Later eventually came, after black beans and pico de gallo and slabs of broiledshark and mole-covered enchiladas and mangoes sliced over ice cream Later came with large mugs of cinnamon-flavored coffee mounded with steamed milk.

"I'm going to tell you what happened, but I'm going to hold back something."

Patricia held her coffee in both hands, suddenly chilled by the open sky, the collection of her blood around her stomach, and the matter at hand.

Becket was on his second coffee already, and had just returned from the bathroom; his hair and face were wet, and the sleepy look was temporarily in abeyance. "You're telling me that you're not going to tell me something?"

She nodded. "I'm not holding anything back except the identity of my deckhand." Or her gender. "He wasn't there when I discovered the Open Lotus and though he was there when I was running from the INS, everything I did was my doing. He was just along for the ride, and he's barely an adult and I don't want him brought into this."

Becket was still for a moment. "Provisionally accepted," he said. "You had a run-in last March with the INS over working in the EEZ with a foreign national crew."

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "I was blown into the EEZ by a storm. I was only three miles over the line and they wanted to arrest my crew and impound my boat for that. But that's not the case here. My crew this trip had wet feet, but his back was dry."

"All right. If I absolutely have to corroborate something you've said, I'll have to press you for access. It's possible I can leave his name off the record." He took an audio recorder from his pocket and placed it on the table; then rested his forefinger on the "record" tab. "Ready?"

She took a deep breath, then nodded. The recorder made a small tiny chiming sound. "My boat was about fifty miles from the Houston dikes..."

7.

Becket: Testimonio

...about fifty miles from the Houston dikes."

Thomas had no trouble concentrating on Patricia's story. He knew, in the back of his head, how near the end of his reserves he was, but for now he watched her face as she told him of her encounter with the death ship and he didn't feel tired at all.He hadn't known what to expect after the videotape. The figure on the screen seemed almost unlikely to exist above water, the small pony tank she'd used was hardly visible, making her seem a water-breathing sprite completely surprised by the intrusion of corpses from the breathing world.

The creature on the pier, whom he'd spotted just before Geoffrey grabbed her arm, was equally different. He'd expected her to pull away or run, but instead, she'd whirled tightly, striking Geoffrey with her elbow and knocking him neatly into the drink. It was all Thomas could do to keep from dropping to his knees and roaring with laughter.

Then there was the woman who'd ridden in the boat with him, the one who'd pulled painful memories from him as easily as she shared her own. There was the woman who'd moved across to the other seat so she could see both sides of his face.

He settled back and watched her talk, letting the details flow past him. The recorder would catch those anyway and he wanted the nuances, the changes of expression that would lead him places that words would not.

Besides, her face, unlike his own, was not at all hard to look at.

She got to the part about finding the boat.

"Why didn't you tell the Amoco tool pusher what you'd found?" he asked.

She paused. "Two reasons. One, for the same reason I later ran. I was afraid of INS involvement. Two, if there was a salvageable cargo, I wasn't going to share it with them. Sunken boats aren't subject to the Flood Salvage Bill. Amoco hired me to find an oil leak, but they might not see it that way, and I didn't want to argue with them about it. When I found the bodies, though, I just wanted to keep it quiet while I ran back home."

Thomas nodded. "I see. How could you identify the types of ordnance, just from looking at the holes?"

"Two years ago, the INS contracted me to recover a small steel trawler in twelve hundred feet of water south of Louisiana. The INS intercepted her trying for the coast and the idiots fired two LAW rockets at the INS cutter. If they'd hit the cutter at the waterline, it would've been bad, but instead they punched a hole into the forward mess." She paused. "The second rocket killed the boarding crew as they were coming across in a Zodiac. The cutter responded with cannon and machine-gun fire, and that trawler went down like a stone-before they could see what she was carrying, though they pulled some of the trawler's survivors and corpses from the water."

Thomas raised his eyebrows. "I think I heard about that. What was the cargo?"

"Uncut cocaine. About two tons. It was in sealed plastic bags and except where some shrapnel tore some open, it was mostly recovered intact. Anyway, that'swhere I'd seen twenty-millimeter cannon and fifty-caliber machine-gun holes." She tilted her head and looked across the table at Thomas. "Was I right?"

"Yes. We recovered slugs." Now why did I tell her that? Watch yourself, boy. "I know what you did from the time you opened the hold to when you closed the hold.

Everybody who saw the tape knows. I'm also presuming from watching you cut the chains that it was the first time you saw the cargo. Well, from that and your, uh, reaction."

Patricia nodded.

"Was that the last time you saw it? Did you go back and look or remove anything from the hold?"

"No. I don't think I could've made myself go back in there even if I had a very good reason. Was it open when you got there?"

"No. Apparently it was as you left it." Thomas could understand her reluctance to reenter the hold. "What did you do next?"

"I went back to the sub, got some salvage foam, and plugged the oil leak. Ran out of air on my way back, too."

"What's salvage foam?"

She spread her arms apart. "It's an elastic plastic foam that you can spray into things to displace water and give them positive lift. It's really stretchy, for about an hour, so, even if you're bringing it up from depth, it can handle expansion without losing buoyancy. It makes a good temporary patch."

"Ah. Why'd you take the time to do that?"

"Are you kidding? Do you know how much oil ended up in the oceans during the Deluge? Not to mention other nasty chemicals. I work in the ocean. I live on the ocean. I don't want any more toxins dumped where I live."

Thomas nodded. A better reason than, "I didn't want anybody else to be able to find it." Well, her subsequent behavior had certainly proved she wasn't trying to hide the ship. "Tell me what happened after that."

He listened to her account of finding the railway car and returning to Terminal Lorraine. Then came the approach of Sycorax and her decision to run.

"It's not that I was sure about Sycorax or even the INS. For all I know, some third party loaded a twenty-millimeter cannon and fifty-cal aboard their rowboat and did the deed." She paused and licked her lips. "If it had happened officially-say, the crew opened fire on a boarding vessel-I would think I would've heard about it.

But suppose an investigation was under way and the press hadn't gotten wind of it yet." She searched Thomas's face. "Did an INS vessel report sinking the Open Lotus?""No."

She exhaled. "Well, I feel justified in running, then. I don't know that it makes it any better. If it had been a case of the INS firing back, think how horrible it would be for the INS crew to find they'd accidentally killed all those people in the hold."

She shuddered. "But then it's even more horrible if the people who did sink the Open Lotus knew what was in the hold." She took a swallow of her coffee and looked back down at the table. "How many people were in the hold, anyway?"

Thomas was surprised. "Do you really want to know?"

The corners of Patricia's mouth dropped down. "I can't stand people who ogle car wrecks and other disasters. It's the children, though. I can't stop thinking about the children."

Thomas sighed. "Eighteen men, twelve women, and seventeen children. There were three crew, as well. And no, we have no idea who they are yet. By the way, I didn't tell you that. I also shouldn't have told you about the ammo and I would be very grateful if neither of you talked to the press about it." He looked from Moses to Patricia.

"About the incident itself or just the details we've learned from you?" Moses asked.

"Just the details. If you weren't extraterritorial, I'd threaten you with obstruction-of-justice charges, but I wouldn't be able to make it stick out here.

Instead, I'll just say 'please.' " He turned to Patricia specifically. "You'll probably be mobbed by the press when they know you're back here."

Patricia had been staring down at the table. When she looked up her eyes were wet. "I'll be all right if I stay out of public places. My entire hex has only one section of public corridor where it joins two other hexes, but otherwise it's entirely private property. Unless a reporter had an apartment in my hex or a child in my school-which they don't-they can't enter. And my concierge is screening all visitors."

"No phone calls?"

She shrugged. "I can count the number of people who have my satphone number on one hand. I've been letting the voice mail get my regular line."

"I wish fewer people had my satphone number," Thomas said wistfully. "Tell me what happened after you started running from the Sycorax."

"Well, they took my boat."

"Navigational hazard. It's at BBINS." He pronounced it "bee-bins."

"I don't know what that is."

"Sorry. Buffalo Bayou INS Station.""Oh. How do I get it back?"

"Um, I'm not sure. I'll be glad to check into it. If your only crime was justifiable flight, I don't see what the problem would be. What happened after they boarded your boat?"

She slumped back and her face fell into a shadow cast by her coffee cup.

Thomas moved the candle minutely to the side, so he could see her face. He leaned his elbows on the table and supported his chin. The fatigue was catching up, but it left him in a rush when she described being shot at.

"They shot at you?"

"I can show you the holes. Not fifty-caliber, I believe. Why so surprised? We did flee."

"Yes, but you didn't fire at them. And since you weren't an immediate danger, the rules of engagement don't allow for anything past those first warning shots." He narrowed his eyes. "I'm going to be very interested in their log. Maybe they thought you were going to hit the diver."

"We were well past the diver when they fired."

Thomas shook his head.

"So you didn't fully recharge your flywheels. Did they break off the chase? Is that how you got back here?"

"As far as I could tell, they never stopped trying to find us. As to how we got back here, well, it really didn't have anything to do with finding the Open Lotus."

"I thought you weren't going to hold anything back but the identity of your crew." Thomas was so tired now that if Patricia balked on him, he wouldn't have the energy to pursue it. "Is it this?" He reached out and turned off the recorder.

Patricia looked at the recorder, almost as if she'd forgotten it was there. "I did something stupid," Patricia said. "It's rather embarrassing."

Thomas raised his eyebrows but otherwise just sat still. Come on. You know you want to talk about it.

She told them then about the portable stereo decoy and the bubble in the sunken rig and reluctantly, about almost being sucked into the intake jets of the Sycorax.

Thomas stared at her, openmouthed.

"I know it was stupid!" Patricia said.

He shook his head. "That's not what I was thinking. It's too bad you didn't have a suction collar like they use on the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles. Then you could've snuck up on the Sycorax and clamped on like a remora without having to leave the sub." He shook his head again. "I'm glad you didn't get 'grated likecheese.' I have enough witnesses to this crime who are unable to testify." He got momentarily grim, then laughed abruptly. "If the crew of the Sycorax had known!

It's like spending all day trying to find your sunglasses when they're perched atop your head."

He dipped his hand into his water glass and slapped wet fingers across his cheeks. "Whew. So you rode back under the Sycorax?"

"Yes. That part's mostly boring. I broke us loose when it pulled into la Boca del Infierno-that is, into the INS shipping chan-"

He raised his hand. "No need. I'm familiar with la Boca and el Ano." He was silent for a moment. "Unless you can think of anything else, I think that concludes my business." He raised his eyebrows.

"Can't think of anything."

"How do we settle up the check?"

Patricia shook her head. "Feel free to come here sometime and pay, but Tio Rodolfo would be very unhappy if we were to try to pay. Especially after I stayed away for so long. The most I can get away with is the odd piece of salvaged restaurant equipment."

Thomas took a deep breath that turned into another jaw-cracking yawn. "Weren't you going to tell me why you decided to come back?"

She shrugged. "Yes. I was. But not yet." Her eyes darted sideways at Bill Moses and Seaman Guterson.

Don Rodolfo came with one last tray, five tiny shot glasses topped with blue flame. "A los amigos ausentes." He handed the little glasses around.

Thomas eyed the fire doubtfully, thinking about other flames, other times.

"You blow out the flame, first," Patricia said. She demonstrated, knocking it back in one quick gulp.

"All right. To absent friends." The flame may have been out when Thomas swallowed the liquid, but it burned all the way down. He exhaled sharply, wheezing slightly. "What is it?"

Patricia shook her head. "Better not to ask."

Don Rodolfo leaned close to Patricia and whispered something in her ear. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. "Estoy de acuerdo," she said.

She stood and turned to Thomas. "Commander Becket, would you come with me for a moment?"

Seaman Guterson and Bill Moses started to stand, but Patricia waved them back into his seat. "We'll be right back It's just for a moment."Puzzled, Thomas followed Don Rodolfo and Patricia back through the kitchen, then out another hallway that led first to an office and then to a residence.

In the corner of a living room was a candlelit niche where a crucifix hung over painted saints on wooden retablos. In the foreground a rectangular grid of candleholders stood cemented to the niche by mounds of melted wax. A cluster of photographs stood just behind leaning against a retablo Patricia pointed to one of the photographs. "I'm going to light a candle for my father. I thought you might like to light one for your Ensign Parnasos-did I remember the name correctly?"

He didn't know if it was the fiery liquid or the food or the fatigue, but Thomas suddenly felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. "Yes. Eugene Parnasos. You remembered perfectly."

He took an unlit candle from the frame and touched it to one of the large votive candles burning at the side. He put it back in its place and took out his wallet.

Tucked behind Thomas's driver's license was a dog-eared photo of a curly-headed young man with dark eyes and a wide smile. Thomas looked at Don Rodolfo and mimed putting the photo with the others. "Se puede?"

Don Rodolfo nodded. "Si. It would be our great honor."

Thomas put the photo down in a gap between Patricia's father and an older woman smiling so large her face seemed all creases. He bowed his head for a moment. You live, Eugene, in my thoughts and in my memories. He stepped back and to the side, making room for Patricia.

Patricia picked up the photo of her father and stared at it for a moment.

Thomas could see the resemblance, though her father's hair was thin, his face was lined, and the long nose that anchored Patricia's features so nicely was rendered pleasantly ugly by masculine exaggeration. In the picture he was sitting at a table that Thomas recognized was at this restaurant and he was smiling as largely as Eugene.