Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  Riley glanced at her. She was staring at him with a look of disappointment, like she’d caught him in a flagrant lie.

  “I know what I said. But things don’t always go according to plan.”

  “In your case,” she jabbed, “things never go according to plan.”

  Riley wondered at the anger and frustration in Carmen’s words. How long had it been building and why?

  “We don’t have a choice, Miss Debagh,” Hudgens said pedantically. “Circumstances require it.”

  “Circumstances,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t like it,” Marco said, shaking his head.

  “Big surprise,” Jack replied, leaning on the tabletop with his arms crossed.

  “But what do you really want to find there?” Julie asked. “From what Van Dyck told you, that Mustermann went back to Europe. And although the cargo in the Duchessa is similar to what the expedition in 1935 had, there’s no one alive to ask, right?”

  “You’re right, Miss Daumas,” Hudgens admitted. “But we still have to make sure. It would be unforgivable to get this far”—he gestured toward the outside—“and not find out everything related that we can, don’t you think?”

  She shrugged, still not understanding, but she didn’t say anything.

  “When do we leave?” Jack asked, sounding tired in anticipation of having to get up early.

  “The train leaves at five in the morning,” Hudgens answered, “but I think it’d be best if as few of us go as possible. We should be discreet.”

  “How few is as few as possible?”

  “Just the commander and I,” Riley said. “The rest of you will wait in Matadi, on the ship.”

  “I’m going too,” Jack said immediately.

  “No, Jack. I’d rather you stayed here, in charge of the Pingarrón.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’d rather look like Rudolph Valentino, but—” He pointed at himself.

  Riley turned to Hudgens. “I told you.”

  The commander tutted and nodded with resignation. “Okay. The three of us.”

  “Four,” Carmen raised a finger from the other side of the table.

  “No,” Riley said. “Not you.”

  “Why not?” she asked, scowling.

  “Well, I can think of a number of reasons,” he argued. “But to start, it will be a long, uncomfortable journey, dangerous too. Also, if you’re with us, you’ll call a lot of attention.”

  “Despite what you think, I’m not afraid of being uncomfortable,” Carmen objected. “It won’t be more dangerous than staying here, and as far as calling attention, I don’t think that was a problem a few days ago in Santa Isabel, was it? More like the opposite.”

  “That was different.”

  “That was different?” she repeated. “That’s your argument?”

  Riley didn’t get a chance to respond.

  “But, why do you want to come, Miss Debagh?” Hudgens asked.

  “Look out the window.” She motioned toward it. “I don’t want to be twiddling my thumbs in this hole for days.”

  “I understand,” he said with a nod. “But I don’t think Léopoldville will be much better than Matadi.”

  “And I don’t think it could be worse.”

  Hudgens turned to Riley, looking for arguments, but he just shook his head.

  “Ever since I met her, I haven’t been able to get her to change her opinion one time,” he said. “If she’s decided she wants to come, I don’t think anyone will be able to convince her it’s a bad idea.”

  The commander sighed tiredly. “Okay. We’ll be four.”

  “And us?” César asked, motioning toward himself and his wife.

  “You two,” Riley hurried to say before anyone else signed up for the excursion, “will stay here on the ship. Keep your eyes open. Schedule night watches and pull in the catwalk after we leave.”

  “Do you think someone will try to board us?” the Portuguese asked, somewhat concerned.

  “No. Van Dyck seemed satisfied with his gold, and I don’t think he’d risk turning us in and losing it. Regardless, there’s no harm in being cautious. Speaking of which,” he said to Marco, “Marovic will stay with you too.”

  “Captain,” César objected, “I don’t think—”

  “He’s staying,” Riley interrupted, raising a hand. “And Julie,” he turned to the pilot, “you’ll be in charge. If there are any problems or even any sign of them, untie and go to Boma or Banana in the river mouth. Got it? I don’t want you to take any chances.”

  “What about you all?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry about that, Julie. We’ll find a way back.” Then he reached for the coatrack and grabbed the captain’s hat he never used. “This is yours now,” he said, going over and putting it on her head.

  She smiled happily, pursing her lips with mock authority. “Je suis the new capitaine of the Pingarrón!” she shouted seriously, holding back laughter. “And I order you to kneel down before me now, subjects!”

  César rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to leave her in charge?” he asked Riley.

  Riley nodded confidently. “I think she’s doing great,” he said, smiling along with everyone else.

  Marco was the only one who wasn’t enjoying the spectacle. He glared at Julie like someone sizing up an opponent before combat.

  At dawn the next day the quartet of crew members from the Pingarrón was already in Matadi’s bustling train station. The steam engine had broken down, and two hours after its scheduled departure time it was still sitting completely immobile at the end of the tracks. Meanwhile, the sheet metal roof resonated under the downpour, which seemed like it would never stop—a constant drumbeat Riley’s ears would start to ignore like his nose would a bad smell.

  When they’d arrived at the station that morning, they’d discovered all the first class tickets had been sold and there were only third-class tickets available. Although the real surprise was that those tickets were not available to whites.

  “The third car is for blacks only,” the ticket seller had explained with disapproval. “You can’t sit there.”

  “It doesn’t matter to us,” Riley insisted. “We need to get on the train.”

  “Maybe you don’t care but the company does. We can’t allow the passengers to mix.”

  “And why not?” Hudgens asked. “We’re not blacks who want to go in first class but whites who want to go in third. What’s the problem?”

  “Company policy,” the seller said as if the mere suggestion of sharing space with Africans sickened him.

  “Let’s see,” Riley said, “you’re telling us there aren’t seats in first class though there are some in third, but we can’t go in third because we’re white. So even though there are open seats on the train and we desperately need to go to Léopoldville, we have to stay here and wait until tomorrow.”

  “Actually,” he said with certain joy, “tomorrow the train comes back from Léopoldville and returns on the following, but the tickets for that day are also sold out. There aren’t any open seats until next week.”

  “This has to be a joke,” grumbled Jack, who’d been following the conversation from behind Riley.

  “And what about second class?” Riley asked. “No open seats either?”

  The worker seemed to think it was a funny question. “There is no second class,” he clarified. “Only first and third. For blacks and whites as it should be.”

  Riley was about to tell the cocky seller what he thought about that segregation, but he was able to contain himself in time.

  “Look, friend,” Carmen said, leaning on the counter and talking sweetly. “We have to get on that train no matter what, and I think you can help us, yes?”

  “The company doesn’t allow—” he started to recite again.

  “I know,” she interrupted, “but I’m sure you could sell us some first class tickets, and later, if we decide to change cars and go to third class without you being able
to do anything to stop us . . . What do you think?”

  The ticket seller seemed to think it over, weighing the possible consequences.

  “And,” Carmen added with a mischievous wink and pointing at Hudgens, “our friend here will compensate you generously for your troubles.”

  An hour later, the small steam engine with four cars clattered lazily east along the Congo River. Inside the overcrowded third-class car, Carmen, Riley, Hudgens, and Jack, surrounded by several dozen bewildered Africans, tried not to think of the long, uncomfortable journey ahead.

  In front of them, the dense, dark, unknown jungle provided a narrow passageway for the men aboard the fragile machine of iron and wood. On either side of the tracks, cliffs of vegetation rose thirty yards up, as solid and impenetrable as if they were stone walls.

  Riley had never been anywhere like this in his life. His primary experience was of infinite blue marine horizons and straight lines as far as you could see, broken only by the crests of waves. Not even his memory of the dense forests of New England was anything like what he saw out the window now. They were different magnitudes, different planets. In the way that everything on the sea is light and evokes liberty, there, sandwiched between huge, menacing thickets and that blocked even the sun, it was all darkness and death.

  If for a sailor a clear horizon and blue sky is paradise, that place was about as close to hell on earth as possible.

  Riley kept those dark thoughts to himself, leaning back on the hard wooden seat next to the window. He took Conrad’s book out of his bag and turned to the page with the corner folded over.

  We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell.

  33

  The fourteen-hour trip ended up taking sixteen. It was one in the morning when the train finally stopped with an agonizing squeal in front of a decrepit brick building. In the lazy light of a streetlamp, a sign blackened with mold emerged, reading “Léopoldville.”

  They’d spent most of the journey letting passengers off at the series of stops along the way, so in the end they wound up enjoying a first class car. But still, the constant shaking, the suffocating heat, and the wooden seats were brutal. When the group stepped from the train, they stretched their stiff muscles before heading toward the terminal.

  Their first impression upon walking the street in Léopoldville was similar to the one they had when getting off in Matadi some days before. Though the capital of the Belgian Congo was a much larger city and its lights in the dark made clear that it stretched south for several miles, the sense of decrepitude and decay one got from its streets and wooden buildings was the same.

  “Okay,” Jack murmured with resignation, looking at the sky with his bag on his back like a sailor recently arrived in port. “At least it’s not raining.”

  A scruffy 1930 Citroën C6 sedan came out of nowhere and stopped in front of them. The head of a man who didn’t look much better popped out of the window. “Taxi?” he asked.

  The four got in, and Hudgens told the driver to head for the Hotel ABC, where he’d made a telegram reservation the night before.

  After a brief drive through nearly deserted streets, the taxi stopped in front of a long white four-story building with palm trees on either side. Its facade had a large sign that read “The Grand Hotel ABC.” Half a dozen bellhops swiftly appeared with smiles and words of welcome to open the doors of the taxi and take what little luggage there was.

  Once they checked in, Riley was so tired he decided to skip dinner. After a stop at the bar he went to his room. He soon finished a nice shower and went out on the third-floor balcony completely naked. He took a sip of the gin and tonic in his hand and leaned on the railing, his gaze lost in the stars studding the night in constellations you could see only if you traveled beyond the Equator.

  The faint smell of soap coming from his skin barely masked the sweet scent of flowers and rot that the soft breeze brought from the great dark-watered river as it crept stealthily below his window carrying an indecipherable warning from the depths of the jungle.

  Riley looked to his left. There the humble lights of the river port twinkled, and he could make out the silhouettes of half a dozen ships tied to the docks. Then he looked forward, toward the other side of the wide river, where a few lights marked the presence of Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, only five miles north of Léopoldville.

  He heard the dull creak of wood from footsteps in the adjoining room, and after a moment a familiar silhouette appeared on the balcony. She had a towel around her body and a dense tuft of black hair falling over exposed shoulders.

  Riley contemplated the woman in silence for a long minute, observing her still profile against the river, her eyes fixed on a point beyond the horizon.

  She finally felt Riley’s gaze on her and turned halfway, just enough to confirm his presence. But she said nothing.

  One thing Riley really had trouble stomaching from Carmen was her long silences. When she decided to ignore him, it was as if he evaporated into thin air—like a ghost that only took form as the object of that woman’s gaze.

  Riley knew it was a game in which whoever spoke first lost, so he stayed as quiet as she was, eyes on the river. But after a minute he filled his lungs with air, exhaled slowly, and tried to keep it from sounding like a sigh.

  “What’s going on with us?” he asked softly, less a question than an observation.

  Carmen’s silhouette kept facing forward, silent. She’d heard him, but she didn’t seem prepared to answer.

  “Can you tell me what you’re thinking?” Riley added.

  He already knew what the response would be.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Suddenly, the distance between them felt unbridgeable—as if they were on opposite ends of the earth.

  “I don’t really know what’s going on with you . . . ,” Riley added after a moment. “But I’m sure we can work it out.”

  Carmen stayed silent.

  “I know what happened in Santa Isabel was an unpleasant experience,” Riley went on, aware he was talking with himself, “but it doesn’t have to happen again. I don’t think what we have should end over something like this.”

  “It’s not that,” Carmen said when Riley had already stopped expecting a response.

  “Then . . . ,” he asked. “Why?”

  She put both hands on the railing and let out something like a sigh. But she didn’t say anything.

  Riley spoke next. “I love you,” he mused. “You know that, right?”

  Carmen’s profile seemed carved in stone.

  Then Riley asked a question he regretted immediately. “Do you love me, Carmen?”

  Carmen turned toward him then, though Riley wished she hadn’t. “Of course I love you,” she answered.

  “But you don’t want to be with me,” Riley said, raising his voice without knowing it.

  Carmen’s eyelashes shone in the steely moonlight, and Riley knew what she was going to say next.

  “I don’t know.”

  Without adding anything else, she turned and disappeared into the shadows of her room.

  Riley froze, feeling his heart fall to pieces.

  At eight the next morning they were in the hotel dining room to eat and plan the day. Hudgens went over their next steps. “We’ll split up,” he said. “I’ll go with Miss Debagh to the hospital to find out more about that German survivor.”

  “If he exists,” Jack said, picking up his coffee cup.

  “If he exists,” Hudgens repeated in agreement. “Alex and Jack, ask around if anyone knows anything about that expedition or Mustermann. Someone must have seen or heard something.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to go to the port authority and ask them directly?” J
ack asked. “They must have some type of registry.”

  The commander shook his head. “We’d have to do a lot of explaining, and sooner or later we’d run into someone who wanted to know what we’re really doing here.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially though there was no one else in the room. “Better if we start in the hospital and the port. We’ll go from there.”

  “Agreed.” Riley nodded, wiping his lips with a napkin and leaving it on his empty plate. “Let’s go, Jack.”

  Jack looked at him, then at his plate, where there were three hot waffles covered in condensed milk and dark chocolate shavings. “Can’t we . . . ,” he asked with the sadness of someone abandoning a pet.

  “In a couple hours it’ll be hot as hell,” Riley countered, standing up. “The sooner we go the sooner we’ll get back.”

  “Okay,” he grumbled, standing up.

  “Good luck,” Hudgens offered.

  “Same to you,” Riley answered. “See you here at midday.” He didn’t look at Carmen as he turned and headed for the exit, followed closely by his second.

  “What’s going on with you two?” Jack asked when he caught up with him at the main door.

  “With who?”

  “Don’t play dumb. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Not your business,” Riley responded drily.

  “Bullshit, it’s none of my business. When you and Carmen fight, we all pay.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Riley said, still walking.

  “That’s what you say.”

  “Yes, that’s what I say.” He stopped and faced his friend, putting a finger on his chest. “It’s between her and me, and it has nothing to do with you or anyone else. Clear?”

  “No, it’s not clear.” Jack swiped at Riley’s index finger, like someone swatting a bug from their clothing. “What’s going on between you is more fucked up than usual, and from experience, I know it means nothing good for you or for the rest of us.”

  Riley stared down at Jack, trying not to let loose the rage that had been filling him since that last night in Santa Isabel when Carmen had decided to break her promise and Hudgens had pushed him to undertake the absurd mission to the Belgian Congo.