“Get onboard. We’re going for a sail.”
30
The cabin was small. On both sides of the narrow passageway leading to the front, two seats were mounted. She sat on the port side and leaned against a plastic sliding window that would bring more light into the hold on a sunny day. The original porthole on the starboard side was also replaced by this modern-day version.
Frank stood on the deck behind the steering wheel. He maneuvered the ship at a snail’s pace out of the port. In this secluded area there were hardly any waves, so it felt like they were floating along on a quiet lake. Heleen looked out and saw no activity anywhere around them. Apparently they were the only ones sailing at this time.
Frank pressed the TRANSMIT button on the radio and began to speak in Spanish fluently. The harbor master’s response followed almost immediately. Frank responded with a short “vale” and placed the radio back in the transmitting equipment holder. He smiled arrogantly.
Despite Frank’s rapid pronunciation, she managed to make out two of the words he had said in Spanish: jefa and something that sounded like romantica. Jefa literally meant chief in the female form. It was also slang for “my wife,” which men often used jokingly to indicate who wears the pants in the family. She had learned that in Mallorca when she had asked Frank, of all people, what it meant. With a little imagination, she figured he had just said something like “I’m going to make a romantic trip with my wife.”
Her last bit of hope about his role being very small in this whole thing was disappearing fast. Her fingers slipped from the thin ledge to which she’d been clinging tightly. It was still possible that Frank got carried away in this case and that things happened that were beyond his control. Any evidence to the contrary, however strong it was on paper, could not wipe out the memory of their marriage. That’s why she’d decided to go and look for the truth: for her own peace of mind and also to clear his name.
The confrontation with Jorge Castellano made one thing clear about the situation. It was about a lot of money. Castellano and Gautier had made a pact. The Spaniard turned out to be a puppet, and the Frenchman and had died of an overdose. Somehow, someway, the insurance money was secured by a third party.
How Frank had become caught up in all of this was the big question. At the start of her journey, she had been fully convinced that he was dead. That he had fallen overboard and had drowned. But on the way to Spain she had not been so sure of that anymore. However remote, she still had one last glimmer of hope of a reunion with him. Now that she had found him alive he would have to give her a reasonable explanation of this absurd situation. It was impossible that she had been so wrong about Frank all this time. Despite all of the facts that so clearly spoke against him, she had been convinced that he had somehow been tricked into it all. Up until now.
Frank increased the speed; the hum of the engines became more powerful. They sailed along piles of rocks that formed an artificial reef. Fast-blinking red lights warned the ships sailing in and out about the rocky obstacles. Heleen looked at the lights and realized she had made a big mistake by entering this boat without any resistance. Yet she remained very calm. It was all becoming clear to her now.
Frank was the mastermind behind this whole operation, with or without a partner. Probably with a partner. How he had come to decide to take this insane step she would soon find out. The man at the helm was not the Frank from her memories. He was a dirty bastard.
The glimpse she got of little David had told the most important part of the story. He was Frank’s son. Genes don’t lie. Their greatest wish when they were together was to have a child, and it had never been fulfilled. In the garden she had seen how this scar in Frank’s life had been healed. By David. Seeing this had crippled her. Rather than breaking out in a complete tantrum, she had felt a deep need to be rescued when she saw the child. To be rescued by Frank. Instead she got stabbed in the back.
“Tell me the truth.”
Frank avoided her gaze.
“The truth is not very pretty,” he replied after a moment.
“Trust me, I can take it.”
He nodded and bowed his head down a few inches. Was that guilt?
Through the corner of her eye, Heleen looked at the subtle change in his body language. This also had to be an act. Like his soothing tone in the car and at the harbor. The excuses about Romina’s actions, the reassuring words telling her that nothing would happen to her—he was almost timid in his behavior … it was all part of the game that he was playing. His only concern was that she went along with it all without opposition. He was planning something—he was taking her somewhere. Until they got there, he would play the role of the husband she had loved so much, the love of her life.
Heleen saw the flashing red lights getting smaller. They were headed out to sea.
This was anything but a romantic trip. Unconsciously, she clenched her jaw. She was ready.
31
“I met Romina five years ago,” Frank said. “She had just started working as a secretary for the director of a chain that I did regular business with. And it was love at first sight.” He sighed rather theatrically. “That had nothing to do with our relationship, Heleen. That was excellent. It just happened to me.”
“That I can understand,” she replied, sounding slightly injured. “You hear that a lot.” During the past few minutes Heleen had figured out how to get herself out of this situation. In order not to arouse any suspicion, she had acted very timid and submissive. That’s how he knew her, as the naïve little housewife.
Frank nodded. “I should have been honest with you from the beginning. But yeah, in hindsight, it always looks different.”
His sigh drowned out the pounding of the diesel engines for a moment.
“So we had an affair. Romina had been divorced for two years. Before that she had been married for five years. Childless.” He quickly glanced at the nautical instruments before he continued. “Because our relationship was a sensitive matter, to say the least, we decided to keep it a secret. I did not want to hurt you, and Romina and I, more or less, had a business type of relationship—in her conservative family the traditional values are held in very high regard. Through my work, I arranged that the Costa Brava and Balearic areas solely became my responsibility. This meant I had to concentrate more on the hotel chains that had their headquarters in that area. That made it a lot easier for me to combine my work with spending time with Romina.
Heleen stared sheepishly ahead. His story made her sick. Without showing it, she continued searching for a way out.
“Then Romina became pregnant, something that had far-reaching consequences. Our life as we knew it was over. Our world was upside down: the problems quickly began to overshadow the moments of happiness, which we experienced far less. Romina finally came up with a brilliant idea, or at least, so it seemed at the time. Again, I should have just been honest with you from the get-go, and for that I apologize.”
Heleen could have strangled him. Apologize? You can’t apologize for destroying someone’s life!
“Because Romina couldn’t disclose her pregnancy to her family, her surroundings, or to her employer, she made up someone named Fernando Cervantes. He was a Spanish engineer who was abroad nine months out of the year. She had met him during a staff party in Barcelona and one thing had led to another. This took some of the pressure off. Her conservative parents did not like it. After her divorce she had suddenly become pregnant by some world traveler. They did not say it out loud, but in their hearts they thought it was a terrible disgrace. But the introduction of Cervantes to the world brought along a lot of problems. For me, it was still impossible to take on that role in the outside world. So it changed our meetings in Blanes to sneaky encounters in the strangest places. What should have been a high point in our lives had quickly become a low point. I couldn’t even be present at my son’s birth.”
Heleen had mentally prepared herself for this story. She knew that David was his son. But hearin
g him say it out loud was still hard. She had not realized that it was simply impossible to guard or protect herself from certain emotions. While he spoke of his relationship and the pregnancy, Frank had stomped on her soul and had pulverized it. She was nauseated and felt totally empty. All she had left was the broken pieces of the past, while he was working on an even brighter future. The grief was overwhelming. She felt a pain she had never experienced before.
“Are you okay?” Frank wanted to know.
“I’ll survive,” she replied. The throbbing sound from the engines hid the slight tremor in her voice.
He closed his eyes and shook his head gently. He suddenly seemed vulnerable.
“I’m sorry, Heleen. Not for my love for Romina or for David’s birth, but for my approach. I was convinced that telling you then would have only made matters worse. I was sure that you would never have accepted that I had fallen in love with another woman. Each time I contemplated telling you, I was immediately struck by horrifying images. I pictured you ranting and raving, cursing and crying. The consequences that it would bring forth also scared me to death. So then I decided not to do it and postpone it. It became a vicious circle from which I could not escape. Postponing it meant nothing changed or happened.”
He made a helpless gesture with his hand.
“When Romina became pregnant, I was overcome with mixed emotions. The sheer joy of fatherhood had a dark side. Our past, you know? That weighed heavily on my shoulders. How the hell could I tell you that I had fathered a child with another woman? That would have been inhumane. A huge blow after all those years that we had tried to have our own children. I simply wasn’t ready to take on that confrontation. So I had maneuvered myself into a position where it actually became impossible to face you. From that moment I constantly lived with a mask on. It hid the shame for my behavior.”
A silence fell.
32
“The following year, Romina’s parents died, one after the other in a very short period of time,” Frank continued a moment later.
Heleen wanted to scream loudly during the silence that had dropped. He should have damn well said something to her! As if her life hadn’t become an absolute living hell because of all this sneaking around? But she kept her mouth shut, partly because she was taken aback by his confession and partly because she was confused about whether his confession was all an act or actually sincere.
“It was a difficult time for her. She had gone back to work so she couldn’t spend much time with David. She brought him to day care in the morning and picked him up again in the late afternoon. The evenings she spent mostly behind her computer, while David slept. She couldn’t count on much support from her family. Her brother, Jorge, was a strange guy, a real slacker, and she only had occasional contact with him. She and her sister, Ana, no longer speak. Since childhood, those two have never gotten along. They only exchanged a few obligatory words at their parents’ funerals and that was it.
“We had to make do with meetings at varying times and places. Sometimes it all became too much for us, and I would just drive to Blanes, park my car on another street, run to her house, and creep in through the back door. But we could not keep that up forever. Something had to change.”
Heleen had managed to get her emotions under control a little bit. She carefully looked around, looking for a way out.
“A twenty-year-old cruiser,” Frank said. He seemed to have gotten wind of her searching eyes. “It was part of the inheritance. Jorge chose the bank account, which had very little in it, and Ana just took some stuff as mementos of her parents.”
“Poor Ana, an angel, surrounded by evil relatives,” Heleen replied cynically.
Frank forced a laugh. “She is the only one in the family you haven’t met yet. Maybe we should arrange for a meeting with Romina, Ana, and Jorge. What a reunion that would be.”
“So Jorge Castellano is her brother. That’s what I suspected all along.”
Frank checked the instruments extensively. He changed course. He made a demonstrative movement to the right. Heleen saw his hands slide across the steering wheel, and the wheel itself hardly moved at all. This ship more or less stayed on the same course. It was purely a diversion for Frank to gain some extra time. He wanted to keep her quiet by stretching out the story. Somewhere out there on the Mediterranean, where nobody would notice them, he would end her life.
“During a telephone conversation between Romina and him, something he said turned out to be very useful. At the time Romina and I had come up with at least a thousand and one ideas that could help to change to our lives. Many things were seriously considered, from starting a fast-food restaurant on the boulevard to robbing a bank. When Romina mentioned the conversation she’d had with Jorge, during another one of these brainstorms, discussing some of the most ridiculous ideas, the ball suddenly started rolling, and this plan began to develop.”
It was all moving too slowly for Heleen. She watched as the red lights turned into tiny pin drops; it wouldn’t take long before they disappeared out of sight completely. She had to speed up the conversation, because without some sort of reference to where the mainland was she wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Let me guess: Jorge brought up Vincent Gautier, an old queen who was totally in love with him. You suddenly saw an opportunity to execute your plan by using Gautier. An insurance scam, perhaps?”
Frank smiled with pity in his face.
“Jorge unintentionally gave us the idea. It was a casual remark he made about a gay couple he knew who allegedly committed insurance fraud. During a holiday trip, one of them had lost a valuable ring. Jorge said he suspected them to have hawked the ring somewhere or something like that. But the insurance paid them the money.
“This story got us thinking about how I could disappear from my life and how I could stay with Romina without having to worry about money. In the beginning we talked about it jokingly, but as time went by it became more and more serious. Insurance fraud was not a bad idea. Months of thought and preparation went into it. To have a good plan is one thing, but to execute it is far more complicated.”
Heleen felt a spark of anger ignite inside of her. The arrogant bastard. He was so full of himself. If you didn’t know any better, you would think he was fishing for a compliment. Still, she had to go along with it all. She could feel hurt on the inside, but had to do it without showing any visible aggression on the outside. She couldn’t give him a reason to be more alert and sharper than he already was. Her only chance of survival, once again, seemed to be the element of surprise. Frank was as strong as an ox.
“I can see how all of that went,” she said. “Gautier had to be eased into the deal. Once he agreed you unfolded the whole plan with Jorge and that meant you needed to sign a domestic partnership contract.”
Frank nodded in acknowledgement. “Yes, that’s the short version of what happened. There were mutual agreements made on the percentages to be received from the amount expected. Everyone had to know in advance what their cut was after the money was divided. Once we were all in agreement, then the details were figured out together.”
“You mean details like applying for a two hundred thousand euro loan to help pay off the high insurance premium each month?”
“I knew you would find out about that eventually. But I also knew that they would never be able to get their money from you after I was officially declared missing. Then you would not be expected to pay it back to them, and I needed it very much at the time to put our plan, our future, into motion.
“You’re just too good for this world, Frank.” She shook her head in disbelief. “But why all of this drama? You could have just divorced me. That would have been far less complicated.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, ran his fingertips across his eyelids, and sighed deeply.
“It was impossible; that’s what I just tried to explain to you. Besides, a divorce would have ruined me. Even if I could have managed to find a decent way to resolve it with you,
which was highly unlikely, my employer would not have tolerated it. There is no misunderstanding about relationships in the workplace. It would have meant an immediate dismissal. If that had happened I would have ended up working at a fast-food restaurant in Blanes, for eight euro an hour.”
After hearing this ridiculous explanation Heleen wanted to get on with it. Time was of the essence now. She had a plan, but first she wanted an answer to the question that had been on her mind for quite some time now.
“How did you manage to get off the cruise ship without being seen?”
Frank looked straight ahead into the dark night. “I don’t think I got off the ship without anyone having seen me; there were far too many people around. However, no one recognized me as Frank Eldering.”
He shrugged.
“The simplest ideas are often the best ones. In addition to all of the Filipinos that worked on the ship, there were also people of other nationalities working onboard as pursers, Jorge instance. After I left our cabin to go for my supposed walk, he hid me down below in the hold. I had plenty of time down there to change into the purser suit that Jorge had left there for me. When we docked in Barcelona, he gave me a big bag of garbage. I put my clothes in the trash and followed Jorge up the stairs. I carried the bag up high in front of my chest, so that my face was hidden from all the security cameras and passersby. The loading and unloading of the ship was now in full swing, the fresh new supplies in, the garbage out. In the rush of it all we walked quietly down the gangplank, and nobody paid any mind to two pursers who brought a leftover bag of garbage to a port container. Once I was in the harbor I drove away in a car Romina had parked there, and Jorge went back to the ship.”
Heleen had heard enough. She now had a good overall picture of what happened, the plan and its impact. She could care less about the few remaining missing pieces at this point.
Cruise: A Thriller Page 12
