He turned on the gas grill behind him and removed the steak and asparagus he had placed in the minifridge earlier that morning. For the past three weeks, he’d been subsisting on one meal a day. He’d already lost ten pounds and felt pretty good about it. At night, he reduced speed and slept on the couch behind the wheelhouse. December Atlantic crossings were fairly popular, and the radar alarm woke him up at least once each night, warning of other traffic.
The solitude and challenges of outdoor adventures were therapeutic. Over the past weeks, he had had many hours to think. The omnidirectional satellite dish maintained a continuous Internet connection, which allowed Pat to stay in contact with the world with e-mail and VOIP phone calls. He also had a satellite phone as a backup. He’d had a full service conducted on the engines and generator in Ponta Delgado, Portugal, where they had a first-class marina, and he felt very confident the Sam Houston was going to be up to the test of its first Atlantic storm.
By two o’clock, the skies were gray, and a mixture of snow and rain began to fall. The winds were gusting to fifty miles per hour and seas were rolling at fifteen to twenty feet. Pat made his way to the wheelhouse after a precarious descent down the ladder. By four, it was completely dark, and the winds were gusting up to eighty miles per hour. Pat could only see two hundred yards ahead using the yacht’s FLIR system. As a novice sailor, his approach to the mammoth forty-foot waves was to take them bow-first, accelerating while going into them and decelerating on the way down. That was a technique that worked well when pushing a big board through the surf, and he imagined the same laws of physics applied to boats. The gyrostabilizers were doing a miraculous job limiting the roll, and while the sixty-four-foot yacht was taking a beating, there were no signs of damage.
At ten o’clock the next morning, Pat saw the first glimmer of daylight. The seas were down to a mere ten feet, and the wind was no longer whistling as it passed through the flydeck. He made a cup of coffee and a tuna fish sandwich and returned to the controls at the wheelhouse. He did a walk-around of the yacht, starting with the engine rooms and the sleeping cabins and finishing on the flydeck. There was a lot of snow and ice buildup on the deck, but nothing that warranted concern. Exhausted, he checked the navigation and set the radar to twenty-five miles, grabbed his blanket, and fell asleep in the wheelhouse chair.
Three days later, Pat was sailing into Halifax Harbour on his way to the Nova Scotia Royal Squadron Yacht Club for refueling and rest. The weather was a brutal eight degrees Fahrenheit on the flydeck. There was no wind, and the water was smooth as glass. There were still remnants of the morning fog as he navigated between McNabs Island and Ferguson Cove on the final mile of this leg of his journey.
Even in the bitter cold of winter, the friendly Canadian attendant at the squadron was helpful in guiding Pat to a slip and helping him tie down. Pat put up the Q flag and called the Canadian border security authority. Once he had water and power hooked up with a great deal of help from the young dockhand, he coordinated for refueling. After tipping the helpful dockhand five hundred dollars, he finally went down to the owner’s cabin and took a long-overdue shower.
It took the remainder of the day to refuel and complete the customs inspection. Pat used the idle time to clean the boat and conduct postoperation maintenance on the engines. In mid-December, the days in Halifax were short. The sun was setting even though it was only four thirty in the afternoon when his hired car arrived to take Pat and his two suitcases filled with dirty laundry to the Marriott Harbourfront Hotel.
Pat decided to spend the next two nights in Nova Scotia before beginning the final leg of the trip, which was another seven-day voyage directly south to the Bahamas. The Marriott was clean and a pleasant break from the boat. It was a weekend, and Pat had time on his hands. After another hot shower, he donned his ski parka, gloves, and toque, as the Canadians referred to a watch cap, and headed out for a walk.
Halifax is a very pretty city, even on a dark winter night. Pat was staying in the downtown waterfront area, which was littered with pubs and restaurants. Christmas lights and decorations were everywhere as he stepped out from the hotel lobby. It felt good to stretch his legs. Standing on a boat during rough seas could be a workout, but weeks of not walking took a toll. His face was thinner than when he had begun the journey and covered by a beard that could use trimming. His eyes are less hollow, softer somehow. The trip was taxing; he’d slept little, but he was filled with energy.
Heading south on Water Street past the piers and the maritime museum with the cold air on his face reminded Pat of being at sea. Sailing alone halfway across the world was cathartic. He could feel the slime fall away from him with each passing nautical mile. He knew Mike Guthrie would drag him back into the mess. He always did, but in the meantime, Pat intended to forget about the toxic sludge that was the Middle East for a while.
After forty minutes, Pat turned around and walked back toward the hotel on Water Street. It was seven thirty on a Friday night, and there was music coming from a bar next to the Marriott. He entered the brick building with the sign out front that read Lower Deck and made his way to a restaurant inside called the Beer House. He was famished, and the smells wafting out from the kitchen made him salivate. He ordered an Alexander Keith India pale ale, which seemed to be way too many words for a simple beer. When the waitress delivered his tall draft, he ordered the grilled seafood platter. The interior of the pub was nautical-themed, with light oak planking, fishing nets, and neon beer signs. There was a band setting up on a small stage adjacent to the dance floor while track music plays. The crowd was mostly young people from the neighboring colleges. People from the Maritimes are a unique subset of Canadian. The economy has been depressed for decades, and Pat had always thought of them as joyful journeymen. Newfies follow the work to the factories of Ontario, the oil fields of northern Alberta and wherever else they can find it. Tonight’s crowd looked to be an excellent example of a people with a reputation for knowing how to have a good time. When the band kicked off with a strong if not ironic rendition of “Summer of 69,” Pat decided to stick around for a couple of sets.
By the second set, Pat was on his fourth beer. The lights in the bar were turned down low, and the band was blasting Top 40 pop music. A young guy and two girls signaled for permission to sit at the unoccupied chairs at his table, and Pat invited them with a hand gesture. The band was loud, and the dance floor overflowed with the young and a sprinkling of not so young.
When the band took a break and it was quiet enough to talk, the young guy introduced himself as Owen and his two friends as Emma and Olivia. The kids were drinking pitchers of Labatt’s Blue, which seemed particularly horrific to Pat. He was enjoying himself. Three weeks in solitary could make a person appreciate humanity, and it was nice to see good-natured kids hanging out.
Emma was a socializer, and they began to make small talk. When she learned Pat was an American, she asked him what brought him to Halifax and what he did for a living. He briefly considered telling her the truth—that he was an international arms dealer and a CIA assassin—but instead he said he worked in logistics. She went silent after that; nothing can kill a curious person’s interest faster than logistics and supply chain management.
Pat was tempted to ask about what the kids were studying, but somehow the notion of asking a college student in a bar what her major was at Pat’s age seemed a bit depraved. He stayed for a third set and made sure to pay the kids’ tab before calling it a night.
Pat slept late the next morning. He rented a car at the Marriott and went food shopping on his way to the Squadron Yacht Club. He spent the day restocking the galley and cleaning the boat. When he was done, he felt like everything was ready for the final run to the Bahamas. He made a laundry run to the hotel and back and gained comfort from the fact that he no longer had to worry about running out of underwear and socks for another couple of weeks.
For a small city, the food and entertainment options in Halifax were exceptional. Pat wa
lked several blocks in the freezing cold to the Press Gang Restaurant and Oyster Bar. Unlike last night’s venue, this was not a place for the impoverished twenty-year-old college kids. The Press Gang was one of the finest restaurants in the city and had a well-stocked bar with live entertainment on weekends. One of the oldest buildings in Halifax, it had been built in the nineteenth century. The architectural style was classical, with stone walls, exposed wooden beams, rustic lighting, and a bar with a world-class whiskey selection.
After a flawless dinner of mushroom risotto and an Alberta tenderloin, Pat retired to the bar to listen to the band. The Press Gang lived up to its reputation. The food was amazing. The restaurant was very expensive by Halifax standards, and on a Saturday night the guests were the well-heeled and those celebrating special occasions. The atmosphere is warm, and Pat enjoyed a couple of exotic scotches, including a 1971 Macallan and a 1961 Glen Grant, while he listened to the band and watched the crowd. He left at ten o’clock because he wanted to get an early start in the morning with a clear head.
The next morning, he was underway by nine. Not knowing the harbor, he needed to wait for the sun to rise before setting out. It was a cold morning, minus one Fahrenheit with enough of a breeze to put a chop in the water. It was roughly fifteen hundred miles to the Bahamas, and Pat planned on covering five hundred miles per day by running twenty-four hours at twenty-two knots. Pat had the range to make it without needing to refuel, and the weather was supposed to be clear. He was anxious to get into the warmer climes; every exterior surface of the Sam Houston still had a sheet of ice on it that Pat was eager to lose. After the crossing, he was leaning toward using the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, but now that he was rested, he had decided to get back out on the open ocean and take the straight shot due south to the Bahamas. The direct route saved hundreds of miles, and it was possible to travel day and night at speed. The Intracoastal had speed limits, and the amount of congestion, bridges, and obstacles made it impossible to operate continuously. The direct route at most points was hundreds of miles off the US coast.
The final leg of the journey was by far the easiest and most enjoyable. Because Pat’s fuel situation was stronger than he had expected, he ran at twenty-eight knots on the last day of the journey. He docked at Runway Cove Marina in Governor’s Harbour at a little after four o’clock on Wednesday morning.
Runway Cove was less than a mile from his house, on the Caribbean Sea side of the island instead of the Atlantic Ocean, where his home was. It was a tiny marina with only twenty slips and a very narrow entrance with shallow ten-foot draft clearance. The big advantages were that it was within walking distance of his place, and it had power and water hookups.
The customs process was a bit of a joke. Pat called and agreed to go to the airport the next day and get in-processed by customs. He refueled the main tank, but not the auxiliaries. He had been sailing halfway around the world with weapons and ammunition stashed in the Sam Houston. The equipment was secured below the floor under the auxiliary fuel tanks, which he needed to keep empty, so he could retrieve the gear later.
Pat called Jonah and asked him to pick him up. While he was waiting, he removed the food that would spoil over the next two weeks from the refrigerator. Christmas was next week, and the kids would be all be home by the twenty-second. Pat had already scheduled a flight from Raleigh to Governor’s Harbour on the twenty-sixth. Everyone would spend a week in the Bahamas before flying back to school and work.
The tiny marina only had one employee, a rail-thin elderly black man with a gray beard and a taciturn personality. While Pat was waiting for Jonah, he spent some time with Michael and received some assurances about security. Michael lived and worked in the marina’s lone building. He was a master mechanic who kept the aging fishing fleet running. Pat left the conversation feeling much better about the Sam Houston’s security and maintenance prospects. He paid Michael a month in advance for the slip and for the fuel, including a healthy tip and giving him his cell phone number to call in case of an emergency.
Arriving at his home, Pat was greeted by Maria and Father Tellez. Jonah took Pat’s luggage upstairs to his bedroom, and Father Tellez and Pat sat at the dining room table. Maria was an outstanding cook, and Pat was starving. Father Tellez loved spicy food, and Maria had prepared a Creole jambalaya that smelled fantastic.
Sipping one of his super-sweet guava juice concoctions that gave Pat diabetes just thinking about it, Father Tellez looked him over appraisingly and declared, “You look much better than the last time I saw you, Pat, really.”
“Thanks, Father, I feel great.”
“Are you going to keep the beard?”
“No, I don’t think so. This was just for the voyage. I’ll be clean-shaven tomorrow.”
“You’re thinner, but also more relaxed,” observed the priest.
“I am. I did a lot of thinking on the trip, and I think it’s time for me to stay here.”
“You’re more at peace. Whatever you were involved in, I hope you’ll stay away from it in the future.”
“That’s my plan, padre. I don’t look for trouble. It just seems to sort of follow me wherever I go.”
“You have a great family, Pat. You need to go home.”
“Next week the family will be here.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. It will be a marvelous time.”
Maria served dinner, and they ate. It was hot, spicy, and absolutely terrific, and Pat ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Over coffee, Father Tellez discussed the situation with the foundation. As usual, he had more projects to fund than he had funds. Pat told Father Tellez that he would transfer the money he needed. The projects were all part of the Catholic Church’s outreach to the poor in Venezuela. The economic and political failure of the oil-reliant communist state was causing massive starvation, which was the focus of the father’s efforts.
After coffee, the father took a large bowl of jambalaya to his apartment for his sister. Maria cleaned up, but instead of leaving, she asked Pat to sit on the recliner in the adjacent living room. Maria left the room and returned with a towel, a bowl of hot water, scissors, and a razor.
“I take it you’re not a big fan of the beard.”
Maria just smiled. She spoke very little, but she heard everything. For the next thirty minutes, she worked with a surgeon’s precision and removed Pat’s beard. Despite the strong Colombian coffee after dinner, Pat was exhausted and fell asleep during the shave. Maria had to wake him up and send him to bed.
The next morning, he awoke early and, after checking the surf report, went searching for his gear. He was on the water at half past six. The water and ocean temperature were both about the same: seventy degrees. Pat wore a thin wet suit and felt very comfortable. The recent weight loss had him down to 204 pounds, which at six five, and with his musculature, gave him a ripped definition he hadn’t seen in a decade. The swells were between 1.2 and 1.6 meters, with clean breaks. The conditions would make for an enjoyable morning.
Sitting on his board beyond the break, Pat saw another surfer walk across the beach and enter the water. Pat had been surfing for two hours and had planned to make this last wave his last. A distant silhouette of the lone surfer gave promise that it might be Diane from Tippy’s. Pat stuck around, wanting to say hi if that was the case. Sure enough, as the surfer in the red wet suit reached him, Pat saw it was his favorite waitress from Tippy’s, who greeted him with a big smile.
“Good to see you, Diane. Where’s Finley?”
“Out on the pro tour.”
They chatted. Instead of quitting, Pat hung around for another hour. It was always nice to have company, especially someone you could learn from. Finally, he confessed to exhaustion and left the surfing star for his last run of the morning.
After a shower and a shave, Pat had coffee on the deck and caught up on e-mails on an iPad. He saw Father Tellez outside following his morning Mass and waved for him to come up.
The Colombian priest
was in his usual joyful mood when he arrived on the deck. Maria magically appeared with a steaming cup of coffee, which was the holy man’s only vice. The beach was a dusty pink, the water a turquoise blue with slow curling waves breaking against the shoreline. The morning sun shimmered off the water, and the only sounds were the birds and the crashing waves. After five or six minutes, Father Tellez broke the silence. “Pat, you can’t go back to the Middle East.”
“I heard you last night.”
“Whatever you’re doing is destroying you. I could see it when you came last month. You’re involved with evil, and the weight of it is crushing you.”
“The way I like to look at it, Father, is that I’m the one who is doing the crushing.”
“I don’t think you believe that. You forget I was once a soldier myself.”
“There’s nothing like a monthlong sail halfway across the world to give a man some perspective.”
“And what insights have you gained?”
“In the big picture, I’m just a piece of driftwood tossed around and moved by the tides and currents.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not in control. There are bigger forces at play. Whether I go back or not is probably not even going to be up to me.”
“You have more power and control than you think.”
“I used to believe that, but I’ve come to recognize my insignificance. You know, I drove that boat through a North Atlantic storm with waves twice the size of this house in the middle of the night. Mother Nature’s power was on full display, and that’s something I can deal with. It’s tangible. It’s physical.
“When the top guys in the Department of Defense butted heads in a political war, that’s something I can’t deal with. I had no idea what was going on until I was tossed out as collateral damage. When the masters of the universe failed to consider the risk of trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages, the government bailed out the banks and left me for dead, once again the big boys were playing a game that not only did I not understand the rules of, I didn’t even know a game was going on.
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