Maybe Sal was right. She’d already taken her best shot at bringing Albion to justice, and she’d failed. There was little likelihood a second assault would succeed. A sane woman would let it go and return to some semblance of normalcy. Find love again. Start another family. Commit herself to her craft. She was still young. Still had time for second chances.
She reassembled the camera, tucked it back into the bag.
Nick was looking at her in the rearview mirror.
“You doing okay?”
She blew out a breath, tried to smile but felt it fail on her lips.
“I’m fine,” she said. “You?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Tell you in an hour.”
“She’ll be happy to see you,” said Sal. “Handsome stud like you, she’d have to be nuts otherwise. Is she nuts?”
“No, Sal. She’s not.”
Later, as Nick steered the Fiat up the narrow road that twisted through a sea of olive trees fanning out for miles in every direction, Harper watched as the western sky flared crimson, and higher in the atmosphere, the twilight heavens were mottled by hints of plum and cinnamon, a fleeting tapestry as chromatically rich as the Florida sunsets that had taken her breath away since childhood. The day’s last gaudy gasp, its dazzle and color bleeding away in a few exquisite seconds before black night closed in.
For a dreamy instant, Harper was a teenage girl again, and she and Nick were lazing across a silky backwater bay in Nick’s sloop, a Bermuda rig that Nick had salvaged from a boatyard after Hurricane Beatrice tore through Miami and left behind the wreckage of thousands of watercraft, a bonanza for enterprising folks of modest means.
Nick spent most of a year restoring the boat, and the two of them used it to poke around the secluded sounds and creeks of Biscayne Bay and the Upper Keys. They’d become connoisseurs of sunsets, bathing in the eerie serenity and exhilaration of hundreds of them, Harper shooting endless panoramic photos that inevitably failed to capture the scope and grandeur of even the most ordinary setting sun.
Eventually she was so humbled by the challenge of sunsets she felt she’d discovered her limits as an artist. It was partly that inability to catch a faithful replica of those flamboyant, rippling skies that led her to portraiture. She decided that the human face, even with all its deceits and layers and masks, was challenge enough for her skills.
“This is the second-largest plantation in Spain,” Nick said. “A half million trees. The olives in this province are picual. Normally they have a musky pong like cat piss. It’s the cheap stuff. They use it for lamp oil.
“But that’s the old picual. Daniela’s father developed a new cultivar, a picual that’s very complex, more like a fine Bordeaux. These days the Aguilar orchard is winning awards for their extra-virgin oil.”
“She teach you all that?” Sal said.
“Daniela grew up in the olive orchard,” he said. “It’s in her blood.”
“Seeing her again,” Harper said, “how awkward will it be for you?”
“I’ll be fine,” Nick said. “We parted friends.” Then he waved a hand at the windshield. “Voilà.”
As the Fiat came around a sweeping bend, Harper saw it glowing against the hilltop, the ramparts, parapets, and turrets of the medieval citadel.
Nick had sketched out its history a few miles back. Set on one of the highest promontories in southern Spain, Castillo de Aranjuez had been both a Moorish and Roman stronghold in centuries past. A fortress with ten-foot-thick walls, the command post to countless monarchs and chieftains who held dominion over vast regions of the Iberian peninsula and portions of the continent beyond. So many men had died attacking the castle or defending it that the hills still echoed with their battle cries, and the creeks and rivers that ran south to the Alboran Sea were forever tainted with their lifeblood.
“Where’s the drawbridge?” Sal said. “The moat with alligators.”
“Impressive,” Harper said.
Nick said, “Just wait.”
Using the credit card Albion provided, a black Amex, Gerda rented an Audi A3 at the Hertz office inside the train station in central Córdoba. New car, dark blue, almost black. Roomy, low mileage. Then she used the same card to buy a fresh phone in a kiosk down from the train station, a smartphone paid up for two months.
The smartphone was pricier than what she usually paid for a burner, but she wanted a screen, wanted internet maps, so she could find her way across this part of Spain, or wherever the hell Harper McDaniel was headed.
In central Córdoba, she parked the Audi and chose a tapas bar, Taberna El Poema, a corner café. Sat outside under a striped umbrella, ordered a plate of anguilas, eels cooked in garlic sauce. Cleaned her plate, ordered another, feeling the need for protein, packing her gut with eels, slimy creatures like short strands of spaghetti.
She watched the people walking past in the gathering darkness. The night was cooling, men shooting her enticing looks, trying to charm the tough broad with big shoulders. She texted Albion to give him her new number. Ordered coffee. It was almost eight o’clock.
A half hour later, her waiter was hovering, ready for her to leave. New customers lined up at the entrance. Her plate was empty, coffee gone, the check lying in front of her. Her phone jingled.
A text. She read it once, then again. It was the location of the cell phone belonging to one of McDaniel’s companions. Gerda scribbled the address on the back of the check. Castillo de Aranjuez. Canena.
In reply she sent a thumbs-up emoji. Then she entered the castle’s name in her phone’s search engine. A map appeared, showing the route. Seventy miles due east. An hour and a half. But with the Audi, Gerda could make it quicker.
Harper, Nick, and Sal were met at the door by a gray-haired man wearing white trousers and a white shirt and a red sash cinched at his waist. He bowed and waved them inside, giving Nick a familiar pat on the shoulder.
“Señor Nicholas, muy buenas. La señora es así.”
Nick introduced the gentleman as Mateo López, el mayordomo. The butler.
A golden light from the sconces on the foyer walls bathed the castle’s interior. Nothing cold or stark about this place.
Daniela appeared at the far end of the hallway. As she approached, her initial look of confusion softened into a wide smile.
She wore her black hair in a bun with a few stray strands loose against her graceful neck. Her dark eyes were large and calm, though there was a mischievous radiance to the smile she devoted briefly to Nick. The look that passed between them suggested the private hours they’d shared still burned brightly in both their memories.
She wore loose turquoise trousers and a silky cream blouse that rippled in the golden light. She was trimmer than Harper remembered and taller, only a couple of inches shorter than Harper. With an informal dignity to her posture, Daniela moved in easy harmony with the opulent surroundings.
She gave each of them a warm greeting, then led the way down a corridor that passed a banquet hall, then a two-story library, followed by a smoking room and a gallery decorated with oil portraits of ancient men and women posing for posterity, and another room whose walls were mounted with the trophies from hunting expeditions: gazelles and rams and other horned creatures. They passed by rooms with intricately carved chiffoniers and armoires, credenzas, drop-leaf desks, hutches and benches and armchairs. An abundance that filled but didn’t clutter the enormous spaces. Each room appeared stately and imposing yet somehow comfortably lived-in.
She guided them to a sitting room with a fireplace encircled by three roomy couches. A low fire crackled behind the grate, the logs shifting and releasing a stream of sparks.
Above the mantel hung a portrait of a dignified patriarch in suit and tie standing before the columns of a loggia, his arms crossed casually across his chest while behind him spread thousands of gnarled olive trees—the master and his orchard.
There were mahogany side tables sheathed in embossed copper, several standing lamps, and a cushioned win
dow seat carved six feet into the stone wall.
“These thick walls,” Sal said. “Love to have them in my condo back home. My walls are so damn thin I can hear my neighbor clipping his toenails. Not a problem here.”
She laughed with genuine amusement. “No, it’s very quiet here. Sometimes too quiet, actually.” Her gaze passed over Nick before she settled a smile on Sal.
Mateo reappeared with a decanter of red wine and glasses. When everyone was served, he passed around a platter with triangles of toast and small sampling dishes of extra-virgin oil from olives harvested from the castle’s own orchard.
Sal had a taste and smacked his lips.
“Damn,” he said. “Sweet as a first kiss.”
“With a peppery bite at the end,” Nick said and gave Daniela a quick, private smile.
Daniela tucked her legs beneath her and turned to Harper.
“I’ve had Mateo air out the guest rooms. I know you are on an important journey, but I hope you’ll honor me with your presence at least for tonight, and longer if you like.”
Harper extended her hand to Nick. His call.
Nick said if Sal and Harper agreed, it was fine with him.
They agreed.
Daniela had a husky contralto voice, perhaps roughened by cigarettes or else inherited from patrician Andalusian ancestors like the rugged outdoorsman in the painting above the fireplace. As she chatted about the harvesting of the olives, which had recently begun, her eyes wandered the room, landing on Sal and Harper at intervals but lingering on Nick’s face with greater frequency.
Even from the side, Harper registered the softening in Daniela’s gaze each time her eyes settled on Nick. As Harper watched this happen several times, it occurred to her that perhaps the real reason Daniela had given up her job with Nestlé and decided to settle in Castillo de Aranjuez was not simply because her father had died and the orchard needed tending, but because it made her more available to a nomad like Nick.
Everyone fell silent and watched when Mateo came into the room. He moved aside the grate and used a poker to adjust the logs, then added two more from the stack on the hearth. When he’d finished and departed the room, Daniela swiveled to the side and gave Harper her full attention.
“Shall we talk now, or would you prefer privacy?”
“Decision time,” Sal said to Nick. “Will our leading lady sideline her own family, push us away after all the risks we took on her behalf, treat us like we can’t be trusted, or let us in on the straight dope?”
“If she wants to sideline us,” Nick said, “she’s entitled to do it.” He came to his feet. “Come on, Sal, let them talk. We’ll go outside, get a breath of air.”
“Oh, sit down,” Harper told Nick. “You made your point. It’s okay, Daniela. You can speak freely.”
Nick settled back on the couch, crossed his legs, and folded his arms across his chest, the remains of a wounded scowl fading from his face.
“As you know, I’ve been making calls,” Daniela said. “Tactful inquiries to friends with ties to the olive-oil industry as well as business associates I became friendly with during my years with Nestlé. I tried to be as circumspect as possible in raising Lester Albion’s name, and as I told you, until recently I had uncovered nothing that might be useful in your crusade.”
“Good word,” Sal said. “Got that same religious fervor.”
Daniela resettled herself on the couch, looked into the fire as it popped and sputtered. “Before I begin,” she said, “I must ask you, What do you know about dark pools?”
On her way back to her Audi, Gerda stopped at a wine shop and bought three bottles of cheap red, uncorked them, and emptied the contents into the gutter.
She recorked the bottles and laid them on the passenger seat, then followed her phone’s route-guidance commands out of Córdoba onto the highway that led to Canena. In less than an hour she arrived in the outskirts of the small town. She could see the silhouette of the castillo on a knoll maybe a mile distant.
She pulled into a petrol station, gassed up the car, then filled both empty bottles with high test and replaced the corks.
Inside the petrol station she looked around for a while, then purchased three miniature Spanish flags and a plastic cigarette lighter. Outside the store she tore the flags off their wooden staffs and dropped the staffs into a trash bin.
It would be over soon. Calm assurance warmed her body. She could hear the hum in her veins drop to a lower register like the growl of a predator closing in.
FIFTEEN
Castillo de Aranjuez, Canena, Spain
Dark pools, Daniela explained, were private exchanges set up by investment banks to avoid the transparency of public stock exchanges. Traders who were making large buy or sell orders and wanted to avoid exposing their intent to competitors, shareholders, or the market at large could execute trades in one of the fifty or so dark pools that operated in the United States and the eurozone.
“For many months now, Lester Albion has been buying up dozens of family-owned olive groves throughout southern Italy. Many of the families resisted his entreaties, but it seems Albion found ways to coerce them into selling—threats and sometimes outright acts of violence.”
“You have proof of this?” Harper asked.
“Not the sort of proof that might sustain a legal case. But several friends in the Italian oil business, honest people, have told me these stories about Albion’s business practices as he has put together larger and larger holdings in Puglia. They describe poisoned livestock, mutilated goats or pigs, a prize horse’s eyes gouged out, a farmer’s child nearly run down on the road while walking home from school, barns and sheds incinerated, various forms of intimidation.”
“Imbrogli della mafia,” Sal said.
“More than tricks,” said Harper. “He’s built his own little olive-oil empire . . .”
“In Puglia, it’s estimated that there are sixty to seventy million olive trees, grown primarily in small, family-owned orchards. Perhaps a quarter of a million Pugliese operate these small groves. They live on their land, the land of their ancestors, in tiny whitewashed cottages with small sheds, a few goats or mules. It’s very primitive. There are no large orchards as we have in Spain, like the one that surrounds us here. The average grove in Puglia has two or three hundred trees. For centuries, those small orchards have been passed down from one generation to the next. So what Albion is doing, constructing a large tract by buying up the family groves, has never been seen before. It’s a radical departure from the traditions of the past.”
“A hostile takeover.” Nick’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes restless, flicking around the room, lighting on random objects, then moving on as if he’d discovered that being in such close proximity to Daniela was proving to be more challenging than he’d imagined.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Why would he do that?” Harper said. “From what I’ve read, the olive-oil business is very demanding, the profit margins small.”
“Sadly, that is true,” Daniela said. “In Albion’s case, this is where the dark pools come into play.”
Sal heaved himself to his feet. “Sorry, but I need to check out your facilities.”
Daniela looked to Nick for a translation.
“He has to pee,” Nick said.
Daniela rose from the couch and guided Sal out of the room and down the hallway.
When they were out of earshot, Harper said, “Are you all right, Nick?”
He nodded, but his eyes said otherwise. A faint blur of distress muddied them.
“This was a mistake,” he said. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Maybe it wasn’t a mistake,” Harper said. “I think you needed to see her again. She’s a remarkable woman, smart and gentle, and quite beautiful. And she’s being very helpful.”
“I’m glad you like her.”
“I do. I like her very much.”
A few moments later, Daniela’s throaty laughter punctuated Sal’s stream of one-l
iners down the corridor.
Nick rose as they entered the room, a loose, boyish smile on his face, as if Harper’s approval had eased his inner tension.
Daniela resettled herself on the couch, and Sal said, “I was telling our lovely hostess about that fancy driving stunt Nick pulled on the highway. The hay wagon, all that. Making that last-second swerve. But don’t worry, nothing about Gerda.”
“Gerda?” Daniela turned a puzzled smile on Sal.
Sal zipped two fingers across his lips as Daniela turned to Harper.
“And who is this Gerda?”
“Oh, it’s a long, not-very-entertaining story. You were telling us about dark pools and Albion.”
Daniela smiled thinly. Not buying it, but letting it go.
“Well, there’s a certain banker in Rome, Sandro Moretti, who handled several of Nestlé’s Italian accounts during my years with them. I knew that Sandro’s bank, Crédit Agricole, did a great deal of business with other agricultural concerns, so he was on my list of calls. It was quite fortunate that I contacted him, because it was through Sandro that I learned about a gentleman named Manfred Knobel.”
Harper looked across at Nick and Sal, who shrugged in unison. Harper turned back to Daniela.
“Knobel is a young German who several years ago built an industrial oil-processing complex just outside Bari, which, as you may know, is the major port city in the Salento peninsula, that stiletto heel on the boot of Italy. Because the local community of olive growers is small and tight-knit, it was apparently difficult for Mr. Knobel, an outsider, to make headway in this community with his bold and disruptive ideas.”
“Such as?” Harper asked.
“You see, always in the past, the olive farmers of that region depended on a collection of small mills to extract the oil from their fruit. Old-fashioned granite millstones were used, and the whole process was done by hand, the grindstones turned by mules or farmhands. It was a quaint process and could produce delicate oils from the strongly flavored coratina olives that are grown in that region. But in the last decade, with the rapid growth of the market for extra-virgin oil, new methods of milling have been introduced. And this is where Manfred Knobel became important. In Bari, he brought in an engineering firm, Alfa Laval, which has developed innovative technologies for crushing olives and malaxing and oil extraction. The new systems are far more efficient and cost-effective than the old methods, and the oil they produce is excellent. Knobel’s plant incorporates centrifuges and stainless steel hammer and disk mills. The very latest and finest methods of oil making.
When You Can't Stop (Harper McDaniel Book 2) Page 11
