Frik Versfeld stormed out of the terminal building at Goa International Airport, India, his fists clenched in annoyance at the barely tolerable flight. There were many things he hated about long-distance travel, but at least he might be able to work out his frustration on Jake Timber’s face soon enough.
Aurelia’s team of hackers had found evidence of multiple bookings for the pair of ARKANE agents out of Macau, an obvious attempt to throw him off their trail. But one route had been booked under fake names and Frik had decided that Goa was their most likely destination since it also fit with the history of the Portuguese in this area of the world.
The other options were Jamaica in the Caribbean, which seemed ridiculous as it wasn’t even a former Portuguese territory — and Luanda in Angola, which Frik remembered with some fondness.
His bank account had been nicely padded while working there during the last years of the civil war, which stretched on for 27 years after the country’s independence from Portugal. The lack of oversight from his oil company employers allowed Frik the freedom to experiment with new methods of torture, and the women were desperate enough for his dollars that they endured his particular brand of pleasure.
Luanda was one of the most expensive cities in the world, but there was a stark division between the rich in their luxury gated compounds and the poor in the stinking slums. The place was still chaotic in the wake of the conflict and Frik could see no reason why a relic of the Jews would be kept somewhere so desperate. Goa had to be the place. He jumped in a taxi and headed for Goa Velha, the old city and former capital of Portuguese India.
Frik emerged in front of the extravagant Baroque-style facade of the Basilica of Bom Jesus with its four towering levels in red brick and white marble. Two smaller entrances flanked an enormous door, thronged by the faithful who gathered to see the patron saint of Goa, St Francis Xavier. His mortal remains rested within, apparently still incorrupt after five hundred years, and his tomb seemed like a reasonable place to keep a relic — or the fragment of an ancient map.
Frik steeled himself against the mass of humanity around him as he strode toward the entrance. Indians had no sense of personal space, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from shouting at the bastards to get out of his way. He kept an eye out for the figures of Jake and Morgan, but they were nowhere to be seen. He must have beaten them here.
The spacious interior of the basilica had high ceilings, wide windows and cream walls with an extravagant altar of gold with paintings of angels singing Gloria to God. Frik had to hand it to the Catholics. They really did have some impressive architecture.
Tourists crowded around a side altar where a gigantic Florentine mausoleum stood, covered with ornate carvings of stars and cherubs. The body of St Francis lay inside a casket within. The faithful here honored the saint, but many others considered him responsible for the torture and death of thousands as he had requested the Inquisition come to India in 1545. The records had been conveniently lost over time, but many died here, burned alive in the fires of the auto-da-fé.
Frik had no personal faith in God, but he did have an appreciation for the various branches of the Inquisition. They had perfected the art of torture and the merciless killing of those they considered less than true believers, and they were certainly right to consider women inferior beings. Frik sometimes grated at working for Aurelia, but she had starved herself into looking nothing like a real woman, and she was as ruthless as a man on behalf of her cause. She might even have made a good Inquisitor. Frik smiled at the image of the gaunt heiress with a red-hot poker in her hand, advancing on those she wished to wipe off the face of the Earth — and there were many of those, that was certain.
He also had great respect for the Portuguese explorers who headed out to conquer foreign lands, who had reshaped the world in their own image, transforming the territories they possessed and whose heritage still resounded in the modern world. Frik rejected those bed-wetting commentators who thought that reparations should be paid for past atrocities. Couldn’t they see how much the Europeans had done for these cesspools of humanity?
He finally made it to the front of the pack of believers and stared at the ridiculously ornate casket containing the remains of the saint. Frik realized that there was no way he was getting into that thing without a serious amount of explosive. As much as he enjoyed blowing things up, there was something not quite right about the situation.
As he walked away from the basilica, Frik wondered where the hell the ARKANE agents could be. There were few other places that made sense here in Goa. Perhaps he had made the wrong choice after all?
No matter. Aurelia would find out where they were soon enough, and he would go beat the hell out of the smug bastard who had scarred him. Jake Timber would leave the world looking a lot less pretty than he did now.
As the cargo plane banked over the azure waves of the Caribbean, Morgan considered how small the world felt when you could cross it in a day. The Portuguese explorers on their ships would not have been able to travel both east and west from their home ports as she did so easily. Most of them died far from their homelands in countries they claimed for their king, disregarding the people who already lived in the lands they conquered.
There were so many incredible things about the modern world, so much to discover and experience. Some thought there was little mystery left, that everything could be found through the portal of an internet search, online video and social media, but that was merely a curated and edited version of the real world. To understand a place or a people, you had to walk the streets. If you wanted to know the truth behind the facade, you had to dig much deeper than what could be found through a screen. Morgan was grateful for this because, let’s face it, if Martin and his vast digital power could solve all ARKANE’s problems, then she and Jake would be out of a job. Then what would she do with her life?
The shores of Jamaica came into view, the green mountainous regions of the inner island visible across white sand beaches and the modern city of Kingston. The plane flew in over Port Royal and bumped a little on landing. As the roar of the engines fell silent, Morgan sighed with relief. Cargo planes were the most efficient way of getting from Macau to Jamaica, but they were not designed for a pleasant flight. The luxurious memory of the MGM Cotai had faded with the first few hours of flying, and now she was desperate to get off.
Jake unfolded himself from a padded bench, yawning as he sat up and unstrapped the various loops he’d constructed to keep himself in place during the flight. He moved with some residual discomfort and gently touched his ribs.
“How are you feeling?” Morgan asked.
Jake took a deep breath and then coughed a little as the pain clearly intensified. “Not quite one hundred percent, but getting there. The long sleep helped. Did you get some rest?”
She shrugged. “A little, but I did a lot of reading.”
Jake smiled. “Excellent, but we need coffee before we tackle the library.”
Morgan smiled at the thought. Jamaica was famous for its Blue Mountain blends. “Definitely.”
They emerged from the plane into a different kind of heat than Macau, with a stiff ocean breeze blowing clouds across the sky and refreshing the surrounding air. Airports were similar all over the world, but the faces here were different and the atmosphere was more relaxed. Macau had a frenzied underlying sense of commerce. If you didn’t hustle, you wouldn’t make it to the end of the day. Kingston seemed more about just letting the day happen around you, and as they walked through the terminal, Morgan relaxed a little. This wasn’t such a bad place to investigate where the next piece of the map might be.
They jumped in a taxi and headed around the bay into the city, stopping at a coffee shop near the Kingston library. Morgan sat at a table outside in the early morning sun while Jake ordered the local brew. A little further down the street, a man cooked on half a metal drum while local workers gathered around, enticed by the sweet smell of fried plantain and johnny cakes, little fried dumplings served alongside akee fruit and salt-fish.
Jake emerged from the shop with an easy smile on his face and steaming cups of coffee in his hands. “This is more like home for me, more like Africa. I love it already.”
Morgan took a sip of the black coffee and allowed her body to loosen up in the sun. The city was not quite as she had expected. There were modern office buildings next to tin shacks, tiny stores selling different goods with makeshift tarpaulins as shade, a juxtaposition of wealth and poverty. The culture was a world away from Macau, but the disparity between rich and poor was just as evident.
“There doesn’t seem to be much here of the Portuguese?” Jake noted as he stretched out his legs.
“That’s because the Spanish were here, not the Portuguese,” Morgan said, recalling the information Martin had sent. “They arrived in 1494 when Christopher Columbus claimed this area, and most of the indigenous people died of diseases brought by the sailors. The Spanish brought many thousands of African slaves to the island to work the fields, and the population grew. The British conquered it in 1655 and expanded the sugar plantations. After slaves were emancipated in 1838, many of the freedmen continued to work on subsistence farms. Jamaica became independent from the United Kingdom in 1962 but is still part of the Commonwealth.”
Jake looked confused. “So why are we here then?”
Morgan gave a broad smile. “Jewish pirates of the Caribbean.”