by AD Starrling
He had no doubt something nasty was about to go down. The loaded gun and the cryptic contents of the envelope aside, the dead man’s bare wallet spoke of someone who did not want to be easily identified. He suspected the driving license was a fake. And, in his professional opinion, people engaged in scrupulous activities did not usually walk around with that much hard cash in hand and calluses on their fingers from heavy gun use.
The what, where, and when of the event, however, remained a total mystery. As to the who, the one woman on Earth least likely to be pleased about his involvement in the affair appeared to be right in the middle of it all.
Sleep proved to be an elusive beast. After the nocturnal lullaby of the rainforest, the alien sounds of the city jarred Conrad’s nerves. He lay awake for a good couple of hours and finally dozed off at around three in the morning.
His freshly washed clothes were in a garment bag hanging outside his door when he got up the next day. He checked out of the motel shortly after nine and took a cab to the financial district of the city.
The vehicle’s air con was broken and its driver unseasonably chatty. By the time the car pulled up along a busy road, sweat was running in rivulets down Conrad’s back; not only had he caught up on the recent political scandals that had shaken the city’s administration, he had also been brought up to speed on more local news and TV gossip than he had ever wanted to know.
He paid the cabbie and waited until the car disappeared in the heavy traffic before crossing the road to a sleek, glass and steel building. Beyond the discreet front door of the gleaming tower was the cool, monochrome lobby of a bank. An immaculately dressed young woman sat on a stool behind the reception. She regarded him politely as he crossed the marble floor toward her. Conrad stopped in front of the desk and spoke in a low voice.
The woman’s eyebrows rose fractionally at his words. Her gaze skimmed over the birthmark on his left forearm and darted toward the tellers’ counter behind him. Conrad gave her his best smile. Although he had showered again this morning, he suspected his two-day stubble and shabby clothes did not quite match up with the bold statement he had just made.
He reached inside the rear waistband of his trousers under the receptionist’s increasingly anxious stare. His fingers brushed against the staff weapon tucked in the small of his back before closing on the Ziploc bag. He took out one of the savings bonds and placed it on the desk.
The receptionist paled when she saw the denomination and stamp date on the certificate. She stammered a profuse apology and swiftly dialed an extension.
Forty minutes later, Conrad strolled out of the building with more liquid assets than he had when he walked in. The bank’s senior funds manager, a portly man with a receding hairline and sweaty hands, insisted he made full use of the establishment’s facilities before he left. Conrad had thanked him and politely asked if he could use a phone in private. He was quickly ushered to an empty meeting room with a panoramic view of the city. The funds manager told him to take his time and closed the door on his way out.
Conrad leaned against the glossy, beech and chrome table that dominated the space and picked up the trim, modern phone that sat upon it. He made two calls.
The first was to a number in Rio de Janeiro. It went to voicemail after six rings. He listened to the message that followed, disconnected, and contemplated the glimmering waters of the Rio Negro in the far distance.
He picked up the phone again and dialed the number of a private jet charter company he had used in the past. After confirming the details of his reservation, he arranged the transfer of a substantial sum of money into their accounts.
The receptionist smiled graciously at him when he walked back into the lobby of the bank a couple of minutes later. He smiled back and saw her blush as he exited the building.
A shiny, black executive sedan with tinted windows pulled up at the curb as the door swung shut behind him. A man in a dark suit got out of the driver’s seat and scanned him with a neutral expression.
‘Mr. Greene?’ he said with a hint of a Texan accent.
Conrad inclined his head.
‘I’m the chauffeur from the charter company,’ said the man.
The immortal raised his eyebrows. ‘That was quick.’
‘I was in the area,’ the man explained with a civil smile. He opened the rear door of the vehicle. Conrad climbed inside the air-conditioned space and settled on the pristine, cream leather seat.
Fifteen minutes later, the car rolled to a stop next to a gleaming, white Learjet 31 parked on the tarmac of the private business zone of Manaus’s main international airport. Conrad stepped out into the dazzling sunlight. He gave the Texan a tip and strolled toward the figure waiting at the bottom of the jet’s steps. The man in the pilot’s uniform walked forward and offered his hand.
‘Hello, Mr. Greene,’ he said in a broad Georgian accent. His smile furrowed the pale crow’s feet fanning out from his eyes. ‘This ain’t your usual time of year to be making this trip.’
Conrad smiled and shook the man’s hand. ‘Hi, Bill. Yeah, something came up.’
The pilot observed the rucksack on the immortal’s shoulder. ‘Traveling light again, I see.’
The immortal shrugged noncommittally and followed him up the steps to the cabin. The pilot showed him to a table with a tray of complimentary food and drink, and headed for the cockpit. The jet got under way and lifted off moments later. Weather conditions permitting, their flight to Rio de Janeiro would take just under four hours.
Conrad helped himself to a delicious shrimp salad and a beer before moving to the large sofa at the back of the plane. He put his feet up, made himself comfortable, and opened the dead man’s envelope.
The first sheet occupied his attention for half an hour. He studied the random, enigmatic text until his vision practically blurred and came to the conclusion that all of it was written in code. The first three lines intrigued him the most. Structured in the form of a haiku, a short Japanese poem, they read:
“On Freda’s Dark Day
For the Rightful Blood to rise
The Falcon must fall”
It appeared to be some sort of message. As to what it stood for and for whom it was intended, he still had no clue.
Next, he analyzed the floor plans of the oval building and the map of its exterior from every possible angle. He decided they would be impossible to interpret without a point of reference; considering most of his excursions from the rainforest in the last sixty-odd years had been restricted to his trips to Rio, he could have been staring at the latest Opera House in London for all he knew.
The photographs he left for last. It was obvious to him that the people featured on them worked for some sort of government agency. Whether they were CIA, MI5, or Mossad was difficult to ascertain from the limited details in the shots.
He was still staring at the picture of Laura Hartwell when the pilot’s voice came over the intercom and informed him that they would be landing shortly. He put the envelope back in his bag, buckled up, and looked out of the nearest porthole just as the plane crossed the Serra do Mar mountain range.
The state of Rio de Janeiro spread out across the landscape through the thinning clouds below, a wide plateau of peaks and rainforests interspersed with coffee and sugar plantations that gradually gave way to coastal plains. Guanabara Bay appeared ahead, its glinting dark waters heralding the hazy, cobalt expanse of the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Hugging the western shore of the bay was the state’s namesake capital city. As the Learjet turned on its final approach to Galeão International Airport, the girder bridge that joined Rio to the neighboring municipality of Niterói drifted into view. Conrad caught glimpses of the iconic landmarks of Sugarloaf Mountain and the white, soapstone and concrete statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain through the mantle of smog that bla
nketed the city.
His biennial pilgrimage to Rio had started some eighteen months after he retreated from civilization at the end of the Second World War. Although he had wanted nothing else but to spend the rest of his protracted immortal existence in the peace and solitude of the rainforest, three centuries of service as a senior intelligence operative in the Bastian First Council had instilled habits that were hard to break. Following an internal debate that lasted two weeks, Conrad concluded it wouldn’t do any harm to keep up to date with world events and scientific developments once in a while. However good he was at covering his tracks, his instincts told him he would not be able to hide from the Bastian immortal society forever. He wanted to be ready if and when they came knocking at his door.
His trips to the city were one month long, and he spent most of that time catching up on global advances in the sciences and general technologies, particularly weapons and military engineering, as well as politics and the major cultural changes sweeping across the world. In the first forty or so years, this was achieved by reading newspapers in coffee shops, trawling through the city’s libraries, and clandestinely touching base with the odd friend as well as old military connections. His voyages during the two decades spanning the mid 1960s to the early 1980s were often fraught with danger. With the country under the rule of a series of military dictatorships, the army aggressively pursued anyone they suspected of being a foreign political insurgent. His skills as a former agent kept him well beneath their radar during those years of autocracy.
Then came the advent of computers and the Internet. With his outings suddenly more streamlined, Conrad rediscovered the pleasures of the more physical pursuits of weapons and combat training. He had not realized how much he missed sparring with a skilled opponent until he knocked out his first man during a no-holds-barred fight in a seedy underground club in the city.
Since he rarely went anywhere without his staff weapon, he started to make his trips by private charter when airport security tightened up in the 1970s. Although it was technically legal to carry a bladed weapon in checked luggage, the last thing he wanted was attention from the authorities. Money was hardly an issue; despite the fact that he had donated most of his fortune to various charities when he went into self-imposed exile, there was still a considerable amount of it left in his accounts.
Forty minutes after landing at the airport, Conrad walked out of the men’s toilet dressed in a newly purchased casual short-sleeved shirt, chinos, and Doc Martens. His backpack was bulkier from his purchases at one of the chain stores in the main terminal building.
He strolled into the offices of a local rental car company and booked a Ford Focus for the day. His old clothes and shoes went inside a trashcan in the parking lot. He climbed inside the vehicle, turned the air con to full power, and soon merged with the traffic headed south on the expressway.
Bottlenecks started to form shortly after he took the exit ramp for the neighborhood of Sao Cristovao. Horns blared and tires shrieked around him as cars, courier bikes, and pedestrians fought for space on the road. The sidewalks swarmed with the lunchtime crowd, droves of people milling around the food stands and snack bars that dotted the narrow space. The aroma of grilled meat and fried tapioca floated above the acrid stench of exhaust fumes.
He finally made it to the edges of the Manguiera shantytown and stopped the Ford on a quiet street halfway down a hill. Just under a mile to the south and across an expanse of railway tracks, the pale facade of the Maracana stadium and its blue bracing pillars shimmered in the afternoon heat.
Conrad propped his elbows on the steering wheel and studied the dilapidated, two-story structure sitting on a corner plot two doors down and across the street from where he had parked. The drawn curtains on the first floor and the roller shutters across the front of the establishment projected an air of abandonment. The sign above the lintel read “Eterno Bar.” The irony of it did not escape him.
He grabbed the backpack, exited the rental, and crossed the road to the building. A rust-stained, corrugated iron door stood in the wall around the side. He rapped his knuckles sharply on the metal sheet and waited.
Seconds ticked by. Nothing happened. Conrad sighed and knocked again. It took another couple of minutes of persistent banging to elicit a response from the inside of the edifice.
‘All right, all right, I’m coming! Keep your goddamned panties on!’ someone bellowed in Portuguese from the other side of the door. There was a shuffle of footsteps followed by the sound of a key turning in a lock. A bolt slid against metal and the portal creaked open.
A monstrous figure with a shock of disheveled, tawny hair and a beard loomed in the doorway. Eerie, pale eyes squinted sleepily in the bright sunlight. There was a sharp intake of breath. The eyes shrank into narrow slits.
‘You!’ the figure hissed.
Conrad gaped at the apparition. ‘What’s with the beard?’
The man snorted and slammed the door shut in his face. The bolt slid back in place.
‘Hey!’ shouted Conrad. He thumped loudly on the metal panel. ‘What the hell’s with that reaction?’
‘Go away!’ the giant yelled from the other side.
‘I can do this all day, you know,’ Conrad retorted grimly, still pounding on the door. Sweat pooled down the sides of his face and dripped onto his new shirt. He was aware of windows opening and people emerging on doorsteps further along the road.
‘All right!’ the man barked. ‘Jeez, you’re such a pain in the ass!’
Conrad lowered his fist. The footsteps returned. The door opened once more.
‘Well, what are you standing there like a moron for? Come on in,’ grumbled the orange-haired colossus.
Conrad followed the man down a cramped alley that gave way to a surprisingly pleasant, paved backyard. A metal grille swung shut behind them as they entered the cool interior of the building. They headed past a staircase and a galley kitchen to a large, dark space at the front. The giant disappeared in the gloom to the left, his steps heavy on the hardwood floor.
Conrad stopped in his tracks and blinked. It took a few seconds for his vision to adjust to the shadows. Dim shapes slowly materialized in front of him. There was a click from the left. Muted lights came on, illuminating the room.
Instead of the hovel that the exterior of the building suggested it would be, Eterno Bar was an unexpectedly clean and well-maintained drinking establishment. Period pieces from bygone eras dotted the floorboards and blended artfully with old furniture bearing elegant lines and a sheen of polish. Antique gaslights graced the ceiling and the pale walls, which held a scatter of faded black and white photographs.
‘This place hasn’t changed much.’ Conrad strolled to the curved counter and climbed on one of the wooden stools arranged in a neat half circle beneath it.
The man with the orange hair grunted noncommittally and extracted two glasses and a dark bottle from a shelf behind the bar.
‘So, what’s with the grouchy attitude and the beard?’ said Conrad.
The man glared at him. ‘What the hell kinda time do you call this? And the beard’s none of your beeswax.’
Conrad looked pointedly at his watch. ‘It’s one in the afternoon.’ He inspected the giant’s facial growth. ‘You got bored of shaving or something?’
‘I only went to bed at seven this morning,’ the man retorted. ‘I need my beauty sleep. I’m getting old.’ He hesitated. ‘The ladies say I look better with a beard,’ he added in a low mumble. The tips of his ears went the same shade as his hair.
Conrad cocked an eyebrow at the Bastian immortal who had once been his colonel and third in command. At five hundred and sixty-odd years old, Horatio Cassius Gordian had almost an extra century on Conrad. Together with Gordian’s cousin on his mother’s side, they had enlisted in the Bastian corps in the mid-sixteen hundreds, during Europe
’s bloody Thirty Years’ War. After a couple of decades working the field, Conrad advanced through the echelons of command and soon became responsible for an elite team of intelligence operatives, of which Gordian and his cousin were the first members and top colonels.
Although his otherworldly healing powers made him a figure to be revered by the Bastian councils, it was Conrad’s fighting abilities and leadership skills that gained him the respect of the men and women in his charge, and they obeyed him with a steadfast loyalty that was scarce in the ranks at the time.
A whiff of strong liquor distracted him from his recollections. He watched Gordian pour two shots of the golden liquid sloshing inside the bottle. The giant slid one of the glasses toward him. Conrad closed his fingers around it and downed the drink in one go. The aged cachaca trailed a delicious, fiery path down his throat, leaving a velvety aftertaste.
‘This is good,’ he said, looking into the empty glass.
Gordian swallowed his, grunted in pleasure, and refilled both glasses. ‘So, what brings you here? You’re about a year early, aren’t you?’ The giant observed him guardedly.
Conrad twirled the shot glass and watched the amber liquid dance around the rim. He knocked back the second drink, placed the glass carefully on the counter, and looked steadily at Gordian. ‘I need to know where she is.’
Chapter Five
Silence greeted Conrad’s statement. Gordian lowered his glass to the bar.
