After the War: A Novella of the Golden City

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  “Exactly. Or any mention of diamonds,” he added. “If we all scan through these stories, we should be able to find it.”

  The talk of diamonds caught her attention, reminding Alejandro that he should purchase a new pair of earrings for her in lieu of a wedding ring.

  “Sir, you don’t need to stay,” he said when the duke grabbed a handful of notebooks and settled at the table.

  “Nonsense,” the duke said. “Currently Ana is preparing our daughter to meet her soon-to-be husband. There are seamstresses there at all hours. I assure you, they don’t need me.”

  If Alejandro recalled the newspaper stories correctly, the duke had only one child, a daughter who would marry the young heir to the Portuguese throne in Sintra, thus bringing the two halves of the House of Aviz back together and ending any question of the divided throne. “I appreciate your help, then, sir.”

  “You truly can call me Raimundo,” the duke said, eyes on the pages before him.

  Joaquim took another seat at the table and claimed a handful of the notebooks, while Serafina took one and settled on the couch. Alejandro gathered the remainder of the notebooks and sat in the armchair next to his wife. He loved this library with its musty smell and walls of old books. For a time it was silent in the room, until the duke sighed, got up, and rang for coffee. The butler popped his head into the room and dashed off to do the duke’s bidding.

  “You should get these published,” the duke pronounced.

  Alejandro realized that directive was aimed at him. “I think they need work, sir.”

  “I agree,” he said. “However, the ones I’ve read are quite diverting.”

  “Half of them are autobiographical,” Joaquim said, “and the other half are pure fancy. It’s difficult to decide which is which at times.”

  “But still publishable,” the duke said. “I have connections in that arena.”

  “You have connections everywhere,” Joaquim replied blandly.

  It was a tempting prospect, and might provide some income for him and Serafina. “I’ll consider your suggestion, sir.”

  “Raimundo,” the duke repeated.

  Roberto came in then, bearing the coffee.

  The duke glanced at the footman as he set the tray down on the table. “Are you one of our veterans?”

  Roberto flushed, his scar turning red. “Yes, sir. I served in Flanders.”

  The duke rose and shook Roberto’s hand. “I would love to speak with you after we finish here.”

  “Of course, sir.” The footman bowed his way out of the room, apparently flustered by the attention.

  Serafina poured for everyone. After a few minutes, they settled back to their reading. The room fell silent again save for the sound of turning pages and the occasional clatter of a cup in a saucer.

  “I have it,” the duke said after opening his third notebook. His dark eyes flicked across the pages as he began to read more thoroughly and they all waited expectantly on his verdict. “The hero of this story is named João, and he is, indeed, a common Portuguese soldier, caught up in an effort to steal some invasion plans from the German army.”

  He was flipping pages backward, as if to figure out how the story started. “Aha! The Englishman in charge saw João steal another soldier’s wallet, apparently a jest of some sort. Since he needed keys stolen from a guard, he asked João because not only could he lift the keys, but he could also pass for a French civilian because he was fluent.”

  Alejandro licked his lips. Yes, he remembered that part of the story now. “Was there a Russian?”

  The duke flipped through the pages. “Yes. The Englishman is actually Russian by birth and claims he’s related to that dead madman, Rasputin.” He glanced up. “When was this written?”

  “There should be a date in the front of the notebook,” Alejandro told him.

  The duke looked and then regarded Alejandro with surprise. “1915. Rasputin didn’t die until the end of the next year.”

  “The events in that story would have occurred in 1918, though,” Joaquim noted.

  “Impressive,” the duke said. “You predicted Rasputin’s death. In any case, why would the Englishman boast that he’s related to a madman?”

  “Because he was a witch,” Alejandro recalled, “and having someone like that in your family makes you sound more threatening than you actually are.”

  “Is this the witch who curses João in the end?” Joaquim asked. “The Russian, I mean.”

  Alejandro tried to recall the story. “Yes, I think so.”

  Joaquim gave Alejandro a strange look. “A maledictor? That’s a rare talent.”

  Alejandro had to bow to Joaquim’s greater knowledge of witches—after all, he did work for the Special Police. “The man in the story specializes in cursing, if that’s what it’s called.”

  “Well what happened to them?” Serafina asked loudly, impatient with their digressions.

  “They’re sent to steal a battle plan,” Alejandro said, finally recalling more of the details. “Behind the enemy lines in a town called . . . Lille. They were there for days hiding from the occupying forces before everything was right to make a move. João realizes after he does his part that the two who went inside stole more than the plans. They tell him and the Englishman that there were jewels, already stolen from a jeweler in town. If he keeps his mouth shut, they can divide the stones among themselves after the war . . . but João refuses to go along with it. One of the English tries to set him afire, but his effort rebounds on him and he dies instead, burned to death.”

  “Why?” Joaquim asked.

  The duke squinted at the page. “Ah. Because João has an amulet given to him by an African witch doctor.” He looked up. “Where would João have met a witch doctor?”

  “An amulet?” Serafina asked, eyes wide. “Like an old piece of bone on a strip of leather?”

  Alejandro blinked at her. “What?”

  “Yes,” the duke said. “It’s described exactly that way in the story.”

  “You had one,” Serafina said, bouncing in her seat like a little girl. “When you came back from Angola, you were wearing it about your neck. You told me some tribal leader gave it to you after you saved his son from a German bomb.”

  He felt idiotic for not knowing about an incident Serafina thought obvious. By now he should be accustomed to that. “German bomb?”

  Joaquim answered. “An effort to sow discord between the Angolan troops and the Portuguese troops. The Germans planted bombs under several of the Angolan barracks, and then spread word that the Portuguese were responsible.”

  “Why would we ever do such a thing?” Alejandro protested. Even though Germany hadn’t yet declared war against Portugal, the Portuguese had sent troops to their former colony in eastern Africa to help the Angolans protect their territory from the encroaching Germans.

  “Some people don’t need a great deal of urging to become angry,” the duke said, “and there will always be those in our former colonies who blame us—often with just cause—for many ills they suffer.”

  Those sounded like the words of a man with a great deal of experience in diplomacy. “And I saved someone?”

  Joaquim laughed. “You foresaw the incident and informed your commander ahead of time. At first they thought you were making it up. They didn’t know you’re a seer. But when they began to find the devices, they evacuated all the barracks before too many were hurt. Several men were injured, but no one died. One of the bombs wasn’t caught in time, and you took a piece of shrapnel when you tried to hold back an Angolan soldier.”

  And that explained the wound to his thigh. “I see.”

  “I forgot to tell you that story,” Joaquim said apologetically.

  “Well, it’s probably in these notebooks somewhere.” Alejandro wished he hadn’t been such a prolific writer as a young man. It would take him weeks to work through all these notebooks. “So I evidently was involved in an attempt to steal some battle plans, but became a casualty along wi
th way because I didn’t agree with their . . . additional theft. One of them tried to burn me to death, only to have the curse bounce back on him. I’m less inclined to inform the man’s family now if we learn his identity.”

  “Even if he tried to kill you,” Joaquim said gently, “his family would still want to know.”

  Alejandro sighed. Joaquim was a kinder man than he was.

  The duke, who’d been reading all the while, lifted his head. “So the Russian curses you—I mean João—to forget everything, using the dead man’s blood as the sacrifice, and he and the remaining man flee.”

  Alejandro pinched the bridge of his nose. "Wait. If I was incapacitated, how could I know they fled? So that I could put that in the story, I mean.”

  “This is a story,” Joaquim said patiently. “Perhaps when you wrote it, you simply inserted the most logical conclusion.”

  It would have been better if he hadn’t made things up. Now they couldn’t be sure the man who’d cursed him was a Russian or that he’d even been involved in an effort to steal German battle plans. He might have been brought in to help steal someone’s lunch menus. This wasn’t evidence at all, and it didn’t bring back his memories. “How does knowing this help us?”

  “It gives me information to give to Bastião,” the duke said, “something more to pry with. We know the approximate date, and now we have an idea what the operation was intended to do. With that he might be able to wheedle out the names of the others involved.”

  “And the one with a Russian name is the one who can take this curse off me,” Alejandro said.

  Serafina regarded Alejandro with knitted brows.

  Joaquim’s lips pursed as he thought that over. “True. I suspect the Russian isn’t the one pursuing Alejandro, though. More likely to be the final member of the team.”

  The duke’s brows pinched together. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the Russian would know whether or not his curse would hold. The person leaving notes for Alejandro seemed unaware that Alejandro still didn’t remember who he was. He fears that Alejandro will tell someone where to find the missing stones.”

  Now they had an idea what the man threatening Alejandro wanted.

  Diamonds. This was all about diamonds.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  Friday, 25 June 1920

  SERAFINA HAD CHOSEN the Café Elite for lunch that day, and Alejandro could guess why. Her younger sister, Mariona, had joined them, and after eating, the two suggested they might wander along Santa Catarina Street where the new café sat. The street was lined with shops and close to the Herminios department store.

  Mariona sat with them now, sipping her coffee and trying hard to look sophisticated. Only eighteen, she was young enough to gape at the café’s ornate Flemish mirrors, the plaster carvings of cupids and flowers, and the conservatory in the back. The newly opened café had been decorated in the Art Nouveau style and Alejandro didn’t think he’d ever seen one more beautiful. He suspected it would soon become one of the city’s most popular cafés, although he didn’t care for the name. He didn’t see himself as one of the elite, not after nearly two years spent digging sewers and laying paving stones.

  Mariona whispered something into Serafina’s ear, the two of them making a very vivid picture. Serafina’s sister shared her fair skin and black hair, startling against the deep red velvet of the banquette on which they sat. And they were dressed nearly alike, Mariona in a stylish peach-colored dress, and Serafina in the same color but with an overlay of ivory lace.

  Serafina smiled at whatever her sister said, her dark eyes laughing. “Mariona and I are going to visit the shops, if you don’t mind. Can you find your way home alone?”

  Serafina didn’t realize it, but he wasn’t alone. Now they knew the threat to Alejandro was more than just words scrawled on paper. Now they knew what someone didn’t want him to talk about. There were diamonds involved, and people would kill for that. The footman Roberto sat at a table out on the street, close enough that he could keep an eye on Alejandro. Pressed into guard duty by the duke, Roberto had expressed his relief at the chance to spend a few afternoons beyond the butler’s watchful eyes. And although Roberto hadn’t trained for guard duty, he’d seen battle.

  “I’ll be fine,” Alejandro told his wife. “You two enjoy yourselves.”

  Smiling, Serafina kissed his cheek and went on her way, Mariona in tow.

  “I must say, she’s every bit as pretty as you claimed,” a voice said in English . . . with an English accent.

  He knows me. No . . . he knows Old Alejandro.

  Alejandro shifted to regard the man standing at his table. With blond hair slicked back from a rectangular face, he’d been distinctive enough that Alejandro had noticed him sitting on the far side of the café. The man’s body language didn’t betray any hostility, a good sign. “Why don’t you join me?”

  The Englishman settled on the velvet banquette Serafina had vacated. He crossed his legs, set his hat atop his knee, and regarded Alejandro with pale blue eyes that tilted up at the corners. “You neglected to mention the gills, though, Jandro. She’s a sereia. You told me she trapped you into marrying her,” he said. “Now I know how.”

  Had Serafina trapped him into marriage? Apparently he’d thought so, a strange thing since everyone had been aware he intended to marry her for years. Surely he hadn’t simply volunteered that information to this man, not unless they were friends. Alejandro did his best not to let the man see any reaction. He didn’t want the newcomer to know his needling had hit a soft spot.

  “Personally,” the man went on, “If my wife looked like that, I wouldn’t care. Is the younger one unattached?”

  “Not as far as you’re concerned,” Alejandro snapped automatically. “What do you want?”

  “Of course, you don’t remember me, Jandro,” the other man said with a sad smile. “We knew each other back in the war.”

  You don’t remember me. The certainty in the man’s words said he knew the hex on Alejandro was holding. “You’re the man who hexed me. I expected you to look more . . . Russian.”

  The man laughed dryly. “So Phillips has already gotten to you, has he? That lying prick.”

  And the other unknown man was named Phillips. “I haven’t spoken with Phillips.”

  The blond man snorted. “No, I didn’t expect Phillips to dirty his hands by finding you himself. How does one get a drink in this place? I’m parched.” He waved over a waiter and placed an order in passable Portuguese.

  “Why are you talking to me, then?” Alejandro asked.

  “Phillips has been hunting me, you know,” the man said. “He wants the stones. His henchmen have tried to kill me five times in the last four months. I must say, I’m getting rather tired of it.”

  What henchman would be stupid enough to try killing a witch who could curse him? Most likely a henchman who doesn’t know that fact. “They haven’t been successful so far, I see.”

  “No,” the Englishman said, “but the government is tiring of cleaning up the mess when it happens.”

  The mess? Alejandro cringed. “What have you been doing to them?”

  He opened up a silver case, offered a cigarette to Alejandro, and lit his with a match once Alejandro had duly refused. “The first four, I just stopped their hearts,” he said, and blew out the match. “Not too difficult to pass off as bad men whose fate had caught up with him. The last one, though . . . I panicked and turned him inside out.” He took a drag from his cigarette. “Right outside Whitehall, too, on Queen Mary’s steps. Quite embarrassing, that incident.”

  Alejandro tried to picture what turning an assassin inside out would look like. It did not sound pleasant. “And how can I get you out of this mess?”

  “We find the stones,” he said with an elegant shrug, “and turn them over to the government. That’ll pull Phillips’ teeth.”

  Wouldn’t this Phillips want recompense, then? Alejandro sat back as the waiter brough
t the man’s coffee. Once the waiter had gone, he said, “You don’t know where they are?”

  “No,” he said. “You hid them. The idea was that I would make you forget where, and after the war we would all meet back in France to retrieve them. Then of course, everything fell apart.”

  Alejandro felt his stomach sink. He’d actually gone through with hiding the stones? Had he been complicit in their plan after all? The story hadn’t said that. “Ah.”

  “You don’t recall what happened, of course,” the man said, stirring his coffee with a little spoon. “When we met up outside Armentières, Lighter twigged you were going to snitch on him and Phillips, you being a good Catholic boy and all. He . . . well, he decided to stop you. I didn’t realize what was happening in time to prevent it.”

  Lighter had to be the man who’d tried to burn him alive, the one whose corpse lay near the Ferreira family plot. Alejandro wasn’t sure if that was a nickname or not, but it helped. “How would he find the stones, then?”

  “He wasn’t the brightest of sparks.” He shook his head. “Didn’t think that far ahead. For some reason, his flames bounced right off you and back onto him, charring him and leaving a rather gruesome and smelly corpse. Can you explain that part? I know you don’t remember, but . . .”

  “I was given an amulet,” Alejandro told him, “by a witchdoctor whose grandson I’d saved in Angola. He said it would protect me.”

  “Apparently it did. Lighter fell on me—ruining my clothes, I must add. I panicked and threw the card I’d prepared at you, not realizing that I had a dying man’s blood all over my hands.” He stopped and took a drag from his cigarette, and then another sip of coffee as Alejandro waited in silence. “The blood transformed my planned curse into a hex,” he went on, “and was intense enough to physically knock you down. All three of us, actually. When I came to, Phillips was gone, and I had Lighter’s blood all over me. God, not just blood. It was horrid. He was just lying there, all burned and stinking like a rabbit fallen into a fire. I thought you were dead.”