we?’ she said.
Clay glanced up into the rigging, at the small Turkish flag he’d hoisted while Hope slept.
‘In TRNC waters. We passed Famagusta about two hours ago.’
Hopefully, the flag would mollify any Turkish coastguard they happened to meet.
‘Just tourists out for a cruise.’
Clay said nothing.
‘How long until we reach Karpasia?
‘By nightfall. Sooner if the winds cooperate.’
Hope reached into her purse, pulled out her mobile phone, opened the back panel and thumbed out the SIM card. From a zipped pouch in her wallet she retrieved another card, loaded it into the phone. ‘I wonder if there is service out here.’ She flipped open the phone, punched in a number and looked at the screen. Then she raised the phone to her ear. ‘It’s me,’ she said, and listened a while. ‘Okay.’ She closed the phone, looked at Clay. ‘He’ll meet us tonight, just east of Dune Point. He says he’s found some villagers who are willing to talk to us about what’s going on in Karpasia. And he has confirmed it: Erkan is at the monastery. He can take us there.’
27
Extinction
Clay let the anchor slide into the water, paid out chain until he felt the Danforth hit bottom and start to dig into the sandy sea floor. He let Flame drift with the light breeze flowing out across the dunes, let out chain until a length four times the water depth lay on the sea bed, then secured the chain at Flame’s bow. She swung slowly head to wind as the anchor flukes bit and dug in. Clay stood at the bow, gauged Flame’s position against the dark rocky mass of Dune Point on one side, Rigel melting into the horizon on the other, and waited. After a while Hope joined him at the bow, her light dress rippling in the breeze. There was no moon. Starlight, aeons old, danced on the black water, bathed the beach and the dunes antique white and there was not a trace of human endeavour to be seen. The only sounds were the lapping of water against the hull and, in the distance, coming on the wind, the hooting of a pair of owls: one calling, a single rising note, short and clear, asking who, the sound drifting to them across the treed ridge beyond the dunes; and then, moments later, the reply from afar with the same question, falling. It was shortly before eleven o’clock.
They walked across the coachroof, stepped down into the cockpit. Hope went below. Clay unlashed the inflatable dinghy from the foredeck and let it slide into the water. After a moment, Hope reappeared in the cockpit and handed Clay a mug of coffee and a bowl of hot beef stew. ‘There are no labels,’ she whispered, cradling her mug in both hands, letting the steam rise to her face.
‘Aren’t you eating?’ he said.
‘I’m vegetarian.’
Clay set aside his stew, went below, found a can of peaches, opened it, carried it up into the cockpit and gave it to Hope, handing her a spoon from his pocket. ‘It could be a long night,’ he said.
They ate in silence. Hope looked out over the water. ‘You see how dark it is, how quiet?’ she said. ‘This is what the turtles need. Come summer, the females will return from years of wandering the seas, ready to lay their eggs. They return to the same beaches where they were born, guided by the magnetic fields imprinted on them at birth. They stand off here in the shallow water waiting for nightfall, then, when all is quiet, usually around the full moon, they come ashore. They lay three times over a six-week period, about every two weeks, clutches of about 120 eggs in chambers half a metre deep. Incubation is seven weeks.’
She looked off along the sweeping phosphorescent arc of the beach. ‘This beach has the single-largest remaining population of nesting green turtles in the Eastern Mediterranean. But every year, about eighty percent of nests are dug up by foxes. So the odds aren’t good. At our research station at Lara Beach in the south, we’re protecting the nests and helping the hatchlings get to the sea. Thirty years from now, when they mature, with a lot of luck, a few of them will be back to continue the line.’
Clay watched the star-white crests of gentle waves curl and wash up onto the beach, listened to the hiss of water retreating across the carbonate sand, timeless.
‘That’s why development is the end,’ said Hope, taking Clay’s hand