Someone had put a tail on me, making me extremely nervous. I had that feeling for the past few minutes, and it wouldn’t go away. I’m rarely wrong about these things, and this time, it was unusually intensive.

On my way back to the motel in Fagatele, I drove to Pago Pago first and stopped at the Korean restaurant near my former hotel to grab a bite. I knew it was a stupid idea, but in Fagatele, I couldn’t find anything decent to eat because the place wasn’t exactly a tourist destination, and as a result, it was full of rat meat sandwiches. I had just bought some sushi to go and sat in my car when I got the feeling.

Interestingly enough, I couldn’t detect anything unusual around me. It was nine in the evening, and the streets were almost empty because people here didn’t like rainy weather. However, when I started the engine and drove to the next intersection, the reason for my anxiety became apparent right away. Before I knew it, two cars rushed past me and blocked my way—one in front and the other behind. Four strapping white fellows jumped out of the vehicles right after that and surrounded me.

I looked out the window, surprised and desperate at the same time. No one in Tutuila cared about calling the police in such situations, and on top of that, I had no gun. I could lock the doors, of course, but it wouldn’t help me much because, unlike me, the men outside were carrying their pieces with them. After quickly calculating my chances, I realized I was helpless and doomed. I sighed heavily and waited for the thugs to open the door, reach inside, and pull me out of the car. When it happened, two of the guys secured a grip on me, and the only resistance I could put up was resting myself in their hands and making them sweat as they dragged me down the street.

It turned out we weren’t going for a very long walk. After about fifteen meters, we swerved toward the shore and sank into a bistro near the beach. Its windows were blinded with shutters, and the fact disturbed me a lot because it promised nothing but trouble. As soon as we stepped inside, the men let go of me, quickly searching for weapons and pushing me toward the far end of the main hall. A guy sat there at one of the tables with his back turned to me. He was having dinner.

I slowly kept walking, escorted by two of the thugs. When we reached the fellow, he raised his head and waved his hand toward a vacant chair opposite him. It was Ernesto Chavez in all his glory—lavishly decorated with scars and golden jewelry around his neck, fingers, and wrists. When I saw him, the situation suddenly seemed to me not only unpromising but tragic.

I nervously sat in the chair and put my hands on the table. The boss of Greenspace said nothing at first and just kept eating his dinner—some chicken legs. His hands and mouth were greasy, and his long, curly hair was loose on his shoulders. His shirt was unbuttoned to his chest as usual, and in comparison, my shirt, which I had considered extravagant up to this moment, now looked like a monk’s robe. It had just one zombie who carried his own head, while Chavez’s had an abundance of naked chicks, sports cars, flowers, and guns, all stamped against a background of fireworks and flames. The only thing missing in the composition was a Jacuzzi full of champagne where the chicks could splash around.

The man slowly finished the leg he had started and wiped his hands on a cloth napkin. Then he wiped his mouth, too, and finally turned his eyes toward me. They were hazelnut brown with some green at the edges, and they looked surprisingly warm, given the grimness of his marked face. He seemed calm.

“Mellrow, right?” He opened his mouth after a few moments, and when I heard his voice, I just wanted to kill myself because the contrast with his eyes was really startling. The guy sounded as if someone had tried to slit his throat—obviously, unsuccessfully. “We meet at last!”

“At last?” I asked, seemingly nonchalant and careful to appear calm, too. “I didn’t know you wanted to see me. I’m not in the habit of running away from people.”

“You’re not?” He ridiculed me. “I saw you running at the Red Dragon. You were running like hell!”

“Yeah, but that’s a shameful part of my life, which I don’t like to remember. Why am I here?”

Chavez glanced absentmindedly behind his back and snapped his fingers without answering. The sharp sound echoed sinisterly in the quiet hall, and all my coolness evaporated immediately. In a few seconds, a tall Latino waiter came running to our table with an empty expression pasted on his face. He had a white tablecloth sprawled over his right hand and forearm, and I expected him to shoot me with the gun he probably had underneath.

“You hungry?” the boss of Greenspace surprisingly asked me, making a frugal gesture toward the bottle of wine near his left hand. It was almost empty, and the waiter briefly nodded. “They have excellent oysters here, freshly harvested this morning. The chicken’s delicious, too.”

“No, thank you very much!” I was quick to reject his offer because I suspected I was going to die soon and didn’t want to experience that on a full stomach. “It’s very kind of you, but I had too much sushi only ten minutes ago, and I feel a bit sick right now.”

The waiter quickly walked back to the bar, and Ernesto slowly started chomping on another chicken leg while throwing meaningful looks at me every now and then.

After a while, he got back to the point. “You’re here to tell me a few things that I want to know,” he said. His serene tone clashed with his hoarse voice and the threatening meaning of his words, making me shiver. “I believe you’ll be happy to do so because people rarely deny me things.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they rarely do,” I mumbled, already feeling increasingly anxious since I couldn’t grasp his intentions. The guy was so weird! “What specifically do you want to know?”

“For starters, you can tell me who hired you to poke your nose into my business and why. You see, too many people are trying to do this lately, making me uneasy, to say the least.” He slowly shook his head to demonstrate his disapproval. “How would you react if you were in my shoes, huh? What would you do if you arrived back home, for example, and found a bunch of guys sitting in your living room, watching your TV, and eating your food?”

“I guess I’ll shoot them in the face right away,” I quickly said without considering it much. It was incredibly foolish, and I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t follow my advice.

Chavez sharply turned his eyes to look at me, surprised by my answer. If he knew my weird thinking patterns when I was nervous, he wouldn’t have been, but he didn’t. I waited tensely, expecting something terrible to happen to me any minute, but the guy unexpectedly smiled. It was strange because he actually had a very charming smile.

“Well, in that case, you’ll probably know exactly how I feel in this annoying situation,” he explained. “So, go ahead! Tell me everything. Tell me what you’re doing here.”

“You know,” I began cautiously, “I wanna tell you, but I’m terribly afraid at the same time. My story is so ridiculous that I’m worried you might want to kill me simply because you think I’m giving you bullshit.”

He stopped gnawing at the chicken leg and stared at me again, but without putting down the piece of meat. He didn’t make any gestures to encourage me to talk or threaten me; he just studied me for a while. Then he resumed eating. All the time, I desperately tried to hide my fear because I knew people like him became mean when they sensed it. They saw it in the eyes of others too often, and the feeling of power intoxicated them.

“I was hired by two beautiful chicks independently.” I went on after I saw he wouldn’t speak. “It was a very unusual thing. One of them assured me you were smuggling rhino horns into Chinasia, and the other claimed it was South African swallows. They both asked me to take pictures of you and the Chins at that restaurant in Nuuk. I didn’t know what to think about them at first, but later, I realized they wanted to mix you up with the Chinese in some nasty way.”

Chavez paused his eating for the third time. At this moment, the waiter appeared to refresh his glass of wine, leaving the bottle beside a bowl of lemon water. Then he disappeared. The boss of Greenspace took a large sip of his drink.

“Who are they?” He wiped his mouth with the napkin.

“Bobby Bjornson is the one, but the woman’s dead now. As for the other, your guess is as good as mine. She told me she was Sharon Vorderbruggen, but god only knows who she really is. She has a handful of names—all fake, I guess.”

“Any relation to DuPont, any of them?”

I smiled nervously. “That’s the weirdest part! Bjornson used to be his mistress, and the other might be something like his wife. Nobody actually knows for sure because it appears to be a top secret.”

The guy wrinkled his forehead and pursed his lips in surprise, thoughtful. The marks on his face stretched across it in different directions, like an elaborate tattoo.

“Well, that’s exactly what I thought,” he said after a moment. “I suppose they wouldn’t have had the guts to mess with me if they didn’t think they had protection! Which one sent you down here?”

“None of them.” I awkwardly gesticulated with my right hand because I realized I had started tapping my fingers on the table, and I was afraid he would see it. “But I don’t think you get the situation right! It wasn’t my intention to poke my nose into your business. It’s just that after the events at the Red Dragon, my cases fell apart, and I dropped them, but unfortunately, the Chinese didn’t think so. They turned my life into hell, and I had to come here eventually. It was my only chance of survival and also my only chance to stop the jerks.”

“You know what? You’re absolutely right. I do not get it!” Chavez suddenly fixed his eyes on me, and this time, they didn’t seem warm. They looked cold and evil. “Do you know why? It’s because I think you try to fool me! You came to Tutuila to stop the jerks, but somehow, you ended up on the island of Ofu while doing it. Would you care to explain how exactly you planned to achieve that?”

I hardly restrained myself from swallowing loudly when he said that because I had hoped he didn’t know about my little trip. My eyes secretly drifted across the hall to look at the entrance, and three of his thugs were there, blocking it. It was the only way out.

“No, I’m not trying to fool you!” I forced myself to squeeze an awkward smile out of me. “You see, your business here doesn’t concern me. As far as I know, it’s perfectly legal, but even if it weren’t, I still wouldn’t care. The thing is, I was following Sharon’s boyfriend and trying to know what he was up to.”

“Oh, there is a boyfriend now?” The boss of Greenspace pulled a wry face, ridiculing me.

“Of course, there’s a boyfriend! He’s been in this since the beginning. Remember the shooting at the Dragon’s windows?”

“What about it?” the guy asked, suddenly frowning. The scars on his face wrinkled again, which made me think I was probably going too far.

“Well, he did it!”

“No shit! And why would he do such an unbelievably stupid thing?”

“I can hardly tell you that,” I said, making a serious effort to stay calm. “He’s a hopeless prick. A nutcase! Perhaps he thought attracting your attention to me was a good thing because I was supposed to serve as a patsy after he killed Menelaus a few days later.”

Chavez gazed searchingly into my eyes for a while, thinking, and then he slowly started the last chicken leg. After the first bite, he unexpectedly tossed his head toward the bottle of wine.

“You care for some?” he asked.

“No, but I’d love a glass of whiskey if you don’t mind.” I swallowed dryly. I really needed a strong drink at that moment.

The man waved his hand and sharply snapped his fingers at the waiter. The latter came immediately. I ordered my whiskey, and then he vanished. After less than a minute, the glass was already on the table before me. Chavez slightly raised his glass for cheers, and he drank. I took mine too and gulped half of its contents at once, but to my disappointment, it was awful. It tasted like the piss of a camel who had died of alcohol intoxication two days ago.

“So, you’re convinced these guys killed DuPont, then?” Greenspace’s boss asked me after patiently waiting for me to finish with all the faces of disgust I couldn’t avoid pulling when I swallowed.

“I am. But it’s not that easy to grasp their complicated plan,” I coughed. “At first, I thought they were running some scheme to seize his company, but then I realized it was impossible. Powerful men like Menelaus have armies of lawyers who coin unbreakable prenups for them, and besides, the circumstances behind the marriage are somewhat controversial. The entire thing may not have legal ground, actually.”

“And now? What do you think of it now?” Chavez looked at me from behind the chicken leg after I stopped talking.

I pretended to drink again because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to tell him. I didn’t have many options. Since Bobby was dead now, and the guy obviously knew I had been on his island, there was no need to beat around the bush anymore. I was probably going to die here anyway, so maybe the wisest thing in this situation was to come clean. There was a minor chance he would consider me harmless in this case.

“I suppose you know Menelaus’ idea was driving you out of business, right?” I cautiously went on afterward. “I believe his murderers have adopted it, and they’re trying to take his place. In a way, it’d be them who would be driving you out of business now!”

“I assume you also visited Olosega when you went to Ofu, didn’t you?” Chavez asked me cunningly. “What do you think about DuPont’s project? What was he trying to achieve?”

“Well, magnetic tubes can serve no other purpose except being part of docking stations,” I shrugged. “I can’t imagine, though, how the man planned to finish his project. I hear these things are nothing less than financial tar pits, even for a mighty corporation like his.”

“Yeah, I’ve actually wondered exactly the same thing. But if you want to seize an entire niche of the international trade market, you must think big, right?” The boss of Greenspace dipped his fingers in the bowl of lemon water. “And what I hear is that he developed close relations with the aliens to that effect. Such a thing would surely help his cause!”

“It surely would,” I agreed. But now he’s gone, and everything would be in vain. I guess the silver lining is that people of the South Pacific may sigh with relief because they would have starved to death if he had succeeded. Economies here would have collapsed!”

Chavez suddenly looked at me somewhat sharply as if he felt personally offended. I looked at him, too, but I didn’t know what I had done wrong. I knew these were dangerous waters, but since I had started to feel comfortable during the past few minutes—probably because of the whiskey—I cracked that stupid joke, and now I was sorry. It made me put the glass on the table and push it as far from me as possible.

“Well, I mean, all these local people going nuts about manufacturing ammonia is a very weird thing.” I continued hesitantly after my phrase hung awkwardly between us without his comment. “They just can’t produce the stuff, right?”

The guy didn’t reply and calmly finished his last chicken leg, after which he slowly pushed his plate aside. Then he sluggishly wiped his hands on the napkin and took a long sip from his glass. Finally, he brought his eyes back to me. For a moment, I thought he would snap his fingers at his thugs to get him a machete, and he would cut off my fucking tongue for talking too much.

“You know, I was raised in extreme poverty in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.” He started telling me a very obscure story after that. “We were four brothers and two sisters, living in something that you, northern people, would consider a slum. So I have known poverty very intimately, I’m saying. These people here, however, are beyond every possible idea of poverty that you and I may have. They would consider even my old life back in Buenos Aires to be luxurious because, due to globalization, they practically live on leftovers now. But they didn’t want to be part of this globalization! They were happy with their lives before it happened! So, someone has to give them something in return for their suffering. Don’t you think so?”

I blinked, surprised, because I didn’t expect to hear anything like that. I wasn’t prepared for the fairytale about the knight who fought to eradicate poverty, or I wasn’t prepared to hear it from his mouth, at least. As far as I was concerned, he was a former environmental guerrilla who converted to making money out of his ideals.

“I guess you’re right, but after all, it’s bad for business,” I said cautiously because I needed to maintain my position as equal despite my fear. It was crucial to stay cool-headed and calm. “And what’s bad for business is always bad for the businessmen. Certainly, there are many people around who don’t like what you’re doing!”

I didn’t actually have a clear idea of what I was trying to achieve. As a whole, I was improvising quite recklessly, which was probably why I grabbed my glass again and gulped down the rest of my disgusting drink at once. I hoped it would make my suicide easier to take on. Weirdly enough, Chavez didn’t react as I expected him. Generally, he seemed like a pretty reasonable guy, and in any other situation, I might have even liked him.

“Perhaps you are right to think so,” he admitted, “but only to a point. It may look like that to outsiders—like you—but these islands here are my headquarters. In a way, they are my kingdom, and I’m the king! And being a king, I have to keep my subjects happy. Right? Almost all of them have no other way to make a living, and I just can’t ignore it because they are too many, and this is their country.”

He suddenly stopped talking and looked at me tensely. I looked at him, too.

“So sometimes, during holidays,” he went on after a while, “I turn a blind eye to the fact that I’m actually encouraging them to keep coming, and I buy some of their shit. It’s worthless, of course, but that’s the price you pay to keep your business going. That’s the fucking rule: You always have to keep your subjects happy! And besides, it doesn’t cost me anything at all.”

He stopped again, and this time, he didn’t talk for almost a minute. The silence was welcome because I had absolutely no idea what to say. Despite his tacky redneck style, the boss of Greenspace was obviously much, much cleverer than most of the contemporary politicians were—or at least, most of our politicians in Greenland. Behind the idealistic plea for helping poor people, I recognized the real reason for the entire shitshow here: He just needed a physical place for his trade hub because his organization was shady, and he couldn’t have stability anywhere else in the world. Through his money and influence over local men, he was really their king, and no government of SPC could ever touch him as long as his “subjects” were happy. He was a very clever guy!

“So let’s get back to the point,” Chavez continued after the short pause. “You said these weird people were trying to drive me out of business. They visited my island hoping to achieve what exactly?”

“I couldn’t possibly know that,” I shrugged. “Maybe you should ask Sharon’s boyfriend next time when he brings his containers to Ofu!”

Chavez raised his eyebrows, surprised.

“He really did that?” He asked in disbelief. “He wanted to make some small money in my hub? Isn’t that too cheap for a man who intended to acquire a whole business empire?”

“Actually, he’s even cheaper than that,” I smiled, wondering whether to tell him about the fraud. I didn’t see why not. Unlike Sharon and Marty, the guy had done nothing to ruin my life, and this entire thing was kind of putting him and me in the same boat. His face darkened as soon as he heard my little story.

“Well, this is really upsetting now!” he mumbled gloomily but still calmly. Listening to him talk, I had this feeling he could never lose his temper. Everything he said was so calculated and balanced, which was weird for a man in his position. “It’s always disappointing to hear that someone is trying to make a fool of you. How many containers are we talking about?” he continued asking.

“There were five, approximately ten tons each.”

“Five? Five’s not many.” He pursed his lips, but it was a pose. He clearly wasn’t quite ready to swallow the insult. “I can live with it, although I’m not sure I can live with the humiliation.”

I also pursed my lips because I couldn’t disagree. Besides, I didn’t give a shit what the guy might do to my dearest Greenland “friends.”

“Well, you should probably be cautious if you decide to go for revenge,” I warned him because he seemed my natural ally now. “This chick—Sharon—she’s pretty close to Chandrakant Sengupta lately. I don’t know what you think of the Indian, but he obviously doesn’t think much of you, and besides, he’s beloved by the moon!”

Chavez’s face darkened again. Unlike before, now that I mentioned Sharon’s new boyfriend, it changed rather dramatically, and for a moment, I feared he might flip out. In this situation, I could only hope he believed that the enemies of his enemies were his friends.

“And how close is she to him?” He asked me, his voice still very low.

“Intimately close. They kissed!”

“They kissed, huh?”

“I think she’s seducing the guy to help her get you out of the picture. Alone, she has no chances or resources to do it.”

The boos of Greenspace didn’t reply. He was just thinking. His eyes kept looking at me, but it wasn’t me who he had on his mind. I could feel his hatred penetrating my body like rays of light, going through it, through all the walls here, through the entire city—all the way to Sengupta’s heart. I was afraid I was the link between them now.

“You know what?” I cautiously played my trump card because I realized it was my last chance to save my skin. “I don’t know about the chick, but I can deliver the jerk to you.”

He slowly focused his eyes back on my face.

“He’s always after me; it’s kind of personal now,” I explained. “It will probably take a day or two, but he will bite!”

“And what possible benefit can I have from getting him?” the man quietly asked. “Except for the pleasure of killing him, of course!”

“I don’t know. He may prove to be useful. Now that Sharon has ditched him, he might be willing to cooperate. Besides, you’ll know what exactly she and Sengupta are up to.”

Chavez didn’t react, still pondering it strenuously.

“Does this whore really have a chance to succeed Menelaus?” he asked after a few moments.

I slowly shook my head. “I really doubt it. Things are getting pretty hot in Greenland, so she might easily end up in jail if she decides to go for it. From what I see here, though, she doesn’t need to do that anymore. She’s got a real chance of becoming the Queen of Tutuila now!”

“Oh, don’t say that!” the boss of Greenspace frowned. Such a thing would be highly annoying, to say the least. I wouldn’t go to war about it because it’d be bad for my business, but even so, it’d be annoying!”

“Well, I guess she won’t last for too long.” I shrugged. “Sengupta will be tired of her in a few months, and then she’ll be all yours. Until then, you can use the jerk to keep her under control, and as for the iodine, you can just resell it. So, no big deal, right?”

Chavez looked at me sharply.

“What did you just say?”

“You can use the jerk to control her,” I hesitantly started. “He knows her well, and—”

“About the iodine!” the boss of Greenspace interrupted me. It was only then that I noticed he had his fists clenched and his eyes sparkling. He had transformed literally in just an instant, and it confused me because it was so sudden. “Where did the iodine come from?”

“But I told you he delivered it to your hub, didn’t I? A few containers of it.”

“You told me he delivered a few containers with fake stuff!” he hissed. I could barely hear his voice now. “Iodine is not the thing I want near my hub. Iodine reacts with ammonia!”

“What?” I tensely leaned forward. I heard him very well but wasn’t sure I was getting him.

“Haven’t you made fireworks when you were a kid? It’s an explosive! Ammonia and iodine go boom!” The guy shouted loudly.

I was still looking at him, dumbfounded, without being able to speak.

“Are you positive that the containers were full of iodine?” Chavez asked me the next second, lowering his voice to a whisper again.

At first, I didn’t react and was even afraid to move, but then I reached into my pocket and extracted the mineral from Sengupta’s yacht.

“You tell me! Is this iodine?”

The boss of Greenspace looked at my palm, frozen like a statue, and his eyes grew darker and darker. He slowly reached for his cell phone on the table, but it rang loudly just before his fingers touched it. The sound reverberated ominously throughout the empty hall, and his hand stopped there momentarily. Then he sharply took the device to pick up.

I looked around nervously because I realized I had played my cards very, very poorly. I was trapped here with no way out, and instead of giving the guy a reason to keep me alive, I involuntarily told him what Sengupta and Sharon were up to. I was in no position to deliver anything more to him, and my life was worthless now.

Chavez listened very tensely to someone on the line for a whole minute and didn’t say a single word. His fingers were white from squeezing the handset, and the fingers of his other hand were tapping on the table, but without actually touching the tabletop—he was that nervous! After the phone call ended, he made a short gesture behind his back without looking at me anymore. Two of his thugs immediately came running to us; they grabbed me and violently dragged me across the hall. I didn’t even try to resist. In a few seconds, they roughly pushed me outside onto the street and slammed the door behind my back.

I looked around, surprised. It all happened so unexpectedly fast that I didn’t even have time to fear for my life. Then, I instinctively turned around to look at the ocean. It was already dark, and the sky was cloudy. I couldn’t see the moon or any stars on the horizon, but a pale pink spot was slightly pulsing in the impenetrable darkness where the horizon usually would be. It seemed like a beautiful, silent firework at first. Then, it suddenly grew bigger and bigger, and a moment later, the thunder hit the shore.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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(www.stfargo.com)