A Broker In Papeete
I did not sleep well that night, and the next morning I walked up the rue des Poilus Tahitiens to the office of Henri Ravel.
Henri was a yacht broker, or had been. He had retired formally about ten years ago and informally never, and kept two rooms above a Chinese grocer on the Paofai side, where he dealt in the sort of transactions that do not require an agency. He sold boats to people who did not want to be named and he handled charters for clients whose lawyers preferred no paperwork at all. He was seventy-three, he was thin as a heron, and he had been in the South Pacific longer than my parents had known each other. More importantly, for my purposes, he had for thirty years collected — as a hobby that paid for itself — every reference to a phantom atoll between the Marquesas and the Cooks that had crossed his desk. He had a file drawer devoted to islands that had appeared on one chart and no other, and another drawer for islands that had appeared on several and then been quietly removed.
I brought coffee from the corner because his was undrinkable. He took it without thanks, which meant he was pleased to see me.
"Alvar," he said. "You look tired. Tell me who died."
"Nobody," I said. "A client came in yesterday with a 1790s Spanish sheet. Unnamed frigate, uncredited cartographer, clean provenance from a Bonhams lot. There's an atoll north-east of Napuka that isn't in our