The Matador's Crown (16 page)

18

The plaza the museum was on was lined with palm, locust and banana trees. The narrow, tight streets in this island-bound city all led to big, beautiful plazas. Elizabethan architectural influences were everywhere. Pair that with the Moorish tile work and a blend of Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance, and a girl could get lost in her admiration of a cupola here or an arched entrance there.

So Annja didn’t notice that the car on the street heading toward her didn’t swerve to avoid her until the front fender was just six feet away. Sensing the driver
did
see her and was actually aiming for her, Annja leaned into the parked car to her right. Gripping the hood with her fingers and using the flat yet sticky-from-the-heat metal surface, she levered herself up. She did a somersault over the hood of the car as the moving vehicle whisked by.

Landing on the sidewalk in a roll, Annja came up into a kneeling position and jutted her head up above the car’s hood to scan the area. The dented green luxury car that had just tried to kill her stopped and began to back up.

“Definitely not an accident.”

Taking off in a run down the sidewalk, she heard tires squeal as the car made a backward turn in the middle of the street. The museum entrance was to the right, so she went straight, heading out of the plaza. Civilians could be put into a dangerous situation there.

The car behind her gunned it. With a glance over her shoulder, Annja saw it jump the curb. The wheels tore up the landscape fronting the museum. Its tires spun in the soft ground, spitting up clods of grass in the vehicle’s wake.

Pumping her arms to increase her speed, Annja couldn’t outrun the car, which was getting too close for comfort. To the right lay the museum grounds. To the left, the street—and a very familiar rental Jeep. The driver honked and waved frantically.

Once again, the man’s Annja-radar saved the day.

She dodged right, and the car behind her followed along with the change in direction. Garin drove slowly, marking her progress. She leaped into the open back bed of the Jeep. The car following her rammed into the back of the Jeep and Garin put his foot down hard on the accelerator. Annja clutched the roll cage bar as the momentum slammed her body hard against the side of the bed.

“Not surprised,” Garin said as she climbed into the front seat, “and only a little offended you didn’t invite me along for the chase.”

“You’re here now. Stop complaining. Turn right. Take this scuffle away from the crowded plaza.”

“Ever concerned about the innocents.” Garin turned a hard right, the Jeep lifting high on its outer wheels, before gunning it down a narrow street. “Who are we evading?”

“Not sure.”

“Did you look at him the wrong way?”

“I was minding my own business headed to the museum when he almost crushed me against a parked car.”

“Hardly the way to pick up a beautiful woman.”

“I’ll say. Some men have no manners whatsoever.”

“I’ll lose him down by the docks.”

Annja focused on the green car coming up close behind them. Looked like an old-model Mercury with a long, flat body. The license plate was obscured by mud, and the fender looked as if it had taken more than a few hits. The driver wore dark sunglasses and a bandanna over his hair. She couldn’t pick out any remarkable features. He had found her outside the museum, so she could guess someone had known where she’d been headed. But she hadn’t told anyone. He must have followed her from the hotel.

“Much less threatening than the bull,” she muttered as the Jeep increased the distance between it and the tail. Garin took another sharp turn.

“What bull?”

“I narrowly avoided being gored a few hours ago.”

“What? Where? You were at the corrida?”

“No, I was on my way to the antiquities shop you suggested I visit. Which makes me suspicious now. You were the one who sent me there.”

“A bull came after you while you were shopping? Heh. So the whole bull-in-the-china-shop thing…”

“Not as funny as you think it is. It found me before I found the shop. Had to take it out before it trampled down a bunch of kids.”

“Good going. Where’d it come from?”

“I have an idea. A certain sniper visited me afterward to let me know the bull had come from Cristo’s ranch.”

Taking another sharp turn, the Jeep shot under an iron bridge. Here it was darker and the smell of oil and industry made it hard to breathe.

“You know Cristo?” she asked. “Or for that matter, do you know someone who might have Cristo sic a bull after me?”

“Annja, I hope you’re not implying what I think you are. I thought I’d made it clear—I trust Manuel.”

“I know. You two are friends, and you choose your friends carefully. But why would Cristo want me dead?”

“You’re not dead. Are you sure the bull didn’t escape its cage while being transported through the city?”

She stared at him and knew he got the message even though he didn’t turn.

“All right, all right,” he said. “I sent you off shopping, and it led you into danger. That is suspicious. Want me to ask Manuel about Cristo for you?”

“I don’t understand how the ranch hand could be involved. Unless he sells illegal antiquities and felt I was getting too close to discovering it was him.”

“Cristo doesn’t strike me as the discerning sort who would be interested in bits of pots.”

“The votive crowns in El Bravo’s sanctuary are not pot bits. And just because he sells them doesn’t mean he has to have an interest in their aesthetic qualities. Yet if he’s that desperate for money, as Ava implied, that he was involved with the sale of the crowns, he couldn’t be that bad off now. No. I don’t understand the assistant’s involvement.”

“Lost him.” Garin pulled the Jeep to a stop near a chain-link fence in front of a stretch of warehouses along the shore. “You’re sure it was one of Cristo’s bulls?”

“It had a half circle above a bar brand.”

“That is Cristo’s brand.” He adjusted the rearview mirror to keep an eye out behind them. “I’m not keen on your involvement in this particular adventure, but I’ll look into it.”

“Thank you.”

“I have a price.”

“Not willing to pay.”

“Come on, Annja, don’t be like that.”

“I know better. Your prices are too steep, and that’s without tapping into my bank account.”

“Fine. You’ll owe me one.”

He drove onward, navigating a turn that took them beneath a streetlight defaced with red-and-white graffiti. They had driven far from the tourist areas or any festivals. Annja peered over her shoulder, making sure the tail was nowhere in sight. A wooden box in the backseat caught her eye. “What’s in the box?”

“A trinket.”

“Can I look?” She reached back and pulled the flat, wide box into her lap.

“Don’t you even want to hear what you’re going to owe me?” He flashed her a bright, white crocodile smile. Lesser people had fallen shaking to their knees before that duplicitous grin, she felt sure.

Annja rapped her fingers on the box, vacillating between the two curiosities.

“You’re thinking about it,” he teased. “I love a curious woman.”

“Does it involve you dressing me for an event that has me tagging along awkwardly?”

“Dressing you I’ve done. Door number two or what’s in the box?”

She smoothed her palms over the box’s polished wood surface. It was stained dark and stamped with the maker’s mark—two crossed swords inside a circle. She didn’t recognize it. Door number two involved doing something for, or with, Garin Braden. It could be as innocuous as attending another corrida, or it could involve an excursion that involved weapons and stealth. It might even be a weird kind of date that meant getting dressed up and meeting legitimate dignitaries at a charity ball. The man’s interests were eclectic, to say the least.

“Door number one,” she muttered.

“It’s a research thing,” Garin said. “Some dusty old artifact I put my hands on recently. I thought you could take a look at it for me.”

“Is it in this box?”

“No, that’s just a trinket.”

“Hmm… Seems like every time I take a look at an artifact for someone, bullets fly. Not to mention the local authorities develop an extreme dislike for me.”

“Is that a no?”

“What is it? This artifact you want me to look at.”

“It’s unique. I don’t have it with me, but will look forward to your visiting me in Berlin to assess it.”

Annja pressed her shoulders to the back of the seat, curling her fingers around the box. She knew he couldn’t possibly ask her for a favor without requiring she go to him and meet him on his grounds. Wouldn’t be Garin Braden if it had gone any other way.

“Deal. Next time I’m in Germany, it’s a date.”

“A date? I wasn’t suggesting we go that far. So I have to buy flowers and prepare you a meal, too?”

“Sounds about right. But skip the flowers. An unnecessary expense. Now do I get to look in the box?”

“It’s not locked.”

Running her fingers along the edge, she prolonged lifting the cover as her mind sifted through the possibilities of what might lay inside. To Garin, a trinket could weigh fifty carats and have once hung around a queen’s neck. Or it could be a solid-gold pistol from the eighteenth century embossed with Garin’s name or even the name of a past king. Or why not a biological weapon he’d picked up for a song because he could?

He chuckled. “It’s not going to leap out at you.”

“Was it obtained illegally?”

“Annja.” He mocked a pout, which answered the question in the positive.

Pushing open the lid, she was initially relieved it was only a piece of jewelry. Then she was disappointed it didn’t glitter with priceless jewels. It was an elaborate Art Nouveau piece, but the metal was bronze, in need of a polish, and the ivory pendant featured a hand-painted portrait. The woman’s face had been done in the style of Alphonse Mucha, but she sensed it wasn’t the great master’s work, though she surmised the artist had once designed pieces for Fouquet, the famous jewelry designer.

“Pretty,” she offered as the Jeep rolled along a coastal street, catching flashes from the intermittent streetlights. “You a fan of the Art Nouveau style?”

“Not really.”

“Then it must be the woman in the portrait,” she guessed. “Who is she?”

Garin almost ran into a bicyclist loaded down with wicker baskets. He had to quickly spin the wheel to the left.

“Well, well,” she remarked. “She must have meant something to you.”

Braden remained silent. And she had guessed correctly. He knew the woman in the portrait. Or likely,
had known
her, to judge the piece. It was well over a century old. Certainly the man had a long list of conquests. Could this woman, with the red hair and sensuous mouth, have stolen his heart?

She wouldn’t ask. “Where we headed?” she said and turned to place the jewelry box on the backseat.

“We’re here.” He pulled the Jeep in front of a warehouse sided with bleached wood slats warped from the sea air. “I was shopping in the area earlier—”

“There are no stores in sight, Garin.”

“I bought a pretty necklace. Anyway, listen, I noticed this warehouse and thought it might hold some interest for you. Want to take a look inside?”

“Will I like what I see?”

“Knowing you and your morals, probably not. There are usually only two workers here during the evening according to— Ahem. Let’s go through the side door beyond the chain-link fence and greet them.”

“Have you previously introduced yourself to anyone inside?”

“No. I took a drive around after I was done—”

“Shopping.”

“Exactly.”

Garin walked beside Annja, his hand on the gun he wore concealed under his left arm. He strode with the confidence of a man you didn’t want to mess with, especially if you were involved in bad things in an unassuming warehouse by the sea.

They vaulted over the chain-link fence with ease. “Is this a guns-blazing scenario?” she inquired as they neared the dented, rusted tin door. A glance over her shoulder ensured the area was still and quiet. “Or a silent reconnaissance mission?”

“I think a little of both. You cool with that?”

“Always.”

Garin winked as he gripped the door handle and waited for her to signal her readiness with a nod. He lifted the door upward so the tin panel didn’t scrape the asphalt and pulled it open far enough for Annja to slip inside. The setting sun didn’t reach this area, but inside hazy streaks of light beamed through cracks in the sea-and-wind-damaged tin roofing.

Annja’s fingers tingled to hold the sword. It had become a sort of sixth sense, but she only drew it out when faced with real and imminent danger. The warehouse was dark but she heard no sound.

Garin gestured for her to walk ahead, down an aisle of steel girders boasting vertical rows of empty steel shelving. It was difficult to guess what the warehouse may have originally been built for.

Dust tickled the back of her throat and she closed her mouth to breathe shallowly so as not to sneeze. In her backpack she kept a small Maglite and drew it out, flashing it from side to side.

A curious scent lured her forward, toward an open area. She recognized it as formaldehyde. A good indication that there may be artifacts ahead. Unless somebody was embalming bodies.

Annja paused. Here, near the end of the steel-girdered row, wooden packing crates of varying sizes lined the shelves haphazardly. As well, some pottery and even random human bones were laid out as if awaiting cataloging. Nothing stood out as particularly valuable. No gold or silver or anything she could immediately place with certainty to a specific time period or age. Nothing was tagged, and most of the objects had been set down carelessly to judge from the broken pottery. But that didn’t mean the valuable stuff hadn’t already been sorted out. These girdered racks could merely be where all the detritus ended up.

Her assessment? Most definitely an antiquities operation. But the variety of artifacts baffled her. Had all this been dug up in the Cádiz area? Couldn’t be possible. She recognized a potsherd as ceramic. Whatever it had been used for, it wasn’t Spanish in origin. The warehouse must also be receiving from other locations. As well as shipping out? A shipping-and-receiving hub?