The team got to work, narrowing dates and events down. Alicia was given a pile of old, dusty books to flick through. Russo eyed her with half a smile. “They’re books,” he said. “Do you know how they work?”
“Piss off, Robster.”
Cam was seated to her left. “I don’t read,” he said.
“Oh, sorry,” Alicia replied without thinking. “I mean—”
“No. I can read. I just don’t.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why’s that then?”
“It scares me,” Cam said honestly. “It removes me from life, makes me imagine things that aren’t real. I have enough problems dealing with real life, let alone fantasy.”
Alicia flicked through the first book. She took her time, not wanting to miss any vital information. She drank from a fresh bottle of water. At midday, Russo and Cam fetched a plate full of sandwiches. They read long into the afternoon before taking a short break.
Caitlyn had a large pile of books stacked to her right. “In these,” she said, laying a hand on top, “we have accounts narrowed down to the year 1733. Five out of almost a hundred. Keep reading. We need all of them.”
Evening passed and the desk manager arrived. When Alicia looked over to the door through which she appeared, she was surprised to see that the woman was indistinct, almost a ghost. A thick haze of unsettled dust hung in the air, the artificial lights glinting off it. Every individual mote drifted lazily as it rose and fell back down to a surface.
“Closing time,” she said.
Crouch rose and negotiated for a lock in. He had no contacts here, no sway, but the wads of American dollars he passed over appeared to do the trick. Alicia heard her say they would be locked in until 7:00 a.m. Crouch said that was perfect.
They researched, ate and drank some more. Two and then three in the morning passed, the witching hours making Alicia feel like they were locked in a tomb, the profound silence making her twitchy. She started to whistle until the others gave her narrow eyes, then shuffled her feet until Crouch told her to go take a break.
When the museum reopened at 9:00 a.m. the next day, they were still working.
Alicia was famished. “Does anyone else fancy a bag of Gregg’s sausage rolls and a seven-shot black coffee?”
Everyone looked up hopefully, but Alicia shot them all down in flames. “Me too. But all they got here is tea and tacos.”
Finally, they were ready to tackle the pile of books that related to 1733. Alicia started replacing the surplus tomes back on the shelves, taking care to do the job properly. History was as important as anything they were doing now. One day, we would all be a part of history.
Late morning came. More sandwiches and water were consumed. Marco started explaining things as he read.
“We’ve come up with fifteen shipwreck survivors on that night from accounts written by civilians, clergy and guards. There was a rudimentary police force at the time too, which also catalogued events. Only seven of those fifteen survivors have histories. The other eight all drifted away from the area. Of the seven, four settled in Acapulco. The other three made their way to local towns and hamlets.”
“We can trust these sources?” Crouch asked.
Marco sighed. “As much as we can trust anything. Maybe the people didn’t see all the survivors. Maybe the crate holding the sword was emptied by a freak wave. Or looted later by some private collector.”
“The records and accounts for that night are pretty exhaustive,” Caitlyn said. “For the time. But you see, our man was quite striking. He was tall and blue-eyed. Not only that, but he fled Acapulco, refusing aid that very night. He was conspicuous in more ways than one.”
Marco tapped the front page of a narrow but thick tome. “Let me read you a passage from this, written by a Father Sebastien of one of Acapulco’s oldest churches. ‘My love of our town is affirmed. She is loving, giving, nurturing. She took in the Santa Azalea survivors and nursed them to health. But my faith lies deep-rooted in our country too, as today I saw others also provided the sailors with safe haven. Today, the blue-eyed stranger reappeared and he looked rested and healthy, fifty five days after the hurricane. I saw no sign of his mysterious gray sack and did not speak to him.’”
Marco looked up. “You see? It was an event. An event so great that everyone remembers what they were doing when it happened, and all the details too. This tells us that our blue-eyed friend settled nearby.”
“One more thing,” Caitlyn said, opening her own book. “There is one single account out of the hundreds I’ve trawled through. It refers to the same man living in a nearby hamlet then called Cuesta. It’s not surprising that he is mentioned here. He’s a foreigner, speaking with a different accent, looking dissimilar to everyone else. He’s also a survivor, a partial hero of sorts.”
“And where is this Cuesta now?” Crouch asked.
“Just checking.”
Alicia stretched and yawned. Her own investigations had yielded nothing, just as most of the team’s had yielded nothing. Two out of seven wasn’t bad. Cam had spent the time napping and wandering up and down the aisles, looking glum. Alicia wondered if she should try to talk to him about his sister and what came next.
But time ran away from her. It always did. By the time she was done reading, Caitlyn had pinpointed the old town of Cuesta.
“It’s seven miles away,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Alicia sat once more with Cam and Russo in the back seat of their large SUV, headed for the small Mexican town once called Cuesta. Today, it was called a longer version of the same name, something Alicia couldn’t pronounce nor remember. She was dressed appropriately for her once more in a white T-shirt and tight denim shorts. She wore a flak vest under a light bomber jacket. She carried weapons and ammo, as did the entire group. Nobody expected trouble, but they were prepared for it.
Alicia felt ready for action, having recovered from the battle at sea. Akhon was dead. The Assyrian criminal organization would be in chaos as others scrambled for his crown. Rival groups would seek to move in. For now, their attentions should be far from one of Akhon’s side ventures.
The sun beat down across a tree-lined highway filled mostly with pickup trucks. It didn’t take long to reach Cuesta once they had left Acapulco and its heavy traffic behind. Out here, the skies were bright, and the air was fresh. Alicia’s mind was already switching back to her boyfriend, Matt Drake, and what was coming for their team in the next few days.
She would have to leave soon, return to her main team.
But, for now, she sat back and reveled in a few moments of peace.
Cuesta sprawled across a valley floor and a third of the way up two nearby grassy slopes. Back in the eighteenth century it had barely covered a third of the valley floor. Marco, with Caitlyn’s help, drove them to the oldest building in town—a beautiful old church built in 1737, most probably with the help of the mysterious blue-eyed man.
“Are we lucky it’s still here?” Alicia wondered. “Or are there a lot of eighteenth-century buildings around here?”
“Plenty,” Marco affirmed. “I found eight churches alone in a search. That doesn’t include storehouses, chapels, cathedrals, missions and more. They built them well in those days.”
They parked in a space opposite the old church, a simple, white-faced building with two tiny steeples to either side of a portico and a wooden door. A cross sat on the roof. Two steps led up to the door, both overgrown with weeds. It was a rural, ramshackle old place with dilapidated walls running away from the door in both directions. Only the central area seemed intact.
Marco gave them the eye. “Not liking the look of this.”
They knocked at the door and entered. An old man met them, dressed in jeans under a white robe. His hair was short and his eyes dimmed. When they approached he gave a slight bow.
“How may I help you?” His English was as rough as the church.
Marco explained with Caitlyn’s and Elyse’s help that they were looking for the t
own archives. The priest nodded and led them back out into daylight.
“It dates to 1737,” he said proudly, taking some time to find the right words. “My church; built after the first settlers but before the American Revolution and the Hidalgo rebellion. The history... it is deep.”
“Are there records?” Marco reiterated.
“Letters. Journals. It is today’s privilege to keep yesterday’s deeds. History teaches us how to go forward.”
“I wish that it did,” Crouch said with a heavy heart. “I really do.”
The old priest nodded. “What do you want from the records?”
“We are searching for a man,” Caitlyn said. “A shipwreck survivor. We believe he settled in this hamlet.”
“That is possible,” the priest said. “We are a short walk from what was the old port of Acapulco.”
They went on to explain that they’d been commissioned by a wealthy woman to find one of her long lost ancestors. The search had led them here. The priest eyed them closely, eyes finding Alicia’s flak jacket and more than one badly concealed weapon. He was no woolly-headed local.
“This way.” He led them inside the church and to a badly fitted door behind the altar. A set of rickety steps led down into a basement. Alicia held her tongue as she descended once more from fresh air into musty darkness.
“There’s no electricity,” the priest said. “I hope you have flashlights.”
Alicia grunted. “Is any of this shit in order?”
“Alicia!” Crouch snapped, but the priest didn’t appear to have heard. When Caitlyn asked him the same question more diplomatically, he nodded.
“Early records to late,” he said, pointing.
Marco, Crouch and Caitlyn strode over to several rows of dusty, part-broken shelves. They lifted the items they needed with care, carrying them back to the center of the room where a six-by-three wooden table rested, its surface cracked and pitted, its edges splintered. Alicia’s heart fell when she saw they carried only four books.
“That’s it?”
“Have faith.” The old priest smiled. “It’s always worked for me.”
Once more, the team sorted through old documentation. This time, there was nowhere to sit except up against old walls or in grimy corners, but the occasional sound of a scampering rodent put Alicia off. The priest left them to it, reappearing occasionally to check on them. Alicia listened to rustling and scuttling and Russo’s heavy breathing until the restlessness set in and she started feeling grumpy.
“Are we anywhere nearer solving this thing or what?” she asked in the afternoon.
“No,” Crouch said.
Two hours later she asked the same question.
“No,” Marco said.
Ninety minutes later, she was done. “Look, what happens in Acapulco stays in Acapulco. Maybe we’re not meant to find this thing.”
“Or maybe we are,” Caitlyn whispered. “Guys, I think I’ve found something.”
Everyone turned to stare at her. Alicia hopped from one foot to the next. “Well, go on then, for fuck’s sake.”
“This is a diary. A pretty detailed one.” She held up a deep red book that had been bound by a tatty gold ribbon. It bore no title, no sign of authorship. It could have been any old scribblings, lying down here underground on these crumbling shelves for all eternity. It could so easily have been overlooked.
“Inside,” Caitlyn said, “it bears the name Gabriel Medina. It is an account of his life, started in 1715 and continuing right up to his death around 1765. This Gabriel had blue eyes, he was tall, and he rode the Manila galleons at least three times.”
The entire room stiffened, suddenly rapt with attention.
“Does it bear his birthplace?” Marco asked, thinking hard.
“How does Massachusetts sound?”
“Pretty damn good.” Marco had to restrain himself from reaching out for the book.
“Gabriel describes all his voyages and the terrible conditions aboard ship. He sailed them for love of the sea. He ventured further because he had a love of adventure, of discovery. Even though the Spaniards pretty much murdered half the sailors that helped take their treasures from Manila to Acapulco, Gabriel risked it all for the sea.”
“Murdered?” Russo asked.
“They knew the conditions the sailors would have to endure. One single story tells of a captain ripping out a cistern—of fresh water—to accommodate the luggage of a wealthy passenger. That act in itself was murder. Anyway, Gabriel set sail in 1733 aboard a galleon called the Santa Azalea.”
There was a stifled murmur of emotion around the room. Even Alicia was absorbed in the story of Gabriel’s life.
“Listen to this,” Caitlyn said. “My eternal love affair ended when the winds struck and the oceans rose. It hammered at us, tore through us. It wanted to consume us, even those of us that adored it. I knew, as its fury beset me, that I would venture no more to sea if I survived that day.”
“But survive he did?” Elyse prompted.
“Oh, yes. And Gabriel hid nothing. I guess he never thought his diaries would be found. They were intensely personal, entirely intimate items. He speaks of whores, of disease, of friends that died. Of the lice-ridden gruel he was forced to eat to barely stay alive. Of murder and suicide. And there’s more to his story: ‘I took Juan into my confidence and we purloined the treasure as the ship broke apart all around us. We left at the worst of the gales, when our colleagues found they had no more strength to fight and died, all around us. I will never know how we made it to shore. And by the time we recovered enough to walk to Acapulco’s port I saw Juan already full of greed as he stared at the sack.’”
Caitlyn skipped several pages. “It goes on to tell of how Gabriel and Juan escaped from Acapulco that night and made it to a forest. Their needs were mutual at that point; they needed each other. But Juan attacked Gabriel the next day. Gabriel survived and walked until he dropped, but then he saw the hamlet, the place we now know was Cuesta.”
“What happened to the sack?” Marco asked.
“Gabriel speaks of his guilt. Back in Acapulco he tried to hand the treasure off to an American agent but never found him. He knew full well that the sword and its treasures could at least blunt if not stop the British assault on America.”
“He describes the sword then?” Elyse asked.
“‘She is flat and tapers outward, not to the hilt, but to the point. She is dull, broad and unwholesome. If one found such a weapon one would throw it back into the marshes from whence it came. Runes cover both surfaces but I do not know what they say. This Peter, he seemed a simple and wholesome man.’”
“It describes the copy perfectly,” Marco said. “Which, of course, was not even made in 1733.”
Caitlyn nodded. “I think we’ve found our treasure, folks.”
“Does Gabriel say what he did with it?” Alicia asked, figuring she’d move the conversation right along.
“What do you think?” Caitlyn asked with a big grin.
Alicia couldn’t help but echo the expression. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“We should head outside.”
Not wanting to disturb the old archives any further, Caitlyn, Marco and Crouch all took photos of the diary’s pertinent pages on their cellphones. Then, together, the entire group made their way out of the basement, through the church, and back into daylight.
Alicia stood, squinting at the waning skies. “You realize we spent most of the day in there?”
Crouch clapped her on the shoulder. “You realize we found the bloody treasure?”
“Whoa,” Caitlyn said. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Gabriel’s story isn’t finished. Now, listen...”
CHAPTER FORTY
“Gabriel stood at the crest of a hill,” Caitlyn said, “looking down upon a hamlet. He was more than half dead. Diseased. Hungry and thirsty. The man he helped save had just tried to kill him. Gabriel murdered that man close up, face to face. In some ways he was more alone than those t
hat drowned under the ocean that day. But Gabriel knew already of the attention that the sack drew. Acapulco had showed him that.”
“So he buried it?” Alicia prompted.
“Yes, but not so quick. Treasure comes to those that read all the information. Gabriel was dying. He knew it. He stripped his fingers almost to the bone buying the sack that night but, years later, he saw the advancement of the hamlet, saw that it was edging toward the very slope where he hid the sack...”
Marco looked up and to the right. “That slope?”
“Yes. The very one.”
Alicia followed their gazes, trying to imagine a tall, half-dead and bloodied shipwreck survivor standing right there, staring down at the very ground she occupied right now more than 250 years ago. She couldn’t imagine his state of mind; the thoughts that would run through his head. It was a somber moment and made her think of recently passed friends, of those that died before their time.
“What happened?” Crouch asked.
“Gabriel went and relocated the treasure. That’s when he examined it, described the sword and the treasure. It didn’t appeal to him at all; he had this whole new life now and a family and friends. He was part of a great community. That was his treasure, and the life he found to replace the sea. Anyway, he says he moved the sack and its contents three slopes over to the west, in sight of the ocean, where it could find eternal peace. You see, Gabriel, through his adventures aboard the Santa Azalea, and others, grew to believe treasure was the real enemy. It inspired greed in good men, as it did in Juan. Gabriel found the church, this church, and let go of material things.”
Without returning to their car, the team made their way up the nearest slope, reversing Gabriel’s footsteps of a quarter century before. They started among homes up a narrow road that soon ran out. They ended in soil, dirt and grass under a tall, overhanging tree.
Alicia shaded her eyes and gazed to the west. “Shit, my vision isn’t what it used to be.”
“Not just you,” Crouch said. “I can only see one other hill.”
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