Leonardo arranged the ship visit in February, on a Saturday that came in grey and cold but dry, which was the best February could typically offer.
The port was in Setúbal — not the Lisbon docks, which were now too commercial and too managed for the kind of access Leonardo had arranged. A working vessel, one of the smaller freighters in the Vasconcelos fleet, was in for maintenance and had been made available for a morning.
Daniel had been talking about this for six weeks with a sustained excitement that had if anything intensified rather than diminished as the date approached. The ship had been integrated into his mythology. It had its own section in his ongoing monologue about important things.
They drove down in Leonardo's car — the three of them, which felt both ordinary and like som
