Mary: Likely Suspects

November 7th, 2008: Glen, Josh and I walked into the Sea Breeze Yacht Club Bar overlooking the ocean, and once it had been made clear that Glen would not be running a tab and that we would pay cash up front the bartender agreed to serve us. Glen started to apologize for the inconvenience, then lost interest and downed half of his Budweiser. I had talked Josh into switching to beer so he was nursing a chestnut-colored microbrew. I sat down in the U-shaped booth next to Josh, ordered a cranberry juice on the rocks and tried to think of something else to ask Glen.

Josh eyed the pinball machine in the corner of the bar hopefully, but a quick glare from me kept him anchored at our table. Eventually he turned to Glen and asked, "So what do you think happened to your boat? Whirlpool? Pirates? Sirens? I'm a landlubber so I really don't know how often ships go lost at sea anymore."

Looking none too pleased with having to shift his focus from drinking to talking, Glen nevertheless answered. "Ships hardly ever go lost anymore, really. Not if they have GPS, anyway. Pirates can be a problem, but they don't just come out of nowhere. You usually have a pretty good idea where they are and how to avoid them. Could it have been pirates? The GPS went out on the Liberator right after she changed course southward. Maybe she got boarded then taken over, but the Captain should have been able to get at least a distress call off first." Another pull of his Bud and it was gone, Glen already signaling the waitress for another. "I've gone over it again and again, and I just don't know what the hell happened out there. If they started taking on water they would have radioed. There was no land nearby for them to wreck on anyway. They were in the middle of the damn Pacific!" He pounded his fist on the table just hard enough to draw the attention of the other patrons, and I gave a little placating smile back at them hoping not to get thrown out.

In an attempt to keep him from ranting, I asked, "Are there places known for losing ships in that part of the world? Like a Bermuda Triangle?"

"The Triangle's bullsh*t," he scoffed. "Tourist stuff. Go over the numbers, it's about what you'd normally expect."

Josh started slowly shimmying out of the booth, edging toward the pinball machine, but another quick kick under the table stopped him with a wince. Under his breath he grumbled, "Same exact spot she kicked last time. Goddamn."

Glen continued, oblivious. "There are spots known for shipwrecks, no question, but the Triangle? Nah. Problem is, all the known ship graveyards are thousands of miles away from where we lost contact with the Liberator."

I sipped my cranberry juice while Josh rubbed his knee. "Like where?"

The waitress brought another Budweiser. "I just mean in general, there are spots known for it. Greek islands have a lot of wrecks, but most of them are from World War II. Except for Euboea, that's had wrecks all throughout history. Also-"

"Euboea... is that near Evia? I read something about that island recently." Taras' post mentioned Evia and Glen's reference to Greece reminded me of it. One of the Magician's people, Theophanes was from there.

Glen snorted, covering his mouth as he laughed, the first time he'd done so. It was a braying, grating sound and I was comforted by the fact that based on his temperament and financial situation, he wouldn't be doing a lot of it in the future. "No, no."

"Oh, never mind then-"

He smirked in that way that men do when they know something and you don't. "Euboea isn't near Evia. Euboea is Evia. They have two names for it. God knows why. And who cares? There are islands the Liberator may have washed up on, but Greece would be impossible."

"Whoa, what? What was that? That island?" We finally had Josh's attention. "Wait, that was from Taras' post-"

I watched Glen's face for any recognition of the name, but there was none. Before Josh could say anything else I continued, "What about other places for a ship to wreck? Places south of the Liberator's position? You said it had headed that direction before the locator stopped functioning."

Glen was shaking his head before I'd even finished. "Too far. All way too far. Thousands of miles! What, pirates took over the ship, then traveled for days just to wreck? It makes no sense!"

"Just humor me. Please." I reached into my purse and counted out two hundred dollars in cash, sliding it over to him on the table.

He stared at it for only a moment before clutching it and shoving it in his pocket. "South of their position you've got the islands of Micronesia, and south of there is New Guinea. Farther south is Australia, but now you're going so far... the only place that's really known for shipwrecks is a little spot of nothing you've never heard of on the south side of the continent. Do you have any idea the type of distance-"

This time I was the one to pound the table. Josh's beer tipped over, foam spilling over the edge onto the carpeted floor while Glen saved his drink with a cat-like grab. I knew the answer, and as soon as I said the words I saw on Glen's stunned face that I was right. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I said in a hushed voice, "Wardang island."



As the sun set over the water, in the car on the way back to the hotel, I made plane reservations to Adelaide, Australia, the closest major city to Wardang Island. From Adelaide we could rent a decent car and drive to Port Victoria, where the island was just offshore. We had spent the first few minutes of the drive talking about how crazy it was to just jet off to a place halfway around the world on the basis of only the thinnest, most circumstantial evidence, but neither of us really had the heart for an argument about it. Josh reminded me of my own new rule:

-We no longer look at phenomena that we don't understand and think that it is impossible. We take everything in, no matter how insane, and grant it instant credibility. There is no room anymore for cynicism. We've seen too much.

Without taking my eyes off the road, I said to Josh, "We'll have to move fast. I can make arrangements for the jet to-" I looked over at him then and saw that he was snoring lightly, his head tipped back against the passenger side window and his mouth open. I searched for some light classical music on the radio, found it and drove on, my mind churning. "Tomorrow. We'll go tomorrow."