by Seeley James
“Are you threatening me?”
“Threats are idle.”
He sniffed and retook his seat. He held out an envelope that I shoved in my back pocket. Lugh said, “Two thousand now. It’s all we could raise overnight. Another three this evening. The remainder upon completion.”
I didn’t move.
“We’re good for it.” A few beads of sweat broke out on his forehead when I stayed silent. “Nema will vouch for us. We always pay our debts. Don’t we, sweetie?”
Nema faced the table. She sank another inch closer to it as Lugh leaned to her with a hard look in his gaze.
“Tell him, you stupid bitch.” Lugh’s voice struck a tone I didn’t care for. “He needs to hear it from you.”
“Free Origins always pays its bills.” She sounded like a first grader forced to recite a poem.
My gaze never left Lugh. He felt it and glanced my way. My angry glare caused him pain. He flinched.
“What’d I tell you about disrespect?” I asked.
“I, uh …” His shoulders turned inward. He looked away.
Mercury said, Don’t be wasting time on this fool, bro. You need to get to work on this Paladin fellow. And find out about Ross Gio. Trouble’s brewing in Úbeda and you’re in Paris. If you want to win Jenny back, you’re gonna need a Caesar Parade in New York City when you get home.
I almost asked what a Caesar Parade was, but I figured he meant ticker tape. I don’t know if they even do those anymore. He might have a point, though. Surely Jenny would accept my invitation to ride next to me in the convertible and wave at adoring fans.
Mercury said, Ah, you see it now, dontcha? This is why people want to be Caesar—babes dig guys with crowns. Let’s stop this atrocity and grab some headlines.
I sent for an Uber without saying another word to Lugh. Nor did I say anything to him when it pulled to the curb.
I opened the door for Nema and swept her in with a gesture. She got in and scooted over, leaving room for one more in the back.
Lugh stepped toward the open door. I stopped him. He looked up. I said, “You’ll need a separate Uber.”
“What on Earth for?”
“You need to go to a hospital.”
“No, I don’t.” He frowned as if I were stupid.
My left hand grabbed his wrist and pulled it forward while twisting it hard. My right hand smacked inside the crook of his elbow. My knee came up with blinding speed and slammed into his radius and ulna. A doctor had once told me you couldn’t break a bone by hitting it straight on or from the side. There must always be a bit of a twist involved. It turns out he was right. Both Lugh’s bones snapped like matchsticks.
“I told you to treat her with respect.”
Lugh’s open mouth could only inhale in shock; he couldn’t even scream.
I slid in the car and told the driver to go. I turned to Nema. “Lugh decided to make a quick stop along the way. He’ll meet us there.”
CHAPTER 14
Andalusia rolled out from the town of Úbeda as a heaving sea of olive trees and arid farmland. IDC’s organizers had taken every room in the eleventh century city. My assigned room was in a sixteenth century palace turned into a hotel. The entrance opened onto a tourist plaza with an ancient stone church on the otherside. The lobby was a large open space with an ornate skylight two stories above us. Nema told me she had other accommodations but came with me to make sure everything went smoothly.
While I stumbled through my rudimentary Spanish with the clerk, a notable woman entered the building. I could tell because the clerk looked over my shoulder and let his mouth fall open. Nema’s attention also turned to the front door with a shudder of excitement or fear or both. I followed their lead and craned around.
Waves of dark curls rolled over the woman’s shoulders. She walked like a samba. A rhythmic, fluid motion of eyes and hair and body and legs and arms. With her eyes fixed on mine, she strode toward me at a leisurely pace, each foot dramatically swinging around the other like a model on a catwalk.
Tall and lean, her fashion statement was breathtaking and simple. A smooth green dress that looked like it had been shrink-wrapped on her. The neckline formed a V deep enough to make a man look but not enough to show cleavage. Her lipstick was red; neither bright and sexy nor dark and smoky. It was serious red. Her eyes were naturally dark and equally serious.
She stopped half an arm’s length from me, close enough for me to catch the scent of her perfume. It was the same kind Ms. Sabel wears, something expensive. She said, “When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured. Luke 9:48.”
Bible-thumpers always catch me off guard. I never know what they’re talking about, much less how to respond. So, I didn’t say anything.
She held out her hand. “Arrianne, but you can call me Gospeler like everyone else.”
Mercury leaned an elbow on the clerk’s desk. Whooee, dawg. Don’t she think a lot of herself? Gospelers were the ones who sang the Gospel after the Christians trashed Rome and took illiteracy to new heights. Nobody knew how to read, so gospelers sang it to help the people remember the words.
I said, Is a gospeler a good thing?
Mercury said, Not in my book. My worshippers were educated.
“Stearne.” I swallowed hard.
“I know. Your reputation precedes you. You’re quite the hero. I like heroes.” Arrianne glanced at Nema. “Thank you, Nema.”
Nema also hadn’t taken her eyes off Arrianne since the grand entrance. She swallowed hard, then scurried to the exit.
I broke the spell with Arrianne and watched Nema. “I was just beginning to like her.”
“Why?”
I faced Arrianne. “Because no one else does.”
The woman snapped her fingers, and Nema stopped in front of twin ironwork doors. She didn’t turn around.
“Shepherd of the meek, are we?” Arrianne asked me.
“Why would people refer to you as a singer of the Gospels?”
“I find people who live in fear, like Nema, to be tedious. I prefer those who take charge of their lives.” She drew a fingertip down my shoulder. “Men of action.”
I gave her a slow once-over. “You don’t look like a church-goer.”
“You’re here as an employee of my conference. I’m here to explain your position. Once you accept, I’ll show you to the training grounds.”
“Are you going to explain where the rest of my money is?”
“We put you in the best hotel, but you’ll be paying all your expenses from your exorbitant fee.”
“Sounds like an excuse for ‘I can’t afford you.’”
A smile creased her serious lipstick. “That’s not a problem.”
“Then prove it.”
Arrianne’s eyes indicated she didn’t like my impertinence. She took a long, slow inhale through her nose as if practicing some form of anger management. I didn’t move. She craned over her shoulder. “Nema, find Paladin, and get this man his chump change.”
Nema fled, her shoes clattering down the ancient stone entry steps to the plaza outside.
Arrianne faced me with a scowl. “That girl pleases you? Really?”
“Your seduction-schtick must make men swoon. A month ago, I would’ve fallen for it. But right now, I’m not interested in you—or Nema. I’m here because someone said your program needed a dose of reality. That’s it. So, drop the act.”
I turned to the clerk, whose mouth was still open. I grabbed the key out of his hand. “You heard the lady call ten thousand euros ‘chump change,’ so charge the room and incidentals to her. She can afford it.”
I paced through the large lobby, heading to my room.
Halfway across the space, Arrianne said, “She must’ve been someone special.”
I froze mid-stride. My fists involuntarily clenched. Then I moved on.
Mercury floated up the wide stone staircase on his
wings while I climbed. You’re supposed to fit in as one of them, dude. Pia-Caesar-Sabel wants you to get inside this operation and figure out their scheme. How are you gonna do that when you be acting like a jerk?
I said, When a grunt asks questions, it raises suspicions. But they offer intel to a trusted advisor to get his opinion. If I just rolled over and took her shit, they’d never trust me with their secrets.
Mercury frowned. That actually makes sense, homie. I musta taught you that.
I opened my room. Uh-huh.
Mercury said, Still, it would be a lot easier if you did what you usually do and fall for her.
I dumped my bag on a four-poster bed and faced my mythological god. Jenny left me yesterday. YESTERDAY. And no, I’m not over it.
Mercury said, That’s because you didn’t take up Nema. And now you’re passing on Arrianne. If you keep turning these opportunities down, you’ll never get Jenny back.
I said, Is that what you did in Rome? Screw your way back into a relationship?
Mercury looked at me like I was missing the obvious. Ever hear of Roman orgies, dawg? Oh, those were good times, let me tell you. You start making it with someone else, and the ex gets totally jeally! Then you get the I-want-you-back sex that leaves you sore for a week.
I put my hands over my ears. La la la …
Mercury shook his head as he floated off my balcony. I looked out at the narrow alley below. Inspired by Miguel’s midnight climb, I shimmied down a drainpipe to the cobblestones. The newest brick in the lane was three hundred years old. I jogged around to the hotel’s entrance and stuck my head in the front door.
I snapped my fingers to get Arrianne’s attention. “You said you were going to show me the training grounds.”
She glanced at the stairs, then back at me. She shrugged and followed me outside.
Her ride was an Audi convertible parked out front. We drove out of town, up a one-lane road and into the hills.
“We got off to a bad start,” she said. “Despite what the French police are saying, I think you’re the hero of Paris. As I said, I like heroes. We want to learn what you look for when you take down a terrorist. I look forward to learning new things. But Lugh recommended you, which makes me suspicious.”
I twisted in my seat to observe her. The twisty road kept her focused, though she managed to steal a glance at me now and then.
“There are many bureaucrats from Washington to Bucharest who dislike us.” She stole one of those glances. “They’ve done things that we find offensive. This conference is about defensive skills. Yet they act like we’re committing crimes. They’ve hassled us and taken some of us in for questioning. Our people are uneasy. There are many among us who feel a certain paranoia about newcomers.”
She didn’t ask a question, so I waited her out.
“We need your expertise. But we are not willing to give you any control. We need you to understand who you work for and what we need from you.”
I stayed still.
“My organization is called Birth Right. This is our conference. I am in charge. Some of the other groups, like Paladin’s, are putting up with me for the week. We have something of a truce going on. You might call it cooperation for the common good. But some of these people have violent tendencies.” She tried another dark-eyed glance. “It’s important that you respect the hierarchy. If you do, you’ll fit in. If you don’t, well … some of the dogs around here tend to eat the other dogs.”
We crested a hill. Before us lay an open valley with a small village of sixteen houses off to the right. All the roofs had been removed.
On the left was a large shooting range where two dozen men practiced their aim. She turned down a dirt track to the left.
We got out and approached the firing lanes. The rangemaster saw us and shouted at the shooters. They secured their weapons and stood. They took off their hats and lowered their eyes.
I checked Arrianne in my peripheral vision. She wasn’t surprised by their deference to her. A smirk of privilege lurked on her face.
The rangemaster greeted her as Gospeler. The other men introduced themselves. Half were Americans, the other half came from all over Europe. They showed off rifles of varied types and quality. Hunting rifles and civilian assault rifles were the most popular. A few had scopes. None looked fully automatic. Downrange the paper targets were prints of famous Arabs from Yasser Arafat to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Others had Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Nelson Mandela.
Mercury walked just behind my left shoulder. We knew this was gonna be one ugly assignment, brutha. But this is uglier than I thought. Can you do this?
I said, It’s starting to get real, but yes, I’ve got this.
Mercury said, Something huge is lurking in these shooting lanes, bro. You have to find out who or what Ross Gio is and which group is involved. Do you really got this?
He wasn’t helping my confidence any. But the men I’d just met weren’t Christchurch types. They were more like warrior wannabes, the kind who spend their weekends at paintball fields.
Arrianne sent the men back to shooting their targets. I watched them from behind the rangemaster. They were neither impressive nor hopeless.
“What do you think?” Arrianne asked. “Can you make heroes out of these men?”
“Heroes aren’t made. They rise up out of the dust when needed and return to it when the danger passes.”
We got back in her car and crossed the valley to the small town. As we came nearer, I could see the buildings had been riddled with bullets. One house stood apart, a quarter-mile from the others. It retained its roof and windows. Bullet-proof plexiglass walls shielded it from the town. The observation deck.
She drove up to the house. Outside was ancient block and stone, like every place in Úbeda. Inside were four simple rooms. Overstuffed leather furniture filled the living room. An expensive table and chairs left little space in the dining room. An open arch led to a recently remodeled kitchen. The bedroom had no door but did have a four-poster bed just like the one in my hotel room. We walked out on the veranda overlooking the shot-up village.
Two sets of binoculars hung on the wall. She took one and handed me the other.
“This is our urban warfare zone or UWZ.” She swept an arm across the view. “We call it the Ooze for fun.”
“Quite a big place here. You rented this for the conference?”
“Spain still has 3.4 million unsold houses left over from the 2008 recession. I bought it cheap.” She winked at me.
I checked the landscape.
She nudged her shoulder against mine. I followed her inside. She said, “The conference starts in two days. It lasts five. We have sixty-four heroes we need you to raise up out of the dust.”
CHAPTER 15
Arrianne unzipped her dress, dropped it to the floor, and kicked it into the bedroom. With a slow turn, she lifted her dark locks from her bra. “Would you help me?”
Her flesh was smooth and inviting, her curves as round as a pinup model from the ’40s. Somewhere between Rita Hayworth and Sophia Loren. I should’ve drooled. Instead, my eyes turned away. A vision of Jenny’s slow unveiling on our first night in Paris came to mind. Half of me wanted to get the image of Jenny out of my head and unhook Arrianne. The other half wanted to dump the mission and fly back to DC to beg Jenny for a second chance.
I said, “No thanks.”
She said, “‘But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ Matthew 5:28.”
I opened the front door. “I need to study your Ooze … uhm.”
Without a glance back, I walked downhill to the bullet-riddled village.
Mercury walked with me. Y’know, most people get dumped, and there’s a billboard everyone-but-you can see that says, AVOID THIS PERSON LIKE A FREAKIN’ STD. They can’t buy a date. Months later, when they finally get a date, the billboard changes to, ASK THIS PERSON OUT NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE! Th
ey have nothing but dating offers. Not you, though, homie. You get dumped like Ebola-infected feces, and you’ve got two women stalking you—the next day!
I said, Means nothing. I miss Jenny.
Mercury said, A week from now, you’re gonna slap your forehead and say, ‘I coulda had Arrianne AND Nema. What was I thinkin’?’
I ignored him and walked through the narrow lanes of the UWZ. Weeds sprouted between the cobblestones. Walls of crude stone and mortar, worn and weathered, stood against time. If they’d ever been plastered and whitewashed, the coatings had disintegrated decades ago. Some walls had openings cut in them shored up by new, unfinished planks. Most of the buildings were two stories. Some had open decks instead of upper levels. Spent shell casings littered the ground in places. The largest piles lay below the better shooting positions.
Three lanes met in an oddly shaped plaza of sorts. A large piece of iron capped an old well. Curious arrows spray-painted on the ground gave measurements with abbreviations. Not many of them made sense without a key. I followed the clues and tried to inventory them. A few houses away, one stood out. An arrow pointing out of town read, “St. Paul’s 500 ft.”
Mercury appeared next to me. What do they got against Paul, brutha? My boy Nero beheaded the dude, wasn’t that enough?
I said, Saint Paul’s could mean a lot of things. Got any useful ideas?
Mercury said, Saint Paul was a busy boy, almost as busy as Mother Mary. He’s got a city in Minnesota, a cathedral in London, a college in Virginia. There are fifty-seven places in France named after him. Minerva-only-knows how many places are named ‘San Pablo’ in Spain.
I kept wandering the town. I ducked in and out of houses. I found more of the curious markings. There were quite a few with distances measured in feet. They varied from ten to thirty, but few went beyond that. Then I found two quite different from the others. They had double-line arrows as if for emphasis. One read, “Amen” and the other “Warwick.” On a wall in a small room, another read, “Queens Head” and the last one I could find, “Rose.”
