“Maybe, but you are planning to go north. In case you haven’t looked at the calendar lately, it’s the beginning of bloody November!” Gavin forced himself to relax, pushing his palms down in some Tai Chi move to battle frustration. “Okay, let’s just say for argument’s sake that you work something out with Panama, leave Anna and the yacht, fly back, swing some kind of deal with Ottawa, Washington, whoever might want her along with the film, evidence, whatever you shot in Kiev, and then they pick her up from here?”
“Won’t work. I’m not about to abandon her. If you and someone you loved had gone through something like this, I sure as hell hope you wouldn’t abandon her either! Jesus, who do you think I am? and the deal is I get her to Canada, they grant protection, she talks or whatever. Talk is secondary, getting there is primary and by there I mean Ca-na-da — not Panama!”
“Then stay here. Stay with the boat, try to work some kind of deal from Panama.”
“Don’t you get it? She’s not safe here.”
“Give me a break! You think she’ll be safe in the north Pacific in winter?”
I shoved my way past Gavin, “Besides, you don’t know what I’ve gone through to get this far. I’m sure as hell not giving up now!” I left Gavin fuming on the dock and stomped up to the clubhouse.
The veranda was bigger than it looked from the water, a concrete slab overlaid with years of heavy white enamel paint. Other than a Choco Nation mother and daughter sitting on a blanket silently weaving coiled baskets in front of the lounge, we seemed to be the only customers. “Glad to see you beat the rush and got a table.” I joined Anna and Sandy. Gavin slowly made his way toward us, arms crossed, examining his shoes.
“The well armed gentlemen at the gate say there are extreme tourists coming in from a cruise ship. I’m guessing it’ll pick up around here, knowing those extreme tourist types.” Sandy laughed. It was jarring to hear a human voice that wasn’t my own or Anna’s. “Apparently, it’s quite the thrill to have drinks at the world’s most dangerous yacht club.”
I asked our server for a list of their Irish whiskies and got a blank stare. Sandy piped up, ordering a round of Balboa beer in fluent Spanish. I raised an eyebrow at Gavin and he muttered, “Yup, until we got on the flight to Panama, I didn’t know either.”
Three sweating beer bottles and a Perrier — no glasses — showed up. Sandy held hers over the table, canted just slightly, waiting. I clued in when Gavin took his Perrier and clinked it against Sandy’s beer bottle, but kept it at arm’s length too. I joined them with a clink of my bottle and Anna followed suit.
Conversation drifted to Sandy and Gavin and their plans for some R&R — since they were here anyway. “Thought we’d check out Bocas del Toro and, get this, Coiba Island.” Gavin snatched at the opening to suggest, once more, that Anna and I come to our senses and join them in vacation paradise. Sandy nodded with a half smile as Gavin went on about how dangerous the north Pacific can be in winter. I wondered if they had rehearsed in the plane on the way down.
“The thing is, Jess, this guy with a heavy Russian accent showed up a couple of times at the house looking for you and Anna.” Sandy said, when Gavin’s lecture had lost traction.
“My house?” I turned to Gavin. “You know about this?”
“Of course I do.” Gavin said, then to Sandy, “Show em the pics.”
Sandy handed me several ink-jet on glossy snapshots of the man in question. My street in her photos looked hauntingly familiar and yet forbidden. I took a look and then passed them to Anna. The man didn’t look familiar, but the photos were taken from a distance and weren’t all that clear. Anna went through them, laying them on the table like tarot cards, before announcing that, “It is hard to tell, but it could be Sergei.”
Rationally I knew that was unlikely, but even so, the fact that someone, who might be Sergei, had been hanging around my house, had me excusing myself and hurrying back to the yacht to email Tom.
Early the following morning, Tom’s return email lit the message light on the sat-modem.
Leave Panama Canal Zone ASAP. Whoever’s hounding your Vancouver friend could have followed her. AND, the list of ships transiting the canal is easy to get hold of and you’re on it: Today, 10 am.
The canal contact and two other men showed up wearing crisp white shirts, ties, pressed trousers, polished shoes and hand-held radios. Radio calls resulted in the arrival of a couple of strapping young Panamanians with two dozen tape enshrouded car tires. A Nissan pickup towing a boat and trailer pulled up. Gavin and Sandy hopped out. Then the driver backed down the boat ramp and launched a skiff. It was filled with the provisions Gavin and Sandy had procured before our arrival. Gavin explained the fortuitous planning as a just-in-case deal. As in, just in case I couldn’t be persuaded to take a holiday and then fly home with them. A couple of drums of diesel were trundled down the dock and hand-pumped into the fuel tanks. Finally, two buckets of Colonel Sanders’ finest Kentucky fried with all the trimmings and several cases of Coke Classic were handed aboard for our Panamanian pilots and line handlers. With the four of us and our crew of five on board, we motored toward the infinite procession of slowly moving ships.
There would be no turning back. Especially after Tom’s warning, we’d decided to keep Shadow going when we hit the Pacific. I hung onto the rolls of film I’d shot in Kiev. It was safer with me than with Gavin. Especially since as he was doing the Eco-tourism thing. Besides, if I didn’t make it, the photographic evidence on that film was pretty much worth squat.
Once through the canal, the Pacific spread out before us. A pilot boat pulled up alongside and, while underway at five knots, the guys in the shirts and ties jumped aboard and were gone. A few minutes later, the skiff, we’d unloaded the groceries from in Colon, came bouncing up behind us. With great frivolity, the two young Panamanian men hurled the tires to their compatriot in the skiff, followed by the mounds of rope they’d brought aboard and finally, buckets of chicken bones and garbage. With the skiff piled up like a top heavy garbage scow, Gavin and Sandy climbed aboard. How that thing didn’t capsize is a mystery to me. With moist eyes, I watched Gavin and Sandy waving as it disappeared in the distance.
THIRTY-SEVEN
It got dark quickly. The sailing was unremarkable, with a light wind moving us smoothly south through the Gulf of Panama. Anna had been morose and silent. On deck, she’d watched the sunset until the last glow of crimson was consumed by blue-black. Then she went below. I knew she was crying silently, or at least trying to conceal it from me. What could we say to each other to make it easier? Sunsets were always the worst for Anna.
I hadn’t spent enough time on land to get used to it, but seeing Gavin and Sandy before heading back to sea left me lonelier than previous departures. The radar picked up targets all around, but nothing close. The sky was overcast, the air warm and saturated. Aside from the spilled light of the electrics, the darkness was total. I was sipping the last of the whiskey I’d poured myself earlier and Anna was asleep below. Compared to the company and activity aboard through the canal, the yacht was desolate. It was a good night for feeling sorry for oneself.
With the Gulf of Panama behind us to the southeast, days blurred into weeks. Winds got lighter and the sea became glassy. A hundred nautical miles off Guatemala, the radar hooted a collision warning. I woke Anna when I had visual and auditory contact with whatever was speeding right toward us. “We’ve got company. Get dressed.”