Chapter 9

By the time Jeremy awoke, the sun was already in the western sky. His view from the bedroom window faced south. Looking out of his window, he could see the groves that stretched from one end to the other. To the east was lemon trees which had already been picked but had enough fruit left for him to identify. The olives trees on his right were thick with fruit, which swayed softly in the wind. To the far right, Jeremy could see harvesting bins for the olives. A sense of nostalgia for his time as a farm worker flashed for an instant, though it was weak.

He remembered looking out of the window in that little town in South America, when Jeremy remembered his name. Looking through another window to the world with his brains put back together gave him a new perspective on life. He had a glimpse of what it meant to be genuinely humble rather than faking it as he had for some years.

"I had it all and I lost it. Now that I have it all again, what shall I do?'' Jeremy muttered aloud. He had no answer.

He tied his shoes and stepped into the hall. The hallway walls were old style plaster. He walked to the main room of the house wondering what he was going to find. The woman from the Outfit was sitting in a chair reading a newspaper and looking bored. He couldn't remember her name but he noticed that she had changed out of her black dress into pants and a blouse.

He stared. Taking a guess, he estimated that she was five years older than him, making her around forty. Jeremy cursed and recalculated because he was two years older. She was only a few years past him. The black hole of two years lost bothered him more than momentarily forgetting of her name.

"Damn," he muttered, causing the woman to look up from her reading.

"Ah, it is good to see you up, Mr. Hamilton," she said. "Would you like something to eat?"

"Call me Jeremy," he said. "Give me something to hold me over until dinner. Iberians eat late in the evening, right?"

"There is a farmhouse cheese in the chilling unit and some fresh bread on the counter, I'll get you some," she said, putting down her paper.

"Don't bother," he said, changing his mind. "I don't need a personal servant any more; I do need an assistant and a bodyguard. Although I admit relying on others for all of my mundane chores a few days, er, years ago, I'm perfectly capable today."

Jeremy started slicing bread. "Emma."

"Yes?"

"Your name is Emma. It took a few minutes for me to remember. What's for dinner?"

"I'm afraid it's goat. Mrs. Trujillo brought in a large hunk of meat this morning, bloody and dripping. I'm not sure when she will be back to start dinner because there was an accident in the second barn and she rushed out a little while ago." Emma made a slight face with her tongue out to show her disgust for the dinner choice.

"Coward," Jeremy said as he placed chunks of cheese on his bread. "Goat isn't gourmet but it tastes just fine if cooked slowly. I'll start a stew in a minute."

When Emma started protesting, he made it clear that he had been cooking on a ship for the past five weeks and it wasn't reclamation science.

Jeremy busied himself washing, cutting and slicing meat and vegetables. Emma got up to watch him sauté floured chunks of meat in the bottom of the pot. He added the vegetables and broth he had identified in the chilling unit.

The pot was simmering nicely when a woman in her fifties stormed through the door. Jeremy noticed that Emma's right hand went to her pocket.

"I have no idea who has it out for us, but every year we hire idiots who don't know their left hand from their right hand. Serves them right that they should lose one of them." She was fuming.

Emma coughed.

"Mrs. Trujillo, this is..."

Jeremy walked up to her and thrust out his hand.

"Enrique De Luca. It is a pleasure to meet you and thank you for the hospitality."

She took his hand warily.

"Welcome Mr. De Luca, the pleasure is mine." She took a sniff. "Who started cooking dinner?"

"I took the liberty of starting a goat stew. It still needs seasoning and I'm pretty sure the stew needs to simmer for a few hours."

Mrs. Trujillo lifted the lid and took a sniff. "Did you add wine?"

"I didn't know if you wanted an African flavor with clove and cinnamon or an Iberian flavor with wine and rosemary."

"Ah, a man who can cook," Mrs. Trujillo said. "Maybe I should replace that tired sack of potatoes in the barn with this man. Are you good in bed, too?"

Jeremy opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again.

"Anything I say will get me in trouble."

"He is smart too," Mrs. Trujillo said to Emma. "Now out of my kitchen and leave me to my work."

Emma motioned to Jeremy to follow her and together they stepped out onto the veranda. The groves in front were heavy with an orange colored citrus that was too small to be oranges. The fruit puzzled him. Emma told him they were kumquat trees.

She led him over to the closest one and pulled a couple of the small oblong fruit down. She popped one in her mouth, peel and all. Jeremy imitated her and chomped into the fruit. The peel was slightly bitter, but the fruit was sweet; taken together the kumquat was tasty.

Noticing that they were completely out of earshot of anyone else, he asked, "What is the plan?"

"We go to ground for a week or two, using the time to identify who is trying to track you down. After that, you and the circumstances will dictate the next step," Emma said as she chewed another piece of fruit.

Jeremy was not impressed.

"The 'who' is obvious: Leandra, my wife. She still wants the billions that I hid from her."

"She is your ex-wife and a widow because you no longer exist. Her last attempt to get the money was an immediate demand for a divorce after your conviction and before your sentencing. She angled for the alimony and child support because of the lack of a pre-nuptial agreement. Alimony demands a financial search for all assets. She got the search but not the divorce in time for your mindwipe."

"Why didn't she wait for a probate of the will?" Jeremy asked. "Oh, never mind. I remember writing her out of most the will and placing penalties for challenging the terms. Even if she claimed 'dead man's hand' on the will and got the terms overturned, the cost of doing so would have been excruciatingly expensive. Smart girl."

"You applaud her last effort to get your assets?" Emma said. Jeremy gave an evil little laugh.

"She is a clever little woman, but there was no money to be found. I was the genius even if was usually only in chemistry."

"Correct," Emma said. "The money was gone and the account ledgers said that you were leveraged up to your eyeballs. The genius statement I'll reserve for later judgment."

"She got her twenty million credits. Why is she still dogging me?" Jeremy asked.

"She wasn't fooled and neither were a number of insiders who knew you. They don't know how you made several billion credits disappear, but they know you did it. Leandra hired a firm to track down the money and you, if necessary, to see if there was scrap of information left in your brain. She must have hired them on contingency because she didn't have the cash to pay in advance."

Jeremy spit out a particularly bitter piece of fruit. "The next questions are which firm and how far have they gotten? Who has the wherewithal to penetrate the Bureau of Prisons and use them to track me?"