Debris Line (Gibson Vaughn)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  “At the hotel. Anibal is here keeping me safe like a good mother hen. I would tell you more, but it’s not wise.”

  Sebastião said that he understood.

  “I’m sorry about Jenn, my friend. I had no idea she meant so much to you.”

  “Neither did she. I may not be very good at sharing my feelings.”

  “Nor I,” Fernando said, tiring of the conversation. “Is she there? I would say good-bye.”

  “No, she went to meet Hendricks.”

  Fernando ended the conversation and hung up. He didn’t need to ask where, the blue dot told him that much. The Porsche was currently in Alcantarilha, a flyspeck of a town midway between Albufeira and Lagos. Fernando had passed it a thousand times but never seen reason to stop. George Abe would be with them. No doubt about that. But what were the four Americans conspiring about? How much did Gibson know about Fernando’s business with the Romanians? He should have killed his friend when he had the chance.

  So now, instead of being able to sit back and enjoy his drink, Fernando had one more mess to clean up. There was nothing tying Fernando to the warehouse. Not directly. He had scrupulously covered his tracks. But if Gibson got it into his head to share what he’d discovered with Baltasar, then it would only be a matter of time before his father put the pieces together. And that could not be allowed to happen. He’d risked too much these past two years to see it undone now.

  Fernando’s first instinct was to reach back out to the Romanians and have them handle Gibson Vaughn. Their way this time. But that would be a mistake. He couldn’t afford to look weak to the Romanians. When the time came to take the Algarve, they would need to respect him. Besides, Luisa was on her way to Quarteira. The Romanians would need every man at their disposal to survive her.

  No, he would have to deal with Gibson himself.

  Or would he? Maybe there was another way.

  He picked up the phone and dialed his father.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  They crossed the street to the church in a solemn procession, as if going to view the body of a dear, departed friend. Jenn trailed behind, feeling very much on the outside looking in. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt this way since coming to Portugal. She’d spent two years hunting for George before finally freeing him from Cold Harbor. Cold Harbor had been hunting her too. Missed her by a matter of minutes in Albany. It had been a hard, dangerous couple of years. Cold Harbor had hunted her as much as she’d hunted them. She’d relied on no one but herself. Answered to no one but herself. It had kept her alive.

  Part of her preferred it that way.

  Dan was right. He didn’t work for her, and she had no business talking to him that way. But she was having a hard time adjusting to the idea that these people—as much as she cared for them—had a say in what she did or how she did it. The hold they had on her felt like a shackle. It made her feel unsafe. Made her crave the drink that Sebastião had taken out of her hand.

  The heavy wooden door opened grudgingly and admitted them into the quiet of the church. The pews were empty, lights dimmed in case someone needed a late-night word with God.

  Hendricks made a sweep to confirm that no one was having a crisis of faith. “We’re alone,” Hendricks told Gibson. “Floor is yours.”

  Gibson balanced his laptop on the back of a pew. The screen flickered, casting an alien glow across the church. Hendricks put a cigarette in his mouth, remembered where he was, and returned it to the pack. George sat one row back and leaned forward, fingers interlaced like a penitent awaiting absolution. Jenn stood apart from the others, arms crossed. She wished she were back in Sebastião’s bed. Not standing in a musty church about to look at something terrible because Gibson Vaughn needed to save the world. The nice thing about Sebastião was that he didn’t need taking care of. He had an entire staff dedicated to his upkeep. It was a very appealing lifestyle.

  Then there was the matter of his retirement and the puzzle of Salzburg. His offer cast him in an unexpected light. Had he been serious about marrying her? She didn’t know what to make of that. From anyone else, it would have been a joke. He hadn’t been kidding, though. Not that he’d given it a lot of thought, but then that wasn’t Sebastião’s way. She wouldn’t call him an impulsive man, but once he made a decision, the decision was made. Second-guessing was not in his nature. Once upon a time, she would have said the same of herself. Nowadays, though, it seemed like all she ever did was doubt herself.

  Gibson finished fiddling with his laptop. He stood back and tapped the space bar. George leaned closer to see. Jenn could see just fine from where she was.

  A video began to play.

  Taken from above, it showed an enclosure inside a warehouse. It looked like a pen or a corral that you might find on a working farm. It didn’t hold animals. Jenn felt her heart seize, but she didn’t look away.

  None of them did.

  Jenn had always felt a visceral responsibility never to blink. To bear witness where others wouldn’t. That was probably why she’d joined the Agency. It was why she had fought seeing the video at all. As long as it remained an abstraction, she could minimize whatever Gibson had found. The mind didn’t allow itself to imagine certain things unless forced to see. Seeing would make it harder to argue that they shouldn’t get involved. And she really believed that intervening would be suicide. Silently, she cursed Gibson for putting her in this position.

  Inside the corral were two dozen boys—perhaps as young as fourteen, none older than sixteen or seventeen. She guessed they were a mixture of North African and Middle Eastern, most likely from countries like Syria and Libya. Places wracked by war and civil unrest, where human traffickers could prey on people’s desperation. Slavery had reached epidemic proportions in the twenty-first century. Jenn had seen estimates as high as thirty million worldwide, with nearly a million souls trafficked internationally each year. Half of them children.

  Vague promises of a new life in Europe were enough to lure them to gamble with their lives. Not realizing that there was no way out, no better life. Places like the United States and the European Union did the traffickers’ work for them, creating cages without bars. Even if one of these boys managed to escape, he couldn’t go to the police without being sent back to whatever hellhole he’d escaped.

  The conditions in the video were deplorable. Filthy metal buckets served as toilets. No running water. The boys glistened with sweat and moved lethargically. Without ventilation, and the Portuguese sun beating down, the temperature inside the warehouse would be north of one hundred and twenty degrees during the day. She doubted nighttime brought much relief. Lights shone down mercilessly as some boys slept on cardboard, shirts wrapped around their heads. Others stared morosely through the bars, tracking something or someone beyond.

  Gibson hit the space bar.

  A second video began. It showed a similar enclosure. This one contained girls—similar ages, similar ethnicities. Jenn guessed that they had arrived together but had been segregated by gender. Pregnant stock would drive down prices.

  “I think the pens are where they’re kept before auction,” Gibson said. “Wouldn’t want the merchandise fraternizing before the sale.”

  “Auction?” Jenn said.

  To answer, Gibson tabbed to another video. It showed a boy standing against a concrete wall in his underwear. His ribs stood out, but he had an athletic frame. Someone threw him a soccer ball, which he caught and held in the crook of his arm. The boy smiled despite his circumstances, a friendly, kind smile. He’d been cleaned up. Made presentable. He turned slowly in a circle. To his right, text listed his name as Kamal. Height. Weight. Education. Languages spoken. Vital statistics scrolled down the screen.

  Kamal was fifteen.

  Jenn ran her tongue across her teeth but did not look away.

  “His file also includes a PDF of his medical records,” Gibson said, his voice thick with anger. “Everything a discerning customer needs to make an informed purchase. Kamal here was sold
two days ago to a buyer in France. Delivery is still pending.”

  Gibson tabbed again and again. A different boy, a different girl, the same concrete wall, the same nightmare. A girl with a bow in her hair. Tab. A frail boy in a frayed Nirvana T-shirt. Tab. On and on it went. Gibson cycled through a dozen more videos. The children weren’t in the best shape, but Jenn saw that the boys were all handsome and the girls beautiful. These children had been handpicked with one purpose in mind. It sickened her to think what was in store for them. Especially because she could see in their eyes that they didn’t yet know it themselves. Their captors’ lies still kept their dreams of a better life alive. That was why every one of them smiled hopefully for the camera. Somehow, that made it all that much worse.

  “How did you come by this?” George asked.

  Hendricks and Gibson looked at each other and had a wordless discussion. Finally, Hendricks shrugged and said, “They’re being stored and streamed through servers at the cannery. Best as I can tell, Baltasar is running a dark-web auction site.”

  George cast his eyes down. “This isn’t the man I knew twenty years ago.”

  “Well, that’s a huge fucking surprise,” Gibson said.

  “Hey, that’s enough,” Jenn snapped.

  “No, it really isn’t,” Gibson said. “Benjamin Lombard. Calista Dauplaise. Now this? It is possible that you are the worst judge of character in the history of the world. Seriously, have you ever been right about anyone in your entire life?”

  “Gibson,” Jenn said sharply.

  “What? We’ve been sucking at the teat of a major drug importer who turns out to be a human trafficker because George vouched for him and said he wasn’t such a bad guy as all that.”

  “No one made you stay,” Jenn said.

  “You’re right, there. I’m as guilty as any of us.”

  Jenn and Gibson stood toe to toe, neither blinking, neither backing down. She had an irrational desire to punch him in the throat and see how things went from there. But she didn’t; he wasn’t who she was angry with.

  “He’s not wrong,” George said.

  “It’s not that simple,” Jenn said.

  George disagreed. “Right now, it is exactly that simple. After we deal with this, we can argue the particulars.”

  “Deal with it?” Jenn said. “We have to get you out of here. Out of Portugal.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” George said.

  “Sir, you’re not in any shape for us to be getting involved with this.”

  George struck the ground with his cane. The report startled Jenn into silence. Slowly, he rose to his feet. He trembled, whether from the effort or the emotion, she couldn’t say. He looked at each of them in turn, but his eyes settled on Jenn.

  “I am done being talked about like I’m on life support, Jennifer. I am not, contrary to popular opinion, an invalid who needs his diaper changed for him.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “No, but it is implicit in every decision you make. Poor, delicate George. It stops now. I will not be an albatross to hang around all of your necks. Do I make myself understood? That stops now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He pointed at the laptop. “I can’t allow this to go on. If you think I’m going to tuck tail and run, leaving these boys and girls in the hands of this monster, then you don’t know a thing about me.”

  “If you stay, I stay.”

  “No, Jenn,” George said, his expression softening. He took her hand. “Not this time. You’ve sacrificed so much for me already. I’ll never be able to adequately thank or repay you. You certainly don’t owe me any more blind loyalty. If you stay, stay for yourself.”

  “What about you?” Jenn said to Hendricks, who hadn’t said a word. “You have to see how badly we’re outgunned here.”

  “Maybe, but I’m with Gibson on this,” Hendricks said. “Fuck slavery.”

  Jenn looked at him disbelievingly, then to the group. “So, do we have a plan other than pulling a Butch and Sundance?”

  “We do,” Gibson said.

  “Well, let’s hear it, then.”

  “We offer a trade,” Hendricks said, leaning in.

  Jenn looked skeptical. “What do we have that Baltasar Alves could possibly want?”

  “His shipment,” Gibson said.

  “His shipment?” Jenn said, then did a double take. “Wait, you actually did it?”

  “You don’t have to act so surprised.”

  “You disarmed the explosives?” asked George.

  “No, they’re still armed, but I control them. I can disarm or detonate. And I can do either remotely.”

  “The kids for the drugs . . .” George said thoughtfully.

  Hendricks smiled in the dark of the church. “Has a certain poetic symmetry when you think about it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Fernando looked across the dark street at his car parked outside the café and rolled his eyes. Only Gibson Vaughn could screw up a Porsche. Did he take it to a club? Did he meet some ladies? No. He drove to a sardine cannery and then to some cheap café in the middle of nowhere. If you asked Fernando, it was a crime against precision German engineering. This also explained why Gibson hadn’t been with a woman since coming to Portugal. His priorities were forever in all the wrong places. A shame. Fernando wished he could have done more to show the American a good time. It would make killing him easier.

  The Audi parked beside his car was a surprise. It belonged to Sebastião, and Fernando knew it intimately. He had almost flipped it on the test drive. That it had held the road impressed Fernando so much that he’d contemplated buying one for himself. Sebastião must have leant it to Jenn. Why hadn’t he mentioned it on the phone? Fernando wondered whether he needed to worry about him too. It would be disappointing if Jenn had gotten to Sebastião. There weren’t many people Fernando actually liked, and he was already losing several of them.

  Up in the front seat, Anibal directed Tomas to roll the car forward a few feet, lights off. He had spotted movement inside the café and wanted a better angle. In the window, an old man flipped chairs upside down onto tables. Otherwise, the café was empty. No sign of Gibson Vaughn or his friends. Up and down the street, the shops and houses were all dark. They could be inside any one of them. Watching, even now. Fernando didn’t like it. Didn’t like anything about the situation.

  At least it had gotten him out of the hotel. It had been simple enough to let slip that Gibson Vaughn and Dan Hendricks had returned to Fresco Mar Internacional. His father’s natural paranoia had done the rest. Harder had been convincing him that Fernando should accompany Anibal to Alcantarilha. Ordinarily, he wasn’t permitted any involvement with his father’s criminal operations. But with Luisa tied down in Quarteira dealing with the Romanians, and unanswered questions swirling about the loyalty of those inside the organization, Baltasar had a dwindling number of people he could trust.

  Planting doubt in his father’s mind about Gibson Vaughn had been a good first step, but it wasn’t enough. His father held George Abe in the highest regard. Fernando had grown up listening to stories about the man. It would take more than circumstance to convince Baltasar that George was conspiring against him. His first instinct would be to take them alive, but that ran the risk of the truth coming out, which Fernando couldn’t allow. He touched the gun beneath his jacket. It would be better for everyone if they died before then. Tonight, in Alcantarilha.

  Fernando had been considering the logistics of it. How best to manipulate the outcome? Ideally, Anibal and his men could be provoked to put them down. The massacre at the hotel had had the unexpected benefit of drawing suspicion away from himself. He was a victim. Better to keep it that way for now.

  Or was it?

  Anibal had ambition of his own. Especially now that Silva and Peres were off the table. Did Fernando really want the bootlicker to get to play hero? Fernando could clean up his own mess and remind his father that he had value beyond managing hotels and resta
urants. Luisa wasn’t the only one in the family who could pull the trigger.

  Anibal’s phone rang. Fernando could tell from the way he sat up straight that it must be Baltasar. Such a good little soldier—a little erection bobbing hopefully in the wind. Fernando thought about putting a bullet in Anibal’s head too. Don’t get greedy, he told himself. Unless the opportunity presents itself.

  Two vehicles approached slowly from the opposite direction—a sedan followed by an SUV—stopping at the far corner from the café. Anibal told Tomas to pull alongside the sedan so that the rear windows aligned. When the two windows opened, Baltasar greeted his son across the narrow divide.

  “Pai?” Fernando said, scarcely able to conceal his fury. His hand balled into a white-knuckled fist. This ruined everything. Disposing of the Americans would be impossible with his father overseeing things. Fernando saw his opportunity evaporating and, for a long second, feared that his father knew everything. Baltasar rarely left the safe confines of the compound. That he’d done so tonight, with war raging across the Algarve, was unfathomable unless he knew his son’s intentions. Sweat trickled down Fernando’s rib cage. It was an unfamiliar sensation, and it took him a moment to identify what he was feeling. Fear.

  “Are they here?” Baltasar asked.

  “The car is here. There’s no sign of them.”

  “Have you asked the café owner?”

  “Not yet.”

  A look of irritation crossed his father’s face. Fernando saw the truth. His father wasn’t here to confront him. Baltasar Alves had driven to Alcantarilha in the middle of the night because he didn’t trust Anibal to handle the situation. It was as simple as that. Had he traveled to Quarteira to supervise Luisa as she dealt with the Romanians? Of course not. Luisa was above reproach. This morning’s hijacking had happened in Anibal’s territory, a major liability in his ledger.

  Fernando realized he had misread the terrain. Anibal didn’t see the death of Silva and Peres as an opportunity. He wasn’t looking to climb the ladder; he was simply trying not to wind up in a box beside them. After all, he was an endangered species now. The last of his kind. That’s why he’d been peacocking in front of Baltasar all day. Trying to prove himself. Fernando thought there might be an opportunity there. Anibal had always been loyal to Baltasar, but a man’s loyalty to his own neck usually took precedence. Anibal’s uncertainty about where he stood might be exploited under the right circumstances.