The Trade

by Chris Thrall

  “And do you live in the castle alone?” Hans asked.

  “Along with Senhor Chavez – that’s Fernando, my butler – yes,” said the mayor, uncorking a bottle of red wine and filling their glasses. “My wife, Catalina” – he looked over to a portrait painting on the wall of a naturally beautiful, dark-haired woman – “she died in childbirth many years ago.”

  “That’s harsh,” said Hans.

  “When you understand this life is cruel, it makes it easier to live, no?” Gonzales paused to look at the picture once more, the pain evident in his birdlike eyes. “I guess it is why I wish to help you find your daughter.”

  “What makes you think she is still alive?” Hans asked.

  Before the mayor could answer, Fernando entered the room pushing a trolley laden with starters. As he set down goat cheese salad, shrimp soup, fried moray eel and thick-crust brown bread, Penny caught the distinct smell of aguardente on his breath, a type of moonshine popular in Portugal and Latin America.

  “It is not what I think, Hans, it is what you think.” The mayor broke off a chunk of bread and dipped it in his soup. “I know you came to the islands to recover Jessica’s body. You didn’t find it, but you are still here. I would say that is something of a clue, no?”

  Hans half nodded and shrugged, giving nothing away as he helped himself to salad.

  “I also know you have received special mission status from the US embassy and that the treasure hunter you hired has rather curiously disappeared.”

  “You know a lot.” Hans smiled politely, not wishing to appear defensive.

  “Enough to know you believe your little girl has fallen into the wrong hands,” said the mayor, locking eyes with Hans as the mood turned serious.

  “Are you referring to the traffickers?” Hans asked, although the question needed no answer.

  “Os traficantes.” Gonzales turned his head and made a spitting motion. “It is the islands’ ugly secret, and the evil vermin responsible need to be brought to justice.”

  “I heard on the radio your offer of a reward for information about the English girl’s disappearance.”

  “The money is the easy part, Hans. Even as mayor I can do little else, except to put pressure on the police to do their job. But I must warn you this business is centuries old. As Europe and the West modernized and your law enforcement developed ways to fight crime and corruption, Cape Verde remained in the dark ages. It is only recently, when we follow the international example to receive investment and support, that we have started to get our act together.”

  “And your point?” said Hans.

  “That the foundations of this business were laid many years ago by men who care nothing for accepted rules, who have moved quicker than the times and who will let no one get in their way.” The mayor’s fist clenched, and it looked as if he would start banging it on the table. “I am trying to warn you, Hans. If you persist, you and Miss Penny will not get off this island alive.”

  “Are you suggesting I forget about my daughter and go home?” Hans fought to keep his temper.

  The mayor reached forward, gripped both their hands and lowered his voice. “Hans, I am saying that you and Miss Penny have been through a lot already. You cannot afford to lose each other. You must go back to the States and let the authorities do their job.”

  Hans refrained from asking if these were the same authorities who let a fugitive from English justice move to the island, then start a business with the proceeds of his crimes and buy weapons and a boat for trafficking kidnapped children – but what the mayor said next made him glad he kept silent.

  “Amigos.” Gonzales clenched his grip and looked them in the eye one at a time. “I beg you to go home, but if you must stay and continue the search for your daughter, then I suggest you focus on one man.”

  Penny’s eyes flicked to Hans.

  “And you must tell no one you heard this from me – comprende?”

  They nodded.

  “We have an Englishman here running a bar in Praia. It is called Chico’s. Do you know it?”

  “We’ve driven past it,” said Hans.

  “Then I say no more.”

  “But how do you know this?” Penny asked.

  “I cannot know for certain,” Gonzales replied. “But let’s just say, to serve four terms in office it helps to have connections in the right places.”

  He didn’t need to explain further, for the first thing Hans spotted in the mayor’s office wasn’t so much a landscape painting of a goat basking in the sun’s rays on a hilltop but the esoteric symbolism behind it.

  - 52 -

  “The mayor seems a good man to have on side,” said Penny as they drove down the winding mountain road away from La Laguna.

  “He’s certainly making an effort to combat the traffickers,” Hans replied. “The radio station said the reward money he offered for information about Holly’s kidnapping came out of his own pocket, and he’s certainly connected.”

  “Yeah, I saw you go quiet. What was that about?”

  “The painting in his office – a goat standing on a pyramid of rocks in the sunlight.” Hans threw her a knowing look.

  “Masonic symbols – or are you thinking Illuminati?” Penny referred to the ‘enlightened ones,’ a global cabal of Satanists, originally an offshoot from Masonry, who manipulate mankind through financial and media control and by orchestrating a perpetual state of war.

  “The goat might represent the devil Baphomet.” Hans shrugged. “Or our mayor might just be a high-ranking Freemason.”

  “Don’t tell me he gave you the handshake?” Penny grinned.

  “Ha! A mason will tell you that’s a myth.” Hans braked for the T-junction at the bottom of the hill and pulled onto the coast road. “You certainly impressed him with your Spanish.”

  “We do our best.” Penny squeezed his knee. “It was funny, though. I noticed he switched between Castilian and South American.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Castilian is the modern parlance of Spain, but in Central and South America they speak the language of the conquistadors – basically, an older dialect. He said ustedes, meaning ‘you’ plural, not vosotros.”

  “Probably due to the influence here. We’re closer to the South American continent than we are to Spain.”

  “Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. The butler was a bit of a bruiser, hey?”

  “You can say that again. Did you see the shrapnel wound?”

  “Is that what it was?”

  “Yeah, he’s certainly been in the thick of it somewhere.” Hans checked his mirrors and pulled over to the side of the road. “I need to speak to Mike Davenport.”

  He called the Englishman’s number.

  “Mike, Hans Larsson.”

  “Hello, Hans.”

  It didn’t sound good.

  “Any news?”

  “No, nothing – only the usual police inefficiency.”

  Hans looked at Penny and shook his head. “Are you still in Praia?”

  “Yes, staying at the Fortuna.”

  “Is there any chance we can meet, say, tomorrow for lunch? It would be good to catch up, and there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Sure, do you have anywhere in mind?”

  “How about Tima Tima. It’s a—”

  “Yeah, I know it. It’s near the hotel.”

  - 53 -

  The Malian woman made her way through immigration at Cape Verde’s Nelson Mandela Airport and, with no luggage to collect, straight into the arrivals area. It thronged with disembarked passengers and expectant family and friends, most loud in dress and voice. Chauffeurs held up cardboard signs with names of their pick-ups scrawled on them in marker pen, and eagle-eyed cabdrivers and hotel touts pounced on hesitant-looking travelers to try and make a buck.

  This airport was far more modern than the one she had flown from in Gambia. The mix of white tourists and coffee-colored and black Africans meant that with her light-brown skin
she stood out a lot less than on the mainland. However, born and raised on the African continent, she had gotten used to the stares.

  Before exiting the airport to grab a cab from the rank, the woman haggled with a moneychanger to get a good rate for the euros she’d brought from Banjul. Then, after picking up a map of the city of Praia from the tourist information desk, she bought a pay-as-you-go SIM card in a cell phone store and topped it up with credit.

  Intending to stay within her budget, the Malian asked the driver to drop her at a boarding house she’d researched on the Internet. A prestigious establishment frequented by Portuguese officials, merchants and ships’ officers in its heyday, the two-story colonial building had long since fallen into disrepair. It sat in a long terraced row on a street dividing the booming tourist area from the shantytown housing the third of the city’s population that lived below the breadline.

  The woman gave the building a once-over. Its terra-cotta roof tiles were broken, faded and mottled with age. Dark-gray mortar patched crumbling yellow walls in desperate need of paint. The balcony’s handrail was broken in places and missed several balusters. She climbed two limestone steps, worn into polished-smooth troughs over the years by thousands of feet, to enter the lobby. After crossing the stone-tiled floor, careful not to trip in the gaps where tiles were missing, she woke with a polite cough the middle-aged local man sprawled over the reception desk.

  “Kantu noiti?” he asked lazily in Creole, propping his head on an elbow.

  “Uma semana, por favor,” she replied in Portuguese, figuring a week’s stay should be sufficient for her mission.

  He picked a key off a row of numbered hooks and slapped it on the desk, then laid his head back down.

  “Pagar agora?” She reached for her purse.

  “Mais tarde,” the guy waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the stairs.

  The room was a simple affair and sufficient for her needs – a wooden bed with clean, if not dated, linen, a wardrobe, and a table and chair next to the louver doors onto the balcony.

  After unpacking what little clothing she had, the woman hid the SIM card purchased at the airport in the lining of her shoe. She undressed and wrapped herself in one of the hotel’s threadbare towels, picked up her toiletry bag and room key and headed for the communal bathroom at the end of the landing.

  Standing under the spray, washing off two days of travel grime, the woman felt the occasional niggling doubt, sending a tingle of anxiety through her shoulders, arms and torso. The Trade was a serious business – as its name suggested. Life was cheap, yet dealing in those lives created vast fortunes for amoral individuals who played by their own set of rules. These players weren’t going to throw open the door and welcome her into their midst because she had cute little orphans for sale. She had to find an in and then be prepared to prove her intentions and trustworthiness by passing whatever initiation they had in store. If she didn’t play it right, her fate didn’t bear thinking about. Then there were law enforcement personnel to avoid – and not only local police but agents from a number of countries’ intelligence organizations operating covertly in Cape Verde, the hub of international trafficking.

  The woman put this out of her mind and concentrated on the next move. She needed a contact through whom to ease her way into the Trade. It had to be someone on the fringe, someone not too smart, a bit player she could blackmail.

  - 54 -

  When Hans and Penny entered the Tima Tima the following day, Mike sat sipping coffee and staring intently at his laptop screen. They both understood what he was going through. The café bar itself was quite some place, its bohemian ambience and neorustic decor setting it apart from the local food parlors, churrascarias and touristy eateries. The proprietor had acquired a series of enlarged prints of Jack Kerouac’s original manuscript for On the Road, including authentic rum stains, handwritten by the Beat Generation author without paragraphs on a single roll of paper, which ran in segments along one of the café’s redbrick walls.

  “Hans, Penny!” Mike looked delighted to have company with whom he had something in common – as opposed to police, journalists and hotel staff. He stood up and welcomed them with a hearty handshake. “Let me get you some drinks. The espresso’s good.” He raised a thimble-size cup. “Or if you want milky, I’d go for a galão.”

  “Galão sounds great for me, Mike,” said Penny, “but I reckon Hans will have a beer.”

  “Brilliant. Then I’ll join you, Hans. I’m glad you suggested this place. I’ve been coming here every day to get out of the hotel.”

  Mike caught the waitress’s attention and asked for the drinks and two more menus.

  “So, how’s tricks?” he asked, attempting a smile, but his haggard face spoke of only exhaustion, his bloodshot eyes of utter helplessness.

  “No, you go first,” said Hans. “And lunch is on us.”

  Mike took a deep breath and closed his laptop screen. “It’s like whoever took Holly was invisible. Several people have come forward saying they were on that part of the beach the same day, some even camped right near us.”

  “But no one saw a thing?” Hans ventured.

  “Nothing, Hans.”

  “I’ve come across this in my detective work. Those folks who did actually see Holly being led away wouldn’t have registered it, because their brains weren’t interpreting it as a crime, and the other beachgoers could have been preoccupied with a million and one other things at that exact moment.”

  “Yes, yes.” Mike shifted forward in his seat.

  “It’s like a thief who goes into an electrical store and walks out with a huge TV. Because he’s not acting all suspicious and no one’s screaming ‘Thief,’ he gets away with it. It’s called crime in plain sight.”

  “How come you’ve explained to me in ten seconds what no policeman here has been able to?” Mike looked both gobsmacked and cheated.

  Hans spread his palms and gave an I think you know the answer to that look, adding, “It’s my job, Mike.”

  The waitress returned with the drinks and menus and gave them time to order.

  “I hope this doesn’t sound inappropriate,” said Mike, “but have you noticed how much you look forward to eating out when you’re in a crisis?”

  “Drinking beer too,” said Hans. “It’s a combination of replacing energy lost through stress and taking your mind off things.”

  “And having an excuse to eat whatever you want and stick it on a credit card,” Penny joked, and the three of them laughed.

  “Well, I’m going for the jagacida – bean and sausage stew,” said Mike. “I’ve had it every time here, and it’s really good.”

  “If it fills a hole, then I will too,” said Hans, never picky when ordering food.

  Penny had the same, and as they dipped chunks of freshly baked bread into the delicious jagacida, Mike filled them in on events.

  “The media back home is having a field day – which has been hard for Carrie to deal with on her own. But it’s getting difficult for me here too, what with the local backlash.”

  “Really?” Penny stopped her fork midway to her mouth.

  “The islanders thrive on tourism. The more this thing drags out and the more journalists arrive here to stand on public beaches giving frantic news updates, the harder it’s gonna be on their economy.”

  “Let’s hope there’s an end to this sometime soon,” said Penny.

  “I think if the British police had been given access to the case, it may well have been solved by now.” Mike shook his head and blew through pursed lips. “But the cops here are next to useless.”

  “Have they given any indication who might be involved?” asked Hans, locking eyes with Penny for a moment.

  “No. Why do you ask?” Mike put down his knife and fork, having spotted the nonverbal communication.

  Hans looked at Penny again before continuing, not wanting to give too much away but feeling it disingenuous to keep the desperate man in the dark.

 
“Mike, we have reason to believe Jessica has also been taken.”

  The Englishman’s mouth fell open. “B-b-but I thought you said she had drowned . . . When your yacht sank, I mean.”

  “We were tipped off she was pulled from the water and passed on to the traffickers,” said Hans.

  “So . . .” Mike wrung his hands, struggling to get his head around the dramatic turn of events. “We’re in the same situation.”

  “It might even be the same kidnappers,” Hans replied. “Which is why I need to ask you if the police have ever mentioned a guy named Eddy Logan to you.”

  Mike thought for a moment, but only out of politeness. “No, Hans. They looked into a couple of local guys, and nothing came of it. But I’d remember if a Westerner’s name came up.”

  “When you first arrived, you said you flew into Praia and spent a couple of days here,” Hans said.

  “Yeah, we did.”

  “Did you visit a bar and restaurant called Chico’s?”

  No, I’ve not heard of it. Why are you asking this stuff?”

  “Because Logan is a name that’s been mentioned, and Chico’s is the bar he runs.” Hans screwed up his paper napkin and chucked it in the empty bowel.

  “Have you been to the police?”

  “Believe me, Mike, if we had anything to go on, we would. But at this stage the cops would only blunder in and send the traffickers scurrying underground. I’m making inquiries, and I’ve got powerful people behind me and the resources I need to do a thorough investigation. But I can’t stress enough how important it is for the girls’ safety that you don’t tell anyone we’ve had this conversation.”

  “No, of course not, Hans,” said Mike, looking ever more bewildered. “You have my word.”

  - 55 -

  In Goldman Sachs’ Boston office, Innes Edridge checked he was up to speed with the morning’s itinerary, the final action being a phone call with Liechtenstein’s finance minister advising him of the effect issuing shale gas exploration permits would have on the national oil company’s share prices. Then he sat back in his office chair for ten minutes of mindfulness meditation before eating – or drinking – his lunch of vegetable juice, a combination of cucumber, spinach, celery, carrot, tomato, garlic, chili pepper and ginger, blended with a dash of Worcestershire sauce. The latter, along with the carrot and tomato, was not particularly alkalizing on the body, but it added a fruity flavor, and the result was certainly far healthier than his colleagues’ choices – ham and cheese subs, pasta mixes, and the previous evening’s leftovers.