The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [9]
Little by little the sky grew brighter, making the canopy of mangroves seem even thicker than before. It was already hot, and the air was a shroud of humidity. Mosquitoes began to swarm, and Marten swatted at them as he went. He was thirsty and hungry and increasingly apprehensive. For all he knew he might have only begun to cross the swamp. It could stretch on for miles before it reached the sea. He began to wonder if he was a fool to try to cross it. How long would it be before his legs gave out or he lost his bearings and turned back the way he had just come? Or stumbled into quicksand, which he knew could be anywhere?
He stopped and looked back. Retracing his steps could be as treacherous as moving on. Even if he made it back to the river he would only have to find another way out. That was if he didn’t run into soldiers first. No, it was best to trust his instincts and keep on the way he was, following the incoming tide.
Ten minutes more and the first sun of the day cut a swath across the trees above him. Another ten and it hit him squarely in the face. In that moment he knew he was looking due east. It meant he was headed toward Bioko’s eastern shore. A half hour later he stopped and shaded his eyes. When he did, the breath went out of him. Through the trees he could see the ocean, its low breakers rolling in beneath a cloudless sky.
“Yes! Yes!” He let out an explosive cry of joy and relief.
Wet, bone weary, hungry, battered, torn, and thirsty, whatever he had done, however he had done it, however far he had come, he had crossed the never-ending prison of mangroves and made it out of the swamp. At that moment nothing in his life had ever seemed more wondrous than the sight of the sandy beach and the rolling sea before him.
For a while he simply sat and rested. Finally he stood and looked left, toward the north. A half mile or so up he could see the rusting hull of what once must have been a coastal freighter buried in the sand. All that was left now was the stern and a piece of bow, connected by what remained of its midsection. Beyond it stretched miles of beach. Nowhere did he see a sign of humanity. No village, no fishermen, no boats at anchor. No person or thing that might provide water and food or help him get to Malabo at the northernmost tip of Bioko. All that had happened, it seemed, was that he had traded the endless maze of the mangroves for miles of uninhabited, desolate beach. It made his fate nearly the same as before. Put one foot in front of the other and move on.
He looked at his watch.
7:48 A.M.
A glance at the cloudless sky, a deep breath, and he stepped off.
6
11:27 A.M.
“Look!” Twenty-four year-old Luis Santiago cried out in Spanish. He was staring off through the high grass and toward the ocean. Immediately his companions, Gilberto, Rosa, and Ernesto, rushed to join him.
“Marita!” Rosa called over her shoulder to the group’s leader, a young Spanish doctor hunched over the hood of one of two aging, mud-splattered Toyota Land Cruisers looking over a map with two uniformed native guides.
“What is it?” she called back in Spanish.
“A man on the beach!”
Marita turned to look.
“There.” Luis pointed toward the sand.
Marita Lozano shaded her eyes. At first she didn’t see him, and then she did: a lone man in the distance staggering along the beach near the water’s edge. They were at the side of a mud-rutted dirt road a good fifty yards from the shoreline and probably not visible through the tall grass from where the man walked. He was moving slowly and more than once stopped to look around as if he were trying to get his bearings. Then he moved on, his gait unsure, his balance unsteady. Finally he stumbled and