The Devil on Chardonnay (31 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

Pirates

The sword flashed in the bright sunlight, and Boyd ducked, hearing the swish as it passed over his head.  Constantine towered over him, the pirate's chest covered only by crossed bandoliers of .50 caliber bullets and an oil-tanned leather vest.  His bulging biceps strained against serpentine silver bracelets, and a thick leather belt held up baggy, bloodsoaked canvas breeches.  He roared in frustration as Boyd ducked away, his own sword heavy in his hand, slowing him down.

Constantine’s massive hobnail boots shook the wooden deck as he pursued Boyd, scurrying beneath the barrels of cannon, still hot from the just-ended sea battle.  Men in pitched combat shouted and cried out all around them as they hacked, stabbed and died.   The wounded ran to the rail, slipping in pools of blood as they threw themselves over the side, preferring a 20-foot drop and sharks below to death at the hands of Portuguese pirates.

Coming to the bow, Boyd turned to make his stand.  He swung the heavy sword in an arc, and Constantine stepped nimbly back, then in and, with a backhand motion, knocked the sword from Boyd’s hands.  Empty-handed now, Boyd lunged, hoping for a leg hold to take down the man who seemed to be even larger than a moment before.  A blow from the butt of the big man’s sword stunned him, and he fell to the deck.  He rolled quickly over, expecting the blade.  Strong arms grabbed him, pulled him fully upright and swung him back toward the forward mast, pinning him to it, feet off the deck.

“Not so fast little man.  It wants you,”  Constantine said, his voice like distant thunder.

The clamor around them subsided, and only pirates stood, watching.

“Who?”  Boyd wheezed.

“It.”  Constantine laughed again, and stood aside, pointing with his sword toward the open passageway.  Stairs descended into the dark …

********

 Only the seat belt kept Boyd from leaping over the seat in front of him and landing in the lap of a plump Portuguese schoolteacher returning to the islands from a music symposium in Lisbon. 

“Por favor, senhor!”  The stewardess ran back to Boyd and touched his shoulder.

Looking around with wild eyes and panic, Boyd slowly realized where he was.  He’d not slept the night before in Lisbon and had finally dropped off on the plane to the Azores.  “It” and the pirates and Constantine faded, but his heart still raced.

“Obrigata, senhora.  Un cerveza, por favor,” he mumbled, sitting back down.

Wars are won and lost in battles, and battles come down to skirmishes, and skirmishes are won and lost by individual men, eye-to-eye with their enemy, hot and tired and scared.  Men who have trained a lifetime, then travel, march, run, climb and fight until only sheer will is left.  Two men, each peering into the face of death an arm’s length away, decide it all. 

Boyd’s hand shook as the stewardess handed him a beer, wrapped neatly in a damp napkin.

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

Porto Martins, Azores

“
They are boys, here for basic training.  They are not men for a fight,” Ferreira said.  He was somber, speaking of the Portuguese Army recruits training on the island.

They were sitting in a low-ceilinged, dark bar with thick volcanic stone walls and small windows overlooking a tiny bay with a dozen dories pulled up on the concrete landing.  Rain fell steadily without wind and splashed into the street from a broken downspout, right in front of the open door.

Angeja nodded, drinking a Coke and stubbing out a cigarette, and said, “One frigate is with the tuna boats nearly to Iceland.  The other, at Ponta Delgada, will go to Corvo in the morning.  Constantine’s boat will not escape, but we cannot send men onto the island yet.”  

“No airfield there?”  Boyd asked.

“There is an airfield there.  The runway is only 800 meters.  We land the Casa there every two weeks in the winter, or if they call an emergency.  People go to Flores by ferry the rest of the year.  It is for the people who live on the island to visit the other islands.  We begin the flights in November,” Angeja said, earnestly, explaining why they couldn’t rush Corvo with what they had. 

“I suppose if we went in there early, they’d know something was up?”  Boyd asked, knowing the answer already.  “It sure would be nice to know what’s on that island.”

“There is no hurry,’ Ferreira said.  “In a week, we will have two frigates, two U.S. destroyers, a company of airborne troops from Lisbon, and your Marines.  Nothing Constantine can do would help him then.”

“OK.  I’ll wait,”  Boyd said, finishing his beer and still uneasy but resigned to waiting.  “You guys gonna eat here?”

“No, I must go home.  My wife …”  Angeja took the opportunity to bow out.  He pulled some bills out to cover his tab.

“Yes, eat with me.  We will have a good meal,” Ferreira said, motioning for another Scotch. 

“Not any of that chourico?”  Boyd asked suspiciously, remembering the fried red sausage that tasted like toenails. 

“No.  Polvo guisado, it is very good.  A man is going to meet us here tonight.  He is a fisherman who is home from the tuna fleet.  He knows Constantine and his island.”

Boyd and Ferreira wished Angeja a pleasant meal with his wife, then stood in the door with their drinks and watched him sprint to his car across the road.  The low clouds had darkened the early evening an hour before sunset, and the sea was a dull gray, with sullen swells grudgingly breaking at the last minute to roll into the rocks not 40 yards from the little fisherman’s bar that sheltered them.

A half-smoked cigarette dangled from Ferreira’s mouth, and his graying hair ruffed up in back with the breeze now beginning to come off the water, as he stood looking over the boats and the water running across the road and down the concrete ramp.  He looked very much like he belonged here, though Boyd knew he was from the teeming slums of Lisbon and had spent his youth killing Africans and Cubans in Angola and Mozambique.  They stepped back across the heavily beamed threshold and re-entered the simple restaurant.

Their table had been transformed.  A fresh red tablecloth had been laid and set with traditional brown glazed pottery dishes with a ring of tiny red flowers around the rim.  The bowl in the center of the table was filled with a steaming, purple dark stew, and a pottery pitcher held wine.  Two bottles of Luso, the local mineral water, were open, and each plate had a few shreds of lettuce and carrot.  A loaf of heavy Azorean bread was cut into odd-size chunks and piled in a napkin-lined basket.  Butter and fresh cheese, only days from being milk from the local black-and-white cows, were in matching bowls.  A side dish of piri, the local hot pepper sauce, awaited application to the bread and cheese.

“How did we come to know about this fisherman coming here tonight?” Boyd  asked, sitting down, nodding at the owner, smiling to hide the uncertainty the sight of the stew was causing to his normally robust appetite.

“The island people know what is going on here,” Ferreira said, thickly buttering a piece of bread and pouring them each a healthy large glass of the heavy red wine. “They trust me, and they trust you Americans.  If he has broken international law, they will not shield him.  Also, Constantine has made enemies.”

The owner, standing in the door to the kitchen with an apron around his middle, beamed with pleasure at this opportunity to serve his renowned polvo guisado to such distinguished guests.

“So, what is this?”  Boyd asked again, peering down at round bits of purple meat in a dark stew with onions and spices and a heavy sheen of oil on the top.

“I don’t know the name in English,” Ferreira said, digging in to his with a large spoon.  “They have eight arms.”

“Octopus?”  Boyd asked, looking again at the stew.  He could see suction cups on some of the pieces.

“Yes, better taste it.  Augusto will be offended.”

Boyd took a tentative bite.  The octopus was rubbery, with an oily, garlicky taste.  He smiled at Augusto and took a big bite.  It went well with the heavy red wine and crusty bread.

“Vinho de cheiro,” Ferreira said, holding up the wine.  “It is a local wine.  The vines grow on the ground along the black lava soil.” 

He finished his, and the heavy dark red wine stained even the empty glass. 

The pitcher was refilled, and they finished the stew, made purple from the liberal addition of wine during the cooking process.  They lingered over the rest of the bread.  Ferreira was loosened considerably by the several double Scotches before dinner and the two liters of wine they had consumed.

He spoke of the local bullfights.  Wild bulls are brought into the streets where they run free, while young men of the island sprint up to touch them, then leap over fences and through windows to escape.  The old people watch and remember when it was they who sailed over the same wall, fleeing the grandfather of that same bull.  Then Ferreira told tales of storms that had swept away fishing boats with their entire crews, never to be seen again.

A larger wave crashed against the rocks, and the wind picked up, blowing water onto the concrete floor.  Boyd looked up to see a figure pass the window in front and stop in the door.  Underneath the worn yellow slicker, he wore faded jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.  Boyd noticed cow manure and mud on his nearly knee-high rubber boots as he stepped from the now dark road into the light.

The man paused a moment, shaking rain from his slicker, eyes adjusting, checking out the corners and the kitchen through the partially drawn curtain.  His face was furrowed by the sun, and his tanned hands looked too large for the sleeves of his faded shirt.  He walked to the bar and scraped the bar stool as he sat.  Augusto, surprised at another customer on such a night, entered from the kitchen where he had been eating his own meal.

“Boa tarde,” Augusto said, laying down a small paper napkin.

Boyd recognized only the greeting. The rest of their conversation was beyond his superficial grasp of the language.  Ferreira ignored the man completely. 

A car slowed in front of the bar, pulled off the road and parked behind Ferreira’s Toyota.  A small man rushed across the street, protected from the now gusting wind by a thin leather jacket and gray slacks.  He, too, paused at the door before entering and joining the first man at the bar.  He ignored Boyd and Ferreira but spoke to Augusto and the other man. 

When Augusto returned to the kitchen, Ferreira scooted his chair around to make room for another, and then leaned over to pull two more chairs to their table.  The two men brought their beers to the table and sat down.

Another large wave crashed outside, and the rain was producing a puddle in the middle of the floor.  Augusto walked quickly from the kitchen as if the water was a new event and closed the front door.  The crash of water from the broken downspout was only muffled, and the room seemed smaller.  The smell of cooked octopus was stronger.

“Don’t use the name of the man we are here to talk about,” Ferreira said as they all leaned into the center of the table and spoke in Portuguese.  “Our friends are afraid of retribution from his family.”

After 10 minutes he turned to Boyd. 

“They are very angry.  He has taken control of the island by moving his fishing boats and crews there.  They have forced out or intimidated the people who lived there before.  This has all happened in the past year.  The young were only too happy to work for him, and the old ones content to watch the television brought to them by the big new satellite antenna he built.  They get all the channels from the big European satellite we can’t get here.”

“Do these guys work for him?”

“Mauricio did, but was fired because he didn’t want to go to Africa anymore.  It’s a rough crossing.  The older one is his uncle, who worked on the boats before the new business.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ve been smuggling guns.”

“What happened to the cheese?”

“They don’t do that anymore.  Freighters stop at Corvo at night and unload.  They run the guns into Liberia and Mauritania.  They bring back hashish and wild animals.”

“What kind of animals?”  Boyd asked quickly.

“Monkeys.”

“Shit.  Guns and monkeys, couldn’t be any worse than that,” Boyd said, shaking his head and looking out the window.

“Oh, yeah, it could,” Ferreira said.  “When Mauricio came home from Corvo, he told his uncle he was on the last trip to Africa.  They traded a metal suitcase for a wooden box about the size of a case of wine, and it took two men to carry.  They’re gassing up to do it again.”

The waves now were cresting at the entrance to the bay, and the rain splashed at the window, and the wind was a constant low howl.  Winter in the North Atlantic was beginning.

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

Cairo

“This is Lester Holt with NBC News interrupting 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.'  We have breaking news from Africa.  The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Sudan has spread to Egypt.  We are going live to our chief foreign affairs correspondent, Richard Engel, in Cairo.  Richard, what do you have there?”

“Thank you Lester.  Behind me is the main highway from Cairo south, toward Sudan.  Units of the Egyptian Army are streaming by, headed into the desolate Sudan border area where the Ebola quarantine line has been breached.  Thousands of jihadists, bent on testing their faith against what they are calling 'The Wind of Allah,' flanked the quarantine barrier at Wadi Halfa and drove to the jihadist camp at Khartoum.  Many died there, and hundreds, now sick with Ebola, streamed back across the border making a mad dash for hospitals in Cairo.  They have been stopped at Aswan, 400 miles to our south.  Film taken this afternoon as we flew over the Khartoum area shows the dead are littering the desert.  Though they brought tanker trucks filled with fuel on their journey, hundreds are now stranded in the desert without fuel.  Others have plunged into the swamp along the Nile toward South Sudan, where the South Sudan Army has set up a quarantine line at Malakal. Lester …”

“Richard, is this a general uprising of Islamic warriors?”