To The Lions - 02 (19 page)

“Cesar
was a little shit and a snake…spoiled, entitled, and very shrewd.
 
Took after his mother.”

“Can
I trust him?”

Valentin
pointed at the bag on the bench beside Gage.
 
“You’ll have to.
 
I guess that’s
what the money is for.”

Gage
processed that nugget before saying, “Tell me what you know about Berga.”

Producing
a tan Gitane from its blue package, Valentin lit it with a match, puffing
thoughtfully.
 
“Berga is not talked about
much in Spain, even in the underworld circles.
 
The reason is its small size.
 
They
simply haven’t had as many people go through.”
 
He drew on the Gitane, trumpeting his cheeks as the smoke exhausted from
a corner of his mouth.
 
“The other reason
one doesn’t hear much is due to Berga’s sentences.
 
Most men who go there are sentenced to life—and
‘life’ here in Spain means just that.
 
Very few men exit to tell their tale.”
 
He flicked the ash into a nearby puddle, the ash hissing briefly.
 
“My cousin was there a decade ago.
 
We were very close growing up.”

“What
was he in for?”

“He
was sent there because he killed his brother-in-law in an argument over money.”
 
Valentin said no more.

“Did
he make it out?” Gage asked.

Valentin
shook his head.
 

“Did
he die naturally?”

“No.”

“Mind
telling me what happened?”

“You’ve
heard of Los Leones?”

Gage
nodded.
 
“I read up on the prison.
 
They’re a large gang that started there, correct,
and have since spread outward?”

“They
will be your chief concern.
 
Animals.
 
Vicious.
 
Unpredictable.”
 
Valentin took a steadying breath.
 
“My cousin was discovered on only his fourth
morning, alone in his cell.”
 

“So
he was killed?” Gage probed.

A
delayed nod.

“Valentin…how
was he killed?”

“There
were so many injuries to his body, they don’t know which one was fatal,” he
answered, staring into an unpleasant place.
 
“His hands were chopped off.
 
He’d
been scalped.
 
His entrails were
out.
 
Many of his bones were broken.”

Gage
narrowed his eyes.
 
“Was all that some
sort of retribution for something?”

“While
we don’t know for certain, we later learned that he owed an incarcerated member
of Los Leones money.
 
The debt was a
decade old.”

“A
great deal of money?”

Valentin
eyed Gage.
 
“Less than a hundred
euro.”
 
He dragged on his cigarette
before crushing it out.
 
“In Berga, any
insult is colossal despite its size.
 
You
remember that.”

* * *

Ascending
in the Abba Hotel’s elevator, Gage readied himself for his next challenge.
 
He was more nervous about this one than any
he’d encountered thus far in Spain.

It
was time to tell Justina.

Gage
exited the elevator, viewing himself in the mirror at the landing.
 
He was ashen.
 
When he reached his hotel room door, he placed his hand on the knob,
taking a deep breath.
 
Then he keyed the
door and stepped inside.

Justina
was still in bed, sitting up, the covers to her waist.
 
She looked up from her magazine, studying him
for a moment before lowering her eyes to the bag.
 
Her smile faded—she was reading his face.

“What
have you done?”

“I’ve
taken a job.”

“What
job?”

“A
job that’s going to take me away for a while.”

She
crossed her arms.
 
“How long is ‘a while’?”

“Please,
just listen,” Gage said, moving to the bed and sitting at her feet.
 
“I have to work, Justina, and my job isn’t
always pleasant.
 
Far from it,
actually.”
 
He touched her leg.
 
“My last three jobs have been miserable and dangerous—and
none of them made me much money.
 
I
risked my life on each one and, had anything gone wrong, I’d probably be dead right
now.”

Justina
didn’t respond.

“The
reason I woke up and accepted the job this morning, Justina, is completely
about us.
 
This isn’t about only
me.”
 
He chewed on his lip, finding the
correct words.
 
“I’m fearful of the job
I’ve accepted.
 
I don’t have a problem
admitting that, but I’m also fearful that, had I told you about it beforehand,
you’d have talked me
out
of it.”

Her
nostrils flared.
 

He
lifted the bag, placing it between them.
 
“This is a million euro.”

She
stared at the bag.
 
There was a jolt that
ran through her but she recovered nicely.
 
“I don’t want you because of money,” she said flatly.
 
“You could go off on this job, meet some
other pretty girl, and never come back to me.
 
It’s you I want.
 
Not money.”

Gage
pulled the curtains back, flooding the room with morning light.
 
“First off, Justina, I don’t want to meet
some other girl.
 
It’s been quite some
time since I’ve been involved with anyone and being with you has brightened my
outlook like the sun just brightened this room.”
 

“And
where are you going for this job?”

“Before
I tell you, I want to know something, and I want the truth even if it takes you
a day to think it over.”

“What?”

“If
I’m gone for a long time, years even…will you wait on me?”

Justina
blinked several times.
 
She stared up at
him, obviously trying to comprehend what would make him ask such a
question.
 
“Why would you be gone
years
?”

“The
job could very well take that long.”
 
Gage licked his lips.
 
“So, will
you, Justina?
 
Will you wait for me?
 
I think we’ll be able to communicate
sometimes but, even if we can’t, will you wait?”
 
She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her
off.
 
“Before you answer, I’m going to
give you that money.
 
Just know
that.
 
That money is for your mother and
brother.”

There
was a lengthy period of silence in the hotel room. Outside, church bells chimed
the ten o’clock hour.
 
Then, Justina began
to cry, covering her hands with her mouth.

Gage
wanted to hug her, to console her, but he kept his distance.
 
Right now, he wanted Justina to be alone in
her decision.
 
Eventually, her face
contorted through her tears, she shook her head, barely able to get any words
out.
 
Several times she said, “I can’t…”

“I
understand,” Gage whispered.

Justina
used the sheet to dry her eyes, shaking her head back and forth.
 
Turning her bleary eyes up to Gage, she said,
“That’s not what I mean.
 
I just can’t
believe that a man I’ve known for only a week has been so good to me.
 
Even in my dreams, I didn’t believe a man like
you lived on this earth.”
 
She held out
her hand, pulling him beside her.
 
“I
will wait for a lifetime for you, Gage.
 
I will dream of you all night, every night.
 
There’s
no
other man for me.”
 
Justina buried her
head into his chest, crying, gripping him, continuing to tell him that he was
the only man for her.

He
held her, waiting for her to calm down.
 
“I’m going to tell you everything, okay?
 
It must remain between only us.
 
You cannot tell anyone about it, understand?”

“I
understand,” she whispered, staring into his eyes.

Taking
his time, Gage explained what exactly he did for a living.
 
He’d shaded over it before, but now told her
about his background and his present life.

Justina
took it all in stride.

Then
he told her everything he knew about the mission.
 
He told her about Navarro, about his son
Cesar, and about Berga.
 
She asked a few
questions, most of which he didn’t know the answer to.
 
When they’d talked about it long enough, an
hour later, Justina opened a bottle of water, drinking it while staring out
over the center of the city.
 
Camp Nou, the
massive home to Fútbol Club Barcelona, shimmered in the distance.

She
turned.
  
“The hardest part of all of
this is imagining myself alone.
 
When I
was working for the Russians, although I was surrounded, I felt alone then.”

“I
understand.
 
If you’d like, you can go
back to Poland and wait.”

“No,”
she answered, firmly shaking her head.
 
“I want to be near you.”

He
slid his shoes off, dropping into the chair beside her.
 
“Then you can just send your mother the
money.
 
We can’t deposit it in a bank,
nor can we send it all at once.
 
The best
way will be to send it by FedEx or something similar.
 
You’ll send it in cash installments, probably
once a month.
 
She can’t deposit the
money either, and will need to be smart about how she goes about using it.”

“My
mother is wise.
 
I will tell her how to
do it, and she will follow instructions, yes?”

“Good.”
 
He pointed to the west, saying, “So, now, our
first priority is finding you a place to live.”

“Near
the prison?”

“Within
reason,” Gage answered.

“Can
I visit?”

“We’ll
have to wait and see.
 
If I think it’s
safe, we’re going to have to take some precautions to ensure that you’re never
followed.
 
I don’t want a soul knowing
where you live.
 
Okay?”

Justina
nodded.
 
Then, from the table beside him,
she lifted a magazine and began to roll it, twisting it nervously in her
hands.
 
Gage could hear her breathing,
probably trying to come to grips with the seismic upheaval her life had taken
in the last week.
 
“Why me, Gage?”

“Why
would someone follow you?
 
Well,
hopefully that won’t ever—”

“No,
Gage.
 
Why do you do this for me?”

“What
do you mean?”

“I’m
just poor Polish trash who you met in a sleazy Russian club.
 
We had a nice week together…okay, great.
 
But, because of that, you want to share your
money and your life with me?”

Gage
knew this was some sort of defense mechanism, especially from someone who’d
never had two nickels to rub together.
 
He allowed silence to settle over the room before he asked, “How do you
feel about me?”

“You
already know.”

“Tell
me anyway.”

“I
love you, Gage.
 
I’ve loved you since our
time in Tossa.”
 
Her mouth twitched.
 
“And the hardest part of all of this is
thinking of being without you, no matter how much money you make.”

He
moved beside her.
 
“You can trust me,
Justina.
 
I’ve got no agenda here other
than us.”

She
took his hand, kissing it.
 
“I hope you
love me.”
 
As he was about to answer, she
stopped him.
 
“Tell me on my first visit
to Berga, yes?”

Gage
and Justina lay back on the bed and held each other.

Chapter Eleven

They
talked about the job during the three-hour drive to Berga.
 
Had they driven straight through, the trip
would have taken less than ninety minutes, but they had stopped twice.
 
The first time they pulled over was after
Justina calmly asked Gage to stop the car following a gulf of silence.
 
Once he was off to the side of the road, in a
mountainous area, she exited and, at her behest, Gage followed.
 
She led him to an overlook at the high
hairpin curve, the Catalonian valley falling a thousand feet below the
ascending roadway.
 
There was a red
picnic table above the rocky escarpment and she motioned him to sit.
 
As soon as he did, Justina began to scream
and yell at him.
 
She spoke in her native
tongue at first, giving him a tongue lashing any drill sergeant would be proud
of.
 
When she switched to English, she
called him a maniac, saying she was unable to process how—even for such a large
amount of money—a person would willfully allow himself to be imprisoned.
 
Gage let her finish before he again explained
his reasons, this time going so far as to cover the high points about his past,
his post-traumatic-stress, and even the tragedy with Monika.

When
he was finished, Justina, spent, apologized for her outburst.

“You
don’t need to say you’re sorry,” he said, pushing her hair back and kissing her
on the cheek.
 
“Because you’re right, I
am a little nuts.”

They
stopped again, a half-hour later, again at Justina’s request.
 
Trying to stifle his irritation, Gage pulled
to the side of the road in a heavily wooded stretch south of the town of
Ruig-reig.
 
Justina exited, again commanding him to get
out.
 
When he did, she led him by hand
down into the damp conifer forest, the gray skies obscured by the canopy of towering
trees.
 
In a glade below the roadway’s
level, a hundred meters from the rental car, at Justina’s direction, Gage made
slow, passionate love to her on a soft bed of pine needles.
 
When finished, they’d gotten dressed and
Justina had lain in the crook of his arm, the two of them peering upward,
through the gaps of the Spanish Pinsapo fir trees.
 
Justina smoked a cigarette, toying with his
Gage’s short hair as the two of them enjoyed the moment for what it was.

“Why
did you come back for me?” she asked.

“This
morning?”

“At
Eastern Bloc.”

“I
guess it had something to do with what you first told me, about being
essentially held against your will.”

She
kissed him.
 
Ten minutes passed as birds
zipped overhead, ignoring the two humans on the forest floor.

Justina
broke the silence.
 
“We must make love
many times in these two days.”

Gage
turned to her.
 
“Yeah?”

“Two
years is a long time, yes?
 
I think we
will both miss it.”

Their
laughter got them moving again.

They
travelled to the town of Berga, stopping north of town to view the eponymous
prison from the road.
 
It was
unremarkable, surrounded by several high fences and guarded by squat towers on
each corner.
 
The prison itself, set back
a kilometer from the road, appeared to be made of cinderblock.
 
Three stories high, it didn’t appear much
different than a gargantuan warehouse.
 
Gage didn’t care to linger too long, but did make a quick sketch of the
exterior features and the surrounding relief.

From
Berga, they continued north, the growing gray of the day seeming a bit of a
harbinger of things to come for Gage.
 
Despite their lovemaking a short time earlier, he fought to keep his
spirits buoyed.
 
He thumbed the window
switch for a dose of fresh air, breathing it deeply.
 
Having no idea of where the road would take
them, they continued on until they stumbled upon a picturesque lake marked as
La Baells.
 
The water, most likely snow
and glacier fed, was distinctly turquoise, which Gage knew usually signified an
abundance of resident lime.
 
In the
middle of the long lake were a towering concrete dam and, just above it, a
bridge.
 
They followed the road that circled
the lake upward, above the dam, coming to a small town called Cercs around
mid-afternoon.

Cercs
was situated in the valley of high Catalonian foothills, with the vivid water
of the lake behind it.
 
The rustic town seemed
more likely to be situated in Scotland or western Canada than in Spain.
 
The marker just outside of Cercs announced
its founding in 1379, with a current population of just over a thousand people.
 
In the center of Cercs, like most Spanish
towns, was a handsome old church.
 
Gage
parked the rental, another Audi, and exited, immediately getting a good feeling
about Cercs but vigilant due to its small size.
 
If someone unsavory were to ever take interest in Justina, finding her
here wouldn’t be difficult.
 
After another
glance around the quiet town square, he led her to the church.

Gage
guessed the church was at least five hundred years old.
 
The distinct reddish stone building probably
seated no more than a hundred people.
 
The stone was badly in need of pressure washing, having been overrun in
spots by dark moss.
 
The architecture was
quite simple; the most complicated feature was the columned façade that made
the church appear larger than it actually was.

Inside,
there were several worshipers, praying and meditating, and a number of
illuminated candles providing light along with the stained glass windows.
 
Gage and Justina walked forward through the
arched nave, passing through two more doors to an administrative area before
seeing a light at the end of the hallway.
 
Gage held Justina’s hand, leading her to the light where they found a
priest sitting in a cluttered office, reading a newspaper while having what
appeared to be a glass of hot tea.
 
His
face was old and leathery and he arched a bushy gray eyebrow at the couple as
he grumbled what must have been a local greeting that neither Gage nor Justina
could understand.
 
The way his voice rose
at the end made his greeting more of a question, probably because he wasn’t
used to having people walk into his office unannounced.

Gage
didn’t speak Catalan, one of the languages of Catalonia, but his Spanish was
passable—improving with each day in Spain—and, after greeting the priest, he
asked who in Cercs might have a home they could rent.

“You’re
married?” the priest asked, switching to English without prompting, his eyebrow
still cocked.

When
Gage hesitated, Justina stepped forward.
 
“Not yet, señor,” she replied in smooth Spanish.
 
“But we will be soon.
 
My fiancé here is going away for a bit.
 
He wants me to have a quiet place to prepare
for our nuptials.”

The
priest rolled his chair to the opposite end of the desk, moving his spectacles
down to the tip of his Gallic nose, going through an ancient rolodex card by
card, eventually grunting and transcribing something on a piece of church stationary.
 
He folded the paper and handed it to Justina.

“Go
to that address…Señora Moreno’s home.
 
When
you exit the church, look to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the
west.
 
She owns nearly everything you
will see.”

Gage
cleared his throat.
 
“Will she help us
this late in the afternoon?”

The
priest continued to look at Justina, adding a dash of humor to his voice though
his face remained stony.
 
“If you have
money, Señora Moreno will help you
any
time of any day of the year.”

Gage
thanked the priest who called out as they were leaving.
 
“Young lady, I do hope you will join us for
Mass.
 
The times are posted outside.”

Justina
smiled back at him.

* * *

Cercs,
Spain

Señora
Moreno, real estate magnate, was nothing like Gage envisioned she might be.
 
Short and squat, with a corkscrew beehive of
black hair marked by twin streaks of gray, she looked and acted more like
someone’s doting grandmother.
 
No sooner
had they knocked on her door than she had begun fawning over Justina.
 
At Señora Moreno’s directive, Gage drove her
and Justina down a private road to the lakeshore and followed a gravel road
around the lake.
 
Justina was in the
backseat with the landlord, the two going on about all manner of topics.
 
Per Señora Moreno, Gage parked at the final
house, a picturesque cabin.
 
Gage stood
outside the car and waited for the landlady to finish a story about her herb
garden.
 
Finally, the two women emerged
from the Audi and, using a key from her large ring, Señora Moreno opened the
door to the lakeside cabin and gestured them inside.
 

Other
than the dust raised by the forced air from the door, the cabin was still and
quiet.
 
The furniture that appeared at
least half a century old, but otherwise looked completely functional.
 
A few old paintings hung on the knotty pine
walls and, at the cabin’s rear, a large paned window was covered by brittle
drapes.
 

As
Señora Moreno showed Justina the tiny kitchen, Gage pulled the drapes open,
viewing the lake above the dam and, on the leaf and pine needle-covered hill
below the cabin, what appeared to be an old fire pit.
 
There was no dock at the lake and no worn trail
leading down to the water.
 
He guessed
the cabin had been empty for some time, confirming it when he turned on the
kitchen water, waiting as pipes rattled and frightening gurgling sounds could
be heard below the cabin.
 
It sounded as
if a giant suction hole had opened in the earth and was close to swallowing the
cabin and everything around it.
 
After no
less than ten seconds Gage was rewarded by an explosion of muddy water,
punctuated by explosive air bubbles until, after running a bit, a smooth stream
of clear water eventually emerged.
 
He
splashed the water in the sink to move the sediment down the drain and walked
into the far room in search of the two women.

“…was
to be hers,” Señora Moreno said to Justina, standing before a medium-sized bed,
clasping Justina’s hands as she looked her up and down.

Gage
felt, judging by Señora Moreno’s tone and expression, that he’d just
interrupted a weighty story.
 
He stood
silently.
 
Justina turned to him, her
face awash in sympathy.

“Señora
Moreno built this cabin for her daughter.”

Unsure
of the context, Gage nodded and dipped his head.

Señora
Moreno shooed the sympathy away.
 
“It’s
been many years now, and she would want someone staying here.”
 
She turned to Justina.
 
“You remind me of her.”

“I
don’t know what to say.”
 
Justina took
her hand.
 
“Thank you.”

Señora
Moreno beamed.

“We’ve
been learning how much we have in common,” Justina said to Gage.

Señora
Moreno gave Justina’s hand a final squeeze.
 
“Perhaps we’ll have time to get to know one another better.”

“I’d
like that.”
 

Justina
walked to Gage, leaning close.
 
“Well,
what do you think?”

“It’s
not what I think…it’s up to you.”
 
Justina’s radiant smile, and a deft squeeze of his butt, provided his
answer.
 
He looked at Señora Moreno.
 
“How much is the rent?”

The
businessperson emerged from sweet little Señora Moreno in a flash.
 
Her mirthful face turned serious as she
clasped her hands in front of her. “Being on the lake, in this popular region,
it’s
not
inexpensive.”
 
Eyeing Gage levelly, she said, “Twelve-hundred
euro per month.”

“Is
that negotiable if we choose to extend the term?”

“No,”
she responded with a firm shake of her head.
 
“This is a prime vacation cabin in a desirable area.
 
Long leases do me no good.
 
Come July and August, I can rent this cabin
for three times the monthly number I gave you.”