Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  He mumbled something in Spanish that sounded like a swear word. “Watch your back, Summer. Better yet, pack it in and come home.”

  Just who did he think he was talking to? He knew that she wasn’t a delicate debutante. “It’s under control, Chase. Dan—that’s my expedition partner, Dr. Daniel Kazaki—he speaks Spanish and he knows how everything works down here. He’s done surveys for NPF before. And the islands are wonderful,” she hastened to add.

  “I wish I were in the tropics. The high here is supposed to be twenty-six today. I could have used crampons just to walk to the barber shop.”

  She loved his shining wings of thick black hair, the polar opposite of her own fine platinum blond. “I hope you didn’t get too much cut off.”

  “Is all of it too much?”

  “What? Why would you do that?” Was he kidding? His lack of response told her he wasn’t. “Never mind, you don’t need to answer. It’s for a job.” She tried to picture him without his full head of blue-black hair, his part as straight as a knife slash on the right side.

  “Yeah, I’m on assignment. I actually shaved it a couple weeks ago, but Nicole said she wasn’t touching it again, and do you know how hard it is to shave your whole head?”

  “Uh, no.” She was still stunned at the mental image of a bald Chase.

  “I have an American flag, the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ version, tattooed on my right bicep. The snake opens its mouth and hisses when I flex.”

  She laughed. “Now I know you’re putting me on.”

  There was a clink of tableware before he asked, “Did I mention the silver skull dangling from my earlobe?”

  “Oh, no. Does this have anything to do with those crimes in the Southwest? Don’t tell me you’re going to hang out with those nut—”

  “Don’t be dissin’ my buds.”

  Fire bombings of Latino-owned businesses, thought to be the work of anti-immigration groups, had recently erupted across Nevada and Arizona. Hate crimes fell under the FBI’s mandate. Hadn’t there been a story about bodies found in the desert, too? Illegal immigrants from Mexico, if she remembered right. How could Chase Perez work undercover on that case?

  “You have olive skin,” she said.

  Fortunately, the man had so far proved adept at following her zigzags of thought. “A deep tan, especially after all the sun lamps my head has been under lately.” he said. “I’m a sun-loving skinhead.”

  “You have dark eyes.” A deep earthy brown, to be exact. Latino eyes, Native American eyes—his father was Mexican-American, his mother was full-blood Lakota. Starchaser Perez’s eyes were as far from blue eyes as anyone could get. “Doesn’t the Bureau keep a blond surfer type for this sort of thing?”

  “I volunteered him for a security detail in Anchorage. I think he was pleased.”

  “Right.” She looked around the room to see if she’d missed any items. There, her sleep shirt lying half under the pillow.

  “I’m not joining the Aryan Nation, sweetheart. FYI, I am third-generation Italian-American and my mama makes the best gnocchi you ever tasted.”

  Sam wasn’t sure what gnocchi was, let alone what it tasted like. She sighed. “At least Nicole will be with you, right?”

  “Of course. She’s dolled up like a TV evangelist, bleached blond big hair and all.”

  It was hard to picture Chase’s sophisticated auburn-haired partner transformed in such a manner. “I wish I could see that.”

  “I’ve got pictures. For future blackmail. You never know when you’re going to need extra money.”

  She laughed out loud. This was what she most loved most about him—he could always lighten her mood.

  “I can’t wait to spend a whole week with you, Summer.”

  “You’ll be back in time?” No matter what. He’d said it, too.

  “No sweat. I can see it now, us zooming downhill at breakneck speed, you wearing one of those stretchy jumpsuit things.”

  “Cross-country skiing,” she corrected. She was the sturdy athletic type, not a sleek snow bunny. “Rain pants and gaiters and wool sweaters. I don’t have one of those ‘jumpsuit things.’”

  “I’ll buy you one. Hot pink. What in the hell are gaiters?”

  “Have I ever told you what I did to the last person who gave me something pink?”

  “Turquoise, then. Do they make them in turquoise?”

  “I wouldn’t know; I don’t wear jumpsuit things. I’m supposed to ski in public with a skinhead?”

  “I’ll wear a hat.”

  “Will you still have the tattoo?” Damn; the thirty minutes she had to pack was nearly up. “Chase, I’ve gotta go now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “You can’t; I’m heading out soon. But Happy Valentine’s Day mañana.”

  So it was; she’d completely forgotten. “You, too, mi amor.” Why was it easier to say she loved him in Spanish than in English?

  “Ciao for now, mi colibrí.”

  “What’d you call me?”

  “C-O-L-I-B-R and I with an accent. Look it up, querida.” He ended the call.

  Slipping in mystery words here and there was Chase’s way of teaching her Spanish. She hadn’t yet decided whether the habit was endearing or annoying. She grabbed her sleep shirt from the bed, zipped it into her duffel, and loaded herself up like a pack mule for the trip down the stairs.

  5

  At six fifteen, Sam and Dan skulked down to the harbor. At least it felt like skulking to her. She hoped everyone in town was slugging down mojitos in the bars or had their eyes focused on the horizon and not on the two overly burdened tourists waddling down the dock. The sunset was certainly worthy of attention. She found it hard to divert her own gaze from the stunning sight of Academy Bay transitioning from molten gold to violet silk.

  It didn’t seem fair to fly so far south in February and get no more hours of daylight than she had at her northern home latitude. But Ecuador was named for its position on the equator, and that zero-degree latitude meant the hours of daylight and darkness didn’t vary much, all year round.

  Her sunglasses slid down her nose as she thumped her bags on the dock next to the four air cylinders Dan had rented. She pushed the glasses to the top of her head. “I feel like an outlaw slinking out of town before I get caught.”

  Dan waggled from side to side to let a duffel drop heavily from each shoulder, and then ducked his head to lift the strap of a third from around his neck, leaving only his binoculars dangling against his chest. “We’ve already been caught. Or at least discovered.”

  “So we really are in hiding?”

  “It’s usually wise to remain incognito when among the locals,” he answered vaguely.

  “But the Internet coverage . . .” She’d been hired to broadcast their presence, after all. To the entire world, no less. “Why would the Natural Planet Foundation ever agree to this deal with Out There?”

  “What do you think?” Dan rubbed the thumb and the first two fingers of his right hand together in the universal sign for money. “NPF is hard up for donations, like all nonprofits these days. Key Corporation is funding this survey. Plus, international support is always the best defense; and we want the survey results to become public as soon as possible. You can write about the Galápagos in general, can’t you? You won’t pinpoint exactly where we are?”

  “I won’t use your name. And I definitely won’t say we’re on a tour boat,” she told him. Out There wouldn’t want the public to think their intrepid women reporters lounged around on yachts. “And I won’t be specific about locations.”

  “That’s the trooper.” He slapped her gently on the shoulder. “This is my fault; I should have glued a real patch over that emblem on my wetsuit before I left home. I expected the local politics would have simmered down by now; it’s been years since the pepino war.”

  “Pepino?” She was feeling more clueless by the minute.

  “Sea cucumber.”

  “Ah.” She moved on to the next worrisome word, war. “
I read there was trouble about overfishing sea cucumbers, but I never heard it called a war.”

  Dan’s gaze met hers. “Maybe war’s too strong a word. Nearly wiped out the pepinos, but no people were killed. Now the poachers have moved on to new species.”

  “So you’ll document what’s going on and I’ll broadcast it.” She chewed her lower lip for a minute; remembering Wyatt’s admonition that NPF was responsible for research and she was responsible for entertainment. Illegal fishing might be news, but it did not sound particularly entertaining. She set that worrisome thought aside for a moment as she remembered that Chase had called her a Spanish word. “Dan, what does colibrí mean?”

  He considered for a moment. “Hmm. I’m trying to remember. Col is cabbage, so maybe colibrí is something made with cabbage? Coleslaw?”

  That wasn’t very flattering. Why would Chase call her coleslaw?

  An inflatable dinghy neared their position, and Dan raised his hand in greeting. When its rubber fender bumped the dock, a short, stocky man in matching khaki shorts and shirt leapt from the bow and tied the craft to a metal cleat. His thick black curls were salted with gray, and his weathered face was heavily lined; clearly he’d spent years in the sun. Sam guessed his age to be late fifties or early sixties.

  “Amigo!” Dan and the man embraced each other, and then Dan turned to Sam. “This is Eduardo Duarte, the most senior naturalist guide here in the Galápagos. We’ve worked together several times. Eduardo knows more than most scientists at Darwin Station.”

  The guide beamed. “They come for a few years. I work here for almos’ thirty.”

  “I’m honored to meet you.” Sam held out her hand, and Eduardo shook it.

  Dan slapped Eduardo on the back. “I hear they’re planning a parade for you, man.”

  The older man blushed. “Not a parade. Una fiesta, nothing more. And not for a month.” Turning to Sam, he explained, “I am the first naturalist guide to achieve thirty years, so I am the first to retire with a pension.”

  “Congratulations,” she said. “Eduardo, what does colibrí mean?”

  “Hummingbird.” He wrinkled his brow in confusion at the sudden change of topics.

  Dan chuckled. “Obviously my translation skills are rusty. I guessed it meant coleslaw.”

  Eduardo laughed.

  Sam smiled. She liked the idea of being a hummingbird in Chase’s eyes. She adored the tiny resilient Anna’s hummingbirds who visited her feeder, even in the midst of blizzards. If only she were half as tough as they were.

  Eduardo tilted his head in the direction of the dark-skinned helmsman, who had stepped out of the boat and was busy loading their gear. “This is Tony, first mate of Papagayo. He has no English.”

  “Mucho gusto, Tony.” Chase had taught her the polite response for meeting someone.

  Tony extended his hand to help her over the rubber bumper. His square jaw and brown eyes looked vaguely familiar. Had she seen him around town? She didn’t really think so; she’d only been here twenty-four hours. “Nice dinghy,” she mumbled to cover her confusion.

  “Panga,” Eduardo said. “Rubber, wood, fibe-glass, no matter—here we call all little boats pangas.”

  As they motored out to the yacht, their wake rocked half a dozen gaily painted wooden fishing boats, rigged with winches and nets. Small skiffs—pangas, Sam reminded herself—bobbed at their sterns like children clinging to their mothers’ skirts. The fleet made a colorful collage, lit by the last rays of the sunset. She scanned her pile of luggage for one of the digital cameras Key had loaned her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a huge black shadow flash through the water beneath the boat. She jerked upright and squinted at the shining plane of the water’s surface, trying to make out the shape as it sped away.

  “Beachmaster,” Eduardo said.

  She followed his pointing finger. A huge bull sea lion hauled himself out of the water onto a yellow skiff tied behind a fishing boat. Already listing low in the water under the weight of two smaller female sea lions, the panga sank a few more inches, nearing the waterline. The females bleated their annoyance and slid off into the water, tipping the craft, which then slipped silently beneath the surface. The beachmaster vanished as well, again becoming an underwater shadow.

  The space the yellow skiff had occupied was now only flat water. Sam imagined the owner emerging from the cabin in the morning, ready to step into his dinghy, and finding only a line disappearing into the aquamarine depths. Creepy.

  Eduardo broke into her thoughts. “This happen all the time. Inflatable”—he patted the rubber bumper on which he sat—“is best.”

  She pressed her lips together to stop her internal editor from mouthing corrections to Eduardo’s English: an inflatable, happens, fiberglass. The man spoke at least one language more than she did.

  He smiled. “You will find sea lions are rulers of the Galápagos. Here we call them lobos del mar, wolves of the sea.”

  Actually, that made more sense. With their pointed snouts and long necks, the pinnipeds looked a lot more like canines than felines.

  Beside her, Dan raised his binoculars to focus on a gray blip on the southern horizon. She squinted again. It was a large ship of some kind.

  “Supply ship,” Eduardo guessed.

  “I can’t make out the name, but it looks like it’s written in Japanese or Chinese characters.” Dan lowered the binoculars, letting them hang on their strap against his chest again. His posture was rigid.

  Eduardo studied Dan for a minute, and then he looked away toward the shore. Sam glanced at Tony. The first mate’s gaze was fixed on the water ahead.

  An Asian supply ship? That seemed odd. Wasn’t the Galápagos colony too small a market for deliveries from other countries? Then she clued in on the reason behind Dan’s tense attitude—a large ship like that probably would not have cause to deliver to the Galápagos, but one might want to pick up a load from another boat in the area. There was only one thing these islands had that Asia would want: seafood. Had it been caught legally outside of the marine reserve or poached from within?

  Tony abruptly killed the engine as the inflatable nudged up against a small platform at Papagayo’s blue-and-white stern. A crewman, his shirt the same blue and white as Tony’s, secured the panga’s bowline and then offered Sam a hand. She stood up a little unsteadily, then picked up her laptop case and duffel.

  Tony pulled the duffel strap from Sam’s shoulder and slung it over his own. “We bring.”

  So Tony did know some English. “I’ll carry my computer,” she told him. Clutching the laptop protectively with one hand and the crewman’s hand with the other, she stepped out onto the landing platform.

  Eduardo pointed up a set of stairs to the main deck. “You go up the stairs to the lounge. The others have already eat—early dinner tonight. But Constantino will see that you receive sandwiches.”

  Dan scrambled over the heap of gear to join Sam. “No more bucking our own bags. We’re traveling first class now.”

  She followed him up the stairs.

  The lounge turned out to be an enclosed communal area on the main deck, divided into halves by a center stairwell. Stationary teak tables and padded blue benches marked the rear half of the room as a dining area. The forward half of the lounge was filled wall to wall with plump beige vinyl couches. On these, six passengers reclined—four senior citizens, obviously seated in pairs, and two much younger and slightly scruffy men, all with white name tags pinned to their chests. Their faces were turned attentively toward a young man standing before them. His guide uniform was identical to Eduardo’s. He stood next to a map on a stand and was orienting the group, using a pen as a pointer.

  Constantino, a large man who also wore a crew shirt and a name tag, emerged from behind a small wet bar nestled next to the stairwell. He motioned Sam and Dan to a dining booth still damp from a recent cleaning. Ceramic plates laden with sandwiches and fruit appeared in front of them, served by a dark man in a sweat-stained undershirt
with soapsuds on his forearms. Sam felt a twinge of guilt at adding to the guy’s normal workload.

  Tony and two other crewmen in blue T-shirts shuffled into the room, hunched under Sam and Dan’s gear. The trio disappeared noisily down the central staircase into the nether regions of the boat.

  “Vino?” Constantino stood beside them, now with a white towel over one arm and a bottle of wine in each hand, his ample belly brushing the edge of their table. “From Chile,” he added, as if this was important information.

  “Tinto,” Dan responded. Constantino splashed red wine into his glass.

  Sam pointed to the white wine, and he filled her glass to the brim. The flavor was dry and crisp. “Good stuff.” She took another swallow.

  “Chilean wine is usually good,” Dan agreed. “Don’t take Ecuadorian, no matter how pretty the bottle is.”

  The sandwiches—chicken, bacon, and avocado—were delicious. As they turned their attention to plates of sliced cantaloupe and pineapple, Eduardo joined them, sliding onto the vinyl seat beside Dan, a stack of printed material in one hand. A glass of red wine appeared instantly at Eduardo’s elbow, delivered by Constantino.

  The baggage handlers, now empty-handed, silently passed the table on their way back outside. Sam studied their profiles as they passed. “Dan,” Sam said in a low voice, “does Tony seem familiar to you?”

  Dan watched the crew members as they slipped through the doorway and then disappeared toward the stern of the ship. “He looks a little like Ricardo.”

  “Ricardo?”

  “Our boat pilot this morning.”

  Had that actually been this morning? This was starting to feel like the longest day in history. “Maybe they’re related. Did you get Ricardo’s last name?”

  Dan shook his head and then speared a piece of pineapple with his fork.

  Eduardo shrugged. “There are many Ricardos. And many relations in the Galápagos.” He slid a blue-and-white booklet across the table toward Sam and another toward Dan, and then opened his own matching booklet to a page featuring a map of islands linked by dotted lines. “The itinerary of this boat. You see”—he unfolded another map, which Sam recognized as the one Dan had shown her last night—“we pass very close to all your inspection points. No problem, except for Wolf.” Eduardo tapped his finger on a spot near the top of the booklet page.