The man who called himself Pedro spoke with a Slavic accent. His high cheekbones and blue eyes were not like any Latino whom Francisco had ever seen either. And his nose looked as though the man might have been a professional fighter: Flattened so that it covered a good part of his face. But jobs in Puerto Rico were hard to come by, and asking questions was discouraged, particularly inquiries as to exactly what Pedro and his ever-changing coworkers actually did.
The town house itself was also like none other Francisco had seen in the city. The exterior was normal enough, except for the fact its stucco was a pale blue rather than the muted reds, greens, and yellows favored by the other buildings, only one or two rooms wide, that sat along the curbs of the narrow blue cobblestone streets of Old San Juan sharing common walls.
That was not the only difference. The place had been modified far beyond what Francisco guessed was allowed by the strict rules of the city’s preservation council, a body dedicated to keeping as much of the sixteenth century intact as possible.
During Spain’s construction of the fortifications of San Juan beginning in 1539 and extending over the next two and a half centuries, the eighteen-foot-thick walls of the fortress guarding the harbor—San Felipe del Morro—and a number of storerooms and magazines had been built to facilitate the speedy delivery of provisions, powder, and shot to the fort’s garrison.
The English and Dutch had been a constant threat, mounting campaigns from their Caribbean colonies. Sir Francis Drake attacked in 1595, barely escaping when a cannonball pierced the cabin of his ship. Four years later, the duke of Cumberland succeeded in a land assault and siege against the city, only to retreat six months later when dysentery decimated his forces. In 1625, the Dutch sacked the city but were unable to breach del Morro’s walls.
After the fort fell into disuse at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the storage spaces honeycombing the city’s walls were deserted, available to squatters, beggars, or whoever chose to take them over. Soon, respectable facades were added, along with upper stories, and the former usages were forgotten.
Calle Luna 23 was such a house, with some notable additions. Instead of the blank wall at the rear that had been the inner part of the fortifications, a banquet-sized room had been carved out to accommodate a battery of computers and other communication equipment that Francisco did not recognize. He only knew they were connected to the third floor, an area forever locked off from the rest of the house. The shutters of the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street were steel rather than wood and were never opened, not even in the evening when every house in the old town was wide open in hopes of catching the breeze that would dissipate the damp mustiness of the air-conditioning that made Old San Juan habitable this time of year.
At the moment, Francisco was finishing sweeping the stone floor. His cleaning job was as mysterious as everything else here. First, the floor was littered with cigarette butts. Not the usual filtered Marlboros or Winstons sold at the bodega across the street, but cardboard-tipped, foul-smelling things with black tobacco. Francisco had never seen such a brand elsewhere in Puerto Rico. Where had they come from? Then, his first task each of the three days a week he came to clean was to empty a large wicker basket of shredded paper into the municipal garbage bin down the street. What was so important, so secret, that it needed to be shredded? Finally, there was the third floor. The door from the stairs was always locked and secured by a chain. Apparently no cleaning was required there. What was so valuable that it had to be locked away? And who were the men who came to and went from Number 23? None of them appeared to be Latino; almost all looked Slavic like Pedro. They spoke a rough language Francisco could not understand, even though he had taken several language courses before a slumping economy had forced him to drop out of the university at Ponce on the southern side of the island. They did occasionally speak English, particularly over the cell phones they all carried. But the speech was always oblique, never referring to anything Francisco was aware of. He surmised that the words they said stood for something else, a code.
Sometimes, though, they spoke clearly. That was even more confusing. Things about attacks on Japanese whaling fleets, cutting long lines in the Bering Sea, or sabotaging lumbering equipment in Brazil. Who cared about things so far away?
GrünWelt, GreenWorld, the international society publicly and politically dedicated to stopping the supposed rape of Planet Earth. That’s who, although the name meant nothing to Francisco.
Its world headquarters were ostensibly located just down the street from the US embassy to Switzerland and Liechtenstein at 19 Sulgeneckstrasse, Bern. An impressive building had been purchased and renovated with sums donated by concerned conservationists from around the world. The society’s announced policy was to fight whatever it saw as destruction of the environment with whatever peaceful means might be at hand.
That was the public persona.
Activities that might not stand the scrutiny of the authorities, or that skirted local or international law, were planned and put into practice here in San Juan, away from the hordes of well-meaning, if ill-informed, members whose dues and contributions provided the only source of income. At least, as far as the public knew.
Like many parts of the world lying between the tropics, Puerto Rico’s police had the laissez-faire attitude common to those latitudes plus the unique Anglo concept that, no matter how suspicious, premises could not be entered by authorities without some form of probable cause. In short, as long as the inhabitants of Number 23 caused no problems in San Juan, they were left alone.
Francisco was aware of little, if any, of this. He did know Pedro was talking to someone in the States, because he had been behind him and seen the 202 area code on the screen of the cell phone.
“I am relieved to hear if our problem has not been solved, it has been located there. Are you sure you can handle it?”
His silence while the question was answered implied satisfaction. “It is imperative you recover the objects. Yes, I understand it may not be easy. Dispose of the carrier. If you need assistance, call.”
Francisco thought that odd too. For an organization concerned about faraway whales and Brazilian rain forests, recycling would seem to make more sense.