Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She was yelling some gibberish at him in French and her father started their way, so Spyder grabbed Pinky’s arm and yelled, “Come on!” They took off running down the steep road.

  His damn brother sure as hell wasn’t any kind of athlete. He looked like an injured pelican as he waddled down the hill, his arms flapping like wings. Lucky for them, the parents were too busy drying the little cunt’s tears to take off after them. Probably decided against it since the day was too hot and they were too fat.

  So, they didn’t get a ride down the hill, but it had been worth it. Once they rounded the first hair-pin switchback, he and his brother slowed to a walk and Spyder began to whistle “The Eddystone Light,” a tune he’d picked up one summer working on a shrimper.

  From high up on the side of the hill, they had a great view looking down on the harbor. Spyder watched the ferry thread its way through the anchored boats. He hoped Thor was on it. Even if the dude was a total douchebag, it would cure this boredom to have something happen.

  “That was a dumb move,” Pinky said between wheezing breaths.

  Spyder rounded on his brother and grabbed a handful of fabric at the front of his shirt. “Fuck you, Pinky. You just wish you’d got a good feel like I did.” He cackled and released his brother. Then he rounded on him again and put his finger in his brother’s face. “And don’t you never call me dumb again.”

  “You ain’t got no discipline, Spyder. That’s your problem. And we’re gonna need discipline if we ‘spect to take this Thor dude. He knows his shit. ‘Stead of sitting around drinking up the last of the liquor on the boat and coming up here to feel up some French chick, you and me need to be figuring our way out of this. It ain’t gonna be easy to kill a dude like Thor.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Aboard the Savannah Jane

  March 29, 2008

  6:35 p.m.

  Riley sat sideways on the bench seat on the bow of the yacht Savannah Jane, leaning back on her elbows, her feet propped up on the cushion. The flight on Hazel’s private jet had taken four hours, with another hour spent dealing with the officials on both ends. Niko’s captain had arranged for a launch to ferry them out to the yacht. Riley had seen these big, white, multi-storied yachts that looked more like wedding cakes than boats, but she had never been aboard one. If Dig was keeping watch on the airport at Pointe-à-Pitre, as she assumed he was, he would never know they were already back down in the islands.

  It felt good to get out into the warm Caribbean night once more — to enjoy the star-splashed sky away from the big city lights. From the moment the crew had anchored here in Marigot Bay, she’d been feeling cooped up inside the yacht. Theo told them when they’d contacted him earlier via the long distance single sideband radio that Spyder Brewster was keeping watch on the bay, so neither she nor Cole had dared venture on deck in daylight. They’d decided to wait until well after dark before making the dinghy transfer across to their own boats. Thankfully, Bonefish looked safe and secure when they’d entered the bay.

  She had left Cole asleep on one of the settees in the cabin below after Hazel and Niko had retreated with their drinks to the afterdeck. She smiled again at the memory of those early morning hours spent in that big colonial four poster. She had only slept, at most, a couple of hours, curled up in a spooning position in Cole’s arms, his cheek resting against her back. She knew she should be inside the cabin catching up on her sleep, too, but she was too buzzed. She felt as though electricity were humming through her veins and firing off hundreds of random synapses in her brain.

  Much as she wanted to revel in the memory of her early morning love-making, Riley could not forget the sound she’d heard when Dig wrenched her father’s head to one side. Yesterday, in order to survive and get through the day, she had tried to stuff her sorrow into a compartment and shut it out. It was time to face it. Diggory Priest had murdered her brother and her father. And he intended to kill her next. Not only did she need to stop him, but she intended to stop the entire organization that had set this moment in motion. To do that, they would need to get to Surcouf first.

  She and Cole had spent most of the day with their heads bent together pouring over the journals he had brought with him in the duffel he carried. She listened as he explained his thoughts about the calendar paperweight and what this clue from his father might mean. Cole was certain they were looking for a date that when entered into the calendar would produce the name of the day of the week. If they did try the date of the supposed End of Days according to the Mayan calendar, the day of the week when the world was supposed to end 12-21-12 was a Friday. But what did that tell them?

  Riley was more inclined to think the paperweight would relate to one of the coins or an earlier puzzle that the elder Thatcher had sent his son. She’d asked Cole to compile a list of all the types of coins, ciphers and puzzles his father had sent him. But it turned out all the dates on the coins were outside the forty year range of the calendar.

  From out in the darkness, Riley heard the noise of an outboard cranking over, and when she glanced off the big yacht’s starboard quarter, she saw the single white light of a dinghy pulling away from Shadow Chaser. That would be Theo coming over for dinner, she thought. Hazel had invited him to join them when they’d spoken on the radio earlier.

  Riley got up and headed aft to welcome Theo aboard, but Cole was already there ahead of her leaning on the aft rail watching the dinghy approach the broad swim step. She admired his dark silhouette backlit by the glow of the underwater lights that turned the water around the stern a brilliant blue.

  “Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” she said.

  Cole turned around and in the pale glow of the lights. “Hey, Magee.” He opened his arms and she stepped up and kissed him, placing her hands on his waist and then sliding them up his back as she moved into his embrace. She was only three or four inches shorter than he was and their bodies fit together so well, she rolled her hips against him in a playful little hula. He broke off the kiss and whispered, his breath hot on her ear, “That’s what I like about you, Magee. You get straight to the point.”

  “We have this Marine Corps motto,” she said as she wrapped one leg around his back side. “When in doubt, empty the magazine.”

  Below them, they heard the outboard engine cut off. That was followed by a thud, then the sound of feet scrambling on the teak swim step and muttered curses. Riley slid out of his embrace and leaned over the rail. Behind her, she heard Cole groan. Below her, Theo lay sprawled on the swim step, the dinghy painter wrapped around one of his legs.

  Cole appeared at the rail next to her. He cleared his throat. “Nice landing,” he said.

  “You can see right into the engine room down here. Damn distracting.” Theo untangled the mess, tied off the line, and climbed up the curving staircase to the afterdeck.

  “Still don’t understand,” Cole said, “how you can build almost anything with those hands, but you have trouble putting one foot in front of the other.”

  Theo wasn’t listening to him. He was surveying the large after deck with mini bar and the glass doors that led into the luxurious interior. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad, at all. These friends of Captain Riley know how to travel.”

  “She’s a Horizon Elegance Ninety-Four. Just launched a year ago,” Cole said.

  “She’s got twin cats with over fifteen hundred horse power each,” Riley said. “We’ll introduce you to the captain, and he can show you around the bridge and engine room later.”

  “Sweet!”

  “Glad you approve, my man.” Cole slapped him on the back.

  The door to the main salon slid open and Hazel poked her head out. “You must be Theo. Welcome aboard.” She stepped out onto the deck and shook his hand. “Your timing is impeccable. Dinner is about to be served.” She waved them inside.

  When Hazel was out of earshot, Theo whistled a low appreciative note.

  “Slow down, island boy,” Cole said.
“She’s got a boyfriend.”

  “A fellow can look, though, eh? Wow!”

  Riley sighed. “She always has that effect on men.”

  Cole turned to Riley, smiled and extended his arm. “After you,” he said.

  As she entered the salon, Riley heard Theo’s hushed voice say, “It’s about time the two of you figured it out.”

  “Figured out what?”

  “That you two needed to stop knocking heads and start knocking boots.”

  “What are you talking about?” Cole said.

  Theo laughed and shook his head. “Mon, it’s written all over your face.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Aboard the Savannah Jane

  March 29, 2008

  7:35 p.m.

  The meal reminded Riley of the many embassy dinners she had attended with her family when she was a child, only here they were five at a table that could have seated twelve. The stewardess in her crisp white uniform delivered food that looked almost too pretty to eat: fresh conch salad garnished with orchids, spicy callaloo soup, Vietnamese swordfish curry, jasmine rice, chocolate lime rum cake. It had been years since she had seen a spread like that and judging from the looks on the faces of the guys sitting on either side of her, it may have been the first time for Cole and Theo.

  The dining table was separated from the plush couches and chairs of the main salon by a low, burled wood counter atop which sat a gorgeous floral arrangement. Opposite the dining table, a carved wood bar sported a gold-plated beer tap, and throughout the yacht the teak and holly floors were partially covered with thick Persian rugs. Riley had spent part of the passage across from Antigua roaming the yacht and talking to the crew. Now, she found it awkward to sit and let them wait on her. When the coffee was delivered, she asked Hazel to invite the chef and crew out for their thanks.

  “You’re kidding,” Theo said when the chef turned out to be a pretty, petite redhead named Victoria who looked barely twenty years old. “You did all that?” She blushed crimson at their applause and hurried back to the galley.

  Niko offered them after dinner drinks, but Riley and Cole declined, instead asking for another espresso. “If we’re going to sail out of here soon,” Riley said, “we’ll need clear heads.”

  Hazel said, “We watched you two all day pouring over that book and scribbling on paper. Have you figured out where you’re going yet?”

  Riley glanced at Cole and then back to Hazel. “Not exactly. But I was thinking about it when I was out looking at the stars this evening, and there is something in the journals I want to check .”

  Cole stood up. “I’ll get it.” He returned a few minutes later with the last volume of his father’s journals, several sheets of paper, pencils, and the marble paperweight. He pushed their coffee cups aside and spread them out on the tablecloth.

  “May I see that?” Niko asked, reaching across the table to indicate the paperweight.

  “Sure.” Cole handed it to him.

  Riley reached for the journal as the two men played with the device. She turned to the page with the odd song and read it over one more time.

  “Ah, I see,” Niko said. “Hazel, darling, did you see this? Isn’t it clever?”

  Hazel grinned across the table at Riley. “Where did you say you found this little treasure?”

  “We dug it up on Dominica. Cole’s father left him these journals and buried that for Cole to find.” She pointed to the calendar. “But now, we don’t know what he wanted us to do with it.”

  “What did you find out at the library?” Theo asked.

  “Nothing that will help us,” Cole said. “Riley and I went over and over that on the plane this morning. Most scientists don’t think there’s anything significant about the date when the calendar ends.”

  “Oh yeah,” Hazel said. “The world is supposed to end sometime in 2012?”

  Riley turned the journal around and slid the book across the tablecloth so Hazel could see Thatcher’s last entry.

  Theo reached across the table and pointed to the text. “You see this line where he writes, ‘Wits end is where I am. Spent a bit of time there. Expect to be there til the end of days.’ Cole thought because he mentioned end of days, that might mean we should set the calendar for that date.”

  Cole took the device from Niko and turned the top plate carefully, lining up the months and years. “So, you see that when we set the month for December under the year 2012, we see that the 21st day will fall on a Friday. But we can’t figure out what Friday might mean – if anything. This afternoon, Riley and I asked your captain for charts and maps of Guadeloupe and Dominica, and there isn’t any place name on either island that uses the word Friday.”

  “Or the French word vendredi,” Riley added.

  Hazel pointed to the page in the journal. “What is this song here?” She read the words aloud.

  “Fais pas do do, Cole mon p’tit coco, Fais pas do do, tu l’auras du lolo, Yayd d’dir, Y’did yd, Jamais fais do do. Riley, what language is that middle part?”

  “I thought at first that it was some kind of Creole phrase. But I had another idea this afternoon. Let me check.” She ran her fingers under the letters of the two odd lines and counted under her breath. “Hmm. Both lines have an even number of letters.”

  Cole stepped from behind her chair and stood at the head of the table. He pulled the book closer. “So what are you getting at?”

  “Well, coordinates on a chart are always in pairs. Like latitude and longitude.”

  “Oh no,” Theo said. “Not again.”

  “Riley,” Cole said, “Theo and I have been trying to get longitude and latitude coordinates out of those two lines for months now. We’ve tried everything.”

  “But what if they were coordinates on a different sort of graph? Remember when I was asking you this afternoon about the different puzzles your father sent when you were a boy? You mentioned one called a Polybius square or checkerboard.”

  “What in the world is that?” Hazel said.

  Cole rubbed his hand across the whiskers on his cheek in a gesture she was getting to know that meant his brain was jumping ahead. “It’s a bifid cypher that uses a pair of letters or numbers in the cipher text to represent one single letter of plain text,” he said. “For a Polybius square, you create a five by five grid and fill in the letters of the alphabet.”

  “You lost me at bifid cipher,” Hazel said.

  “Here, I’ll show you. Riley, grab a pencil.”

  She picked up a pencil and pulled a blank sheet of paper to her.

  “Now draw a big square,” he said, “and make five columns then five rows across.”

  Riley began sketching the grid.

  “That gives us twenty-five boxes, but there are twenty-six letters in our alphabet, so start filling in the squares with the alphabet. You can put the last two, Y and Z, on the same square.”

  Riley filled the squares with letters as he talked.

  “Are you all with me so far?”

  They nodded.

  Cole picked up the pencil when she had finished and began using it as a pointer. “Then you select two five-letter words and write them along the outside horizontal and vertical edges. So let’s say your cipher text is AF; you find the A row in the word on the left side and the F column from the word on top. Then follow down to the square those two coordinates lead you to. The key to the cipher is knowing what those two words are.”

  Hazel leaned back in her chair. “How on earth are you going to figure out which words to use?”

  Theo said, “Too bad Friday is a six letter word.”

  The five of them sat there is silence staring at Riley’s sketch.

  “Wait,” Riley said. “Theo’s got something. Look at those lines in the song. The only letters used are RIDAY. Cole, give me that pencil.”

  He handed it to her, and Riley added an additional row and column to her box making it six by six. Then she wrote the word FRIDAY down the left side of the page. She used th
e same F in the top corner and wrote RIDAY across the top. When she was finished, she presented the paper to Cole.

  “Riley, you’re brilliant!” Cole said. He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth.

  She felt her brain short circuit and flicker for a moment like the lights did during a power surge.

  Cole rested his elbows on the table again, pencil in hand. “Theo, read me the letter pairs from the song chorus.”

  “Okay. Ya.”

  Cole found the intersection of the Y row and the A column. On another sheet of paper, he wrote the letter X.

  “Then yd.”

  Cole repeated the process and wrote the letter W.

  When Theo finished reading him the letters, Cole looked at what he had written: XWMFWHW.

  “Does that mean anything to anybody here?” he asked.

  They all shook their heads, but nobody said a word. Riley felt sure they were close, but they’d missed something.

  Finally Cole broke the silence. “Well, it was a good idea, Riley. But you know, it’s getting late.”

  Riley tried to think like James Thatcher, the man who lived in the ’Tween.

  Cole pushed the paper aside and stood. “If we want to shake the Brewsters, we’ve got to leave tonight early enough to get a good head start.”

  Hazel looked up at him. “But where will you go?”

  “Wait a minute,” Riley said. She had not stopped staring at the Polybius square she had drawn.

  “Riley, it’s already nearly ten,” Cole said.

  She pointed to the grid. “What if we use the coordinates backwards?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, instead of latitude and then longitude, what if we use them the other way around? Your father was trying to prevent people like Diggory Priest from finding this. He wouldn’t have made it easy.”

  Cole shrugged. “It’s worth a try.” He dropped back into his chair.