“So, Mademoiselle,” he said. “We go?”
Monsieur Beaulieu sat on a pontoon in the bow of the dinghy talking into his cell phone and waving his free hand through the air as she ran him back to the inner harbor her chart referred to as La Darse. The brightly-painted hulls of local fishing boats were tied along the eastern wall, so she continued to the head of the harbor in front of the Place de la Victoire and the still bustling fish market. White plastic buckets filled with ice and red squirrel fish were lined up behind the men who displayed the larger kingfish and grouper on their tables. Creole ladies with headscarves and huge shopping baskets were haggling for better prices. Riley smiled at their waving arms and shrill voices, not so different from the man in her dinghy.
Since she and Beaulieu had been speaking in English, he apparently did not realize she spoke fluent French. He was discussing what to charge her with. He snapped the tiny phone closed and sniffed as she turned the boat to come alongside the seawall.
Once Beaulieu had his feet on terra firma, he brushed his hands together as though he had dirtied himself by getting ferried ashore.
“You are certain your mysterious passenger was American?”
Riley stood in her dinghy looking up at him, one hand on the seawall steadying the boat. “Yes, no doubt about it. And he assured me he had already cleared into your country. Why do you ask?”
“The name he gave you. Surcouf. It is French and I am surprised he would use it.”
“Why?”
“There was a very famous French submarine with this name. Surcouf. Named after a pirate. She disappeared in the Caribbean in la seconde guerre mondiale. Over one hundred and thirty men died when she was lost in 1942.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Exactement. You are an American.” He snorted air through his massive nose. “You know so little about l’histoire of the rest of the world.”
Great. A fake name, and a French one, no less. God only knows what he was into. And the jerk stole her only handheld VHF radio.
Beaulieu waved his hand toward the immigration building on the waterfront. “You are coming.”
It wasn’t a question.
“You’ve got my paperwork, and you know where to find me,” she said.
“That is not sufficient, Mademoiselle. This man you brought ashore, the man you insist was American, has not passed through immigration. He is an illegal, undocumented alien. You will come with me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Marigot Bay, Guadeloupe
March 25, 2008
5:45 p.m.
The Citroen pulled to the side of the road and screeched off again almost before Cole had fully climbed out of the vehicle.
“Thanks a lot,” he said to the red taillights as they disappeared around the next curve.
He reached down to brush the dust off the tropical print sarong. What did he expect when he was out hitchhiking in a dress — and going commando, no less? The driver had made certain assumptions, and he wasn’t exactly happy when Cole turned him down.
He started down the steep dirt road leading to the narrow rocky beach at the head of the bay. He picked his way between the stones since his bandaged feet had started to hurt again during the ride. He’d plucked the cactus needles out of his hand with tweezers he found in the head on Riley’s boat, and he flexed his hand as he walked. Nearly good as new.
The last rays of sun lit the treetops high on the mountain above him, but down in the cove night was descending. A restaurant was perched on the ledge above the dark water, its colored lights illuminating the small grove of coconut palms. When he reached the bottom of the hill, Cole lifted the green T-shirt and grabbed the VHF radio he had clipped to the waist of his sarong.
“Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is Shadow Mobile.”
A few seconds later the radio crackled to life. “Shadow Mobile, where the hell are you?”
“Switch?” he said, and the voice acknowledged. They switched to the VHF radio channel they always used. He didn’t want to broadcast his location in case they were listening. Once Cole explained how he had arrived, his first mate grudgingly agreed to pump up the spare dinghy and come ashore to pick him up.
Twenty minutes later, he heard the oars splashing as his mate struggled to row the tiny boat in through the cove’s small surf. In the deepening dusk, he could make out neither the man’s dark skin nor the black rubber dinghy against the dark water of the bay.
“Over here,” Cole said, stepping out of the shadows.
The dinghy ground onto the shore and Theo Spenser stumbled onto the beach, the rope in the bottom of the tiny inflatable dinghy wrapped around one of his long legs. When he managed to disentangle himself and straighten up, he stood almost half a foot taller than Cole.
“Quite a landing, Theo.”
“Mon, I hate this boat,” Theo said in his clipped, British-sounding English. “It scares the crap out of me.” He adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses on his face and peered down at Cole. “Is that a skirt you’re wearing?”
“I’m starting a new fashion craze.”
“The Scots beat you to it.”
“That’s me. Always a day late and a dollar short.” Cole bent over the small rubber dinghy and began to adjust the oarlocks.
“I’ve heard people call you ‘a few cards short of a full deck,’ but the day late one is a new addition to your repertoire.”
Cole stood up with the dinghy line in his hand. He smiled. “I’m always striving to upgrade.”
“What did you do with the Whaler, anyway?”
“It’s a long story.”
“As usual. And where did you get the radio?” Theo took it from Cole’s hand and held it close to his face to examine it. “It’s a rather nice one,” he said nodding. “Waterproof.”
“I’ll tell you the story when we get out to the boat.” Cole put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And on the way out, I’ll row.”
Once off the beach, the swells were gentle rollers, so Cole took the opportunity to row facing forward and admire his boat as they approached. Shadow Chaser was sixty-four feet overall, a former shrimper he’d bought in Fernandina and then spent six months converting over to a research and salvage vessel. Her navy blue hull was barely visible against the dark foliage across the bay, but the accommodation lights in the wheelhouse reflected off the water. From her business-like raked bow the lines of her hull swept aft with a slight hollow in her sheer to the lovely rounded transom. God, she was a beauty. She still had her big A-frame crane aft and the outriggers in place, so she looked like the work boat she was, not like some Ivy League asshole’s yacht. But it was Theo who had really done magic with the money they raised.
The kid was amazing. Cole had been teaching in the Maritime Studies program at East Carolina when he met him on the docks at Ocracoke. Theo had arrived one morning as a crewman on a gleaming white motoryacht. Cole was down in the launch, trying to clean the carburetor on an old Johnson outboard when this tall, gangly black kid came over and asked if he could have a look. From Cole’s vantage point, squinting up at the young man, he couldn’t make out any features in his face. The sun behind his head made him look like he had a brilliant celestial aura, and he spoke with an Oxford accent that sounded more like it belonged on Masterpiece Theatre than on a greasy, salt-baked dock on the Outer Banks.
“You know anything about outboards?” Cole asked. “‘Cuz I’m just about ready to give up on this one.”
When the young man jumped down into the wooden tender, Cole saw his skin and hair were the brownish black of one who’d spent hours in the sun. His hair was close-cropped, his white shirt and shorts threadbare but clean and pressed, and behind his gold-rimmed glasses were dark, bright eyes full of intelligence. He shook Cole’s greasy hand and took the wrench without a word. Ten minutes later, the jets were clean, the motor reassembled and the exhaust was producing clouds of bluish smoke as the stranger gunned the engine.
Cole shouted, “Nice work. W
hat’s your name?”
The young man shut down the engine and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a clean handkerchief. “Theophilus Spenser. Just call me Theo.”
“Where you from, Theo?”
“Dominica. It’s an island.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The young man hopped easily up onto the concrete pier and looked down at Cole with a sigh. “Not the Dominican Republic.”
Cole laughed. “Yeah, I know. My old man spent some time down in the Caribbean. On Dominica and Guadaloupe.”
Theo inclined his head in approval. “Very good. All right. Cheerio.”
Cole watched as the fellow began to head back toward the yacht that had arrived that morning. Did people really still say that? Cheerio? “Hey Theo,” he called out. “You know diesel engines, too?”
In Okracoke, the big yacht left, but Theo stayed, and Cole had seen it as his chance to go out on his own, to say, “See ya’” to that world of academia that never would accept him anyway. Cole started Full Fathom Five Maritime Explorations, and thanks to the support of their one big, then-anonymous donor and a handful of guys who’d made a bundle in Internet start-ups, he bought his own boat, and fitted her out. Theo even designed and built their Remote Operating Vehicle or ROV that had an underwater video camera and a mechanical arm. Cole had named it Enigma. It was better than the one he’d been using at the university. Together, they had turned Shadow Chaser into a state-of-the-art vessel for the search and recovery of archeological artifacts. To their investors, that translated as a treasure hunter.
Once aboard Shadow Chaser, both men headed for the galley, and Cole filled the coffee pot while Theo walked forward to the pilot house to check the gauges on the Cummins generator he’d left running. He brought the chart back and spread it out on the Formica dinette table. Cole slipped into his cabin to change into a pair of shorts. He was about to lift the woman’s shirt off his head, but when the fabric was across his face, he stopped and inhaled. There it was, that citrus smell somewhere between orange and lime. He’d smelled it in her hair when he’d brushed close to her, and again, down in the head on her boat. He smoothed the olive-colored fabric down across his chest. No need to dirty another clean shirt just yet.
Back in the galley, he turned off the stove. When they both had steaming mugs of thick black coffee, they slid onto the red vinyl bench seats of the galley dinette and looked at the chart.
“I’m waiting,” Theo said.
“Okay. I was diving out here,” Cole said, his finger tracing a line off the southwest coast of the island.
Theo didn’t say anything.
“I had the handheld GPS and I was over the coordinates where we’d got that last reading from the magnetometer. I drew a blank, though. Didn’t see a thing.”
Theo rubbed his chin. “So, I suppose there are two possibilities, then. Either the sub broke up into pieces that are now so covered in coral you couldn’t see them — or we still haven’t broken the code right, and the magnetometer got those readings off some other kind of trash.”
“I don’t care if it’s been more than sixty years, we should be able to see something from a sub that in her time was the biggest submarine in the world. Coral wouldn’t cover it that fast.” Cole shook his head. “We haven’t got it right yet. But I know it’s here.” He wasn’t sure if he was referring to the code in the journal or the submarine itself — or both. “Anyway, after I’d exhausted a couple of tanks just chasing fish around, I took the dinghy into this little cove where there’s a spring.” He finished the story, telling Theo about the men who arrived, his escape up and off the cliff, and how he’d been picked up by the Bonefish.
“So what did she look like?”
“What?”
“Don’t bloody try to act like you didn’t notice. It’s not like we’ve had women crawling all over this vessel the last few months. Christ, man, you were butt-naked and all alone on a little sailboat with a woman. Did you do her?”
“Shut up.”
“Aw, come on, Cap’n.” Theo stood up, put his hands under his shirt and poked his fingers out to make imaginary breasts. He waggled his eyebrows up and down. “Was she hot?”
“I don’t know.” Cole rubbed his hands across the chart, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles in the paper. “I was more worried about the guys who’d been trying to kill me an hour earlier.”
“Yeah, right,” Theo said, sitting back down looking dejected. He took a long drink of his coffee. “So somebody’s after you. Again.”
Cole held up an index finger and pointed at Theo. “One of these days, my friend, you are going to have to eat those doubting words.”
Theo leaned forward, his close-cropped head hovering over the chart. “So, who do you think they were this time?”
“The Brewster brothers.”
“No, mon.” Theo leaned back, screwed his eyes closed for a second and made a face like a man who had just sucked on a lemon. “Not again. Not those two trogs?”
Cole wasn’t thrilled about it either. The Brewsters were half brothers, a couple of Outer Banks lowlifes who had once told Cole they were “from the same crackhead mama, different white daddies.”
“How’d they find us?” Theo asked. “I thought we left them back in the Carolinas.”
Cole shrugged. “Word gets around. Especially that word — gold. And Shadow Chaser’s not exactly inconspicuous. Even a moron could track down a boat that looks like her in the Caribbean.”
“I wouldn’t give Spyder that much credit.” Theo sipped from his coffee mug.
“Spyder, no. His brother, yes. Besides, I’m pretty sure I spotted them as the woman was bringing us into Pointe-à-Pitre.”
“What? Tell me they didn’t see you.”
“No, I went below to use the head. They’ve got a Bertram sportfish now, named Fish n’ Chicks.”
Theo chuckled. “Probably stole it and renamed it. That sounds like Spyder.”
Cole nodded. “I’m almost certain they were the ones after me this morning. With those wet suit hoods, I didn’t really see their faces, but later I was looking out the port when this boat passed us. It sure looked like Pinky out on deck.”
“Him, I’d recognize anywhere.”
“You’ve got that right,” Cole said. There was a time he’d felt sorry for Pinky who suffered from a condition called vitiligo. Most of his skin was the light brown color of walnut shells, but vitiligo had caused odd patches to lose all pigmentation. The result was he sported a white Afro and his skin looked like somebody had splashed him with a bucket of bleach.
Theo walked to the galley sink and rinsed out his mug. “So, what about the Whaler?”
“Let’s head down there and look for it tonight. I can’t afford a new one. And there was all my dive gear in it, too. If we’re lucky, they left it there. Decided they’d rather leave it for us so we can find the wreck – which they intend to steal from us, later.”
“What I don’t get is, if they followed us here, why show themselves now? Why chase you? What were they after?”
“They must know, somehow, that we’re getting close.”
“But how? Do you think they know about the journals?”
“God, I hope not.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pointe-à-Pitre
March 25, 2008
5:25 p.m.
Diggory Priest leaned back in his café chair, took a sip of the decent Bordeaux they’d served him, and surveyed the large concrete square aglow in the tawny light of the late afternoon sun.
“They’ll get the job done. It’s just a matter of time.”
Diggory turned to look at the older man who had just spoken. He knew the man only as Caliban. One elbow rested on the back of the man’s chair at their outdoor table at the Cafe Caraïbe, while the fingers of his other hand were tapping on the glass table top. He had a full head of thick silver hair and a tan that spoke of hours either on the deck of a yacht or a golf course. Clearly, the man came from old money. He
reeked of it. But there was no surprise in that. Not in this business. Diggory looked at the man’s profile. He was almost twice Dig’s age, yet the way women looked at them was nearly identical. Dig wondered if he would age as well as Caliban.
Diggory had known he was good looking even before he hit puberty, had known the power of his smile. As a kid, after school, he’d always gone straight to the diner where his mother worked, and the other waitresses fawned over him, calling him pet names and touching him, always touching him.
He swallowed to suppress the shudder. Diggory had learned early on how much women wanted him, and how easy it was to manipulate them. Caliban clearly enjoyed the same knowledge. To the rest of the world, both men shared a similar casual arrogance, but Diggory knew that while he worked at it, Caliban was born to it.
“They’d better get it done,” Diggory said.
“This business was a mistake, clearly. You need to make sure they understand that. I didn’t order them to go after it. The coin matters, but at this point, it will only confirm what we already know. Those two did this on their own initiative. That’s the problem. Right now they should be in observation mode. If they wait, he’ll lead the way.”
Diggory watched a couple of young girls in mini-skirts teetering on high heels as they crossed the uneven pavement in the street. “I hate counting on them. Sounds like they’re not merely barbarians, they’re Neanderthals. Shallow end of the gene pool.”
“I understand that, but we don’t want our fingerprints on this.” From his shirt pocket, Caliban removed a pack of Dunhill cigarettes and lit one with a silver Zippo lighter. He blew a stream of smoke toward the umbrella hanging over their table. “These fellows don’t have a clue. That’s what makes them perfect for the job. We risk nothing.”
Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller Page 6