João didn’t know if he agreed but acknowledged the compliment. They discussed the details and made their arrangements. When it was settled, they shook hands across the table. João watched George Abe limp away and out of sight. He went back to the counter and ordered a glass of port. It didn’t taste as bad as he remembered, and he found that he didn’t feel so afraid anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alcantarilha was a sleepy village northwest of the thronged beaches of Albufeira. At the village’s center, surrounded by a warren of narrow, medieval streets, rose the Church of Our Lady of Conception. Dating to the sixteenth century, it was an imposing, castlelike church in the Manueline style—Gibson had to Google what that meant. As the town grew over the next century, the nearby cemetery had made way in the name of progress. The disinterred bones had been relocated to a small chapel on the side of the church. More than fifteen hundred skulls and thigh bones lined the walls of the Capela dos Ossos—the Bone Chapel.
The chapel was smaller than Gibson expected. Only a few people could stand comfortably inside. Not that he’d had any sense for how many square feet fifteen hundred human skulls could tile. He’d expected it to feel claustrophobic and morbid but instead found it unexpectedly peaceful. It was no less strange, he supposed, than making up a body so that it looked alive, dressing it in a suit, and burying it under six feet of dirt.
Honoring the dead was always hard, he thought as he studied the bones of men and women that had rested here since before his own country had even been conceived. You told yourself whatever lies made sense of the senseless and did the best you could.
He wondered about his own funeral. After what he’d unearthed at Fresco Mar Internacional, it wasn’t a bad time to give it some thought. Despite his repeated brushes with death, he’d never really paused to consider the aftermath. Would they allow him to come home then? He thought he’d like to be buried alongside his parents. Who would attend the service? Perhaps a few conspiracy bloggers. He smiled grimly. They would show up just to confirm that he really was dead. It would not be a packed house, that much he knew for certain. He wasn’t that kind of man. He hadn’t led that kind of life.
Would Ellie come to his funeral? Would she grieve her father or only curse his memory? She’d be well within her rights. He pushed the thought away. What maudlin, self-indulgent crap. Only depressed teenagers and old men on their last leg indulged thoughts of their own funerals, and he was neither. Time to get out of here before he bought an acoustic guitar and started writing sad songs. Gibson ducked through the low doorway of the chapel and stretched in the moonlight. Porsche made one hell of a sports car but not much of a bed. The brief nap he’d caught on the drive over had left him with a rude kink in his neck. Another sign he was getting older if not wiser.
Hendricks had picked Alcantarilha as one of their three rally points because, while the chapel drew a few tourists, it wasn’t the kind of attraction that most came to the Algarve to see. And there certainly wasn’t anything here that would interest Baltasar Alves or his people.
Hendricks smoked at an outdoor table, the duffel of money and Gibson’s computer bag between his feet. They’d swung by the house after leaving the cannery. The only other customers were an elderly couple who sat silently, side by side, looking out at the dark street like a pair of stone statues guarding the entrance. The proprietor, a grumpy man with permanently pursed lips, sat inside watching soccer highlights on the television.
An electric-blue Audi R8 Spyder purred to a stop outside the café. Jenn got out and looked at the Porsche.
“Yours?” she asked.
“You like?” Gibson said.
“Hendricks let you drive it?”
Hendricks snorted.
“We’re still negotiating,” Gibson said.
“Like hell, white boy.”
Jenn helped George from the car. He tired easily at this time of night, and it had been a long day. One that showed no indication of winding down anytime soon. Gibson looked at the two sports cars. Fernando and Sebastião shared a love of shiny, high-end toys. Not exactly ideal for keeping a low profile. Probably best to dump them.
It took some coaxing, but the proprietor eventually pried himself from the television. Coffees were ordered. Hendricks lit a fresh cigarette; he’d been trying to quit, but the stress of the day had him chain-smoking like they’d cured cancer. The elderly couple, unaccustomed to all the activity, asked for their bill. The four waited patiently for the coffees to arrive and for the couple to stroll away into the night. Once they were alone, they got down to it.
George said, “I have a boat in Olhão that will take us to North Africa. A contact in Morocco will help us from there.”
“When?” Hendricks asked.
“As soon as we’re ready, but I don’t think we should delay longer than necessary.”
“Agreed,” Jenn said emphatically.
George said, “Baltasar and I go back, and that still counts for something, but given his mood and the situation in the Algarve, I wouldn’t bet against him having a change of heart. Speed is essential now.”
“We stopped at the house on the way here. Everything’s in the car,” Hendricks said, then to Jenn: “I packed you up. You’re all set.”
“Appreciated,” she said after the briefest of hesitations.
George said, “Jenn, do you have any other stops you need to make?”
Her back stiffened. George had put it delicately enough, but they all knew what, or whom, he’d meant. Jenn was an intensely private person, and Sebastião Coval was not a topic open for discussion. It didn’t help that they were all looking at her expectantly.
“No. I’m good to go,” she said and shrugged with all the nonchalance she could muster. She’d make one hell of a poker player, but there was sadness behind her eyes. Gibson had written off her relationship with Sebastião as a disposable distraction. Now he wasn’t so sure.
George either took Jenn at face value or chose not to linger on the question. “Good. I’ll let the captain know. The sooner we’re on our way, the better.”
Hendricks cleared his throat, looking square at Gibson. “You telling them, or am I?”
“Telling us what?” George asked.
“Youngblood here isn’t going to North Africa,” Hendricks said. “At least not yet.”
Jenn looked at Gibson with the same expression as when you learn your cousin has relapsed again and is back in rehab—sad but not exactly surprised either. Resigned.
“We went back to the cannery,” Gibson said.
Jenn and George exchanged a look. “When?”
“After the hotel.”
Incredulous, Jenn lit into Gibson. “Let me get this straight. After bitching about not wanting to get us involved with Baltasar, you wait until after he threatened to kill us if we didn’t get out of Portugal to go poking around in his business? Are you out of your mind?”
“Opinions vary,” Gibson said.
“Wait . . . did you say ‘we’?” She turned on Hendricks. “You went along with this?”
“It’s complicated,” Hendricks said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
It was Hendricks’s voice that turned sharp now. “Complicated means not simple. Don’t talk to me like I work for you. We went back. I had my reasons.”
“Which are?” Jenn said, downshifting to keep the peace.
That was Gibson’s cue. For the second time, he told the story of his abduction and his delicate business arrangement with the hijackers. Jenn didn’t take it half as well as Hendricks had. Maybe not even a quarter. She interrupted constantly, asking him to repeat parts, as if she couldn’t believe her ears. When he was finished, George and Jenn regarded them both angrily.
“I get why you did this,” she said, “but why didn’t you talk to us? Tell us what was happening?”
Gibson said, “I’ve been trying to talk to you for three months, Jenn. Now suddenly you want a conversation?”
“That’s not even the sam
e thing, and you know it. You have no right to make decisions for all of us. What do you think Baltasar is going to do when he finds out?”
“It was worth it.”
Under the table, Gibson pushed the satchel across to Jenn. She unzipped the bag. Gibson watched for their expressions to change, but it might as well have been his dirty laundry. Jenn really would make one hell of a poker player. George was no slouch himself.
“How much is here?” George asked.
“Hundred thousand,” Hendricks said.
“So, after you write this report, the money is yours?” George said.
“It’s ours,” Gibson said firmly.
“Should make running a little easier,” Hendricks said. “Don’t you think?”
“That it will,” George said. “I agree with Jenn that you should have discussed it with us, but this is a difference maker.”
“So where’s the but?” Jenn said, not ready to join in George’s back-patting. “Why aren’t you coming with us?”
“We have another problem,” Hendricks said, stubbing out a cigarette and lighting another. “Gibson found something on the servers. It’s not . . . good.”
“And you intend to stay because of this discovery?” George asked.
“I have to,” Gibson said.
“What is it you found?”
“It’d be easier to show you,” Gibson said. He didn’t mean it, though; seeing would be harder. He suggested the church across the street, the café too public for what he had to share.
Jenn gazed off down the dark, narrow road. Her tongue was playing across her teeth the way it did whenever something was bothering her.
“No,” she said. “No. Whatever you’ve got, I don’t want to know.”
“You’re not even going to look?” Gibson asked.
“Not even between my fingers. Whatever you’ve got, it’s not my problem.”
“It’s serious, Jenn.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“So why not?”
“Because I don’t care, and I can’t afford to start.”
Gibson looked at her in disbelief. “What the hell happened to you?”
Jenn paled. “You know exactly what happened to me. Same as I know what happened to you. To all of us. The four of us? We’re a goddamn mobile tragedy. So why do you always have to go looking for more trouble?”
“I didn’t go looking. I stumbled onto it.”
“And what if you did?” Jenn said. “There’s plenty of bad in the world. A lifetime’s worth. So if you tell me you stumbled onto something bad, I believe you. But how about you stumble the fuck away from it again? Everything can’t be on us to fix.”
“Just watch the video. You’ll understand.”
“No,” Jenn said. “Luisa all but put a gun to my head. Baltasar Alves has just gone to war with anyone he considers a threat. So far, we’ve managed to stay off that list. Barely. I intend to keep it that way, and that means getting my ass out of Portugal like the man said.”
“Watch the video,” Gibson repeated.
“And then what? What are the four of us going to do about whatever it is you’ve found? Hold up Baltasar at finger-point and demand he change his ways?” Jenn said. “This is a matter for the police.”
“He owns the police. Isn’t that the point of his ‘Pax Algarve’? He keeps the drugs out. They let everything else slide.”
“We’re not equipped. This can’t be our fight.”
They argued back and forth, months of frustration between them boiling to the surface. Neither making any headway. It was impossible to win an argument if no one was really listening. Heels dug in, they were only interested in the righteousness of their position.
“Gibson,” George said. His voice was low and calm.
Jenn and Gibson trailed off and slowly turned to look at George expectantly.
“I’d like to see what you found.”
“Sir,” Jenn said. “I don’t think—”
“Then we can each decide for ourselves what we will or will not do.”
And that was that. They were decided.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Fernando Alves had a problem, and its name was Gibson Vaughn. Up in his suite at the Mariana Hotel, Fernando sat at the bar, idly stirring a gin and tonic. Not the best idea under the circumstances, but he had always thought better with a drink in his hand. Something about the clink of the ice cubes against the glass cleared his head. It would have been much more pleasant out on the balcony now that the sun had set, the breeze coming off the ocean. Anibal had forbidden it. Wouldn’t even allow Fernando near the windows lest a sniper lurked on an adjacent rooftop, waiting to blow his head off.
Not exactly how he’d pictured passing his afternoon.
Ordinarily, Fernando preferred to plan ahead. Long in advance. Patiently, like a chess match. If chess weren’t so suicidally boring. He’d inherited that much from his father—the vision to account for every variable. However, the hijacking of the drug shipment was a variable that no one could have predicted. The day had deteriorated so rapidly, Fernando had been forced to act before he could see how it would pan out. For one thing, he had dramatically underestimated his father’s reaction. He certainly hadn’t anticipated being placed in protective custody.
Since permitting himself to be rescued by Gibson Vaughn, Fernando hadn’t had a moment to himself. Couldn’t make a phone call without being overheard. Two of Anibal’s men followed him like dogs everywhere he went. Even into the bathroom, as if assassins might slither up the drain with knives between their teeth. It was all a bit paranoid, but Anibal was only following orders. And if Anibal had one distinguishing quality, it was a blind willingness to execute Baltasar Alves’s every whim to the letter. Armed guards stood watch at the front door; more waited outside in the hall. A tiny army, just for him. His father’s touching concern for his safety notwithstanding, it was all incredibly inconvenient. Under the watchful eye of his new guard dogs, his hands were effectively tied. He’d become a prisoner in his own home.
Fernando didn’t second-guess his decision to kill Dani Coelho. Gibson Vaughn had made it unavoidable. Coelho was a greedy cockroach of a man without a shred of personal loyalty. What had it taken to persuade Coelho to betray Baltasar? A little blackmail and some cash. He would have given up Fernando at the first hint of danger. So, the second Gibson had asked to talk to Coelho, Fernando knew what had to be done.
How hard was it to hit one jogger with a car? Fernando cursed the sloppiness of his Romanian associates. Gibson should have been safely out of the way, recuperating in a hospital. Then none of this would have been necessary. Of course, the Romanians blamed him for not allowing them to kill Gibson outright.
Fernando stirred his drink.
Perhaps they were right. Perhaps he had allowed sentiment to cloud his judgment. He’d been concerned that a hit on Gibson would only raise suspicion. But more than that, he hadn’t wanted to kill him. He felt sorry for Gibson Vaughn, and killing him had seemed extreme at the time. That was before Fernando had killed five men and discovered it wasn’t nearly as bad as people said. And before Gibson had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. He would almost certainly have to die now. The question was how.
The maddening part was how close he had come to pulling it off, cauterizing the threat completely. Killing Dani Coelho had fulfilled his primary goal of stymying Gibson. But the inspired part had been allowing Anibal to draw the wrong conclusions about whom the target had been. Fernando couldn’t have anticipated how powerfully his father would react, but it had been beyond his wildest dreams. It had precipitated a falling-out with George Abe, who had been given twenty-four hours to leave the Algarve. That included Gibson. Problem solved.
Or so he had thought.
On his laptop, he studied the map of the Algarve. The blue dot at its center indicated the current whereabouts of his Porsche. The car had a GPS tracker installed, and he had lent it to the two Americans so that he could keep tabs on th
em. A good thing he had, because they’d been busy bees during the last few hours. Instead of preparing for their departure, Gibson had driven back to Fresco Mar Internacional.
Exactly the turn of events that Fernando had tried so hard to avoid. As soon as his father had involved the Americans this morning, Fernando knew that Gibson Vaughn posed an existential threat to him. Knew if Gibson got access to the servers, then he would uncover what Fernando had worked so hard to conceal. But every move he’d made had been countered or blunted as if the universe itself had made a side bet that Fernando would be discovered. In retrospect, it felt almost inevitable.
What Fernando didn’t understand was why.
From the beginning, Gibson had been opposed to involving himself. And that was before Baltasar had thrown them all out of the country. So why the hell had Gibson risked returning to the cannery? Fernando couldn’t make sense of it. He understood people in terms of self-interest. But even through that lens, Fernando couldn’t see Gibson’s angle, and that made him uneasy.
There was something he wasn’t seeing, but what?
On impulse, Fernando picked up his phone. Sebastião answered on the third ring. He said nothing, but Fernando could hear him breathing, deep and slow.
“Olá?” Fernando said, breaking the silence, but his friend still did not speak. “Sebastião?”
“I haven’t decided if I’m talking to you,” Sebastião said, slurring his words slightly. He was drunk.
“What have I done?”
“Your father has sent Jenn away from me.”
That surprised Fernando. Sebastião had already been with Jenn Charles far longer than he typically stayed with a woman. It wasn’t like him at all. “I would have thought you’d be thanking us,” he said. “I’ll throw a party to announce your liberation. Women will pilgrimage to your bed to celebrate.”
His attempt at levity didn’t go over well.
“What do you want, Fernando?”
“It’s been a bad day. A lot has happened. An attempt was made on my life.”
“Meu Deus,” Sebastião said, sobering in a hurry. “I had no idea. I’m glad you’re all right. What happened? Where are you?”
Debris Line (Gibson Vaughn) Page 16
