Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1)

by Fernando Gamboa

  Later, the Spanish Civil War started.

  Riley had never been to Spain. Though he spoke Spanish, he had only practiced it with his mom or in seedy South American ports. His mom was from Cádiz, and loved to tell him about the amazing history of her country. Riley developed a connection to Spain, and when he learned fascist rebels had taken up arms and shot, among many others, his maternal grandparents at the cemetery wall in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, he didn’t need any other excuse to go. Stupid, young, and bitter, he directed all his anger at fascism and enlisted in the International Brigade to defend the threatened government of the Republic. Two and a half months later, he landed with hundreds of his countrymen in Barcelona.

  During the war, he got to see the true nature of humanity, the horror and the barbarism. After tens of thousands of years, he thought, we’re still the same cavemen with clubs, jumping at the chance to smash our neighbor’s skull in. Riley also learned that freedom is a tree that can’t be fed with words and intentions alone. It requires blood and sacrifice. Though he knew he was on the right side, the communist militias he sometimes found himself fighting with side by side were paradoxically further than his fascist enemies from the ideas of freedom he upheld.

  But all those lessons came later, when the brigade was dissolved and they crossed the border of the Pyrenees, along with thousands of refugees fleeing fascist repression. With Franco’s army’s bullets whizzing by inches from his head and artillery shells mercilessly pounding the Republican positions he defended, he had neither the opportunity nor the desire to think of anything but surviving to the next day.

  Then Spain experienced the violent, vengeful peace of the fascists. War was declared in Europe almost immediately afterward, and Riley, tired and with his retina still stained with the blood of men he saw die, decided to return to Boston and resume his interrupted career in the Merchant Marine. The systematic Nazis with their cold determination and goose steps disgusted him more than the sloppy Spanish fascists with their berets and crucifixes, but the United States wasn’t at war with anyone, and fighting once under another country’s flag, he told himself, was more than enough for a lifetime.

  As he was preparing to return home from England, he suddenly found himself the proud owner of a freighter ship, modest but in good condition. With little hope for the future and even less desire to return to a country where he had no one left but his parents—and they hadn’t been in touch for years—he took command of the ship and recruited temporary sailors who were too old or crippled to serve in the Royal Navy. For a few months, they transported goods and supplies across the English Channel, but the mass appearance of German sub “wolf packs” unceremoniously sinking anything bigger than a rowboat made him look for friendlier waters. He decided on the Western Mediterranean, registered the boat under the Spanish flag to take advantage of the country’s neutrality, and changed its old British name to that of the hill where so many good men died.

  Since then, things had taken unexpected turns. With Jack’s help, he had finally enlisted a permanent crew. As legal trade plummeted because of the war, they got by accepting less-than-legal jobs. Sometimes, these earned them enough to go out on a few drinking binges and get by for a while. Usually, however, they were left running from customs police empty-handed. But no one had been jailed or gravely injured yet, so they kept sailing. And that was something to be proud of.

  I hope March isn’t playing us, Riley thought, watching the red morning light paint the summit of Monte Hacho, and we can come away with something from all this. Something better.

  If Captain Alexander Riley had had the slightest idea of what awaited him and his crew, he would have turned the ship around and never looked back.

  10

  “This hookah is really good. It tastes like apple, you should try it.” Jack leaned back on the bright, geometric-patterned pillows. Riley thought that if he’d been wearing a turban and baggy clothes, Jack would’ve seemed like a real caliph.

  “No thanks,” Riley said, lifting his glass of tea from the brass tray. “It calms me down too much, and I don’t want to be calm.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “Do you think we’re gonna have problems? Relax, Alex. Someone’s just gonna come explain what’s going on and what we have to get from the wreck.”

  “With Juan March involved,” Riley said, taking a cautious sip of his peppermint infusion, “it’s hard to relax.”

  They sat at a table in the back of a tearoom in Tangier’s medina quarter. Since 1925, Tangier had been an open city governed jointly by Belgium, Spain, the United States, France, Portugal, Great Britain, Russia, Holland, and Italy. A true diplomatic quagmire, it was the perfect enclave for spies, fugitives, and smugglers from all over the world, a cultural and religious hodgepodge where anything could and often did happen. This made Tangier the perfect port for Riley’s business, but things were changing.

  The year before, General Franco’s army had occupied Tangier. The new fascist government still hadn’t managed to fully undermine the city’s cosmopolitan character, but the intimidating presence of Spanish soldiers now made it a much less safe and friendly place to land.

  Tangier was really like two cities that coexisted with their backs to one another: the Western and the Muslim. Although they were only separated by a few streets, they marked a cultural, religious, and socioeconomic abyss that made the two sides polar opposites. Someone had compared Tangier to Siamese twins who never saw each other’s faces and kept ignoring each other.

  The modern, dissolute side had wide avenues and elegant neoclassical buildings with dozens of restaurants, luxury hotels, international banks, consulates, corporations, and showrooms that rivaled their counterparts on the Old Continent. Thousands of expatriates from around the world lived there, searching for freedom or fortune.

  From all sides it besieged the other Tangier, embodied by the ancient, bewitching medina next to the port. Its winding streets of houses washed in blue and white paint with tiled entrances were so confusing and chaotic that no one had yet tried to map them. Private homes were scattered among small subsistence shops, inns, and teahouses. Pots sat in doorways with wooden doors painted the color of the desert sky. Women made themselves invisible in immaculate white haiks, revealing only their dark, elusive eyes, while men in robelike djellabas walked aimlessly or loitered on street corners, seeming to have nothing better to do than watch people pass.

  “As-salamu alaykum.”

  Riley turned, thinking it was the waiter again, but found a chubby Arab man in a white linen suit and red fez studying them.

  “Wa ’alaykum as-salaam,” Jack said with a nod.

  “Pardon the intrusion,” the man said, stepping forward as he took off his fez. “Are you Mr. Riley and Alcántara?”

  “Who’s asking?” Riley said.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, taking a seat. “My name is Ahmed El Fassi, and I’m the representative of Mr. Juan March’s interests in this part of the world.”

  “And what interests are those, if you don’t mind?” Jack asked.

  “All interests.” El Fassi smiled slyly. “Which of you is Captain Riley?”

  “That’d be me,” Riley said.

  “In that case,” El Fassi said, taking a thick brown envelope out of his jacket, “this is for you.”

  Riley took the envelope sealed with black wax.

  “As you can see,” El Fassi said, “the envelope was sealed by Mr. March himself and has never been opened.”

  “Is this all?” Riley asked, weighing it.

  “Honestly, I have no idea what’s in there. My only task was to keep it safe until you arrived and give it to you in person.”

  “You mean you don’t know anything about—”

  El Fassi lifted his hand. “No, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. My job was to meet you and give you the documentation. Nothing else.”

  “But there’s a lot that needs clarification,” Riley said. “Things essential for completing the
. . . job. March assured me personally that once we were here he’d give us all the necessary information.”

  “And that’s exactly what I’ve done,” El Fassi said, pointing to the envelope. “All you need to know is in there.”

  “This is a bad start,” Jack grunted. “I don’t like this.”

  “Me neither,” Riley agreed.

  “Mr. March prefers to be discreet in his business,” El Fassi said.

  “This isn’t discretion,” Riley said, tapping the envelope with his finger. “It’s paranoia.”

  El Fassi smiled tiredly as if admitting they were right, stood up, and buttoned his jacket. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said, taking his fez from the table. “Less than an hour ago, Mr. March asked me to tell you the delivery time has been modified.”

  “Modified?”

  “You have a week to finish the job.”

  “A week!” Jack shouted, drawing looks from the other customers. “That’s impossible!”

  Riley looked at his friend, then back at El Fassi, trying to stay calm. “We can’t do it in so little time. We agreed to do it in twelve days, not seven. You have no clue how complicated . . . It’s absurd.”

  “Impossible,” Jack said.

  El Fassi shrugged again. “Call it what you want, it is what it is.” He put his fez on. “You’ve made an agreement with Mr. March, and if you allow me to offer a piece of advice, for the good of your health, I suggest you honor it.”

  Before El Fassi was out the door, Jack scoffed, “I knew the bastard would screw us one way or another.”

  “So these things go,” Riley said. “No reason feeling bad about it.” He broke the envelope’s seal and slid the documents out onto the table. “Let’s see what we have here . . .”

  On the olivewood surface he unfolded a marine chart of the Strait of Gibraltar from the Instituto Hidrográfico de la Marina with a 1:200,000 scale. It covered the area from Cabo Roche to Punta Chullera in the north, and from Cap Spartel to Cabo Negro in the south. Included were precise plans and two photographs of a merchant ship that was five hundred feet long, with 7,762 tons of displacement, a central superstructure, and two large smokestacks. Named Phobos, it was a Dutch ship. There was also a white envelope, containing a few typed pages detailing the operation and a photo of what looked like a wooden case holding a strange typewriter with too many keys.

  “Well,” Jack said, flipping through the chart, which had a red X marking a point only five or six miles northeast of Tangier, “at least information isn’t going to be a problem.” He smiled bitterly. “We have the exact position of the shipwreck marked like they do in pirate stories.”

  “Hmm,” Riley said, holding one of the pages written and signed by March.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked.

  “This is all very strange,” he said, looking up. “The rush, the secrecy, what they say they’re going to pay us . . . All in exchange for this thing.” He showed him the black-and-white snapshot of the device.

  “You’re shitting me. This is what they want us to salvage from the wreck?” Jack said.

  “That’s what it says here. And if it’s in good condition, it says we’ll get a bonus.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “No idea, but I like the word bonus.”

  “A fucking typewriter!” Jack said, studying the photo.

  “It must be something special to be worth a fortune.”

  “I don’t know, maybe it’s made of gold and diamonds and has a great typeface,” Jack said.

  “It’s clearly made of metal and wood, buddy, but even if God used it to write the Ten Commandments, it’d be too much money.”

  Jack leaned on the cushions. “Anyway, I say we don’t worry. If the coordinates are right, with a little luck, in a week we’ll be able to salvage the fucking piece of junk, deliver it, and be rich forever. We could buy one of those tranquil little South Pacific islands with beautiful, half-naked women”—he traced a feminine silhouette with his hands—“and stay there till we die of old age.”

  “That’s your plan?” Riley smiled, leaving the letter on the table. “Die of old age on an island of half-naked women?”

  “Do you have a better one?”

  “You’re a perv.”

  Jack was about to respond when a group of five uniformed legionnaires came in, with crooked caps, shirtsleeves rolled up, and shirts unbuttoned at the chest. They had long sideburns, crude tattoos, and the cockiest gaits imaginable. Riley remembered the times he’d been in firefights with soldiers like that, the most fanatic of the fascist army. He remained twisted around, looking at them for a moment until he snapped out of it and went back to the documents.

  “Moor!” an angry voice shouted, slapping the counter. “A bottle of wine!”

  An obsequious waiter appeared with an unlabeled bottle and five glasses. He filled them all to the top, left the bottle, and wisely ran to find something to do in the back.

  The one in charge, called Paracuellos, who wore sergeant stripes, raised his glass. “For the Legion!” he roared. “For the leader! Viva Franco y viva España!”

  His comrades cheered at the top of their lungs, as did the rest of the patrons, though much less enthusiastically. Riley and Jack, who were in the back corner, acted busy, hoping no one would notice them.

  That turned out to be too much to ask.

  With his glass still in the air, the sergeant looked at them. “Hey you!” he barked. “Drink to the leader’s health or I’ll rip your heads off.”

  Riley and Jack looked at each other. If we’re not careful, we could get our asses kicked.

  “Of course, my friend,” Riley said, turning halfway around and lifting his empty teacup from the table.

  “What kind of a shitty toast is that?” The sergeant came over, followed closely by the other soldiers. “Are you shitting me?”

  “Never,” Riley said, trying to hide his sarcasm.

  “One moment,” Paracuellos said. “That accent of yours . . . Don’t tell me you’re a fucking American!”

  “I am,” Riley said, noticing the smell of alcohol wafting over. “Is there a problem with that?”

  Paracuellos turned to his buddies and pointed at Riley. “He asked me if I have a problem, the Yankee faggot!”

  The other soldiers surrounded the table, happy for the chance to break a couple of skulls in front of an audience.

  “And you, Fatty? Are you a Yankee faggot too?”

  Jack bit his tongue.

  “You know,” Paracuellos said, lowering his face to Riley’s, “I killed a whole lot of Yankee faggot brigadiers in the war . . . When they saw us coming they ran like bunnies.” He made a rifle gesture. “You wouldn’t believe how fun it was to gun them down as they ran. Ra-ta-ta-t—”

  The last “ta” didn’t make it out of his mouth, because Riley sprang up and turned as he threw a rising hook at Paracuellos’s jaw; it landed and knocked him several feet backward.

  The other soldiers couldn’t believe anyone would be crazy enough to attack a Legion sergeant. The two seconds they needed to realize what had happened was enough for Riley and Jack to get ready. Riley took a dull, rusty cutlass from among the wall decorations, and Jack grabbed a small stool and held it out in front of him like a lion tamer.

  The legionnaires, nevertheless, much better prepared for such occasions, each took out a knife as long as a hand that they opened with a crick-crack sound one after another.

  “We’re going to cut your guts out,” the sergeant announced once he recovered from the fall and stepped forward. His face had a cloudy, drunken look. With difficulty, he stood up and smiled a furious and bloody grin, and Riley saw he was now missing some teeth.

  “Leafe them to me,” he said, full of fire, wiping the blood on his sleeve. “Leafe them to me.”

  11

  Facing the certainty of an imminent fight, the majority of the patrons left the place, but they were soon replaced by a curious, noisy crowd. It was mostly made u
p of kids eager to witness a brawl with knives, blood, and, with luck, a death or two.

  In one corner, with green pants and bare chests, stood five very angry legionnaires, armed with gleaming, horn-handled Albacete steel knives, dying to fillet the two in front of them. In the other corner stood a fat guy with a stool next to a taller man with black hair, resolutely brandishing Muhammad’s grandfather’s sword.

  “So,” Jack said to Riley, “now do you regret not bringing the gun?”

  “I didn’t think we’d need it.” He looked at the blood dripping out of the sergeant’s mouth onto the floor.

  “Well, good work. Here they come.”

  “First we’ll take out your eyes,” the sergeant said with the glee of someone anticipating a tasty meal. He turned the knife in his hand. “Then we’ll cut off your balls, and to finish up we’ll slice you open like pigs and leave your guts out for the flies. Sound good?”

  “Honestly,” Riley said, “I’d rather resolve our misunderstanding like gentlemen. We don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  The sergeant, who’d expected a string of desperate pleas and cries, was so stunned by the response that for a moment he was left with his mouth open, dripping blood and squinting as if he weren’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Did you say hurt us?” He turned to the other four who had the same knives and eagerness to use them. “He said hurt us, the fucking fag. Let’s see who gets hurt!”

  Fanning out as if they were doing a military exercise, the men surrounded Jack and Riley against the wall. They instinctively took a step back, treading on the sofa cushions. Then the legionnaire who was farthest to the right sprang toward Jack who, with unexpected agility for his size, dodged the knife aimed for his belly. Jack grabbed the stool by one leg and smashed it with all his might on the soldier’s face, causing him to fall to the table with a crash and a broken jaw.