The Devil on Chardonnay

by Ed Baldwin

  “This must be something to behold with all the sail out on a windy day,” Boyd said, aching to see it.

  “If it were truly windy, we wouldn’t put them all out. With 20 knots, we could, and it is beautiful.”

  She smiled, apparently at his enthusiastic interest in Chardonnay.

  Wolf emerged from the doghouse carrying three open Michelobs, his suit replaced by cotton shorts, no shirt. His chest and arms were huge, outlandish in their excess. His abdomen was ridged with muscle and flat as a board. His thighs were large by normal standards but small when viewed with the massive pectorals. Obviously a very serious weight lifter, Boyd thought, and no stranger to steroids.

  “Want a beer?” he asked, holding up the two in his left hand.

  Taking a beer, Boyd waited for Mikki to take a tentative sip, then let the first third of his slide down in one cool gulp. He felt the cold all the way to the bottom and was glad they didn’t drink beer from cans.

  “I have some additional business up the coast tomorrow,” Mikki said, looking across Charleston Harbor. “There is an island for sale. You can come along if you like. Bring your friends. We will leave at eight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  JAHAZI COFFEE HOUSE

  “Aarif, kind of you to come,” Raybon said, rising to welcome his guest at a small coffee house in the old-town section of Mombasa.

  “Hello, my friend.” An older man in the traditional white robe of Arab dress approached. He wore a wound scarf on his head like a turban. He sat cross-legged at a low table in the dark rear of the shop. A waitress brought a steaming pot of tea as he sat.

  “The sunrise was beautiful today,” Raybon said as he poured tea for his guest.

  “A gift from Allah.”

  “Allah be praised.”

  They each took a sip of tea and looked around at the nearly empty shop and out to the busy street.

  “Our business has not been good this month,” Raybon began.

  “My friends are not so interested in our product now. We are being watched closely by the government.”

  “Have my visitors upset your friends?”

  “Visitors always raise the question of loyalty.”

  “Who do you think my visitors are?”

  “CIA,” the man said matter-of-factly.

  “Some were. Captain Chailland and Colonel Smith were from the United States Air Force. I took them to an island in the Seychelles for a scientific investigation.”

  “My friends think you took them to the Congo.”

  “Why do they think that? Did they not see the equipment? There was a boat, tents, scientific instruments.”

  “They think you were recruiting tribes from the mountains to fight the Janjaweed.”

  “I’ve heard some disturbing news, something I don’t understand,” Raybon said, looking into his host’s eyes.

  “Oh?” Aarif returned the look.

  “A friend, coming back from Juba, has told me of an army forming north of there.”

  “Yes. The Sudan is a dangerous place,” he said warily.

  “It is not the Janjaweed, herders fighting for their land, or the Army of Sudan on the border. It is jihadists from many lands.”

  “Jihadists in Sudan?” Aarif stroked his chin, brow furrowed.

  “Yes, old friend. Why would jihadists be in Sudan?”

  “It is forbidden for Muslims to have two Emirs in this world, as it causes confusion and conflict. Jihadists fight to unify Islam.”

  “There are several leaders in Muslim nations who call themselves Emir.”

  “That is forbidden.” Aarif took another sip. “It is true, but it is forbidden.”

  “So jihadists are supposed to unify all Muslims?”

  “It is written that every Muslim man must struggle, which is what jihad means, toward self-improvement and to defeat the enemies of Islam and unify all Muslims under one Emir.”

  “But what has South Sudan to do with unifying all Muslims? There are no Emirs there.”

  “I am a simple trader from Oman. What am I to know of these things?” Aarif was becoming reticent.

  “You have been very generous with me, old friend. I appreciate knowing you. Should I leave Mombasa? Am I not welcome here?”

  “It is written that the infidel can be tolerated and given a chance to recognize the wisdom and follow the Prophet, if it is the will of Allah.”

  “Allah be praised.”

  “You have been a friend, Raybon. It is dangerous for you here, but you can stay. If I hear of any plans against you, I will call at once. And I don’t know why jihadists are in Sudan.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  SAND ISLAND

  Neville St. James raised the mainsail as they passed Fort Sumter, the wind snapped the canvass taut, and Chardonnay surged. With just the mizzen and the first jib, she’d seemed sedate, wallowing along while motor cruisers skimmed past. Now that the mainsail was up, it felt as though there were a visceral force in the teak and brass. Boyd gripped the railing over the doghouse and ran his hand along the smooth top. It was power. Not the vibration an engine can give, this was more spiritual, more thrilling.

  “You feel it?” Mikki smiled at him.

  Boyd couldn’t suppress the grin, like a child experiencing something wonderful for the first time. Donn and Pamela also were holding on to part of the ship, and grinning. Wolf smirked, drained his beer and dropped the bottle into a plastic bag attached to the mizzenmast. Neville St. James stood by the wheel. Bare-headed, he squinted back toward Charleston and took a deep breath.

  Chardonnay hit a small wave and spray flew from the bow, a few droplets carrying back over the deck. The wind pushed, and Chardonnay seemed to push back, creaking as the canvas and rope adjusted to the increased force. There was a sensation of riding the swells now as the speed increased.

  “Beautiful wind,” Mikki said, looking back at Charleston. “We had wind like this all the way across the Atlantic. Steady, from the south.”

  “This is the time of year for the big blows,” Neville commented from the wheel as they neared the widening exit from the harbor.

  They turned north, and the mizzen and main sails were allowed to rotate to starboard to catch the wind. Neville directed the Portuguese crewmen to let the sails out, and one of them climbed out the bowsprit and attached the end of a jib while the other climbed a third of the way up the mainmast to attach the other end. They were making Chardonnay’s maximum speed of 12 knots. The passing scenery included a beautiful sky, other boats, waves, birds and the bluing Atlantic.

  Boyd shook off the warm comfort of the morning and refocused on the job at hand. Their mission had been to find Ebola, and they had not. They’d followed the trail of money to Charleston and lost it. Someone was laughing at them. Was it Lymon Byxbe? Had Ebola ever been at BioVet Tech? If they kicked the door down, would they find anything at all? He was afraid not. Whoever sent money to Paris knew what they were doing. That taco truck was a sign that this wasn’t just about money. Someone was playing games.

  Mikki emerged from the doghouse wearing the same shorts and long-brim baseball cap Boyd had seen through the telescope from Cooper Jordan’s office. Her compact, low-slung breasts were thoroughly tanned and almost unobtrusive on her long torso. The virginal nipples bespoke that, although she was nearly through her reproductive years, she had not borne children.

  Through manners or instinct, Boyd looked quickly away from Mikki. Wolf and Neville were watching Pamela and Donn stare at the breasts. Mikki carried a tray of glasses and a bottle of white wine, but her eyes scanned the whole group. The Portuguese seaman turned aft and busied himself with coiling some rope.

  “Vouvray is such a good morning wine. Would you like some?” She placed a towel on the shining teak atop the doghouse and put the tray on it.

  Donn and Pamela approached Mikki, taking a glass, eyes flicking from wine to breasts to face. Mikki poured, smiling blandly. Pamela had worn shorts and a white golf shirt, the pattern on her
bikini was visible beneath it. Donn sported his big flowered Hawaiian shirt and shorts. Boyd wore tennis shorts and a white knit shirt.

  “We have planned to reach the island at high tide, noon. Neville is afraid of shoals. We are making good time, no?” She looked back at Neville at the wheel. He nodded.

  “Which island is it?” Donn asked, looking out over the bow again.

  “Sand Island. I’ve been interested in finding a private island. There are none available in the Mediterranean. The Adriatic has some, but life is uncertain there.”

  Boyd knew Sand Island well. It was a teardrop-shape island just west of the Military Operations Area off the Atlantic coast. It was known for the spit of sand extending from its pointed southern tip that varied in length with the tide. He’d briefed dozens of missions, always pointing it out as a landmark at the edge of the MOA. He’d assumed it was a part of the nearby Francis Marion National Park and Seashore.

  The Isle of Palms was sliding past a mile west. The crowded shoreline seemed tacky with its tiny, multicolor houses, an easy commute from downtown Charleston. There was hardly any beach.

  “You haven’t been below,” Mikki said, pouring the last of the wine into her own glass after giving Wolf a top off. Their eyes met briefly.

  She removed the tray and towel and led the way through the double doors into the doghouse. Wolf walked aft. Boyd lingered until last, and then followed down the slightly curving stairs. The chart room was just a wide pause in the passage below deck filled with radar screens, depth, weather, and navigation instruments, books and charts.

  Boyd saw a chart laid out on the map table that showed the coast of South Carolina and a plastic overlay with a course charted to Sand Island. It looked much like the flight plans he prepared when he planned a mission.

  The light shining through the skylight forward of the doghouse lit the interior of a small but lavish dining and sitting room as the stairs circled from aft forward. The heavy table to one side was large enough to feed a dozen. Across the expanse of oriental carpet, accented by shining brass lights hanging from the ceiling, there was an additional table with chairs and a velvet settee at least 10 feet long. Fresh flowers and a fruit bowl adorned the wet bar at the end of the room. A narrow galley filled a hall beyond.

  “The crew’s quarters are aft of the mast. A guest stateroom is there,” Mikki said, pointing to a small, discreet door adjacent to the wet bar. Opening it, she revealed a nicely appointed room with a settee and a double bed.

  “You may use the toilet there.”

  She walked back to the stairs they’d just used and pointed to another closed door.

  “Wolf is there.”

  Opening double doors behind the stairs she walked into a spacious room lit by another skylight with a settee on one side and a double bed on the other. A large beveled glass mirror dominated the forward wall. One sidewall was a bookcase, the other had a small dressing table and closet.

  “I sleep here.”

  She turned to face her guests, peering behind her into her private space, then closed the doors.

  “Chardonnay is a sailor’s ship, built to sail fast and far,” Mikki said, ending the tour.

  *********

  “Ten meters!” Mikki yelled back to Neville at the wheel.

  She was sitting on the chart table watching the depth gauge. Wolf stood at the bow, watching for logs or debris. Pamela and Donn were stationed on either side. Sand Island lay nearly a mile away, yet Neville’s caution had the sails furled and the diesel idling them along at only a couple of knots.

  “She draws 12 feet,” Neville said to Boyd, standing by with a long pole in case some debris was spotted. “Your Eastern coast is a ship’s graveyard of shoals, shifting constantly.”

  “Why 12 feet? We surely didn’t go 12 feet down those stairs,” Boyd asked, understanding the intensity of the captain’s anxiety, even with 30 feet of water beneath his hull and the ability to back up at a moment’s notice.

  Boyd knew well how it felt to fly an aircraft worth thirty-five million bucks and belonging to someone else. He’d seen guys crack one up by some once-in-a-zillion-odds accident and never be allowed to fly again.

  “Keel. We have a lead weighted keel six feet below the hull. We need it to balance the sail. A stiff wind would blow her over. With the keel, the force of the wind is transmitted into forward motion. It’s where the power comes from.”

  Neville St. James held up one hand and motioned at it with the other to represent the wind. The first hand went forward.

  “We don’t want to run onto a sandbar, with a dropping tide, we’d be here for a week.”

  “Fifteen meters!”

  “This island she wants, it’s just a sandbar. One big blow, and she’d be gone,” Neville said quietly. “This whole area here is shifting sand. Chardonnay is for deep water.”

  Five hundred yards from shore, Neville dropped anchor in 12 meters of water. Sand Island rose from a long bar south of Cape Romain. It was one of the barrier islands that protect the Santee River estuary from the open sea. Boyd knew well the miles of salt marsh punctuated occasionally by wooded hillocks that lay inland. Sand Island was no more than a wooded hillock farther out, surrounded by water instead of marsh grass.

  Wolf and Boyd lowered the Searider, a large inflatable launch with rigid bottom and outboard motor. Mikki donned a T-shirt and shoes and led her guests down the ladder. Wolf followed, lugging a cooler filled with beer and sandwiches for lunch. Soon they were bouncing over the swells, spray flying as she opened up the 40-horsepower outboard. They selected a landing spot on the northern shore.

  “The agent said it is offered by the heirs of one of your richest families,” Mikki said, jumping out of the stern in thigh deep water.

  Wolf jumped out of the front and began pulling the launch onto the brief beach tangled with brush and driftwood. Donn and Pamela hesitated getting their feet wet. Boyd, taking the lead from Mikki, slid over the side and waded in, pushing the boat.

  It may have been just a sandbar, but the trees on Sand Island had been there for three hundred years. Live oaks with trunks 12 feet thick and branches spreading 90 feet, parallel to the ground, do not spring up in one man’s lifetime. Palmetto palms grew thick in the sand near the shore but gave way in the interior to huge oaks, poplars and gum trees. It was quiet and cool.

  A circular charred area just off the beach surrounded by oyster shells, ketchup bottles and beer cans suggested trespassers used the island.

  Wolf was tense. His bulk clearly didn’t lend itself to stepping over logs or around brush and vines. He’d already scratched his leg on a thorn and a thin line of blood was visible on his calf. He walked as if there was nothing like this in his native Austria, or on the French Riviera where he lived. He seemed to expect a wild beast to leap out of the forest at any moment.

  Boyd and Eight Ball walked woods in the midlands of South Carolina almost daily. He knew each tree and bush here but hadn’t seen anything this old outside the gardens of the plantations along the Cooper River north of Charleston.

  “Private islands are hard to come by in Oklahoma. I tried to buy a town once,” Donn said, walking through the brush to the interior.

  “A town?” Mikki asked.

  “Yep. Skunk Wells, Oklahoma. The oil fields around there dried up, and cattle prices were down. The local bank went bust, and I offered them a package deal. Bank, town square, town hall, the whole deal for two million bucks. I was going to put in a golf course and sell lots.”

  Near the center of the island, Boyd came upon an ancient magnolia, its thick trunk nearly obscured by the drooping of its lower limbs. Midway up, on the very outermost tip of a long branch, was a rare late season bloom, pure white in the darkness of the forest.

  “Here, hold this,” Boyd said impulsively, digging into his pocket for the small knife he carried. He handed it to Pam.

  Pam took the knife and looked at it for a moment and then looked dumbly at the tree.

  Boyd ran at
the tree and leaped at the trunk, planting one foot as high as he could while grasping a branch and pulling himself smoothly upward, pausing momentarily with his torso across the branch before throwing a leg across it and standing. Now 10 feet from the ground with his head six feet higher into the foliage, he repeated the process and disappeared.

  “I’ll pull the branch down,” Boyd’s voice came from within the tree.

  From her pose, it was evident Pam had no idea what he was trying to do.

  He walked out on a large branch, holding a smaller one above it. When he got near the end, both of them now sagging, he pulled himself up on the smaller branch and it bent near to the ground. On the end of that branch was a pristine white flower 8 inches across.

  “Cut it with the knife,” he said, hanging from the branch. “But don’t touch the flower.”

  Pam cut the branch several nodes above the flower. The others gathered to look at it while Boyd dropped to sit on the branch on which he’d been standing. He sat there for a moment and then grabbed a lower branch and swung down another level, dropping to the ground and rolling in the soft earth. He walked to Pam and took back his knife and the flower. The fragrance, as always, took him back to early summer nights at home in southern Missouri, cicadas buzzing in the big oak and the fragrance crossing the road from the magnolia in the neighbor’s yard. He trimmed the excess leaves from the stem and handed it to Mikki.

  “You climbed the tree just to get a flower?” Wolf asked.

  “It’s a magnolia. It blooms mainly in the spring, but for special occasions will sometimes produce one this late. This tree has been popping these out for a hundred years or more. It’d be a shame not to look at one up close.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Mikki said, smelling it. “Thank you.”

  They walked south, taking turns carrying the cooler.

  “So, are you going to buy it?” Boyd was walking with Mikki.

  “Perhaps. The price is high. I want it.” She looked around, then back at the magnolia. “There is a feeling here.”

  Boyd nodded without speaking, looking back at the woods they had just traversed. A cloud passed overhead and obscured the sun. In shadow, the forest changed.