Neither answered, gazing directly ahead.
Helen’s first thought was that she had been kidnapped for her father’s money. Once, when she was about ten, he had been having trouble with the union at one of his plants. The fighting had been bitter, finally resulting in threats against Helen’s life by anonymous members of the local. The dispute had been resolved eventually, but she always remembered the incident, which served as a warning that wealth carried its penalties as well as its privileges.
“Where are you taking me?” Helen demanded, trying to sound braver than she felt.
The man on her right turned to look at her. “Do not be afraid,” he said, in thickly accented English. “We mean you no harm.”
“What is this about?” she said slowly, beginning to change her mind about the purpose of her abduction. His accent, though cruder and far more pronounced than Matteo’s, sounded hauntingly familiar. Could it be...? Her heart leaped into her throat as he reached inside the collar of his shirt and withdrew a silver chain. A medallion hung from it, and he held it out, displaying it for her. A tropical bird inscribed in a circle glowed in the filtered light from the tinted windows. Helen looked down at her ring; the symbols were the same.
“Matteo,” she whispered. “Does Matteo want to see me?”
Her companion nodded. “Si, Matteo. We take you to him; you come with us. Yes?”
Helen didn’t ask why Matteo hadn’t come himself or why he had chosen such a dramatic method of providing her with an escort. She knew from experience that he had his own reasons for doing everything, and she was so happy at the prospect of seeing him again that she didn’t question them.
She sat back in her seat and watched the passing scenery as the driver, who was clearly familiar with the area, skirted Crescent Beach and St. Augustine and headed for the highway, turning toward Jacksonville. They drove for almost an hour in silence, while her guards stared out the windows and the efficient driver piloted them through downtown Jacksonville and into a seedy, rundown area near the docks. It was the sort of neighborhood Helen would not have ventured into alone, but she was sure that her two companions, both the size of pro linebackers, were under orders from Matteo to protect her with their lives. When the car pulled to a stop and they got out, the men materialized on either side of her like secret service men flanking the President.
Helen looked over the facade of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse as her companions led her to a rear entrance. It was approached by walking through an alley littered with refuse remaining from a time when business was conducted inside. Sheets from newspapers, handbills and pamphlets crunched underfoot as one of the men opened a door set into the barnsided wall and they stepped through it.
The interior was vast and empty. The man who had spoken to her in the car gestured for her to follow him, and he took her to a small inner office, which must have served as the center of commerce in its day. The second man fell in behind her as Helen entered the glass walled room and was asked to take the only available seat. She did so, wondering uncomfortably where Matteo was. The guards remained with her, obviously waiting for him also.
Helen sighed and tried to get comfortable on the folding chair, ready to remain until he arrived.
* * * *
As Helen was settling in to wait, Matteo was on his way to the warehouse by another route, lest anyone should be following his car. He was driving; two of his lieutenants sat in the back seat. As he looked into the mirror he saw the two men exchanging glances. He knew exactly what they were thinking, though they would never be bold enough to say it.
Before leaving for this meeting he had explained his plan to the two of them, and it had met with a less than enthusiastic reception. Disputing their leader’s judgment was out of the question, but their covert looks, their unspoken incredulity, had said it all. They thought Matteo had finally lost his mind.
Relying on the help of an effete American heiress was preposterous. If Helen Demarest did what Matteo proposed, she would be required to fly off to the jungle of a country she’d barely heard of to aid people she didn’t know. To even suppose that she might do so was absurd.
Matteo disagreed. His men were sincere, but their knowledge of Americans was limited to what they heard in political diatribes and read in slanted newspapers. Matteo had lived in the United States for thirteen years while attending school. He knew that Americans loved underdogs and causes, but most of all they loved their freedom, and they admired others who wanted the same thing for themselves. Helen might help him, not in spite of her nationality but because of it.
Matteo turned into the alley leading to the warehouse, schooling himself to keep his inner conflict from showing in his expression. His main reason for leaving Helen in Florida, without the promise of future contact, was to keep her out of danger. Now he was about to ask her to immerse herself in it. He had to dismiss the contradiction because he was desperate. He knew that her feelings for him would convince her to go along with his scheme when other arguments might not, and he was out of options, forced to use her. He saw no alternative.
He stopped the car and got out followed by his men, who trailed him closely, their hands at their belts. The local police were still on the alert for him, and extra patrols had been assigned to the waterfront area. Matteo strode purposefully into the warehouse, heading for the room where Helen had been sequestered.
He had wanted to be there when she arrived, to minimize her anxiety, but his men had persuaded him that it would be better to arrive later and be certain that she was not tailed. He could see the back of her head through the glass as he approached, and his steps quickened.
Helen got up the minute she saw him, momentarily taken aback by the change in his appearance, and then flinched when the men with her took a step toward her as she rose.
Matteo lifted his hand as he came through the door, and they fell back. Helen looked at him, and he returned her stare. Neither said a word.
He had undergone a remarkable transformation. His hair, which she remembered as longish and wavy, was cut short in a contemporary style and tinted to give it an auburn cast. He had a short beard, but unlike the one she had shaved off, this was clipped and neat, like the three day growth worn by models in sportswear advertisements. While it gave him a stylish and slightly rakish air, it also had the desired effect of making his features less sharp and identifiable. He wore aviator glasses with grayed lenses for the purpose of concealing his eyes; Helen knew that his vision was perfect.
His clothes completed the picture. Helen had spent enough time in expensive stores to recognize top quality merchandise: pleated linen pants with a cowhide belt, cotton lisle shirt, soft lamb’s wool sweater. The total image was chic, upscale, preppie. For reasons she didn’t understand he wanted to look that way.
Helen glanced nervously at the guard nearest her, and Matteo nodded toward the door, dismissing the men. All four departed immediately without a questioning glance, but she noticed that one remained just outside the door, within calling distance, his back to the room.
Once they were alone Matteo opened his arms, and Helen ran into them. He held her for a long moment before she said, “Matteo, you’re all right. I was so worried.”
He stepped back to look at her, brushing a strand of hair from her brow. “I’m fine. I hope my men didn’t frighten you. There was no safe way to get in touch.”
“I was scared at first, but then the bigger one showed me his medallion, the one with the same figure that’s on the ring you gave me. After that I knew they were from you and I would be okay.” She touched his cheek, roughened now as it had been when he was sick. “How is your arm?”
“Good as new. You’re an excellent nurse.”
Helen’s hand fell away and she said guardedly, “Matt, why did you bring me here? The way you left I never expected to see you again a week later.”
“I didn’t expect it either,” he replied simply.
“What happened?”
He turned
away. “I can’t get out of the country. My plan when I left you was to go south to the Keys and use a connection I have there, but apparently I’m too hot to handle.” He smiled resignedly. “The local police are one thing, but your FBI is also looking for me, and my friend didn’t like the idea of federal charges and a federal court. So here I am.”
Helen sighed and folded her hands, as she had when she was little and confronted with a problem. The cloak-and-dagger tactics and unsavory surroundings might be necessary, but they still made her uneasy.
“All right, Matt,” she said in a controlled voice, “what is going on? You wouldn’t tell me before, but you must have changed your mind, or I would not be standing here, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So. What’s with your clothes—your hair, for starters. You look like a Wall Street stockbroker out for Saturday lunch at the country club.”
“Good,” he said with satisfaction. “That’s my disguise.”
Disguise? she was about to reply when she had to jump out of the way as a mouse scurried by, followed by another in hot pursuit.
“You’d better get a cat in here,” she advised him. “You’ve got mice roller skating all over the place.”
“I don’t plan to stay,” he answered dryly.
“No? Where are you going?”
“Back home, I hope. That depends on what you do.” He held her light gaze with his darker one. “You helped me once, Helen, will you do so again?”
“Tell me about it,” she said warily, “and I’ll let you know.”
Matteo gestured for her to resume her seat, overturning an orange crate next to it. He arranged the box so that he would face her and sat down. “Ask, and I’ll answer,” he said.
“Who are you?” she said.
“I am Matteo Salazar de Montega,” he replied solemnly, humoring her, like a child reciting his lunchtime menu for his mother.
“And where is your home?”
“My country is Puerta Linda,” he replied, producing a map from his pocket and opening it for her. He had come prepared.
“Here,” he added, pointing to the coastline of Central America. Helen followed his forefinger to a tiny state divided from its neighbors by a river on one side and a mountain range on another. She continued to look down at the map as he took off his tinted glasses in order to see better.
Puerta Linda. The name struck a chord in Helen’s mind, and she remembered news reports of the turmoil in that country, the clips filled with shots of men in fatigues toting rifles and aerial views of verdant jungles.
“The night we met I was buying guns for the revolution there, and your Coast Guard interrupted the sale,” Matteo went on evenly. “That’s why the federal government is in on it, too; they’re looking for me on illegal purchase of weapons charges.”
Helen listened, absorbing each piece of information as it came. Puerta Linda was a world away, the current government a corrupt dictatorship threatened by bands of rebels who sought to overthrow it. Rebels like the man before her, who watched her calmly with obsidian eyes, waiting for her reaction.
And now his name began to assume its full significance, and her mouth went dry. Montega. He was the leader of the revolution, a young turk who was trying to organize the various factions to make a disciplined assault on the sham democracy in power. He had been described as well spoken and American educated, a brilliant organizer with a keen mind and limitless personal courage. Matteo Montega was the most prominent figure in his country’s evolving history, and Helen had been hiding him in her father’s house for a week, feeding him erythrocin and Angel Bites. It was incredible.
“What do you want me to do?” Helen asked quietly, subdued by the enormity of it.
“Your government knows that I will try to get back to my country,” he answered. “Agents are watching the airports, monitoring all flights to Puerta Linda. There aren’t many, so it isn’t difficult to screen the passengers. I want to leave the country as part of a couple because they will expect me to be traveling alone. But I need someone, a real American who would not arouse suspicion, to pose as my wife.”
“And that’s where I come in,” Helen whispered.
“Yes. There is more involved here than just my breaking American law, although that is what they would use to imprison me. The current government in my country is allied with the United States, and the Puerta Lindan officials would like nothing better than for the American authorities to throw me in jail and let me rot there. I’d be out of the country and out of their hair, permanently.”
Helen swallowed, realizing that he was right.
“You must understand,” he said, leaning forward earnestly. “My country would be ripe for a Communist takeover if the current government fell and the rebels were not organized and ready. I must be there, Helen, or Puerta Linda will go from a lesser evil to a greater one.”
“I’m not a very good actress,” she said feebly. “I don’t know how convincing I would be.”
“You would just have to be yourself,” Matteo replied. “You are an American, you have the right accent, the right attitude; you could answer questions correctly if you were challenged. We’ve got all the paperwork; you wouldn’t have to do anything except get on the plane with me and sit there until we arrived.”
Helen stared back at him, her eyes wide.
Matteo took her hand. “Helen, I speak English very well, but I have never been able to lose my accent completely. And it gets more pronounced under stress; it would give me away in a minute. At the very least it would make the authorities suspicious, and closer investigation would prove disastrous. But if you were with me you could do most of the talking, provide me with cover, don’t you see?”
“I see,” she murmured, not looking at him.
He thought she was about to turn him down and said, “Before you say no, let me tell you more about me and my country, and why it is so important for me to get back there.”
Helen’s gaze returned to his face as he said, “The bird on the ring I gave you is the aquatar. It is native to my country and a freak of evolution, able to survive under conditions that would kill other wildlife, able to eat almost nothing for long periods and store its own water. It is a survivor, tough and smart and as tenacious as the spirit of freedom in my people. That’s why we took it for our symbol.”
Helen listened, intrigued.
“My country has not been in the hands of the people for a long time. The ‘elections’ the government holds are a farce; the officials talk about registering and voting, and then perpetuate a dictatorship that has kept the same faction in power for twenty years.”
“Puerta Linda always calls itself a democracy,” Helen said. “But most people know better.”
He snorted. “Do you think so? Americans don’t seem to care.”
“They just don’t understand, Matteo. It’s all so confusing, so many different groups and it’s happening so far away.”
“But you should try to understand!” he said passionately. “You Americans take too much for granted; when I was in school here and would hear on the news about the lack of ‘voter turnout’ during an election, I would be enraged. Do you know what the opportunity to vote in a free election would mean to any Puerta Lindan? And so many of you throw it away; softball games and appointments for a haircut are more important.”
Helen dropped her eyes, remembering an election day when she had been immersed in her research and had forgotten to vote.
“I want to bring to Puerta Linda the same kind of government you have here. My father made a mistake in sending me to America to school. I learned what it’s like to live in a free society, and once you’ve done that, you can’t go back to a lifetime of indentured servitude.”
“Your father?” Helen said.
“Yes. He was a minister of the current regime who served it until he died three years ago. He had all the wealth and privileges its favorites enjoy: a seaside villa, a staff of servants to wait on him and his family, the bes
t of everything. Nothing was too good for a man so high in the government, a trusted cog in the most corrupt machine in Central America.”
“It must have been hard for you growing up in his house,” Helen offered softly.
“I didn’t,” Matteo responded, meeting her gaze directly. “I am illegitimate. My mother was my father’s maid.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
Matteo stood and began to walk around, gesturing to make his points. “I was raised with my mother’s people and saw things from their point of view. She was poor and I was poor, dirt poor, while my father and his legal wife, and their legal children, lived in a big house, and were driven around in a fancy car, and ate off china plates.”
Helen didn’t say a word, fearful he would remember that she was a lot closer in origin to the father he described so bitterly than to Matteo himself.
“We ate off the clay dishes my mother made by hand, when we had anything to eat at all,” he continued, lost in the past. “And she was ignored once she got older and lost the beauty that had attracted my father’s attention. But he did do one thing for her, something that changed the course of my life and made me glad, for once, that he had sired me.”
“What was that?”
“He listened to my mother when she asked for me to receive an education. She knew it was the one route I could take to escape the cycle of poverty that had trapped her and everyone like her. She begged and pleaded and I guess she finally wore him down, or maybe I was getting old enough to become an embarrassment and he wanted me out of the way. I don’t know. But when I was ten he arranged for me to go to boarding school in Connecticut. He had a lot of diplomatic ties here because the ambassador to the U.S. at that time was a close friend of his.”
Helen sensed that he had almost forgotten she was there, his memories were so vivid. He smiled slightly.
“So I found myself living and studying with a bunch of rich Americans, the sons of doctors and lawyers and big businessmen. And there I was, the Puerta Lindan bastard without a word of English transplanted to the wilds of New England. The first winter I almost froze. I had never seen snow, and we had two blizzards, drifts up to the windowsills. I thought I was at the North Pole. And I couldn’t even say Connecticut.” He grinned suddenly. “When I get nervous I still can’t.”
Men of Intrgue A Trilogy Page 6