An Accidental American: A Novel (12 page)

Such a fitting meeting place, Valsamis observed, sliding his Ruger from his coat, checking the nightscope. Adamastor, this god turned by lover’s rage to wind and stone, an embodiment of the dark and vengeful soul of the southward passage and the great African continent, what it had meant to those early sailors. Sea and storms determined to swallow them whole.

It wasn’t quite dawn and the sky was coldly luminous, brittle and bare as ice on water. Out on the
miradouro,
the statue towered like an angry fist, body clenched in eternal wrath. Down on the Tagus, the first ferry to Cacilhas drifted out onto the river’s empty oblivion, a night watchman’s lamp slowly trolling from shore to shore.

Just get him to the belvedere. Valsamis repeated his instructions as he watched Nicole start up the rua Santa Catarina, her face a ghostly green in the scope’s eye. That was all she had to do; he would take care of the rest. Nothing to go wrong, and yet so much. Nicole took a long drag on her cigarette, and her face caught for an instant in the ember’s glare, her skin a light source in itself, like a figure in a Dutch painting.

Wet work, Valsamis thought. This, what separated him from Morrow and the others. What they would not have been willing to do. But, then, it was better to take care of these things yourself. Better to know there would be no mistakes.

Valsamis crouched down, as he had learned to do as a child in Montana. His father beside him in the darkness, beneath the snow sodden boughs of the old ponderosas. His big burly arm around Valsamis’s shoulder, steadying the Remington, the rifle still too big for the boy’s hands.

“You’ve got to be quick about it,” his father had told him in the truck driving up into the Pintlers, his only advice, and this from a man of great deliberation. Valsamis hadn’t understood it at the time, and when the first elk dipped into the draw and moved down toward them through the waist-high drifts, Valsamis hadn’t moved fast enough. He’d let himself be dazzled by the creature. And when he finally recovered, he’d missed his shot.

All these years later, he could still remember the exact feeling of defeat, the elk lumbering away into the underbrush, spooked by some force both unseen and unheard, the scent of Valsamis and his father drifting toward him across the snow, eggs and bacon fat, whiskey and Lucky Strikes, the stink of humanity.

It was the last time Valsamis had hesitated in the face of death.

I inhaled deeply, pulling the smoke into my lungs, and scanned the dark
miradouro
ahead, the stand of palms, elegant as a
fadista
’s fingers on the neck of her guitar, and in front of them the massive silhouette of the sea god. Watching, I thought. Valsamis and others, perhaps. And then, in the doorway beside me, something moved.

I stopped walking and dropped my cigarette to the ground, my eyes straining against the darkness, my heart pounding. “Rahim?” I called quietly.

All was silent. Mistaken, I told myself. Another ghost like the one outside the Rosa. Then a face appeared in the doorway, features slowly revealing themselves.

Twelve years, and yet Rahim’s body was as familiar to me as my own, his hair that smelled of saffron and black pepper. As if the richness of Africa had been born into him. And for an instant I understood what had brought us both to that place, the wound we’d each carried all those years. Not a betrayal, I reminded myself, but still, in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to run.

Rahim stepped toward me and opened his mouth as if to speak, but he never got the chance. There was a whisper in the air, like schoolgirl gossip.

Neither of us moved, then Rahim’s left hand flew to his neck and I could see the splash of blood beneath his fingers where the bullet had hit.

“
Attention!
” he hissed, grasping my wrist and yanking me past him and into the shelter of the doorway.

My back slammed against the wall and my breath was knocked from my chest. When it came back to me, I could smell blood in the air.

“
Tu es blessé?
” I gasped, turning to Rahim.

He shook his head, pressing his hand to his neck. But I could see that he was wounded. His shirt was sticky with blood. His eyes were panicked, his breath shallow.

I sloughed my jacket and helped him to the ground. “
Tiens!
” I said, kneeling beside him, pressing the canvas jacket against his neck. Hold this. I could smell the fear on him, the sourness of his sweat and breath. In a matter of seconds the jacket was soaked through with his blood.

“It’s okay,” I told him, wanting to believe myself, but even as I said the words, I knew they were a lie. “You’re going to be okay.”

I rose and started toward the doorway, but Rahim put his free hand on my arm and held me back. His grip was uncomfortably strong, his fingernails sharp against my skin. He reached into his pocket and took out a pistol, shoved it into my hand.

I looked down at the gun, then moved toward the doorway again, stepped out, and waved in the direction of the belvedere.

“He’s hurt!” I called into the darkness, my voice echoing up the empty street, my own fear coming back to me.

Down on the river, a ship’s horn sounded as if in reply, but from the belvedere, there was just silence. The wind picked up slightly and the palms shivered.

“We need help!” I called again, desperate now, trying to keep my voice under control.

This time the answer came almost immediately. A second shot hissed out of the darkness, clipping the stone doorway just above my shoulder. This bullet intended not for Rahim but for me.

Ducking back into the doorway, I lifted the pistol and ran my thumb across its body, feeling for the safety.

Rahim reached for my arm again, and I crouched down next to him. He was shivering, his skin cold and damp, his teeth chattering. He would die here. He would die here and there was nothing I could do about it.

“The invoice,” he whispered, taking a slow breath, gathering himself for the effort of speaking.

“Ssshhhh.” I put my hand on his forehead, then leaned toward the doorway and peered out into the dark street. Not blind, I thought. No, Valsamis could see us perfectly, must have been shooting through a scope.

“The invoice,” Rahim repeated, louder this time, struggling to be heard. “At the dairy.”

“I’m going to get us out of here,” I told him.

“No,” he rasped, pushing my hand away. “Go, Nic.”

I shook my head, but he didn’t see. His eyes were focused on the doorway, on something in the distance beyond my shoulder.

“The car,” he said. “The lights.”

I didn’t understand at first, thought he was imagining something. And then from the hillside below came the groan of a car engine toiling upward.

“The lights,” he repeated.

I nodded, suddenly understanding. If Valsamis was shooting through a nightscope, the car would be my only chance, the headlights the cover I needed.

I peered out again into the gloom and watched the two lights heading up the hill toward us. Yes, I thought, if I went behind them, I might just make it.

I looked back at Rahim one last time, and he nodded at me, as if giving me permission to go.

“Thank you,” I told him, still not quite sure what had happened. Then I took a deep breath and rose up on the balls of my feet, legs tensed.

This way, I whispered, willing the car toward me. The lights washed forward, blazing a perfect path up the street, toward the belvedere and across Adamastor’s flanks. The car passed the doorway and I leaped out behind it, rising toward the brilliance. In an instant I was safely through, back into the darkness again, my legs propelling me down into the wild maze of Santa Catarina.

T
HEY WILL MAKE YOU FORGET
the taste of your mother’s milk. What Khalid had said all those years earlier, the two of them huddled around a fire in one of the wrecked buildings on the green line they’d claimed as their temporary home. Burning books that night to keep warm. The previous inhabitant’s collection of French mysteries, Simenon and Lenotre.

It was Kanj who’d discovered the apartment. A mortar had smashed into the roof above the living room, leaving a gaping, rain-logged hole around which a few sun-starved weeds had grown, but the rest of the space was miraculously intact. China in the dining room cabinets and expensive linens on the beds. And in the kitchen sink, unwashed breakfast dishes, a crust of toast, a brown smear of egg yolk, testament to the speed with which the war had overtaken the city.

Normally, Khalid didn’t talk about his time in prison, but that night something had set him off. Kanj hadn’t admitted it then, not even to himself, but he’d been afraid, terrified not so much by the pain of torture but by his own weakness, what he might say or do. Khalid must have sensed it, for after a good hour of talk, he’d grown quiet.

“It will surprise you,” he’d said, stirring the ashes, “just how much the body can take.”

This had not comforted Kanj at the time; he had not been able to understand what Khalid meant. But now he had come to see that his friend was right, that the fear of pain was worse than the pain itself, that once you surrendered to it, there wasn’t much you couldn’t bear.

Shift change, Kanj thought, listening to the sound of footsteps outside his cell, the scrape of a key in the lock. He took a deep breath and let his body relax completely, let the physical go. Then the door opened and he could see the man again, the familiar bald head and blunt hands. My best friend, Kanj thought, and my worst enemy. Soon, Kanj told himself, soon they would bring the Americans to him.

Taken, I told myself, shivering as I made my way down toward the river. My fingers were numb, my hands covered in Rahim’s blood. I’d been taken, and good. I could hear my father laughing as he walked away from a shortchange he’d pulled at a bar in Nice, counting his money as he went, handing me a crumpled fifty-franc note. People see what they want to see, he’d said, his cardinal rule of the con.

I was sixteen at the time, a runaway from my aunt’s house in Bordeaux, falling hard for the same man who’d seduced my mother all those years earlier.

“You don’t know him,” Emilie had said when I’d finally called to tell her I was staying. “He’s just using you.”

She’d been right, but at the time I’d wanted more than anything to believe she was wrong.

It was light when I emerged onto the waterfront, the morning dour and unwelcoming, clouds like bruised chilblains on the ashen sky. With nowhere else to go and Rahim’s words still fresh in my mind, I’d decided to head back to the dairy. Invoice or no, I could lie low there for a while, at least until I figured out my next move. The Cacilhas ferry had just left the dock and was churning its way out onto the river. Its twin had cast off from the opposite shore, but it was still a good twenty minutes away, limping through the chop.

It was too cold to be without a jacket, the clouds halfheartedly spitting a few raindrops, and I needed to clean myself up, so I made my way into one of the dockside cafés and headed for the restrooms. I washed my hands and face as best I could, then slid Rahim’s pistol from my hip pocket.