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PROLOGUE

THE CASTAWAY would have been dead before sundown but for the sharp eyes of an Italian seaman called Mario By the time he was spotted he had lapsed into unconsciousness, the exposed parts of his near-naked body grilled to second-degree burns by the relentless sun, and those parts subed in seawater soft and white between the salt sores like the lioose

Mario Curcio was the cook-steward on the Garibaldi, an a her way eastward toward Cape Ince and on to Trabzon in the far eastern corner of the north shore of Turkey She was on her way to pick up a cargo of almonds from Anatolia

Just why Mario decided thatin the last ten days of April 1982 to es over the lee rail instead of through the garbage chute at the poop, he could never explain, nor was he ever asked to But perhaps to take a breath of fresh Black Sea air and break the alley, he stepped out on deck, strolled to the starboard rail, and hurled his garbage to an indifferent but patient sea He turned away and started to lumber back to his duties After two steps he stopped, frowned, turned, and walked back to the rail, puzzled and uncertain

The ship was heading east-northeast to clear Cape Ince, so that as he shielded his eyes and gazed abaft the beaht in his face But he was sure he had seen so swell between the ship and the coast of Turkey, twenty ain, he trotted up the afterdeck, e, and peered again Then he saw it, quite clearly, for half a second between the softlyhills of water He turned to the open door behind hi into the wheelhouse, and shouted “Capitano!”

Captain Vittorio Ingrao took soh of a sailor to know that if a ht be out there on the water, he was duty-bound to turn his ship around and have a closer look, and his radar had indeed revealed an echo It took the captain half an hour to bring the Garibaldi around and back to the spot Mario had pointed at, and then he, too, saw it

The skiff was barely twelve feet long, and not very wide A light craft, of the type that could have been a ship’s jolly boat Forward of le thwart across the boat, with a hole in it for the stepping of a mast But either there had never been a one overboard With the Garibaldi stopped and ing in the swell, Captain Ingrao leaned on the bridgewing rail and watched Mario and the bosun, Paolo Longhi, set off in the side From his elevation he could look down into the skiff as it was towed closer

Theon his back in several inches of seawater He was gaunt and emaciated, bearded and unconscious, his head to one side, breathing in short gasps He moaned a few times as he was lifted aboard and the sailors’ hands touched his flayed shoulders and chest

There was one permanently spare cabin on the Garibaldi, kept free as a sort of sick bay, and the castaas taken to it Mario, at his own request, was given tiard as his personal property, as a boy will take special care of a puppy he has personally rescued froave the man a shot of morphine from the first-aid chest to spare him the pain, and the pair of them set to work on the sunburn

Being Calabrians they knew a bit about sunburn and prepared the best sunburn salve in the world Mario brought froalley a fifty-fifty ar in a basin, a light cotton cloth torn fro the cloth in the ently pressed the pad to the worst areas, where the ultraviolet rays had bitten through almost to the bone Plu astringent drew the heat out of the scorched flesh The man shuddered

“Better a fever than death by burn shock” Mario told him in Italian The man could not hear, and if he had, he could not have understood

Longhi joined his skipper on the afterdeck, where the skiff had been hauled

“Anything?” he asked