Conspiracy

by Dana Black

  Little Agustin grinned, perfect teeth gleaming white against his dirt-smudged skin. “Only steal from the gadje.”

  This reply caused Agustin to frown gravely. The boy was developing into a very promising young pickpocket, but he had an annoying habit of robbing his victims before he brought them to Agustin’s cave. This practice caused great unpleasantness when the victim tried to pay for the evening’s entertainment and realized his loss. Agustin reminded the boy sternly that nothing was to be taken from a gadje until the return trip down the Sacromonte, and received a stream of protest that tourists returning from Agustin’s cave rarely had anything left worth stealing.

  The father took his son’s flattery, as the saying goes among the peoples of Rom, with a mug of garlic water.

  “Guide them elsewhere, then,” he growled, and rumpled the boy’s hair.

  Continuing up the narrow, rock-strewn pathway, Agustin reflected on the humiliation he had suffered in the jugar shop, the grubby hole-in-the-wall in Granada where he placed his futbol bets. To have lost, that was one thing; but to have lost so badly that he could not even afford the minimum wager for the Sunday Fourteen? That was a catastrophe.

  Even now his ears burned hot with shame at what they must be saying about the foolish gypsy. Tomorrow he would have the pesetas from tonight’s crop of tourists, but that was too late to save face. He cursed softly to himself and wished that he had never heard of El Copa Mundial, the World Cup, and that he had never bet against the Americanos. The loss he had taken was a setback not only to his pride, but also to the family economy; he had hoped to realize enough winnings to furnish the second cave he had recently bought.

  That cave was at the top of the Sacromonte, isolated from the competitors in what Agustin felt was a commanding position—a natural journey’s end for those who wished to say not only that they had seen the gypsy dances in the caves in the sacred mountain, but that they had climbed to the very top.

  Unless he had a sudden stroke of fortune, however, Agustin would now have to wait until next year to buy the rugs and copper utensils and leather goods that a properly furnished cave required. Perhaps even later, the way prices kept going up. He dreaded to think of what Lora, his wife, would say. Her mother was to have moved up to the new cave, but now the old harridan would be with them for the remainder of this tourist season and on through the winter. When she learned of the money he had lost, her tongue would drip venom.

  Agustin made up his mind not to tell any of the family until after tomorrow. That way he could be assured of tonight’s take; no one would hold back on him. Then, if there was a good haul, he would have a sizable portion to bet on the Copa Mundial semifinals. Agustin still had a good hunch that the Americans were going to lose.

  He pushed aside the worn canvas flap that covered the mouth of his cave and forced a smile. His wife and two daughters greeted him. They were already dressed in their working garb, the tight gown of the volta fertility dance. Long sleeves, a neckline that plunged to the waist, close-fitting around the hips. Their gleaming black hair was tightly braided. Their lips, boldly painted red, compelled attention. Their dark eyes, outlined in mascara, transfixed the unwary.

  Tonight they would dance. The ten or twelve gadje who would crowd into the cave at any one time would stare as the rhythms of the tambourine and zimbel, the melody of violin and flute, possessed the dancing women. The gypsy legends— the dance of the vampire and the virgin, the dance of the boar’s tusk and the rose-water—would work their magic. The gadjes would part with their valuables, either voluntarily, as payment for what they were about to see, or otherwise as the little ones and Lora’s mother moved among the crowd, their skillful hands busy during the heat of the dancing.

  There had been much excitement while Agustin had been away, his wife told him. Rojas, the chief of the Sacromonte, had telephoned for Agustin concerning a new business venture he wanted to discuss. And Ignacio, the rug peddler, had offered to cover the dirt floor of the new cave four layers deep in high-quality designs for less than half his usual rate. All he was asking in return was that payment be made by the end of July.

  “That would give us three good months operating two caves,” Lora said, and showed her teeth in a brief smile of pride at the bargain she had found. For Lora, a brief smile at any time other than during the volta dance indicated wild excitement. Agustin coughed and scratched his beard and said the rugs might be worth looking at. Then he excused himself and said he would pay a call on Rojas, the chief.

  As it turned out, Rojas’s business proposition also concerned Agustin’s second cave.

  12

  It was not quite 2:00 a.m. when Keith Palermo felt a coarse hand gently slapping his face. He opened his eyes and immediately winced at the pain of a barbiturate hangover, a tight, throbbing band that cut across his forehead and his temples. For a moment he closed his eyes again, trying to remember what had happened. He recalled the security guard, recalled getting into the man’s car. Then, nothing.

  He opened his eyes again, and focused blearily on the shadowy figure who was leaning in through the passenger door staring at him. Swarthy face, greasy hair, wide lips, sparse wisps of an unrealized mustache making the grimy skin look still dirtier.

  “Who are you?” Keith whispered.

  The man smiled graciously. “I am Rojas, chieftain of the people of Rom,” he replied. “Welcome to Granada.”

  Before Keith could answer he felt a gun prodding his ribs.

  “Get him out of here,” said a voice behind him.

  Keith turned and saw the Bernabeau stadium guard, now without his uniform. “Search him for weapons,” the man went on. “And be quick about it.”

  Raul’s tone showed his impatience with the gypsy’s posturing. He was fatigued from his long drive and not looking forward to the return trip—or to the eight-hour shift of stadium guard duty that awaited him in Madrid, starting at noon.

  If Raul was late, people would ask why. Palermo would be missed by then, and police would be questioning all stadium personnel.

  The man called Rojas lifted Keith out of the car.

  For a moment Keith thought of making a run, but behind Rojas were two others with the same swarthy faces. Both had knives. Keith’s head throbbed as he tried to think what to do. It took an effort of will to stand quietly while Rojas knelt and patted Keith’s legs, arms, and sides. He straightened and patted Keith on the chin once more. “He is unarmed,” Rojas announced, as though the discovery represented a personal achievement.

  “Hold him,” commanded Raul, and reached into the back seat of his car. He came up with a small color Polaroid camera. “Take this.” He leaned over to give the camera to the gypsy. “Each day you will send by airline courier service to me in Madrid a photograph of this man holding that morning’s newspaper. He is to be treated well. If the photographs all show evidence of proper treatment, I shall return on Friday with your payment. If he appears to have been harmed, or if no photograph appears when I call for it at the airport, all three of you and your families will pay the penalty. You remember what happened to Paolo?”

  Rojas nodded silently, recalling how the face of his predecessor had been altered by three of Raul’s bullets. All three had been fired at close range, into Paolo’s nose.

  “There will be no mistakes,” Rojas said quietly. “But what if he attempts to escape?”

  “Then you will kill him. But he will not attempt to escape.”

  Raul went on, turning his attention to Keith. “Will you, Senõr Palermo? You will know that in a week you will have your freedom. You will be able to rejoin your team, to play in the contest for third place in Seville. Would you risk death knowing that?”

  Keith felt a rush of anger. “You’re doing this just to keep me away from the Argentina game? Who are you working for?”

  “Let us say only that we wish to influence the World Cup, Senõr Palermo. As you may have guessed, we are from another country, and the names you have heard us use are not the ones
on our passports. When you have been released, we shall all have returned to our part of the world.”

  Keith tried to keep him talking, hoping to learn more. “Why should you keep me from the game with Argentina?”

  “We are not careless,” Raul replied. “You have seen our faces, but you will not be able to use that information against us once we have vanished from Spain. If you knew more, however, we would be unable to release you alive. Do you understand?”

  Keith nodded. There has to be a weak spot, he thought.

  “Do you intend to keep me drugged?”

  “I tell you the truth, Senõr. You have won much respect by your futbol here in Spain. We do not wish more drugs unless you make it necessary.”

  At Keith’s side, Rojas spoke up. “The more you cooperate, Senõr, the more pleasant will be your stay with us.” He pointed up the hill behind them, a dark shadow on this moonless night. Here and there, lights from the caves glimmered through the cloths that covered their entrances. “Your quarters await you at the top of the Sacromonte,” he continued. “If you wish, you may walk there like a man, or be drugged and carried up the pathway like a child. It is your choice.”

  Raul started the engine of his Renault. “I leave him to you, then,” he said, pointing a finger at the gypsy. “Do not forget the photographs. I want to see his face growing more beautiful each day.”

  He cut the wheel hard left and executed a U-turn in the darkened roadway. A hundred yards back, Keith and his captors saw the car’s lights come on and heard the engine increase speed.

  “Well, Senõr Palermo,” the gypsy named Rojas said, “it is time for us to be going. How do you wish to travel?”

  Keith thought of running then, but his mind quickly rejected the idea. The road was dark and deserted. Behind him was a high unscalable wall that looked to Keith to be a fortress of some kind and was in fact part of the Generalife, the ancient walled summer retreat of the Moorish princes. On the other side of the road was the hill Rojas had called the Sacromonte.

  The pathway Rojas had spoken of was obscured by darkness. Keith felt weakened and rubber-legged from the drug he had been given. Here and now he would stand little chance against three armed men who knew the area. Later perhaps he would feel better and be able to make a move. They had been told to treat him well.

  “I’ll walk,” he said.

  “You are wise to cooperate.” Rojas moved two folded cotton scarves from his pocket. “I regret the necessity for these, but we shall be passing near enough to some of the caves for a shout to be heard over the noise of the dancing.”

  They walked slowly, single file, Keith second in the procession. He was to keep his hands in his pockets, Rojas had ordered, and Keith kept them there, even though it made for difficult balance as he picked his way over the rocks in the dark. The narrow pathway they followed seemed to bypass most of the caves, leading directly to the top of the hill.

  Keith saw a man and woman emerge from one of the caves, momentarily silhouetted in the light from the entrance. With them was a smaller figure, a boy who led them down the trails toward the one on which Keith walked. Rojas saw too, and held up a hand. The boy guide stopped. He waited with the couple until Rojas and the others had passed the intersection of the pathways before continuing.

  The incident told Keith two things: that Rojas did not want others coming close enough to recognize him, and that Rojas had power to make others on the hillside obey. The latter realization disturbed Keith, for it cast doubt on the story that the men who held him captive were strangers to Spain. Foreigners would not command allegiance with an upraised palm. And natives to the area would not want Keith returning to identify them.

  Another trail joined their pathway a short distance ahead. Along that trail, several of the caves were lit. Beyond them, the mountain was dark. If Keith was going to alert anyone to his presence, he would have to act quickly.

  But what could he do? There were two men watching him from behind. If he tried to remove the gag from his mouth, they would stop him before he could raise his arms. The couple he had seen reminded him of the celebration he was to have had with Sharon tonight. He felt worse to think that even now she was probably waiting for a phone call, some word of explanation. And here he was with no way to reach her.

  Then he had an idea. At the next large rock he came to on the trail, he gave a fairly convincing performance of stubbing his toe, losing his balance, and falling to his hands and knees. Instantly the two behind him were at his sides, hands under his arms, lifting him up again. He shrugged them away and made a show of dusting off the knees of his trousers, shaking his head as if disgusted with his own clumsiness. Then he put his hands back into his jacket pockets and nodded that he was ready to continue.

  Rojas had been watching the other trail. No one was in sight for the American to have signaled; therefore it appeared that the fall had been genuine. “Be more careful, my friend,” he said. “Or for the remainder of the distance we shall have to drag our companion who has drunk too much wine.”

  A few minutes later they reached their destination, the second cave of Agustin Vavra. The entrance, crumbling white limestone, was framed in unpainted timber. The interior, a space perhaps double the size of Keith’s hotel bathroom, was furnished with a single folding chair and a mattress that lay directly upon the dirt floor. “You may take the kerchief from your mouth,” Rojas said. “At this distance, no one would hear you if you cried out once. And believe me, Senõr Palermo, you would not be able to cry out a second time.”

  Keith looked around. “This is what you call treating me well?”

  “You will have food, exercise, and rest,” Rojas replied. “I can assure you that others have been treated much less favorably.” He motioned to the taller of the other gypsies, pointing at something farther back in the cave. The man moved quickly. Soon he was with them again, carrying two woven baskets, which he opened to reveal loaves of bread, cheese, and bottles of dark red wine.

  Rojas indicated that Keith was to sit on the mattress, the others on either side. Rojas himself took the folding chair.

  Before the four men had finished eating, partway down the Sacromonte one of the cave entrances gleamed briefly as Tobin Yamada and his wife, touring Spain from Tokyo, made their exit. The Yamadas had been warned against the light-fingered gypsies of the caves, and refused the repeated offers of two small boys to guide them along the pathway back to the road. Consequently they were paying close attention to where they walked. As they reached the place where Keith had fallen, Mrs. Yamada stopped and bent down. “Look, dear,” she said to her husband in Japanese, and handed him a letter. The envelope was folded in half and smudged with dust where Keith had concealed it under his shoe, but the two addresses, childish scrawl and printed label, were plain. “New York,” said Mr. Yamada as he examined the envelope. “And then forwarded on to Madrid. I wonder how it came to be here in Granada?”

  13

  About eight o’clock Sunday morning, Wally Murray of the AP wire service showed up for his breakfast interview with Keith Palermo. He waited.

  Shortly after ten o’clock, Gabe Alexander, the young press secretary of the U.S. soccer team, admitted to Wally that he hadn’t the faintest idea where Keith Palermo had been since the previous afternoon. Wally asked whether the Madrid police had been notified. When told they hadn’t, he made the call himself. Then he filed his story.

  The AP sports editor on duty in New York was finishing up her night duty. She knew the ways of soccer stars on the road, especially after a victory, and wired back for Wally to run a followup later in the afternoon. She saw no point in embarrassing yesterday’s hero by crying wolf before the poor guy had time to sleep it off. Wally reacted to this delay by phoning UBC, which was known to be one of Keith’s favorite haunts because of a certain lady producer.

  Sharon was working on the camera setups for Calderon Stadium. She had left instructions with Molly’s relief operator on the switchboard that any calls concerning Keith
Palermo were to be directed to her personally. Her talk with Wally lasted about five minutes. He had nothing to tell her about Keith that she did not already know; in fact, she and Gabe Alexander had already exchanged several phone calls earlier, both hoping to locate Keith.

  However, at the close of the conversation Wally Murray said, “I just don’t get it. A guy carries the team higher than they’d ever dreamed, and when he disappears, nobody seems to want to do anything.”

  Sharon thought about what Wally had said for perhaps ten seconds after she had hung up. In those few moments, it seemed to her that the work she had kept herself occupied with during the night and morning had been useless papers, fleeting electronic images, meaningless numbers. Without Keith, what would the future hold but more of the same? She had reacted to his absence last night in her usual way, immersing herself in work, but what if that defense mechanism of hers was actually hurting Keith?

  She realized that if she believed in Keith, she had to believe that something or someone had kept him away against his will; there was no other way to explain the fact that he hadn’t called her.