Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

From behind the tinted-glass windscreen of the Cloud , Mr. Callahan and Freddy Negus watched Pablo on the pier.

“That’s our boy,” Callahan said.

“Gawd,” Freddy Negus said.

“What’s wrong with him?” Callahan demanded. Callahan was drinking a rum and soda and the sight of it in his hand at so early an hour made Negus uneasy. “He showed up, didn’t he? He’s just a deserter, that’s all.” He saw Negus glancing at the drink in his hand and put it down beside the Fathometer. “I mean, what do you want, for Christ’s sake? Billy Budd?”

“You hire these monkeys and then I got to keep them in line. I’ll tell you, Jack, I’m getting plumb wore out with it. We could have taken on a local crew for this.”

Callahan picked up his drink angrily.

“I told you, Freddy, didn’t I, Freddy, that I did not want a native crew for this? I need people I can control and who need me. I need a guy with a little technical savvy who’s a long way from home and who can’t take to the hills if the deal goes queer. A deserter is perfect. That boy you’re looking at is gonna work out fine.”

“Gimme a dope run any old time,” Negus said. “At least you know what you’re up against.”

“Hell, Freddy,” Callahan said, “you been out in all the weather. An old pirate like you.” He stepped unsteadily over the hatchway and into the galley for another drink.

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Negus said. “We’re all getting a little old for piracy.” He kept on watching Pablo, fretting down on the pier. “And when’s Deedee coming back? We want to clear tonight.”

“She drove over to Pico to find a dentist,” Callahan said, measuring out his rum. “She’ll be back in plenty of time.”

“Fuckin’ ’ell,” Freddy Negus said. He put his baseball cap on and went out on the little bridge beside the wheelhouse, squinting into the sun.

“Hey, you!” he called down to Pablo. “Pablo! Come on up here.”

Hearing himself hailed from one of the ratty shrimpers, Pablo picked up his bag and started along the pier. There was a white man in a baseball cap on the bridge of the largest of the boats; the man was waving Pablo aboard. It occurred to him that the Callahans’ yacht must be lying to offshore somewhere. He had suspected contrabanding but nothing so complex.

“Tabor?” the man asked him when he stood abeam of the shrimper. A black man who had been painting bright yellow numerals on the vessel’s prow turned to look at him. Pablo nodded.

“Come aboard, Tabor.”

Pablo stepped over the rail. The man who had called him was tall and lean, tanned, with lazy faded blue eyes. He indicated a hatchway behind the wheelhouse and followed Pablo through it.

“I’m looking for the Cloud ,” Pablo explained.

“You’re standing in her,” the tall man said.

Mr. Callahan came forward from the galley, a glass in his hand.

“Well done,” Mr. Callahan said. “Right on time.”

Pablo turned from the tall man’s steady gaze.

“Christ, Mr. Callahan. You told me you had a powerboat. You didn’t say nothing about shrimping.” He felt disappointed and betrayed. It was not at all what he had looked forward to.

“You don’t see any sails, do you?” the tall man asked him. “This is a powerboat.”

Pablo turned to face him. “No question about that.”

“What’s happening right now,” Mr. Callahan said, “is that you’re being engaged as a crewman on the shrimp boat Cloud. We’re registered out of Marathon, Florida. We’re licensed to fish in the territorial waters of the United States, of Mexico, Belize, Compostela and Tecan. Any other questions will have to wait. O.K.?”

“What am I working for?” Pablo asked bitterly. “A percentage of the catch?”

“That sounds like a question to me,” the tall man said.

Pablo looked at the man again. From his accent, Pablo made him out to be a white Bahamian. Hope Town, Spanish Wells, some sorry-ass town like that. A mean redneck.

“Let me introduce Mr. Negus,” Callahan said. “My number one.”

Pablo nodded. Mr. Negus shifted the plug of tobacco in his cheek.

“And let me hasten to assure you that you’re not being taken advantage of. If we were looking for cheap labor there’s plenty to come by down here. You’ll do fine but you’ve got to go by our rules.”

Negus was looking out at the pier through the hatchway.

“Where you from, son?” he asked Pablo.

“Texas.”

“Lay out your gear for us.” He indicated Pablo’s bag and the deck of the passageway in which they stood. For the first time, Pablo noticed that the interior bulkheads were paneled in dark wood, the rubber-matted deck was spotless. He opened his bag and spread his store of worn work clothes, toiletry bags and slickers across it. Negus crouched to rifle through it and immediately picked up the plastic bag that held Pablo’s passport and tourist card. He handed it over to Callahan.

“We ask everyone to do that for us,” Mr. Callahan explained. “These days you can’t be too careful.” He looked the passport and tourist card over and returned them. Negus took Pablo’s wallet from him. There was nothing in the wallet except what was left of his money. Negus gave him back his wallet and motioned him up against the bulkhead. Pablo leaned forward on his palms.

“Sorry,” Mr. Callahan said.

In a few moments Negus had the automatic and the diver’s knife out on deck. Grimly, he turned out Pablo’s trouser pockets one by one.

“What’s all that for?” Mr. Callahan asked mildly.

“Just for protection.”

“Now how in hell,” Mr. Negus wanted to know, “did he get down here trussed up with all that weaponry? Don’t you think it’s a bit odd,” he asked Callahan, “that they didn’t get it off him?”

“Nobody ever searched me,” Pablo told them. “I come down to Vizcaya on the bus.”

“The bus? All the way from the States?”

“Yes, sir. All the way from Matamoros, Mexico.”

Negus sighed in exasperation.

“I mentioned that it would be our rules,” Callahan said to Pablo. “If any of that troubles you”—he motioned back toward the shacks of Palmas—“we’ll pay your way back to Vizc and wish you luck. Otherwise — our rules and no questions. That way you’ll make out very well indeed.”

“O.K.,” Pablo said. “I guess I’m with you.”

“You can’t keep that pistol while you’re aboard,” Callahan told him. “You might have an accident. The knife, O.K.”

Negus gave him his Dacor knife. “Wear it on your belt where a man can see it, sailor.”

“Welcome aboard,” Mr. Callahan said, and took his drink aft.

He walked through the galley and into a dark compartment where the forward ice hold should have been, closing a door behind him. Pablo looked from the well-stocked bar in the galley to the tinted glass fronting the pilothouse. At the forward end of the passageway in which he stood was a Modar UHF transmitter and a CB. There were A and C Lorans and what appeared to be a seventy-eight-mile-range radar scanner. The wheelhouse cockpit had a brand-new recording Fathometer. From the dock the Cloud had appeared to be a moderately clean eighty-five-foot shrimper. Inside she had the appointments and equipment of a cutter.

“I take it,” Mr. Negus said, as he watched Pablo look over the electronic gear, “that you’re familiar with this stuff?”

“More or less,” Pablo said.

“Everything the latest boats carry, we carry,” Negus told him. “Your big Texas boats have all this stuff.”

Pablo did not contradict him. They went out on deck and Mr. Negus led him aft. Between the mainmast and the upright outriggers, some kind of extra compartment had been constructed. Its uppermost section rose above the level of the main deck and was boarded over with three-by-five hatch covers. This, Pablo thought, would be the compartment into which Mr. Callahan had taken his drink.