Chapter 106 — Current

The weather office in Dakhla had the moral atmosphere of a place repeatedly abused by governments that wanted prediction without responsibility.

Low building. Salt haze on the windows. Charts tacked crooked to corkboard. Computers old enough to remember other lies.

Salma knew a forecaster there. Not because weather and justice had any formal partnership. Because people who spent enough years around the sea sometimes learned to hate the same euphemisms.

Nabil Sefrioui met them in shirtsleeves with a mug gone cold and a face made precise by permanent skepticism.

"I was told you brought an ocean argument," he said.

"Yes," Salma answered. "We need it shorter."

Nabil looked at the map points on Noor's tablet.

"Bad sign already."

He led them to a wall chart and pinned three markers in place. White Dune launch sector south of Dakhla. The reported rescue coordinate east of Lanzarote. Wind and current lines between them curving northwest in a patient merciless sweep.

"If a wooden pirogue launches here after midnight with unstable engine performance," he said, tapping Dakhla, "and loses reliable motor after the second day, this current takes over. Not kindly. But predictably enough for people who still respect water more than paperwork."

Noor set down the rescue time.

third night / dawn contact

Nabil did the arithmetic in his head.

"Possible. More than possible. Likely."

He marked estimated drift bands day by day. First day: slow outward line. Second: wind shear north-west. Third: wider current pull toward the islands.

Adaeze looked at the chart.

"So Spain's origin unknown is nonsense."

Nabil capped the marker.

"No. It is lazier than nonsense. They mean origin insufficiently comfortable for us to certify."

Salma placed the ledger copy, the van notebook, and the rescue sheet in a row across his desk.

00:26 sale 01:05 load 19 aboard 18 survivors / 1 deceased

Nabil read the figures and nodded once.

"Good," Noor said.

Nabil pointed at the rescue summary.

"If they found the boat east of Lanzarote rather than farther south, that means someone kept enough engine or paddling discipline for two days before current won. Your dead man may have been the one doing the repair work."

Awa, who had insisted on coming, answered immediately.

"Yes. Moussa always fixed everyone else's bad tools first."

Nabil drew a final arrow from the Dakhla launch zone to the rescue coordinate and wrote beneath it:

route continuity probable to strong

Then, after a glance at Salma, he crossed out probable and wrote:

strong absent contrary contact

"Better," he said. "Probability is where officials go to hide. Currents are less polite."

Salma copied the chart reference.

"Will you attest?"

"To the water, yes. To the state, no." He saw her expression and amended it. "Fine. In writing if the writing stays attached to the chart and nobody asks me to praise interagency cooperation."

He printed the drift model and signed the bottom.

Outside the office, wind turbines moved in the distance with giant bored patience. The peninsula seemed to narrow under the noon glare until land itself felt provisional.

Noor studied the signed chart.

"Sale. Launch. Battery. Survivor. Current. Rescue."

Salma nodded.

"Now the island room."

Awa looked west where the Atlantic flattened into brightness too hard to trust.

"And the body."

"Yes," Salma said.

By evening they were back on the road north to the airport, the folder thicker again. Current model clipped behind the rescue sheet. Nabil's signature cooling under ink. Dakhla shrinking in the rearview while Lanzarote's name sat on the boarding pass with the false innocence all destinations inherited before the file reached them.

Micah held the travel copy between his knees.

"Scale is shorter now," he said.

Salma did not look up from the folder.

"Enough to accuse."