“So . . . how did they do it?” Tank asked.
“Don’t know, but here’s the connection: they were both wearing a big gold earring.”
Brenda was fully alert now, spine straight. “Please say you have this guy’s name, his number . . . ”
“He bought a watch and a scarf . . . ”
“And a lobster and steak,” Delilah added.
“And we saved the receipts.”
Chapter Fourteen
Zedekiah Snow
Wednesday morning, decked out in seaman’s blouse and with a pirate scarf upon my head, I joined the crew, lending a hand and no small amount of muscle to hauling on the sheets and trimming the sails as the helmsman brought us about. While I had no intention of stooping to their level of savagery, it seemed my nearly breaking Scalarag’s jaw had at least broken the ice and the crew were beginning to accept me, talking freely in my presence. The talk was, we were heading back for St. Clemens to do a Thursday show. What Thatch intended to do with Andi and me once we got there ––or before we got there –– was the foremost question of my day.
While I blended and sweated with the crew, Andi and Captain Thatch stood on the quarterdeck still digging for treasure in her memory.
“It was a money deal,” she recalled, wide-eyed at the dawn of the recollection. “I . . . I mean, Ben . . . met with some people.”
“Who?”
“Two guys, and they offered him a . . . Wow! A million up front, another million after delivery, all transferred into a secret bank account.”
“HA! I can see it plain, the traitor!”
“Ben was trying to get out. They told him something like, It’s all going to go down and you’re going to go down with it unless you get out now. Get out, take the money, and disappear.”
“Get out? Of what?”
Andi cringed as she shared it. “Whatever you pirates are doing.”
“Two men? Who were they? Who were they working for?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
The Captain put a finger in her face. “Faces. Would you know their faces if you saw them?”
She closed her eyes. “I might. I remember an older guy, and some big tough guy like a hit man. I think he was Asian . . . ”
“Names?”
She shook her head. “Maybe they never told me . . . or Ben. But there was something else . . . ” She winced, trying to remember.
“What, lass?”
“Something to do with a banana peel.”
* * *
The receipts bore the name and signature of a certain Filbert Figg. A few discreet conversations among the St. Clemens merchants led Brenda and Tank to a shop owner who’d shipped some wind chimes to the same Mr. Figg. The shipping address was in Key West, Florida, the closely packed, miles-of-merchants tourist town that was once the haunt of Papa Hemingway. They caught a flight that morning and, after a cab ride through the busy streets and desultory throngs, found themselves at one of a row of houses crammed shoulder to shoulder along the waterfront. The particular model of wind chimes hanging near the front door confirmed they’d found the right place.
Brenda and Tank suspected the name Filbert Figg was an alias, and they were right. The name they’d cross-referenced to this address was actually Zedekiah Snow, and it was his wife Audrey who answered the door. She listened patiently to their story; when they described Andi’s mysterious golden earring, she swung the door wide open. “Please come in. He’ll want to hear this.”
Zedekiah Snow was a small-framed, white haired man in a baseball cap, his eyes crazily disoriented, his visage scarred from an old injury. He appeared to be in the middle of a strange Eastern exercise in the center of the living room, leaning this way, then that, hands holding an invisible bar of some kind, shifting his weight as if negotiating fierce rapids.
“Zed . . . ” said Audrey.
“Not now!”
“You have visitors.”
“Tell them to go away!”
Audrey looked out the front windows. Brenda, Tank, and Daniel followed her gaze and spotted a sailboarder tacking across the wind and jumping the waves. Then they noticed how the sailboarder and Zedekiah Snow were making the very same moves at the very same time.
“Their friend just purchased one of Ben Cardiff’s earrings,” said Audrey. “And now she’s been kidnapped.”
As one, the old man and the sailboarder lost their balance and fell, the sailboarder into the waves, the old man onto the floor. As the sailboarder paddled about in the waves, the old man paddled on the floor, going nowhere. “How can that––? Oh, hold on!” He groped, then grabbed the bill of his hat, yanking it from his head and tossing it aside.
Now moving on his own, the sailboarder gathered up his board and started paddling for shore. Zedekiah Snow quit swimming and felt his way to a chair. He sat down and reached for a pair of dark glasses on the side table.
As he put them on, Audrey donned a pair of glasses from the kitchen counter and turned her gaze upon Brenda, Tank, and Daniel.
“Oh . . . ” said Zedekiah, as if he were now seeing something through the glasses. “Looks like a family!”
Audrey introduced them as just friends.
“You’re not from the government, are you?”
“No sir,” said Tank. “We’re just––”
“I won’t talk to the government. And I thought I was hiding. How’d you find me?”
“Well . . . ” Tank began.
“Never mind. Kidnapped? By whom?”
Tank and Brenda looked at each other. Daniel answered, “Pirates!”
Audrey looked down at Daniel. Zedekiah reacted. “Cute kid. Pirates? Yes, that would be Ben, all right. Large gold earring, was it?”
Brenda and Tank brightened. “Yeah,” said Brenda.
“How’d she get it?”
“She bought it from a store on St. Clemens. The owner of the store was a scavenger and got it off the beach somewhere.”
“Ha!” Snow must have been rolling his eyes behind those dark glasses. “So Ben’s not as clever as he thinks.”
“Sir, I’m sorry to tell you,” said Tank, “Ben is dead. He was murdered.”
Snow deflated a little, his hands plopping on the chair. “So now there’s more to it. What about your friend? Did she wear the earring?”
“Oh yeah,” said Brenda.
“Did she start behaving strangely?”
“She started acting like a pirate,” said Tank.
“There is more to it. Better sit down and tell me the whole story.”
They sat and spoke and Zedekiah Snow listened. When they’d recounted it all, including the kidnapping, the murders of Ben Cardiff and Neville Moore, and the bomb planted in the Conch restaurant, he took a moment to digest it, dry-washed his face, and said finally, “Well, your turn to hear my story, I suppose.”
Audrey sat in another chair right next to him, looking at Brenda, Tank, and Daniel, as Zedekiah began. “You’ve gathered now, I can see you. Tank, the towering muscle man; Brenda, graceful carving in ebony; Daniel, the cherub with a special wisdom. It’s coming into my brain through a Writer, a chip embedded in these glasses here.” He tapped the dark glasses he wore. “And it’s being sent from another chip, a Reader, in Audrey’s glasses. She sees you, the image becomes brainwaves in her head; her glasses convert the brainwaves into a transmittable signal and send that signal through our translator system to my glasses. My glasses convert the signal back into brainwaves in my head, and my brain translates them back into the image she sees. Very simple concept.”
The beachside door opened, and the sailboarder came in.
“Ah! My son Jeremiah! No doubt you noticed our little experiment. We were sailboarding together. Jeremiah, how’d it go?”
The young man was wet and tired, but pleased. “Weird. Like I was you.”
“And you were me!” Zedekiah laughed. To Brenda, Tank and Daniel, “The very first bi-directional mind feed! He sends me his sensory impress
ions through a Reader in his headband, I pick them up through a Writer in that billed cap over there and send back my rusty old skills in riding a sailboard. With bi-directional feed, we share the experience!”
“The problem was deciding just who was driving,” said Jeremiah.
“That can be worked out with practice and mutual agreement. But you see how wonderful this could be? The blind can see through the eyes of their loved ones; the deaf can hear, the paralyzed can walk and old blind cranks like me can even ride a sailboard through the mind and senses of someone else!”
“It’s incredible!” said Brenda.
Zedekiah Snow sank back in his chair. “Mm, and it’s also dangerous, as you have discovered. Your friend Andi has experienced far more than she wanted . . . just as I feared would happen some day. Ben Cardiff and I were associates. Together we perfected the Read/Write system. It was Ben’s idea to plant the Reader and Writer chips in head garments. It held great promise for the blind, the deaf, anyone else who might be denied a fuller life experience. But Ben was a moral weakling, and he came across a scoundrel willing to exploit that weakness: Horatio Thatch?”
Tank and Brenda didn’t recognize the name . . . at first.
“Captain Horatio Thatch?”
Their eyes widened. “The captain from the pirate show!”
“A pirate indeed,” said Snow. “For the tourists and . . . a pirate of a very different kind when it comes to pirating the minds of rich tourists to gain access to their bank accounts and portfolios. Thatch wooed Ben away from me with promises of using our invention to get rich, and, I suppose, that’s what’s happened. Place a pirate hat or an earring or a scarf on a tourist to take a pirate picture, and while they’re smiling and making a memory, all their bank information is downloaded directly from their brain. That’s why Audrey and I were on St. Clemens a month ago –– secretly, we thought. We were checking out what use Ben and Thatch were making of our Read/Write system. Now . . . oh dear, what to do? No doubt you’ve gone to the authorities?” Amazingly, he could see the look on their faces. “Ha! That’s what I thought. The Gate’s already been there. Ohhhh, yes, I know about The Gate. They came to me first, wanting the system. Sell them the system? They’d make worse use of it than the government, prying, spying, pirating! I became Filbert Figg and vanished. But Ben was still available, I see. He cut a deal, I suppose, and the deal went south somehow––” Suddenly he appeared stricken by a revelation. “Ahhhh yes! Would you like to hear an excellent guess?”
Brenda and Tank nodded knowing he could see them.
“Ben struck a deal to sell The Gate the technology. To show what it could do, he left a Writer earring at a drop point on the beach for The Gate to pick up. Then, wearing the Reader earring himself, he intended to transfer his memory, all the vital information, to The Gate through the system, his Reader to the Writer they supposedly had. Except . . . ”
Tank spoke the conclusion, “Except Neville Moore the shopkeeper found it first, and Andi got the earring instead!”
“And so The Gate was out their money and thought Ben had swindled them, so Ben came to an ignominious end, and now . . . ” Zedekiah laughed, either at the trickery of the events or at his own cleverness. “And now, it is not The Gate who has all of Ben’s knowledge and the technology, and it’s not Thatch and his pirates either; it is Andi who has it all in her head!” Then he stopped laughing. “Oh dear. That doesn’t bode well for her, does it?”
Chapter Fifteen
The Wild Man
That evening, I was back in leg irons in my compartment, awaiting dinner. The irons could have been a stage prop at one time, but they were functional now, rendering me helpless. I suspected, I hoped, that their ultimate function was to encourage Andi’s cooperation and nothing beyond that.
But by now I just couldn’t be sure.
* * *
“We’ve been good to your friend the prof,” the Captain told Andi. “Each day, each hour he’s still breathing, he’ll have you to thank for it. Remember that.”
Andi was seated before the computer screen again, looking through screens, menus, drop-downs, with the Captain and Sparks looking over her shoulder. “It all looks familiar.”
His hand was on her shoulder. “We need the numbers, the pass codes to access the bank accounts.”
“Don’t you have them written down somewhere?”
“Ben did, and now he’s gone and the records with him.”
“So . . . ” Andi kept looking. “Looks like you can’t always have it your way after all.”
His grip on her shoulder tightened. It hurt. “Don’t let that thought cross your mind. I’ll have what I want.”
Well, everyone has their tipping point. Andi was reaching hers. Even while grimacing with the pain she told him, “As if brute force is going to make you right in the grand scheme of things?” She twisted in her chair to look him in the eye, batting away his grip. “You may be captain of this ship, but it’s a mighty big ocean. You may scoff at God and Truth, but this system runs on Truth, on rules of physics and mathematics that must be obeyed whether you like it or not, and if I’m going to solve this problem it’s going to be according to those rules, not yours. Now back off!”
As if grudgingly conceding her point, he straightened, giving her space, and crossed his arms, removing physical threat. “Well then. Where do we stand according to these . . . rules?”
As if the momentary distraction had freed up her mind, she thought of using another path to the files. She scrolled, she clicked. “Oh, oh, ohhh, looky here!”
“Ah!”
“Recognize them?”
“Yes!” He chuckled and this time patted her shoulder.
Sparks patted her other shoulder. “These are the bank accounts, with their codes!”
She began to scroll down the screen. “Yes! This is the code for Switzerland . . . and this is the code for France . . . for England . . . Japan . . . Germany . . . and this link takes you to the server in New York. Wow!”
“Keep going, lass,” said the captain. Then he added chillingly, “Professor McKinney is counting on you.”
She rolled her eyes but he didn’t see it.
There was a commotion below, enough to make the beams quiver: Blows, boots, the clatter of a plate, the creak of an old door. There was that scream again! Footsteps thundered up the passage just outside.
The Captain bolted to the door. “Scalarag! What’s--”
A body collided with the Captain and he reeled into the passageway. For a terrifying instant, a ragged wraith leaned in the doorway, eyes white and crazy, hair an explosion, squeaking out a laugh and babbling gibberish as the air carried the stench of feces and urine. Andi shied back into a corner. Sparks grabbed up a chair to shield himself.
With a maniacal cry, the creature bolted, leaped over the fallen Captain and ran up the passage, and it was only now that Andi realized who it was –– Jean-Pierre DuBois, the flamboyant French buccaneer! He’d not been seen since the Captain handed him Andi’s gold earring and he took it below decks. Moments after that came the first scream, undoubtedly from this same wretch who was clearly out of his mind.
“Spikenose!” the Captain bellowed.
The little cook, nose bleeding, bounded up the passageway. “He jumped me! I was bringing him his dinner and he jumped me!”
“All hands,” yelled the Captain. “Lay hold of that madman!”
“Captain!”
Thatch looked at Spikenose impatiently.
“He has my pistol!”
Both men thundered up the passageway and Sparks followed as the whole ship came alive with shouts, stomps, running.
Andi, overwhelmed with curiosity, hurried topside in time to see Norwig the Bean and Sparks sprawled on the deck, second best in a tangle with DuBois the maniac who now scrambled about the deck and up to the forecastle, chased by Rock and Scalarag. DuBois was swinging from the shrouds, hurling things, screaming, laughing. Finally, with Rock and Norwig guarding one set o
f steps and Scalarag and Sparks the other, he was trapped on the forecastle. The Captain stepped forward and tried to talk sense, but DuBois drew Spikenose’ pistol from his belt and took aim. The Captain ducked aside just as the weapon went off with a loud report and a puff of blue smoke. A lead ball blasted a splinter out of the main mast, ricocheted off the deck and broke out a window of the Captain’s quarters.
At that, Captain Thatch drew his own pistol even as DuBois drew a sizable knife. Stepping up on the rail, DuBois leaped at the Captain.
The Captain fired. DuBois took a lead ball through the neck and tumbled onto the deck squirting blood. Andi looked away.
When she looked again, the Captain stood over DuBois, cursing. The men came running. Scalarag knelt by the Frenchman trying to stop the bleeding, but the damage was done, exceedingly. Rock looked at DuBois, at the Captain. “Those . . . those were live rounds!”
The Captain slowly replaced his pistol. “Spare me the act, Rock. You’re not surprised.” He looked around the horrified circle, eyeing their pistols. “Nor any of the rest of you, I’ll wager!”
Scalarag stood, blood all over him. DuBois was dead.
“He was my friend,” said the Captain. “It was Ben did this to him, but we’ve made it square.”
“What . . . ” Norwig was trembling. “What are we gonna do?”
The Captain started for his quarters. “Think it through, mates. I have. We hold course for St. Clemens. There’s big money to be made.”
“But . . . ” said Rock, “what about––?”
“Tie him to some weights and throw him over the side.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Mind Pirates (Harbingers Book 10) Page 6