Authors: Kate Wilhelm
Finally, a more distant pale glow indicated that they were approaching Belize City. She watched the headlights behind them brighten and dim again as David sped toward the city, toward safety. They came to the shantytown, the shacks all dark with few streetlamps in this area, few lights anywhere. The following lights were keeping the same distance as far as Barbara could tell, but as David slowed driving into the city, they became brighter again.
“Hold on,” David said a few seconds later. He turned off the car lights and made a turn onto a side street, throwing her against the door in spite of his warning. From the backseat Robert groaned and made a deep sobbing sound. David drove two blocks, then stopped at the curb and turned off the engine. “If they turn this way, duck down,” he said, twisting around to watch the street they had left. She watched, too.
Very soon the other car drove past the street. David waited another minute, then took a walkie-talkie from his pocket and made a connection.
“I've got them both. Robert needs a doctor. We have a follower.” After listening, he said, “Right.” He clicked the walkie-talkie off and put it back in his pocket, turned the key, and started to drive again, still without lights. There was city light, a few house lights or yard lights, enough. At each cross street, he stopped long enough to make sure no other car in sight was moving, then drove on, keeping to residential sections of the city, as far as Barbara could tell. Then, at a wider cross street, flanked by office buildings or government buildings, he flicked on the high beams, turned them off again, and waited until there was an answering signal of lights on and off. He pulled ahead and into a parking lot. Two men rushed to meet him as he stepped from the car. They held a brief conversation before one opened the back door. With two of them on one side of the car, David on the other, they maneuvered Robert out. He was limp, unconscious or simply too weak to walk. They carried him to a waiting van, put him inside, and two of them got in and drove away. David returned to take his place behind the wheel.
He sat with his forehead pressed against the steering wheel for a minute or two, then started the engine again.
“David, will you please tell me what's going on? Who are you? Who you're working for? Something, anything.”
“Not now,” he said, sounding very tired. “Help me watch for that prowling car. Keep in mind that if they spot us, they'll start shooting and just be done with it. They might have turned off their lights exactly the way I did.”
He drove as before, relying on the sparse lighting of the city, approaching intersections cautiously.
“At least tell me where we're going,” Barbara said, watching parked cars, watching cross streets on her side. She dreaded going back to her hotel, to where they might come looking for her.
“I'm taking you to the waterfront where you're going to get in a rowboat and be taken to where you'll be safe,” he said, pausing at an intersection. “That's where we'll have to move fast. There are lights all over the place down there and people moving around, fishermen mostly, getting ready to sail at dawn.”
A few minutes later she said, “Headlights coming.”
David backed into a parking space at the curb and they both ducked down out of sight until a black sedan drew near on the cross street and passed, moving slowly.
“Good,” David said when the other car was blocks away. “They're still using lights.”
He crossed the intersection and soon after that the tourist hotels came in sight. He kept going, and didn't stop again until they had reached the waterfront street. At last he pulled over, not at the docks, where the launches and pleasure boats were at anchor, but much farther down, and, as he had said, there were lights in the area, lights on boats, men carrying boxes, calling out to one another, loading boats, other cars and trucks pulling in. Some boats were already slowly moving out to sea.
He scanned the boats, then turned the headlights on and off quickly. A flashlight flicked on and off.
“Final act,” David said. Before he opened his car door, he took a careful look around, then said, “Let's go.”
Holding her arm, he hurried her across the street and to a wharf where small boats were tied. Almost at the end a man was standing by a post. He nodded to David, stepped into a rowboat, and held out his hand to Barbara.
“David,” she said, “thanks. Just thanks.”
“Sure,” he said. “Now get your ass in that boat and beat it.” He grinned at her, but he looked exhausted.
She took the other man's hand and stepped into the rowboat, which tilted alarmingly.
“Sit down,” the man in the boat said. He took his place at the oarlock while David untied the boat. David gave it a push, and the boat glided away from the wharf.
Barbara watched David run across the street toward the car until he was lost to sight. She would never know more about him than she did at the moment, she suspected. Not whom he worked for or what his real mission was, or how he had learned that she and Robert were at the finca. He must have carried Robert to the car and left him there to return for her, and she was grateful for that much. That he had taken it for granted that she might have killed her guard suggested that he had left a dead man, possibly more than one, when he rescued Robert.
And now she was in a rowboat heading out to sea, away from other people, away from lights, with a man she had never seen before.
20
As the rowboat was rocked by the wakes of fishing boats heading out to sea, Barbara huddled on the wooden seat, holding on as tightly as she could with both hands. Soon the oarsman turned away from the seagoing crafts until the little boat was far enough from them not to be affected, and the swells of the ocean lifted and lowered it. She continued to hold on even though being swamped didn't seem quite as imminent. Now she prayed she would not get seasick. When most of the lights were well behind them, the man at the oars began to turn the boat parallel to shore.
Dark hulks of boats loomed to her left, eclipsing shore lights, revealing them again as the little boat rode the dark water. Finally the rower began to slow his steady rowing, and he was turning again. Where the shore lights had been to her left, more and more they were straight ahead. He pulled in at the side of one of the big boats where pale lights revealed a ladder. On deck someone was standing, waiting.
“Go on up,” her oarsman said, holding the boat steady.
She climbed the ladder. A hand reached out to her and she stepped onto the yacht.
“Welcome aboard, Barbara,” Gabe Newhouse said. “Let's get you out of the light. This way.” He led her to a narrow door, down several steps, and through a passage to a galley. “That's better,” he said. “Have a seat. What can I get you? A drink, wine, water?”
“You can start by telling me what the hell is going on,” she said as she sat down in a booth and drew in a long breath. “And if that's coffee I smell, that's what I'd like more than anything.”
“At this hour? It's after four. I've been drinking it to stay awake, but you must be ready to get some sleep.”
“It won't keep me awake. I won't sleep until I have a few answers.”
He laughed. “Coffee it is. Have you had anything to eat all day?”
“No.”
“Ah, then an omelette is in order. I'm pretty good with omelettes.”
“Gabe, spare me the good host routine. I've had a rotten day. I want to know what's going on.”
“Will you tell me about your day?” he said, pouring coffee into a mug. He brought it and the carafe to the booth. “Sugar, cream?”
“No. I suggest an exchange of information. I tell you nothing unless you talk, too.”
“Ah, quid pro quo. Finally the lawyer in you rears its head,” he said. “Fair enough. Who starts?” He was taking things from a built-in refrigerator as he spoke.
“You do,” she said. The coffee was heavenly. “How did David know where we were? Who sent him to get us? Who are you both working for or with? I'm in a game I don't know, don't know the rules, don't know who the other players are, or even how many teams there are.”
He nodded. “Right. But one suggestion. Let's establish some ground rules. We limit it to this one day for the time being. There will be time to talk tomorrow, actually later today, but for now we speak only of the day just past. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
He came back to the booth and handed her an ice bag wrapped in a towel. “Keeps the swelling down a bit,” he said. “Who did it? Santos?”
She nodded. The ice bag felt good on her cheek that was still hot and throbbing. He returned to the counter and began to break eggs into a bowl.
“Yesterday,” he said, “around noon, Miles Ronstadt drove out to the finca to nurse his orchids, but he was turned back. Someone told him he couldn't tend them, an important meeting was taking place. It worried him. Some plants would wilt and drop the flowers if they weren't watered, or something like that. He turned around and drove to the little cluster of workers' houses down the road. He was friendly with some of the women there who went to the finca every afternoon to prepare the evening meal. He thought to have one of them water the orchids in his place.” He began to grate cheese.
There was an alarming throb of engines and the yacht made a shuddering movement. “We're sailing? Where are you taking me now?”
“We're sailing. I've been saying for a week that I'm ready to take off, that any minute now we'll depart Belize. That minute just came.”
“Where to?”
He turned to smile at her. “Cancún. But that's beyond our agreement.”
Barbara finished her coffee and poured more.
“It seems,” Gabe said, returning to the cheese grater, “that Robert and Anaia are both very popular among the people of the forest. Ronstadt's friend was concerned because the kitchen workers had also been told not to come today, and one of the field-workers told her husband that Santos had seized Robert and he was being held at the finca. They all know what's going on, of course, and they're afraid of Julius Santos and his hired guns. They didn't know what to do with the information they had. Since no one can trust anyone these days, they didn't dare go to the police. So she told Ronstadt. And he, poor man, was in the same quandary. Who to tell? What to do? I imagine his first inclination was to do nothing, put it out of mind. His informant said he should tell Papa Pat. See what I mean? They know things. They know Papa Pat and Robert are close, and they both are close to Anaia. Papa Pat would know what to do, was the implication.”
He was watching his omelette now, and the aroma of food was overwhelming. Barbara suddenly felt faint with hunger and could hear her stomach complaining loudly.
“Well, Ronstadt told the woman he didn't know how to get in touch with Papa Pat. She told him the priest had registered births earlier and had mentioned to several different people that today was his day to exchange books in Belize City. Ronstadt might find him at the used bookstore if he hurried.”
He added cheese to the omelette and carefully folded it.
“To make a long story short,” he said, “that's what Ronstadt did.” He turned to give Barbara an appraising look. “I think you put a little starch in his spine, Barbara. With your pep talk, your suggestion that he should write a book. Anyway, he drove back to Belize City and found Papa Pat coming out of a copy shop on the same street as the bookstore. And minutes later Papa Pat told me.”
Barbara closed her eyes. Papa Pat was working with Gabe and David? One of them?
Gabe brought the omelette to the booth, went back for a plate with a thick piece of bread and a butter dish. He sat opposite her. “Eat,” he said, “and I'll wrap up my part of the bargain.
“About an hour later,” Gabe said, “Papa Pat called again to tell me that he had sent a courier to you with some important documents, and that you were not there to receive them. The courier waited a while, but of course you did not return. Papa Pat found that quite disturbing, as I did, since he said you were expecting the documents and you had agreed to wait for the delivery. It wasn't hard to find out that you had left with the boy, Philip. Nor was it hard to figure out where you had been taken. End of story.”
She took another bite, then opened her purse to get her notebook. She handed it to him. “My side of the bargain,” she said. “You can read it while I eat. The omelette is wonderful. Thank you.”
Neither spoke again while she finished eating everything he had provided and finished drinking her coffee.
“A long day,” Gabe said, handing back her notebook. “I wonder if they would have thought of that and taken it from you.”
“I wondered the same thing,” she said, and took out the Eliot volume. “It's in here, too. Santos had looked through it earlier, and I hoped no one would give it a glance again.” She fanned open the pages to show him the many annotations.
He laughed softly. “Good thinking.”
“How did David get sent out there?” she asked then.
“And why did you get in the Jeep with Philip?” he countered.
“He had taken me to meet Robert before and I thought he had been sent this time,” she said without hesitation.
“David and I met on the terrace as we'd been doing almost every day, usually in the company of the broncos. But now and then we managed to talk alone. We worked out the plan. It had to wait until very late, very dark. He couldn't take on all the king's men by himself.”
“He didn't have to,” she said angrily. “How many resources do you actually have? The men who picked up Robert, the crew on this yacht, the man who rowed me out here, probably others, as well. You sat by and let that boy get killed, let Robert get tortured. Did it even matter to you and your allies?”
He regarded her soberly for a long moment, then nodded. “It mattered, but there are bigger issues involved. I think few here have any idea of what you call my resources, and it has to be that way for the time being. Robert would have suffered unimaginable agonies before he told them where to find Anaia, and he would have given them some false leads first, but eventually they probably would have broken him. It was imperative that he not reach that point, and it did not take an army of men to achieve that goal.”