Take my word for it, Ian is just about as broke as Raven.”

Evan Cummings looked politely disbelieving. “A yachtsman, broke? Really?”

Will said, “Really,” and turned to Raven. “The consulate has a fund for stranded travelers, but it is not official money. It comes from donations and fund raisers by the officer’s wives and it is never quite sufficient to our needs. For a friend, a small loan will be my treat.”

Cummings rose and we joined him. “First a photo,” he said, “then Will will show you how to make an international call.”

We trooped down for the photo, then Will led us to his desk, dialed the number Raven gave him, and handed her the receiver. “Daddy’s secretary said that my father would be out of town for another two days,” Raven explained as the connection was made, “so I’ll leave a message on his answering machine at home.” Then she turned her attention inward, her head bobbing slightly as she followed the recorded message. She said, very fast, “Daddy, if you haven’t talked to Elena, call her. She has the details of what happened to me. I’m at the consulate in Marseille. I’ve lost my money and I need you to send me a couple of thousand.”

There is always a moment of dissatisfaction at the end, when you’ve talked to a machine as if it were a human. Raven’s face registered it, then she passed the phone back to Will, who hung it up. Will’s face was full of mischief. He said, “A couple of thousand?”

Raven didn’t get it. She turned to me for enlightenment, but I was shaking from the effort of not laughing out loud. She looked irritated at being left out of the joke and became more irritated when it dawned on her that we were laughing at her.

Finally, I controlled myself enough to say, “I’m sorry, Raven. A couple of thousand is probably reasonable, for you and your family. Will and I aren’t used to moving in those circles. We both worked our way through college, where a ‘couple of thousand’ might have to last us a semester.”

“You two own a yacht!”

“We built a yacht. I had a rich aunt who gave me a job as a guard at her freight yard and paid me more than I was worth. She gave me the opportunity to work my way through college, but she wouldn’t pay my way. That’s the kind of person she was. Wahini was in the back of the freight yard, about half finished. It came with the property when my aunt bought out a bankrupt competitor who spent too much time dreaming of Tahiti and not enough time tending to business. When Will and I decided to finish her, she agreed to buy the materials, if we would do the work. That’s how we got her.”

“But it takes money to travel.”

“That depends on how you travel. Why do you think we ate canned stew all the way across?”

Raven grinned. She had forgiven us. She said, “I just though you had no taste.”

“Close. I have never had the chance to acquire taste. Unlike Will . . .; Will, how much did you pay for that suit?”

Will held the lapels back to display the perfectly tailored vest and chuckled, “Half of my first paycheck. I arrived at Marseille in blue jeans, with one cheap suit in a cardboard suitcase. Upwardly mobile, that’s us. Just a couple of yuppies.” more tomorrow

Chapter Nine

After Raven had told her story, getting her a new passport was the first order of business. Since she was a friend of a friend of Will’s and the daughter of a state senator, they made it a priority item. Cummings made a call to Sacramento, to Senator Cabral’s office, to confirm Raven’s identity. When he asked Raven for her full name, she said, “Ramona Maria Elvira Cabral.”

“Ramona?” I said.

“Just shut up!”

“Maria?”

“Ian!”

“Elvira?”

“Look, Raven is who I am. What my parent’s named me twenty years ago doesn’t matter. They didn’t know me then.”

Cummings talked a long time, occasionally asking questions of Raven and relaying her answers. Once he passed the phone to Raven so she could speak directly. After she passed it back, she said, “My father wasn’t in. Actually we were lucky to get anyone; it’s past midnight there. That was his secretary. She was under the impression that I was still in New York.”

“That means something,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about the attack. If your luggage had been left in your room, the cruise line would have suspected something. Did you drop your purse during the struggle?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Let’s assume you did. All Davis would have to do is take your key, clean up your room, and drop your purse and luggage overboard. Then there would be no way of knowing, or even suspecting, that you hadn’t just gone off somewhere on your own.”

Will nodded. “That makes sense.”

“It begins to look more and more like a deliberate act, planned out in advance.”

Cummings had cradled the phone. He said, “Intelligent improvisation would account for it just as well. We don’t really know much for certain.”

Raven’s eyes had grown fierce in memory of her attack. She wanted to know who would investigate.

“To be frank,” Cummings replied, “no one. The attack took place in international waters, aboard a ship of Norwegian registry. Bermudan authorities will be notified so they can watch for the pair in the future, and we will send a copy of the report to the New York police for the same reason, but you know the crime rate in New York. I doubt if the report will even be read by anyone but the clerk who files it. The only ones with the right and responsibility to follow up the incident are the Norwegians, and what could they do?”

Raven’s comment was not ladylike, but Cummings was too urbane to notice.

“Anyway, our next step is to walk down and get a photo for your new passport, and then you’ll have to excuse me while I notify the port authorities. They will want to know why your yacht is moored in France and you have not registered with them.”

“Mr. Cummings,” Raven said, “this is embarrassing to mention, but I’m flat broke. All my money is apparently on the bottom of the Atlantic, where I was supposed to be.”

“You can phone home at our expense, of course, but I had assumed that Mr. Gunn would be providing for your immediate needs.”

Will had been sitting quietly, as befits a very junior officer. Now he laughed and said, “Evan, some time I must explain Ian’s peculiar financial circumstances. Take my word for it, he is just about as broke as Raven.” more tomorrow

At the bottom of the harbor there is a traffic turnabout where cars enter the tunnel under the Vieux-port. We sat there for an two hours watching the boats come and go, and waiting for the consulate to open. We didn’t talk much. Afterward we walked up the hill to 12 Blvd. P. Peytral. 

The consulate was set back from a small, pleasant, cobblestoned, tree shaded square. There was a stone and metal fence where a friendly French guard went through the contents of our pockets and held my jackknife for ransom while we were inside. It wouldn’t be so easy today, but in 1989, Osama bin Laden was just a young man no one had heard of.

We descended into a small garden, and then through into a foyer where a second guard sat like a bank teller behind a thick glass panel. He asked our business and I explained that Raven was an American citizen who had lost her passport. He made a brief phone call, released an electronic lock, and told us to go on into the waiting room. 

“Who is working on lost passports today?” I asked.

“Mr. Cummings. Why? Do you know him?” Behind the polite reply there was suspicion. The cold war was still a reality. I could not see his hands, but I would have bet that they had moved closer to a panic button.

“No, but Will Hayden is a close friend of mine. I’m Ian Gunn.”

The man relaxed. He said, “Mr. Hayden has been expecting you for two weeks. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

“Thank you.”

The waiting room was utilitarian, with straight backed leather chairs, framed prints from the USIA, and not much else.  Raven sat down uneasily and said, “I hate this. This dress makes me look like a refugee.”

“You are. But you look fine.”

“Hah! To you. You’re hooked.”

Cummings came in and shook hands with us both. He was a small, gray man with a twisted lip. It looked like a cancer removal scar. Probably he had smoked a pipe all his life; probably, he didn’t any more. He gestured us ahead of him down the hall toward a small office. 

Before we got there, Will came around a corner with a grin six feet wide and grabbed me. We pounded each other’s backs for a minute; then he held me at arm’s length. I don’t normally like being handled, but Will is my closest friend. Perhaps my only real friend, in a world full of friendly acquaintances.

Will appeared not to have noticed Raven, but I knew him better than that. I also knew Raven would be looking at him, and at the contrast between the two of us. We were both just at six feet. Will was fashionably thin in a tailored suit; he looked like a model. I weigh one-ninety in baggy jeans and a khaki shirt, with hands like a carpenter.

Will looked like he belonged at an embassy ball; I looked like I belonged on the deck of a sailboat.

The contrast was largely illusion; we were better matched than we appeared. We had both graduated San Francisco State with honors, and our MA theses in Political Science had been posted within a month of each other. We had both applied to the State Department; we had both passed the exams. And we had built Wahini together.

However, there was no denying that Will was better looking. In fact, he was better looking than just about anybody. It was an old joke between us that I kept him around just to keep the girls off my back.

He turned to Raven and said, aside to me, “You were going to introduce me, weren’t you?”

“I shouldn’t. Raven, Will Hayden. Will, Raven Cabral. She came over on the Wahini with me.”

He took her hand and said, “You trusted yourself in Ian’s hands?” His voice held an irresistible mixture of warmth and taunting. Raven smiled until her eyes glowed.

“The lady is with me, Will.”

I said it very quietly, and Will raised an eyebrow. I seldom resent his successes, and he knows it. He said, “Of course,” and turned off his charm like a faucet. He remained friendly and solicitous, but all invitation was gone out of his face and voice. If I knew how he did that, I would open a school to teach the technique and get rich. more tomorrow

By four, Raven was asleep. I wanted to be away from the Wahini before the port authorities arrived, so I set the alarm for two hours sleep. When it went off, I would have thrown it overboard if I had had the strength.

We rag-bathed by lamplight, lavish with soap and water for the first time now that we were in port. Quarters were cramped, so I helped her and she helped me. Somehow, that made the process take longer.

By the time we reached the street, the fish market had been underway for an hour. The sounds and smells were comfortingly foreign. Notre-Dame de la Garde was lovely in the early morning sunshine as it looked down on Marseille. 

The embassy wouldn’t be open until later in the morning, so we took our time. Raven was lovely in her shore going clothes, but it was a testimony to her, not to them. She was a fair seamstress, and I had sewn up the Wahini’s sails. Between us we had managed to turn a spare piece of terylene sail cloth into a simple shift. It was a little crude to look at, but I could guarantee it wouldn’t blow out in a fifty knot wind. I bought her a pair of sandals at a street stall to complete her outfit. On the Wahini, she had gone barefooted.

Raven was preoccupied. She walked at my side, holding closer to me than was her habit, and smiled. But she should have been electrically alive. How many people get pulled out of the ocean and whisked off to Europe on a private yacht? By someone who becomes an enthusiastic lover? I may not be a fairy tale prince, but I am not Beauty’s beast either. So we sat on a bollard overlooking the fish market and I asked her what was wrong.

“How is it since you rescued me, Ian?”

“Fifty-two days.” I had all the facts ready so I could tell my story with accuracy at the embassy. “I picked you up on April thirteenth. My lucky day.”

“Not so lucky for me.”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“I suppose.”

“You could be dead. Instead of walking around Europe with me, enjoying the sunshine and the smell of fish.”

She patted my leg and smiled, but the smile went away quickly. She said, “I was supposed to catch a plane back to San Francisco the night my ship got to New York. Someone was supposed to pick me up at the airport early that Tuesday morning.”

“And you weren’t there. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’ve been speculating about what happened then. Daddy would notify the airline and they would check to see if I ever got a boarding pass. Then he might check on later flights. If I didn’t come back within twenty-four hours, he would probably call the cruise line.”

“And they would say you never got off the ship.”

“No, Ian. That’s what is bothering me. When we got off in Bermuda, the Bermudan customs people checked our passports, but the cruise line people didn’t make a head count. If they did the same thing in New York on the way back, they would have no way of knowing that I never left the ship.”

“Leaving your disappearance a complete mystery. Maybe Davis and his sidekick had that in mind?”

“Maybe. That isn’t what I was thinking of, either. If I never got home, Father would not think I had drowned in mid-ocean. He would think I had turned left at the terminal with some guy I had just met and gone off to raise hell without telling him.”

I didn’t like thinking of myself as one of a cast of thousands, but she looked so glum that I said, “If that is true, then he has just been spared unnecessary grief.”

She nodded. “True. And I’m happy for him, but I’m not feeling too good about myself.”

It must have been contagious. Suddenly, neither was I.

*****

As I have said elsewhere, this set of events couldn’t happen today, because of ubiquitous, instant, worldwide communication.

Evening was approaching and the city lights had begun to come on. After sixty-eight days at sea, it looked good. It looked like food, showers, a bed that did not heave all night long, and other people’s voices. Our bowsprit was pointed straight toward the seaside Promenade de la Corniche where people were driving home from work, or out for a night’s entertainment. The houses of the city rose up in tiers on the highlands beyond.

A ninety degree turn to port put the promenade on our right hand and took us under the battlements of Tour Saint-Nicolas, past the breakwater and the entrance to la Grande Joliette, the new ship harbor. The stalk-legged silhouettes of unloading cranes were black against the sunset as we passed, turning sharply to starboard this time and passed beneath Tour Saint-Jean down the narrow entry into the Vieux-Port.

Marseille’s old harbor is famous throughout Europe, even though it is now mostly used by pleasure boats and fishermen. It is a half mile long rectangle of water thrusting itself right into the center of Marseille, and packed with boats of every description. Encircled by broad avenues which are backed by shops and restaurants, it is the heart of the city. As we looked for an empty berth, the cathedral of Notre-Dame de la Garde was etched black against the fading sky high above us.

We tied up next to a rugged but colorful fishing boat. One of the fishermen helped up put out our lines, gesturing and giving orders in flowing French. When I answered him out of my hundred word French vocabulary, his gestures simply became more animated. Between us we managed to get the Wahini secured.

He pointed to the Q flag flying and said something I didn’t understand. After several tries, he simply repeated, “Demain.  Demain!” and I got the picture that tomorrow would be soon enough to contact the port authorities. I hauled the flag down.

The other fishermen were lining the rail now. One of them gestured toward our stern and our helper trotted back to see the Wahini’s name and home port. He came back looking impressed and asked, “L’Amerique du Nord?  Le Etats-Unis?” I nodded. Then he asked if we had just made the Atlantic crossing. At least, I think that is what he said. I nodded again.

That made us instant friends, or at least minor celebrities. The other fishermen came down to join us and carried us away across the broad Quai du Port to a night on the town.

I never did decide if they were really impressed with our crossing, or just looking for an excuse to celebrate. Or maybe they were just impressed with Raven and looking for an excuse to spend an evening with her. She was in her element. Within minutes she had discovered that one of the fishermen spoke a rough sort of Spanish and the two of them became our translators. We were paraded from restaurant to bistro and presented to every waiter, shop keeper, and passer-by in Marseille. We ate bouillabaisse, which I was told a dozen times that night was invented in Marseille, and other things I could neither identify nor remember. I could not refuse the wine, and by two hours into our night my memory was getting hazy.

It was close to two AM when we got back to the Wahini. After our guides had gone to bed, Raven and I sat on deck looking up at the lights of the houses on the surrounding hills. My head felt like a half-full gallon pail. Raven was enjoying my discomfort. “For a person who doesn’t drink,” she said, “you certainly tied one on.”

I was too far gone to try to be clever. I just said, “That’s why I don’t drink.”

“You seemed to enjoy it.”

“Too much!”

She smiled sweetly, like a tigress surveying her prey. “I seem to remember some other things you used to enjoy. Do you feel up to them?”

I looked into her predatory eyes and said, “Would it matter?”

“No.”

“Then let the games begin.”

As it happened, I was up to them. Within seconds she had my full attention. The rest of the night was not hazy at all. more tomorrow