Buried At Sea

by Paul Garrison

"I am willing you my yacht."

  Jim looked forward, up the passage to the main cabin. Light was pouring in the ports, glowing on the varnished wood. Pretty to look at and a powerful machine. He could feel her pulse through the bulkhead. She was heeling just enough, shoving surely through the scrambled seas. There were times when he hated being stuck on her, but she was a fine and beautiful object.

  No. It was too crazy. Besides, he couldn't afford to run her. He'd seen the bills in Will's desk: thousands a year just to keep her in trim; a rich man's toy.

  As he had done so often in their conversations, Will read Jim's mind. "You could charter her out. They'll pay a premium for luxury. People go nuts for the workmanship. They want excellent food, first-class accommodations, a pleasant captain, and his beautiful first-mate-slash-wife."

  "Sounds great, Will, but I can't. Shannon couldn't do it." "Why the hell not?"

  "She can't walk."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She's crippled, Will. She can't walk more than a few steps on crutches."

  "You never said an

  ng. . . ." He trailed off, his expression hurt. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I didn't want to talk about it, Will."

  "I thought we were friends."

  "Well, we were. We are. We became friends. But you're also my boss and I didn't want to talk about it."

  "But of all things not to talk about."

  "The trip was the time to think about it, not talk." But he did have to ask himself the same question. "I did not want to admit to you that as much as I try to ignore the fact, Shannon's affliction is central to any future we might share."

  "That poor kid. Poor both of you. Christ on a—You poor—"

  "We're okay," Jim cut in. "It's not like she's paralyzed or anything. We have a sex life—a great sex life—had . . "I'm really sorry, Jim. . . . What happened?"

  "She got creamed in a ski accident. Multiple compound fractures, both legs, knees . . .

  you name it, it shattered."

  "Where were you? Oh, I get it. You came later. You were the physical therapist."

  "Something like that ... They pinned what they could. She's got more titanium in her than an F-16, but . . . She's a very strong woman, but sometimes she's hanging by strength alone. So I don't see her doing yacht charters."

  "Why don't you let Shannon decide what she can and can't do?"

  "How could she even brace herself against the roll of the boat?" Jim retorted angrily.

  "Decide together when Hustle is yours. If . . ."

  "If what?"

  "If you put my head in the freezer and deliver it to Angela."

  "I told you, I can't do that."

  "This is a dying man's last wish."

  "You're not—"

  •

  "I am, Jim. I surely am. Today, tonight, tomorrow. I'm a goner. The infection is rampaging through me. It's burning me up. I'm sailing on fire like a dead Viking."

  He lunged at Jim and grabbed his arm; there was desperate power in his clawlike grip. "

  Jim, you must help me undo what I started."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The McVays are the last people on the planet who should have the power of my processor. Whatever you do, you must not let them get it."

  "I promise you, Will. I'll do everything I can to keep it for myself?'

  "Promise you'll take my head to Angela."

  "I promise. Now go to sleep."

  What Val McVay found most maddening about Will Spark's e-mail encryption scheme—aside from the fact that she hadn't been able to crack any of the letters she had intercepted—was that the gibberish that covered her monitor made it appear as if her computer had crashed. It made Notes or Domino look like a crossword puzzle, and if you didn't attack it carefully, she had discovered the hard way, it bit back with a virus that took a week to eradicate. It wasn't possible that Will himself had devised it. It was the product, she was sure, of one of his talented Indian engineers.

  As a scientist and an engineer, Val held a bred-in-thebone belief that ever-expanding computing power meant that there was no such thing as an undecipherable code. Gang together enough McVay-Hyper workstations and write some hot cracking code and eventually you could decipher anything.

  But even Val had to admit that if there was ever going to be an uncrackable, utterly secure secret communication, it would involve developing quantum cryptography coupled to a randomly keyed onetime code similar to the one Will Spark used in his email correspondence with his Sentinel engineers and, just recently, Dr. Angela Heinman Ruiz of Rio de Janeiro.

  Having failed to crack e-mails intercepted to and from Will's engineers, Val knew she hadn't a hope of reading the contents of the long messages he had exchanged with the South American doctor. A clue to his destination? Perhaps.

  Cross-checking revealed that Dr. Ruiz was a plastic surgeon. But she had practiced microsurgery years ago, before

  she went for the money. And although the booming Brazilian economy kept her busy most of the time in Rio, she had a second practice in Buenos Aires. The problem was, Dr.

  Ruiz was currently in neither of her offices.

  JIM WENT UP on deck and trimmed the main and the jib. All he could do was try to make the boat go faster.

  To hell with the McVays. They were Will's problem. His problem was simpler, his goal clear: sail Hustle close enough to Buenos Aires to radio a medevac helicopter. A helicopter would save two days in the race to get Will into a hospital. Sail the boat to Buenos Aires. Nurse Will along. Helicopter to a hospital.

  The wind was edging west, moving into their teeth, - which meant beating into it, sailing close hauled. Will had shown him a trick of flying a third sail, an inner jib or staysail, from the jackstay, which angled between the foredeck and a point two-thirds up the mast.

  In theory the boat would go faster with a single big headsail, but Hustle, Will had taught him, didn't always play by the rules.

  If he could get the wind flowing just right through the narrow slots between the two headsails and the main, she might go faster. The sail was in the forepeak and the fore-hatch was dogged down tight, so he had to go down the main hatch again and head forward.

  "What's up?" Will called.

  "I'm going to try a staysail."

  "Wear your harness."

  He found the sail. It would be easier to take it up the forward hatch. But the bow was rising and falling and spray was flying heavily over the foredeck. A new sense that from now on he alone would run the boat made him cautious. What if he opened the hatch just as the bow dipped under a big sea? With good luck he'd only get the forepeak wet. With bad luck several tons of seawater would come blasting in. With really bad luck he'd be knocked down and injured so badly he couldn't sail.

  Ludicrous. He was thinking like an old man.

  Nonetheless, he dragged the bag through the main cabin and up the main hatch into the cockpit, donned his harness, clipped onto the jackline, and dragged the sail forward.

  He pulled it out of the bag, sorted top from bottom—Will had marked the difficult-to-

  distinguish head and clew with indelible ink—and shackled the tack to a pad eye set in the deck at the foot of the jackstay. Then he hanked the sail onto the stay with snap hooks and shackled a halyard to its head. He bent two lines to the clew and led them through blocks and back to the cockpit. And with those sheets ready to control the sail, he winched it into the sky.

  It slammed around in the wind, crackling and thundering, until he made his way back to the cockpit, where he took three wraps of a sheet around a portside winch and cranked until the Dacron sail was as taut as the main and the forward jib. He eased the main a hair and hauled the jib in two clicks of the winch, and when he finally looked at the knot meter it told him what his body already knew. He'd increased the boat's speed by almost half a knot.

  With triumph came sudden hope and the powerful belief that if he just drove the boat hard and true he could keep Will alive un
til he had sailed him within helicopter range of Buenos Aires.

  He fiddled with the auto-helm until he had it responding properly to the additional sail.

  Then he ducked below to feed Will and get some hot coffee. Will was sprawled on the couch in the main cabin. He thrust his arm toward Jim and pointed at his heart-rate monitor.

  "I'll bet you've never seen numbers like these."

  Jim looked. His own heart jumped. Will's pulse had fallen to forty beats a minute.

  Jim said, "I'll radio Angela."

  He switched on the single sideband. If he couldn't get Angela, he would broadcast a distress call on 2182. Some doctor somewhere would tell him what to do. Shoot Will full of Adrenalin or something.

  Will laughed.

  "What?" Jim turned from the radio. There was a finality in Will's tone, a firm sound of resolution, like a solid door swinging shut.

  "I just had a wonderful revelation: when all is lost, there is nothing left to lose."

  Jim leaned toward him.

  "You'll love Buenos Aires, Jim. Most hospitable people you've ever met, half Italian, half Spanish, most of 'em speak English, and they'll give you the shirt off their back, only they've got an inferiority complex, so when they ask what you think of Buenos Aires just tell 'em you never saw a city like it. And don't ever talk about the Falklands War or the '

  disappeared' the military killed during the dirty, war against the left. Jim, don't forget our deal. Here's the serrated knife."

  He extended the scalloped blade. Just as he did, an errant swell smacked Hustle on her port side, staggering the sloop. The knife fell from Will's hand and landed straight up on its rounded point, stuck squarely between two planks of the teak deck.

  Will peered blearily at the quivering blade. "Amazing," he whispered. "What are the odds?" Swaying, he leaned forward and began to sing,

  "Standin' on the corner,

  I didn't mean no harm. . . .

  Jim jumped to catch him, but he got tangled in the nay station and before he could swing his legs out from under the desk, Will tumbled to the deck.

  Jim knelt and turned him over. His cheek was cut and his nose was bleeding, but he was struggling to pull something from his pocket. "This is for you."

  "Let me help—"

  "No big deal. Just my bosun's knife."

  "Hang on to it," Jim said. "You'll need—"

  "Wear it always. Keep it sharp. It could save your life sometime. See this key?"

  "Yes." The key Jim had stolen—borrowed—stolen--to open Will's private desk.

  "It opens the desk in the bulkhead. A bunch of stuff there you can look at. Keep anything you want—I know you rifled the desk—but there's a secret panel underneath that you missed. It opens when you release a little spring under the drawer. False bottom.

  Something in there you might enjoy when you grow up."

  "Let me help you into bed."

  "No. I'm outta here. It's all yours, Jim. Have fun with it. Just make sure you get my head to Buenos Aires." He closed his eyes. "Watch this, Jim." He raised his arm. The heart-rate monitor was recording a deadly thirty beats a minute. And as Jim watched in helpless fascination, the numbers spooled down to zero.

  JIM PULLED THE knife out of the crack in the cabin floor and returned it to its rack.

  Then he picked up Will.

  For the first time in his life he understood the phrase "a bag of bones." He carried Will into his cabin, laid him on his bunk, and pulled a sheet over him. Then he backed out of the cabin. The body barely indented the sheet.

  Deer Shannon.

  Will died et nine-twenty this morning at 33' 49' S. 40' 19' W. I feel so alone. I crossed two oceans with the man; already I miss his talking and talking and talking, teaching me stuff. telling me stuff, talk. talk. talk. constant talk, the sailing lessons. and tons of advice, most of which I didn't need or didn't want to hear. We sailed from Barbados to Nigeria and then back across the South Atlantic. Thousands of miles. I know he was a con man. I know he was a liar. And it looks like he was a thief, too. But he was fun to sail with and he was so full of hope. He made me want to be an optimist, like you.

  I'll write you more later. I have a ton of stuff I have to deal with, but I just had to tell you this first.

  I love you. I wish you were here with me.

  Jim

  He entered Will's death in the log. He wrote the time he died, Hustle's position, and his opinion that Will had died from an infection resulting from a knife wound suffered in Nigeria.

  He stood in the main cabin for a while, just standing and turning, not knowing what to do next. Air. He needed air. He hurried up the companionway. The sea was empty and the sky sharp, with several bold white clouds. The wind was chilly, invigorating, like the first cool day of autumn.

  It is autumn, he thought. Almost. Down here winter is summer, and summer is over. And there's a dead man below, whose head I'm supposed to cut off and put in the freezer.

  Thank God they were out of the tropics. The cool weather bought him a day or two to make up his mind.

  He should read the will. Will's will. But he didn't want to yet. So instead he went below and unlocked the teak desk and found the release for the false bottom, which pivoted open, revealing a square drawer. Folded inside was a canyon suit bag. He unzipped it, smelled cedar, and discovered a black tuxedo. The coat had satin lapels, the pants a satin stripe, and there were suspenders, a silk cummerbund, and a snowy white pleated shirt.

  Jim had worn a rented tux with a plaid cummerbund to his high school junior prom and a couple with colored jackets to friends' weddings. But Will's was midnight black. When you grow up. What was Will thinking? It would never fit him . . . though it might if he lost some more definition.

  He put it back in the suit bag and closed the desk. Then he sat down at the nav station and opened the drawer. There was a business envelope with his name written on it in Will's fine, clear handwriting. The paper was heavy and textured, as was the single sheet folded inside. Jim took it up to the cockpit, sat on the windward side, and read. It began in the same clear hand:

  I, William Spark, aka Billy Cole, aka Pendleton Rice, aka Randell Smythe, aka Mickey Creegan...

  What a time Shannon would have tracking all those names on the Web. He'd bet it was Mickey Creegan who had moved up in the world by painting boat bottoms.

  ... being sound of mind and frail of body, write my last will and testament: If Jim Leighton, my good friend and loyal shipmate, delivers my body—or, failing that, my head—to Dr. Angela Heinman Ruiz in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I bequeath to him all my worldly possessions, including my yacht, Hustle, and royalty rights to all my patents.

  Maybe if he covered Will's body with a blanket and wrapped his head in a towel. . . . Am I losing my mind? he thought.

  Will's handwriting deteriorated, with crossouts and confusions of words not finished.

  If Jim Leighton fails to hold up his end of this bargain, everything goes to Ms. Cordelia MacDonald, Borlum Farm, East Island, Falkland Islands, UK.

  No surprise there. Perform, or you get nothing. Have I lost my way? Jim thought. But he wanted his piece of Sentinel.

  Will had signed it "William Spark," and dated it, "Aboard the yacht Hustle, 32 degrees south, 40 west. (Voice copy on tape cassette and in voice mail of Dr. Angela Heinman Ruiz, Rio de Janeiro—just in case any of my ex-wives try to dispute this.)"

  Finally, Will had scribbled a note on the bottom of the page:

  JIM: JUST HANG ON TO MY HEAD. JUST PROMISE ME THAT, PLEASE. Keep it in the freezer, even if you can't find Angela, maybe you can get in touch with my Frantic scribbles tumbled off the bottom of the page and landed on the back.

  —cavemen. . . . Do me this one favor, shipmate. And even if you screw up, and everything goes to Cordi,

  you can keep the boat. Cordi hates sailing—she gets even sicker at sea than you do, if that's possible—and she doesn't need the money. She's doing fine with a hydroponic farm. . . . Here, I'm signing
it again to make this codicil legal.

  He had signed all five names again.

  Jim said, "Thank you, Will. Thanks for the out."

  Will had scribbled some more, in lighter ink, in a scrawl so chaotic it was almost impossible to read:

  You're in a win-win situation, kid. Do the right thing. Or as you loved to say to me: "A deal's a deal."

  Jim said, "Do the right thing? Oh, give me a break." Will was manipulating him to the end. Even after the end. The right thing was to bury Will at sea in his wonderful tuxedo and sail home an honest man. But Will had backed him into a box, a double trap of greed and need. I want it all and I want to take care of Shannon, if she'll let me. All I have to do is butcher my former shipmate.

  LIKE THE OPERATION, this postmortem decapitation would be less messy on deck.

  What if someone sees? Who would, in the middle of nowhere? A spy satellite looking down? Forget it. What was the big deal? Will was already dead.

  He was on his own and no one would ever know—except for Angela, when he handed her Will's head.

  He wrapped Will in the sheet and carried him up to the cockpit. "You wanted this," he said out loud. "And you're not alive. So what the hell?"

  He got a towel and the serrated knife. The boat was heeling, leaning hard over as it beat into the wind, bound for Buenos Aires. He wrapped the towel around Will's head. Maybe there wouldn't be much blood, but who knew? He was feeling sick to his stomach.

  He eased the mainsheet and both jib sheets. The sloop stopped straining and stood a little taller. He picked up Will's body and laid it across the afterdeck where he had "operated"

  on Will's wound. Operation successful, patient dead. He picked up the knife, glanced automatically at the sails, looked around the empty ocean, and glanced at the compass, which showed them heading due north.

  "North?"

  He leaned closer. The card spun until it pointed due east. He stepped back and it spun west. He was holding the knife. The steel was affecting the compass, throwing it off, confusing it, making it false. He looked at the gleaming, finely scalloped edge. A beautiful tool, Will had called it. A thousand years of Japanese war technology tamed for the kitchen.