Reamde

DURING THE LONG run to Heartless Island, Marlon and Csongor had learned from direct observation what every waterman knew from experience, and what engineers knew from wave theory: that longer vessels inherently go faster than shorter ones. They had given the larger vessel something of a head start, since they didn’t want to follow it obviously. Not long after the beginning of the voyage, they had noticed that their quarry was pulling away from them, in spite of the fact that they were running the outboard at full throttle and felt as though its frail-seeming wooden hull would be smashed to pieces by the waves at any moment. The boat they were following did not appear to be running at high speed and yet it was gradually outdistancing them.

As they had slalomed around a few small islands along the way, they had been able to regain some lost ground by cutting straight across tidal shallows where the big boat had been obliged to swing wide. But by the time they’d hove in view of the crowded island that seemed to be their destination, the terrorists’ boat had become a nearly invisible dot, and it had required all of Csongor’s powers of concentration to maintain his focus on it and to prevent its getting lost against the background of countless other vessels.

But of course it had slowed down as it had neared its destination, and so Marlon and Csongor had finally been able to gain on it. The problem of tracking it had become slightly easier, and easier yet when it had elected to swing clear of most of the harbor’s clutter and tie up alongside a fishing vessel that stood aloof from the myriad others.

Csongor couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t become confused and lost it during those anxious minutes, so it had been with a slowly building sense of relief that he made out the damaged deck planks, the crushed pallets, and certain other identifying marks that he had memorized during the first few minutes of the chase.

Whereupon they had run out of gas and been forced to break out the oars.

Much of the remainder of the day had then been consumed with hugely important, yet infuriatingly trivial matters such as obtaining water and food. Without Csongor, Marlon would have found this easier, but still not easy. Easier because he would not have had to explain the presence of a large white man in the boat with him. But still not easy because it would have been obvious to the waterfront society of this little island that Marlon was by no stretch of the imagination a boat person. Had he shown up in a gleaming new white fiberglass runabout, they might have pegged him as a nouveau riche with a freshly acquired toy and taken little note of his obvious lack of nautical acumen. But instead he was in an old and, to put it charitably, well-broken-in working boat that had had no business making the run across open water from Xiamen in the first place. The easiest possible explanation for this combination of clues was that Marlon had stolen the boat from an honest Xiamen waterman and was now a fugitive from justice.

That had all been obvious, and so it had not seemed like a smart move to simply row the boat into the most crowded part of the harbor. Instead, although they had already been suffering from thirst and from a general feeling of being at the end of their ropes, they had taken turns rowing the boat in a wide arc around the island, looking for a less obvious place to put in. Along the way, they had swung past the fishing vessel to which the terrorists’ boat had been tied up, never coming closer than several hundred meters and trying not to stare directly at it. There had been nothing to see anyway. A couple of men had been visible through the windows on the bridge, and two more had been loafing on the main deck just aft of the superstructure, but beyond that there had been nothing to suggest that the vessel was occupied by anyone other than run-of-the-mill fishermen.