That could be helpful. “What can you tell me about the boy?”
Inês shook herself out of her daze. “Uh . . . he and the woman—Leandra, you said—arrived at the embassy about a week before we came to Amado. When I saw them together, I had the impression that they were mother and son, but I can’t be sure. The boy was kept in the office with the secretaries so they could watch him. They said not to leave things about because he was a thief.”
The boy had certainly stolen from them. “Was he ill, like Leandra?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Did you hear any name for him?”
“They called him Jandro,” she said, pronouncing the name in the Spanish way. “Uh . . . Alejandro Ferrera.”
Oriana held up one hand. It took only a split second for her to make the connection—Alejandro Ferrera was the Spanish version of Alexandre Ferreira, the name of Duilio’s father. That could not be a coincidence.
CHAPTER 22
MONDAY, 27 APRIL 1903; BARCELONA
They’d arrived in Barcelona late Sunday night because of some trouble with the train—they’d had to replace an engine near Zaragosa. But once the train arrived at the station, a hotel omnibus had whisked them through the still-crowded streets to the Hotel Colón where their reserved room waited. The hotel was almost as opulent as the one in Lisboa, and they’d been given a room on the second floor that would look out over the plaza. Joaquim had the impression that the desk clerk knew they’d recently married.
In the morning they ate at the hotel’s restaurant, a long room with white tablecloths and courteous staff. Despite the elegance of the dining car on the train, Joaquim decided he preferred this place specifically because it wasn’t moving. So they ate their breakfast and planned what steps they would take first.
The American consulate general in Barcelona was right on the harbor, and while Joaquim’s Catalan was rusty, the cabdriver pulled his horses to a stop at the appropriate building, so he must have made his desire clear enough. Once he’d paid the driver, he led Marina up the steps.
The guards asked his business, but as soon as he’d given his name, they sent him on through to speak with a secretary, proving that Madam Norton was as good as her word. The secretary, a stern-looking young man with spectacles and chaotic hair, led them on, the scent of cigarette smoke drifting from his garments.
“A liaison has been assigned to your case, Inspector,” he said, taking them along a dim hallway toward the back of the building, away from the water. He knocked on a door with a paper label that read BENJAMIN PINTER. “Benjy’s a good fellow. He’ll set you right, whatever it is.”
Another young man, this one rounded with ruddy cheeks and dark hair, answered the door. He eyed Joaquim and cast a worried glance at Marina, but thanked the bespectacled man and quickly ushered them into his office.
Joaquim introduced himself and Marina, and refrained from rolling his eyes as the young man bowed over Marina’s gloved hand and pretended to kiss her knuckles. “You can call me Benjy,” he said in Catalan. “Or Pinter, whichever suits you.”
Joaquim eyed Pinter as the man sat behind his plain desk again. His office wasn’t much different than Joaquim’s, but this one was tucked away in the back, meaning that Pinter was either very much a secret or utterly unimportant. Given the tatty state of Pinter’s charcoal suit and the dusty hat that sat atop his file cabinet, Joaquim suspected it was the latter.
“Madam Norton told us your people here would be looking out for a woman coming from the islands,” Joaquim began. “Have you spotted her?”
Pinter nodded. “Yes, Inspector. We spotted the woman, Leandra Rocha, the moment she stepped off the ship onto the docks here.”
Joaquim glanced over at Marina, wondering how much of that she’d caught. Marina spoke Spanish, which was not the same as speaking Catalan. She nodded at him, which meant she’d understood enough. He doubted she’d caught that the man phrased his news in the past tense. He turned back to Pinter. “Have you lost her?”
“Not sure,” Pinter admitted with a grimace. He ran a hand through his dark hair. “A member of the Paris mission took over that job. Unfortunately, he hasn’t reported in for a day now. We don’t know if he’s somewhere where he cannot make contact, or if he’s gotten into trouble.”
“A member of the Paris embassy? Why?”
Pinter took a careful breath. “He outranked me, and wouldn’t tell me why. A specialist, I’m afraid.”
“Specialist?”
“A foreign service specialist. This fellow handles affairs with special people.”
Since his cousin worked in a division of the police whose purview included special people, Joaquim had a good idea what Pinter meant by that. “Such as the sereia?”
“There is a division that focuses on interactions with witches and nonhuman individuals,” Pinter confirmed. “She would qualify as being of interest to his branch.”
Had Madam Norton contacted this gentleman from the Paris office? Because it didn’t seem as though the Barcelona office had invited his interference. And did that mean someone in the American embassy considered this affair to be of greater importance than they’d thought? Paris wasn’t as far as Lisboa, but not a negligible distance either. Joaquim caught himself chewing his lower lip. “So, what happens now?”
“We were going to turn the pursuit over to you, Inspector, but she’s out of my hands now.”
Joaquim rubbed a hand down his face. “To your knowledge, did she contact anyone? Did she hand over the journal she’s carrying?”
“She headed into the old city,” Pinter said, “and met up with a local lawbreaker, a sort of master pickpocket. He gave her a place to stay in the tightest part of the old city. I can’t know if she still had the book in question. My mission was only to watch her, not to make contact.”
“And this new person? The specialist from Paris? Did he make contact with her?”
Pinter didn’t answer, but the way his lips twisted in disapproval told Joaquim the specialist had made contact with Leandra Rocha, or planned to, against orders. To do that, he must have a motive. “So he knew her.”
The young man’s mouth opened. It was fortunate he wasn’t a spy, because he’d be terrible as one. “I didn’t say that,” Pinter protested.
Joaquim glanced at Marina, who was politely paying attention whether she understood them or not. In Portuguese, he told her, “I think our American ambassador left something out.”
“Are you surprised?” she asked in turn.
“No, I suppose not.” Privately, Duilio had expressed some doubts about Madam Norton. Not that her aid hadn’t been vital so far. Instead Duilio questioned her motives. Mere curiosity about the fate of a former employee didn’t seem a strong enough motive to help them as much as she had. Joaquim turned back to Pinter, wondering how much Pinter had caught of what he’d said. Portuguese wasn’t all that distant a cousin of Catalan and Spanish. “So, what role are your people taking in this now? Now you’ve misplaced my quarry and inserted one of your own people into the situation.”
“I’ll give you what I do have,” Pinter said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “But until I hear from the other agent involved, I can’t tell you any more.”
Joaquim watched him closely. “And will you do so when you hear?”
“Madam Norton asked us to cooperate, Inspector,” Pinter insisted. “I am trying to do so.”
The poor man was caught between two of his superiors, an uncomfortable position that Joaquim had been in himself from time to time. “Very well. We’re at the Hotel Colón, on the Plaça de Catalunya. You can leave word for me there.” Joaquim rose, noting that Marina was giving him a speaking look. He took her hand and set it on his arm to lead her out of the office. But he stopped on the threshold and turned about. “What about the boy?”
Pinter seemed surprised. “We were only told
to follow the woman. Once she’d gotten rid of him, we didn’t worry about him any longer.”
Joaquim’s mouth went dry. “Got rid of him?”
“I assumed she’d rented him or had a similar arrangement, because she left him where she stayed the very night she arrived. Where he went from there, I can’t tell you.”
The boy was webless, half sereia, no ordinary boy off the street, but Pinter clearly didn’t know that. Madam Norton must have neglected to forward that information.
No, Joaquim doubted the omission was a matter of neglect. The woman was too crafty to forget a pertinent detail like that, so it had been intentional. “Where exactly did Leandra Rocha go that first night?”
“To a den of thieves within the old city’s walls, a place I certainly would not have been able to enter. The boy didn’t leave with her, though. Children like that run rampant in the poorer parts of the city.”
There were poor children everywhere, in every city. They very often fell into a life of theft and begging, if not worse, often working to fill someone else’s pockets. But this boy was important. Duilio had told him so.
“We’ll find the boy, then, and if you figure out what your man has done with Leandra Rocha, please send word.”
* * *
Marina kept one eye on Joaquim as he sat on a bench in the midst of the crowded walkways. In his hands he held an undershirt taken from the luggage in which the boy had hidden back on the islands. An odd thing to carry about, so he’d concealed it in a paper bag borrowed from the hotel’s concierge.
They’d followed Joaquim’s sense of the boy to an area in the old part of town, inside the ancient walls, and had ended up on a wide bricked walkway lined with plane trees. Pedestrians milled about, shopping and visiting cafés for coffee and a late breakfast of bread rubbed with olive oil and tomatoes, even though it was nearer time for lunch in her opinion.
Joaquim had warned her this was a place where tourists abounded, even this early in the year, so she should guard her handbag against pickpockets. That had, however, only increased his certainty that they would find the boy here. One thing they did know about the boy was that he was a thief, and this was exactly the sort of place where they could count on finding one—the Rambla. So Marina waited near a stand where an old crone sold flowers, once again watching other people stream by.
Joaquim’s head turned toward the harbor, almost as if the boy was in his sight. Then, eyes wide with surprise, he turned to look over his shoulder at her.
What? Marina glanced down and saw that a boy stood against the wall, right next to her. She stifled a gasp. She recognized that shirt and cap from the photograph Joaquim had in his keeping.
The boy swept off his cap and pressed it into her free hand. Marina clutched the thing without thinking; there was something hard within. Without so much as a glance up at her, the boy settled at her side, one foot propped against the wall. His face was downcast, as if he were sulking.
A second later Marina realized why. A large man in a blue and red uniform with brass buttons, a tall black hat atop his head, came jogging down the street, his dark eyes scanning the people that crowded the stalls and shop fronts and cafés. Marina surreptitiously opened her handbag and stuffed the boy’s cap inside, praying that it didn’t contain lice. Thank heavens Ana packed my largest bag. She reached out her hand to the boy. “Come along.”
The boy huffed out a long-suffering breath. But he slipped a small, dirty hand into her gloved one. She led him to the flower seller’s stall and made a show of perusing the lady’s wares. Taking her lead, Joaquim came and joined them. As the uniformed man approached, Joaquim purchased a bunch of pink roses, turned to the boy, and said, “Carry these for your mother.”
“Flowers?” the boy complained in Portuguese, the pronunciation only slightly different from the Spanish, but noticeable.
Apparently the boy spoke their language. Marina held his hand and thanked him fulsomely. He let out another dramatic groan, but clutched the flowers close anyway.
The man in red and blue was almost on them, so Marina tugged her handkerchief out of her sleeve and knelt down to make a show of dabbing dirt from the boy’s nose. Hopefully that would prevent the man from getting a good look at him.
But that was when she got her first look at the boy’s face. Her heart nearly stopped.
CHAPTER 23
ILHAS DAS SEREIAS
Duilio dressed in his shortest pareu, the one that came only to midthigh. It was one he wore only when going down to the beach to swim, although it was early in the morning for that. But the wife of the Spanish ambassador had come to call and she was notoriously prudish. If anything would put her off her guard and provoke her to make mistakes, it was a display of bare skin. Unfortunately, that meant he had to leave his revolver in the bedroom.
He double-checked the paint about his eyes and made sure his overlong hair wasn’t too disordered, then turned to Oriana. “Good enough?”
She ran a hand across his tattooed chest. “You look lovely.”
He rolled his eyes. She always told him that. “Let’s get this over with.”
They had returned to the house on the beach the previous evening, Costa and Inês Guerra with them. The lovers were now settled in the guest quarters, and Duilio’s best guess was that Vas Neves had spent a couple of hours giving the lieutenant a severe dressing-down.
Since Inês’ information confirmed that Madam Davila was neck-deep in this chaos, the woman’s visit was timely. So Duilio followed Oriana along the hallways to the courtyard where the ambassador’s wife waited for them.
Grandmother Monteiro hadn’t dignified the woman’s presence by joining them; thus only two of the guards were there, the captain out of deference to the office of the Spanish ambassador. A rare smile lifted one corner of Captain Vas Neves’ lips when she spotted Duilio. She knew exactly why he was dressed as he was. Costa stood at her side, back in his Portuguese uniform. Reddish bruising marked his jaw, but most of the swelling had passed. Since they’d both been there for the incident in the market, Duilio wasn’t shocking either of the guards with his attire.
Madam Davila waited in the center of the sunny courtyard. She must be baking alive in all the layers of fabric she wore. She had on a dark blue suit with beige lace showing on her high collar and spilling from the cuffs of her sleeves. She cast a startled glance at Duilio’s mostly bared legs and quickly averted her face.
She glanced up again when Oriana entered the courtyard, and vexation flickered across her features. Oriana had chosen to eschew any vest. Apparently the ambassador’s wife was no more comfortable being confronted with Oriana’s bare breasts than she was with Duilio’s thighs. As long as her husband had been ambassador here, Duilio would have thought she’d become accustomed to near nudity by now.
Ignoring the woman’s reaction, Oriana ran through the customary greetings and inquired politely after Ambassador Davila. The ambassador was suffering from gout, his wife claimed, which Duilio considered just as good an excuse as any other. For all intents and purposes, Madam Davila was the Spanish ambassador in his stead.
The woman’s dark eyes flicked downward, taking in Duilio’s legs again, and returned to Oriana’s face. Madam Davila lifted her narrow nose in the air. “I see that you’re still playing at being a native, Madam Ambassador.”
“Playing?” Oriana smiled. “I was raised here, Madam Davila, in this very house, so this garb is quite natural for me. We were about to go down to the beach for a swim though, so you did catch us in less formal attire.”
It wasn’t a secret, so Madam Davila knew Oriana had been raised here. Instead she was commenting on their clothing to cover her discomfort. Duilio moved behind Oriana and leaned against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other. He folded his arms to display his armbands better.
“To what do we owe the honor of your visit today, Madam Davila?” Oriana asked.
An interesting tack to take. The unnamed member of the domestic staff had to be either Leandra Rocha or Inês.
“Why would one of your household come here?” Oriana asked innocently, hands folded.
“We aren’t certain,” Madam Davila said. “But now we can’t find any trace of her.”
“Surely you can replace her,” Oriana noted. “If she wished to leave your employ, that’s her concern, isn’t it?”
Madam Davila plucked at the leaves of one of the plants next to the fountain. Her glove, a delicate netting one, snagged on a leaf and she jerked it away. “If it were that simple, I wouldn’t have troubled you. But when she fled, she took a young boy with her, the son of one of the young women who work in our offices.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t contacted the government on Quitos, then,” Oriana said. “Why would this domestic steal another woman’s child?”
“We’ve speculated that she’s delusional and believes he is her child,” Madam Davila said, waving one lace-obscured hand. “It’s hard to be certain why until we can find her and question her.”
Now that was a hastily concocted story if ever he’d heard one; they’d resorted to claiming madness. Madam Davila’s story was weak.
“I fail to see how we can help you,” Oriana observed.
“There is one aspect of this that you should know,” the woman said, her eyes fixing on Oriana’s bare feet. “The boy is almost eight years old. Clever, with dark hair and dark eyes.”
The ambassador’s wife lowered her lovely face then, as if embarrassed. “His mother named him Alejandro Ferrera,” she added, “and his resemblance to you is quite marked, Mr. Ferreira.”
The Shores of Spain Page 19