by Alex Archer
“No. I’m not the police.” Annja helped the woman put the load of clothing into the dryer.
“I saw you with them this morning on the television.” The woman pushed quarters into the machine and started it cycling. The clothing thumped as the big barrel turned, and the little girl on the woman’s hip watched the contents spin.
Several other women and a few men of all ages occupied the Laundromat, all of them dealing with their clothing. A television blared from the mount in the corner, displaying a ghost-hunting program. The whir and vibration of the machines created a soft blanket of noise that filled the building. The strong smell of detergent and bleach burned Annja’s nose.
“I work for them sometimes,” Annja replied. “As a consultant when they need me.”
The woman was suspicious and distrustful. That was a typical reaction to anyone outside a culture. Annja wasn’t of Russian heritage, wasn’t from the neighborhood and her clothing separated her from everyone else in the Laundromat. The woman placed her child on the folding table in front of the dryer and fussed with her hair, combing it neatly.
“Your daughter is beautiful,” Annja said.
The little girl smiled shyly and ducked her head into her mother’s bosom.
“Thank you.” The woman smiled, but she didn’t open up anymore to Annja.
“Did you know Mr. Benyovszky?” Annja asked.
Shrugging, the woman picked up her daughter again. “I see him in the hallway sometimes. He was a good man. Very kind. His two great-nephews, though, they are a waste.”
“I got that impression myself.” Annja hesitated, wondering if she was pushing too hard or too sudden, and knowing there was no other route to handling the situation. “I’d like to talk to someone who knew Mr. Benyovszky.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want his murderer to get away.”
“No one does. If anyone knew, they would tell the police.” Suspicion darkened the woman’s face. “They say whoever killed Mr. Benyovszky stole a fortune.”
“I don’t know. In fact, I don’t know that anything was taken for sure. That’s what I’m trying to help the police find out, but in order to know that, I need more information about Mr. Benyovszky and his business.”
Another woman walked up to the first. This one was older and more plump. Her hair had turned gray and her face was weathered by years. She spoke rapidly in Russian, too fast and too low for Annja to understand.
When the first woman looked back up, she said, “My friend tells me that she sees you on television and that I should trust you because she thinks you are a nice person.”
Annja smiled at the other woman. “Spasiba.”
The older woman nodded. “You are welcome.” The words came hesitantly, but they were sincere.
“If you want to find out more about Mr. Benyovszky’s business you should seek out Yelena Kustodiev,” the first woman said.
“Where can I find her?” Annja asked.
“She lives in the next building.” The woman hesitated, shifted her child on her hip, and looked pensive. “She is a…a very strange woman. It is best to be careful around her if you have to speak to her. I will write you the address.” She accepted the pen and paper Annja handed her from her backpack. “When you go there, please do me the favor of not telling Yelena Kustodiev who told you about her.” She shook her head as she wrote down the address. “She is a most intimidating woman. You will see.”
Chapter 9
Nguyen Rao sat in the back of the squad car and worked on the handcuffs that bound him. The locks were no problem to manipulate. The most difficult thing had been in acquiring a pick. While he had been transferred from the room where Detective McGilley had spoken with him, he’d managed to steal a ballpoint pen from the desk of another policeman on the way out without being noticed. Rao had stripped the clip from the pen, then dropped the writing utensil into a convenient trash receptacle, keeping only the slim length of metal.
Until the two policemen escorting him had placed him in the back of the squad car, he had kept the metal covered in the folds of his palm. Now he bent the metal and hooked it into the cuff on his right wrist. He didn’t need both open if that wasn’t possible, but managed it more easily than he’d believed. The locks had been simple, and he was dexterous, but he’d had to be patient, as well. That was made harder because he didn’t know how far they planned on taking him.
The two policemen in the front seat on the other side of the metal mesh barricade separating the rear seat from the front talked about football, arguing in a good-natured way that told Rao they were friends, not just workmates. He kept that in mind, knowing he did not want to entertain any bad karma while engaged on his mission. He sought only to right an old wrong. If possible.
The first cuff clicked open, followed quickly by the second. Rao kept his hands behind him, thinking only of the elephant and of Calapez’s involvement. Rao wondered who had sent the man there, and he wondered if he would have been able to entreat Maurice Benyovszky to give him the elephant in person while so many attempts over the phone had been denied.
Rao didn’t know if Benyovszky was a good man or not, but he knew that no man deserved to have his life taken from him. He wished that Benyovszky would enjoy better terms in his next life, but that was out of Rao’s hands.
Not for the first time, he wished the elder monks had sent someone else. But he was the most knowledgeable about the elephant, and he spoke English easily enough. He had been the best choice for the assignment, and he had taken on the responsibility.
“I’m telling you, Frank, ain’t no way the Pats are gonna squeak by this year, and if they do, the Broncos are waiting on them.” The driver sipped his coffee as he pulled to a stop behind a cab at the intersection.
Glancing around, Rao tried to get his bearings. The city was an unknown area. He had managed to get around only through the map function on his phone, but he no longer had that. Still, he had confidence in himself.
He was also discomfited by the fact that he had turned himself in only to be taken into custody. He had not thought he would be placed under arrest. He still did not know how that had happened even after the police officers had explained his rights to him, then had told him he was being taken into custody as a material witness, but not as a criminal. The whole matter was highly illogical. They had said his incarceration—not their word but Rao had no other word for it—was to ensure he would provide testimony at the proper time.
He had argued, but he had quickly seen there was no other way around it, so he had given in. And he’d stolen the ballpoint pen.
Tipping over onto his right side, Rao drew back his left leg and kicked the window. The door had no handles on the inside in the rear compartment. The glass shattered and flew out to cascade against the car in the next lane.
The policemen turned around, yelling at him through the mesh separating them from him, promising dire consequences. Rao ignored them, aware of the policemen hurrying to open their doors. They were as separated from him by the mesh as he was from the front of the vehicle.
Rao spun around again, then slipped through the broken window like an otter, hauling himself out on his arms and gaining his feet in the glass-strewn street. Fragments cracked under the thin-soled shoes the police had given him along with the orange one-piece coverall that ironically reminded Rao of his temple robes.
The driver, older and thicker, scrambled out of the car and tried to bring his pistol up. “Freeze!”
Afraid that the policeman might shoot, not that he would hit Rao, but that someone else might be injured if bullets started flying, Rao grabbed the man’s gun wrist with one hand and twisted while at the same time slamming the car door closed with his other hand. The door struck the policeman with enough force to stun him. Rao pulled the weapon from the man’s hand without breaking the wrist or the fingers
and tossed the weapon into the backseat through the broken window.
Then he was running, throwing himself across the hood of the sedan parked beside the police car, then hurtling across the other two lanes of oncoming traffic. Horns blared and brakes screeched. He managed to slip across another car as the driver panicked and slammed on the brakes, and by the time everything calmed down, Rao was in the nearest alley, running for his life, trying to figure out how he was going to find the elephant. The only thing he knew to do was go back to where the elephant had been lost like any hunter would.
* * *
“COME, FERNANDO. YOU’RE missing your party.” Joana de Campos made a moue of her lips as she walked across the length of the yacht’s salon while carrying a large drink in either hand. She was a gorgeous woman, full of figure and as feisty as any of the opposite sex Sequeira had ever wanted. Long black hair tumbled down her naked shoulders, so bronzed by the sun that she looked like she’d been carved from sandalwood. The play of muscles under the skin revealed that she was alive and vibrant.
Fernando Sequeira sat on one of the white lounging sofas in the salon. No one else was there. All of his guests were out on the deck or swimming in the ocean under the careful eye of his crew. A couple inches short of six feet, broad shouldered and handsome, carefully groomed with a chin-strap beard that followed the fierce line of his chin, Sequeira sat there in aqua bathing trunks and deck shoes. His hair was black as sin and his eyes were almost amber with just a hint of green.
He smiled up at Joana, knowing that she loved looking at him. Most women found him attractive. He worked to stay that way. Deftly, he plucked one of the drinks from her.
“Thank you, Joana. For the drink and for your concern. But I am not missing my party. I enjoy watching the people I invite on these trips.” He sipped the champagne, then captured her free hand in his and pulled it to his lips to briefly kiss it.
“You should be out there.” Joana waved toward the yacht’s stern where thirty men and women, all young, all fit, laughed and carried on. Many of them were Portuguese, but many of them were from other countries, too. Sequeira spread his business around. Communication these days was global, and it moved quickly. “You are the life of the party, you know.”
Sequeira pulled her down to him, to sit next to him on the sofa. “I will go in a moment. When you get too close to business, sometimes you lose sight of the prize in all the movement. I like distance.”
“You like too much distance sometimes.” Joana leaned in and kissed him. She’d had a little too much to drink and the effects were showing. “You’re like a lion, Fernando. You should stalk out among people and claim your space.”
He laughed at her then and she thought he was laughing with her, enjoying her daring. In truth, all of that attention was what she craved. Sequeira didn’t care for it so much. He leaned in and kissed her bare shoulder.
“Do you know what my father told me one day?” he asked.
“You have told me many things your father told you.” She leaned against him and sipped her drink.
“I have.” He nodded agreeably. “But one of the best things he told me was that a man who wanted power, to control things, that man would be content in the shadows when wielding his power. A man who wishes everyone to know him, who craves the limelight, that man is only making a target of himself.”
Adrian Sequeira had been a criminal, a street thief and pickpocket when he was younger, then had built a small empire smuggling cigarettes and arms through Spain. Afterward, after getting an education, he set up straw banks and began laundering money for other criminal organizations.
During his teen years, Sequeira had fought with his father. Both of them had been prideful men and Sequeira didn’t like moving slowly like his father had with his business. Nor did he want to simply inherit what his father had assembled.
Instead, Fernando Sequeira had combined his love of pop culture, movies, the Masters in Fine Arts he’d received that he’d paid for himself, and set up shop as a film and television program pirate. He’d run that business out of the back of his car for a while, then gotten more machines and employees and rented an office.
That had been fifteen years ago when he was just out of university. The profits had rolled steadily in, and his father had even laid off some of the money laundering into those businesses. Fernando hadn’t been satisfied, though. By thirty, he’d bought his first television station and plowed enough money and his expertise into it to get it off the ground.
Those first few months had been hard. Communications was a tough market. He was slowly starving to death, watching his profits get soaked up trying to buy into a market share. In the end, he’d gone to his father for help.
Men who tried to stand in Sequeira’s way ended up bloodied, blackmailed and financially beaten. No prisoners were taken. Slowly and surely, Sequeira had built the empire he’d dreamed of. He owned television stations, radio stations and premium movie services, including several DVD and video-game vending machines that kept the money rolling in.
These days, his father respected him as a businessman, and Sequeira understood more of what his father had been trying to teach him. There at the end little more than a year ago, when Adrian Sequeira had succumbed to a brain tumor that had taken him quickly, Fernando had gotten close to the man.
“Fernando?” Joana studied his face, her eyes narrowed and her attention fully on him.
“Yes.” He smiled at her.
“Where were you?”
He squeezed her hand. “Here at your side.”
“No, you weren’t.” Joana sighed. “Sometimes you are like that. Here with me one minute. Gone the next.”
“I’m sorry. I have a lot on my mind.”
“This is why I tell you that you should enjoy your guests while on this cruise. You work too hard.”
“I work just enough.”
Joana reached up and brushed back a lock of hair from his forehead. “You are thinking about the elephant, aren’t you?”
Sequeira grinned at her, wanting to distract her from that. “No.”
“Now you are lying. I saw you when you were studying that elephant on the computer.”
A few days ago, in his study, where only a few people were allowed to visit and Joana was supposed to stay out of, she had seen him watching the bidding for the elephant Maurice Benyovszky had offered for sale.
He didn’t bother to deny the accusation a second time.
“Honestly, my love, I don’t understand what you see in those old things. Those swords and faded maps and statues of hideous things.”
“I know.” Sequeira sipped his champagne and felt the gentle roll of the yacht on the waves. Outside, the weather was cool enough to be enjoyable on the deck, and the water was warm enough to swim comfortably, as several of his guests were doing. Little over a mile away, Lisbon rose in the distance across the blue sea.
“I wish I did, then perhaps I would not be so jealous of the time it takes you away from me.”
“A man must be allowed his diversions and passions. Otherwise he is not a true man.”
“This is another thing your father taught you?”
“This is a thing I have found to be true. If I did not appreciate those things, then I would never appreciate you as I do.”
“I am not an old thing.”
Sequeira chuckled at her mock outrage. “No, you are not. And I am glad of it.”
He was, but her beauty and attention didn’t hold a candle to the treasures he’d found over the past ten years. Legends and near myths and handed-down tales still made his blood quicken. His father had done a lot of business with sailors and sea captains while smuggling, and all of those men had carried stories with them.
Sequeira had minored in history, and his fine arts degree had exposed him to a lot of the art that he cherished
. Portugal was rife with tales of pirates’ treasures and other artifacts left by the Romans, the Visigoths and the Moors, to name only a few. He had some items from all those cultures, and he had listened to hundreds of other stories.
Three years ago, he had found a sunken ship, a Spanish galleon, and had recovered almost two million dollars in gold coins, just a taste of what had probably been strewn across the sea floor when the ship had gone down.
“Have you ever heard of the Neustra Senora de las Mercedes?” he asked, knowing the answer before she gave it.
“No.”
“It was a Spanish galleon, sunk in 1804 while voyaging back from South America. In addition to the many people on board, the ship also carried tons of gold and silver worth over five hundred million dollars.”
Joana’s eyes lit up at that. “So much?”
Sequeira nodded. “So much. The ship was found by a treasure hunter out of Florida in the United States. He had researched the maps and the records, and he had found the ship. The problem was, he told people about his find, and the Spanish took the treasure back.”
“That does not sound fair.”
“I don’t think that it is, but it is how countries work. No one in Spain was looking for that ship, and even if they were, they were not skilled enough to find it. This man was. So, you see, Joana, these old things are worth my time.”
“Will this elephant lead you to treasure like that?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“Do you have the elephant?”
Anger beat at Sequeira’s temples and he tried to control it. “Unfortunately, not yet. I had hoped to purchase it from a man last night during an online auction. I had even sent a man to get the elephant after I won it with a bid. Instead, the internet server I was using crashed at the wrong time and I was unable to procure the piece.”
“Does the person who purchased the elephant know what you know about it?”
“That is another mystery to me.”
“Where do you think the elephant will lead you?”