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

by Fernando Gamboa

  “Are you suggesting there’s some relationship?” Carmen said. “That wouldn’t make sense. He’s the one who kept him alive.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Riley countered. “But it if you think about it”—he traced a line with his finger from one end of the table to the other—“there’s very little reliable information in this whole story, but also too many coincidences for them not to be related to the others. We have this expedition that disappeared in 1935, but two years later Zeiss or Weiss shows up in the river, speaking German, and conveniently dies—without explaining what happened—the day after the only other person who could know anything escapes from jail.”

  “I don’t think the native was responsible for his death either,” Hudgens replied.

  “Maybe not, but that’s just the first piece of the puzzle,” Riley said. “Then Mustermann comes on the scene, who’s maybe also German, and he leaves this city with almost a hundred boxes sent by Klein from the middle of the jungle. A cargo,” he continued, “that ended up in the holds of the Duchessa d’Aosta and that the Germans appear rabid to get their hands on.”

  “Or recover,” Hudgens pointed out.

  “Or recover,” Riley agreed. “And at the same time all the white men in the Mangbetu region start to disappear and no one dares to investigate because they’re afraid of the spirits.”

  “You mean everything happened in the same place,” Carmen deduced immediately.

  “Exactly. Same place and to the same man.”

  “And Klein?” Jack asked. “Where’s he fit in to all this?”

  Riley opened his hands in a show of ignorance. “Who knows? But he’s in the middle of it all. Sure seems like he’s pulling the strings.”

  Hudgens, like the others, paused to think over Riley’s claims till he finally nodded. “You’re right, Captain,” he said, taking a deep breath. “All the evidence points to Klein and that Mangbetu region. It seems to be the key to this whole mystery.”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, in that case,” he said, leaning forward on the edge of the table, “there’s only one possible line of action. We have to go there.”

  For a moment, the three others went silent, sure they hadn’t heard right.

  Riley smiled. “That’s funny,” he said, surprised at the commander’s sense of humor.

  But the man didn’t crack a smile. “I’m not joking,” he said solemnly.

  It took Riley a few seconds to convince himself that was the case.

  38

  “Maybe you’ve lost your damn mind?” Riley asked. “Were you not listening to what we just told you?”

  “I heard perfectly well, and that’s why we should go. Klein’s there. We should find him.”

  “And didn’t you hear the part about everyone who goes there doesn’t come back?”

  “You yourself said your contact, Verhoeven, was there,” Hudgens said.

  Riley shook his head hard. “At the request of Klein,” he reminded him. “All the others who went disappeared without a trace. Including a whole squadron of colonial guardsmen.”

  “Soldiers who are mostly indigenous,” Hudgens said, “and who may have simply deserted.”

  “And the crew of the steamship they were on too? And the trade posts that got swallowed by the earth? And the German expedition?” He paused to think about it. “They all decided to stay quietly in the jungle with the mosquitoes and crocodiles?”

  Hudgens seemed to hesitate a moment, but clearly imagination wasn’t one of his strengths. “I have no response for that,” he said, “but I don’t doubt that there is a reasonable explanation. Maybe they had to leave the region because of disagreements with local tribes.”

  “Of course . . . disagreements,” Jack said, rolling his eyes.

  “Nothing we can’t handle, knowing ahead of time that we’re going to have problems,” Hudgens insisted. “I’ll be in charge of finding a good steamboat and crew and we’ll go heavily armed. I promise we won’t be in any serious danger.”

  He hadn’t finished before Riley disagreed. “None of us will go with you, Hudgens.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not your decision.”

  “Oh yes. I think so.”

  “The orders from Rear Admiral Wilkerson—” he started to say.

  Riley interrupted him by slapping the table so hard it shook. “I don’t give a damn about orders from Wilkerson or Roosevelt himself,” he replied. “If you want to look for Klein that’s your business. I’ll even send you off at the dock if it makes you happy. But I assure you that neither Jack, nor Carmen, nor I will go with you. You can get that idea out of your head.”

  Hudgens’s mouth tightened. “The mission isn’t over yet.”

  “Yours, I don’t know, but ours is over right now.”

  The commander addressed Carmen and Jack. “Remember, if you say no now,” he told them, “you’ll be violating the terms of the agreement with ONI and there will be consequences.”

  Jack leaned forward now. “You can take your threats and shove them,” he muttered.

  Hudgens shook his head. “I’m not threatening you, I’m just informing you,” he said, lifting his hands. “Our orders are to find out the nature of the Duchessa’s cargo, independent of where we have to go to do so.”

  “Well, good luck,” Jack replied, pointing at the door. “There it is.”

  “We had this conversation before,” Hudgens murmured, rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. “And I don’t want to have it again. I just want to be sure you all know what it entails. Are you refusing to carry out the orders of the ONI, Captain Riley?” he asked Alex directly as if starting to pass down the judgment they’d inevitably receive when they got back to the US.

  “You already know my answer,” he said, crossing his arms. “You can write it down in your notebook.”

  “Understood,” the commander answered, making a mental note. “And you, Mr. Alcántara?”

  Jack leaned back in his seat, making a mocking face. “Not if I were drunk off my ass.”

  Finally Hudgens turned to Carmen, who answered before she was asked. “I shouldn’t even be here,” she responded, almost amused. “So forget about me going anywhere other than back to the ship.”

  The commander looked them over with disappointment in his eyes. “I was expecting more from you,” he grumbled. Then he stood up, turned, and left the bar without another word.

  “Go to the jungle . . . what an idea,” Jack said, watching him leave. “Wouldn’t find me in a jungle full of cannibals and wild beasts.” Then he patted his big belly and added, “They’ll come for me first!”

  Carmen smiled without much enthusiasm, but Riley was left thinking over Hudgens’s words. Although he acted defeated, his tone of voice said otherwise. Far from it.

  Taking advantage of the late afternoon’s cooler temperatures, Riley and Jack decided to go to the train station and buy their tickets for the next train heading back to Matadi. To their surprise, Carmen decided to join them, saying she had nothing to do in the hotel. And she was right. Not just about Hotel ABC, but all of Léopoldville. They’d come so far only to find out so little.

  Riley watched a line of black men with chains around their necks a few blocks from the hotel. They walked single file, looking tired, with heavy baskets of dirt on their heads. Their empty gazes reminded Riley of the lifeless eyes of those on the brink of death, people he’d seen against a wall, about to be shot. It was a look of absolute hopelessness. The eight natives were extremely thin, and it seemed impossible for them to hold that much weight. Their ribs stuck out like the frame of a shipwreck, seemingly held in place only by the skin covering them.

  Riley, Carmen, and Jack stopped before the alarming spectacle.

  “What are they doing?” Carmen asked. “Look.”

  One by one the eight men let the dirt fall from their baskets, forming a mound in a corner of the clearing. They retraced their steps to get more dirt from a mound in the opposite corner, a few do
zen yards from the street. Everything seemed to indicate that they had made both mounds and were transporting them from one place to another with an unknown purpose.

  But what stood out most for Riley was how the rest of the passersby didn’t pay them the least bit of attention. White men with salacots or panama hats, mostly in suits and with well-groomed mustaches, walked with ladies in large dresses as light as their pink skin. They avoided the eight men on the sidewalk like they were no more than sleeping dogs.

  A white man in a police officer’s uniform, leaning against a low wall across the street that was partially shaded by a scrawny tree, watched the scene with bored disinterest. Jack had taken Riley’s arm, sensing trouble. But he got loose easily.

  “Don’t worry,” he said over his shoulder. “I just want to ask.”

  Jack already knew what tended to happen when his friend just wanted to ask, so he hurried to join him. Carmen followed close behind, glowering.

  When Jack caught up to Riley, the officer was already speaking. “They’re inmates carrying out their sentences,” he explained. “I’m just watching them.”

  “And what crimes did they commit?”

  “Well, little bit of everything,” he answered, downplaying it. “Theft, disobeying authority, vagrancy—”

  “Vagrancy?” Carmen interrupted. “You sentence them to forced labor for vagrancy?”

  The officer seemed perplexed by Carmen’s outburst, but instead of getting angry, he sucked in his stomach and touched his mustache with a sophisticated air. “It’s not forced labor, miss,” he said in a phony voice. “We’re reeducating them. These savages don’t understand any language but punishment, and unfortunately we have no other option but to make them work however we can, so they learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  “To be civilized, miss,” the officer said as if it were obvious. “They’re all lazy thieves, and if it were up to them they’d just permanently loaf around the city. So at the very least they learn the meaning of work.”

  “That include whippings?” Riley asked, pointing at inmates crisscrossed with deep scars, some still fresh.

  “Only when they deserve it,” the officer responded coldly. “The rod and reproof give wisdom, you know. And in the end,” he concluded, “it’s for their own good.”

  Riley was opening his mouth to reproach the mustachioed cop in his ridiculous shorts, when Jack grabbed his arm to shut him up.

  “We gotta go,” he said. “They’re going to close the ticket windows.”

  “No rush,” Riley said. “They’re open till—”

  “Let’s go,” Jack insisted in a tone of voice that left no room for discussion. “Now.”

  Riley stopped to look at his second, trying as usual to argue but seeing the common sense in Jack’s words. “All right,” he said grudgingly. Then he turned, without saying good-bye to the officer, who shook his head in disapproval.

  After twenty minutes of walking in silence through the wide dusty streets of Léopoldville, they reached the city’s train station, where they reserved first class tickets on the next available train, which left for Matadi in three days.

  When Carmen had found out she might be stuck in that smoldering city where there was nothing to do but fight dehydration and mosquitoes twenty-four hours a day, she tried to convince the representative to sell them some third-class tickets like they had used on the way there. But this ticket seller resisted her charms and gave an unequivocal no. She had no choice but come to terms with the prospect of spending those days waiting, closed in her room under the ceiling fan with a book in her hands.

  For a moment she thought the time would pass much more quickly if she had Riley’s body with her instead of a book. But she rejected the idea, knowing it would only complicate things further.

  On his way back to the hotel, tired and grumpy, Riley could think of nothing but taking a long shower and drowning the afternoon in cold beer till his mind stopped thinking of all he’d seen. But as soon as he entered the hotel, he saw Hudgens in the lobby, leaning back in a chair by the entrance and smiling from ear to ear. It seemed he’d been waiting for them.

  “Good afternoon,” he said with inexplicable enthusiasm as he put aside his newspaper. “Did you have a productive afternoon?”

  Riley paused a moment before answering, as surprised as the others at Hudgens’s attitude change. “Not as productive as you, I suppose.”

  The ONI officer’s smile widened. “True, very true.” He laughed as he stood. “Want to go to the lounge a moment and I’ll explain?”

  “Not really,” Jack said. “We were hoping to go to our rooms and have a shower.”

  “It’ll just be a minute,” he insisted, motioning toward the glass door to the hotel lounge.

  “Can’t you tell us what it’s about?” Riley asked, his patience all but gone.

  “I got it,” the commander said quietly after he looked from side to side to make sure no one was nearby to listen.

  Riley was too tired to guess. “What did you get?”

  The smile on Hudgens’s angular face widened. “A boat,” he declared, satisfied. “A boat to go after Klein.”

  39

  In the end they had no choice but to follow Hudgens to a private room, where he explained the details of the news over a small tea table. “I decided to go talk with Verhoeven myself,” he said.

  “Why?” Jack asked, annoyed. “You didn’t believe what we told you?”

  “No, not that,” he said, perhaps not completely sincere. “I went because I wanted to talk with him and ask about some things I had on my mind. Did you know, for example, that he’s an Afrikaner veteran of the Boer Wars?”

  “We didn’t get to know each other that well.”

  “So”—he leaned forward in his chair, lowering his voice—“I suppose he didn’t tell you he’s a ship captain or that he has his own boat in Léopoldville.”

  Riley couldn’t hide his surprise. “Well, no,” he admitted, glancing at Jack. “He didn’t.”

  “And not only that,” Hudgens added enthusiastically. “He also claims to know the Mangbetu region Klein’s hiding in very well.”

  “Let me guess,” Riley said sarcastically, leaning back in his seat. “He offered to take you there for a small price.”

  “He assured me that he could be ready to leave in a couple days,” he replied. “Isn’t it perfect?”

  “No, it’s not perfect. It’s completely stupid.”

  Hudgens shifted in his seat, offended by the comment. “And may I ask why?”

  “God damn it, Commander,” he groaned. “Even you should realize Verhoeven’s lying.”

  “Explain.”

  “You don’t know the jungle, much less the Congo jungle. Honestly, I don’t think any white man really does.” Riley motioned toward the window. “What’s stopping Verhoeven from taking you in circles around any of the hundred river tributaries and then, when you don’t find Klein, making up some excuse or story? Worse, he shoots you and throws you to the crocodiles the first chance he gets?”

  “I’m not an idiot, Captain. Verhoeven’s payment is conditional on us finding Klein.”

  “But you must have promised him an advance, right? How much?”

  Hudgens paused briefly before answering. “Just the least necessary.”

  “Well, he might already be prepared to kill you for that,” Riley said with a smile.

  “That’s why I need you to come with me. We’ll be safer if we all go. Even our people on board the Pingarrón in Matadi could come.”

  “Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “Not going to happen.”

  “And why not try to get there on another boat?” Carmen asked. “The state company . . . what’s it called?”

  “OTRACO,” Jack said.

  “That one. Can’t they take you? Should be more reliable, right?”

  Hudgens shook his head. “That part of the river isn’t covered by any company, and especially not since the trading outposts d
isappeared. No one goes there.”

  “Can’t you hire another captain and his boat?” Riley insisted. “Someone who you wouldn’t worry about cutting your throat in your sleep?”

  Hudgens disagreed yet again. “It’ll be risky no matter what,” he objected. “But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. No captain is willing to go there for all the gold in the world. They say it’s because of malaria and the cannibals, but clearly what they’re really afraid of is something else. There’s no other way,” he concluded with a shrug. “My only chance of getting there is Verhoeven.”

  “I hope you’ll reconsider, Commander,” Riley said. “You’ll go there for nothing . . . and I’m afraid you’ll never come back.” He leaned toward Hudgens and added in a confidential tone, “It’s not worth it, trust me.”

  The officer’s face remained impassive. “I have a mission to complete. Duty requires me to—”

  “To hell with that!” Riley interrupted. “Duty doesn’t require you to commit suicide. It’s your stupid military pride talking.”

  Hudgens bit his lip, almost pained. “You don’t understand, Captain. I’m an officer of the United States Navy, and I swore to defend my country—which I’ll remind you is also yours. If instead of a smuggler you were a real patriot,” he added, “you’d know what I mean.”

  “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” Jack quoted.

  Hudgens frowned at him. “And cynicism is for cowards,” he replied angrily.

  Jack smiled grimly. “Whatever you say, pretty boy.”

  Seeing it would be impossible to convince them, Hudgens stood up, buttoned his jacket, and looked at Riley once more. “So that’s your final word, Captain?” he asked. “You formally refuse the mission entrusted to you?”

  Riley crossed his arms and drew back in his seat. “I think I’ve been clear enough,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “If you want, I’ll make you a drawing.”

  They all went back to their rooms, not even reconvening for dinner.