'Purpose of your visit?' the agent asked the husky man be hind the wheel. The driver jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the fishing rods and tackle boxes in back. 'Going fishing.'
'Wish I could join you,' the agent said with a smile, and waved them on into Tijuana.
As they pulled away, Zavala, who was sitting in the passenger seat, said, 'What's with the Spies Like Us routine? All we had to do was flash our NUMA IDs.'
Austin grinned. 'This is more fun.'
'We're lucky our clean-cut appearance doesn't fit the profile for terrorists or drug runners.'
'I prefer to think that we're masters of disguise.' Austin glanced at Zavala and shook his head. 'By the way, I hope you brought along your American passport. I wouldn't want you to get stuck in Mexico.'
'No problem. It wouldn't be the first time a Zavala sneaked across the border.'
Zavala's parents had waded across the Rio Grande in the 1960s from Morales, Mexico, where they were born and raised.
His mother was seven months pregnant at the time. Her condition didn't stand in the way of her determination to start life with her newborn in El Norte. They made their way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Zavala was born. His father's skills as a carpenter and woodcarver brought him steady work with the wealthy clients who built their fashionable homes there. The same influential people helped his father when he applied for a green card and later for citizenship.
The truck was on loan from the Red Ink's support team because rental cars couldn't be taken into Mexico. From their hotel they headed south from San Diego, passing through Chula Vista, the border town that is neither Mexican nor American but a blend of both countries. Once into Mexico they skirted the sprawling slums of Tijuana, then picked up MEX 1, the Carretera Transper linsula highway that runs the full length of Baja California. Past El Rosarita with its concentration of souvenir shops, motels, and taco stands, the commercial honky-tonk began to thin out. Before long the highway was flanked by agricultural fields and bare hills on the left and by the curving emerald bay known as Todos Los Santos. About an hour after leaving Tijuana they turned off at Ensenada.
Austin knew the resort and fishing city from the days he crewed in the Newport-Ensenada sailboat race. The unofficial finish was at Hussong's Cantina, a seedy old bar with sawdust covered floors. Before the new highway brought the tourists and their dollars, Baja California Norte was truly the frontier. In its heyday Hussong's was a haunt for the colorful local characters and rugged individuals, and the sailors, fishermen, and auto racers who knew Ensenada when it was the last outpost of civilization on the eight-hundred-mile-long Baja peninsula before La Paz. Hussong's was one of those legendary bars, like Foxy's in the Virgin Islands or Capt'n Tony's in Key West, where every body in the world had been. As they stepped inside Austin was heartened to see a few scruffy barflies who might remember the good old days when tequila flowed like a river and the police ran a shuttle service back and forth between the cantina and the local hoosegow.
They sat at a table and ordered huevos rancheros. 'Ah, pure soul food,' Zavala said, savoring a bite of scrambled eggs and salsa. Austin had been studying the sad expression on the moose head that had been over the bar for as long as he could recall. Still wondering how a moose got to Mexico, he turned his attention back to the map of the Baja that was spread out on the table in front of him next to the satellite photo showing water temperature.
'This is where we're going,' he said, pointing to the map. 'The temperature anomaly is in the vicinity of this cove.'
Zavala finished his meal with a smile of pleasure and opened a Baedecker's guide to Mexico. 'It says here that the ballena gris or gray whale arrives off the Baja from December to March to mate and give birth to its young. The whales weigh up to twenty-five tons and run between ten and forty-nine feet long. During mating, one male will keep the female in position while another male-' He winced. 'Think I'll skip that part. The gray was almost exterminated by commercial whaling but was made a protected species in 1947.' He paused in his reading. 'Let me ask you something. I know you've got a lot of respect for any thing that swims in the sea, but I've never thought of you as a whale hugger. Why the big interest? Why not leave this up to the EPA or Fish and Wildlife?'
'Fair question. I could say I want to find out what started the chain of events that ended up with the sinking of Pop's boat. But there's another reason that I can't put my finger on.' A thoughtful expression came into Austin's eyes. 'It reminds me of some scary dives I've made. You know the kind. You're swimming along, everything seemingly fine, when the hair rises on the back of your neck, your gut goes ice-cold, and you've got a bad feeling you're not alone, that something is watching you. Something hung7y. '
'Sure,' Zavala said contemplatively. 'But it usually goes be yond that. I imagine that the biggest, baddest, hungriest shark in the ocean is behind me, and he's thinking how it's been a long time since he's had authentic Mexican food.' He took another bite of his huevos. 'But when I look around there's nothing there, or maybe there's a minnow the size of my finger who's been giving me the evil eye.'
'The sea is wrapped in mystery,' Austin said with a faraway look in his eyes.
'Is that a riddle?'
'In a way. It's a quote from Joseph Conrad. 'The sea never changes and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.'' Austin tapped the map with his fingertip. 'Whales die every day. We lose some to natural causes. Others get tangled in fishing nets and starve to death, or they get nailed by a ship, or we poison them with pollution because some people think it's okay to use the sea for a toxic waste dump.' He paused. 'But this doesn't fit any of those categories. Even with out interference from humans, nature is always out of kilter, constantly adjusting and readjusting. But it's not a cacophony. It's like the improvisation you see with a good jazz group, Ahmad Jamal doing a piano solo, going off on his own, catching up with his rhythm section later.' He let out a deep laugh. 'Hell, I'm not making sense.'
'Don't forget I've seen your jazz collection, Kurt. You're saying there's a sour note here.'
'More a universal dissonance.' He thought about it some more. 'I like your analogy better. I've got the feeling that there's a big bad-ass shark lurking just out of sight and it's hungry as hell.'
Zavala pushed his empty plate away. 'As they say back home, the best time to fish is when the fish are hungry.'
'I happen to know you grew up in the desert, amigo,' Austin said, rising. 'But I agree with what you're saying. Let's go fishing.'
From Ensenada they got back on the highway and headed south. As in Tijuana, the commercial sprawl thinned out and vanished and the highway went down to two lanes. They turned off the highway past Maneadero and followed back roads past agricultural fields, scattered farm houses, and old missions, eventually coming into rugged, lonely country with fog-shrouded rolling hills that dropped down to the sea. Zavala, who was navigating, checked the map. 'We're almost there. Just around the corner,' he said.
Austin didn't know what he was expecting. Even so he was surprised when they rounded the curve and he saw a neatly lettered sign in Spanish and English announcing they were at the home of the Baja Tortilla Company. He pulled over to the side of the road. The sign was at the beginning of a long, clay drive bordered with planted trees. They could see a large building at the end of the driveway.
Austin leaned on the steering wheel and pushed his Foster Grants up onto his forehead. 'You're sure this is the right spot?'
Zavala handed the map over for Austin's examination. 'This is the place,' he said.
'Looks like we drove all this way for nothing.'
'Maybe not,' Zavala said. 'The huevos rancheros were excel lent, and I've got a new Hussong's Cantina T- shirt.'
Austin's eyes narrowed. 'Coincidence makes me suspicious. The sign says 'Visitors Welcome.' As long as we're here, let's take them at their word.'
He turned the truck off the highway and drove a few hundred yards to a neatly tended gravel parking lot marked with spaces for visitors. Several cars with California plates and a couple of tour buses were parked in front of the building, a corrugated aluminum structure with a portaled adobe facade and tiled roof in the Spanish style. The smell of baking corn wafted through the pickup's open windows.
'Diabolically clever disguise,' Zavala said.
'I hardly expected to see a neon sign that said, 'Welcome from the guys who killed the whales.' '
'I wish we were toting our guns,' Zavala said with mock gravity. 'You never know when a wild tortilla will attack you. I once heard about someone being mauled by a burrito in No gales-'
'Save it for the drive back.' Austin got out of the car and led the way to the ornately carved front door of dark
