by Orca Various
“You’re not old enough,” I blurted out. When I’d met Chad in the plane, I had guessed he was in his fifties or sixties, which would have made him a teenager in 1966, and Grandfather had been recruited by the young man sometime before that.
“In my business, you never retire. There are too many loose ends that can come back to haunt you. So I keep myself in shape, and since I’m afraid my one weakness is vanity”—Chad pulled the skin around his eyes until the wrinkles disappeared—“I have had some chemical and surgical help. I’m not going to see seventy again.”
“What is your business, exactly?” Laia asked. “You’re not an investment counselor or an international real-estate advisor.”
“You’re correct, I am neither of those things, although I pride myself on the depth of knowledge I have picked up over the years in both those fields. Broadly, I am an employee of the American government. I would rather not go into details, as I am sure you understand, but if I can rely on your discretion, I can fill you in on some background pertaining to your grandfather.”
Both Laia and I nodded.
“Excellent. I was what’s called a child prodigy—I was reading Shakespeare at age four and performing calculus by age seven, that sort of thing. My parents were well-off, so I was pushed through a very expensive, very high-powered education program. I completed a university degree at fifteen and my doctorate at eighteen. I take no credit for this—my brain is merely a freak of nature. Learning just comes easily to me. What I really wanted was to become an actor like Marlon Brando or Humphrey Bogart, but my achievements had attracted attention. I was approached by the US government and persuaded to work for them. They made it sound important and interesting, and gave me the impression that it would only be for a few years. Of course, that last bit was a lie.”
A look of regret flashed across Chad’s face, and I wondered what he could have done if the government hadn’t got its claws into him. I was certain he lived with that question every day.
“One of my first tasks was to meet with David McLean and see if he would work for us. I managed to persuade him—and in the process learned that acting was in fact a large part of what I would be required to do. No Oscar nominations though.” Chad’s smile returned fleetingly. “I enjoyed working with your grandfather very much. He was an intelligent man, and I have always admired that. David McLean required good, rational reasons for everything he did. Some of the people I hired simply required a paycheck at the end of each month. Bob was one of those.”
“Bob!” I said. “The Bob who was with Grandfather in Spain and worked for Gorky?”
“The very same.”
“He was a double agent?”
“And a very good one,” Chad said. “Unfortunately, he was betrayed by someone—we think it may have been Kim Philby—and died in a mysterious car crash. Gorky’s network was not as tight as he would like to think; a number of our agents infiltrated it.”
“Was Maria one?” Laia interrupted.
Chad shook his head. “We approached her, of course, but she was a very strong woman with a clear moral code, and she refused. I think she used Gorky much more than he did her.” Chad smiled, as if remembering a pleasant experience. “However, you may recognize another of our agents, Arturo.”
“The saboteur at Morón Air Base?” I asked.
“There was no saboteur at Morón.”
“But the planes exploded,” Laia said.
“Gorky did have a plan,” Chad explained, “but Arturo told us about it. I sent your grandfather down to see if he could find out who was supplying the explosives and see if it would lead us to Gorky. He was becoming too dangerous, so we decided to close him down.”
I wondered what exactly close him down meant, but I said, “Except Grandfather failed. There was a bomb on the plane.”
“He did not find Gorky, that’s true, but there was no bomb on the plane. The explosion above Palomares was simply what everyone said it was: a terrible accident. We think the tanker got too close and the fuel line punctured the skin of the B-52 behind the cockpit, causing the explosion that took both planes down.”
I stared at Chad. Was he telling the truth? There was no way to know. He had taken his interest in becoming an actor seriously. “What about the lost bomb?” I asked.
“We could never work out what had happened to the plutonium core from bomb number three. We calculated that it should have landed in the hills, but extensive searches never turned it up. Eventually, we assumed it must have become entangled in one of the parachutes and drifted out to sea. We gave up searching for it. We did not know that David had visited Maria on the way home from Palomares and that she had persuaded him to leave the bomb a secret. Nor did we know that Gorky had visited Maria the next day and that she had let slip the bomb’s existence. We thought Gorky and his network were neutralized, but in reality, he was searching for the bomb and becoming more fanatical and obsessed every year.
“I became involved in other things, most of which had nothing to do with David McLean. The events of that January in Spain faded. As I said, one never retires in this business, but you do ease off with age. Earlier this year, I was on a beach in Florida when I received a phone call from your grandfather. We chatted about old times and he told me about you seven boys and the plans he had for you.” Chad was smiling broadly as he talked about Grandfather. “It was so typical of him to give you all mysterious envelopes. Anyway, he ended the conversation by telling me about hiding the bomb in the hills. I was horrified and asked him where it was. He laughed and said that I probably had a better idea than he did. Then he hung up.
“I was confused and traveled up to Canada to ask him what he meant. I didn’t think there was a tearing rush. But there was. I arrived the day after David McLean died. With him died the location of the bomb.
“Of course, I realize now what happened. Your grandfather assumed I knew that the bomb had been returned to Morón Air Base, hence his comment about me knowing where it was. Trouble was, the Air Force never told anyone about retrieving the bomb; they simply disposed of it in our storage facility in the Utah desert. I guess they didn’t want an embarrassing incident from the past brought up and had no idea it might be important. So, there I was, convinced there was still a nuclear bomb hidden in the hills above Palomares. That’s where you come in.”
“How?” I asked.
“After David died, I set up surveillance on you and your cousins.”
“You what?” I almost shouted. “I was being watched all this time? That’s illegal!”
Chad laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said when he had finished, “but after what I’ve told you, do you think legality is a large part of the work I do? In any case”—he held up a hand before I could launch in again—“no one was watching you; we simply followed your movements by putting tags on your passport number and bank-card use. It’s quite easy.
“We did take more notice when we saw that your envelope was bringing you to Spain and”—Chad looked at Laia—“when we saw you were meeting Maria’s great-granddaughter, we did crank up the interest level a bit. Interest faded when we discovered you weren’t coming anywhere near Palomares—by the way, I would love to read your grandfather’s journal one day—but you remained on our radar. When we saw you were coming back to Spain, I booked the seat beside you on the last leg of your flight and arranged the meeting with Felip to see if we could get you here and find out anything.
“We knew Gorky was still alive and living in Almería. He was harmless as long as the bomb remained hidden, so we let him be. Yesterday, after you two went off to look for where the bombs landed, Felip told me a bit about the mysterious codes you were following. I guessed immediately what they must be, and I had a problem: Palomares is a small town, and Gorky might find out what was going on. I decided to pre-empt him.”
Chad stopped talking and looked down at the table. He looked almost guilty, not a feeling I associated with him. “What happened then?” I encouraged him.
Chad looked up. “I phoned Gorky and told him what was going on.”
It took me a moment to work out what that meant. “You told him we were here and knew where the bomb was?” I almost yelled, realizing that Chad’s phone call was how the guy on the red scooter had found us and how Gorky had managed to kidnap us. “You could have got us killed!”
“It was supposed to be under control,” Chad said miserably. Was his guilt an act as well? I was furious.
“Well, it wasn’t under control, was it?” I said, banging my fist on the table. The barman glanced over at us.
Chad shrugged. “I did try to take precautions. When I bumped into you last night, I’d just finished adding sugar to the red scooter’s gas tank. I figured that would slow them down a bit.”
“So that’s how Lucio lost us,” I said. “He couldn’t follow us up the hill until he had fixed his scooter.”
“We were going to track you using your GPS signal,” Chad went on. “When Gorky contacted you, we could move in. That way we would have the bomb and Gorky.”
“But we didn’t take the GPS with us this morning,” Laia said. “Felip had it.”
“Exactly,” Chad agreed. “We lost you in the hills—until you made a cell-phone call.”
“I didn’t…oh, the pocket-dial to DJ,” I said. “You were monitoring my cell phone. When I rolled over in the van and speed-dialed DJ by mistake, you could zero in on the signal.”
Chad nodded. “We lost the signal soon after, but by then the chopper was in the air and we had a fairly close location for you. You must have just gone into the mine when we came over the hill—the cavalry to the rescue,” he added weakly. “Only Lucio and Gorky tried to put up any kind of fight, and that didn’t last long. I’m sorry Gorky had a heart attack,” Chad said as if talking about an old friend. “I should very much like to have had a conversation with him.”
“Well, we talked to him,” I said, still angry that we had been used as bait to draw out Gorky. “It wasn’t that much fun.”
“I’m really sorry,” Chad said. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you…”
I was thinking free tickets to the Barcelona versus Real Madrid soccer game, but Laia was more practical. “There’s a Russian guy,” she said, “probably Mafia. He owns most of the hotels and resorts around here. He has very pale blue eyes.”
“Vladislav Gorev. We know about him.”
“Then why don’t you stop him?” I asked, still angry. “He’s corrupt, he hires thugs to do his dirty work, and he’s probably into drug dealing.”
“All of those things are true,” Chad admitted, “but it’s an internal Spanish matter. We can’t interfere.”
“Anyway,” Laia said, “this guy and a couple of his thugs threatened us. They gave us forty-eight hours to talk Felip into convincing you that buying land here isn’t a good idea. He doesn’t want competition.”
“And you would like that problem to go away?” Chad asked. “There are no Americans who want to buy the land. That was just a cover for me to contact Felip. I will have a word with Vlad. No problem.”
“Vlad! Are you friends?” I asked.
Chad smiled. “We’ve done business together. Anyway, I am real sorry for the trouble I got you guys into,” Chad said, reverting to his sleazy real-estate persona. “I’m sure glad that it all worked out okay. It’s been a real pleasure meeting both you folks, and if you ever have a yearning for some real estate or investment advice, who you gonna call?”
TWENTY-TWO
Dinner that evening was amazing. Chad paid for everything and insisted that we eat the best, most expensive things on the menu. I was certainly going to have trouble adjusting to chili, mac and cheese, and the occasional burger when I got home. Afterward, Laia and I went for what was becoming our habitual evening stroll along the beach.
“If Chad had become an actor,” I commented, “he’d have a mantel loaded with Oscars by now. Do you think we can believe anything he says?”
“I think he more or less told us the truth in the bar,” Laia said. “He had nothing to gain by lying.”
“Yeah, but he told Felip a different story over dinner.”
“It wasn’t that different,” Laia said. “Chad just left a lot of stuff out. I’m sure Felip didn’t believe everything he said, but I doubt he’ll complain, especially after Chad offered to use his connections to help get the Americans to pay for a proper cleanup in Palomares.”
“I suppose so,” I agreed. I was still annoyed that Chad had used us to trap Gorky, but he’d also rescued us and he’d helped me fill in a lot of background on Grandfather’s mysterious past. “I wonder what the others are finding out about Grandfather’s secret life,” I said.
“He certainly was an interesting man,” Laia said. “And at least we proved he wasn’t a traitor.”
“According to Chad,” I pointed out. “He’s probably not the most reliable witness, and, as we found out, in the world Grandfather lived in, the line between treachery and loyalty is very blurred—a treacherous act by one person is a loyal act by another. In all of this, only Maria seems to have had a moral code that she stuck to despite everything.”
“She was a very strong woman,” Laia agreed. “I’m glad we discovered a little about her past as well as your grandfather’s.”
“Me too.” I glanced at Laia walking beside me. The lights from the hotels and waterfront bars illuminated her smile as she turned to look at me. “Do you think that every time we meet, we are destined to find out something else about our families’ pasts?” she asked.
“I hope so,” I replied, thrilled by the idea that we would meet many more times. “Mind you, I hope there’s a little less excitement and violence next time. I could do without that. I still shudder when I think of Lucio with a pair of pliers in his hand, hovering over my fingernails.”
Laia laughed and squeezed my hand. “Or Scarface pointing a gun at your head.”
I nodded. “At least Chad will get us out of that mess with Blue Eyes.”
“Let’s hope so.”
We stopped walking and stood, staring out to sea. The lights of scattered ships bobbed on the horizon, and a low, full moon painted a broad, shimmering silver path across the water. “You know, despite everything,” I said, “these past few days have been among the best of my life.”
“Mine too. But there’s a problem for you.” Laia had suddenly turned serious.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“It really puts pressure on you to organize something special for next summer when I come and visit you in Canada.”
“Oh, we can do excitement and violence in Canada,” I said with a laugh. “Bunny has some interesting gang contacts—and have you ever been to a hockey game?”
The next morning, Laia and I were sitting in the lobby of the Puesta del Sol, surrounded by our bags, waiting for Felip to come down. We had said goodbye to Chad over breakfast and were looking forward to a normal tourist day, seeing the sights of Cartagena.
“I hardly notice the naked people anymore,” I said as a bare, chattering family strolled past us.
“So are you ready for a swim now?’ Laia asked with a mischievous smile.
“Not quite yet,” I said.
I was staring idly at the elevator doors when they slid open and Tattoo Head stepped out and came toward us. It never even crossed my mind that Chad might not have managed to contact Blue Eyes and that an unpleasant revenge might be heading our way. Tattoo Head was naked, and his head was not the only part of his body tattooed. In fact, there was barely a square centimeter of un-inked skin to be seen amid the riot of reds, blues, greens, yellows and blacks that covered his body. The man was a walking art gallery, and the tattoo artist had had a large canvas to work with.
Green vines wound around Tattoo Head’s legs, strange mythical creatures peering out through the foliage. Blue and yellow serpents coiled up his arms, fangs bared and red eyes burning. On his chest, a dark, cowled skull grimaced against a backgro
und of spiraling galaxies and exploding stars. Everything seemed alive as the man’s muscles moved when he walked.
Laia gasped, and my mouth hung open in awe. I hardly noticed that Tattoo Head was walking right up to us. About a meter away, he stopped and spun slowly around. His back was as impressive as his front: a blue-and-purple cobra wound its way around the horned face of a demon that stretched from his neck to his waist.
“You like tattoos?” Tattoo Head asked when he turned to face us. He was grinning like a child showing off his newest toy.
All I could do was nod dumbly. Laia managed to say, “It’s incredible.”
Tattoo Head beamed with pleasure. “I have present,” he said in a heavy Russian accent. “From Vladislav.” He reached into the bag that hung from one shoulder. I thought for a second that he was going to pull out a gun, but he handed me a small package. “Have good day,” Tattoo Head said as he turned and headed for the door to the pool.
“That was amazing,” I managed to say after the cobra and demon had disappeared to impress the unsuspecting guests poolside.
“Now, that would be a torture,” Laia observed, “having your entire body tattooed like that.”
“At least you’d have something to show for it in the end,” I said.
“What did he give you?” Laia asked.
I unwrapped the package to find a book—The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky. I laughed out loud and showed it to Laia. “Lorca and Gorky,” she said. “It’s been a literary few days as well.”
I opened the book. On the title page, Blue Eyes had written:
For the stories you haven’t yet read.
Enjoy.
Vladislav Gorev
I smiled and flipped through a few pages. A folded sheet of paper fell out. Laia picked it up and unfolded it. It was a letter, handwritten and obviously old. The text was in Russian script, but the signature and date at the bottom were understandable. The signature was Maxim Gorky’s, and the date was 1917.
“That’s the real gift,” Laia said. “It’s probably worth a lot. I think maybe it’s Blue Eyes’s way of apologizing.”