“ Self-steering gear,” Ramsingh said.
“ What’s it do?’’
“ Uses the wind to steer the boat, and we’re going to use it to get out of the water.”
“ How?”
“ Think you can hang onto it and support my weight for a few seconds?”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I’m heavy.”
“ I’ll manage,” Broxton said and he wrapped both hands around the bottom bar, letting his body hang in the water, arms stretched like he was dangling from a gymnast’s high bar. “I’m ready,” he said, and Ramsingh moved behind him, also hanging onto to the bar. Broxton grit his teeth as the prime minister planted a foot on his back, then another on his shoulder, but he didn’t scream out when the sudden shock of Ramsingh’s weight pushing down on him stretched his arms like a medieval rack.
“ Hurry,” Broxton grunted, as Ramsingh struggled out of the sea, using Broxton’s back and shoulders as a foot hold. Then he was up and the weight was gone.
“ Are you okay?” Ramsingh asked.
“ Yeah, now how do I get up?”
“ Hang on.”
“ Very funny,” Broxton said.
“ There’s a swim ladder, I’ll lower it.” Although it only took seconds for Ramsingh to get the ladder down, it seemed like forever to Broxton, and under ordinary circumstances climbing the four or five rungs from the sea to the safety of the boat would have been as easy as falling out of bed. Now it took all of his remaining strength to get on board.
“ We made it,” Ramsingh said as Broxton lowered himself onto his back in the cockpit. He closed his eyes, sucking sweet air deep into his belly as he let the evening breeze wash over his chilled body. He was wet and cold and he didn’t care, because his body craved rest more than warmth.
“ Can’t sleep yet, Broxton,” Ramsingh said.
“ Five minutes.”
“ No, we have to get inside and get out of these clothes.”
“ We can’t break in.” Broxton said, realizing how hollow it sounded as soon as the words came out. Apparently Ramsingh did too, because he picked up something that looked like a hammer that had been in a plastic holder under the winches, and with a few hard strokes he broke open a hard plastic deck hatch.
“ Winch handle, very handy,” Ramsingh said, sliding it back into its holster. “You want to do the honors?” he said.
“ You’re doing fine so far,” Broxton said.
“ I might have a little too much around the middle to slide through that hatch. It’d be better if you did it.”
“ Then what?” Broxton leaned forward on the cockpit seat.
“ Find the tool box. There should be a hacksaw blade in it.”
“ And.”
“ You hand it up to me. I cut off this lock,” he said, touching the lock that secured the companion way cover. “Then we go to Trinidad.”
“ You’re not talking about stealing the boat?”
“ No,” Ramsingh said. “We’re just going to borrow it. Sort of like you did with that Mercedes.”
“ Can you sail it?”
“ My wife and I wandered the world in a sailboat for fifteen years before our money ran out and I had to come back and take up the law. We’d always meant to go back, but we had kids, and bills, and then politics got in the way.”
“ You can really handle this?”
“ Son, if it sails I can make it dance. You just get me that hacksaw blade and we’ll be on our way.”
Moonlight showed through the hatch, offering Broxton a glimpse of a small salon below. It’s like a motorhome, he thought, as he shifted his position and slipped his legs through the hatch. He dropped onto a settee that reminded him of a sofa in a small living room. “So far, so good,” he said, and then he went looking. It didn’t take him long to locate a tool box in a cabinet by the engine room. “Found the tools,” he said up to Ramsingh and five minutes later the prime minister was using a broken hacksaw blade on the lock, while Broxton continued to search the boat.
When he was a child he’d crossed the country from California to Florida in a motorhome with his parents. Aside from the never ending religious war that was politely fought between his devoutly Jewish mother and his staunchly Catholic father, he remembered the size of the rooms in the home on wheels. Small kitchen, the bedroom in the back, large by motorhome standards, but small compared to a house, the dining table taking up half of the cramped living room. The boat was like that. Compact. There were two small sleeping cabins, one toilet, a salon half filled by the table exactly the way Broxton remembered it in the motorhome, a galley that was slightly larger than the motorhome’s kitchen, and an engine room.
He found clothes that fit in the forward cabin, shorts and sweat pants, tee shirt and sweat shirt and several towels. In seconds he had his wet things off and was slipping on the sweatshirt as Ramsingh finished with the lock.
“ There’s some dry things back here, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said.
“ Call me Ram, you keep forgetting,” he said, as he came in through the companionway.
“ How’d you know about the tool box?’’
“ No properly maintained boat would be without a full compliment of tools,” Ramsingh said as he was shucking out of his wet clothes.
Fifteen minutes later Broxton was holding onto the headsail and leaning over the bow, pulpit, with his foot on the windlass button, watching the anchor come up. Ramsingh had raised the main and was behind the wheel. They were going to sail off the hook.
As soon as the anchor broke free the boat started to move backward, no longer secured to the ocean floor. But Broxton kept his foot on the button until the anchor clanked into place as he’d been instructed, then he made his way back to the cockpit, keeping his head under the moving boom as Ramsingh spun the wheel to the right allowing the wind to fill the main.
“ Have you ever been sailing before, Broxton?” Ramsingh asked, once Broxton was comfortably sitting in the cockpit.
“ Never,” Broxton said, “but I served on a carrier in the Navy.”
“ Doesn’t count. This is different. In a powerboat we’d go directly to Trinidad, be there in twelve or fifteen hours, but since we can’t sail against a headwind we’ll have to make for the mainland and motorsail along the coast.
“ How long do you think it’ll take?”
“ A day, if we don’t stop, maybe a little longer. We’ll see.”
Broxton sat back as Ramsingh let out the jib and the boat picked up speed, gliding through the water like a skater glides over the ice. The moon played off the sea, casting the night in an unearthly glow, and Broxton was reminded of his religious parents, each believing, in their own way, in a God that he’d never been able to find. When he was a child his mother wore her Judaism as a burden and his father, his Catholicism as a cross. But they’d both grown out of religion and into God, coming to peace with each other and their marriage. So Broxton was never barmitzvahed, never confessed, never confirmed. He’d been ignored by two of the world’s great religions and as a result God was no more than a word to him.
But still, on nights like this, he wondered.
“ You should go below and get some sleep,” Ramsingh said.
“ I can stay up,” Broxton said.
“ I don’t doubt it, but you shouldn’t. We’re going to have to go all night, so we’ll need our rest. I’ll take the first watch, two hours, then I’ll wake you.” Ramsingh ran a hand through his long gray hair, pushing it back. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“ Sure you don’t want me to take the first watch?”
“ I’m okay,” Ramsingh said. “The swim was exhilarating.”
“ What about your heart?”
“ It’s been six months since the surgery. I’m in better shape than I ever was. I jog every morning. Eat better. Work out in the gym at night. Easy workouts, but I work out. I’ll be okay. You’re done in. Go below and get some rest. I couldn’t sleep now even if I wanted to.”
“ Yes, sir.” Broxton was relieved that Ramsingh was in better health than he’d thought, but he was reluctant, nevertheless, to go below.
“ You can sleep in the cockpit, if you wish,” Ramsingh said, seeming to understand Broxton’s feelings, “but you should sleep.”