“More like they owe us,” Jack argued.
Instead of answering, Riley put his hand on his forehead and rubbed his temples with his middle finger and thumb. He did that for a few moments, trying unsuccessfully to ease his growing headache.
“It’s almost three in the morning,” he said, looking at his watch, “and this discussion has no point. I understand you’re upset, and I am too. But we have no other option, so I suggest we head for Matadi, find what they want, and then go back home with the mission complete. We’ll lose a week or ten days going back and forth,” he added, “but we’ll save a lot of problems.” He glanced at everyone and asked, “What do you say?”
The crew members looked at each other before answering, and despite displeased faces and obvious reservations, they all nodded, realizing they had no choice.
Finally, Riley turned toward Carmen, who seemed more interested in watching the view outside the porthole than hearing the conversation.
“And you?” he asked, more drily than he’d intended.
Carmen stared at him, trying to communicate something Riley wasn’t getting. “Do I have a choice?”
“Not this time,” he answered, trying to make his tone less biting but failing.
Carmen shrugged and looked back out the window. “Then why are you asking?” she murmured.
Riley was about to reply to the woman, but for once he stopped himself in time. “Okay . . . ,” he said, turning toward the others. “César, go back to the bridge and head one-eight-zero, full speed. Tomorrow we’ll adjust course. Everyone else go to bed.” He looked at Marco with his long johns and ready machine gun. “Or back to whatever you were doing.”
The whole group started out the door amid grumbles and a curse or two. Just as they were about to leave, Riley addressed them one more time. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said, raising an admonishing finger. “If anyone wakes me up before ten and the ship’s not sinking”—he looked them over—“I’ll kill them with my own hands.”
28
That five-hundred-mile trip in suffocating heat that only got stronger as they went south was in some ways more grueling than the trip across the Atlantic.
The general atmosphere on the Pingarrón was a contained discontent that the equatorial sun only exacerbated. It turned the ship into a floating oven, which caused the crew members to spend the day in the shade, searching for whatever airflow they could find. At night they slept out in the open on the bridge to ease their discomfort.
Trying to fight the crew’s low morale and give them some entertainment, Riley decided to have a line-crossing ceremony to initiate those who had never before crossed the Equator into Neptune’s kingdom.
When they were crossing the line around São Tomé island, Riley went to the dining room at lunchtime. He had on a paper crown, a sheet for a cape, and a boat hook for a trident.
Jack, who was dressed as the minion of the god of the seven seas, helped Riley lead Hudgens, César, Julie, and Marco to the deck. Carmen decided not to participate, saying she had no sins to wash away. After a brief speech that urged them to purify their spirits and become subjects of Neptune, they were required to participate in the baptism that sailors around the world had done for centuries.
To this end they put a stool, a bucket of fish meal and molasses, and a drink Riley made of rum, fish sauce, meat sauce, hot peppers, and a pinch of every condiment he could find in the pantry that might make it more disgusting.
One by one the crew members walked past the stool where Riley sat in his role as a vigilant god. Jack cut off a lock of their hair and threw it in the sea as an offering, then daubed them with the fish meal and molasses. Finally they had to take a good drink of the disgusting beverage, which smelled of rotten fish and burned like hell.
To finish the ceremony, Neptune looked over the four new subjects to decide if they were worthy of the honor. He seemed to hesitate a little on Hudgens. Then he ceremoniously gave each of them an improvised certificate that admitted them as members of the select group and urged all fishes and aquatic beings to come to their aid in case of shipwreck.
It ended in laughter and pushing—as it only could—and everyone jumped overboard to get the molasses off them while Neptune and his minion watched closely for sharks.
The kooky ceremony and some scrumptious meals prepared by Jack helped lift the general mood. When the sun rose on the third day of the journey, they could make out the coast of the Belgian Congo, and their frustration turned to anxiety about what was to come. Jack leaned indolently on the wheel, following a course a couple of miles off and parallel to the coast. Next to him, Riley divided his attention between the landscape ahead and a worn book he held open to the first pages.
“‘Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma,’” he read in a low, serious voice. “‘There it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, “Come and find out.”’”
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“A book,” he said, a smile on the corner of his mouth. “It’s for reading. You should try it.”
“You’re hilarious,” Jack said, smiling. “Really.”
Riley showed him the cover of the little book, worn by many years and many readings by many hands. “Heart of Darkness,” he said with reverence, “by Joseph Conrad.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“He’s one of my favorite writers. He wrote books about the sea. And this one”—he tapped the open page—“happens in the Belgian Congo. Right where we’re going.”
“Wow, what a coincidence,” he said, suddenly interested. “And when?”
“End of the last century.”
“Sheesh . . . that was an eternity ago.”
Riley shook his head. “No, no . . . listen to this.” He read again, “‘Here and there greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background.’”
While the captain read, Jack kept his gaze on the horizon. Like the unsteady brushstroke of a careless painter, the line was thick and dark green as it faded in the distance. And just like Conrad’s book said, he seemed to see a small speck of gray on the shoreline at the edge of the jungle. Above it a ridiculous piece of cloth on a mast flew the colors of the Belgian flag.
Suddenly disturbed by the similarity between what the book said and what he was seeing, Jack looked at the cover, which had a black silhouette of Africa over a yellow background. “So what’s the book about?” he asked.
Riley thought a moment before answering. “It’s about . . . horror.”
“The horror of the jungle?”
Riley shook his head slowly, gaze fixed somewhere in the past. “Of men.”
By midmorning they’d reached the mouth of the Congo River. The six-mile-wide stream of muddy water strewn with plant matter served as the natural border between the Belgian Congo and the Portuguese colony of Angola to the south. Sixty miles up the river was the city of Matadi, the only port in the Belgian Congo and the only point of contact between a territory the size of Mexico and the rest of the world. There were no buoys, lights, or signs in the river that would show the best navigation route—as if it weren’t necessary or no one cared.
Gripping the wheel, Riley maneuvered the Pingarrón to the center of the huge channel, where the countercurrent was stronger but they were less likely to run aground. Besides César, who was awaiting orders in the machine room, Riley had sent the rest of the crew to either side of the ship with probes and poles, to look out for any decrease in depth as well as branches and trunks—or often entire trees—which had been pulled into the river by the current, threatening to strike the hull, or worse, damage the rudder or propellers. Losing control of the ship in that godforsaken place would be extremely dangerous, not only to the success of the mission but to the survival of the ship a
nd its crew.
“Careful with that!” he shouted, sticking his head out the bridge window. “Marco! Help Jack with the pole!”
A ceiba tree larger than the Pingarrón itself was coming toward the bow like a torpedo. There was little he could do to avoid it. And there was even less the others could do with their poles. Riley turned hard twenty-five degrees starboard and decelerated. The men got on the port side, poles in hand.
“Twenty feet and rising!” Carmen shouted from the bow, retrieving the probe.
“Fuck,” Riley blurted out. “Just what we needed.”
They were heading for a sandbank.
“Eighteen feet and rising!” Julie shouted, doing what Carmen did.
“Shit!” the captain shouted, turning the wheel quickly toward port, toward the giant tree.
“Get ready!” Jack shouted as they neared the giant ceiba, whose branches rose higher than the ship, despite the tree being on its side.
The men were tiny in comparison to that enormous plant, but they gripped and pushed it like harpooners would a great white whale, in vain but without giving up.
From the bridge, Riley could hear the sinister creak of wood striking and sliding along the side of the Pingarrón like nails on a chalkboard.
The steel hull was strong enough to withstand it, but if it hit the rudder or propellers . . .
Like a floating island, the tree moved along the ship, still with its green leaves and bright flowers unaware there was no longer earth under its roots. But what shocked Riley the most was finding on the highest branch of that ceiba a single monkey standing proudly, his gaze on the expansive ocean opening before him as if he weren’t an unfortunate castaway but the captain of a strange ship.
For a brief moment, the ape turned toward Riley and exchanged a knowing look with him—a look of recognition from captain to captain as if he knew perfectly well where he was going and accepted it, not wanting to be anywhere else.
One captain heading to the unknown and certain death. The other realizing his destiny, doing the only thing he could.
The question was which of them was which.
29
As daylight faded, Matadi appeared in the distance, crouched beyond a deep bend in the river.
From the deck, the crew members of the Pingarrón observed what was to come with incredible relief. They were exhausted from the dangerous ten-hour journey from the river mouth, during which they’d had to dodge invisible sandbanks and giant drifting trees. Those floating islands had been ripped from the depths of the jungle and pulled hundreds or thousands of miles until they reached the sea and disappeared forever.
But when the Pingarrón’s crew approached Matadi and were able to see it more clearly, their relief turned to disappointment as they realized what they’d imagined was a city rising from the middle of the jungle was barely a shantytown, nothing like the tiny but charming Santa Isabel.
The river port was a simple strip of cement along the bank, flanked by canoes and sailboats. The town spread from there like a stain, a chaotic series of hovels and low wooden houses with zinc roofs. They were blackened by the humidity and the mud from the unpaved streets. The only thing that stood out from the depressing landscape was a collection of colonial-style buildings, two or three stories high, that still bore patches of their original paint. Several stood near the church, flying the flag of the Belgian Congo as evidence of their governmental purpose. The best-kept of the lot lined the port, their facades bearing great shiny signs with the names of wood, mining, and trading companies.
“What a little shithole,” Jack said quietly, expressing what everyone was thinking at that moment. He moved to the side, ready to throw the mooring as soon as they got close enough.
Next to him Julie fastened one of the rubber guards that would keep the hull from hitting the quay. “Are you sure this is Matadi?” she asked, hopefully. “Maybe . . .”
Before she could finish, Jack pointed at a dirty sign in the middle of the dock: “Bienvenue à Matadi.”
“Shit,” Julie muttered.
Jack nodded. “Like I said.”
They woke up the next day under a dense curtain of rain. The thick air smelled of wet earth, trash, and orchids, and it stung Riley’s nostrils and seemed to stick in his mouth.
After a brief stop at the customs office and port police station, where they presented their documentation and passports, Riley, Jack, Marco, and Hudgens went to the shipping agent Van Dyck’s office on the far eastern side of the dock area.
Matadi didn’t have sidewalks, so they had no choice but to take the muddy streets. They ducked for shelter from time to time under overhangs to escape the dense warm rain that soaked them to the skin.
There were no white men on the street. And the only vehicular traffic was an old Bedford truck, which struggled to avoid becoming stuck in the thick mud. When it passed them, Jack touched the captain’s arm and pointed toward the cargo. In the truck bed several dozen black men dressed in rags with iron collars around their necks huddled together, enduring the falling rain with morbid stoicism.
Riley’s fingers and jaw clenched with fury.
“Let’s go,” Hudgens said indifferently. “Not our business.”
Riley turned angrily to the commander, but he’d already started off down the street.
Jack pulled on his arm. “Hudgens is right,” he said. “It’s not our business. And even if it was, we couldn’t do anything.”
Riley took a final look at the truck as it grew blurry behind the thick curtain of water, turned up the collar of his raincoat, and followed Hudgens.
Three hundred yards ahead they stopped in front of a two-story colonial building whose awning read: “Consignatarie Commerciale Van Dyck.”
They gathered under the awning, soaked to the bone, and knocked.
A servant humbly opened the door and led them to the waiting room. He came back a moment later with clean towels. The sailors thanked him for the gesture and asked to speak with the head of the office.
In his place, a mixed-race secretary appeared. She looked businesslike in a tight Western-style dress. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked after introducing herself with near-perfect English.
“No,” Hudgens admitted. “We just got in last night.”
She widened her eyes in interest. “Are you the owners of that ship? The . . . Pingón?”
“Pingarrón,” Riley said with a friendly smile. “I see word gets around fast here.”
“It’s a small town,” the young woman responded, returning the smile. “And after all, it’s our job.”
“Can we speak with Mr. Van Dyck?” Hudgens insisted with a hint of impatience.
“I’m sorry but he’s very busy right now,” she answered. “Nonetheless, you can discuss your matter with me or, if you want, make an appointment for another day.”
Hudgens shook his head. “We have to speak with Mr. Van Dyck right now. It’s extremely important and could be highly beneficial for him. Please, convince him to spare a few minutes of his time for us.”
The woman mulled over the commander’s words while looking them over. Part of her job was to screen visitors and separate the adventurers, hustlers, and quacks from the serious businessmen—and the four foreigners clearly did not come close to meeting the last category. “Wait here, please,” she said finally, deciding it was better to be reprimanded for wasting some of Van Dyck’s time than risk losing them to the competition.
She disappeared upstairs with feline grace and came back less than a minute later to show them to the stairs. “Mr. Van Dyck will receive you now.”
Riley signaled Marco to stay in the waiting room. Then they followed the young woman up the stairs to the second floor. They stopped in front of a big mahogany door, and she told them to proceed.
They opened the door and entered. The large office featured burgundy walls, several chairs lining the wall, a comfortable leather sofa in a corner, and in the other a portrait of King Leopold III in a military
uniform. Two flags, of Belgium and the Belgian Congo, stood on either side of the portrait.
Under the flags and portrait was a large, dark wooden desk that almost completely hid the thick, bald man who sat behind it, who was busily pretending to be terribly interested in the papers before him. It wasn’t until the door shut behind his guests that he looked up and stood. “Come in, please,” he said, gesturing at the three open seats next to the desk.
The man was the spitting image of wealth: well fed but not fat, an astute smile, lively eyes behind round glasses, and ruddy skin that’d clearly never seen the equatorial sun. The tailored linen suit, lack of tie, and ceiling fans on full blast appeared to be the only concessions the man made to the African continent.
“English?” he asked as he sat.
“Americans,” Hudgens said.
Van Dyck raised his eyebrows to exaggerate his surprise. “Oh wonderful!” He smiled as if he were delighted. “And how can I help you gentlemen?”
Riley hoped Hudgens would ask some subtle questions to find out the level of cooperation they could expect from Van Dyck and slowly increase the intensity of the interview until they got the information they needed.
Without a word, the commander reached inside the leather satchel hanging off his shoulder, retrieved a small gold bar with the Federal Reserve emblem on it, and placed it on the table.
“Ten thousand dollars in gold,” he said unceremoniously, immediately getting the complete and full attention of the merchant. “All yours if you can answer a few questions.”
Clearly, subtlety wasn’t what the commander had in mind.
30
Van Dyck looked at the gold ingot. Then at Hudgens, Riley, and Jack, and finally at the ingot again.
There was clearly something fishy going on, something very fishy and very dangerous. But the temptation was too strong, and though his old merchant instincts told him such an offer couldn’t be real, his curiosity got the better of him.
Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2) Page 20
