Captain Riley (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 1)
Page 40
The question, of course, was how.
The answer might have something to do with the man with hazel eyes and disheveled hair, wearing a scuffed leather jacket, who’d just walked into the café.
Without a word—he had only been gone a few hours—Riley sat in an open chair at the head of the table. The waiter came and filled his cup with the watery liquid Americans called coffee. Riley thanked him and stared at it.
He waited awhile with his hands on the table until Jack broke the silence. “So? What happened?”
Riley paused, looked up, and smiled. “It’s settled.”
“Seriously?” Julie said.
“What’d they say?” César asked.
“Details, damn it. Give us details,” Jack begged.
Riley raised his hands in a plea for patience. “Easy, easy . . . I’ll tell you everything in time, but the most important thing to know is that the Office of Naval Intelligence has offered to resolve our problems.”
“Seriously?” Julie repeated. “How?”
Riley shrugged. “It seems they have some kind of agreement with Juan March, one that involves us.”
Jack asked, “Between that pirate and your government? And we’re included?”
“Yup.”
“It stinks of trouble,” Marco said, shaking his head, and for once the whole crew agreed with him.
“Sheep to the slaughter,” Jack said.
“I know, I know,” Riley rushed to say. “But there’s no backup plan. Take it or leave it, and believe me . . . leaving it would be bad for our health.”
“They have an agreement with March?” César asked in a tone that implied awareness of all the negative consequences a bad encounter with the Majorcan banker usually entailed.
Riley nodded. “According to his logic, we owe him for the Enigma, so the deal is a way to compensate him.”
Grunts of disgust sounded across the table.
“And what exactly did we agree to, Captain?” Jack asked bitterly.
Riley gave him a serious look, then smiled with satisfaction. “Actually, I’m the only one involved in the compromise. But you’re invited to join me if you want.” He looked at their attentive faces. “All of you.”
“Invited?” Julie asked.
“Exactly. Invited but not obligated.”
“What do you mean, Alex?” Carmen said. “Invited to what, a party?”
“Not exactly,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “See . . . now that the US is in the war, they’re short on field agents that can travel around the world without raising suspicion. So they offered us jobs as agents for the Office of Naval Intelligence.”
“Are you talking about espionage?” Jack asked, shocked.
Riley shushed him.
“Are you crazy?” Jack whispered. “We’re smugglers, we don’t know how to be spies.”
“Damn it, Jack,” Riley said, “you’re not listening. I didn’t say anything about espionage. We’ll keep doing more or less the same thing, we’ll just get orders from ONI. March will act as cover, arranging business that will justify our missions. We’ll get paid by Uncle Sam, get the usual commissions from the business we do, and,” he added, spreading his palms, “it’ll be a way to fight the Nazis.”
“So,” Jack said, crossing his arms, “now it’s your war?”
Riley took the jab. “You could say that it caught my interest ever since they tried to annihilate the human race.”
“By the way,” Carmen said, “did they believe what you told them about Operation Apokalypse and the Aussterben?”
Riley shook his head. “They said without proof it all sounds like science fiction. But they also insisted we not say anything under penalty of treason, so I think they partly believed it.”
“What about the English collaborating with the Nazis on an attack against your country?” Carmen said.
Riley nodded regretfully. “Same, but I don’t think it matters much now that we’re on the same side.”
“And if the Nazis try to attack with the virus again? I’m sure they have more of it in Germany,” Jack said.
“I don’t know if they’ll try, my friend. But like I said, we’re at war, so that changes a lot. The navy’s on high alert, which means it’d be much more difficult to get an infected agent into the US, let alone twenty or thirty.”
“I’m in,” Elsa announced.
Riley blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I mean I’m in, Captain,” she said, saluting him. “You want volunteers, right? Well, now you have one.”
Surprised, Riley hadn’t meant to include her when he’d said “all of you.” “Actually, I don’t know if you—”
“Don’t give me another one of your ‘this isn’t a life for an innocent girl’ speeches. After all that’s happened I have the right to go with you. I have nowhere else to go, and I’m the only one here who speaks German. Think about it, I should be your top choice.”
Riley knew she was right. She’d be very useful and had plenty of reasons to hate the Nazis. Still, he hesitated, but then offered his hand across the table. “All right then. Welcome aboard. Anyone else?” he asked, looking at Jack, who returned the look like Riley had stolen his wallet.
“Fuck,” Jack muttered. “Holy shit . . .”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Riley smiled, knowing he’d follow Elsa for sure.
“Us too,” César said after exchanging a glance with his wife.
“Marco?”
“What’s the pay?”
“More than before, that’s for sure.”
“Then okay.” He nodded.
“Hold on,” Jack said. “We don’t have a ship anymore, remember?”
Riley gave him a sly look like someone in the last round of poker who goes all in holding a pretty hand of aces and kings. “That’s almost the best part. Apparently a Uruguayan merchant bound for the Azores found the Pingarrón drifting three hundred miles south of Flores.”
Everyone gasped.
“How’s that possible?” Jack said. “Last time we saw it, it was about to sink!”
“Yeah, well.” Riley shrugged. “According to the report it was lopsided and charred but still floating. They promised to recover it and get it ready to sail in less than three months. All on the ONI’s dollar . . . with the condition, of course, that I assemble a crew.”
Joaquín Alcántara couldn’t do anything but lean back in his chair. “Doesn’t sound bad,” he admitted, taking his pipe out. “Not bad at all.”
“I think this calls for a toast,” César said, raising his cup.
Everyone followed suit and clinked their porcelain cups together. “To the Pingarrón!”
“To its crew!” Julie said.
Elsa raised hers higher. “To Helmut Kirchner, the man who saved the world.”
“To Helmut!” they joined in enthusiastically.
They all drank, and after they put the cups down and grew silent again, Riley glanced at everyone, noting their looks of satisfaction and pensiveness.
Then he saw Carmen piercing him with her black eyes.
“And me?” she asked angrily. “You’re not gonna ask me if I wanna join your stupid amateur spy club? Don’t think I’m up to snuff?”
With the hint of a smile, Riley stared at her. In response, he took a gold ring from his pocket and, holding her hand, knelt down to ask the one question he’d never expected to come out of his mouth.
The one he’d wanted to ask since the day they’d met.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel would not have been possible without the collaboration of many people whose names do not appear on the cover. I’d like to mention some of them here.
First, my parents, Fernando and Candelaria, and my sister Eva. The three of them have been critical to the success of all my projects.
I would also like to publicly thank Diego Román, Patricia Insúa, Eva Erill, Jorge Magano, Susana Torres, Rosa Pérez, Erika Wellmer, Lola Gulias, and, most of all, Carmen Grau for her
unbelievable help and patience in correcting and improving the original manuscript and making it into the novel you now hold in your hands.
Finally, thanks to Alex Woodend, Elizabeth DeNoma, and all the wonderful professionals at Amazon Publishing who made the publication of this novel possible. Without them, you and I, dear reader, would never have met.
And of course, above all, my deepest thanks to the hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world who read my novels and inspire me every day to keep writing.
To all of you, one more time, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Fernando Gamboa
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I sincerely hope you enjoyed this novel and, if so, please rate it on the Amazon page where you purchased it. I need you to get involved by reviewing the novel online, so other readers will know your thoughts and become interested in reading it too.
If you write a review, please drop me a line at captainrileyepilogue@gmail.com or through the contact page on my website, www.gamboabooks.com, so you can receive notice of future offers and promotions.
If you want to read more about Captain Riley, including additional information on the people, historical events, maps, photos, or deleted scenes, go to my website or the official Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thecaptainrileyadventures. You can also find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Fernando-Gamboa/1483028298662039.
Finally, I’d like to emphasize that although the names of some of the characters are real, their actions and conversations are not. The selection of historical figures was not at all coincidental, but I by no means suggest that the story is true or that the people actually said the words I attribute to them. Captain Riley is a work of fiction, and that’s how it should be interpreted.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the next adventure.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Noèlia Serendipity
Fernando Gamboa has traveled and worked his way around the world as a diver, Spanish teacher, entrepreneur, poker player, and adventure guide. His novels reflect his lust for life.
Gamboa’s debut novel, The Last Crypt, was published in 2007. In 2012–13, the Kindle version was #1 on Amazon Spain for nearly 200 days. Today, it remains the bestselling e-book on Amazon Spain, having sold over 200,000 copies worldwide. In 2008, Gamboa published Guinea, a thriller inspired by his experiences on the African continent. Black City, the sequel to The Last Crypt, is scheduled to be published in English in late 2015. His latest adventure novel, Captain Riley, became an immediate bestseller on Amazon Spain and was a finalist in the Concurso Literario de Autores Indies 2014.
Gamboa was born in Barcelona, where, as a boy, he was inspired by the works of Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, and Emilio Salgari.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2014 Bethany Ruth Christy
Alex Woodend is a Spanish- and Chinese-to-English translator.
His fascination with Spanish-language and Chinese fiction began at Franklin & Marshall College. During graduate studies at Columbia, he wrote a thesis on early post-Mao literature.
He is currently at work on a Chinese-novel translation and original short-story collection.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CONTENTS
Start Reading
Pingarrón
1
2
The Banker and the Admiral
3
Högel
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
Agent
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Wilhelm and Heinrich
37
38
Wilhelm and Juan
39
40
41
42
43
44
C and Winston
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
The Assault
64
65
The Pact
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR