by mike Evans
Winters glanced to the right. “This is a long-term-care facility?”
“Yes, it is.”
Winters guessed the word “care” might be an overstatement, but he kept that to himself. He was going to keep his own counsel this time. And then he’d be looking for that return flight home. Archer was never going to let him live this trip down.
The inside of the building didn’t reflect the outside, at least not entirely. The floor of the wide central hallway was covered in much-washed clay tile and the walls were a butter-yellow stucco that had worn off in places to reveal patches of brick. Sunlight streamed from the rooms on the west side into the hall, giving it a playful, striped effect, and the woman who walked toward them was smiling. The gaps left by missing teeth would have detracted from her credibility if her English hadn’t been crisp when she asked, “I can help you?”
While Sophia told her their business in rapid-fire Spanish, Winters pulled out his phone and checked for the umpteenth time to see if he had service. Nada. Not that he was expecting to hear from anyone, except maybe Ben, and even that was doubtful. He wanted to let Maria know he was in Barcelona in case she was still there, although he didn’t think that was possible either. She’d said she was just going for a short business trip.
“You will follow?”
Winters looked up to see Sophia already trailing the attendant into a room to his left. He caught up and felt himself nod appreciatively when he got there. Arched windows lined three walls and cream stucco bounced light from the other. Ceiling fans spun lazily overhead. Not a bad place to spend the end of your life.
Only three people were in the room. Two of undetermined gender napped on a couch at the far end. Another, a wiry old man with an impressive moustache, sat upright in a wheelchair near one of the windows, chortling over a book.
“Señor Colon!” the attendant shouted at him.
Winters jumped but the old man barely gave her a glance. Wonderful. He was either deaf as a post or senile. Uncle David heard better than this guy.
The woman rattled off something in Spanish of which Winters caught only the word “Columbus,” and Señor Colon turned his gaze on Winters and Sophia. His eyes were an unexpected blue that gleamed as they surveyed Sophia. At least the old guy could still appreciate a good-looking woman. He closed his book, set it aside, and stroked the moustache.
More give-and-take in Spanish as chairs were pulled up to the wheelchair and the attendant laughed and made some kind of assurances to Señor Colon. He didn’t take his eyes off Sophia as she perched in her light-as-a-sparrow fashion on the edge of one of the chairs and patted the other one for Winters. He sat, but he might as well have been invisible. The old man was clearly smitten.
“I have heard these stories, too,” he said.
Winters startled.
“Your English is very good, Señor Colon,” Sophia said.
“Please. Jacobo.”
“Jacobo. I am Sophia. This is John.”
Jacobo gave Winters a cursory glance and returned to the object of his affection. “My mother, she insist that I learn English as a boy. She wanted I should go to America but it never happened. I did not want to go anyway.” He smiled at Sophia. “Too much beauty here, no?”
The old man could still flirt, Winters had to give him that.
“So you have heard the stories,” Sophia said.
“Of our relation to Columbus? Yes.”
“Are they true?” Winters asked.
“Yes. And no.”
Winters sat back. It was going to be a long afternoon.
“True for me, no. True for you. “He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“Why not true for you, Jacobo?” Sophia said, her voice laced with sympathy.
Yeah. Definitely best to let her do the talking.
“I am related to Señor Christopher Columbus, but not in the line of direct descent. I am a relative very distant, not of the main branch.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophia said.
“I am not! Why do I want Americans knocking at my door who want to see me?” He looked at Winters for the first time—and burst into barroom laughter. “I only joke with you, my cousin! Come—let us drink together!”
The smiling attendant pulled a small table closer and deposited a tray on it. A pitcher of something cold with citrus curls floating in it was flanked by three glasses. Jacobo looked up at her. “You have used the sangria recipe, Anita.”
She shook her head the way any good nurse would who refused to serve alcohol to her aged patient. Winters didn’t have to speak Spanish to know what was going down. Uncle David and this guy were clearly related.
Sophia poured and asked Jacobo to go on.
“My family, it has a colorful history,” he said, caressing his moustache.
Big surprise.
“We are related to a servant who took the name of Colon.” Jacobo winked at no one in particular. “This woman, she had . . . asunto amoroso with her master.” Jacobo let out a horselaugh again. “They had something hot on the side—a child was born—and there you have it—another Colon!”
Winters let himself grin. He was beginning to like this old character.
“Now you, el primo,” he said, gesturing to Winters. “You are no son of a servant.”
“How can you tell?” Winters asked.
“You have the . . .” He snapped his fingers and looked at Sophia.
“El aura?”
“Ah, sí!”
“You have the aura,” she said to Winters.
“Sí, the air of the descendants of the third duke of Liria, Jacobo-Franscisco Eduardo Fitz-James Stuart y Colón.”
“That’s nice of you, Jacobo,” Winters said, “but I don’t think you can say—”
“You have not seen his portrait?”
“I saw his picture online—”
“You must see the portrait or—” He snapped his fingers again.
“Or a copy,” Sophia offered.
He grinned at her. “You and me—we are the perfect team. Why don’t you marry me?”
“You far outclass me,” she said, without missing a beat. “I am not in the line of the Colons.”
Jacobo faked a jealous glare at Winters and laughed again.
“In the stories you were told by the old ones,” Sophia said, “did you ever hear of a secret journal that Señor Columbus kept?”
“Heard of it? I know where it is!”
Winters choked down a laugh. Sophia, however, kept a straight face. “And where is that?” she asked.
“He give it to a monk by the name of Gaspar Gorricio for the safety keeping. He lived in a monastery, the best place for the keeping of secrets.” He gave Winters another wink. “This was common in that day with the important papers.”
Sophia’s face was no longer emotionless. Her eyes were keen on Jacobo. “What monastery was this monk connected with, Jacobo?”
“You haven’t heard this story before?” Winters asked, glancing in her direction.
“This is the first time—”
“The monastery at Santa Maria de las Cuevas.” Jacobo looked pleased that he’d been able to impress her. “In Seville.”
Sophia nodded.
“But you will not find it there.” Jacobo shook his head with more sadness than he felt, Winters was sure. “The monastery, it was closed long ago. It is now a place for history—”
“A historical site,” Sophia said, her voice deflated.
Winters frowned. She was buying that whole thing?
“But”—Jacobo waited, one long bent finger up, until they both looked at him—“the trail to the journal, it begins there.”
Winters couldn’t handle it any longer. “If it was once there and the trail still leads to it, why hasn’t anybody found it before now? Or maybe they have.”
Jacobo’s glare was genuine this time. “They have not, or you would have heard of it.”
“That’s true,” Sophia agreed.
“And . . .
only a direct descendant of Señor Columbus will be able to find it.”
And Winters thought his mother was strange. It must run in the family. They were all nuts and he was beginning to feel that way himself. What was he even doing here?
But as long as he was there, okay, he’d play along. “So the journal knows if the person who’s about to find it is a direct descendant of its original owner?”
Jacobo looked at Sophia in disgust. “He is loco, no?”
“Maybe,” Sophia said, “but please, go on.”
The old man turned to Winters and all but rolled the searing blue eyes. “No, the journal does not ‘know.’ It is an—” He snapped the fingers at Sophia again.
“Inanimate,” Sophia said.
“Yes. An inanimate object. But the keepers of the journal have always known, through the generations. They have knowledge who will have the right to it.” He shook his head ruefully. “All who have tried have failed.”
“What do you mean?” Sophia said.
Winters watched her watch Jacobo, her eyes measuring his face. The old man was suddenly sober. No barroom laugh was forthcoming and he seemed to have forgotten his moustache.
“They have all died,” he said in a somber tone.
“What?”
Jacobo kept his eyes on Sophia, who hadn’t uttered a word. “Your friend, he is not only loco. He does not believe.”
“He’s a man of logic, Jacobo,” Sophia said. “His work requires him to see only what is reasonable.”
“I understand then,” he said.
She smiled at him “What do you understand?”
“I understand why he needs you.”
Winters stood up and extended his hand to the old man. “It’s been a pleasure, Jacobo. Let’s keep in touch now that we know we’re related.”
“Send me a Christmas greeting,” Jacobo said. His voice was as dry as Winters’ ever was.
Winters left Sophia to the prolonged good-byes and waited for her in front of the building. No doubt the old guy was trying to get her phone number.
When she joined him, her face was unreadable again, but her walk wasn’t.
“You certainly have a way with people,” she said coolly.
“I guess I should have humored the old guy.”
“Or perhaps you should have believed him.” Sophia’s eyes flashed as she swept past him to the car. He hurried after her, only because he wouldn’t put it past her to drive off without him.
He waited until they were on their way out of town before he said, “Are you telling me you believed him?”
“I believe he is passing down what he knows without embarrassment.”
“Just because someone’s passing down a family legend doesn’t make it true. I heard all my life that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and then caved to his old man, but I wouldn’t swear it happened.”
She looked at him blankly.
“You wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “But you get my point.”
“Yes,” she said. “And no.”
At least the sparkle was back in her eyes. “Look, I don’t mean to offend you, Sophia—”
“Then stop doing it.”
“Tell me how I’m doing it.”
“By discounting the spiritual aspect of this. I am not trying to press any of my religious beliefs on you, but I would appreciate your not belittling them.”
“Were we talking about religious beliefs? I’m serious—did I miss something?”
“Do you have dinner plans?” she asked.
“I know I missed that.”
“Do you have plans?”
“No.”
“I know a place. If we are still speaking to each other when we arrive, I will buy our meal.”
“And if we aren’t?”
“I will take you to your hotel and we will say good-bye.”
“I really did miss something.” Winters gripped the dashboard. “But I’ll agree to that on one condition.”
“What is that?”
“You don’t kill us before we get there.”
She gave it a minute before she eased off the accelerator.
“Thank you,” he said. “You wanted to say?”
“I wanted to say that I do not think we should discount everything Jacobo said. There may be some merit to the possibility that the sacred keeping of the journal has been passed down through generations of monks and that they do have some way of recognizing a direct descendant.” Sophia glanced at him. “And that way may very well be from the seeker’s motives.”
“I’m listening.”
“Only someone with pure motives should have access to the journal. And who better than a person who has been given a sacred trust to be able to discern that?”
“What possible motives could there be?” Winters watched the tile roofs zip past. She hadn’t slowed down much. “I suppose it could be worth a lot of money—but I’m not interested in selling it.”
“What are you interested in?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why are you on this search?”
My shrink said I needed a hobby? That wouldn’t buy him dinner. And it wasn’t true. But the real reason suddenly caught in his throat.
“My mother started this,” he said. “She left me a letter asking me to continue the search. It meant something to her—I don’t know what—but . . .” Winters spoke more slowly now, “she was like you. She saw something spiritual in it. She said God told her to do it.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believe she believed it,” Winters said. “And I want to honor that.”
They rode in silence for a few miles. By then the sun was turning the hills to silhouettes.
“Then I don’t see that you have much choice but to pursue this,” Sophia said finally. “If it leads nowhere, then you’ve lost nothing except a little time. But if it proves to be true, think what you will have done for your mother. And for all the rest of us.”
“And my daughter, maybe?”
Sophia glanced at him with a questioning look but didn’t ask. He’d never told her anything about himself, much less that he had a daughter. Instead she said, “If God did ask your mother to carry out this mission, there must have been a reason—a reason that still exists or she would not have handed it on to you.”
Winters nodded. “Tell me—how far away is Seville?”
Sophia brought the car to a stop in front of a tiny, tile-topped building. “Four hours.”
“Where are we now?”
She smiled at him. “Dinner.”
Maria had way too much on her mind to sleep on the plane like she had on her first flight to Barcelona, despite the fact that she’d been mysteriously upgraded to first class, where the flight attendants all but rocked the passengers to sleep. Even though her Barcelona experience had started only a few weeks ago, she felt years older than when she began.
At the exit from customs she spotted Elena, just as they’d arranged. Maria grinned and waved but Elena’s response was unenthusiastic.
Actually that was an understatement. Her eyes were wide with panic and her face pasty-white. It didn’t take long to figure out why, either. Carlos Molina stood no more than six feet behind her.
The Austin voice in Maria’s head told her to get back on the plane. A wiser voice told her to pretend not to see him. She went straight to Elena, dropped her bags, and gave her a brief hug, lips close to her ear. “Did you come with him?”
“I would rather be shot. I don’t know why he’s here. He’s acting like he doesn’t know me.”
Maria could hear the terror in her voice and she squeezed tighter. “I’ll handle him. Just grab my carry-ons and head for the door.”
Elena did exactly as she said, though fled for the door would better describe her exit. When Maria turned to grab her suitcases she found Molina already had them.
The words Scream and run because you’re about to be kidnapped entered her mind, but Maria inhaled and gave hi
m a smile. “I wasn’t expecting you, Señor Molina,” she said. “It’s a shame you came because I made other arrangements for pickup.”
“Señor Tejada instructed me to come.”
Then Señor Tejada was going to get a very large piece of her mind. “I’m happy to tell him you followed orders,” Maria said. “Let me take those from you. I need to catch up with my assistant.”
She made a grab for the handles of her roller bags but Molina deftly moved them aside.
“Seriously,” she said. “Elena’s getting a cab and I don’t want to make them wait.”
“Go, then,” Molina said. “I will take your things to your apartment.”
Maria stopped in mid-grab for one of her bags. “My apartment? No. I have a reservation at the—”
“Señor Tejada thought you would be more comfortable in the complex near Catalonia. Three bedrooms, two baths, full kitchen—”
“I’m not settling down here!” Maria reached up to scrape her fingers through her hair. Everything about this was wrong and she had to make it right, or Operation Save Elena was going to be over before it started.
“Tell you what,” she continued. “I’ll keep all my belongings with me until I’ve had a chance to speak with Señor Tejada. Then—”
“He has gone out of town for the day.”
“Then I’ll call him on his cell phone.”
Molina gave the hint of a smirk and Maria immediately knew why. She didn’t have Tejada’s cell phone number. That was going on the list of things she would discuss with him first thing . . .
“All right,” she conceded at last. “I’ll go to the apartment, but Elena can take me. What’s the address?”
Molina said nothing, either by word or expression. She truly wanted to smack him. But that would get Elena exactly where?
Maria forced a smile once more. “You know what, I get it. You have your orders and if you don’t carry them out, it’s not going to go well for you with Señor Tejada. I imagine he can be a pretty tough boss. Where else are you going to find a great gig like this, right?” She started toward the exit, still talking over her shoulder. “I’ll let you take me and my things to the apartment. If Señor Tejada is out of town today I’ll just use the time to get settled.”