Puerto Cisnes?
He continued a long and mostly frustrating search for specific information about the company, hindered by his minimal understanding of Spanish. At last, after following a link he didn’t expect to lead anywhere useful, he found a published notice in, of all places, the U.S. Federal Register, documenting the results of an American anti-competitive pricing investigation of Chilean salmon farmers in 1997. Pesquera Mares Verdes was named as a respondent in the case, but there was no contact information for the company. Arkin skimmed the notice twice, then zeroed in on the name of the government agency that oversaw the investigation: the U.S. Department of Commerce. Tracking down the agency’s website, Arkin explored it until he found an index of archived document service lists from past investigations. And there, finally, he found a mailing address for the company. At least in 1997, the company received mail at an address in a place called "Isla de los Alemanes."
Island of the Germans? he guessed. A map search revealed it to be a small island, hundreds of miles south of Valparaiso—even well south of Chiloé—in an archipelago to the northwest of Puerto Cisnes. The search also turned up a few photos of the island, apparently shot by touring kayakers, showing shores of weathered rock and expanses of grassy pastureland broken up by clumps of stunted evergreen trees. The only dwellings that could be seen in the photos had walls built of what looked like cut and whitewashed stone, appearing very old. If he hadn’t known better, Arkin would have guessed he was looking at photos of sheep farms in Iceland or the northernmost reaches of coastal Sweden.
In the background of a photo of several kayakers on the water, taken, according to the caption, "east of Isla de los Alemanes," stood a towering, snow-capped volcanic peak across a wide body of water. The volcano was probably on the mainland, in the Andes. It was beautifully symmetrical, with distinctive exposed rock formations near the summit. Two prominent tooth-like spires—basalt, Arkin guessed—protruding through the shimmering glacial cap. "Volcan Melimoyu, across Canal Moraleda," a second line of caption read.
Arkin looked at a satellite image of the island on Google. It looked sparsely populated. There were maybe a dozen farm cottages and small homesteader compounds dotted here and there around the island, half of them looking abandoned. The only significant cluster of buildings was on the northeastern shore, on the leeward side of the island, sheltered from the powerful surf of the open Pacific. The buildings were fronted by a small marina protected by a rectangular breakwater. It looked more like an industrial site than a village, but it probably served as both.
Ten minutes later, Arkin was back in bed. The good news was he wasn’t at a complete dead end. The bad news was that the next stop was very, very far away. And he didn’t dare approach an airport without a passport. He puzzled over what to do until exhaustion at last took him.
THIRTY-ONE
Arkin woke before dawn with the clear realization that there was no direction to go but forward. He sat up in his bunk—the worn but comfortable mattress tempting him to lie back down, to bundle himself back up in soft, warm blankets, sheltered from the cool, damp predawn air—and sighed. He slid his feet into his cold shoes, slipped out the bunkroom door, down the hall, and into the vacant dining room, where he ate an entire day-old baguette with butter and jam and drank two cups of black tea.
The first thing he wanted to do was go to the hospital to give Morrison the news about finding a possible address for Pesquera Mares Verdes. As he was passing the reception window, he wished the hairy, bohemian-looking overnight clerk a good morning. Arkin hadn't seen him before. His hair was long and dirty, and he wore a brown, hooded alpaca wool sweater. Arkin pegged him as a wannabe anarchist who didn't quite have the necessary resolve.
But as Arkin passed, something in the man's expression caught his eye. Gave him pause. Following his gut instinct, he stopped in his tracks, turned on his heel, and asked the clerk about the weather forecast. But the clerk didn't tell him about the weather.
"Eh . . . ." The clerk looked troubled.
"What is it?"
"There was a man. Last night, a man. Late."
"Yes?"
"He had a fotografía. Photograph. Of you."
"Me?"
"He is looking for you."
"Police?"
"No uniform. Pero—lo siento—but he feels like police."
"Did he say why he was looking for me?"
The man shook his head.
"Are you sure it was me in the photograph?"
"Yes. It was up close, of your face. You are in a suit and tie."
A suit and tie? How long had it been since anyone took a photo of him in a suit and tie? Could it be an old security badge I.D. photo from back in his DCI days? Knowing that the Priest's group had penetrated the upper echelons of DCI, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.
In the wake of the shootout, it seemed the Priest's group had guessed that Arkin was in Valparaiso. Guessed that it was Arkin who'd killed their operative at the Pesquera Mares Verdes office. It seemed they'd also guessed that he was still staying in a nearby hotel or hostel.
The overnight clerk nodded. A tacit acknowledgement that he was on Arkin's side, if anyone's. He wasn't about to help the police—or anyone who looked like the police. And so far, at least, nobody knew Arkin was staying there.
"Thank you."
"De nada. Take care, my friend."
Arkin went to the front door, paused, and studied the street through the door's glass panes. He didn't see anyone. Not on foot, not sitting in a car. No sign of the white Nissan. He opened the door and stepped out into the gray and rainy Valparaiso morning.
THIRTY-TWO
Arkin once again kept to small side streets and alleyways wherever possible, taking a zig-zagging route through the neighborhood, eyeballing parked cars to make sure there weren't any with passengers sitting in them acting as static surveillance posts. Three moving cars passed him as he walked, and he memorized the color, make, and license plate numbers of each—a black Suzuki hatchback, a silver Hyundai compact, and a gray Volkswagen Kombi. When he was roughly halfway to the hospital, he turned a corner onto a street that had five cars parked along it. Glancing half a block ahead, he spotted one that could have been one of the three that had passed him. It was another silver Hyundai compact. He couldn't see the license plate yet. But as he drew nearer, it became clear that two men were sitting in it.
Arkin stopped short and felt his front pockets as though it had just occurred to him to look for his keys. Then he turned around and headed in the opposite direction, not daring to look behind him, but scanning everything in front of him, looking for any indicators of surveillance or pursuit. As he passed a shop that had a door recessed in a glass entryway, he checked the reflection to see what was going on behind him. The silver Hyundai was on the move, approaching him from behind. But now there was only the driver. That meant the passenger was on foot somewhere.
Arkin came to an alleyway footpath that split the block. He turned onto it. And as soon as he was out of sight of the silver Hyundai, he took off running for all he was worth. The footpath emerged on the far side of the block, then crossed another street and continued through the middle of the next block, descending two short staircases as it did so. But as Arkin crossed the street, his eye was drawn to movement. A man was running down the street toward him—presumably the passenger from the silver Hyundai. When Arkin was halfway through the next block, he glanced back to see the man in pursuit, a few dozen yards behind him.
Arkin turned right at the next street, only to see the silver Hyundai come racing around the corner. He stopped, turned around, then sprinted toward the top of a stairwell he saw at the opposite end of the street where it made a sharp turn and disappeared around a corner. Reaching it at full speed, he jumped, flying over the first eight steps before making a hard landing and nearly losing his balance before resuming his flight. The walkway he was now on appeared to be heading toward the abrupt edge of the hilltop neighborhood—towar
d the bluff where the land dropped away, down to streets paralleling the waterfront. As he neared the edge, he saw that the path made a hard left turn. As soon as he made the turn, he spotted the recessed doorway of a small wooden house fronting the footpath along the edge of the drop-off, its porch in the shadow of a wooden overhang. He stopped in his tracks, then ascended the three short steps up into the dark recessed doorway. There he crouched, spring-loaded for action, listening. A moment later, he heard his pursuer's footfall as he ran toward the same sharp turn at the edge of the drop-off. As soon the man made the turn and was about to cross in front of Arkin's hiding place, Arkin sprang forward, keeping low. The man saw Arkin, but not with enough time to react. Arkin, flying out nearly horizontal to the ground, hit the man hard in the pelvis, putting his full momentum and weight behind his right shoulder, driving into the man as if he were a tackling dummy. An ornate, 3-foot-tall concrete barrier was all that lined the edge of the path. His own speed now his own greatest enemy, the man twisted sideways and flailed to regain his balance as he flew at a diagonal toward the barrier. It hit him low, below the waist, and wasn't enough to stop him. He disappeared over the edge without making a sound. Arkin took two seconds to breathe and look up and down the path to make sure there hadn't been any pedestrian witnesses. Then he looked over the edge. The man had landed mid-torso on top of a concrete wall three stories down. His body was folded in half over the top of it. He was probably dead. If not, he was clearly unconscious and would certainly never walk again.
Then a glint of metal caught Arkin's eye. There was an object on the roof of a building just inside the wall. It was about the size of a cell phone. Arkin felt his pocket. Oh, shit. It must have come loose in the melee, as he pushed his pursuer over the edge of the cliff. There was no apparent way to recover it, short of stealing a 30-foot ladder. He'd have to do without.
THIRTY-THREE
Arkin was able to hail a taxi to run him back to the hostel and then wait while he gathered his belongings. Returning to the still-vacant dining room, he stuffed all the remaining food items on the breakfast table—bread, butter, peanut butter, packets of sugar, instant coffee and tea—into the clean plastic garbage bag he'd pulled from the room's rubbish bin. Placing his bag of food by the door, he slipped back into the dark bunk room, allowed his eyes to adjust for a moment, listened for evidence that anyone might be awake, and then grabbed his bag, as well as the largest backpack he could find among the gear of his seven fellow bunkroom guests. Moving quickly, he made for the exit, stuffing the food bag into the backpack as he opened the front door and stepped out into the street.
His first priority was to get out of the immediate area. He had the cab drive him north, along the waterfront, on Avenida España, as he pondered his options. He had no valid passport. He was a wanted man in both hemispheres of the New World. There was no option but to go forward, into the unknown.
After a couple of miles, Arkin spotted a small marina full of sailboats. Stealing a boat had helped him cross from British Columbia to Washington State when he escaped arrest in Vancouver. And it was looking like a good option once again.
He felt bad abandoning Morrison. But Morrison could handle himself, if anyone could. Given that the only blood left behind in the office of Pesquera Mares Verdes was that of one of Priest's group's operatives, Arkin was able to convince himself that the group had little reason to guess Morrison might be in a hospital. For that matter, they probably didn't have any reason to think Morrison was in Chile. Morrison also had a handcuff key, as well as tremendous skills in manhandling people. And, at least with respect to his bullet wound, he was probably out of danger. In any event, Arkin didn't think he could afford to wait around in Valparaiso. The Priest's group would keep hunting him. And even if they couldn't find him, his photo would surely find its way into the hands of the police and the local news. It was just too dangerous.
The city was slowly coming to life. He had the cab driver drop him at the nearest supermercado, where he spent most of his remaining cash on cheap, sustaining staples—beans, rice, salt, and bottled water. Then he found a bench in a tiny park across the street, sat down, and watched other patrons exiting the store. Before long, he saw what he was looking for. An overweight, middle-aged woman in what Arkin guessed was a housekeeper's uniform. She pushed a wheeled cart loaded with food out the door, down the sidewalk, and into the neighborhood. Having stowed his own groceries in his new backpack, Arkin rose and began to follow her at a discreet distance. Within a few minutes, she stopped under an old eucalyptus tree at the foot of a steep stairwell leading up to a spectacular home of whitewashed stone and tall curved windows, its sloping yard immaculately landscaped and enclosed by an old black wrought iron fence. She pulled two grocery bags from the cart, and began her climb to the house. As soon as she disappeared through the door, Arkin made a quick pass by the cart, grabbing all four of the remaining grocery bags.
*****
Half an hour later, under a tree in a small waterfront park, Arkin took inventory of his haul. In addition to the groceries he'd purchased himself, he had a dozen apples, two cartons of orange juice, a loaf of white bread, a jar of honey, a bag of white potatoes, two yellow onions, and two tins of smoked oysters. He also had a pair of polyester shorts that were too big for him, as well as a couple of cotton T-shirts, a fleece pullover, a safety razor, and a light waterproof jacket, all compliments of his former bunkmate.
Reorganized and repacked, he made his way down to the small marina he'd spotted from the cab and cased the available vessels before settling on a sturdy but neglected—and therefore, hopefully, infrequently used—Coronado 30. Probably at least 40 years old, but solid. Breaking into the cockpit, he was happy to see an autopilot and an old VHF radio hooked up to one of two marine batteries. The batteries appeared to be wired to a mount for a solar panel, but the panel was missing. There was a small stove, but no water maker. Well, if I need water, I'll just put in somewhere, he thought. He turned on the radio to confirm that at least one of his batteries held a charge. It would have been nice to have a GPS receiver. But Arkin figured he'd avoid getting lost by simply staying within 30 or 40 miles of the Chilean coast. All he would really ever have to do is turn the boat until the compass read 'east,' and he'd see land sooner or later.
There was no gas for the small outboard—which wasn't ideal, but he had no time to be picky—so he raised the mainsail and used the breeze to back out of the slip. A minute later, he was underway, heading through the gap in the breakwater, slipping out into the open Pacific.
THIRTY-FOUR
Though he sailed against southerly winds and the cold Humboldt Current, Arkin covered a good distance with fair seas his first four days at sail, tacking his way back and forth down the coast. It occurred to him that going against the current, sailing into the wind, was becoming the story of his life.
There were two minor disappointments. One came in his discovery that the stove was out of propane so that he had to eat cold food. No big deal. The other was that he couldn't figure out how to work the Spanish language autopilot control. That meant that, barring extraordinarily consistent wind, he had to man the helm whenever he was underway, and had to drop sail when he wanted to sleep. It would slow him down, but wasn't the end of the world.
On his second day out of Valparaiso, a Chilean Coast Guard inshore patrol boat made a close pass. But Arkin waved confidently as it went by, pleased with himself that he'd had the foresight to fly the small Chilean ensign he'd found in the cabin from the short flagstaff mounted on the transom. One of the crew appeared to study him through binoculars for a minute or so. But the vessel continued on its way without altering course. Nevertheless, worried by the encounter, Arkin changed his heading to take himself farther offshore, reasoning that it would lessen his chances of coming across another Coast Guard vessel, or anyone else who might identify either him or his stolen boat. Sailing farther from land had its own set of risks. But he was more confident in his ability to manage the seas t
han he was in his chances of not being recognized nearer the coast. Plus, he had plenty of food and water to hold him for a while if anything went wrong. By evening, he was out of sight of land.
That night, when Arkin woke to the urge to urinate, he emerged from the cabin to witness the brightest shooting star he had ever seen. A bright white fireball trailing an eerie green tail clear across the sky, from south to north. It didn't hurt that it was one of the darkest nights he'd ever experienced, with no moon and no visible light pollution. Seeing the meteorite filled him with a sense of wonder, so he sat awake for a good hour, staring up at the Milky Way and studying the unfamiliar constellations of the Southern Hemisphere, eventually spotting the Southern Cross. It was the first time he'd ever seen it. And though it was ludicrous given the circumstances, he began to hum the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song about seeing the same constellation. He reflected on just how unpredictable and insane life could be.
*****
On his fifth day at sea, the wind began to shift to westerly, then northwesterly, and with the shift came a growing swell. For the next 12 hours, it was manageable—nothing he hadn't handled before—though it made sleeping in the rolling cabin almost impossible. But the wind and swells continued to grow, and the boat began to heel so much that he had to lower his foresail and double-reef his main. Worse, to guard against taking a rogue wave over the beam, he had to keep altering his course farther and farther to the west, out to sea. He stowed his food and water in a couple of latched cupboards above the agonizingly tempting sleeping berth, took the extra measure of lashing the cupboard doors shut with a scrap piece of duplex marine wire he'd found on the floor, and then secured the door to the cabin. By evening, it was clear to an exhausted, sleep-deprived Arkin that, even though the waves were still sinusoidal, he would have to stay at the helm in case they began to break.
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