodded. “Okay, I get it. It’ll form a lifting bridle.”
“Si, senor.”
When they were alongside the container, the old man shook his head. “It is upside down.”
“Is that a problem?” Dan asked.
“It is better for us if we turn it over out here on the water. It will roll over easily. Then, when we open it up, whatever is inside will be sitting the way it was loaded.”
“Okay, just tell us what to do.”
The old man directed them, and Dan and Jacob each took a rope and passed it through a tie-down point on the metal walls, then back to cleats on the edge of the barge. With the box secured, Dan boosted his son onto the container, then climbed up behind him. Juan Baptista de la Vega shuffled across the wide platform, dragging a chain in each hand.
“On each of the far corners, you will find a place to attach the hooks,” he told them. “Then I will lift with the crane and the container will roll.”
The job was easier than Dan thought it might be, and half an hour later the old tractor motor was growling and the big cable drum was turning. An inch at a time, the crane started to lift the upright container out of the water. As it came clear of the surface, a steady flow of water ran out from beneath the doors.
“Watch out,” the old man warned them, as he pushed a control lever that started to swing the crane around. “This is how I became crippled twenty-five years ago. You men move back to the tug.”
Dan and Jacob were happy to comply with the skipper’s orders. Under the weight of the container, the barge tilted steeply to one side, but the old man stood his ground at the controls and swung the crane in a wide horizontal arc. The floating platform straightened itself as the crane and its load came across to the center, and de la Vega lowered the freight box.
“Good job,” de la Vega shouted after he shut down the motor. “Now you men tie her down to cleats from each corner, and I will start the tug. I will take you back to your boat, and you can follow me to my home on the island of San Luis Miguel.”
Lunch was ready when the men arrived back at the catamaran, with the barge carrying her load. As they ate in the cockpit, Nicole stared up at the container and suddenly felt dwarfed by its size. “Wow, that thing is bigger than our whole boat”
“Longer, yes,” Dan agreed. “But we’re nearly twice as wide.”
“Yeah, but look how it towers above our cabin roof,” Cadee exclaimed.
“Okay,” – the old man straightened his back as he stood – “I better get started. I will be going slowly, so you will have no trouble following me.” He climbed over the side to the tug and fired up the motor.
“Go ahead and take off,” Dan shouted above the noisy diesel, using the boat hook to push the old boat
away. As the tug motored off toward the island, he turned to his family, “Well guys, there’s our treasure chest. Won’t be long now.”
“I hope it’s full of Japanese motorcycles,” Jacob said eagerly.
“Whatever it is,” Nicole said, “I have no idea how we’re going to stash it on this boat.”
“Well, if it’s something really good, maybe we’ll just have to get ourselves a bigger boat,” Dan said. Seeing Nicole’s expression, he changed the subject. “Okay, kids, let’s clear the cockpit of all this stuff. I’ll help mom wash the dishes and you guys straighten up the rest of the boat. We can let the tug get a head start, ’cause we can go a lot faster than he can. I figure in an hour we’ll fire up and follow.”
Everyone jumped to their duties, and in no time, the boat was ready to go. Dan kept an eye on the distant column of black smoke, still showing clearly against the sky, even though the tub and barge had dropped below the horizon.
The hour came and went, and finally it was time. Everyone was anxious to get underway. “Jake, please lower the outdrive.” Dan said. “I’ll get this puppy humming so we can follow the barge.”
For the next nine and a half hours, they tagged along behind the barge, keeping a respectable distance and maneuvering slightly upwind, so the smell of the diesel smoke would blow away from them. Two and a half knots made it seem almost as if they had dropped anchor and were standing still, yet that was all the barge would do. San Luis Miguel was a little over twenty-three miles distant when they started, and appeared to get no nearer, even after hours of progress. At first, only the two highest points of the island were visible over the horizon, and with each passing hour they were able to see a little more of the island’s shape come into view.
Dan pulled out the chart covering the area around San Luis Miguel and studied the hourglass shape of the land formed by two prominent hills, connected by a narrow waist, creating harbors on opposite sides of the island. On the chart was a thin line that ran down the side of one hill, curving out of the jungle and into the deepest part of the harbor on the east side of the island. A river, Dan thought as he studied what was before him.