Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

  “What’s up, Doc,” he said.

  “You look like hell, Spyder,” Cole said. “What happened to you?”

  The grin faded when he looked down at his shirt. “Some old fart jumped us up river there.”

  “Looks like he got in some pretty good licks.” As the two men got closer, Cole saw that one of Spyder’s eyes was swollen. Pinky, in his long white clothes, looked unscathed. “And it looks like your brother didn’t exactly jump in with his support. No surprise there.”

  “Shut up about my brother. He don’t need to get dirty. He’s smart enough to bring a gun.” Spyder tried to brush some of the dried mud off the front of his shirt. “That dude knew karate or some shit. Fought pretty good for a old guy.”

  Theo said, “You didn’t shoot him, did you?”

  “Nah. Pinky might’ve winged him. Didn’t kill him, though. Dude disappeared into the jungle. He run off our boat and driver, but we stole another one from a bunch of foreigners.” He smiled wide and Cole could see the dark gap where one of the man’s upper eye teeth was missing.

  Cole was tired. Tired of everything going wrong. Tired of these two idiots. He wanted to get back to his boat with this thing Theo was calling a cipher disk. “So what do you want, Spyder? Riley already left with your buddy there.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about them — neither one of them. It’s between you and me, Doc. Always has been. You found something up river there, didn’t you? Gimme that bag of yours.”

  “What if I say no? What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”

  It was Pinky who answered. “No. But my brother’d have no problem taking out one of your buddy’s knees.”

  Spyder laughed. “I like that, bro.” He swung the gun around and pointed it at Theo’s lower extremities.

  Without a word, Cole held out the bag.

  Spyder stepped forward and wrenched it from his hand. He tossed the backpack to Pinky who unzipped it and began to rummage inside.

  Pinky threw the folded shovel to the ground. “That’s what made it so heavy. Ain’t no gold in here.”

  Cole laughed. “That’s what you thought?”

  Spyder shrugged. “Hoped, maybe.” Spyder stepped closer to his brother. Pinky was now examining the 40-Years Calendar. Spyder glanced back at Cole. “What’s that thing?”

  “Don’t answer him,” Theo said.

  Cole shrugged. “You need your knees, my friend.” He took one step closer to Pinky. “That’s what we found up the river there. When we get out to the boat and get some charts, we’ll use it to figure out where the submarine is.”

  “How’s it work?” Pinky asked.

  “We’ve still got to figure that out, but we’re pretty sure this is the key we’ve been looking for. It’s a cipher disk that’ll give us the exact coordinates of the sub. Then, we just dive down and get the gold.”

  “Then let’s go,” Spyder said. He waved the gun directing them toward a path that led past an island sloop, her keel resting on some rotting timbers in the weeds, several wooden props holding her upright. Vines crawled up her hull and termites had taken up residence.

  They walked single file along the narrow trail, Cole in the lead, followed by Theo and then Spyder who held the gun aimed at Theo’s back. Cole searched the ground under the old boat hoping to spot a tool or something he could use as a weapon, but all he saw was tangled underbrush. He felt inside his pockets. He had nothing but a water-logged cell phone. Beyond the sloop was another small wood dock and tied to it, he saw his own Boston Whaler dinghy.

  “You guys been enjoying my boat?” he asked.

  “It’s all right,” Spyder said. “Too small, though. Should’a got the one with the steering wheel.”

  “You can pick the model you want when you’re buying.”

  Spyder coughed out a laugh that sounded more like the grinding gears of a manual transmission. “Me and Pinky don’t never buy boats.”

  Waving the gun in the air, he directed Theo to get into the Whaler first and start the outboard.

  Cole sidled up next to Pinky who was still examining the marble paperweight. The man turned the brass plates and cocked his head to one side.

  “Figured it out yet?” Cole asked.

  Pinky shook his head.

  Cole glanced up and saw Theo pulling on the starter cord for the outboard. The engine wasn’t starting. Theo hadn’t pulled the choke out far enough. He was buying time.

  “See where it says you’re supposed to turn the top plate until you get the year over the month? So you’ve got to find the year 2008, and then line it up with the month which is February. Here — look, I’ll show you.” Cole took the paperweight from the man’s mottled hands.

  Theo continued to pull at the starter cord, and the engine coughed but would not start.

  “It’s hard to read the numbers. I can’t tell if that’s 2008 or 2003. The brass is corroding.” Cole pulled up his shirt tail and attempted to polish the brass plate. Then he looked up and shouted, “Theo, give her more choke, man.”

  Pinky turned to look at Theo in the Whaler, then he turned back to Cole.

  “Hey, man, give me the fucking disk back.”

  Cole raised his arm over his head and said, “You’re not using this cypher disk to find my wreck, man. I’ve worked too long for this. If I don’t get it, nobody does.” Cole lobbed the object far into the bush just as the outboard roared to life.

  Spyder ran into the underbrush, the gun dangling in his hand, forgotten. Cole looked at Pinky’s open mouth and eyes and said, “Sorry about this, man.” It only took one punch to the man’s chin, and he went down like a sack of cement.

  Cole slipped the dinghy’s bow line off a piling as he leaped into the Whaler. He heard a gunshot just as Theo gunned the engine and the dinghy leaped onto a plane headed down river. Theo zigged back and forth as bullets zinged past. Then they rounded a slight bend and the gunshots stopped. Beyond them, the mouth of the Indian River emptied into Prince Rupert Bay. Theo cranked up the throttle heading straight out into the blue water, then turned the Whaler in a wide arc to head for Shadow Chaser. Neither man tried to speak over the screaming outboard engine.

  Theo didn’t throttle down until they were a hundred feet off the stern of the trawler. The Whaler slid up to the big boat’s stern on a wave of white foam. Cole grabbed the ladder and motioned for Theo to climb aboard first. “You go on, get her ready for immediate departure.”

  “We just leave? Let the Brewsters have the cipher disk?”

  Cole nodded. “We’re leaving as soon as I come back with Riley’s dinghy.” He reached into his pocket and extended his closed fist to Theo. “Here, put this somewhere safe.”

  Theo reached out and Cole dropped the marble and brass calendar into his palm. “We don’t have much time. I want to be gone before Spyder finds my drowned cell phone out there in the bush.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  In the air

  March 27, 2008

  7:20 p.m.

  Priest was unable to stop staring at her small hands, at the pink, close-cut but clean fingernails that drummed on the tray table in front of her seat. Ever since take-off when the flight attendant had come through the first class compartment taking drink orders, she had remained silent, her head turned aside, staring out the window at the cloud tops and the distant blue sea. Sometimes, she tugged at her still-damp T-shirt or reached up and tried to smooth down the wild spikes of her hair. Most of the time, though, she stared out the window, her body and face turned away from him. But those tapping fingers told him all he needed to know.

  He’d gotten to her. Not that he’d ever had any doubt. He knew the power he had with women. She was refusing to talk to him. For now. It was all part of the game, and it was so much more interesting when the stakes were high.

  At the airport, she had insisted on finding a pay phone and placing a call to her father’s home number. The nurse, Eleanor Wright, had answered, but before the woman could confirm that Riley’s father was indeed
at George Washington University Hospital, they had been disconnected. When Riley had tried to call back, she got no answer. After that, she tried calling the hospital, but she had been making her way through the voicemail when the attendant announced the final boarding call for their flight over the airport PA system. Riley didn’t hesitate. She hung up the phone and followed him onto the plane.

  He watched out the window as the plane flew over a corner of the island of Guadeloupe. Soon, very soon, it would be his time. He would get his hands on the documents on that submarine and then he would be the one calling the shots. No more errand boy, clean-up man. He winced as he remembered how Caliban had refused to tell him what it was they were after. The man had paid for that lack of respect — as they all would. A little more time, that was all he needed. Time enough to pay one last surprise visit to Yorick, and to allow Thatcher to find the wreck while he was gone. Then he’d go back to the islands, collect what was his, and return to DC — not as a janitor, though. Once he’d paid his respects to Yorick, he thought, smiling in anticipation, and taken control of the situation in the Caribbean, they could kiss his shoes.

  Diggory remembered the first time Yorick had visited him after graduation. The Company had recruited him in the final weeks of his senior year, and he’d moved straight to DC with his few possessions in a cheap suitcase. He hadn’t known what to expect when he heard the three knocks on his door. He’d moved into the rented room in a house on 17th Street SE across from the Congressional Cemetery. The row house was owned by an obese Ukranian woman and the hallways, wallpapered with horrid floral patterns, always smelled like cooked cabbage. But it was the only room he could afford that wasn’t being rented out by blacks, and while he was poor, he wasn’t that desperate.

  Opening the door, he first saw the sleeve of the Italian Merino wool navy suit, followed by the striped tie and then Yorick’s puckered countenance as he surveyed the tiny room. He slid his one good eye up and down Diggory’s worn slacks and polo shirt.

  “A Bonesman living in squalor,” he said. “It’s a disgrace. You’re a fucking disgrace, Priest.”

  “It’s only temporary, sir.”

  Yorick pulled out a fat gold money clip and began peeling off the hundred dollar bills and letting them fall onto the threadbare carpet.

  “That’s not necessary,” Priest said. “I start on salary next week.”

  “Pick it up,” Yorick said.

  The older man focused his eyes on Diggory, who glanced back and forth, trying to remember which was the good eye. Then the lazy eye jerked away. The good eye seared into him. Dig dropped to his knees and began collecting the bills.

  “It’s going to be a while, Priest, before I can pay you any respect — as long as I have to pay to pull you out of the gutter.”

  By the time Dig had collected the last bill, Yorick had started down the stairs. He did not look back.

  Diggory sipped from his wine glass, then turned back from the plane window, and sighed. “It’s going to be a long flight, you know,” he said to her. “Do you want to talk? Just to pass the time?”

  She didn’t reply. In fact, she’d ignored him so long, he was beginning to think about sleep. The nice pinot noir they served in first class was making him drowsy.

  Then the tapping of her nails stopped, and she placed both her hands palms down on the tray table. She faced the seat back in front of him, still not looking at him. “I’ll talk if you’ll give me some answers,” she said.

  “All right. What do you want to know?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it since we were in the car on the way to the airport. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they send you to find me? Why not have Eleanor Wright contact me?”

  “That’s easy. She tried. You weren’t answering your phone. I gather you were outside their signal area. Offshore, perhaps? Anyway, she called the State Department for help locating you. The French authorities had informed our embassy in Barbados when they relieved you of your passport, and since Barbados is my home base these days, they called me. They knew I was in Guadeloupe on company business.”

  “And how did you find me?”

  He smiled. “That, my dear, comes under the heading of trade secrets.”

  She turned to face him for the first time since boarding the plane. He noticed two vertical creases appeared between her eyebrows when she spoke.

  “You trusted me in Lima,” she said.

  “Ah, well,” he said. “That was different.”

  “How so?”

  “Things were different then.”

  “Between us, you mean?”

  “Well, yes.” Sex made all the difference, he thought.

  “We knew what we were doing was wrong.”

  He ran his finger over the skin on her forearm. “But it was right in so many ways.”

  She shivered and drew her arm back. “I wasn’t supposed to know your real job. You were just another trust fund Yank playboy enjoying the lower cost of living south of the border. And yet you asked me to do things for you.” She jerked her head in his direction and flashed him a quick look. “And I’m not talking about those things. I mean work things.”

  He chuckled at her discomfort. She never could talk about it. She never wanted to say those things, and that made it all the more interesting to watch her mouth when she tried. She’d done things to please him. “You were a great help to me.” If you only knew, he thought.

  “I’d convinced myself I was only doing you favors — but,” she said lifting her eyes to his, “it was more, wasn’t it? That last day.” She turned away and spoke to the back of the seat in front of her. “I want to ask, but I’m afraid of what your answer will be.”

  He pasted a wounded expression on his face and leaned forward to try to get into her field of vision. “Riley, how can you think that? Really. I was in —” He stopped. “You’re not going to hit me again if I say that word?”

  “I might. Don’t say it. You know you don’t mean it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  She made a noise as though something had caught in her throat. “The flight’s not that long,” she said.

  Neither of them spoke again for quite a long time. He ordered another glass of wine. He would answer her questions. Soon. But not here. She was petite, but strong and fit, and he couldn’t afford to have her go ballistic on the plane. She flipped through the pages of the in-flight magazine. She wasn’t even looking at the print on the pages. He could feel her mind crawling all over him.

  She startled him when she spoke. “So when we get there, are you going to disappear again?”

  That’s it, he thought. He’d won. She wanted to be with him. She wanted him.

  “We won’t get in until midnight. I have a car and driver meeting us. The weather forecast is for snow. I’ll drive you home so you can get some rest and change.”

  She tugged at her shorts with one hand and felt her tousled hair with the other. “I’m not even dry yet. I’ll freeze dressed like this.”

  “My driver will have blankets in the car.”

  She bit her lower lip and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The worry lines appeared again between her brows. “If I go with you, Diggory, there won’t be any surprises, right?”

  “Absolutely not,” he lied.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  The Atlantic Ocean

  February 13, 1942

  “Bloody hell,” Woolsey said as he wiped the cold sea water off his face.

  Gohin was the first among them to stagger to his feet. Woolsey saw that the muscular French ensign looked dazed, and he was no longer carrying the pistol. As the man standing closest to the rail when the bomb went off, Gohin had been been blown back halfway across the deck and his face was covered with blood. He may have been hit with a large bit of shrapnel or bone, or his nose was just bleeding from the concussion. Either way, he looked a fright.

  Michaut was the first man out of the conning tower, but he was followed by a handful of others.
Though Woolsey could not understand what they were saying, he was glad to hear Captain Lamoreaux answer them with a steady voice. But when Woolsey looked into the captain’s eyes, he saw they were focused not on Gohin, but on the gun that lay on the deck between the two men — the gun that was closer to Woolsey than to either of the Frenchmen.

  The three men on the lower deck moved at once. Woolsey was at a disadvantage because he was sitting on his backside, but he tried to crawl on all fours across the slippery deck. The big French ensign landed on top of him as Woolsey’s fingers closed around the gun, but after receiving a couple fierce jabs to the kidney and a crushing blow to his wrist, Woolsey gave in. He wasn’t much of a fighter. Gohin pulled the gun from Woolsey’s limp fingers and the big Frenchman got to his feet. He delivered one final kick to Woolsey’s ribs as he muttered the word, “Salaud.”

  Woolsey lay curled in a ball struggling to breathe. At Gohin’s order, Michaut and one of the deck officers pulled him to his feet while a couple of sailors grabbed the captain’s arms. They half dragged the two of them across the deck to the ladder, then with Gohin pointing the gun and shouting orders, the men herded Woolsey and Lamoreaux up and down the various ladders and back down the long passage to the door to the hold.

  Inside, Mullins’ body lay where they had left it. Woolsey felt Michaut’s grip tighten on his arm at the sight of it. The sailors released the captain and he began talking to Ensign Gohin in earnest.

  “Michaut, what’s he saying?” Woolsey whispered.

  “He tell Gohin that he know a secret. That he want to talk to Gohin alone.”

  “What’s Gohin saying?”

  “He say Captain want to play trick. He must talk in front of all the men.”

  Michaut stopped talking when the captain began to speak and Woolsey heard several of the men draw their breath in. Then the captain walked over to Woolsey and held out his hand. “Give me your knife,” he said in English.

  Woolsey reached into his pocket and drew out the folded rigging knife. He handed it to Lamoreaux. Walking to one of the wine crates, the captain crouched down and proceeded to pry open the rough wood. He removed what looked like a large, antique, hand-made champagne bottle and held it up for Gohin to see the label. There was something odd about the way he handled the bottle – he held it with two hands as though it were very valuable. Woolsey wondered if he was trying to buy Gohin off with the promise of an exceptional vintage. Just like a frog, he thought. Lamoreaux kept talking, explaining something in French, but when Woolsey looked to Michaut for a translation, he saw the young man’s mouth hanging open and slack, his eyes wide in anticipation. Woolsey was trying to figure out what the old man was up to, when the captain lifted the bottle with a sharp jerk upward, then frapped it down hard on the steel deck. The dark green glass shattered and dozens of shiny gold coins clattered to the deck.