To The Lions - 02 (22 page)

Gage
dropped onto the lower bunk, not breathing for a full twenty seconds due to the
growing pain in his back and shoulder.
 
He raised his eyes to Salvador, who had shrunk to the rear corner of the
cell.

Remembering
what he’d been told about Salvador’s gang, and what he’d read on the Internet,
Gage asked, “Should I expect any more of your fellow Sementals today?”

Wetting
his mouth several times, Salvador shook his head as he mouthed the word “no”.

Gage
pressed one half of the washcloth to the wound on his shoulder, probing at it
and estimating that he’d been stabbed with something about the size of a large
nail.
 
He tried to reach over his
shoulder, but the wound on his back was too far down.
 
Salvador shuffled over.

“I
look?” he asked in English.

Gage
raised his eyes.

“Trust,”
Salvador whispered.

“Me
trust
you
?”

“When
you arrived, señor, I had to do this.”

“What
about your buddies, did they have to try to kill me?”

“Sí,
señor, they did.
 
Every man here must be
tested.
 
Had I not, had we not, would label
us to everyone here as
coños tímidos
.
 
It would be an invitation to our own death.”

“Coños
tímidos?” Gage grunted.

“Scared
pussies,” Salvador clarified.

Gage
pondered Salvador for a moment before he leaned forward.
 
Salvador bent over Gage, lifting his shirt
and switching to Spanish.
 
“
Sí,
the wound here beside your spine is
deeper than the shoulder wound.
 
Juan
must have hit bone on the shoulder, but the wound on your back went all the way
in.”

“How
wide is it?”

Salvador
straightened, showing his pinkie finger.
 
“He got you with what we call a ‘
perforador.
’
 
I didn’t see the one that was used, but
probably a nail or a sharpened piece of plastic.”
 
He patted Gage’s other shoulder.
 
“Wait.”
 
Unsteadily, Salvador exited the cell and turned left.

Not
knowing whether or not to trust Salvador, Gage stood, moving into the corner of
the room protected by the beds on one side and the front wall on the
other.
 
Salvador returned momentarily,
carrying with him a plastic vial and a weathered box of what looked like
detergent.

“Please,
sit.”
 

Gage
stared at him.
 

“Please,”
Salvador said.
 
“Now, remove your
shirt.”
 
Gage complied.
 
Salvador went into his personal items and
came back with a handful of cotton balls.
 
He opened the vial, turning it over to soak it on a cotton ball then
pressed it to Gage’s back wound.
 

Searing,
burning pain.

Salvador
did this three times, then repeated the process on Gage’s shoulder.
 
Finally he retrieved the detergent.
 
“You know Celox?” he asked, holding it up.

“Clotting
agent, yes.
 
I’ve used it before.
 
You guys keep that lying around here?”

Salvador
grinned.
 
Gage could feel the granules
being poured over his back, then his shoulder.
 
Salvador took the washcloth pieces, pressing them against the wounds
filled with the styptic granules.
 
“Now
lie back.”

“Want
me to climb up on my own bunk?”

“It’s
okay,” Salvador said.

Head
spinning slightly, which was disconcerting, Gage rested, feeling the pressure
of the makeshift bandage pushing against his back.
 
Salvador wet another washcloth, handing it to
Gage.
 
“Your nose, señor, it may be
broken.”

Having
forgotten all about the punch he’d taken, Gage wiped the already dried blood
from his face, pinching his nose and deciding it actually wasn’t broken, just
sore from a solid strike.
 
Footsteps
could be heard on the stairs—boots, not sandals—followed by an approach on the
concourse.
 
Gage’s eyes were closed but
he saw the darkness created by the figure just outside the cell.

“You
need to come to the infirmary,” an authoritarian voice said in Spanish.
 

Gage
opened his eyes, seeing one of the two guards from earlier, his mouth twisted
into a smirk.
 

“I’m
fine,” Gage replied.

“You’re
not fine,” the guard said, motioning with his baton.
 
“I know what happened.
 
Let’s go.”

“I’m
fine,” Gage said.
 
“Please, let me be.”

“Yeah,
piss off, Guevo,” Salvador barked.

The
guard snorted before turning and walking away.

Gage
moved his right arm under his head, rotating his eyes to Salvador.
 
“So, did I receive the standard welcome?”

Rummaging
around on his bookshelf, Salvador retrieved a box of toothpicks and placed a
fresh one in his mouth, massaging his jaw as he did so.
 
“That was your first test.
 
The Sementals are very small in number here.
 
But the others will now know that you’re a
force to be reckoned with.”

“What’s
that mean?”

“It
means that everyone is now talking about you.
 
And it will be a source of great status to be the one who kills
you.”
 

Well, that’s just great.
 
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

“But
I think you will be left alone today,” Salvador ruminated.
 
“Although that’s by no means certain.”

Gage
reminded himself of the phrase he planned to adopt as his mantra here:
One hour at a time.

* * *

The
first twenty-four hours of Gage’s incarceration were marked by increasing pain
and little rest.
 
Somehow Gage managed to
shuffle to the evening meal, noting the curious, often malevolent, stares as he
took his tray of food and sat alone, unable to eat a bite due to his lack of
appetite—and not aided by the food’s vomit-like odor.
 
There was still no sign of Cesar and,
especially due to his current condition, Gage knew it would be far too obvious
if he began overtly looking for him.
 
No
incidents followed and Gage rested on his bunk for the balance of the night,
having to endure numerous stories from Salvador, most having to do with his
children and his passion for kung fu.
 

Eventually,
mercifully, Salvador fell asleep.

During
the previous decade, Gage had experienced more seismic shifts than most people
experience in a full lifetime.
 
The
accident on Crete.
 
The abrupt scuttling
of Colonel Hunter’s team.
 
A permanent
move overseas.
 
Losing Monika, followed
by the business with the Glaives.
 
As a
guard walked by, whistling annoyingly while people were trying to sleep, Gage
closed his eyes and remembered the cool air of the Catalonian forest, as
Justina lay below him, her cheeks flushed as they completed their spur-of-the-moment
show of affection for one another.
 
She’d
rubbed her soft hands up and down his triceps, whispering that she would wait
on him if he promised that he would come back to her.
 
When he made his vow, she pulled him to her,
locking her legs tightly around him, and held on for what felt like dear
life.
 
Her grasp wasn’t sexual—it was
emotional.
 
Purely emotional.
 

That
was three days ago.
 
Three days.
 
And now
I’m in prison, on day frigging one, with stab wounds in my body and
seven-hundred days to go
.

Justina…

Not
a man prone to regret, Gage felt the despondent, rusty stab of the disgusting emotion.
 
He imagined what it would have been like if
he and Justina had blown off this ridiculous job and taken the train to
Germany, back to the land he knew so well.
 
There was no longer any heat from the incident with the Glaives.
 
The only thing that had kept him away from his
beloved Germany had been the pain of Monika’s death.
 
But, had he been able to stomach going back,
he could have called Colonel Hunter, along with others he knew, and put out the
word that he was in business again.
 
Justina spoke a little German, and her English was good.
 
Had they settled in the right place, Gage had
no doubt he could have talked to some of the local American military and helped
her get a job at a PX or BX.
 
Their
existence would have been simple, lean when Gage wasn’t working.

But
they’d have been together, and he certainly wouldn’t be nursing these damned
stab wounds.

Torturing
himself even more, he imagined their evenings in a dingy little rental flat,
eating inexpensive food followed by hours of lovemaking while good music played
in the background.
 
Maybe, during the
summer months when the light lingered to nearly midnight, they would have
walked to one of the thousands of hilltop castles that dot the German
landscape, exploring its ruins and scaring each other at every opportunity,
laughing so hard no noise would even escape their—

Stop it, dammit.

You’re wounded and showing loathsome
weakness
.
 
He took two
deep, back-splitting breaths.
 
You’re not in Germany, Gage, because you
took Navarro’s money.
 
Your intentions
were, and are, good.
 
You made the
decision, it was all you, now deal with it.
 
Sleep and, tomorrow when you wake up, stop acting like a pussy and do
what you’ve been paid to do.
 

Work hard.

Don’t let up.

And be ruthless.

His
real self was a welcome presence in Gage’s mind.
 
He managed a few fitful bouts of slumber, but
mainly lay there sweating in his pain.
 
His mind, however, remained hard throughout the night.
 
And it pleased him.

Chapter Fourteen

Cercs,
Spain

At
Eastern Bloc, especially when the season was in full swing, Justina often lost
track of what day it was.
 
With everyone
in Lloret for vacation, and her receiving no days off, the days of the week
were meaningless.
 
To Justina every day
seemed a weekday while, to the teeming revelers, every night was Saturday
night.
 
And now, in the tedium of the
lonely lakeside cabin, for a completely different set of reasons, she’d again
lost track of the days.
 
As she planted
summer flowers in two weathered window boxes, she tried to recall exactly which
day it was, thinking to herself that, for some reason, today felt like a
Thursday.

Gage
had left yesterday.
 
She was now one day
closer to having him back.

The
air was thick with humidity and, despite the cloudless azure sky, Justina
predicted afternoon showers in the next few hours based on what had happened on
the previous days.
 
As she gently pressed
the rich potting soil around the hibiscus, hoping the flowers would waterfall
from the boxes as the summer lolled on, a squeaking sound startled her.
 
She turned, using her forearm to push wisps
of hair from her sweaty face, seeing Señora Moreno on an ancient, three-wheeled
bike.

“Those
will be pretty if you see that they get enough sun,” Señora Moreno said,
climbing off the wheeled machine and reaching into its wire basket, retrieving
a covered picnic basket.
 
Her plump
little hand pulled back the red cloth to display a trove of delicious-looking
food.
 
“Might I entice you into taking a
break?”

“Sure,”
Justina answered, dropping her soiled gloves and wiping her face and hands with
a wad of paper towels.

After
a wonderful lunch of salad, a shrimp dish, and a lemony flan desert, they sat
in the rocking chairs on the back porch, drinking something called
tinto de verano
, essentially red wine
mixed with lemonade.
 

“This
is often enjoyed by the poor here in Spain, much simpler than the sangria we’re
so famous for,” the older woman said.
 
“But it reminds me of my past, and summers, and the early days with
Mateo.”

“He
was your husband?”

“Oh
my, yes,” she said gaily, her mind clearly hearkening back.
 
“A fine man…the finest.
 
He worked in a tire factory until his
thirty-second birthday and that’s when he threw down his gloves in disgust and,
on a whim, we picked up and moved here.
 
They’d just dammed the river and we used our savings to purchase a
parcel of land on what would eventually be the new reservoir.”
 
Señora Moreno glowed, rocking steadily as she
allowed a brief silence to settle in, as if they were eating a fine meal and
she wanted to make certain Justina enjoyed each bite.

“The
lake there, I remember when it was just a small river down in the valley.
 
We watched it rise about one meter every two
or three weeks.”

Justina
stared at the broad expanse of water, unsuccessfully trying to picture a craggy
valley in its place.

Still
staring back into her past, Señora Moreno said, “People told Mateo that no one
wanted to live on a manmade lake, and that the south of Spain was the place to
invest our pittance.
 
But Mateo, in his
patient, Catholic way, would just nod politely and continue making his
plans.
 
Two years later, he had finally
built our cabin…built it by hand.
 
Up
until then, we’d been living in a shack in town.”
 

She
looked at Justina.
 
“I remember the exact
moment that I walked in our cabin.
 
Mateo
had been fanatical about never letting me in before.
 
I remember the smells of creosote and fresh
paint—and I remember his smell, his glorious smell, permeating the place.”
 
She turned her head back to the distance,
back to the memory.
 
“Oh, how we loved
that cabin.
 
Then, as the reservoir
filled to its higher levels, when it really looked like a lake, people began to
arrive.
 
Mateo divided our land and sold
three lots.
 
He used that money to buy
more land…and so on.”

“Did
you tear down your cabin?”

“Oh,
no, darling.
 
We just added on to
it.
 
When you come in my home, the first
rooms are still a part of the old cabin.
 
Same wood, same floor, same ceiling, all laid down by my Mateo.”

A
bird zipped past the porch.
 
Señora
Moreno stopped rocking and made a slight shushing sound.
 
The bird landed in a nearby scrubby tree, its
head quizzically darting left and right.
 
It was green, distinguished because of its long curved beak, with notes
of white and orange around the head.
 
Suddenly it lurched into the air, tumbling then fluttering, an insect
trapped at the tip of its beak.
 
Then it
was gone, off to lunch in private.

“A
bee-eater,” Señora Moreno said.
 
“One of
my favorites and the first I’ve spotted this year.
 
They winter in Africa, you know.”
 
She let out a contented breath.
 
“Summer’s here, my dear.”

Justina
sipped her drink, finding it a tad harsh, guessing that it was probably an
acquired taste or a bit heavy on the Tempranillo.
 
“And your Mateo, his business here grew?”

“Yes,
dear.
 
I became involved after the cabin
was built.”
 
She stopped rocking, leaning
over and conspiratorially whispering, “I’d never had one whit of business
experience.
 
Back then, Circs was
controlled by the local parish priest.
 
He was a good man but had grown too used to the locals fawning over
him.
 
Power can do that, even to good
people.”

“I
can imagine.”

“Once
I straightened him out, made him see things my way, made him understand that
things could be better here if he’d fall in behind me, things were just
grand.”
 
The Spanish lady rested her
hands on one another.
 
“Soon after, I
opened a mercantile in Cercs—very, very busy in-season and steady through the
winter due to the workers from the dam and the power plant.
 
I quickly learned what to stock in the
different seasons.
 
That led to another
shop, then a petrol station while Mateo built cabins.
 
When those sold, we hired others to help us
run things while we speculated on real estate.
 
Mateo always gave me equal voice…such a fine man.”

“Señora
Moreno, your husband…”

“Seventeen
years ago, darling.
 
Automobile accident,
but the coroner felt he actually died of a heart attack beforehand.
 
He’d had heart troubles for years.”
 
She spoke of his death in the flat, practiced
manner of someone who’d found peace and maintained it by not dwelling on the
details of the tragedy.

“I’m
sorry.”

“I’m
fine, dear.
 
I was blessed to have him
for the time I did.”

“Has
there been anyone else since then?”

“No,”
Señora Moreno answered with a firm shake of her head.
 
“He was the one man for me.”
 

There
was a bout of silence, marked only by the occasional thumping of the rocking
chairs.

“As
I told you, this cabin was to be my daughter’s.”

“I
remember,” Justina said, afraid to pry.

“Her
name was Isabel—she died in Madrid, while at university.
 
Spinal meningitis.”

Justina
reached across the small table and touched Señora Moreno’s arm.
 
“I’m so sorry.”

“Years
ago, after Mateo died, I lamented not having more children.
 
But I found peace, and decided to live my
life on my terms.”

“Good
for you.”

“Mateo
and Isabel are together now,” the older woman beamed.
 
“Receiving their reward in heaven.”
 
Before Justina could say anything, Señora
Moreno turned to her.
 
“As I said, you
remind me of her.
 
You have a quiet
spirit about you, just like she did.”

“That’s
so nice of you to say.
 
I’m honored.”

The
placid face returned as Señora Moreno resumed her rocking.
 
“Now I get my pleasure by going to church,
running the business, and moments like this.”

Justina
tasted the drink again, feeling a tad awkward but not knowing what else to say.

“And
what of you and your squire, my dear…is he
the
man for you?”

Feeling
sudden heat in her cheeks, Justina nodded and said, “I truly hope so.”

Señora
Moreno placed her drink on the wicker table between them.
 
She tucked one of her legs up underneath her
and turned her body to Justina.
 
“Well,
if that’s the case, dear, then why don’t you tell me the truth about him?”

Feeling
her eyes blinking spasmodically, Justina stammered, “Señora Moreno…I…I…”

“I
know a false story when I hear one and, until today, I decided to let it
be.
 
But beautiful young Polish women
don’t usually show up here at the foot of the Pyrenees with quiet American men
nearly twice their age to stay anonymously,
hidden
away
, for a long period.”
 
She
reached across the small table and touched Justina’s arm, briefly closing her
eyes as she said, “He’s married, isn’t he?
 
He was here for work, paid you some flattering attention, you two got
involved, and he told you he’d go home and cut all the strings.”
 
Señora Moreno pulled in an audible
breath.
 
“They’re snakes, dear.
 
Cunning and alluring, but snakes the whole
lot of them.
 
It’s just how they were
created.
 
And, I can tell you from my own
experience as an attractive young lady, all he’ll do is come back a few more times
and take what he wants before—”

“He’s
not
married,” Justina said, bursting
out with good-natured laughter.

Señora
Moreno tapped her lip with her index finger.
 
“You’re sure?
 
Older gentlemen, in
their prime, can make you believe all sorts of things.”

“Positive.”

She
showed the palm of her left hand.
 
“Wait.
 
Don’t tell me.
 
I’m old and lonely and such a mystery as your
handsome American is spice to my daily monotony.”
 
Narrowing her eyes, she stared off into the
woods, taking a moment before she said, “He’s gone away on a job of some
sort.
 
Something different…”

Unsure
of what to tell Señora Moreno but feeling very close to her after the stories
of her husband and daughter, Justina said, “Yes, he has.”

“And
he has money, but he works with his hands…I could tell by how rough they
were.”
 
She spoke the words in the
affirmative, but added a slight lilt at the ends of her sentences to indicate
the possible presence of a query.

“He
does work with his hands.”

“And
has money?”

“Well,
not exactly.”

“He
had money when I met him, dear.”
 

“Yes,
but he doesn’t typically have money.”

Señora
Moreno’s face lit up.
 
“Ah, a
windfall.
 
He’s into something quite
illegal, isn’t he?
 
Something
afoul—sinful.”
 
She spoke without censure,
actually sounding quite gleeful at the revelation.
 
“Don’t worry yourself, dear.
 
The secret is quite safe with me.
 
All humans have their peccadilloes.
 
I just knew there was something illicit about
him...”
 
She looked away, her round face
alight.
 
“And he’s such a handsome
devil.
 
I can see how you would readily
invite him into your—”

Justina
cut her off.
 
“He’s not a criminal,
Señora.”

The
elder lady opened her hands.
 
“Then, pray
tell, please just tell me what in the world the nature of your relationship
is.
 
Start at the beginning, speak
slowly, and leave nothing out.
 
I want
all the juicy details.”

Tugging
at her earring, Justina smiled nervously.
 
“I can’t do that, Señora.
 
We
agreed that I’d keep everything to myself.”