The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series)

by Michael Siemsen

  “You know what I believe?” Bodvarr continued. “I believe that it vexes you. You find you want to do wrong—what you know to be wrong—but can’t quite figure out how to make it work. I’ll tell you, though. I can settle it right here. If this Jesus were indeed a real person on earth, with the powers of your one God—sent by your one God—he would not be so conflicted. Look at you, working away at it in there right now! It is at once humorous and tragic.” He raised his voice to a shout. “Kill me now! Kill my helpless people! Take all that is ours! The work of the Christian God!”

  Haeming’s thoughts screamed in a jumble of colors and words, and the image of Bodvarr’s face, twisting, elongating, warping into impossible shapes as it laughed. It flashed between images of his father, Grim, with the same strange contortions and laughter, and back to Bodvarr. Haeming’s arm darted out, effortlessly, the last few inches of the Damascus blade flicking through Bodvarr’s throat as if it were not even there. His beard fell free and drifted to the ground. Blood welled up from the gash, and Bodvarr’s eyes rolled back as his body convulsed there on the throne.

  “Kill them all!” Haeming roared as he darted for the three nearby children. Bodvarr’s children. Each one stood agape, horrified by the sight and sounds of their dying father. They made soft sounds of being punched in the stomach as Haeming pushed his sword through the center of each in turn. They fell one at a time but ended up together in a small huddle, quietly consoling each other as they bled out.

  The rest of Haeming’s men had branched out to attack the townspeople. Few offered any resistance, and none had any weapon more substantial than a thick branch. Haeming watched Finn take a fierce blow to the arm from a stave and answer with a slash to his attacker’s neck that cut through to the spine. The man dropped instantly, and Finn glared across the courtyard at Haeming as if to say, You made me do that.

  “Burn it down!” Haeming shouted. “Everything burns!”

  Flames rose up from dozens of blazing structures, generating an unbearable heat.

  Finn found Haeming and grabbed his arms. “We must go! Now!”

  Haeming glanced around in a daze. Erased, he thought. This place is erased. He saw his men, splattered with blood, some finishing off writhing villagers on the ground, others throwing baskets, chairs, and barrels into burning houses.

  Atli suddenly appeared in front of him and said, “Are we done with this?”

  Haeming nodded.

  “Out the gate!” Atli yelled. “Everyone out! We’re leaving!”

  Haeming walked out last. As they marched down the hill, the pops and crackles of the burning mountain town receded behind them, and a slanted column of smoke rose up to the clouds.

  As Haeming and his men walked silently down the wide path, some men poured water over their faces while others drank. A short time later, they reached the Taino village. The first natives who saw them shouted warnings to others, and by the time the bloodied group reached the village clearing, not a soul remained. Haeming and the others walked through without noticing.

  Haeming sheathed his sword.

  * * *

  A short time later, the sword was in his hand again. He pressed the pommel into a break in the tree’s bark and worked it in tight. He held the sword steady while prying the stone from its housing with his bloody dagger. It was Finn’s blood. At his knees, Finn bled steadily from his belly. Haeming wept and thought of when they first met. Sicily.

  “You’re not him,” Finn said between coughs. “Not Jesus.”

  Haeming closed his eyes and squeezed them tighter. Hurry up and die. Stop talking. He raised his fingers to the gem—a gift to the old gods. Payment, perhaps, for Finn to go where he should. An old ritual, a carryover.

  Finn grabbed Haeming’s wrist, clutched it with enough strength for Haeming to pay attention. Sad eyes peered up, like those of a horse with a broken leg. Finn must have known that it had to happen this way. He was in many ways the conscience for all the men, and they didn’t need a conscience now. Quite the opposite. His grip on Haeming relaxed, and his eyes closed.

  Haeming used his thumb to mark a cross on Finn’s forehead, then stood up and touched the opal one last time before returning to the trail where Atli and the men awaited. Finn must have succumbed to his earlier wound, he would say. And the men would be sad, but deep inside, Haeming knew, they would be relieved. They could all return to their families in Iceland, in Norway, in Denmark, without a thick, black soup drowning their souls.

  FORTY-THREE

  Amid the high-pitched whine, gloved hands guided the smaller logs onto the next conveyer. Álvaro Ovéquiz was well into his shift at the lumber mill outside Alamar, Cuba. In his hand, he held something that didn’t belong. He had thought it some strange sap deposit at first. But when he brought it close to his face, turning it over, he could see that it was a massive jewel, cut with facets like a diamond, but with the colors of tropical water at sunset.

  “What’s the holdup, Ovéquiz?” the foreman shouted.

  Álvaro closed his fingers over the gemstone.

  “Nothing, boss! Keep them coming!”

  He dropped the prize into his apron’s large front pocket and pushed the gnarled fig log through toward the chipper.

  “What have you got there?”

  Álvaro closed his eyes and swallowed.

  Matt opened his eyes, feeling the mill’s itchy sawdust stuck to his neck and along his waistband. Not the mill. Pause. The imprint halted with Alvaro’s hand outstretched before the foreman, presenting the opal. Where am I?

  His memory caught up with him, and he remembered leaping at Fando, missing him entirely. He wondered what had possessed him to think it could work. In fact, he had known for certain it would work; there had been not a doubt in his mind. Because Haeming has no doubts. But I’m not Haeming.

  He tilted his head back and tried to see between the blades of grass and weeds in the front yard. There was no one on the front porch, but he could hear a man and a woman talking. Well, the man was talking, and the woman was yelling. He tried to make out the words. Spanish. “So he said! I say fuck Americans, and fuck police! He came for my crop!”

  Matt’s head throbbed. He raised his eyebrows and felt a massive lump across his forehead. Where was Paul? Was he in there with them? And Fando? And Rheese? Keep pausing . . .

  He rolled onto his stomach and parted the grass in front of him. He could see along the shaded side of the house, where Paul had peeped in the windows and where Matt had made his ill-fated sprint. No one was there—except . . . there! On the ground at the back corner of the house, he could see someone lying on the ground, legs sticking out toward him, head facing the backyard. Matt raised his head a little to get a better view. He saw the shape of the shoulders and back. It was Fando . . . waiting for someone.

  Matt quickly rolled to his left, out of sight of Fando if he should take a backward look, and stood up. Paused . . . good pause . . . Now what? He tried to think of any possible way that he could sneak up on Fando. No, there was nothing. Another bum-rush was out of the question—for one thing, he was far too dizzy to handle any kind of physical altercation. His only hope was the Cuban couple in the house. They apparently had a gun, from what the woman was saying.

  Matt quietly walked up the steps and across the squeaking porch to the screen door. Inside, he could hear the male voice murmuring to himself as a woman sang in Spanish.

  “Seguir adelante y odiarás a tu vecino . . . Seguir adelante y engańar a un amigo . . .”

  Matt’s eyes slowly adjusted as he peered through the screen and saw the man leaning against a wall, facing into another room. Matt definitely didn’t want to knock, or in any way alert Fando that he was up and about. After a sideways glance to the edge of the porch, half-expecting to see Fando with a gun pointed at him, he turned back to the door and saw the man looking straight at him.

  “Ai, mierda,” the man said, and threw his head back in exasperation.

  The woman stopped singing. “What
now?” she yelled in Spanish.

  “Someone else at the door. Just be calm. Don’t shoot anyone else, please, my love . . .”

  Anyone else? Oh God . . .

  As Matt watched, the man was shoved out of the way, and a terrifying woman in a burgundy dress with white flowers stood in his place. In her hands was a submachine gun with a curved magazine. She rushed toward Matt, screaming curses and pointing the rifle at him. Matt put his hands up and tried to gesture for her to be quiet.

  “You want some, too, you piece of shit? I will blow your pale gringo ass into a thousand pieces!”

  “Shh!” Matt hissed, putting a finger to his lips as he glanced nervously to the right. He whispered in Spanish, “A killer out here, ma’am. He has a gun, too. Please. He killed my father . . . many others.”

  Her face turned from fury to suspicion. “That piece-of-shit muscle man killed your father?”

  He kept his eyes fixed to the right as he continued to whisper, “Yes. Just last night. His body is on the mountain back there. With others. The killer is just around the corner . . . or he was . . . He might have heard you and moved.”

  Her face softened, and a hint of a smile appeared. “Oh, he isn’t going to move. I already killed that fucker.”

  A moment later, they were standing over Fando’s dead body. A dotted stripe of bloody bullet holes ran diagonally across his T-shirt. Broken glass littered his back and the ground around the body. A flurry of emotions ran through Matt’s head. His arms and face twitched as the imprint paused and unpaused, while he struggled to keep focused.

  “See?” she said, leaning the AK-47 on her shoulder. “Dead like a dog in the road. I got him through this window.” She nodded to the shattered window frame beside them.

  Matt leaned over to look at Fando’s face. The eyes and mouth were open in an expression of surprise. Matt liked that. He imagined Fando wondering as he died, How did someone actually get me? But perhaps he didn’t consider himself as invincible as Matt had come to think of him. He took a mental picture of the astonished face. He wanted to keep that.

  Matt turned to the woman. “Thank you for killing this man. I feel a small amount of peace for my father.” She nodded and shrugged. “Do you happen to know where my friends are? There were two more of us down here. An older man with a bald head and—”

  “I have them inside. I thought they were with this pile of shit. The one said he was a cop.”

  “He is, yes. He came here with my father.”

  “Come inside.”

  She led him just outside a cracked bathroom door. He could see only a sliver of a grimy toilet and sink.

  “They’re in there?”

  She merely pointed again, then looked away, remorse in her eyes. Matt’s previous sense of relief suddenly fell away, replaced by a new dread. She had said, “The one said he was a cop.” Was. She had thought they were with Fando. Oh, God . . .

  He pushed the door aside and peered in, bracing for the worst. To the right was a half-papered wall; in front of him, the stained sink and lime-encrusted toilet. A yellow plastic shower curtain hid the tub. He shook his head and stepped in, tugging the curtain toward him.

  Inside lay Rheese and Paul, stacked nude with Rheese on top. Rheese was facing down, his wrists bound with a thick zip tie. The gag around his head looked like an old T-shirt. Matt stepped in further and saw Paul’s face, also gagged, looking up at him. His eyes pleaded for help.

  “Here,” the man of the house said from behind Matt, and handed him a pair of wire cutters. He turned to the woman. “I told you.”

  “You told me nothing, faggot! Don’t tell me you told me when you don’t tell me nothing!”

  Matt leaned over and cut the zip ties off Rheese. Rheese flexed his wrists and strained to get up. Matt helped, and Paul moaned as elbows and knees pressed into him. Matt pulled off his gag.

  “This is so unsanitary,” Paul said.

  The two of them dressed hurriedly as the woman lectured Matt that there was no reason for any of them to talk about this house. She was keeping all the guns and ammo, and God damn it, no one had better complain about it, either. She would get rid of Fando’s body, and if anyone came knocking on her door asking questions, she would track Matt down, dead father or not.

  As the three walked out the door, Paul muttered, “Thank you for the hospitality.”

  They waited until they had cleared the yard before anyone spoke again.

  “Is he definitely dead?” Rheese asked. “Did you see him dead?”

  Matt replied, “Yeah, I saw him. He’s right back there; see for yourself.”

  Rheese squinted back toward the house, then said, “That’s fine. I’ll take you at your word.”

  * * *

  As they hiked on in silence, Rheese pondered what was next for him. Turner would go back to his life, likely somewhat the worse for wear. He had some difficult conversations ahead of him around the violent passing of his father. The fellow with whom Rheese had just shared an intimate time in the bathtub would return to whatever law enforcement life he had interrupted to come here. Probably not too shaken up, no long-term damage. As for himself, well, he would surely end up in prison, although he hoped it would be a British one. Somewhere he would be fed three meals a day, have access to a library, hopefully a solitary cell, though not a cell in solitary. If he must have a cell mate, he would rather he be a timid, passive sort, though not opposed to good conversation. Rheese would go mad if he couldn’t share the occasional stimulating dialogue.

  Farther up the path, Turner broke the uncomfortable silence again, “We need to bring my father’s body back, Paul. I’m not leaving him up there. His friend, too.”

  “Jess had people coming,” the officer, Paul, said. “Must be up there by now.”

  Just around a bend, Turner stopped. Rheese halted and looked up to see that Paul, in the lead, was standing transfixed by something up ahead, and slowly raising his hands.

  “What’s up?” Turner said, looking over Paul’s shoulder.

  Standing in the path were five or six men, the one in front dressed in a tight shirt with a shoulder holster. He had a pistol trained on them. Rheese looked past the muzzle and saw the man’s face. It was a face that, more than any other, he had hoped never to see again.

  “Bollocks,” he said.

  “What now?” Turner groaned.

  Paul said, “We’re unarmed.”

  “Hello, Dr. Rheese,” The Gray said with a smile. “Would you mind a quick word?”

  Rheese’s shoulders fell. With frustrated and confused expressions, Turner and Paul stepped aside for him, and he hobbled forward.

  “My goodness!” The Gray said. “You’ve looked better, Professor.”

  Rheese stopped several paces away. He scanned the other men with guns. They looked like Cubans and wore a ragtag combination of military and civilian clothing. Would he kill Rheese in front of them? In front of Turner and the American policeman?

  The Gray cleared his throat. “Step a little to your left, please.”

  Rheese complied.

  “Good.”

  There was a flash and a thunderclap, and the back of Rheese’s head burst. His lifeless body crumpled to the ground.

  * * *

  Matt and Paul dived into the bushes on either side of the trail.

  “Run the other way if you can!” Paul shouted.

  Matt was on his back, looking up through thick foliage, but all he could see was a flight of metal stairs. César, the foreman, was climbing them on his way to the office, with the opal in his hand. He was trying to work out a way he could get away with keeping it himself. Perhaps if he fired Ovéquiz, the mill worker, or even paid him off . . .

  Pause . . . c’mon, pause!

  “Matthew Turner,” said the man who had just shot Rheese. “I see you in there. Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Uh, lemme see—a murderer?”

  “My name
is Jivu Absko. I am a businessman. Now, listen closely. I need you to know a few things, and then I will leave you. First, Tuni is safe. I will be taking care of her now.”

  “What?” Matt blurted. “Where is she? What do you mean, take care—”

  “As I said, she is safe. If she is not already, soon she will be on a flight back home to New York. She has no interest in speaking with you at this time—apparently, you, um, weren’t all she’d hoped you were. She is actually quite cross with you. Give her some time, though. Maybe there is forgiveness in her heart. But for now you should tend to your own life and your family. Which brings me to the second item. I’m very sorry for the loss of your father. I had nothing to do with that, as I’m certain you are aware.”

  “Yeah, I’m aware,” Matt said, struggling to right himself in the thicket.

  “Good. My third and final item is actually a question. My opal . . . did you experience it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Rheese had an opal. Fando blew it to shit.”

  “Solorzano, yes. I was pleased to watch the woman dispatch him. But I am speaking of your psychometry—that supernatural ability to extract the unknown histories of objects via physical contact. Dr. Rheese told me all about it when he attempted to settle his debt with me by selling you to me at a ‘greatly discounted price.’ I didn’t accept the offer, obviously. I do not trade in people. After that, he tried to blackmail me. Now, he has finally paid the price for that. So, with that said, back to my query: did you experience my opal?”

  “A little. Why?”

  “Were you ever in Egypt?”

  “Maybe.” Matt righted himself and stood up.

  “What about Babylon?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm. I should very much like to speak with you again someday . . . now that my opal is . . . gone.”

  “You shouldn’t think of it as being yours,” Matt said. He now faced Absko over the top of the bushes.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, you may have held on to it for a little while, but nothing ever really belongs to a person. Except, maybe, if they made it. Land, animals, jewelry, money, people—they’re not ours. I’m guessing you probably have a lot of money, and you probably think you’re pretty important. And maybe you are, right this second. But your perspective is off. People are here for an instant, and they’re lucky if they matter to someone else. A few leave a little mark, like a carving in a tree trunk. But those inevitably disappear, too. Most people, though, are like a match: they’re conceived, flare into life, burn out, and get forgotten within two or three generations. You probably think you’re one of the ones who leave a mark, but in my experience with people like you—no offense—I’d say you’re a match.”