by K. T. Tomb
The Old Man, in his familiar eccentric tweed jacket, half-moon spectacles, and full gray beard gave a coughing laugh that betrayed the onset of the disease that would take his life just over a year later.
“Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever read anything in your life other than Playboy, but if you had picked up any of the books in your father’s library, or, say, asked any of us old bastards about where you came from, this next part might sound familiar. You’re going on a little trip and it ain’t no vacation.”
Padraig placed the briefcase that was now in Manny’s possession onto his desk. Manny really didn’t want to go to Detroit. He had been there once, and regardless of what the Motor City had once been in the sixties, it had fallen far from its former glory.
His grandfather was speaking again.
“I want you to take good care of this case. I bought it for ten dollars back in fifty-nine. Probably the oldest possession I’ve got, apart from the antiques and who gives a shit about them; your grandmother collected that crap. Inside it, you should have found a map. The map is of a place where the McMillan family has a lot of history. I doubt you ever heard of it because it’s not the kind of information you find in the tits and ass publications.”
That bastard is enjoying this, Manny thought.
Mocking me. I’d like to kick your ass, you dead old fart.
“This is the island of Montserrat. Now, us McMillan’s used to live on Montserrat, no doubt some distant fork of the family still does. The Irish McMillan’s settled there as indentured workers, working hard and saving their money. They also mixed in with the slaves there. In the middle of the nineteenth century, some old grandpappy of ours came into some land, citrus groves and such. Round about the same time, the Europeans, and colonial Americans were getting good at hunting down the last of the professional privateers—pirates, to you and me— and it so happened that old Cormack McMillan was out in his lime grove one day when from up on his hill, he saw a ship coming into port. Its sails were all torn up, looking like it’d been savaged fiercely. On a small island like Montserrat, this was big news. Everybody who was anybody went down to the docks, and who should step off the boat?”
The old man paused and gestured towards the camera.
“I don’t fucking know,” replied Manny.
“Of course you don’t fucking know,” said his grandfather on the TV screen, “because you’re a bum and you never asked me about anything important except what you could get. The guy who steps off the boat turned out to be none other than Captain Boysie Marlowe, one of the last pirates to sail the Caribbean.
“His time was up, and he knew it. He’d had his rear end handed to him by the French; his ship was done for, and most of his crew was dead. He was running for his life, and there weren’t many places left for pirates to go.
“Now, Cormack was scared, like everyone else. He knew that if Marlowe and his pirates wanted to, they could make real trouble for everyone on the island; there wasn’t much law enforcement in them days, and none of your internet or mobile phones to call for help. So Cormack, being as smart as a McMillan can be, invites Marlowe into his home, gave them drink and food and quarters, and they got to talking.
“Marlowe, of course, wanted to get off Montserrat as quickly as possible, but his boat wouldn’t make it to the next island, let alone to South America where he would have a chance of escaping a hanging. Cormack had a boat, not a big one, only a mail runner, but it could work. Marlowe said, ‘I could just take your boat, but you have shown us kindness, so I’ll trade you something for it. I can never return here for fear of my life, and I shall need the gold in my old ship for sure. I will trade you this map, which will show you where a great wealth is on this island, in exchange for your little boat.’
“Now, Cormack didn’t much care for sailing, but what he did care about was his friends and family not getting any trouble from these pirates, so being a sensible man, he agreed. He didn’t think there was any such treasure, but if it got the pirates off Montserrat, so be it. The deal was done, Marlow left, and Cormack never told another soul about the deal he made with the pirate. Not until he had failed to find the loot, of course, and was too old to go looking anymore, did he tell his sons. And they tried, and failed, and then their sons came to America, so over time the map came to be in my possession.”
The old man had spoken for so long his throat was parched, and his voice cracked. His hand trembled as he sipped water, cleared his throat, and continued.
“I was going to go check it out myself, not that I needed any treasure there might be but out of interest, before I got too old to do it. Then round about ninety-five, the volcano there blew up, buried half the island, the old McMillan lime groves and all. It’s still smoking away out there; you can’t even get to the mountain anymore without an official dispensation from the authorities.
“So Manny, you have a chance to prove yourself. Maybe you’re not the smartest or most talented McMillan there’s ever been, but you’re still a McMillan, and that’s got to count for something. Go find out what this is all about. Earn your inheritance, and earn the right to be in this family. I’ve left you some notes and an open plane ticket in the inside pocket of this here briefcase. See you in hell, kiddo.”
The scene abruptly ended. Silence blossomed in the apartment. Manny, who had gotten to his feet without realizing it, swayed slightly as conflicting thoughts battled for dominance in his mind.
“This is bullshit! You old fool!” He spoke to no one.
Alone in his rooms, Manny didn’t have to fake a smile for his grieving family anymore.
“I wait my whole life to come into this inheritance, and you’re fucking with me from beyond the grave? You sick bastard! Sorry for existing!”
He picked up the briefcase and tossed it against the wall, dislodging a large mirror hanging there, and granting him seven years bad luck to go with the twenty-two he felt he had spent already. The briefcase had landed open, facing the floor. Cursing his own stupidity at giving himself a chore to do, as he swept up broken shards of mirror, Manny gingerly picked up the briefcase. A slash ran from one end of the silken interior fabric to the other and across the inside pocket. Through the tear, Manny could see the envelope which he knew contained plane tickets to an island he had never heard of and didn’t care about.
There was another piece of paper there. He plucked it out, and unfolded it. In a bold typeface, five lines of some kind of awful poetry.
Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.
Manny was too furious with everything, his family, and himself to bother puzzling out any more of this cryptic nonsense. Leaving the broken mirror where it lay, he grabbed a beer from the kitchen.
He had the distinct feeling he would need several.
Chapter Three
It was past midday when Manny surfaced in the aftermath of the seven beers and half a bottle of Baileys he consumed the night before.
After regurgitating everything that was left in his stomach, he stumbled into the living room trying his hardest to remember some of what happened. He was grappling with the beginnings of a headache and was jolted back to reality when he cut his foot on the remains of the mirror still strewn about the floor. Manny switched on the TV, channel-surfed while he drank coffee, and then he booted up his laptop. His ego was not in the best of shape following his one-sided argument with his dead grandfather, and it had resulted in the downward spiral of self- pity that had resulted in an alcohol-fueled nightmare.
While he had reservations about the validity of the buried treasure hokum, he had come to the conclusion, somewhere around the five beer mark, that a trip to a tropical island might not be such a bad idea.
Tropical islands meant sunshine and hopefully some hot bodies in bikinis to hang out with; that was, without doubt, a better option than freezing to death in New York
until April the following year. According to the airline tickets, he’d need to fly to Antigua first, and then take a two-engine prop island hopper over to Montserrat. He logged onto his laptop, and began checking flights from JFK Airport, but paused as he was typing the name into Google. Deleting it, he typed instead ‘Captain Marlowe + Pirate’. On the third site, the previous two belonging to works of fiction that had appropriated the Marlowe name, he found what he was looking for.
‘Captain B. Marlowe, aboard the Suffering Amy, terrorized the Caribbean in the mid-nineteenth century. He raided many island forts, and sunk ships belonging France, England and Spain. Eventually captured, he was tried and hung for piracy, on November the 2nd, 1871’.
So, at least that part is true. From what he could find out online, Montserrat was still a no-go area for half the island. There were tours and such to see the volcano, but short of joining one and then bailing out of a moving truck, he didn’t see much hope of going anywhere near it, if this wild goose chase should even go that far.
What would he do if the treasure was in the middle of nowhere, where no one would take him? He didn’t think it would be a good idea to go roaming around an island with no clue where to go. The map was little help. The minuscule writing denoted three locations; the Volcano was clearly marked, which was understandable as it was surely the biggest feature of the tiny island. There was also a kind of parabola that might have been part of a circle or semi-circle once, with the legend ‘Look West’ written next to it.
So...there was a widely curved path, that didn’t show up on Google Maps, and was made nearly two hundred years ago, and he should follow it to the west when the path curves to the east and back to the west. That would mean he’d be walking away from what he should be looking at for a fair few miles, over what the internet told him was the Centre Hills, and right across the valleys where an active volcano might decide to bury him under molten rock at any moment.
Great!
Finally, there were three tiny, faded letters, which after a moment of analysis Manny decided spelled ‘E.I.C.’
He guessed he’d figure that out later once he was on the island. Goiing back to the travel booking site, he began to make his reservations.
Screw the old man, he was taking the challenge. He’d go and show him who deserved to be in this family. He’d show his brothers, his cousins and his dad; then none of them could tell him what to do, ever again.
Manny was not the only adventurer visiting Montserrat.
While Manny, the youngest American son of an influential family, had no idea of the kind trouble he was getting himself into, Kang Xiaoping knew exactly what he was doing. Manny’s closest experience to this kind of adventure would be by way of watching Indiana Jones or James Bond movies, and playing Lara Croft video games. Despite his complete lack of training in espionage, he thought he had what it took to pull off a treasure heist all on his own.
While he was still in the air somewhere over the ocean near Bermuda, Kang was arriving under cover of darkness, coming ashore on a dinghy launched from a small boat. He waded the last few paces through the surf at the deserted Bunkham Beach.
For all intents and purposes, he looked like any other tourist. Loud shirt, camera, cheap shoes, cheaper sunglasses perched on top of his head and a duffle bag containing even more tacky clothes. His contact on the island had recommended Bunkham Beach as an easy entry point. There were steep, vegetation-covered cliffs stretching the full length of the bay, and only one way on and off the sand, unless you were a climber of prodigious skill. The beach itself was also very narrow, dropping off sharply into the Caribbean Sea, facing out across more than a thousand miles of empty water in a straight line towards Nicaragua.
Kang hiked up the beach but did not leave the black sands for the rough path that led up to the Birds of Paradise Villa overlooking the beach. With no light source behind him, Kang was confident that even the sharpest-eyed guest would not have seen him.
Someone else did notice him, however, and moved down to the shore trying to disguise his nervousness. He was another Chinese man, dressed identically to Kang himself, the same shirt, right down to the same sneakers. Kang barely looked at him as he passed, but it was enough to notice that there was a good ten years between them in age, and the other was going grey at the temples where Kang’s hair was still thick and jet black. Kang was also taller, in far better shape, and had no protruding overbite.
The fake-Kang muttered, “Xièxiè, Xièxiè!”, as he splashed into the water, clumsy and loud as a buffalo in the shallows. The oaf fell into the dinghy, and with little care for stealth began rowing madly out to sea as soon as he had managed to climb in to his seat.
Kang sucked air through clenched teeth with displeasure. Checking his luminous watch, he realized that there would be little time for him to enjoy the sights of Montserrat, it was 4 a.m. already, and he planned to be well on his way over the Pacific by noon. He had to get to work.
Following the path the fake-Kang had taken down to the beach, the new and improved Kang made it to the Villa in only a few minutes. The place was lit but deserted. The Kang who had left in the dinghy had rented the entire 10- bedroom complex for his brief stay. The man had clearly gone soft on his fat government salary, and more than likely had taken plenty of bribes in his time to be able to afford such oppulence.
Entering by the sliding doors on the veranda, Kang proceeded to search the rooms for intruders. It was unlikely that there would be any, given the short time frame in which the two men had switched places on the beach, but he hadn’t stayed alive this long, in this business, by being sloppy. Satisfied he was alone, the new Kang Xiaoping emptied his duffle bag of clothes, drew a short, snub-nosed pistol from a rolled up T-shirt, and settled down in a chair, looking out to sea. Dawn was on the horizon, a new day, and the job at hand would soon follow.
Chapter Four
Kang had slept lightly, propped up facing out to sea, a pistol in his lap.
A message sent to the prepaid mobile phone he had found on the kitchen counter simply said ‘Heron found on lake’.
Kang took time enjoying the shower at the villa. He had been at sea for some time, and the Nicaraguan fishing vessel he had traveled on for the last few days was distinctly lacking in modern amenities. Not that he was unused to such hardship, but he was not a man to turn down the finer things in life when they were available.
As he toweled dry and dressed in the ridiculous resort wear, Kang wondered what would happen to the other Kang when he returned to mainland China. He had looked weak and pathetic, but from what he had been told by his handler in Beijing, the man had a significant amount of influence throughout the financial sector. Kang understood that to mean that he would not be punished too severely for his failures.
The hallway to the front door was wide and well lit. The marble floor, like the rest of the villa, was comprised of large, well-set tiles. The walls were solid and white where glass partitions had not been preferred. In the hallway, there was a low telephone table next to an umbrella stand carved from wood into the shape of a tropical bird.
The bird looked at the ceiling, mouth open, and from his gullet protruded several decent quality umbrellas. Kang considered the wooden bird. It seemed like a joke on the sculptor’s part, or at least fot the owner of the villa to purchase such a tasteless piece for a place like this.
On the table, there were several pamphlets and guides for the tourists who stayed there when the property wasn’t rented out in its entirety by dummy companies owned by the Chinese Ministry for State Security. Kang leafed through a couple and selected the one with the best map of the island on the back.
The short book reiterated some of the things Kang had already discovered prior to coming to the island. Population; five thousand residents or thereabouts. Half the island was under a strict exclusion zone policy due to the active volcano and most structures were less than twenty-five years old due to constant hurricane damage. Attractions included hiking in the rainfor
est-covered central hills, scuba diving, and of course the volcano itself, on official tours only.
Kang would not be doing any of that. He tucked the map into a pocket of his light jacket, ate a small breakfast from the scant supplies left by the previous occupant and was about to set out the door, when he noticed the green 4x4, parked in plain view on the road that led over the hill to the nearby town of Salem.
Even from that distance, Kang could recognize military men when he saw them, even if they were only volunteers from the Royal Montserrat Defense Force; he checked himself, or men who looked like volunteers. The villa was the only building for half a mile in any direction. There wasn’t a good reason for them to be parked up there. If there had been a crime to investigate, members of the small local police force would be here.
The last thing he needed was a body count involving locals, he could imagine the furor in Beijing already. Moving quickly, he went into the kitchen, slid out the metal fascia below the electric cooker and stashed his pistol in the gap. He wedged it between the underside of the element and the stone floor. It wasn’t ideal, and he would need to retrieve it later so long as it wasn’t found in a thorough search. It wouldn’t go well for a future guest to kneecap themselves whilst cooking.
As soon as he had replaced the cover, the front door was opened by a Caucasian man in his mid-fifties. He had the typical ruddy face that fair-skinned people tended to develop when overexposed to the Caribbean climate. His slightly too-small shirt accentuated his portly frame, and the four green-clad military men, dark-skinned and well built, made him seem rather short.