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

by Fernando Gamboa

  Finally, I decide to say hello and ask how she is.

  She turns toward me and looks at me hard, but she doesn’t say anything. She stays like that, quiet as a statue for more than ten seconds, until I decide to speak again. I thank her for everything she did to rescue me and the risk she took, and say there’s an implied apology in there, because, as a result she had to set off on this old steamer up the Congo River.

  Carmen listens closely until I’m done talking, breathes in deeply, raises her chin, and finally shakes her head with annoyance. Then she turns around and leaves to go back to her cabin, without a word.

  I think this is going to be a very long trip.

  River Diary

  DAY TWO

  January 27, 1942

  Congo River

  The day starts in a dense, sticky haze, liquid almost.

  We didn’t stop during the night, like I imagined we would, given the infinite number of dangers in the form of rocks, sandbanks, or large, floating trunks, and now I understand why. The fog surrounding us, blurring the edges of the ship, is worse than the darkest nights. Light can penetrate the darkest of evenings, allowing for some visibility. But there’s nothing you can do in this mist to see farther than three or four feet.

  I go up to the bridge, intrigued to see how Verhoeven is able to find the route in such poor conditions, and in his place I find young Mutombo clutching the helm, eyes fixed on that impenetrable milk.

  Alarmed, my first instinct is to take the wheel, stop the boat, and call for Verhoeven, sure the young man hadn’t told the captain about the conditions we were in. But then I realize Julie isn’t much older than Mutombo and has my complete confidence when operating the Pingarrón, so I just stay next to him quietly, watching him. He gives me a brief look of recognition before immediately looking ahead again. If it weren’t for the fact that we hadn’t run aground or hit the bank, I wouldn’t have thought navigating in such a situation was possible. It’s the typical kind of story someone tells after the third or fourth beer—the ones that no one believes. So I’m writing it in this diary to remember.

  In midmorning the fog disappears as if by incantation, and Verhoeven, now at the wheel, shifts the boat toward starboard, where the head current is weaker than in the middle of the riverbed. That means the bank is now only a few dozen yards away and some of the larger trees block the sky with their immense branches. We navigate under them like they’re a giant vegetable awning.

  The captain of the Roi des Boers explains to me with satisfaction that if a fast police launch hasn’t tried to stop us already, they’ll have a lot of trouble doing so, ’cause they’d never get that far. Seems that in the twenty-four hours since we left, we’ve covered nearly two hundred miles.

  I’ve never been too good at math, but by a simple rule of three I calculate that, at this speed, if everything goes well, we’ll cover the rest of the five hundred miles ahead in less than three days. Verhoeven looks at me with his good eye and is about to laugh. “In this river things never go very well,” he assures me. “We can only hope they don’t go very badly.”

  My friends seem as bored as me. I see them wandering idly along the deck or sitting in their hammocks, watching the jungle in a daze.

  Jack made a simple fishing rod for entertainment, though he hasn’t been able to catch anything bigger than a kind of trout with whiskers. I’ve hardly seen Carmen out of her cabin. And Hudgens keeps to himself, studying the few maps Verhoeven has, which don’t really do much besides maintain the illusion that we know where we’re going. If the Afrikaner wants to trick us, it will be easy enough. The only thing we can do is stay alert to what might happen.

  The signs of human activity have become fewer and fewer as we advance upriver. Today we pass about half the number of boats we did yesterday, and commercial outposts maintained by different companies have grown scarcer. They keep them to get ivory and skins from the jungle, which the natives, it seems, trade for tin wire and colored beads. It’s too similar to what happened centuries ago with indigenous Americans.

  I ask Madimba about the scarcity of indigenous villages on the riverbanks. The Congo River is a great water highway, much easier to travel than land, in addition to being an endless source of food. But I’ve only seen a couple of canoes in the distance being used as a makeshift refuge for fisherman. To my surprise, I’m realizing that the African jungle is almost completely unpopulated. It’s an empire of trees, birds, and insects, with no sign of mammals, neither the two- nor four-legged variety.

  In response, the mechanic of the Roi des Boers looks around as if my question had made him realize the same thing. He wears only a green cloth wrapped around his waist that goes down to his ankles, and there’s a brass earing in his broad nose.

  “White men hunt,” Madimba explains in halting English, and when I tell him how excessive that hunt must have been to make any animal larger than a chipmunk disappear, the mechanic looks at me very seriously and says, “I’m not talking about animals.”

  Stuck

  Captain Cook Bar

  Léopoldville

  Sitting at a table in a dim restaurant in the middle of Léopoldville, Julie and César quietly looked at the wood grain, their spirits matching the setting.

  “Merde,” Julie said.

  “Seems unbelievable,” her husband responded. “All those boats in port and not one will take us.”

  “Want to take us,” Julie said.

  “They’re afraid,” César said. “I would be too if I believed all those stories about ghosts and cannibals coming from upriver.”

  “But they’re just stories, mon chéri. Scary stories to frighten children. They haven’t seen any of it.”

  The Pingarrón’s mechanic took his wife’s hand on the table. “In Africa,” he reminded her calmly, “stories and reality are often the same.”

  Julie raised her gaze to meet his. “So you believe them, too?”

  He shrugged. “Must be some truth in them.”

  In response, the Frenchwoman frowned with determination. “Well, in that case, all the more reason to go look for them.”

  Then she took out the wrinkled telegram, sent by a stranger who said his name was Pembé and whom the captain had asked to send a cryptic message, which she now read for the umpteenth time.

  ROI DES BOERS-HANS KLEIN.

  They’d needed a whole day to decipher it and piece things together, but now they were sure Roi des Boers was a ship owned by a trafficker named Verhoeven, and they’d fled the police in search of someone named Hans Klein, a man who lived with a tribe of natives on the banks of a tributary near the middle of the Congo River, hundreds of miles away.

  But that may as well have been another planet. Days after arriving in Léopoldville they still hadn’t found anyone who would agree to take them, not even in exchange for large sums of money.

  They heard footsteps behind them, and soon Marco and Commander Fleming sat down heavily in the table’s two open chairs.

  Julie saw the discouragement on Fleming’s face but still asked, “Something?”

  The Englishman shook his head grimly. “Nothing,” he said. “We just found an ivory trafficker who’ll rent us a motorboat. Fast, but too small for such a long trip. Other than him, no one would talk about it. It’s as if mentioning that river or Klein is like summoning the devil.”

  “They’re afraid,” Marco said. “Cowards.”

  César was going to say something to the Serb, but decided to keep it to himself.

  “What we did find out,” Fleming said, “is that Jan Verhoeven has a terrible reputation. It seems he used to work for the Nazis and in recent years there have been several inexplicable disappearances of passengers on his boat. The word is,” he added, looking at Julie with concern, “that he may have robbed and killed them.”

  “Merde,” the Frenchwoman said again, slapping the table. “We have to do something.”

  “Yes, but what?” César asked. “There’s no way to get near them, let alon
e catch them.”

  “Bonjour,” said a voice that was soon followed by the appearance of the bar owner. He was an easygoing Belgian married to a Vietnamese woman, who for some reason had opened a bar in the heart of Africa. “Everything all right, my friends? Should I bring you some beers?”

  “Bonjour, David,” Julie replied, forcing a smile. “Oui, beers for everyone.”

  “Doing all right?” the Belgian asked, squinting his Saint Bernard eyes. “Looks like you’ve come from a funeral.”

  “Just about,” César muttered.

  “Well, I’m very sorry.” He tried to be encouraging. “But I’m sure after a good, cold beer it’ll be easier to look on the bright side. On the house.”

  “Merci, David.”

  “Need anything else? Something to eat, maybe?”

  “You don’t have here a fast ship to go up the Congo River, do you?” Fleming asked, pointing at the bar.

  The Belgian touched his pants and shirt pockets. “No, I’m sorry,” he answered with a sad smile. “Not on me.”

  “Shame,” the Englishman said with a shrug. “That certainly would have helped us look on the bright side.”

  David winked. “You could always ask the police to lend you their patrol boat,” he joked. “It’s the best launch in all of the Congo.”

  “The police?”

  “Yup. They have an English launch they use to patrol the part of the river that marks the border between Leo and Brazzaville. All day up and down, up and down,” he gestured with his hand. “Like a bullet flying along the water. The Spitfire of the Congo, they call it.”

  “Christ,” César said, interested in anything with a motor and that could float. “It’s that fast?”

  “They say it can go over thirty-five knots,” David explained, lowering his head and the volume of his voice as if it were a state secret. “No smuggler can escape it.”

  “I see,” Fleming said with a thoughtful nod.

  “Anyway,” the Belgian continued, straightening up and winking at Julie. “I’ll bring those beers right now. Nice and cold.” Then he turned and went back to the bar.

  When he was some distance away, César stared at Fleming, who was looking into the distance. “You’re thinking about that motorboat?”

  The commander needed a moment to realize he was talking to him. “Indeed,” he confirmed.

  Julie leaned forward eagerly. “Do you think we could pull some strings with your government and convince the police to rent us the motorboat?”

  Fleming looked at her as if she’d asked to meet King George. “Impossible,” he said. “And even if it were, it would be a bureaucratic nightmare. It’d take months at best.”

  “We could steal it,” Marovic said calmly.

  Julie sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “Rob the police,” César grumbled. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Wait,” Fleming said, raising a hand. “Maybe it’s not a bad idea.”

  “Not a bad idea?” César shook his head as if trying to get rid of the thought. “I guess you think they’re going to leave the boat tied to the dock with no security and the keys inside?”

  “Not to mention,” Julie added, “that we don’t know how to drive it, let alone navigate the river with it. The river’s a labyrinth. We’d get lost or run aground for sure.”

  “That’s all true,” Fleming said. “It doesn’t make any sense to try and steal it if we can’t use it to go upriver.”

  “Right.”

  “So we have to get the crew to go with us.”

  Julie’s eyes widened like saucers. “What?” she asked.

  “How are you going to convince them? Bribe them?” César asked skeptically. “It would cost a fortune considering they’d be fugitives for the rest of their lives. And us too,” he added, waving in a circle, “by the way.”

  “No, of course,” the commander agreed again. “We don’t have the time or the money to try something like that.” He leaned on the table and smiled mischievously before adding, “But I have a better idea.”

  River Diary

  DAY THREE

  January 28, 1942

  Mongala River

  Today we arrive in the village of Mobeka, a modest trade and provisions outpost surrounded by a dozen adobe shanties with thatched roofs at the mouth of the Mongala River. A tributary of the Congo, the Mongala is the waterway we’ll be on starting tomorrow. And I say tomorrow because Verhoeven has decided to tie up and spend the night here. We restock the dry wood we use for fuel, buy some game, and stretch our legs on dry land, since the Afrikaner implies there won’t be many more chances to do so farther ahead.

  The man in charge of the station, a tiny Belgian barely a five feet tall who moves nervously, like a Chihuahua in a salacot, greets us enthusiastically when he sees us land, though he can’t hide his disappointment when we say we aren’t his relief crew. Still, he invites all of us (aside from the native crewmen) to share a bottle of advocaat, which he claims to have been saving for six months for the right occasion. That our brief visit is the best excuse he had to uncork it in over half a year says a lot about his job. More out of pity than anything else, we accept his invitation and talk with him for a couple of hours, bringing him up to speed on the latest shifts in the war in Europe and the newest Hollywood films, which he says he’s a true fan of.

  After wearing out the conversation topics and finishing the bottle of egg liqueur, we go back to the boat to spend the night, and it’s here that I’m writing these lines, in my hammock.

  According to Hudgens, who repeatedly checks our location on the map, we’ve already gone more than five hundred miles upriver. Which means, on paper, about thirty-six more hours until we reach our destination. But Verhoeven insists again that we forget the calculations, as we’ll be lucky to cover those two hundred miles in less than a week. I hope he turns out to be wrong.

  There’s no fog today, and the journey is as calm as previous days. With the exception of the floating trunks that threaten our progress like aimless torpedoes and the occasional sandbanks, crocodiles, and hippopotamuses, the Congo has thus far been an easy river to navigate. The current flows slowly, and it’s so wide that sometimes we lose sight of the opposite bank and it seems like we’re traveling along a particularly nice tropical coast.

  The number of boats coming in the other direction is even fewer than the day before, same for the presence of white men on dry land. Nevertheless, something happens around midday, and even now, hours later, I’m still trying to find a half-reasonable explanation.

  At around ten in the morning, we started to hear thunder in the distance that we attributed to a storm upriver, even though the sky at that time was completely clear.

  The more we advanced, the louder the booms became, so we were getting closer, though we still hadn’t seen a single cloud on the horizon.

  Finally, the mystery was resolved when we rounded a bend and found a boat anchored to the right bank. It had a small cannon in the middle of the deck and was bombarding the wall of jungle in front of it. It was a steamboat a little smaller than ours, with a bunch of men who looked like civilians, so concentrated on their work of firing again and again that they didn’t even notice us as we passed slowly by their side.

  Who knows what pushed them to such insanity, but I’m starting to suspect this place affects people in the strangest ways.

  Carmen hasn’t spoken to me all day, but I did see her chat happily and even laugh with Mutombo. I couldn’t help but feel a stab of jealousy in my gut.

  When I asked her what she was up to with Verhoeven’s assistant, she looked at me liked I’d just asked her the stupidest question in the world. She raised an eyebrow in exasperation and told me, they’d “taken a liking.” That’s what she told me, as if it were nothing.

  If I see the pretty boy lay a finger on Carmen, I’ll cut off his balls and throw him overboard with the anchor around his neck.

  Snitch

  Léopoldville

&nb
sp; There was a knock on the door and an ebony man wearing a police uniform appeared in the office. “Commissar?” he asked.

  Blanchard looked up from the desk full of papers and folders. “Yes?”

  “There’s a man here who wants to see you. Says he has information that could interest you.”

  “Send him to Jules,” he replied, waving for him not to bother him. “I’m busy.”

  “Information about the fugitives,” the sweaty man said.

  Blanchard’s hand stopped in midair. “Tell him to come in.” He tried not to seem anxious, though bile still filled his throat when he thought of the humiliation he suffered days before.

  “As you wish,” the man answered, disappearing and reappearing seconds later with a scruffy white man who was too thin and had dark circles under eyes reddened by alcohol. Blanchard immediately classified him as a failed hustler. One of the hundreds who came to the Belgian Congo every year in search of the fortune that eluded them in Europe and ended up spending their days in the mission hospital, drunk and sick with malaria. That one in particular, he guessed based on his appearance, would visit the sisters soon.

  “Sit,” he said with a polite gesture toward the chair on the other side of the desk. “How can I help you, Mr. . . .”

  “Marcel,” he responded, taking his seat nervously. “They said you’d pay for information about the people who got away the other day,” he blurted without preamble.

  Blanchard leaned back in his chair, trying to appear indifferent. “That depends on the information you provide and if we’re able to catch them,” he answered, interlacing his fingers. “What is it you know?”

  “It’s good information,” he said. “I want a hundred francs now and a hundred when you catch them.”

  “Ten and ninety,” Blanchard replied after thinking a moment and opening his desk drawer. He took out an almost fresh bottle of Gordon’s and put it on the table. “And this beautiful bottle that came the day before yesterday from the city.”