Black Heart

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “Is that where...?” Carmen asked.

  “Yes.” Minnie’s heart stuttered and thudded on. “They took him on a stretcher through that door there.” She pointed to the unremarkable doorway Duardo had been hurried through.

  “That’s where the infirmary was,” Carmen confirmed.

  The paving below the terrace was empty. Already, grass grew between the stones, giving it a neglected, sad look. “It seems like such a long time ago,” Minnie confessed. “But also, like it happened just yesterday.”

  Carmen shifted her feet, the oversized rubber shoes squeaking in the grass. “Let’s go,” she murmured and strode out into the open grassed area between the trees and the palace itself. Minnie hurried after her, barely keeping up with her shorter legs. Carmen arrowed straight for the corner of the building and didn’t stop when she reached it. She moved with the wall a bare inch from her shoulder all the way to the north end of the building and halted at a section of the wall that had a sheet metal patch on it—as if it had been riveted over a hole in the wall. Carmen dug into her jeans pocket and withdrew what looked like a thick, six-inch-long twig.

  She worked the end of the twig between the metal and the brickwork behind it, using a lot of effort. Minnie took a startled half-step backward when the patch moved a fraction of an inch from the wall.

  Carmen slipped her fingertips between plate and wall and waved Minnie over, indicating she should do the same. Confused, Minnie did as she was asked, feeling thick, heavy and cold metal press against her fingers.

  Carmen pulled on the sheet, putting her full body weight into it. Nothing happened. Still uncertain about what Carmen was trying to do, Minnie copied her and tugged on the sheet as well.

  Although there was no sound, she felt the sheet giving way with slow reluctance. When it had moved far enough away from the wall, she was able to recognize it for what it was. The sheet was merely the front end of a vee-shaped bin that was hinged at the bottom of the vee. They were pulling it out from the wall.

  As it swung lower and lower, she saw that the sides of the bin were vee shaped, but there was no back wall to the bin. Just a pitch-black maw. This, then, was the coal chute.

  Carmen touched her shoulder and indicated that she should climb in. Minnie looked at the solid blackness beyond the opening and shook her head. Carmen rolled her eyes with exaggerated movements and pushed her aside. She threw her leg over the side of the bin and wriggled into it until she was sitting on the bottom of the bin. For Carmen it was a tight fit. Her hips were bigger than Minnie’s. But if Carmen could get through it, Minnie would slip through with no problems.

  Carmen inched her way forward and Minnie saw from her progress that the chute did not drop suddenly but sloped gently.

  Encouraged, Minnie climbed into the bin herself. She jarred her butt against a thick metal handle on the inside of the bin and realized that she should use it to close the hatch behind her. She grabbed the handle, tugged on it and the hatch moved sluggishly. It had taken the two of them to open it. How the hell was she supposed to close it by herself, with no leverage? Her feet hung in the complete darkness, with nowhere to anchor herself.

  Then she felt Carmen’s hands on her feet, steadying her. The hands took a better grip on her ankles and started to pull.

  Understanding flared in her. Minnie gripped the handle tightly, rolled onto her stomach and let herself slide down the shoot until her arm was extended. Then she planted her other hand flat against the inside of the framed opening and pushed like hell with that hand while she pulled on the handle with the other. With Carmen’s pulling on her legs, they slowly closed the hatch. It seated itself solidly and Minnie could understand why no one had recognized it as a way into the building. It was too small, too old and looked like it had been riveted into the wall.

  Carmen helped Minnie down to the ground and onto her feet. They were in a half-basement, the old coal chute finishing a couple of feet above the concrete floor. There was no source of light in the room at all.

  Carmen took Minnie’s arm and moved slowly across the room. She had explained to Minnie on the way across to Vistaria that this was one of half a dozen secret entries she had used throughout her high school years to sneak in and out of the palace and avoid her father’s interrogation every time she wanted to go somewhere with her friends. It had also allowed her to move about the city without a security detail.

  So now she led Minnie across the room with confidence despite the dark. Minnie heard fumbling and the motion of air across her face. Carmen had opened a door. She was led through the doorway into more black. She blinked. To their left there was dim light, enough to show them the shape of the passage they stood in.

  Carmen spoke in a murmur, right by Minnie’s ear. “End of passage, service stairs, up to third floor, sneak along main passage to attic entry and up.”

  Minnie nodded, though she didn’t know if Carmen could see the nod. They had already discussed this during the long day observing the palace. The attic had been Carmen’s childhood playground. No one had ever ventured up there except Carmen and, on occasion, Nick and her father when they had come to find her. From the attic they would be able to sneak around the palace and collect the information they needed. Carmen had seemed very confident that the attic was a strategic position. “It runs the length of the palace and there’s a half-dozen entrances. It’s perfect.”

  They moved along the passage and when they got closer to the light Minnie could see it came from beneath a door at the end of the passage. Carmen pushed the door open an inch at a time, peering around it. Then, satisfied, she pushed it fully open. It was a stairwell and a metal staircase wound upward, lit by the dull orange glow of emergency lights. This would get them to the third floor.

  Carmen took off her shoes and indicated that Minnie should do the same. She placed her forefinger against her lips.

  They climbed the staircase as quickly as they could. In that echoing funnel, Minnie realized she was incapable of moving silently. The salt-encrusted nylon of her coveralls swished with each step she took. There was nothing she could do about it. She was naked beneath the suit. With her heart in her mouth, she concentrated on climbing with as little noise as possible, keeping her thighs far apart so the legs of the suit wouldn’t rub together and her arms out from her sides.

  There were doors at every level and Minnie realized that at any moment someone could step through one of them. Her heart pattered along, loud in her ears. Sweat broke out on her temples.

  At the third-floor doorway, Carmen again eased it open. They would have to use one of the main corridors to get to the attic staircase now. She let the door swing shut and put her rubber shoes back on. Minnie slipped on her borrowed tennis shoes. Carmen had found it enormously funny that Minnie fit into the gym shoes Carmen had used when she was ten.

  Carmen eased open the door enough to slip through and Minnie followed. Immediately, their surroundings changed. The carpet beneath their feet was thick and muffling. Minnie could sense the quality even though the light in the wide hallway was dim. At the edges of the carpet, highly polished floorboards gleamed. At intervals sat elegant antique chairs with satin backs and claw feet, or carved wooden pedestals holding up huge bouquets of flowers. It was plush. Silent.

  They moved down the middle of the carpet and Minnie winced with almost every step. She was swishing and in the dull silence it was loud.

  They had covered twenty-five yards when a voice spoke to them out of the darkness. “Puedo oírle el moverse. No funcione tan...o me forzarán tirarle.”

  Minnie froze, for she understood enough of the low Spanish to know that if she did run, he would shoot her. Her nylon suit had given her away.

  Carmen’s hand landed on her shoulder. Squeezed. Minnie felt her move away and knew exactly what Carmen was thinking. The man had spoken of only one and she was the one he had heard. Carmen still had a chance to escape and must take it. Minnie silently wished her luck and turned to face the voice in the dark.

/>   “I’m not running,” she said and threaded her fingers together to hide their trembling.

  There was another small silence.

  “Americana?” It was a different voice. This one came from behind her.

  She swiveled again to face it. Instinct prodded her. “Not bloody likely, mate,” she said. “Can’t you tell the difference between Australian and Yank?”

  “There is...difference?” A door opened nearby, spilling light onto her. The man who had spoken was also illuminated. He was young, unshaven and held a submachine gun to his face, aiming at her.

  Another two men stepped into the pool of light. She realized with a sinking heart that she had been surrounded and had not noticed a thing until the voice spoke out of the dark. The same voice now spoke, still issuing from the shadows. “For an Australian, you are a very long way from home. You have been discovered in a position most difficult to explain.” She sensed movement and the silhouette of the man came into view. He moved slowly because he used a cane. He leaned heavily upon it.

  This was the dangerous one, Minnie realized. This man outranked everyone here.

  He stopped a few paces from her and studied her. He was still in shadow and weak light, but she could see an eye patch and a thick moustache, which might have looked melodramatic on anyone else but on him seemed to imply danger. This man had seen things and suffered. He was experienced in the harsher qualities of life.

  “Do you have an explanation for your presence inside the palace?” he asked. His English was very good.

  “I might,” Minnie said airily.

  He moved impatiently, the cane thudding the floor, and stepped closer. The light hit his face squarely and Minnie sucked in a breath as shock slammed through her.

  It was Duardo.

  “What is it?” he said sharply. “Why do you stare at me so? Do you know who I am? Is that why you tremble?”

  Adrenaline was making her shake, making her feel sick. She was unable to tear her gaze from his face. Was this Duardo? How could it be? He was the enemy, he didn’t know her. It couldn’t be him. Yet...it was Duardo. Somehow, he was here, inside the enemy’s quarters. What sort of dangerous game was he playing? Even though she did not understand what was going on here, she had to play along.

  “No, I don’t know you,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I tremble because your friend over there is pointing a bloody great big gun at me. Am I supposed to chuckle about it?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his calculating eyes. “You have courage,” he said. “I applaud that. I am Colonel Bruno Zalaya y Fuentes.”

  Minnie could feel her already laboring heart actually stop in its tracks for a split second. Duardo...was Zalaya? Duardo was the man that did such dreadful things to people, was the evil lynchpin that Nick intended to deal with?

  “I see you know the name,” Duardo continued. “Which makes you more than just a tourist with too much curiosity.” He looked around at the men in the corridor. “Take her back to my office. I will complete the interrogation there.”

  The younger insurrecto with the gun stepped closer to her and motioned with the muzzle that she should turn around and move. He glanced at Duardo. “¿Y luego, el whorehouse?”

  Minnie had no trouble translating “whorehouse”—it was the same in both languages and she recognized the hungry look on the soldier’s face. A shudder rippled through her.

  Duardo/Zalaya considered her for a moment. “An intriguing idea,” he said softly. “I’ll decide once she has given me some answers.” He glanced at the soldier. “A mi oficina, inmediatamente, Soto. Y el ningún dallying en la manera.” Then back at her. “Yes, do not dally at all. I greatly desire to...question this one.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The young soldier, Soto, took Minnie straight to Zalaya’s office with no detours, not even a word to her. Zalaya obviously had his personnel cowed into complete obedience, which filled Minnie with more confusion. Duardo was clearly Zalaya...but Zalaya had a reputation filled with unspeakable horrors and atrocities. How could this be Duardo? How could the man she loved—who was very much alive—be committing these terrible things?

  Then relief filled her as she remembered something Nick and her father had said when she, Calli and Carmen had managed to pry some information from them. Zalaya had been dishonorably discharged from the Army two years ago. So there had been a real Zalaya, which meant Duardo was only pretending to be that evil man.

  But where was the real one and how had Duardo stepped into this role?

  Worry about it later, she told herself. The answers would come. For now it was very clear that everyone around her was convinced Duardo was Zalaya and until she had some answers, she must deal with him as Zalaya.

  She hugged the crucial fact to herself, barely able to hide her smile. Duardo was alive. He lived!

  Zalaya’s office was on the second floor, north wing, which put it smack in the middle of all the bedroom windows they had been studying all night. Was his the light that had continued to burn?

  Soto opened the door and beckoned her inside by waving the point of his gun. Minnie stepped into an electronic nightmare. There were banks of screens and monitors on every wall and no windows. Sitting in the middle of the room was a console of switches and dials. The nerve center, clearly. Beside it was a large teak desk with a perfectly normal executive’s chair behind it.

  She looked around, then studied the monitors. They seemed to show every single room in the palace, along with most of the areas outside the building. She and Carmen had not stood a chance of going undetected. How long had Zalaya’s people been watching them?

  “Here. Wait,” Soto said.

  Minnie looked over her shoulder. He was pointing at her feet.

  “Here?” she said. “Right here on this spot?”

  It was too much English for him. He shrugged and slung his submachine gun so it rested against his hip. He curled his forefinger over the trigger guard and continued to watch her.

  She went back to studying the monitors. How much of the grounds did Zalaya have covered? How much had he seen of their movements? Did he know she had not been alone? She scanned the outside screens. None of them showed the thick grove of trees at the back of the grounds. None of them showed the section of the building with the square iron patch of the coal chute. But they could have been seen crossing the grounds. They might have been seen in the building itself. She couldn’t see a view of the fire-escape stairs, but there was a reason for all the switches and dials on the desk—he could jump from camera to camera.

  Why had Carmen not warned her about the cameras? She could not have known about them. These were something that Serrano—or Zalaya—had installed. Minnie glanced around the room. There was a lot of very expensive equipment in here. It indicated that one or the other of the pair was overly paranoid about security.

  She turned and glanced at Soto. His gaze didn’t shift from her. He was the perfect guard.

  Her study of the room completed, Minnie dropped her gaze to the floor. Duardo/Zalaya said he would interrogate her. She had to come up with a story now that would explain away everything and not have her shot on the spot as a spy...or turned over to the whorehouse, like Soto wanted. Regardless of what Duardo may want to do with her, he was surrounded by men with machine guns who wanted her dead or given to them as some sort of prize.

  But as the minutes ticked away, she could think of nothing that would cover every facet of the circumstances under which she had been discovered. Plus, she had to make sure that whatever story she came up with would expand to cover Carmen, if she had been seen at all. She squeezed her temples under her fingertips, rubbing them as she rapidly discarded each idea that occurred to her. She’d had plenty of practice lying to her parents as a teenager, sneaking out at night and heading for clubs when she was supposed to be on homework dates...but this was such a different scale!

  Then she paused, considering that thought. No, it wasn’t a different scale at all. Lying was lying.
The only difference in scale was that if the lie didn’t hold up this time, she’d have way more than a simple grounding to deal with.

  The door handle turned and Zalaya limped in with two more soldiers behind him, both with machine guns at their hips.

  In this better light, Minnie was struck by the changes in Duardo. He had lost muscle and was leaner and paler than she remembered. What had he been through to make him look that...used? Then there was the melodramatic moustache and the eye patch, which must have been the real Zalaya’s. Most distressing was the limp and the cane. Were both because of the bullet he had taken in the back to protect her? But she could not ask.

  Unexpectedly, different ideas connected up. Duardo’s limp and a conversation Minnie barely recalled—she could hear Cristián’s studied tones as he’d explained the theory, with Trini Juanita bouncing on her chair with enthusiasm.

  She looked at the way Duardo held his mouth and the strange light in his eyes. He had never shown that calculating gleam before. It would be better to think of him and deal with him as if he were Zalaya for now. It would help her avoid a slip of the tongue that would betray both of them.

  Duardo—Zalaya dumped a length of chain on the desk and from the center of the pile extracted a single handcuff. He held it out to her. “Put this around your wrist.”

  She kept still. She had no idea what he intended, but she wasn’t going to simply cooperate because that’s not what she would have done with Zalaya.

  He spoke in fast Spanish and immediately she was grabbed from behind and her arm extended out painfully. Soto scooted forward, took the cuff from Zalaya and slapped it over her wrist so that it snapped shut with a distinct click. The chain was attached to it.

  The soldiers kept hold of her as Zalaya picked out another cuff from the middle of the pile of chain. This one he slipped around the handle of the drawer under his desk. He then pulled the chair up and dropped into it. He put the cane aside and lifted his leg to the desk and absently rubbed at his thigh. All the while he kept his gaze on her.