Chapter 53

“How far are you going, Jake?” Andrea asked.

“South,” he replied.

“That’s the way we’re going ... but how far are you going?” David asked.

“South I am going. Loss of secret government job. Refused, I did, to certain requirements. Passport, have I none. Naturalized citizen am I. Ph.D have I.”

Although he wouldn’t tell them what he’d done or where the lab was, “Secret I swore,” he still got it across in that Indian British English so often portrayed on TV and in the movies.

“How long you been an American, Jake?” asked Andrea.

“Years I have, many,” Jake admitted.

“I’m betting the accent is a put on,” she said.

“What makes you say that?” he asked ... but chuckling while he said it.

“It’s the accent we expect,” David agreed while maneuvering past a charging Port Authority tugboat.

“Ok ... Got me you have,” he grinned. “You don’t get an Ivy League Doctorate without being able to speak good Americanese.”

“Good ... Now, for your information, eventually we’re going to end up in Australia and New Zealand ... and that’s as far south as we’re going. You’re welcome to come along.”

“What about my lack of papers?”

“No problem ... I have a friend and we’re going to stop there first. Andrea, I need a telephone. Plot a course to the nearest small town with a harbor. Someplace we can get in and out without having to backtrack very much.”

She was looking at the chart, “Shark River inlet is next.”

“That’s way to crowded.”

“Manasquan?”

“Same as Shark river. I want some Podunk in the sticks.”

“I guess Atlantic City is out too.”

“You got that right ... come on Andy ... something small.”

She was silent for a long time ... the air was feeling ‘tense.’

“I got it!! Chesapeake Bay ... the launching ramp by the Liberty Ships. We can tie off at the wharf and it’s about a fifty yard hike to the phone.”

“That’ll work. I need to go to Chesapeake anyway.”

They stayed off shore ... the offshore islands are forever moving. Sand is washed out in storms and washed back in by the tides and longshore currents. In extreme cases ships have sheltered behind an offshore sand bank and found the inlet silted in when they wanted to leave. Some of those ships are still there.

Even so ... they stayed close enough inshore to see the hotels of the islands.

Nature is at work there. The islands are objecting to the buildup. Sand leaves the beaches and is replaced by dredging channels in the backbays and the dredged sand is hauled to the offshore islands and spread on the vanishing beaches. Man and money ... the work is almost as big a hole in the water as a boat.

On the way to the Bay the sidescan sonar revealed the submerged canyons carved by the many rivers and streams that used to drain into the ocean. Man has blocked the outlets and built vacation homes and tourist hotels where rivers used to run.

The trip was a lot less complicated and less crowded than following the backbays of the ‘safe’ waterways.

Atlantic City was passed to starboard and Cape May and Delaware Bay faded in to the north as they continued south.

Chesapeake Bay ... Andrea’s navigation was dead on ... David made the turn and found the launching ramp. The Liberty ships saved ‘just in case’ were past saving now ... but they were still afloat. Eventually they would settle on the bottom and either become hazards to navigation or some enterprising young fellow would cut them up and haul them off for scrap. The Bay already had a collection of World War One merchant ships saved ‘just in case’ and they were rapidly becoming crab traps and odd islands.

David made his call. Andrea could see him walking back and forth gesturing with one hand as the other kept trying to get more line on his phone tether. He hung up. Andy saw him leap in the air and shout, “YES!!” He ran back to the boat as the phone started ringing.

“Are you going to answer that?” asked Jake.

“It’s just the operator wanting the rest of the money,” laughed David.

“Oh.”

“Let’s go, Kelly is waiting.”

“What’s up?”

“I can’t tell you, yet ... soon though.”

The vents opened and the engine room fans started, casting off, they flaked the lines and motored away from the pier and launching ramp and headed up the Bay.

Once, years ago, this pier and ramp were the focal point of a huge encampment of soldiers waiting to load up on ships and steam across the Atlantic to land on the shores of North Africa. A rail line hauled tons of supplies and equipment for the big push ... America’s entry into yet another European war. Typically American, millions were spent for a single use.