Page 43 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

He closed his eyes now, con­jur­ing up the lasagna’s pack­ag­ing. The words on it had been in Eng­lish, but that proved noth­ing. He’d al­ready shared that de­tail with Mikel any­way.

In­stead, he tried to re­mem­ber some­thing—any­thing—about the masked fig­ures who had en­tered the tent. He was cer­tain there had been more than one. How­ever, they’d al­ways worn black from head to toe, loosely fit­ted, with re­flec­tive sil­ver masks that were ter­ri­fy­ing be­cause they’d had no fea­tures. Ev­i­dently, the plas­tic of the masks was trans­par­ent from the in­side look­ing out. They were cheap things that you could buy at any party store, but the ef­fect had been dev­as­tat­ing and ef­fec­tive at con­ceal­ing his ab­duc­tors’ iden­ti­ties.

Mikel had ad­mit­ted to be­ing grudg­ingly im­pressed by the level of pro­fes­sion­al­ism the crim­i­nals had shown. They had been well dis­ci­plined, too, re­fus­ing ever to speak to Gabriel.

And he’d tried ev­ery­thing to get a word out of them be­cause the iso­la­tion had driven him crazy. He had at­tempted to keep track of the cy­cles of bright and dim light, us­ing what­ever plas­tic uten­sil he was al­lowed for his evening meal to scratch tiny marks on the tent wall. How­ever, he would for­get if he’d al­ready made a mark for that day and then ag­o­nize over whether to make an­other one.

He had poked at his guards when they’d en­tered his tent, taunt­ing them, beg­ging them, ask­ing them ques­tions about their fam­i­lies, pre­tend­ing to be sick, even sob­bing. He winced at that last mem­ory. Not once had they bro­ken their men­ac­ing si­lence.

Their only con­ces­sion af­ter four days had been to give him three books: Don Quixote, Cien años de soledad, and El alquimista. Al­though he’d al­ready read them all, his grat­i­tude had been soul-deep, some­thing Mikel had at­trib­uted to mild Stock­holm syn­drome. To Gabriel, though, the books had been a way to es­cape his in­escapable prison. Read­ing about joust­ing at wind­mills had been far prefer­able to star­ing at tent walls, won­der­ing if his ab­duc­tors were go­ing to kill him.

Of course, he’d also won­dered how the ne­go­ti­a­tions had been pro­ceed­ing be­tween the kid­nap­pers and his par­ents, his un­cle, and Mikel. He’d hoped that only Mikel had seen his sev­ered ear. He’d hated to in­flict that kind of grotesque hor­ror on his par­ents or the king. Mikel could han­dle it bet­ter.

To this day, he didn’t know who had opened the box with his bloody body part in it.

He shook his head to clear such use­less thoughts.

Voices. He needed to fo­cus on those. He pawed through the mem­o­ries and jerked his head up. He had heard his kid­nap­pers speak. Just barely.

“What is it?” Quinn asked, notic­ing his sud­den move­ment.

“I heard more voices than I re­al­ized. Some­times I would know when some­one was about to en­ter the tent be­cause I could hear muf­fled voices com­ing from the cor­ri­dor lead­ing to the room where I was im­pris­oned. Ei­ther the door wasn’t fully closed, or they fin­ished speak­ing just as they opened it.” He closed his eyes, try­ing to re­mem­ber the tiny snip­pets of speech. “They spoke dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Span­ish. Also, Eng­lish. And French.” All the lan­guages spo­ken by nearly ev­ery cit­i­zen of Cal­eva.

Open­ing his eyes, he turned to Quinn, feel­ing a surge of ex­cite­ment. “Ko­dra prob­a­bly won’t speak Al­ba­nian or Ital­ian to his con­tact. Maybe I’ll rec­og­nize his voice in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage.”

“That would be very help­ful.” Quinn smiled en­cour­age­ment be­fore she prod­ded, “Can you re­mem­ber any­thing they said?” Be­fore he could an­swer, she went still, lis­ten­ing to her ear­piece. “Ko­dra’s dis­em­barked.”

Gabriel’s ex­cite­ment turned colder and took on an edge of nerves. Would to­day bring him face-to-face with the tor­men­tor who had stolen his mu­sic from him?

An­neliese pulled over to the curb be­hind a line of idling cars. “We’ll pre­tend we’re a ride-share for a few min­utes un­til we know which di­rec­tion to go.”

The car went silent again, and Gabriel wished Mikel had given him a ra­dio as well. He didn’t want to delve into the past when the present felt so ur­gent. “Will you tell me when there’s any news?” he asked Quinn.

“Sure thing. Right now, I’m get­ting a nar­ra­tive of Ko­dra walk­ing through the air­port. Not ex­cit­ing. Shit!” She turned an apolo­getic face to­ward Gabriel. “Sorry, but they’re pretty sure Ko­dra just got his ren­dezvous lo­ca­tion on a piece of pa­per he pulled from un­der a sink in the men’s room. That means we can’t hack into his phone or com­puter to get it, so we’ll have to fol­low him in­stead of be­ing able to scout out the setup ahead of time. Mikel says who­ever he’s meet­ing is a pro.”

“I as­sume that makes it more likely that he’s deal­ing with the same per­son who planned the kid­nap­ping.”

“Let’s hope so,” Quinn said. “Ko­dra didn’t check any lug­gage. He’s headed for the exit now. He’s tak­ing a taxi. No sur­prise there since he can pay cash.”

“Looks like he’s head­ing north,” An­neliese said, eas­ing the car out of the line and onto the road. “Not to­ward his ho­tel, so this may be the meet.”

No one spoke as An­neliese ma­neu­vered through the flow of trav­el­ers. “Roger that,” she said.

“Mikel’s just telling the driv­ers what or­der to go in,” Quinn mur­mured to Gabriel. “One of the agents on the plane man­aged to plant a track­ing de­vice on Ko­dra’s overnight bag, so we can stay out of his sight.”

Clearly, Mikel was as good at this as those they were fol­low­ing. Not for the first time, Gabriel won­dered where Quinn’s boss had come from. “How many car chases have you been a part of be­fore this?” he asked her in a low voice.

An odd look crossed her face. “This is a first. I’m a com­puter nerd, not a field agent.” Her at­ten­tion fo­cused in­ward, so he knew she was lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio. “He’s crossed un­der the high­way and is in a place called Sacavém.”

Gabriel glanced out the win­dow to see a line of blocky brick apart­ment build­ings along the road. A few min­utes later, they passed un­der the el­e­vated lanes of a ma­jor high­way, and the scenery be­came in­dus­trial. The street nar­rowed and wound past auto parts stores and run-down apart­ment build­ings.

“Thank good­ness An­neliese chose such non­de­script cars,” Quinn mut­tered as she, too, looked at their sur­round­ings. “He’s stopped at a restau­rant, Casa do Peixe.” She lis­tened for a minute. “Mikel’s not happy. It’s a dive that’s nearly empty at this time of day. He’s prob­a­bly not go­ing to al­low you in­side. There’s a fish counter, though, which means he can send in a cou­ple of agents to buy fresh fish so they can get video and au­dio.”

Quinn’s eyes be­gan to dance, and she leaned close to Gabriel. “Glad I won’t be in the car with their pur­chases.”

He turned his laugh into a cough since An­neliese and Ivan prob­a­bly wouldn’t ap­pre­ci­ate lev­ity in such a tense sit­u­a­tion. He was grate­ful to Quinn, though, as he felt the ten­sion bunched in his chest ease slightly.

An­neliese drove around a sharp cor­ner and pulled into a park­ing space in front of a dingy fur­ni­ture store. Ivan got out and went around to the trunk, re­turn­ing with a black duf­fel bag, which he passed to Gabriel. “There’s a base­ball cap and mir­rored sun­glasses in here. Mikel wants you to put them on in case we have a chance to get you on-site. Take out your cell phone and stare down at it while you’re walk­ing.” Ivan nod­ded to Quinn. “You should be ready to go with him as cam­ou­flage.”

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