Vineyard Enigma (13 page)

“You did just fine. I’m proud of you. We’ll have this guy for supper, if that’s all right with you. Stuffed bluefish again.”

He nodded happily, still panting.

“You’d better get some rest,” I said. “Your fishing muscles are probably pretty tired.”

“Okay, Pa. Can I have a soda? I need a drink.”

“You bet. You know where the cooler is. Help yourself.”

“Me, too, Pa?”

“Sure, Diana.”

The children put their rods in spikes and headed for the beach blanket and the cooler.

I turned and saw Mahsimba, John, Mattie, and Zee talking and laughing as they looked at Joshua’s fish under the truck.

I opened the back of the Land Cruiser, then, two by two, surf-rinsed sand from our blues and put them in the box on top of the crushed ice. We had plenty of fish.

I walked over to the grown-ups.

“You should be proud of your son,” said Mahsimba, smiling. “He fought a mighty battle.”

“I am proud of him,” I said. “Are you a fisherman yourself?”

“I am,” he said.

“Zimbabwe is famous for its fishing,” said John. “Trout in the mountains and tiger fish in Lake Kariba.”

“But no surf casting as you do here,” said Mahsimba. “We fly-fish for trout and use boats for tiger fish, which, if one may boast, fight as fiercely as your bluefish and have as many teeth.” He held out a hand and I saw a thin scar along one finger. “A memorial to a careless moment removing a hook. I’m fortunate to have my finger at all. Tiger fish are related to piranhas.”

“Let’s take a walk up the beach,” I said. “You can see how different people make their casts. If you look closely, you’ll see a few scarred fingers among the locals, too.”

“I would enjoy a walk,” said Mahsimba.

“And while you two are gone,” said Mattie, taking my wife’s arm, “Zee will bring us up-to-date on all the latest gossip. People in the ER know all the juicy stuff!”

“We’ll be back in time for the first beer of the morning,” I said.

Zee hesitated, then looked quickly at Mattie as Mahsimba and I turned and walked away.

“Your island is lovely and varied. This spot is very different from the villages I’ve seen.”

Mahsimba was strolling barefoot beside me, carrying his shoes in one hand. His shirt and shorts were neat and pressed, unlike mine.

We looked at the line of fishermen as we passed behind their trucks going westward toward the wooden walkway and stairs that led to the parking lot on the top of the bluffs overlooking the Swan Pond. Different fishermen used different motions when they cast and when they reeled in. Some, like me, brought their rods straight back before casting; others threw sidearm. Some used every muscle in their backs and arms; others made seemingly effortless flips. Some reeled with their rod tips high; others kept their tips close to the water. Some reeled hard and fast; others reeled slowly, gently. All of them were catching fish.

“Is it possible that there are fish here like this every day?” asked Mahsimba.

“No. This is a blitz. The fish may be gone any moment, or they may stay here for hours. Some days you can cast here from dawn to dusk and never see a fish.”

“In Africa it’s the same. There are always fish and there are always fishermen, but the two are not necessarily in the same place at the same time.”

A universal truth, no doubt.

We ducked under the rope barrier that prevented Jeeps from going farther west, crossed the board walkway, and went on, leaving the trucks and the fishermen behind us.

“You wish to speak with me, J.W.”

“Yes.”

“About your wife, perhaps?”

I looked into those unfathomable golden eyes. “No, not about her.”

He arched a brow. “What, then?”

“About you and David Brownington.”

“Ah. What would you like to know?”

“The truth.”

He cocked his head slightly. “And what truth is that?”

“The one about the relationship between you and Brownington. The one about the people you really work for.”

We walked on. To our left the dancing waves of the Wasque rip curved out to sea. On the far horizon by Porky’s Island the surf was white.

“Tell me your thoughts,” said Mahsimba.

“My thoughts are that you work or at least worked at one time for the UN and maybe for Interpol and that your onetime friend David Brownington once did the same before creating a consulting firm and hiring out his skills to the other side. My thoughts are that right now, you may be working for yourself, not for the UN or Interpol or the Zimbabwe government. My thoughts are that you may not have actually lied about who you are and what you’re doing, but that you deceived me and John Skye and Stan Crandel from the beginning. My thoughts are that I don’t like being lied to by the people I work with.”

We walked on. “I see,” said Mahsimba. “You have resources I had not anticipated, J.W.” He gave me his smile. “I apologize for underestimating your capacities.”

“But not for deceiving me.”

“I regret that I did so. Deception is a tool of my work, I fear, but in this case its use was clearly an error.”

“But only because you were found out.”

“Indeed, that is so. It has been my experience that most people are more trusting and speak more freely if one is understood to be an employee of a museum or an agent for a law enforcement agency rather than if one is an independent contractor working for a private organization. There are exceptions, of course, of which you are perhaps one.”

Everybody lies at one time or another. Amateurs do it to deceive themselves and others who affect their everyday lives; professionals do it for business reasons.

At the west end of Swan Pond we turned and walked back.

“I have to know what’s going on,” I said. “I don’t want to walk into trouble that I can’t anticipate.”

“Does this mean that you might continue working with me?” Mahsimba’s voice held a note of mild surprise.

“Maybe. Are you really an independent contractor, or do you still have links to Interpol and the UN?”

“I have been granted leave from my official duties with Interpol, and have taken temporary employment with a private firm which, in turn, has been hired by the government of Zimbabwe.”

“To find the eagles.”

“Yes. And to return them to my country.”

“Tell me about Brownington Limited.”

Mahsimba gave himself some time to consider his reply. Then he said, “David was and perhaps still is my friend, so his new life is of more than just professional interest to me; it’s personal. The organization that has employed him also wants the eagles. So far, David has been one step ahead of me in the search, so he found Matthew Duarte before I did.”

“Which may have been a fatal mistake. How do you know so much about Brownington’s activities if the two of you aren’t on the same side?”

He held an imaginary cell phone to his ear. “Modern technology not only allows people to communicate rapidly over great distances, but also allows others to sometimes intercept those communications. Both the lawful and the lawless have those capacities.”

“What makes the people who hired Brownington so anxious to get their hands on the eagles?”

Mahsimba smiled. “A curious combination of greed and sentimentality. After the mercenary, Parsons, stole the eagles from Crompton, the white farmer whose family had owned them for so long, Crompton soon found himself without a farm, too. His land was taken by the successful revolutionaries.

“Being a resourceful businessman with a knowledge of African art, Crompton went into the import-export business, specializing in the international sale of art objects. In the last thirty-five years he has built a very successful organization. Much of his trade, need I say, is in illegal objects, and Interpol is doing its best to put him in jail.”

“So far in vain, I take it.”

“So far. But even while Crompton has been thriving economically, he has never forgotten the eagles. He thinks they are rightfully his, and he wants them back. His feelings were very hurt when Parsons stole them, and when he could afford to do so, he began to look for Parsons. He hired David Brownington and David found him. You know the rest.

“I’ve been told by Sergeant Agganis, to whom I showed my identity card as a member of Interpol, that blood samples from members of Brownington’s family have arrived in Boston and that DNA tests will soon determine whether your Headless Horseman is indeed my friend David.”

“I take it that Interpol and the organization you now represent have the same interests in the eagles.”

“Indeed. Interpol works closely with governments to curtail international crime, including trade in stolen artifacts. The interests of the organization by whom I’m currently employed are those of Zimbabwe, which believes the eagles are its property and wants them back.”

“And your interests are purely economical?”

“It’s true that I’m making more money at the moment than when I am on salary for Interpol, but I’m also a Zimbabwean and have a personal interest in having the birds returned to their homeland.

“My supervisor at Interpol, who is always complaining about a shortage of money, is pleased to have me on this temporary private assignment because the costs of my search are being borne by my employers.”

Head cops are always complaining about their departments being short of money.

“A tangled web,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Can you give me any reason to believe anything you’ve just told me?”

“I cannot. Eventually the truth will be clear to anyone interested, but until then you must trust your instincts.”

We came to the line of trucks and I saw that only about half of the fishermen were still casting. The others had their rods in spikes and were gathered in clusters, talking.

“The blitz has passed,” I said.

“Sic transit gloria mundi.”

Ahead of us were our own Jeeps. My children were in their swimsuits and Zee had doffed her shirt and shorts and was wearing her black bikini.

“Your wife is an extraordinarily beautiful woman,” said Mahsimba.

“Yes.”

“Fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.”

“But the devil will come and Faustus must be damned. Several months ago she shot a man to death and maimed another. They were attacking her and our daughter. She hasn’t been quite the same since. When you get closer you’ll be able to see the scar of the bullet fired by the man she killed.”

“My God!”

“I owe her most of the joy in my life. I’ll never step between her and happiness of her own, but if anyone hurts her, they’ll have me to deal with.”

“I understand.”

“There’s something else you should know,” I said. “But I don’t want Zee to know because she has enough on her mind already. Yesterday somebody took a shot at me. Apparently my snooping around has spooked somebody. You’re snooping, too, so be careful.” I told him what had happened.

He took a few steps, then stopped us both. “I think it’s best if I fire you right now, J.W. I thank you for all you’ve done, but I don’t want your blood on my hands.”

“I don’t think I want to stop,” I said. “If you want to fire me, that’s fine, but I plan to keep going.”

He studied me, then nodded. “I believe I would do the same. But we must both be careful.”

We walked on until we came up to the Jeeps.

“The fish are gone and the food is ready,” said Mattie. “It’s time to eat.”

So we did that, sitting on beach blankets, drinking beer and sodas with our sandwiches.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to fish,” said Zee, who was sitting beside Mahsimba.

“The fish will be back,” said Mahsimba, smiling that smile. “If they come soon, I’ll be waiting for them.”

“Spoken like a Red Sox fan,” said John. “Wait until next year.”

“I do not know these red socks,” said Mahsimba.

“Explaining the Boston Red Sox may take some time,” said John. “The Red Sox are Boston’s professional baseball team. Do you know baseball?”

“I’ve heard of it. Rather like cricket, I’m told.”

“There are similarities, but one big difference between other professional sports teams and the Red Sox is that the Sox never, ever win the championship. Thus the famous phrase, ‘Wait until next year.’ It represents the eternal triumph of hope over experience.”

Zee was a Sox fan, and had strong opinions about the team.

“D,” she now said. “Never enough D or pitching. Sluggers, usually, but mostly not much in the way of fielding or pitchers. There’s Nomar and Pedro and Manny, of course, but not much else. I blame management.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “You may dislocate an arm, waving it like that.”

She ignored me. “They know they can fill Fenway with any kind of team at all, so they won’t shell out enough money to buy themselves a winner. Boston hasn’t won a Series since 1918, for God’s sake! Look at the Yankees! They win about every other Series that’s played. And why? Because they’ll pay their players and they’ve got smart management! If you decide to live in America, Mahsimba, save yourself a lot of grief and root for the Yankees!”

“Sacrilege,” said John mildly. “I’m shocked, Zeolinda, shocked to hear such words fall from your lips.”

She grinned and raised both hands in surrender. “You’re right, John. I’m just being bitter. Anybody at all can root for a winner like the Yankees, Mahsimba, but you have to have character to be a Red Sox fan.”

I saw Mahsimba’s eyes touch the bullet scar across her ribs beneath her left arm before he laughed and let his gaze float to Mattie, who was saying little but seeing much.

“What do you think, Mattie?” he asked. “Should I become a fan of your Red Sox or of the famous New York Yankees, who are known even in my country?”

“All the people on these blankets are Red Sox fans, for better or for worse,” said Mattie, looking back and forth between him and Zee. “But you get to choose.”