The sun was setting as Robert climbed the ladder to the roof of the harbormaster station, a one-story structure at the foot of the cruise ship pier, where Lynda sat on a folding metal chair behind an air-conditioning unit, binoculars on her lap. From the roof, Robert had a clear view of Puerto Madryn, a modest resort town lining a three-mile crescent of sand and sidewalk. At the far end of the pier was the Tern. Robert wanted it closer, but the other spaces were reserved for the 3,000-passenger ships that kept the town’s economy running. Fortunately, those ships were absent today, giving Robert and Lynda an unobstructed view.
After they’d documented every crew member, searched the ship—again, and with dogs—they’d continued their surveillance in twelve-hour shifts. It was now day two, and Robert knew they couldn’t keep up this pace. While staring at a ship sounded simple enough, fighting boredom and sleep was hard work. Robert’s mind wanted to wander and usually succeeded.
The harbormaster had volunteered to help, and while Robert didn’t trust him, he wasn’t going to turn down another set of eyes. For all of Robert’s lobbying, the only help the navy had offered before leaving him and Lynda in the harbor was to leash the Tern to the pier with a three-inch thick chain, which, as Robert could see through the binoculars, still remained intact. Although an arc welder could slice through it in an hour or so, anything that would slow them down was worth using.
Robert had called Gordon and asked him to pull more strings with the Argentines, to get them another boat, but Gordon told him they were out of strings and low on agents. When he added Merry Christmas just before hanging up, Robert remembered that the holiday was just a few days away.
He could smell the harbormaster’s cigar smoke wafting up through the downstairs window as he handed Lynda a soda from the bag he carried. He picked up her binoculars to take a look. “Did I miss anything?” he asked.
“A produce delivery. A few games of Hacky Sack. The chef waved at me a few hours ago. I waved back. Then he brought me a tofu and tomato sandwich. It wasn’t bad.”
“You need some sleep,” he said.
“Easier said than done. I’m covered with bed-bug bites. Is your room as bad as mine?”
“Why do you think I took the night shift?”
Lynda grabbed her binoculars back. Robert was warming up to her, beginning to relax again, to put this mission in perspective. In the end, this was just another job; he was just another government employee. He needed to stay focused on the smallness of his life, even when he suspected the stakes were not quite so small.
“Maybe Aeneas really is gone,” Lynda said.
“No. Here’s around here somewhere. He won’t leave his boat behind. He’s just waiting for the right moment to sneak onboard.”
“Suppose he does sneak onboard, and they torch through the chain and tear ass out of the harbor. Then what? It’s not like we can pull them over.”
“I know that. You know that. But for all they know, the navy is waiting for them just off the coast. I expect them to pull a stunt similar to what they did in Miami. Create a disturbance. Or catch us off guard. Unless, of course, we happen to catch them off guard, which is what I expect to do. Which is why you need to get some sleep.”
“Okay, okay. If you need me, I’ll be at the Ritz.” Lynda grabbed her backpack and descended the ladder. Robert watched her walk along the main street, then turn right at Nuevo de Julio. He welcomed the solitude. Alone, he could let his guard down, enjoy a few hours free of probing questions.
Robert raised his binoculars. The windows of the lower decks glowed, but the bridge remained dark; perhaps they were up there watching him. A part of him wanted to sneak down and unlock the chains, let them slip away, along with the past. Call Gordon and tell him Aeneas had gotten away. It would not be the first time.
* * *
Robert snapped awake to the cool spatter of rain on his face. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes to find a leviathan of a cruise ship towering over him like an office building, blocking his view of the Tern. He stood up too quickly, then fell back onto his chair, his mind hazy.
He glanced at his watch: 6:15 a.m. On the cruise ship’s dock below, crewmembers in light blue jumpsuits were scurrying about, dragging ropes, shouting back and forth in an Asian language; the ship had arrived only moments ago, and he’d slept right through it.
Robert slid down the ladder and sprinted across the concrete embarcadero, bracing himself for a view of an abandoned pier, pieces of chain scattered about. But when he cleared the cruise ship, he saw the Tern anchored at the end of the pier, right where he’d left it.
He stopped and caught his breath. He leaned against a nearby bench but didn’t sit; he couldn’t risk nodding off again. He needed to remain on his feet until sunrise, until Lynda returned. Through his binoculars, the chain that stretched from the Tern to the pier appeared untouched. The windows along the hull and upper decks were dark. Then he noticed a pulse of light on the observation deck above the bridge, and he adjusted his focus. It was the light of a small phone, bathing Lauren’s face in a pale yellow glow. Robert assumed she was talking to Aeneas, based on her animated expressions, the way she paced the deck.
Suddenly conscious of eyes upon him, he gazed up at the white steel ship, with Emperor of the Seas emblazoned across the bow, and noticed silhouetted bodies in windows several stories up. They seemed to be watching him with the same curiosity in which he was watching the Tern.