Free Pirate King by Laurie R. King

translator, to hire us some pirates.
    Our translator is a singular gent by the name of Pessoa, neat of dress and polished of shoes. He carries about him an air of distraction, as if his mind is on Greater Things than translating for a moving picture crew. (He is a poet, which you might have guessed.) Still, he appears to know his business and seems intelligent enough to be of assistance, with the occasional faint betrayal of a sense of humour. He seemed much taken with Fflytte’s peculiar vision of what Pirate King is to be, although whether that is the humour speaking or the intelligence, I have yet to discover.
    Perhaps I shall soon know. The day draws to an end, a cup of some liquid purported to be tea has been drunk, but as yet, piratic actors have we none. In a quarter of an hour, Senhor Pessoa will return to guide us to an alternative source for these creatures (no doubt a drinking establishment of the lower sort) where a friend of his may be found. Pray with me that the would-be pirate is not also a poet.
    Still, if the den in which the fellow hides out sells local wine, it shouldn’t be too bad.
        In haste,
R.
    Postscript: It may not have escaped your notice that this missive contains a dearth of data concerning the true reason for my presence, namely, a missing secretary and the illicit selling of cocaine and firearms. Perhaps that is due to the circumstances of my employment, which is rather that of a person attempting delicate surgery whilst standing in a hurricane.
    I shall persist.
  –R

CHAPTER NINE

PIRATE KING: And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
    P ESSOA STOOD IN the hotel lobby, hat on head and cigarette in hand—a commercial cigarette, this time, not hand-rolled. He was gazing out the window at a group of unloading passengers, his thoughts far away. Perhaps he was composing an ode to the taxi. The poet-translator was a thin figure in an elderly black overcoat, about five foot eight and in his middle thirties. One could see a slight fray to the collar beneath his hairline.
    He started when I said his name, causing a length of ash to drop at his feet, and hastened to press the stub out in a receptacle. He took off his hat, revealing black hair, lightly oiled and neatly divided down the centre.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
    “Life is a surprise, is it not?” he said. His accent was neither British nor purely Portuguese, but shaped by the British school that his curriculum vitae said he had attended during his formative years in South Africa. His owl-like spectacles could not hide the attentive gaze or the gleam of humour, no more than the brief triangle of moustache could hide the slightly drawn-in purse of his lips. Everything about him was watchful rather than outgoing, although the previous day’s pristine but slightly out-of-date neck-tie had been replaced by a tidy if well-worn bow tie, suggesting a minute relaxation of standards. His overcoat, hat, suit, and shoes were those he had worn the previous day, brushed and polished.
    This was a man with pride, if little money.
    “If we’re fortunate, life will not inflict on us too many more surprises,” I replied. “You haven’t seen either of the others?”
    “Not yet. I have only been here a few minutes.”
    Long enough to burn down one cigarette. “Well, we could be waiting some time. Shall we sit down and have a drink?”
    Pessoa seemed to know the hotel as well as he knew the rest of the city, and led me to a small table with a view of the lobby. He waited until I was seated before he placed his hat on a chair and prepared to sit, then paused to remove a folded magazine from his overcoat pocket. This he put with rather elaborate casualness on the table before gathering his overcoat tails and lowering himself to the chair.
    The gesture was too off-hand to be anything but self-deprecation, like a man accidentally letting drop the photograph of a first-born son. I