Kindle Edition
Amazon
RonaldYatesBooks, Ltd
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Mill City Press
ISBN-10: 1545632812
Type: Fiction
Pages: 399
Copyright: June 6, 2018
ISBN-13: 9781545632819
Price: $5.99 (eBook)
As Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins, it is 1914 and Billy is living peacefully in Chicago with his wife, Katharina. That tranquility is disrupted by a telephone call from a powerful old friend that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of havoc and peril in Mexico during the height of its violent 1910-1920 revolution.
Where in the world is Billy Battles?
As Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins we know where Billy is. He is in Chicago with his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber living a sedate and comfortable life after years of adventure and tragedy. That changes with a single telephone call that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of turmoil and peril.
Persuaded by a powerful old friend to go undercover for the U.S. government the two find themselves in Mexico during the height of the violent 1910-1920 revolution. There they encounter assorted German spies, Mexican revolutionaries, devious political operatives, and other malefactors. Caught in the middle of the 1914 American invasion of Veracruz, they must find a way out while keeping their real identities secret.
After managing to extract themselves from danger, disaster strikes. It is a tragedy Billy is all too familiar with and one that will send him plummeting into a painful abyss of despair and agony. Consequently, Billy vanishes leaving family and friends to wonder what happened to him. Where is he? Is he dead or alive? What provoked his disappearance? In Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy, those questions are answered, and the mystery behind Billy’s disappearance is finally revealed.
Excerpt
Chapter 3
We steamed into the port of La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on a late Wednesday evening and tied up alongside Pier Four.
A light fog was rolling in from the east, and as we came ashore, a few dull streetlamps flickered, casting pale patches of reddish-brown light on the wharf. To the west, the city’s streets and buildings were shrouded in a pale, ghostly mist.
“Not a very cheerful place,” Katharina said as we walked past the Paseo del Malecón and up Calle Benito Juarez toward the Plaza de Armas in the heart of town.
“What can you expect from the oldest city on the North American continent?” I said. “After all, the place was founded by Hernán Cortés himself and is almost four hundred years old. We’re lucky to have paved streets.”
“I guess I would have expected Mexico’s oldest and largest port to be a bit more inviting.” She put her arm through mine and shuddered. “I have a bad feeling about this place.”
I pulled her closer. “Sort of like whistlin’ past the graveyard, isn’t it?”
The fog thinned as we moved away from the harbor, but walking past the mixture of ancient Caribbean creole buildings felt like we were entering a different time.
Then, from behind us I heard the sound of hoofbeats and metal-rimmed wheels on rough cobblestone.
“Ya’ll okay?” It was Seaman Vane. He and Seaman Flores had caught up to us in a hired horse-drawn cart that contained our luggage. “You want a ride?”
“No, we’ll walk. It’s only a couple more blocks to the hotel.”
We passed campesinos leading burros laden with sacks and baskets and women with baskets of produce balanced on their heads.
They greeted us as we passed. “Buenas tardes.”
I replied in kind.
“Well, at least the people are friendly, even if the city seems gloomy,” I said.
We continued up Benito Jaurez for the next few minutes, past shops that had closed for the day, until we came to the plaza which was bathed in lights. The place was awash with music. Hundreds of people were eating their dinners from ubiquitous street stalls.
“At last . . . civilization,” Katharina observed.
We had been told to check into the Gran Hotel Diligenicias on the west side of the sprawling zócalo. The hotel was a U-shaped alabaster brick and stucco building, three stories high with a wide, multiarched terrace along its front facing the cobblestoned Calle Principal and the plaza. A two-room suite had been reserved for us by the American consulate.
Before leaving San Antonio, Funston had told us that a man named David Parker would come to our hotel two or three days after we checked in.
“He’s the military attaché at the U.S. consulate,” Funston had said. “In the meantime, just behave like tourists. Get to know the places Germans frequent, and keep your eyes and ears open.”
Our hotel room had a view of the plaza, which was ringed with royal and traveler palm trees. A Spanish fountain babbled in the plaza’s center. On one side of the square stood the city’s imposing 18th century neoclassical Cathedral de la Virgen de la Asunción, with its whitewashed façade, bell tower, and five octagonal tile-covered domes.
Directly across the plaza from the hotel stood the city hall—a two-story stucco building a block square with arched porticos.
Even though Veracruz was below the Tropic of Cancer and much further south than Florida, the temperature in the spring was a bearable eighty-five degrees most days—nothing like Saigon or Manila in March where I remember the temperatures could easily hit one hundred degrees by ten o’clock in the morning with eighty percent humidity.
We came prepared for the heat, however. Both of us brought lightweight clothing and wide-brimmed hats to protect us from the ever-present sun. As I watched Katharina unpack her clothes, I was struck by how much she was able to pack in her luggage compared to a few years before. The reason, she told me, was that women were moving away from the rigid, tailored clothes of the Edwardian era to simpler, looser, more comfortable clothing. I recall one day in Chicago when I’d come home to find Katharina discarding mounds of bulky Victorian- and Edwardian-era dresses for what she called the "new crinoline” styles of 1914.
“Finally, clothes that let a woman move freely,” she’d said as she showed me her new wardrobe. “You men have no idea how easy you have it.”
Katharina’s new dresses, walking suits, full and bell-shaped skirts were shorter, with pleats “for ease of movement,” she’d explained. “Thank God we no longer have to wear corsets and those damnable high-button boots.”
“What’s wrong with high-button boots?” I’d asked.
“Don’t be such a dunce. Shorter hemlines expose a gap between the tip of the boot and a skirt hem—”
“I hadn’t noticed.” Of course I’d noticed. What man wouldn’t? Hemlines were now a good eight inches above the ground, exposing a woman’s ankles.
“And wearing boots distracts from the appearance of these new outfits. Now, women can wear pumps instead of high-topped shoes and boots. It’s a new era, William, a new era for women.”
“If you say so,” I’d muttered.
On our second day we decided to do a walking tour of Veracruz. We arose early, hoping to beat the inevitable sticky heat. Katharina donned one of her new lightweight Gibson Girl walking suits, and I wore a cream-colored linen suit without a tie.
As we walked past the cathedral, wizened old women hunkered on the tiled piazza selling candles and prayer books. Señoritas and señoras paused at the basilica’s entrance to adjust the white Spanish lace mantillas covering their hair before entering for early morning mass.
We continued along Zamora Street past the Trigueros Market and a row of shops whose proprietors were scattering buckets of water in front of their doorways to settle the dust. The pungent smell of rawhide and pigskin enveloped us as we walked past several leather shops. In other stores, men and women pounded and prodded brass and copper, turning the metal into lamps, pots, and belt buckles.
“No one can accuse the people of Veracruz of being lethargic,” Katharina remarked. “It looks like everybody is occupied.”
That included the city’s musicians. Veracruz resounded with traditional music—what the locals called Son Jarocho—played by the city’s ubiquitous mariachis and marimba groups. Guitars, marimbas, trumpets, bass fiddles, accordions, and gourds filled with dried beans were everywhere in the zócalo. The music was a cheerful, effervescent blend of Spanish, African, and Caribbean. After a while, we came to recognize certain songs, even though we couldn’t always understand the dialect.
Katharina grew especially fond of a song called “El Pájaro Carpintero” (“The Woodpecker”). My favorite was “La Mujer Inconforme” (“The Unhappy Woman”).
“You would like that song,” Katharina said. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Well, after all, you aren’t that happy about this little assignment of ours down here, right?”
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