The Nautical Chart Read online

  The man at the service station was just standing there, watching Coy bearing down on him. Coy zeroed in, hands in his jacket pockets, feeling an intense inner energy, a vital exuberance that made him want to shout at the top of his lungs, or pick a fight— with or without Crew Sanders. He was a puppy dog in love. He was aware of it, and yet instead of feeling miserable, he felt stimulated. From his point of view, the sailors with Ulysses who had sealed their ears with wax in order not to hear the sirens' song would never know what they'd missed. Everyone knows the old saw: Any sailor who has nothing to do, looks for a ship, but a woman too. And that justification was as good as any. This adventure, or whatever the devil it turned out to be, included in the same package a ship— albeit a sunken one—and a woman. As for the consequences—the blows and fighting that the ship, the woman, and his own state of mind might generate—he didn't give a rat's ass.

  Once at the service station, Coy walked straight toward the stranger standing sentry duty by the light and the closer he got the stronger was the feeling of familiarity he'd had looking down from the window. When he was almost upon him, and his target was watching him with obvious suspicion, Coy began to coil his line, recognizing the short individual from the auction, the same one he thought he'd seen beneath the arcades on the Plaza Real, and who now, no question about it, was right there before him in his green country-estate car coat, looking as if he were dressed for a parody of a morning hunt in Sussex. The parody bit accentuated his short stature, as well as the bulging eyes and melancholy expression Coy remembered so clearly. The English apparel was laughably at odds with his Mediterranean appearance—black eyes and mustache, gelled hair gleaming at the temples, and sallow, southern European skin.

  "What the fuck are you doing here?"

  Coy approached his quarry at an angle just in case, hands held a little away from his body, muscles tensed, because more than once he had seen pint-sized guys leap forward and sink their teeth into fellows the size of a refrigerator, or palm a knife and bury it in a man's thigh before you could say Hail Mary At any rate, the man was not about to show Coy his profile, maybe because in that getup he was a strange hybrid of formal and grotesque, a kind of cross between Danny DeVito and Peter Loire decked out for a rainy-day turn about the English countryside.

  "Sorry?"

  The man smiled, sadly. Coy thought he heard a vague South American accent. Argentine, maybe. Or Uruguayan.

  "One meeting might be chance," Coy said. "Two, a coincidence. Three, my balls tell me..."

  The little man seemed to consider his comment. Coy noted the

  meticulously knotted bow tie, the impeccably shined dark-brown shoes.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said finally.

  His smile grew a little wider. A courteous, slightly pained smile. He had the face of a decent fellow, a pleasant man whose mustache made him look old. His bulging eyes were focused on Coy.

  "I'm talking," Coy replied, "about being fed up with seeing you everywhere I go."

  'And I repeat, I don't know what you are referring to." The composed expression did not alter. "In any case, if I have offended you, believe me, I regret that."

  "You'll regret it even more if you don't tell me what you're doing here."

  The little man raised his eyebrows, as if surprised. He seemed sincerely wounded by the threat. This cannot be, his face said. It isn't seemly for a nice young man like you to be saying such things.

  "Let us negotiate instead," he said.

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I mean, my good sir, let us be civilized."

  His accent again suggested Argentina. He's putting me on, thought Coy. This sonofabitch is laughing in my face. He debated for an instant whether to punch him in the nose, right where he stood, or push him into a corner and search his pockets to see who he was. Coy was about to make his move when he saw the service-station attendant stepping out of his booth, watching them. Am I headed for trouble? Coy asked himself. Do I raise a ruckus and then face trying to undo the damage? He looked up to the windows on the top floor. All the lights were out. She wanted nothing to do with it. Or was she there, with the lights turned out to keep from being seen? Coy was unsure. This was a fine kettle of fish. Then he saw that the melancholy dwarf had sidled a little toward the curb and was hailing a taxi. Smooth as a chess pawn sliding from one square to another.

  *

  COY stood a while in front of the service station, contemplating the dark windows of the fifth floor. Someone is pulling my strings, he thought. Has me on a stage complete with audience and stage crew. And I'm letting myself be shanghaied like a drunk Ukrainian. He supposed that Tanger was still upstairs, watching from the dark, but he couldn't perceive the least movement. Even so, he stayed a while, looking up, sure that she had seen everything, fighting the impulse to go back upstairs and ask for an explanation. Two smacks with the back of his hand, and she, fallen back against the sofa. I can explain everything, and besides, I love you. Then tears, and a good fuck. Forgive me for taking you for a fool, et cetera, et cetera. Blah, blah, blah.

  He came back to reality with a sigh that was close to a moan. There must be rules for all this. Rules I don't know and she does. Or maybe rules she makes up as she goes. And maybe the rules of the moment for going ahead or cutting out are as follows: Goodbye, great evening, and turn out the light as you go, but don't say we didn't warn you, sailor. Or maybe someone was even being truthful with him.

  He was so puzzled that he headed toward the nearby traffic circle and then slowly walked up calle Atocha. In the first bar that was open—they didn't have Sapphire gin there either—he stood quietly at the counter, looking at his drink without touching it. The place was an old saloon with a zinc counter, Formica chairs, a television, and photos of the famous matador Rayo Vallecano on the wall. There was no one there but the waiter, a skinny man with a tattoo on the back of one hand. His grease-spotted shirt and contemptuous expression did not invite confidence as he swept the sawdust from a floor scattered with crumpled napkins and shrimp shells. Coy was sitting facing a mirror with the printed logo of San Miguel beer, and his face was reflected over the list of snacks and food written in white script. His eyes were precisely at the level of 'loin of pork with tomato sauce" and "squid a la vinaigrette," which was not a thing to raise anyone's spirits. He studied his image with uncertainty, asking it what steps he should take in the next hours.

  "I want to go to bed with her," he told the waiter.

  "We all want that," was his philosophical reply, as he continued to sweep.

  Coy nodded, then lifted the glass to his lips. He drank a little, looked at himself in the mirror, and made a face.

  "The problem," he said, "is that she doesn't play fair."

  "They never do."

  "But she's beautiful. The bitch."

  "They all are."

  The waiter had deposited the broom in a corner, and once back behind the bar, served himself a beer. Coy watched him slowly drink half the glass without taking a breath; then he examined every photo of El Rayo, ending with a poster of a bullfight in Las Ventas seven years before. He unbuttoned his jacket and dug into his pants pockets. He pulled out three coins, laid them on the counter, and began trying to slip one between the other two without moving or touching either.

  "I'm headed for trouble."

  This time the waiter did not immediately reply. He stared at the foam on the rim of his glass.

  "Well, she may be worth it," he said after a moment.

  "I don't know yet." Coy shrugged. "There's a sunken ship, just

  like a movie__ And I think there are even some bad guys."

  For the first time, the waiter looked at Coy. He seemed vaguely interested.

  "Dangerous?"

  "I don't even know."

  A long silence. Coy kept playing with the coins, and took a couple of sips while the waiter, leaning on the end of the bar, finished his beer, took a package of cigarettes from beneath the counter, and
lit one. His tattooed hand included four blue dots between the knuckles of his thumb and index finger—a typical jailbird. He was young, so he couldn't have been there long. Two or three years, Coy calculated. Maybe four or five.

  "I think,'' said Coy, "that I'm going to go ahead with it."

  The waiter nodded slowly, but said nothing. Coy left two coins on the counter, pocketed the other, and left.

  4

  Latitude and Longitude

  "... but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?" (Alice had not the slightest idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say.) LEWIS CARROLL, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

  Zas was stretched out on the floor, tail wagging, his head on Coy's shoe. A ray of sunlight was falling obliquely through the window, making the Labrador's gold hair gleam, as well as the compass, the parallel rulers, and the protractor on the table, purchased that morning at the Robinson bookstore. The rulers and protractor were Blundell Harling, and the compass a W & HC of brass and stainless steel, a model Coy had expressly asked for. There were also two soft-lead pencils, a gum eraser, a graph-paper notebook, the latest edition of the book of lighthouses, and the number 2 chart put out by the Naval Hydro-graphic Institute, corresponding to the Spanish Mediterranean coastline. Tanger Soto had paid for everything with her credit card, and now it was all on the table in the sitting room of the apartment on Paseo Infanta Isabel. Urrutia's Atlas was also there, opened to chart number 12, and Coy was running his fingertips across the slightly textured surface of the thick, white paper, perfectly preserved after two hundred and fifty years of wars, catastrophes, fires, and shipwrecks. From Monte Cope to the Herradora or Horadada tower. The survey embraced sixty miles of coast: on the horizontal, east to Cabo de Palos, and from there, on the vertical, north, like two sides of a rectangle, including the saltwater lake of the Mar Menor, separated from the Mediterranean by the narrow sand spit of La Manga. Except for the error he had noted the first time he saw the chart—Palos was a couple of minutes to the south of its true latitude—the plotting of the coast was meticulous for its epoch. The wide, sandy bay of Mazarr6n west of Cabo Tinoso, the rocky coast and cove of Portus to the east, the port of Cartagena with the menacing little cross that marked the shoal of the island of Escombreras in the inlet, then more rocks to Palos point and the sinister Hormigas islands and their only shelter, the bay of Portman, which the chart showed still free of the mud from the mines that clogged it years later. The engraving was of an extraordinary quality, with light dots and fine lines to mark the various geographical features. And like the rest of the illustrations in the atlas, it had a beautiful inset in the upper left corner: "Presented to our Sovereign King by his Excellency Sr. D. Zen6n de Somodevilla, Marques de la Ensenada, and executed by Captain Don Ignacio Urrutia Salcedo." Besides the date—"the year 1751"—the inset also had the notation, "The numbers for the soundings are Brazas of two Spanish varas." Coy's finger paused at that line, and he looked questioningly at Tanger.

  'A Spanish vara," she said, "was made up of three of the so-called Burgos feet. That was eighty-three and a half centimeters. Half of what you sailors call fathoms. Six feet made one Spanish braza."

  "One meter sixty-seven centimeters." "That's correct."

  Coy nodded, turning back to the chart to study the small numbers that marked the elevation of sandbanks in the vicinity of anchorages, capes, and reefs. Soundings were electronic now, and in a half second they provided the exact relief of the bottom of the sea. In the mid-eighteenth century, however, that data could be obtained only through the laborious task of sounding by hand, with a long cord ending in a lead weight. If the depths marked on the Urrutia chart were in fathoms, he would have to transpose each of these measurements into feet, to make them conform to contemporary Spanish charts. Every two units on Urrutia's chart would therefore convert into approximately eleven feet.

  Two empty coffee cups sat at one side of the table, beside the pencils and gum eraser. There was also a clean ashtray and English cigarettes. Music was coming from the tape player—something old and very pleasant, perhaps French or Italian, a melody that made Coy think of gardens with geometrically trimmed hedges, stone fountains, and palaces at the end of straight allees. He studied her face as she bent over the chart. It went with her, he thought. That music was as appropriate as the casual khaki shirt she was wearing open over a white T-shirt, a man's shirt, military, with large pockets. Informal clothes looked as good on her as more formal ones, the jeans with slight wrinkles at the groin and knee, the bare ankles—also covered with freckles, he had discovered with stupefied delight—and tennis shoes.

  Focusing again on the chart, Coy studied the scales of latitude and longitude. Ever since the Phoenicians began to cross the Mediterranean, all nautical science had been directed toward making it easier for the sailor to identify his position. Once his position was established, it became possible to know what course to follow and what its dangers were. The charts and atlases were more than mere guides, they were manuals for applying astronomic, geographic, and chronometric calculations, which allowed the sailor, either directly or by reckoning, to ascertain his location on the meridians—latitude north or south in relation to the equator— and on the parallels—longitude east or west in relation to the corresponding meridian. Latitude and longitude helped the seaman situate himself on a hydrographic chart, using the scales in the margins. On modern charts these scales are detailed in degrees, minutes, and tenths, of which each minute is equal to a conventional nautical mile of 6,076 feet. Position on the parallels was established by using the scale that appeared on the upper and lower borders of each chart, and the position on the meridians through those on the left and right. Then with the aid of a compass and parallel rulers you extended the lines of each position and the ship would be at their intersection—if the calculations had been correctly done. The matter was complicated by additional factors such as magnetic declination, ocean currents, and other elements that required complementary calculations. There also was a great difference between navigating when using the flat charts of the ancients, on which meridians and parallels measured the same on paper, and the nautical charts that were more representative of the true shape of the earth, with distances between meridians shortening as you approached the poles. From Ptolemy to Mercator, the transition had been long and complex, and hydrographic surveys did not begin to reach perfection until the end of the eighteenth century and the application of the marine chronometer for determining longitude. As for latitude, that had been established since ancient times through observation and astronomic declination— the forestaff the octant, the modem sextant.

  "What was the Dei Gloria's position when she went down?"

  "Four degrees and fifty-one minutes east longitude... The latitude was thirty-seven degrees and thirty-two minutes north."

  She had answered without stumbling. Coy nodded and bent over to establish those coordinates on the chart spread out on the table. As he felt Coy move, Zas lifted his head, then again rested it on Coy's shoe.

  "They must have established their position by taking bearings on the land," said Coy. "That's most likely if they were sailing within sight of the coast. I can't imagine them shooting the sun with an octant in the midst of being chased down. The question is whether they set their location by reckoning. That's always relative. You calculate speed, direction, drift, and miles sailed. Errors can be very great. In the era of sail, they called a location obtained by reckoning the 'point of fantasy.'"

  She looked at him. Serious, reflective. Attentive to every word.

  "Have you sailed much?"

  "Yes. Especially when I was young. For one year I was a student aboard the Estrella del Sur, a fore-topsail schooner turned into a

  training ship. I also spent a lot of time on the Carpanta, a friend's sailboat__ And I read books, of course. Novels. History."

  'Always about the sea?"

  'Always."

  'And dr
y land?"

  "I preferred to have land twenty miles behind me."

  Tanger nodded, as if those words confirmed something.

  "The battle was after dawn," she said finally. "They had light."

  "Then it's most likely they took land references. Bearings. All they would have to do is cross two to find their position. I suppose you know how that's done."

  "More or less." She smiled uncertainly. "Though I've never seen a real sailor do it."

  Coy picked up the protractor, a clear plastic circle that had 360 degrees of circumference numbered in tens around the edge of the arc. That allowed direction to be calculated with precision by transferring indications on the ship's magnetic needle to the paper of a nautical chart.

  "It's easy. You look for a cape or something you can identify." He placed the gum eraser on the chart, representing an imaginary ship, and moved the protractor toward the nearest coast. "Then you correlate it with your onboard compass, the needle, and you get, for example, 45 °N. So you go to the chart and draw a line from that point in the opposite direction, to 2250. You see? Then you take another reference, one separated by a clear angle from the first: another cape, a mountain, whatever. If that gives you, for example, 3150, you drawyour line on the chart toward 1350. Your ship is where the lines cross. If the land references are clear, the method is reliable. And if you complete it with a third bearing, better still."