The Nautical Chart: A Novel of Adventure

414 Pages·2002·1.4 MB·English

by  Arturo Perez-Reverte

THE NAUTICAL CHART
'Spanish galleons and sunken treasure have been the stuff of adventure novels
since Robert Louis Stevenson sent the man with the black spot into the bar of the
Admiral Benbow. The Nautical Chart succeeds in proving that in the right hands
they can still inspire romance and intrigue in the 21st century ... A clever, well-
crafted literary adventure story: a romantic intrigue for all fans of the intellectual
thriller' The Times
'Powered by an infectious joy in storytelling, [Perez-Reverte’s] vessel speeds to a
surprising and satisfying destination. This is literature that is unembarrassed also
to be entertainment, and is thus a noble tribute to its salty forebears of centuries
past...
As an adventure yarn, The Nautical Chart is near-irreproachable'
Guardian
'Perez-Reverte places his adventure within an exciting tradition of maritime
storytelling... Tanger Soto has a determination that reminds me of Peter Hoeg's
Miss Smilla' Independent
'This vivid and colourful tale of lost treasure, love and betrayal on the high seas
is a work that conjures the shade of past masters of nautical adventure. Conrad,
Melville and Stevenson are in this heady brew, but not one of those masters ever
produced something quite as rich and strange as Perez-Reverte's utterly
individual narrative' Barry Forshaw, Amazon.co.uk
A classic of its genre, equal to the best of Eric Ambler and Patrick O'Brian - and,
beyond genre, not far below the levels and depths plumbed by Melville and
Conrad themselves ... In a virtually perfect fusion of absorbing action and
precise, intricate characterisation, Perez-Reverte magically sustains the tension
and suspense over a span of almost 500 pages' Kirkus Reviews
'In the most marvellous way, The Nautical Chart makes the wind of the high
seas blow once more' Le Monde
'O'Brian himself would envy Perez-Reverte s gift for storytelling and his nautical
savvy Le Figaro Magazine
ARTURO PEREZREVERTE was born in 1951 in Cartagena, Spain. He was a
-
television journalist who has appeared on some of the world's most dangerous
crises. He is the author of The Flanders Panel, The Dumas Club, The Seville
Communion, and The Fencing Master.
A P R
RTURO EREZ- EVERTE
THE NAUTICAL CHART
A NOVEL OF ADVENTURE

Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

PICADOR
Firstt published 2001 by Harcourt, Inc., New York
First published in Great Britain 2002 by Picador
This paperback edition published 2002 by Picador an imprint of Pan Maaniilan
Ltd Pan MacmiUan, 20 New Wharf Road, London ru 91m Basingstoke and
Oxford Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 0330486179
Copyright © Arturo Perez-Reverte 2000 English translation copyright O
Margaret Sayers Peden 2001
The right of Arturo Perez-Reverte to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
The right of Margaret Sayers Peden to be identified as the translator of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
© Map pages viii-ix: Carlos Puerta O Map pages x-ii: Reproduced under
permission of the Instituto Hidrogrifico de la Marina. Not valid for navigational
purposes. Please note the disinterested collaboration of the Instituto
Hidrografico de la Marina.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior
written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act
in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
579864
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,
or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser
A nautical chart is much more than an indispensable instrument for getting from
one place to another; it is an engraving, a page of history, at times a novel of
adventure.

JACQUES DUPUET
40
3o
23
LET US observe the night. It is nearly perfect, with Polaris visible in its
prescribed location, to the right and five times the distance of the line formed
between Merak and Dubhe. Polaris will remain in that exact place for the next
twenty thousand years, and any sailor watching it will be comforted by seeing it
overhead. It is, after all, reassuring to know that something somewhere is
immutable, as precise people set a course on a nautical chart or on the blurred
landscape of a life. If we continue perusing the stars, we will have no difficulty
finding Orion, and then Perseus and the Pleiades. That will be easy because the
night is so clear, not a cloud in the sky, not a hint of a breeze. The wind from the
southwest eased at sunset, and the dock is a black mirror reflecting the lights of
the cranes in the port, the lighted castles high on the mountains, and the flashes
—green on one side and red on the other—from the lighthouses of San Pedro
and Navidad.
Now let us turn to the man. He stands motionless, leaning against the coping of
the wall. He is looking at the sky, which appears darker in the east, and thinking
that in the morning the easterly will be blowing, raising a swell out beyond the
harbor. He also seems to be smiling a strange smile. Lighted from below by the
glow of the port, his face is less hopeful than most, and perhaps even bitter. But
we know the reason. We know that during the last weeks, at sea and a few miles
from here, wind and waves have been decisive in this man's life. Although now
they have no importance at all.
Let us not lose sight of him, because we are going to tell his story. As we look
over the port with him, we can make out the lights of a ship moving slowly away
from the dock. The sound of her engines is muffled by distance and the sounds
of the city, along with the throb of propellers churning the black water as the
crew hauls in the final length of mooring line. And as he watches from the wall,
the man feels two different types of pain. In the pit of his stomach is a pain born
of the sadness evident in the grimace that resembles—soon we will understand
that it merely resembles—a smile. But there is a second pain, sharper and more
precise, that comes and goes on his right side, there where a cold moistness
makes his shirt stick to his body as blood seeps down toward his hip, soaking the
inside of his trousers with each beat of his heart and each pulse of his veins.
Fortunately, the man thinks, my heart is beating very slowly tonight.
Lot 307
I have swum through oceans and sailed through libraries. HERMAN
MELVILLE Moby Dick
,

We could call him Ishmael, but in truth his name is Coy. I met him in the next-
to-last act of this story, when he was on the verge of becoming just one more
shipwrecked sailor floating on his coffin as the whaler Rachel looked for lost
sons. By then he had already been drifting some, including the afternoon when
he came to the Claymore auction gallery in Barcelona with the intention of
killing time. He had a small sum of money in his pocket and, in a room in a
boarding-house near the Ramblas, a few books, a sextant, and a pilot's license
that four months earlier the head office of the Merchant Marine had suspended
for two years, after the Isla Negra, a forty-thousand-ton container ship, had run
aground in the Indian Ocean at 04:20 hours... on his watch.
Coy liked auctions of naval objects, although in his present situation he was in
no position to bid. But Claymore's, located on a first floor on calle Consell de
Cent, was air-conditioned and served drinks at the end of the auction, and
besides, the young woman at the reception desk had long legs and a pretty smile.
As for the items to be sold, he enjoyed looking at them and imagining the
stranded sailors who had been carrying them here and there until they were
washed up on this final beach. All through the session, sitting with his hands in
the pockets of his dark-blue wool jacket, he kept track of the buyers who carried
off his favorites. Often this pastime was disillusioning. A magnificent diving
suit, whose dented and gloriously scarred copper helmet made him think of
shipwrecks, banks of sponges and Negulesco's films with giant squid and Sophia
Loren emerging from the water with her wet blouse plastered to her body, was
acquired by an antique dealer whose pulse never missed a beat as he raised his
numbered paddle. And a very old Browne & Son hand-bearing compass, in good
condition and in its original box, for which Coy would have given his soul
during his days as an apprentice, was awarded, without any change in the
opening price, to an individual who looked as if he knew absolutely nothing
about the sea; that piece would sell for ten times its value if it were displayed in
the window of any maritime sporting-goods shop.
The fact is, that afternoon the auctioneer hammered down lot 306—a Ulysse
Nardin chronometer used in the Italian Royal Navy—at the opening price,
consulting his notes as he pushed up his glasses with his index finger. He was
suave, and was wearing a salmon-colored shirt and a rather dashing necktie.
Between bids he took small sips of a glass of water.
"Next lot: Atlas Maritimo de las Costas de Espana, the work of Urrutia Salcedo.
Number three oh seven."
He accompanied the announcement with a discreet smile saved for pieces whose
importance he meant to highlight. An eighteenth-century jewel of cartography,
he added after a significant pause, emphasizing the word "jewel" as if it pained
him to release it. His assistant, a young man in blue overalls, held up the large
folio volume so it could be seen from the floor, and Coy looked at it with a stab
of sadness. According to the Claymore catalogue, it was rare to find this edition
for sale, since most of the copies were in libraries and museums. This one was in
perfect condition. Most likely it had never been on a ship, where humidity,
penciled notations, and natural wear and tear left their irreparable traces on
navigational charts.
The auctioneer was opening the bidding at a price that would have allowed Coy
to live for half a year in relative comfort. A man with broad shoulders, a clear
brow, and long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, who was sitting in the first
row and whose cell phone had rung three times, to the irritation of others in the
room, held up his paddle, number n. Other hands went up as the auctioneer,
small wooden gavel in hand, turned his attention from one to another, his
modulated voice repeating each offer and suggesting the next with professional
monotony The opening price was about to be doubled, and prospective buyers of
lot 307 began dropping by the wayside. Joining the corpulent individual with the
gray ponytail in the battle was another man, lean and bearded, a woman—of
whom Coy could see only the back of a head of short blond hair and the hand
raising her paddle—and a very well-dressed bald man. When the woman
doubled the initial price, gray ponytail half-turned to send a miffed glance in her
direction, and Coy glimpsed green eyes, an aggressive profile, a large nose, and
an arrogant expression. The hand holding his paddle bore several gold rings. The
man gave the appearance of not being accustomed to competition, and he turned
to his right brusquely, where a dark-haired, heavily made-up young woman who