Red Leopard (The Vistaria Affair Series) (20 page)

“I will find you.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t feel that way. Nick, I’m afraid that if I step out of this room, I’ll never see you again.”

He didn’t dismiss her fears as foolish. “Do you trust me?”

She answered honestly. “With my life.”

“But you still believe I will not come to you. Hmm.” He thought about it for a moment, then reached into his pocket as she had seen him do a hundred times since she had known him. His hand emerged, snarled with a gold chain. He lifted it up, so that the pendant attached to it swung clear. “St. Christopher,” he explained. “Patron saint of—”

“Travelers,” Calli finished. “My grandmother was Irish.”

“My mother was Irish, too. This pendant traveled with her father through Europe during the war. She wore it until the day she died and swore it saved her life a hundred times in Northern Ireland. She gave it to me and I have carried it with me ever since.” He held it out to her.

“No, Nick, I can’t.”

He shook his head as if to refute her protest. He turned her around. “Your hair. Pull it aside,” he told her.

She pulled her hair aside and watched as the pendant descended in front of her. It settled on her chest. Then he turned her back to face him. “Believe that I will come for you,” he said and kissed her gently.

Chapter Ten

They traveled by train, a slow, picturesque journey through the mountains. The train stopped at every station along the way and at every stop it seemed that dozens of people got off and three dozen more got on.

The windows remained wide open throughout the trip and fresh air bathed their faces as they sat on the wooden seats facing each other, their luggage piled up on the seat next to Calli. Duardo, she noticed, did not give Minnie any of the overt signs of affection she had seen in the city. As he approached home base and his family, did he grow more wary of his reputation? She didn’t speak of it, but worried that perhaps while he had been in the city Minnie had provided a nice distraction and now he had been forced to bring her back home, he was carefully putting distance between them.

Minnie did not seem to notice the difference in his behavior, but then, she had accepted with serene calm everything that had happened since Calli had shinnied back down the bricks of the Presidential residence last evening.

Calli had found them sitting on the lawn at the base of the flowerbed, Duardo’s arm around her and their heads close together. When her vision had adjusted to the dark of the night, she had seen that only a few dozen paces away, a soldier stood with his rifle resting across his hips, not overtly watching them but hovering, just the same.

Calli had dropped to the grass in front of them and told Duardo what Nicolás had said. Duardo had listened with his head cocked. It seemed he read more into Nick’s instructions than she did for he accepted the news with a sober expression, the twinkle of merriment in his eyes fading.

“I’d like to see Pascuallita,” Minnie said simply.

They had traveled back to the apartment, catching the last streetcar of the night. There, they had packed hurriedly. Calli finished before Minnie because she had less to pack. They’d discussed the pros and cons of telling Joshua exactly what they planned, then decided a note would delay the delivery of the news until they had left the city. They’d written a jointly-authored letter, assuring him they were snatching a last-minute chance to tour the north of the island. They promised to phone him from Pascuallita.

Then on to the house where Duardo had been staying in the city, this time by taxi, which they had managed to hail from the main street that ran below the apartment. Duardo quartered in a small, older house with a distinct lean, tucked away off the main square. Four or five army people shared the house. Duardo packed quickly while Minnie and Calli sat on the front stoop to wait for him—he had explained a little awkwardly that it would not be appropriate for women to go inside a male-only household. He slipped out through the door barely fifteen minutes later, an army issue suit bag over his shoulder and a Nike sports bag in his other hand.

They had walked to the train station, at the bottom of
el colinas
, passing through silent streets where it seemed everyone slumbered. At the train station they had curled up on benches and dozed with their heads on their luggage until the ticket office opened an hour before the train departed.

After the tickets had been bought, Duardo had disappeared into the men’s room with his luggage and returned, shaved and clean. He also wore a light windbreaker, protection against the pre-dawn chill.

Now they were on the train. Despite the heat of the day and the collective humidity of a dozen bodies squashed in around them, Duardo had not removed his jacket, although he had pushed the sleeves up. He left it zipped a third of the way up, too, which prevented the jacket from falling open.

Calli waited until they approached the next station, then sat on the edge of her seat and twisted around, as if she inspected the view out of the window beyond their luggage. When the train came to halt with the shudder and jerk she had been anticipating, she let herself fall sideways, her shoulder landing against Duardo’s chest.

She apologized, pushed herself back upright and ignored Duardo’s thoughtful expression.

Minnie already showed signs that the restless night had caught up with her, so Calli waited. Soon, Minnie’s eyes slid closed and her head bumped against Duardo’s shoulder. He lifted his arm and settled her head on his legs and she curled up like a kitten and slept.

Duardo looked at Calli expectantly.

“How many people around us understand English, do you think?”

He didn’t look around, which told her that he had already assessed everyone near them. “None. They have made no reaction to comments we have made.”

“You have a pistol under your jacket.”

“Yes.”

“Why? Are we in that much danger?”

“Pascuallita is only five miles away from the area of a known rebel camp. I must act as if I am in enemy territory.”

“It is your home town, isn’t it?”

He grimaced. “Many call Tel-Aviv their home town, too. And Belfast.”

“There has been trouble there?”

“Once.” And unconsciously, he rubbed his thigh.

“You were part of that trouble, weren’t you? You were caught up in it.”

“Yes.”

“That is what you did that earned you honor, that got you invited to General Blanco’s birthday. You said you protected your country.”

“And I did,” he agreed.

“Would you be carrying the gun if you didn’t have us with you?”

“Maybe not. I do not know. But you
are
with me and—” He glanced around quickly and said, “Nick asked me to get you to Pascuallita and so I shall.”

“What did you tell the guard last night? The one that tried to stop us when we headed for the palace?”

“Pardon?”

“The one that put his rifle back on safety and melted back into the dark. I’ve been thinking about it, Duardo, and it seems very odd to me that a security detail surrounding a presidential residence would allow an American woman to climb up into the building even if she
was
with one of their own. You said something—enough to allow me to wander freely into Nick’s rooms. What did you say?”

He considered her for a moment. “I told him that—” Again the quick look around, an awareness of his audience disciplining his tongue. “That the long blonde heroine of Prince Leopold’s domain wished to speak to Nick.”

“And just like that, he let you through?”

“Your reputation has spread throughout the army, Callida. You are the strong one. They will allow you almost any liberty, if you say you want it.”

She ran a hand through her hair, suddenly uneasy. “Don’t tell me they have some cute little Spanish name for me, like Nick’s?”

Duardo grinned. “I translated it literally. ‘Long, strong, blonde’.”

“Ouch.”

He laughed properly then. “Vistarians are all poets, even the soldiers. You cannot stop them weaving tales around everything.”

“I’m not a hero, Duardo. You know why I did what I did and it wasn’t for the sake of Vistaria.”

His laughter fled. “It does not matter why you did it. You were scared and you didn’t know if you could do it, but you did it anyway.
That
is a hero. Me, I will always be grateful you did what you did.” He looked down at Minnie and caressed her cheek.

That gentle sweep of his fingers reassured Calli more than anything he could have said.

“So, what do we do when we get to Pascuallita?” she asked.

“Act like tourists, did he not say?”

“Are there lots of tourists in Pascuallita?”

“A few, but it is an uncomfortable journey, so not as many as there should be. Pascuallita is very handsome.”

“Pretty.”

“
Sì
. The mountains, the old houses. To me it is simply home, but people tell me that it is charming.”

“So charming, the rebels are within spitting distance,” Calli muttered. “What was he thinking of, bringing us there?”

“He lives there,” Duardo said unexpectedly.

“He does?”

“Not in the town, but nearby. That is why I met him once before I met Minnie and you. When....” He touched his thigh. “He came to speak to all of us who fought that day.”

A shiver climbed up her spine suddenly.
Nick’s home
.

“How long till we get there?” she asked.

“An hour, maybe. We will be there in time for a late lunch.”

* * * * *

Duardo took them to a public house across the road from the railway station. It appeared to be a custom of his when he arrived back in Pascuallita because the man behind the bar greeted him cheerily by name.

They slid into a booth with high benches and wooden walls that blocked the table from the view of all but someone standing right next to it. Duardo ordered quickly, chatting with the waiter. When the waiter nodded and walked away, he shrugged a little. “You must trust me. They don’t have a menu here and I know what is good.”

“That’s fine, Duardo,” Calli assured him.

Minnie, looking fresh and rested, rolled her eyes. “Just don’t let her gobble it down. She turned purple in the face last time because she bit into something too hot for her. You let her do that again and she’ll sue you for damages to her tongue.”

But Duardo seemed incapable of accepting teasing in his new role as their appointed guardian. He shook his head. “You will like this,” he said.

While they waited for the food, Calli employed Duardo as an interpreter and arranged to use the hotel’s telephone. She placed a call to Josh’s office at the silver mine on Las Piedras Grandes, repressing her frustration at having to deal with an operator to place a simple long distance call. Using good English, the operator told her it would take a while, so Calli sat back at the table, a few feet away.

“What does
piedras
mean?” she asked Duardo.

“Rock. Boulder.”

She laughed. “Las Piedras Grandes...the big rock.”

“It is, too,” Duardo said. “Right at the end of the main island is
las piedras
. There is nothing on it.”

“Nothing but silver in vast quantities,” Minnie said.

“Yes, but for many years, nothing.”

“How big is it?” Calli asked.

“You can drive across the island in twenty minutes,” Minnie said.

Duardo nodded. “I believe that is true. I have not been there.”

“No? Northern boy, huh?”

“Most certainly,” he agreed easily.

The food arrived then, steaming hot bowlfuls of what Calli took to be stew and plates of crisp tortilla-like wafers. There was also a bowl of something cream-colored and of the same consistency as a dip.

In Lozano Colinas, most of the dishes consisted of lots of fresh produce—salsa and piquant salads, along with just-browned meats and freshly-made tortillas. But in Pascuallita, the emphasis appeared to be different.

“No spoon, no fork,” Minnie muttered.

“No. Like this,” Duardo explained. He picked up the crisp wafer, dipped it in the creamy stuff and took a small bite, then indicated that they should, too.

It tasted bland.

“Now try this,” he instructed and dipped the wafer into the bowl before him. The wafer emerged thickly coated with sauce and carrying a spoonful’s worth of what looked like carrots and perhaps meat.

Calli dipped into her bowl and ate. The stew was a savory delight, the vegetables crisp, the meat tender and the spices hit the back of her tongue and surprised her with their subtleness.

“Like?” Duardo asked.

Minnie frowned. “It’s not curry, I know that, but it reminds me of curry. It’s great,” she assured him. “But what is it?”

“Whatever it is, it’s never been in a can,” Calli declared. “That sort of flavor you only get from blending and cooking well.”

“Three days,” Duardo said.

“And the meat?”