Free Adios Muchachos by Daniel Chavarría Page B

Victor confirmed, standing tall and staring arrogantly at van Dongen. “I suppose you’re horrified.”
    Van Dongen, looking at Victor, still smiling and nodding his head enigmatically, did not react for several moments.
    “No, I’m not horrified. I was a bit of a cut-up when I was young, and I still think there’s more honor in a bank robber than in a bank president.”
    This second shock was too much for Victor. He stopped cold in his tracks. The normally glib Mr. King could not find anything to say. Arrogance in the face of certain destruction was fairly easy, but this ray of hope completely undermined his bravado. All he managed to do was scratch his head and smile, although he would have been hard-pressed to explain what the hell he had to smile about.
    Jan took a couple of steps and turned to look Victor in the face. Victor studied him from head to toe, his eyes wide open; he twisted his face into an expression intended to convey incredulity but only managed to reveal his fear and doubt. Van Dongen remained quiet, looking Victor serenely in the eyes. It was his game and he had no need to hurry.
    Victor finally thought of something halfway coherent to say: “How is one to reconcile this confessed dislike for bankers with your relations with a super millionaire like Rieks?”
    “Rieks saved me from madness and dishonor and I’m grateful to him. But that’s not what I came here to talk to you about, Victor.”
    Reeling from the third shock in five minutes, Victor tried to say something, but it stuck in his throat. Finally, he shrugged and asked the question that was burning his chest: “I suppose that by this time the whole company knows everything about me.”
    Jan took a few more steps and stood immobile, pensive a few seconds. Then he headed for one of the benches by the driveway, wiped off the leaves and twigs with his hand, and sat down. Victor stood upright before him, swallowed the rest of his tonic, and dropped the can behind some bushes.
    “No one in Cuba knows anything about this, Victor. For the time being, not even INTERPOL knows that Henry Moore and Victor King are one and the same man. You and I are the only people in the world who know that.”
    “Not Rieks?”
    “Not Rieks!”
    Victor spread his arms in total surrender: “What do you want from me, Jan?”
    Van Dongen lowered his head as if the answer were lost somewhere among the dead leaves and gravel of the country road. Then he smiled and looked up into Victor’s eyes. “The main thing I want is for you to understand my position as right-hand man for Rieks, to whom I owe everything. Because, first of all, your past and your aliases don’t scare me at all. It’s obvious that the bank jobs were just a means to raise money to finance your underwater treasure quest. I can even admire a man with a passion, and finding sunken galleons is one hell of a passion, enough to drive a man a little crazy.”
    Jan paused to take his cigarettes from his bag, then offered one to Victor. He lit both, noticing the intense trembling of Victor’s hands. “Besides, I’ve studied your project inside out, and not only does it appear to be feasible, I’m convinced that it’s going to be a poetic adventure, a hell of a lot of fun and very, very profitable for all concerned. This is something I would gladly devote my life to. I would be a happy man if I could just quit my present job and sign on as your assistant.”
    Victor smiled, flattered, blushing. “What better assistant could I ask for?”
    “I think that with the solid research we’ve had done on all this area—with the immense investment we’ve made in equipment and with the thousands of divers whose explorations you’re going to program using that equipment—there’s one hell of a good chance that we will come up with a couple of loaded galleons in no more than a couple of years. Your project stands to make hundreds of millions for the company, but it’s you who have to do it, you who will