To The Lions - 02 (9 page)

“May
we meet again tomorrow?” Gage asked.

“You
would like to sleep on this proposal?” Navarro asked with a hopefully cocked
eyebrow.

“I’d
be foolish not to,” Gage said, the very words surprising himself.

“Which
means you’re considering it.”

Gage
finished his water.
 
“I don’t want to
give you that impression.”

“If
you weren’t, you would tell me no right now.”
 
When Gage produced his money, Navarro motioned it away.
 
“Please, Mister Harris, the food was my
pleasure.”

“I
will call you tomorrow, señor.”

“I’d
prefer we schedule a meeting now.
 
Do you
feel comfortable enough to visit my casita without disarming my men on your way
in?” Navarro asked, smiling as he finished his query.

Gage
nodded.
 
“Yes, sir.”

“Valentin
will give you a new number and pick you up after you call.”
 
Navarro snapped his fingers and Valentin
appeared.

After
Gage had the information and bade farewell to Navarro, Gage stepped to the
mouth of the alley with Valentin, addressing him and Ocho.
 
“I apologize to you both if I caused you any
problems with Señor Navarro.”
 
Gage
extended his right hand.
 
“No hard
feelings.”

Valentin
stared at Gage’s hand for a moment before shaking it.
 
Ocho followed suit.

Gage
walked into the night.

* * *

The
idea that had struck Gage before his meeting bloomed like a flower.
 
Focusing on the idea and its elements, Gage didn’t
allow himself to mull Navarro’s offer.
 
Not yet.
 
He’d taken the last bus
back to Lloret de Mar and gone to his hotel room.
 
After making the bed and brushing his teeth,
he stashed one of the Russian’s pistols in his suitcase.
 
He grabbed several zip-ties from his suitcase
and left the room.
 
Since that time,
still working on the fabric of his plan, he’d walked the frenzied streets.

It
was now after two in the morning and Lloret de Mar was still going strong.
 
He’d witnessed a fight spill out of a disco
onto the cobblestone pedestrian street—two skinny men in trendy clothes took a
royal beating from a duo of overly muscled, heavily-tattooed men Gage pegged as
Irish.
 
Just when it appeared the two
skinny men were beaten, one of them reached into his pants.
 
The appearance of the glinting switchblade
ended the entire affair without anything more serious than a bloody nose as the
two skinny men yelled after the running Irishmen, insulting them for cowardice.

Cowardice or intelligence?
Gage wondered.

It
felt good to be back in Europe, back to the unique clash of cultures.
 
Back to the sights and smells.
 
The doner kebabs and the proliferation of
smokers.
 
The ancient buildings and the
zany fashions.

Gage
was home.

He
kept going, walking the streets in a grid pattern, never making eye contact
with the multitude of barkers doing their best to entice him into their
club.
 
He was promised women, men, hashish,
and even vodka-laced Italian ice.
 
Like a
lion pacing his cage for exercise, Gage put his head down and kept on
walking.
 

Pausing
at a church, Gage stared up at the bell tower, lit by twin spotlights.
 
The church was Catholic, situated between the
throbbing humanity of the clubs and discos.
 
He found a marker, denoting the building as nearly eight hundred years
old.
 
It boggled his mind to think of the
changes that had occurred around that old cathedral.

He
placed all the money from his pocket in the steel box under the statue of a
saint, allowing his hand to linger there for a moment.
 
Then, moving at a faster pace than he had
earlier, he walked about a kilometer back to a place he’d visited earlier.

It
was the Russian club, Eastern Bloc.
 

And
it was now 2:30 A.M.
 

From
across the main street, as he queued with a group of people smoking outside
another nightclub, Gage eyed the door of the Russian establishment.
 
People flooded out, mostly in groups.
 
The last few were either staggering drunk or
hanging on a member of the opposite sex’s arm.
 
No one went inside.
 
At 2:40, the
lights in the front stairwell went out, followed by the red neon sign.
 
Gage hurried a block to the west before
navigating to the alleyway behind the club, then he made his way back east.

Behind
Eastern Bloc were several cars.
 
There
was a large Mercedes, an Audi S4 with numerous aftermarket modifications, and
an old Volkswagen van with French plates.
 
Above the rear door of the club was a solitary light with a rain shield
over the bulb.
 
Gage found a sandwich
wrapper and, standing on a paint can, used the wrapper to unscrew the
bulb.
 
The alleyway was now dark.
 
He waited behind the van.

At
3:17 A.M. the rear door opened.
 
A
heavily-muscled man exited, glancing up at the darkened light before jingling
his keys.
 
The Mercedes chirped, marked
by its parking lights casting flashes of amber light over the alleyway.
 
Humming a tune, the car’s owner flicked a
cigarette that almost hit Gage.
 
He
entered the Mercedes, disappearing at idle before the car’s tires screeched as
it roared away.

Ten
minutes later another man exited.
 
Though
the alley was dark, Gage’s eyes had adjusted and he noticed the burgundy suit
of his Russian friend, Dmitry.
 
The
Russian staggered to his car, leaning on it for support before vomiting
explosively.
 
Gage was only ten feet away
from the splattering.
 
By the time Dmitry
had essentially fallen inside the Audi, the stench wafted to Gage—vodka, onions
and stomach acid.

Doing
his best to ignore the stink, Gage watched as Dmitry drove away.
 
As the Audi went by the van Gage was able to
see the driver, illuminated by the reddish cockpit lights.
 
Still looking quite nauseous and in no shape
to drive, the Russian was rubbing his Adam’s apple.

That’ll hurt for at least three
days, Dmitry.
 
Hopefully you’re bright
enough to ice it.

A
few minutes after the Audi was out of sight, the rear door opened again.
 
A short man held the door as a number of
females exited.
 
It only took them a
moment to notice the rancid smell, evidenced by them waving their hands in
front of their faces as one of them made a joke about it.
 
Gage eyed the group through the window of the
van.
 
Standing in the middle, as they
waited on the man to unlock the Volkswagen, was Justina.
 
Her arms were crossed in front of her as if
she were cold.
 
She did not join the laughter
of the other girls.

The
van was parked so that the sliding door of the passenger side was nearest the
rear door of Eastern Bloc.
 
The old
Volkswagen must not have had keyless entry because the girls just stood there
while the man entered a sequence of numbers on the building’s keypad, grumbling
about something—probably the lack of light from above.

There
was another joke.
 
Again the girls
laughed.
 
Justina’s arms remained
crossed, her head down.
 
It was the
posture of someone who wished she weren’t there.

And
Gage aimed to do something about that.

While
the man cursed the keypad, Gage moved.
 
Star
pistol leading the way, he came around the van, using a high shooting position.
 
Despite the darkness, the girls saw him
coming, marked by one of them uttering a piercing scream just as Gage reached
the diminutive man.
 
The man had just
started to turn when Gage pressed the pistol into his neck, causing him to
stiffen.

“Do
not move,” Gage growled in Spanish.
 
He
used his left hand to remove one of the thick zip-ties.
 
He wrenched the man’s left hand down, moving
it up behind his back, the effect creating significant tension on the man’s
shoulder joint and causing him to grunt.
 
Gage stuffed the Star into his belt and moved his right hand to the
man’s right hand.

And
that’s when the man resisted.

The
man, a Russian judging by the curses he growled, made an attempt to spin to his
left.
 
If someone had advised him on an
escape, his choice would have definitely been the best option because turning
left, in theory, would relieve the pressure of the hold Gage had applied.

But
Gage’s grip on the man’s left wrist was hydraulic.
 
Sensing the movement, Gage swung his right
elbow in a vicious arc, catching the man above his ear and splitting the fresh scab
on Gage’s elbow wide open.

It
was almost the exact same move Gage had used in Waco, Texas only a few days
before.

The
elbow silenced the torrent of Russian curses.
 
Gage caught the man as he fell, setting him down to the filthy alley
floor and securely zip-tying his hands behind his back.
 
Then the American lifted the keys from the
ground and walked to the stunned women, all but one of whom skittered backward.

Gage
held out his hand to Justina.
 

Speaking
Polish, one of the women yelled what must have been admonishments at Gage.
 
She was visibly confused about what was going
on.
 
They all were.
 
All, that is, but Justina.

She
stared at Gage’s face, then at his hand.
 
When she placed her hand in his, Gage used his other hand to toss the keys
to the nearest of the women, telling them in Spanish to do as they pleased.

Leading
Justina by the hand, and moving with a purpose, Gage Hartline led her up the
alleyway, across the street and into the old city.
 
As they walked, Gage was electrified by the
confrontation, by the setting, and by the feeling of the warm, feminine hand in
his.
 
When, after a few blocks, they
reached his hotel, he turned to her, having not said a word since liberating
her.

“Are
you okay?” he asked.

“I
am now.”

Chapter Five

The
balcony of Gage’s hotel room faced to the northwest.
 
Nearby foothills loomed behind the beachside
resort, their ridges marked by blackness.
 
Behind the hills was the panorama of purple night and, somewhere in the
distance and unseen, the rugged peaks of the Pyrenees.
 
Between the occasional wafts from Justina’s
cigarette, Gage enjoyed the sea smell as the wind blew in from the
Mediterranean.
 
There were occasional
voices below them, in the streets, as the party town wound down from another
night of reveling, regurgitating drunks from its many clubs to stagger blindly
back to their hotels.
 
Someone in another
room had left their balcony door open, the sounds of their intimate union coming
and going and, for whatever reason, making Gage slightly embarrassed.

Since
arriving at the hotel, Gage and Justina’s conversation had consisted only of a
few sentences.
 
He’d learned that her
last name was Kaminski.
 
He’d also gotten
her a glass of water.
 
Justina leaned
against the railing, smoking her third cigarette, facing inward.
 
She seemed shaken.
 
Gage stood next to her, facing outward, his
eyes moving over the Spanish countryside.

“Thank
you,” she said for the third time.

“No
need to thank me.”

She
shut her eyes, tilting her head back.
 
“I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

“You
won’t be in any trouble as long as you don’t go back.”

“I’ll
have to work somewhere and they’ll find me.
 
It’s not like I know a trade.
 
I
can’t be a nurse or a teacher or even a cook.”
 
She flicked her cigarette over the railing.
 
“I’m just poor Polish trash who happened to
be born with a decent body.
 
Working in a
bar, for tips, is all I know.”

Just
as he was about to speak, one of the copulators from down below reached a noisy
crescendo.
 
Gage had been facing Justina
but turned his head back to the hills as he spoke.
 
“You haven’t been
working
, in the traditional sense.
 
You’ve been an indentured servant.
 
While you think you have no skills, I’d wager that those Russian club
owners have burned that notion into your head for so long that you actually
believe it.”

“It’s
true,” she said sullenly.
 
“I am
nothing.”

“So
you just work here for the season?”

She
nodded.
 

“What
do you do in the winter?”

“Work
with my mama’s employer.”

“Doing
what?”

“Cleaning
dirty businesses.
 
Emptying trash.
 
Scrubbing shit from toilets.”

Gage
turned to her, viewing the smooth shape of her face, the protruding high
cheekbones, and the swept back blonde hair.
 
“Justina, how many years have you come here?”

“This
is my fourth time.”

“Do
they fly you down?”

“Are
you joking?” she scoffed.
 
“They stuff eight
girls in that van you were hiding behind.
 
It’s made for six passengers, and with luggage even that would be tight.”

“All
from Poland?”

She
nodded.

He
wondered how many other local workers suffered under these conditions.
 
“Do they force you to come?”

“No,”
she admitted.
 
“At the end of last year,
when they drove us back to Polska, they told us the date and time they would
pick us up—seven months later.
 
As long
as a girl has not had a baby, which, according to the Russians, would spoil her
body, or as long as she isn’t too old or unattractive, she has a chance to be
one of the eight that get chosen.
 
It’s
this way each year.
 
Each year I say I
will not come back, but I do, for the money.”
 
Justina put another cigarette in her mouth, speaking with it clamped
there.
 

“Two
girls were turned away this year.
 
It
always happens.
 
They make us strip to
our underwear on the side of the busy street.
 
It was freezing cold that day and raining.
 
As we stood there shivering, that little
troll you beat up tonight rubbed his hand over every girl’s body—if it jiggled,
he rejected her.”
 
She lit her cigarette,
showing the harshness of her expression.
 
“One girl, who I thought was beautiful, had a tiny bit of stomach
sticking out below her belly button.
 
It
was nothing.
 
The little troll called her
‘
zhir,
’ which is Russian for fat, and
told her to piss off.
 
She went away crying
that she had no money and no place to stay.
 
It was awful but, I have to admit, I was so happy that day they chose me
to come again.”

“I
understand.”

“But
now, as I told you earlier, I’ve decided that I can’t take it anymore.”

“You
weren’t feeling that way before you came this year?”

“No,
because like that girl that was rejected for her tummy, I have no money…I spend
every
groszy
I make helping my family
and buying food.
 
Back in Polska, I live
in a tiny house with the rest of my family.
 
Coming here, while it’s no fun, is a half-year break from scrubbing shit
and I am able to come home to my family a small amount of money at season’s end.”

Gage
had no response to her discourse—her feelings were obviously genuine and
justified.
 
While he had no idea of the
things she’d endured, he was empathetic.

“I’m
sorry for my emotions,” she said.
 
“In
the past I could get through a season.
 
But this year…”

“Did
something happen to you?”

“No,”
she replied, shaking her head.
 
“I’m
just…I don’t know…getting older, I guess.”

“You’ll
feel better after you sleep.”
 
Gage
walked through the room and into the bathroom, brushing his teeth.
 
When he walked back into the bedroom, she was
standing there.

“Tired?”
he asked.

“You’re
going to sleep?”

“I
am.”
 
After turning the bedside lamp off,
he removed his shirt, his boots, and his socks.
 
He left his t-shirt and pants on.
 
Then he flopped down on the bed, motioning to the still-lit bathroom.
 
“If you don’t find it gross, you’re more than
welcome to use my toothbrush and toothpaste.”

Justina
eyed him curiously for a moment.
 
He made
his face pleasant, lacing his hands behind his head as he closed his eyes,
regulating his breathing.
 
Moments later
he could hear her as she brushed her teeth.
 
He heard the water stop and could hear the flick of the light
switch.
 
She stepped back into the dark bedroom,
standing there, appearing unsure of what to do.

“I
won’t bite you,” Gage said, for lack of anything else to say.
 
She removed her top and the short skirt,
sliding into the bed in the bikini he had seen earlier.
 
He recalled how she’d smelled earlier in the
day.
 
He smelled her again, the feminine
scent making his head spin.
 
She was
closest to the balcony door; he was next to the wall.
 
Gage rolled to his right side, telling her to
sleep well.

Again
he closed his eyes.

When
ten minutes had passed, as he neared the welcome cliff of sleep, he felt her
hand.
 
She was pulling him to her.
 
Gage rolled over, allowing her hand to
situate him behind her, lying there as one.
 
Justina found his right hand and pulled it to her stomach, flattening it
there and resting her hand on top.

The
American man and the Polish woman slept soundly.
 
Together.

* * *

Gage
was up after four hours of good sleep.
 
Though
he didn’t think there was much of a decision to be made, it was time to face
the choice that lay in front of him.

He
stood from the bed, drawing no movement at all from Justina.
 
As he slid on a pair of old and friendly blue
jeans from his pack, he couldn’t help but look at her.
 
The sheet covered her lower half.
 
Her youthful, taut body absorbed the sleep
like the good medicine it was.
 
Her full
lips were parted slightly, altering the pitch between her inhalations and
exhalations.
 
Last night, when she’d
pulled him to her, she’d held her hand over his for a solid hour, nestling her
body back into his as if his human touch was curative.
 
Finally, sometime around daybreak, he’d
awoken to find her splayed halfway on top of him.
 
And after that, in his final slice of sleep,
Gage’s subconscious conjured an ethereal dream about Monika, his former lover
whose life had been cut tragically short.

The
dream wasn’t significant, just the two of them hiking a perilous seaside trail,
having an innocuous conversation.
 
As
Gage tugged on a long-sleeve t-shirt he paused his reflection, wondering if the
perilous trail represented the path he was now on.

And
why Monika?
 
He hadn’t dreamed of her in
months.

He
slid on his ancient Asics running shoes and again rotated his eyes to Justina,
sleeping peacefully.

She’s the first woman I’ve had
emotional interaction with since Monika.
 
He nodded to himself.
 
That’s
why.

He
skipped the cramped two-person elevator, taking the stairs instead.
 
Downstairs he found three dozen early-rising tourists
wolfing down a buffet breakfast of fried-hard eggs, fruit, and a strange-looking
type of processed meat that had been seared on a large skillet.
 
Gage stepped to the attendant, showing him
his room key and asking if he could take a mug of coffee on a walk as long as
he brought the mug back.

“Certainly,
señor,” the man beamed.
 
“Our beach is always
pretty, but it’s especially beautiful at this time of day.”
 

Nodding
his thanks, steaming mug in hand, Gage exited and turned right, headed for the
shore.

There
were rows and rows of touristy curio shops between his hotel and the beach, all
shuttered at this early hour.
 
Few people
roamed the wet streets, a trace of steam rising from an early morning shower
that had already passed by.
 
He descended
a narrow street, passing a Scottish bar that looked slightly worse for the wear
after what must have been a lively evening.
 
On his left, as he neared the main road, was the requisite McDonalds
that is now found in seemingly every European city of decent size.
 
Sipping the stark hotel coffee, Gage walked
to the seawall, descending the steps and slipping off his shoes for a stroll by
the water.

The
distant water was glassy but, at its shore, the Mediterranean offered
atypically large waves.
 
Breakers of
three to four feet built slowly, crashing in a thundering yet lonely arrival.
 
He turned landward and viewed the horizon
over the resort, finishing the strong coffee as he deliberately considered the
insanity of voluntarily sending himself to prison.
 
Before he could even consider the offer,
there were a number of questions that needed answering, and those needed to be
ranked by importance.
 
Floating to the
top of the list was Navarro himself: could he be trusted?

And
what were the terms of his son’s sentence?

What
if Gage decided, at any point, that the job wasn’t working?
 
How could he get out and how quickly could
that be done?

What
if something happened to the son that was beyond Gage’s limits of control?

Did
Navarro have any other people on the inside?

How
exactly would Navarro’s contacts “send” Gage to prison?
 
Would Gage assume an identity?
 
Who else was in on the job—who were the
contacts on the inside?

There
were a hundred more questions.
 
More so
than any other job he’d ever been offered—in fact, nothing had come close.

All
the more reason not to take it.

But,
Gage thought,
I’ve never been offered
such money
.