Turned to Stone (14 page)

19

“Oh my God!” cried Mercedes San Román. “What happened?”

Kraniotis poked his head into the container and confirmed that it was empty.

“They’ve taken everything!”

“Nobody leaves here,” Amatriaín ordered, his face etched with worry. “Azcárate, come with me.”

Jaime followed him out into the passageway and up the ladder to the upper deck. There, he stepped into Amatriaín’s path, blocking him from going farther. “I suppose now you’ll tell me I was right and we should’ve finished the job instead of going out for dinner?”

“Damn it, Azcárate. You must promise me you won’t say anything about this.”

“What about freedom of the press? Are you afraid the public will find out we went on a seafood bender and left the ship unguarded?”

“Azcárate, don’t play games with me. This is serious.”

“Calm down. I won’t say anything until we know what happened.”

“You’d better not. It would be a disaster if the world found out all that artwork was stolen from right under our noses.”

“Did you see the port guard? He waved at us as if nothing had happened. There’s no way anyone could’ve emptied the hold without alerting him. He’s in it up to his neck.”

“I agree. Bribery’s rampant here.”

“Not just here. What surprises me is how fast they emptied the container. Maybe we should search the ship before—”

Suddenly he realized Amatriaín was looking past him, over his shoulder. In the half-light, Jaime thought he could see the man’s tanned face taking on a yellowish hue. He looked like he was about to be sick. “What is it?”

Then Jaime saw it, too. He went stiff.

A bluish smoke was rising up the ladder from the belly of the ship and moving directly toward them. “What’s that?” Jaime asked.

“I don’t know. Could be steam.”

“Steam isn’t blue.” Jaime wondered why the rest of the team wasn’t coming out. “Wait here, I’m going down.”

“Down? We have to sound the alarm. If the thieves are still here—”

“Can’t you see the others aren’t coming out? The smoke is probably keeping them from finding the exit.”

“I’m in charge, Azcárate. I won’t let you—”

Jaime didn’t wait for Amatriaín to finish giving his order. Under cover of the thickening fog that was gathering on deck, he slipped through the hatch. The smoke was even heavier below deck. Jaime retraced his steps until he found the passageway wall and, pressing himself against it, advanced until he reached the door to the hold. He was surprised to find that it was closed now, and even more surprised that there seemed no way to open it.

Beneath his feet the ground began to vibrate and his limbs felt slightly numb. The trembling grew stronger until it felt as if the whole ship was shaking. He quickly realized what was happening: the engines had been started and the
Artemis
was beginning to move off in the water. He banged several times on the hold door. “Hey! You in there! Can you hear me?”

He pushed with all his might, but the door wouldn’t budge. He had felt the same sense of powerlessness when he’d been locked in the walk-in freezer in Casa Genaro, though at the time he’d been fighting to save himself, not to rescue others. He missed Roberto Barrero. If the potbellied security guard were there, he’d smash down the door with his body or take out the bolt with one clean shot. In that moment, Jaime understood that his only hope was to use Amatriaín’s weapon to shoot off the lock. He dashed back up to the deck and was left breathless.

The
Artemis
was already sliding past the wharves toward the open sea. Whoever had started the engines was intent on sailing away with both cargo and passengers. Then it hit him: this was more than a curse or a robbery. It was a hijacking!

He looked around for Amatriaín, but the freighter’s deck, as far as he could see, was deserted. Why hadn’t the police shown up yet? How could they not have noticed a giant cargo ship leaving port in the middle of the night? “Amatriaín!” he bellowed. There was no reply.

The wharves slipped past impassively. From the front of the ship, Jaime could just make out the lighthouse that marked the entrance to the harbor. Then he heard something to the stern: part human-like cry, part synthesized sound. When he turned his heart gave a leap of joy. Like a sardine swimming after a sperm whale, a little police patrol boat was pursuing the
Artemis
.

Jaime climbed onto the railing and gripped it with one hand while waving with the other at the two men in the motorboat. They were screaming through a megaphone, demanding that the ship stop. The freighter was travelling at no more than five knots, and the motorboat overtook it easily. Feeling euphoric, Jaime smiled, shouted, and waved so that the team’s rescuers could see him.

Suddenly, a yellow trail streaked out from somewhere in the ship, travelling toward the patrol boat. As it struck the boat a tremendous explosion of fire and shattered metal lit up the sky and then rained down into the sea. The motorboat and its occupants had been pulverized in an instant.

A shockwave hit the
Artemis
and Jaime fell to the deck, the smile wiped clean off his face. Despair overcame him as he realized that all hope of them being rescued had died with those men.

Who had launched that projectile? And from where?

It occurred to him then that screaming like a madman hadn’t been his best idea.

He heard a gunshot, and a bullet whistled past him. Jaime hit the deck and crawled between two shipping containers. He could make out the sound of a firefight in the direction of the stern. He assumed Amatriaín was trying to keep their attackers at bay until reinforcements arrived.

When the shooting stopped, he feared the worst. Their assailants might have abandoned ship, an outcome that would warrant another seafood feast. But they could just as easily have killed, wounded, or captured Amatriaín, and Jaime knew that if they had, he would soon meet the same fate.

How had he ended up in this situation? He was just a journalist who wrote about art!

It was a question he’d been asking himself for far too many years.

He was torn between the desire to stay hidden and an impulse to jump overboard. Neither seemed like a good idea. If he stayed put, he would become one of the hostages. If he jumped, he’d be abandoning his colleagues like a yellow-bellied rat.

He decided to jump. If he was lucky he could reach the shore undetected and get help.

Before he got to the gunwale, he came across a body. To his relief, it wasn’t Amatriaín’s, but that of a heavily built man dressed in commando gear. Jaime found it reassuring that the EHU officer had eliminated at least one of their adversaries. A pistol lay nearby. Jaime picked it up. Its weight in his hand made him feel more confident, though given his marksmanship, he knew he’d be better off avoiding an encounter with a living enemy.

He climbed down to the hold and aimed at the door lock, but the sound of creaking timber startled him before he could shoot. Unable to see through the darkness and smoke, he aimed blindly down the passageway. All he could hear was the beating of his heart.

But he could tell someone was there.

Driven by some survival instinct, he lifted the pistol the way Roberto had taught him—arms outstretched, knees bent—and pressed the trigger. It was virtually impossible to miss in such tight quarters—but still that’s what he did. The sound of footsteps grew louder. He fired again, but this time the pistol made only a metallic click. He was cornered, and he’d run out of bullets. Behind him was the locked hold door, and in front of him, an armed man drawing closer. There was no point in resisting; the ship had left port and soon they’d be on a course to Salamina.

Jaime could smell gunpowder. A silhouette appeared through the smoke. The figure, dressed entirely in black and wearing a face mask, signaled to him to walk out in front.

Reluctantly, Jaime let the masked man direct him to the deck with an assault rifle. Along the port gunwale he saw two others holding Amatriaín prisoner. Both wore the same kind of night-vision mask and held the same rifle as his captor.

What was happening? This reminded him of the video games he played from time to time with Roberto.

“They’re pirates,” Amatriaín said through clenched teeth. “They want the freighter and all its cargo.”

Jaime turned and looked at his captor, trying unsuccessfully to make out some feature of the man’s face. Neither he nor the other two men said anything. They must have been trained to remain silent, and they were doing a pretty good job of it.

“What have you done with the crew and our colleagues? Did you kill them like you did the port police?” said Amatriaín.

The absence of a reply infuriated him. His eyes blazed. “I demand to know what you’re going to do with us and where you’re taking this ship!”

One pirate signaled almost imperceptibly with his head and the man nearest Amatriaín dealt him a blow to the stomach with the butt of his rifle.

Amatriaín’s knees buckled and he fell to the ground, panting.

Jaime clenched his fists but did nothing. This was no game. For now, his best move was to keep quiet and still.

The smoke was now enveloping the ship, making it impossible to see anything but dreamlike forms and spectral lights. Jaime weighed their chances of escaping. If there had been a slim possibility before, now there was none. He looked at Amatriaín, who remained lying on the floor, holding his side. He bent and took the EHU officer’s hands in his own, causing him to groan with pain as he pulled him up to a sitting position. Amatriaín then climbed to his feet and nodded his gratitude as he rubbed his stomach where he’d been struck.

At that moment a door squeaked and a man with a red handkerchief tied over his head appeared among them.

“Just what we needed,” Jaime mumbled. “Who’s this? Captain Blood?”

The new arrival whispered something to one of the pirates, and the figure immediately drew back. Then he nodded at the other two, who stood at attention and then disappeared into the smoke. The man stood in front of the two prisoners and glanced from one to the other.

“Vicente Amatriaín and Jaime Azcárate,” he said in a mocking tone. The words were in Spanish, but his accent was Italian. “This really is my lucky day.”

Jaime stayed silent. He could think of a thousand things to say, but none of them would improve their situation. He thought he’d let the stranger explain himself, but then he realized the man was not going to explain a thing. Instead, he took a couple of steps away and then spun back around, pointing an automatic pistol at them.

“We’ll be finished in a few minutes’ time, but I can’t leave the ship without finishing the job my sister left half-done.”

As if in slow motion, Jaime saw the man’s finger leave the barrel and curve down over the trigger.

It was true what people said; in the end, a person’s life really does flash before his eyes.

His birth on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Alexandria.

His training as an art historian at the Complutense University of Madrid, where he met Paloma. His travels to Egypt and his return. His time as a scriptwriter for a TV mystery series.

His reunion with Laura Rodríguez. His appointment at
Arcadia
and all the adventures he’d had since.

After all that, this miserable freighter was about to become his tomb. Jaime gave a wry smile. He had come into the world on a ship and he was about leave it on another, in virtually the same waters.

He closed his eyes and prepared himself for the shot, which came two seconds later. He felt no pain, just a current of air to his right. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Amatriaín had launched himself at their captor and run his throat through with some kind of grappling hook.

The pirate, his eyes bulging in horror, was bent double and blood gushed from his mouth. His expression betrayed a hatred that was even greater than his pain.
“Porco albino . . .”
He crashed to the ground like a felled tree. Jaime let out all the air he’d been holding and looked at Amatriaín, who still held the hook, dripping with blood.

“What just happened?”

“I found this by the port gunwale and figured it wouldn’t hurt to hide a weapon nearby.” Amatriaín was panting. He didn’t take his eyes off the body. “It’s one of the grapnels these bastards used to board us.”

“That looks serious.”

“ ‘Serious’? He’s dead.”

“Not him, you!”

Amatriaín touched his shoulder and discovered that he was indeed wounded. The pirate had shot Amatriaín as he attacked.

“Hold still.” Jaime took the handkerchief off the dead man and used it as a tourniquet on Amatriaín. He pulled the knot tight and examined the result, unconvinced. “That’s the best I can do for now.”

“Thanks,” Amatriaín said through clenched teeth.

“You stay here and keep still. I’ll go down and help the others, and I’ll bring back a first-aid kit. Does it hurt pretty bad?”

“Azcárate, we have to get out of here. He said that the ship—”

“Tell me later.”

Amatriaín clamped his hand around Jaime’s arm. It was the second time he’d try to stop him that night. Jaime turned and stared at him in fury. Amatriaín’s eyes were barely visible through the smoke. “What are you doing? They’re going to suffocate if we don’t get them out of there!”