Anthony Simone’s grandfather had two brothers; one died at age twenty in Sicily, but the other had immigrated to Buenos Aires in 1900 and Simone’s grandfather had gone to New York. The last half of the nineteenth century had seen a large number of Italians leave their homeland and move to Argentina, just as many had come to the United States.
In spite of my estrangement from Anthony Simone, I still had contacts in Buenos Aires. I was convinced after talking to him that Simone knew the identity of Eve or her mother, probably both. If he did, that contact could probably be sought in Argentina. After all, the company card listed Buenos Aires on it.
I didn’t have much to go on in my search, just a telephone number and the name of a business, but it was the only clue I had to pursue.
Anthony Simone’s great-uncle had fathered a single male child, and this child had in turn littered South America with eight offspring. Of the five living, four still had close ties to Simone, but I knew one who would talk to me. Ismalda Simone was a spinster about ninety, but looked no older than sixty. She was spry and intelligent, with hair that remained dark with only a few specks of gray. She had worked for thirty years in the Argentinean television industry, first doing commercials and later as a star in a sitcom about a poor family who lived on the southern tip of the country. I understood Spanish and had watched a few episodes, but never could understand the humor in the show. Humor is dependent upon the culture, I guess. Or maybe when you kill people for a living, you are not usually blessed with a marvelous sense of humor.
Ismalda hated Anthony Simone and everything he represented. For some reason, though she knew what I did for a living, she liked me, and every time I went to Argentina I stopped by and visited her. Maybe she thought she could change me. Maybe she had.
Now I needed her help, so I flew to Buenos Aires.
She lived in a bright yellow house in the middle of the Italian section of the city. It was built like a small fortress, with only a couple of high, narrow windows to the outside of the building, but with a roomy courtyard in the middle.
No one answered the door when I knocked.
My mind filled with worry. Was she still alive? Had they somehow arrived before me? How could they know? My worries fled when Ismalda’s maid answered the door. Small and birdlike, she regarded me with the eyes of a hawk, as if I had come to steal her dinner.
“Who is it?” I heard Ismalda shout from inside the house.
“No one,” the maid shouted back. I seemed to give that impression to many people.
“It’s Scott Remington!” I yelled before the maid could slam the door in my face. A sense of déjà vu was spreading over me, since she tried to do this every time I visited Ismalda.
“Rosalyn, let him in!”
The maid glowered at me, her nose taking on a beak-like appearance to match her hawk eyes, and I wondered if she might strike, but instead, she merely stepped aside and let me enter. She then closed the door and was gone without another word or even the hint of an offer to show me the way to Ismalda. Luckily, I knew where to find her.
Ismalda was in the courtyard, painting. She was there every time I came to visit. This time she was painting a river landscape that was at least fifteen feet wide and six feet high. It was a massive undertaking, and it was a shame she had no talent. Since starting to paint seriously fifteen years before, she had made no progress whatsoever. A blind drunk could pick up a brush and produce a painting of better quality on his first attempt than she had ever made. To make matters worse, she had discovered pointillism, and thus patterned herself after Seurat. At least she tried to. The two of us were the only people who knew that, and I knew only because she’d told me. I certainly could see no similarities by looking at her work. But no matter how bad she was, I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
“Like it?” she asked.
Luck was on my side. She had finished only the bottom six inches of the canvas, though she had finished that all the way across.
“I’m not sure yet. You still have a long way to go.” This made her happy, since I appeared to be thoughtfully withholding judgment until she had finished more of the painting.
“You’re right,” she sighed. “I’ve never tried to paint anything this big. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s too ambitious.”
The problem was that anything more complicated than painting a wall white was too ambitious for Ismalda, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Good thing you have more talent than I do,” I told her, a true statement.
She nodded, put away her brushes, and motioned me to a pair of chaise longues in the shade.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked me.
“A coke will do.”
“Rosalyn!” she shouted, but the maid didn’t appear. Ismalda looked frustrated, then angry, but only said, “I’m sure she’ll be here in a moment.”
I had my doubts, but sat down and replied, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Well . . .” She stared toward the house, clouds gathering on her face. Then she brightened and turned to me. “How’s the King?”
I shrugged. “Same as always. Trying to control the world, killing off anyone who disagrees with him.”
“He’s successful only because people like you work for him.”
“I don’t work for him anymore.”
“What happened?” It was interesting that she didn’t seem surprised.
I told her, slowly and in great detail. I told her about my retirement, my disorientation with the world, my cruise, meeting Eve and Eme and the old witch, then followed by describing my weeks in the Mayan village. I told her about being hunted, and about my estrangement from Anthony Simone, but I didn’t tell her about my dreams. Then I showed her the card and the photo.
Her face paled as she looked at the photo; she stared at it for a long time. Then she put it down. I thought she was going to give me the same answer as Anthony Simone had, but she surprised me. “I know the old woman,” she said, “and I am familiar with the name of the firm. I’m not sure about the young woman or her daughter. But maybe you know them.” She stopped and gazed into the sky.
Maybe you know them? What the hell did that mean? That I knew them because we’d met on the cruise? Or something else?
“What can you tell me about the firm?” I asked softly. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t because she was trying to hide anything. The thought just repulsed her.
“Of all the evils in the world,” she began, “the old woman represents the worst. You know how I feel about the King. In my opinion, he has few redeeming qualities. In comparison with the old woman, however, he is a saint. Her company must have been incorporated in Hell by Satan himself.”
I kept silent when she paused for a breath, knowing she would continue.
“Her name is Anna Milanic. I guess you might say she is the CEO of International Labor, Inc. The company is an old one, ruled by her family for centuries. It is truly global now.”
“What’s the nature of its business?”
She looked at me sternly. “Human slavery. They buy and kidnap humans and sell them as slaves. There is still a market for slaves, you know, particularly in the Far East and the Third World, even in the United States. There is a small city in Mexico called Tenancingo where sex trafficking is the main business and they have a part in this. This is what Anna and her company have done for hundreds of years, maybe even a thousand. When the Spanish invaded Mexico, they were already here, capturing and selling slaves. During the height of the slave trade to North America, they were there, buying slaves on the Gold Coast and selling them in the United States. In Mayan days their family did the same.”
“How can they get away wi
th it?”
“The company is far more powerful than you would think. It transcends national boundaries and owns politicians in dozens of countries. Money and fear are powerful allies. Most rulers who are aware of the company’s existence are afraid of them. They would prefer to remain anonymous, but that’s difficult now because in the last few years they have grown dramatically.”
“I can’t believe that slavery is possible. This is the twenty-first century. Slavery died out in the eighteen hundreds.”
She laughed bitterly. “Maybe in some places, but certainly not in most of the world. Slavery is all too real. Young women are bought and sold as sexual slaves. Young men too. And anyone strong enough to work is always a target. People disappear all the time, never found. In the United States I’m sure it’s thought that the victims were murdered and their bodies hidden, but many times they’re just kidnapped and sold.”
“Who buys them?”
“The rich and cruel of many nations. There is a market in the U.S. and Europe, but the rest of the world is even more active.”
I sat stunned, hardly knowing what to say. I pictured Gone with the Wind, then more brutal depictions of slaves in mid-nineteenth-century America. Sympathy wasn’t my best attribute—it clashed with my job—but I couldn’t comprehend myself living only at the slightest whim or desire of another human. I suddenly remembered an announcement in the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport stating that they were doing as much as they could to prevent human trafficking, and that anyone who saw something suspicious should report it. Then a cold sweat burst over me as I remembered my dreams.
“The old woman is the leader of this monstrosity?” I asked.
Ismalda nodded. “She is evil to her core.”
“How do you know so much about her?” I asked.
Tears sprang to Ismalda’ s eyes. “She is my distant cousin, I’m told. And Anthony Simone’s also.”
Then she cried, as if all the sorrows of the world were her fault. I didn’t know how to respond, so I said nothing.
“I need to find out more about this company,” I told her when she’d finished.
“Why?”
“I think the evil woman is trying to kill me. I need to find her first.”
“And kill her? Isn’t that what you do best?”
“I don’t know about killing her, but I feel an urge to find her and somehow stop her.”
Again she sat staring at the sky, watching drifts of clouds coalesce, then fragment into slivers of heaven. I knew, but couldn’t ask, that her pain at the mention of Anna Milanic and her company was more personal than she had let on. Perhaps related to Ismalda’s husband? When he was thirty, he had been murdered. Did Milanic play a role in his fate? Ismalda would have to tell me of her own free will.
Finally she spoke, but her voice was empty and flat, all emotion drained out of her. “I will help you the best I can if you make me a promise.”
“What do you want?”
“One more time you must pursue the profession for which you have so much talent. You must kill Anna Milanic. The world will be a better place with her death.”
“I will try to—”
“You must kill her!” Ismalda spat. “You must!” The hatred in her voice was something I could almost grab, and it was also something I’d never before seen in her.
“I will,” I promised her, not knowing if I could keep that promise.
“Then I will help you. It is time for you to know a few things.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
We were in Merida, Yucatán, Mexico, where Ismalda told me she moved from many years ago, and that I would understand why eventually.
We found an Aero Mexico flight from Buenos Aires to Mexico City, then a two hour hop over to Merida from there. I was glad we didn’t have to leave the airport in Mexico City since the smog outside was so thick the nearby mountains were only a smudge in the distance.
Ismalda said little on the long flights, sleeping most of the way. But when we landed that night, we took a cab to a hotel downtown, then another to an address on Paseo de Montejo, a street lined on both sides by mansions from over a hundred years ago. Most were giant things, reminding me of houses in Providence, Rhode Island, where the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts lived during similar times in the United States.
Somehow, the house looked familiar in the faint light of the quarter moon, as the complex spread out before me. The problem haunting my mind was why it looked familiar. I stared at the mansion, old but in reasonably good shape, though vines entangled its gardens and walls.
I knew I had been here before.
In this life. And earlier.
The memories came flooding back. My daughter, Eme, playing in the yard, supervised by slaves. My wife fanning herself on the porch in the Yucatán summer sun, hot even in the shade. No ceiling fans or air conditioning hundreds of years ago. And then I remembered Raxka. The one who lived next door. With her evil mother.
Not that my wife’s mother was a jewel. She hated me because I was not the one she wanted to marry her daughter. I was a scribe, a more prominent level than most but not very important in overall social hierarchy.
Why did her daughter fall in love with me?
In spite of the warm evening, a shiver seized me.
There was something else here. I felt it. But what?
Dared I go inside?
I had no choice.
In addition to my smartphone, I had brought a big flashlight, though I suspected the light from the phone might have been enough. I carefully made my way through the front brush, shining the light before me. When I was halfway to the porch, a black cat ran in front of me, arched its back and hissed, then disappeared into the brush.
The steps were in better shape than I’d expected, concrete and intact. I carefully climbed them, proceeded to the door, and pushed. It was locked.
I was a little surprised, but when I surveyed my surroundings, I realized that someone still lived here. Through a set of windows by the front door, I could see a night light plugged into the wall along the baseboard.
The dark foyer led into a living room, with an old wooden floor covered with oriental rugs, some of which looked extremely expensive. I walked to the center of a large living room. A blue leather sofa hugged the wall I had entered through, and a number of different wooden and leather chairs circumscribed the room, with a wooden desk along the far wall, where a doorway exited the room.
I turned around, shining my flashlight back toward the direction I had come, but switched it off when Ismalda snapped on the lights in the living room, though now I could also see the foyer better.
The house had three stories, which was unusual in this city. I noted the grand stairway in the middle of the front room leading upward, but passed it by and walked through the far doorway to another grand room, a dining room, with a large table in the middle, surrounded by eight chairs, all of which looked extremely old, but still usable. I walked over to the table and rubbed the top. There was very little dust.
Noticing my actions, Ismalda said, “I keep the house clean.”
“Do you come here often?” I asked.
“About twice a year, but I pay a cleaning service to keep the dirt under control.”
The walls of the room were covered with pictures of famous ruin sites. Chichén Itzá and Tulum that I’d been to, and Uxmal, Palenque and the jaguar throne in the Temple of Kukulkan that I’d only seen on the Internet.
Of course, there was also a picture of the sacrificial Sacred Cenote where I had saved Eme in this lifetime.
And where Eme and I been killed by Raxka, many lifetimes ago!
Strange that now I rarely questioned that concept in my mind.
There were no pictures of people, however, so I continued on, exiting onto a large patio completely surrounded by a limestone wall, Ismalda now following me. A fountain sat in the middle, created from the figure of the divine Kukulkan, water running from his mouth into the small manmade pond.
I crossed the patio to the wall. I studied it carefully, finding specks of red paint on it, though most of the paint was long gone. The wall was clearly much older than the dining room furniture inside. It was as if the house had been constructed long after this patio had been placed here. Maybe another house, now long gone, had occupied this lot in the past. Maybe the same family had owned this land for years and built several houses here over time, tearing down the previous one and replacing it.
I asked that question to Ismalda, who told me I was right; this wasn’t the first house built on this lot.
Near the closed gate in the far corner of the patio appeared to be something carved into the wall, about a third of the way to the top.
Using my flashlight, I tried to read it, realizing finally that it was in Mayan.
The Mayan Long Count, to be exact.
11.3.17.1.10.
June 7, 1300 by the Gregorian calendar.
My heart froze, and I almost fell down. I could tell by the shape of the numbers who had carved it.
I had.
But when?
It looked like my handwriting in this life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
More memories suddenly swirled through my mind. I was a small child running through a garden, a boy about eight years old, followed by two girls about the same age, maybe slightly younger. We were playing with a hard rubber ball, trying to bounce it through a stone hoop at the end of the garden.
The Hauntings of Scott Remington Page 15
