The Shores of Spain (24 page)

Costa went pale. “We’re not prisoners there, sir. It wasn’t illegal. And if you want the others to keep silent about my absence, I have to return that discretion.”

He hadn’t expected Costa to have worked that out. Perhaps he’d underestimated the young man’s intelligence. “How long have you been meeting with her?”

Costa flushed again. “Almost two months, sir. Not every day, but regularly.”

There was definitely someone closemouthed among the guards to have held that secret for him. Duilio suspected Corporal Pinho. He and Costa were on good terms. “And you left with her willingly that morning?”

“Yes. I knew that if something had been stolen, I would be suspected, sir. Because of what happened with my luggage.”

Duilio gazed at Costa. “Do you not want to return to Portugal? You’re willing to stay here the rest of your life instead?”

Costa’s shoulders squared. “I’m not clever like you, sir, but I’m not stupid. I’m the last of five sons. Most of the money will go to my eldest brother to keep the estate running. I barely recall speaking to my father as a child, and my mother died when I was too young to remember her. There’s not much waiting for me back there. Given these last few months, I doubt I have an illustrious military career ahead of me.”

Looked at that way, it had to have been a simple decision. “You are, essentially, a fortune hunter.”

Costa didn’t deny it, mouth in a thin line. “It was a practical choice, sir.”

He didn’t claim that he loved Inês, but when Duilio had been holding a gun on him, Costa told her to run, to leave him to face his fate. Even if Costa hadn’t said as much, he must care for her. “You understand that life here will be very different?”

“I have watched you, sir, for the last three months. I’ve seen how different it is.”

Duilio wanted to point out that he had a very tolerant wife, and also the protection of a handful of guards on most occasions. Then again, Costa had been there during the embarrassing incident in the marketplace, so he knew there could be very awkward moments. “Is your mother’s mother still alive? To give her approval.”

“My grandmother? Yes,” Costa said. “And no matter what my father says, she’s fond of me and will agree. I know she will.”

“You’ve given that some thought.”

“We were hoping to travel to Portugal to ask,” Costa said, frustration creeping into his tone, “but when we spoke to the Portuguese captain in harbor, he wouldn’t take us as passengers. I suspect that was your doing, sir.”

“I’m afraid so, Lieutenant.”

“Then why help us now?”

Duilio smiled at Costa, wanting to set the younger man at ease. “The Guerra family and the Monteiro family are neighbors. I would rather get along. You help us substantiate the claim that you were on a special mission, and we’ll help you clear your conscience.”

*   *   *

O
riana turned back to Inês once the men were gone. “I want to talk about what happened
before
Costa. Why have you been asking questions about me?”

Inês scowled. “You’re supposed to be dead, executed, but three months ago you turned up alive. I needed to know why.”

“Because of your cousin?”

“If you’re alive,” she said with a quick shake of her head, “then Safira could be.”

Oriana tapped her fingernails on the arm’s chair. “How did you come to
that
conclusion?”

“About six months ago a woman approached me with questions about my cousin—her position in the ministry and her execution. When I pressed, the woman told me she investigated all executions, a routine matter for the ministry, and asked if I’d known any of the others she was investigating. It seemed strange, so I decided to investigate myself. Before her arrest, the ministry had Safira working at the Spanish embassy, so I found a position there.”

“Why not go to the ministry itself?”

Inês wrapped her hands together, betraying anxiety. “The executed women were all in the ministry, like you, like Safira. All had talent but were never placed in positions of responsibility. All had powerful family members inside the ministry, but that didn’t make
any difference. It didn’t help their careers. It was as if they were held back. Then they were charged and executed.”

Oriana thought back on her two years in the Golden City. The trajectory of the career path Inês described was quite familiar. “And what happened to that woman, the one who was asking questions?”

“I don’t know,” Inês said.

“Do you believe she was from the Ministry of Intelligence, as she claimed?”

Inês sat still, her lips pursed. She tapped her index finger and thumb together, a sign either that she was about to lie or that she was afraid to answer. “She had too much information to be anything other than ministry, but it sounded more like she was investigating them—the ministry—questioning the motives behind the executions.”

“As you did,” Oriana pointed out.

“True. I suspect one part of the ministry is investigating another. The questions started after
you
were left on the Ilhas de Morte. You were the first agent on foreign soil to be accused of treason. That means you were the only one under the foreign intelligence wing. I think someone within the ministry—in that department—took exception to your execution and started an inquiry.”

“Any idea who?”

Inês licked her lips nervously. “If I were to guess, I would point to Jovita Paredes.”

Her aunt
had
moved to save her when she’d been left to die, hadn’t she? The timeline was beginning to make sense. “Did you learn anything about the other women?”

“Not much,” Inês admitted. “I’ve lost my position with the Spanish now, so I don’t know how to find out what happened to my cousin. I still pray every day that she’s alive somewhere, and that she’ll return.”

“You gave up finding out your cousin’s fate?”

“I had to,” Inês said, her shoulders squaring. “For Julio.”

Oriana touched her chin, acceptance without belief.

Inês’ nostrils flared. “Have you never been in love?”

Oriana licked her lips. She had obeyed orders until her execution. She had left Duilio’s comfortable home, even knowing she was in love with him. And she had bent her orders as far as she could so that she could avenge a friend’s death. But she had, in the end,
followed her orders
, and had nearly died for that loyalty.

“The woman who was with the boy?” Oriana asked, changing tacks. “What can you tell me about her?”

Inês shrugged. “She was at the Spanish embassy, but I only caught a glimpse of her once. She was sequestered, locked in a room.”

That seemed needlessly cruel. “Locked up? Why?”

“She’s ill. Gill rot, I think. No one wanted to talk to her.”

Oriana gestured for Inês to wait as she thought that through.
Gill rot
was the common name for tuberculosis on the islands. For sereia the disease usually attacked the gills and air bladders before the lungs. Leandra might have been wearing a neck clap to keep from infecting others. That also would explain why Leandra had slept in the Guerra courtyard instead of trying to find a room at an inn. “So you didn’t know her name—Leandra Rocha?”

The young woman’s mouth formed an O of surprise. “I know that name,” she whispered. “She was on the list. One of the early ones, I think.”

The list that the mysterious agent of the ministry had presented to her
.
Oriana wasn’t surprised. “She worked at the American embassy, not the Spanish, but she was executed like me . . . and your cousin.”

Inês sat for a moment, one slender hand laid over her mouth. “I wrote most of the names down,” she said after a moment, “in my journal. It’s at my mother’s house. I can tell you other names.”

That
could
be helpful. “What can you tell me about the boy?”

Inês shook herself out of her daze. “Uh . . . he and the woman—Leandra, you said—arrived at the embassy about a week before we came to Amado. When I saw them together, I had the impression
that they were mother and son, but I can’t be sure. The boy was kept in the office with the secretaries so they could watch him. They said not to leave things about because he was a thief.”

The boy had certainly stolen from them. “Was he ill, like Leandra?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Did you hear any name for him?”

“They called him Jandro,” she said, pronouncing the name in the Spanish way. “Uh . . . Alejandro Ferrera.”

Oriana held up one hand. It took only a split second for her to make the connection—Alejandro Ferrera was the Spanish version of Alexandre Ferreira, the name of Duilio’s father. That could
not
be a coincidence.

CHAPTER 22

                   M
ONDAY
,
27
A
PRIL
1903
; B
ARCELONA                   

T
hey’d arrived in Barcelona late Sunday night because of some trouble with the train—they’d had to replace an engine near Zaragosa. But once the train arrived at the station, a hotel omnibus had whisked them through the still-crowded streets to the Hotel Colón where their reserved room waited. The hotel was almost as opulent as the one in Lisboa, and they’d been given a room on the second floor that would look out over the plaza. Joaquim had the impression that the desk clerk knew they’d recently married.

In the morning they ate at the hotel’s restaurant, a long room with white tablecloths and courteous staff. Despite the elegance of the dining car on the train, Joaquim decided he preferred this place specifically because it
wasn’t
moving. So they ate their breakfast and planned what steps they would take first.

The American consulate general in Barcelona was right on the harbor, and while Joaquim’s Catalan was rusty, the cabdriver pulled his horses to a stop at the appropriate building, so he must have made his desire clear enough. Once he’d paid the driver, he led Marina up the steps.

The guards asked his business, but as soon as he’d given his
name, they sent him on through to speak with a secretary, proving that Madam Norton was as good as her word. The secretary, a stern-looking young man with spectacles and chaotic hair, led them on, the scent of cigarette smoke drifting from his garments.

“A liaison has been assigned to your case, Inspector,” he said, taking them along a dim hallway toward the back of the building, away from the water. He knocked on a door with a paper label that read B
ENJAMIN
P
INTER
. “Benjy’s a good fellow. He’ll set you right, whatever it is.”

Another young man, this one rounded with ruddy cheeks and dark hair, answered the door. He eyed Joaquim and cast a worried glance at Marina, but thanked the bespectacled man and quickly ushered them into his office.

Joaquim introduced himself and Marina, and refrained from rolling his eyes as the young man bowed over Marina’s gloved hand and pretended to kiss her knuckles. “You can call me Benjy,” he said in Catalan. “Or Pinter, whichever suits you.”

Joaquim eyed Pinter as the man sat behind his plain desk again. His office wasn’t much different than Joaquim’s, but this one was tucked away in the back, meaning that Pinter was either very much a secret or utterly unimportant. Given the tatty state of Pinter’s charcoal suit and the dusty hat that sat atop his file cabinet, Joaquim suspected it was the latter.

“Madam Norton told us your people here would be looking out for a woman coming from the islands,” Joaquim began. “Have you spotted her?”

Pinter nodded. “Yes, Inspector. We spotted the woman, Leandra Rocha, the moment she stepped off the ship onto the docks here.”

Joaquim glanced over at Marina, wondering how much of that she’d caught. Marina spoke Spanish, which was not the same as speaking Catalan. She nodded at him, which meant she’d understood enough. He doubted she’d caught that the man phrased his news in the past tense. He turned back to Pinter. “Have you lost her?”

“Not sure,” Pinter admitted with a grimace. He ran a hand through his dark hair. “A member of the Paris mission took over that job. Unfortunately, he hasn’t reported in for a day now. We don’t know if he’s somewhere where he cannot make contact, or if he’s gotten into trouble.”

“A member of the Paris embassy? Why?”

Pinter took a careful breath. “He outranked me, and wouldn’t tell me why. A specialist, I’m afraid.”

“Specialist?”

“A foreign service specialist. This fellow handles affairs with
special
people.”

Since his cousin worked in a division of the police whose purview included special people, Joaquim had a good idea what Pinter meant by that. “Such as the sereia?”

“There
is
a division that focuses on interactions with witches and nonhuman individuals,” Pinter confirmed. “She would qualify as being of interest to his branch.”

Had Madam Norton contacted this gentleman from the Paris office? Because it didn’t seem as though the Barcelona office had invited his interference. And did that mean someone in the American embassy considered this affair to be of greater importance than they’d thought? Paris wasn’t as far as Lisboa, but not a negligible distance either. Joaquim caught himself chewing his lower lip. “So, what happens now?”

“We were going to turn the pursuit over to you, Inspector, but she’s out of my hands now.”

Joaquim rubbed a hand down his face. “To your knowledge, did she contact anyone? Did she hand over the journal she’s carrying?”

“She headed into the old city,” Pinter said, “and met up with a local lawbreaker, a sort of master pickpocket. He gave her a place to stay in the tightest part of the old city. I can’t know if she still had the book in question. My mission was only to watch her, not to make contact.”

“And this new person? The specialist from Paris? Did he make contact with her?”

Pinter didn’t answer, but the way his lips twisted in disapproval told Joaquim the specialist
had
made contact with Leandra Rocha, or planned to, against orders. To do that, he must have a motive. “So he knew her.”