The Admiral's Mark

by Steve Berry

  They left the school and stopped by the Hotel Creole, where Malone learned that Simon had checked out earlier. Most likely, the Austrian was now headed to the airport, unsure of what had happened at the citadelle but glad to be away. He grabbed his bag from the room on the third floor and left, riding with Dubois to the docks and his boat. Along the way, he called and secured a seat on a flight out of Cap-Haïtien to Miami that left in six hours. From there he’d shuttle home to Atlanta.

  “Sorry about getting you into all that danger,” he told Dubois.

  “I get myself into it. I want to help you.”

  “Fortunately, it’s all over, and I appreciate what you did.”

  He sat on the aft deck, beneath a canvas canopy, out of the sun. Most of the other boats were gone, out earning a day’s wage. He hadn’t really noticed much about the boat on the first trip, except for its struggling engine.

  “You need a mechanic,” he said to Dubois.

  “That be me. It makes a lot of noise and smoke, but works. Always has. Scotty help with that. He give me money for parts.”

  And he would, too, when Dubois dropped him at the airport.

  The least he could do.

  “He buy me GPS.”

  “Scott did?”

  Dubois nodded. “He say we need it. He use it some, then leave it with me.”

  He stepped into the forward cabin. Above the wheel, mounted to the old timbers, was a new GPS, wires snaking a path to a power source.

  He wanted to know. “What did Scott do with it?”

  “That’s how he found Santa María.”

  “But you don’t know if that wreck is Columbus’ flagship.”

  And nobody ever would. Most likely, Scott intended to use his find to work another con on somebody.

  “He mark the site with GPS numbers. That’s how I know where it is. He tell me that was secret-agent stuff. But I never believe he is an agent. Just a man who treat me good.”

  His mind swirled. Everything fit into place, except one thing. The paper Scott sent to Ginger. That had been bothering him for the past two days. Why do it? And why would Simon think it important enough to fly to Atlanta for a look?

  Then it hit him.

  How simple.

  So simple that it had almost eluded him.

  He stepped to the aft deck and found the brown envelope in his bag. He removed the page with the Admiral’s mark written across its face and brought it back inside the forward cabin. He switched on the overhead bulb and held the sheet close as the filament heated.

  Slowly, brown numbers materialized.

  Dubois watched carefully and realized. “He use lemon juice.”

  Malone smiled. “That he did. Actually, not a bad way to send a message, if you don’t know it’s there.”

  “I know those,” Dubois said. “They be for the wreck site.”

  “Fire up the engine. I want to go back down.”

  Malone kicked his fins and swam toward the massive hulk of rock with the crack and crevice. He’d come down alone, Dubois staying up top with Schwartz’s gun, keeping a lookout. No other boats had been around, and he wanted to keep it that way. The current today was weaker, but the same shark remained on patrol fifty yards away. The GPS numbers Scott had secretly sent to Ginger had led them straight back here.

  He approached the opening and eased himself inside.

  He examined the timbers in the sand and could see that they’d been hewn, man-made, now petrified by centuries in the water. A few other artifacts lay scattered. What looked like a cup, some nails, belt buckles. This was clearly a shipwreck. Whether it belonged to Christopher Columbus remained to be seen.

  He fanned the sand and stirred up the bottom, revealing what lay a few inches beneath. The storm rose, then settled quickly, the warm water retaining its crystal clarity. A niche caught his eye, but he knew better than to stick his hand there. Some eel might decide a few fingers would make a great lunch.

  Another niche to his right seemed more inviting.

  Shallow, no more than a foot or so deep, the entire interior visible.

  He fanned its sand.

  And saw something.

  Glass.

  A little more stirring revealed more glass.

  He reached down and freed the object.

  A Coke bottle, the top stuffed with a cork and sealed with wax. Inside was a rolled piece of dirt-brown paper, similar in size and color to the other pages of the book he’d bought at the auction. A wax-sealed plastic bag provided an additional measure of protection.

  He’d found the hiding place.

  Risky as hell to leave it underwater, but Scott had never been noted for caution.

  Malone stepped from the car at Cap-Haïtien’s main airport terminal. Dubois had driven him from the docks, and they’d made it here in plenty of time for his flight.

  He shook his friend’s hand and thanked him again.

  “No problem, mon. I glad you come. We solve everything.”

  Not quite everything, but enough.

  He handed Dubois $500. “Fix that engine, okay?”

  “Ah, mon. This be too much. Way too much.”

  “It’s all I have or I’d give you more.”

  They said their goodbyes and he entered the terminal, checking in for his flight.

  Matt Schwartz waited for him just before the security checkpoint.

  “I didn’t think you’d let me leave without saying goodbye,” he told the Israeli.

  “Did you find the page?”

  He nodded.

  “I thought you might. We wondered why you went back out on the boat.”

  “What happened to Simon?”

  “Went straight to the airport and is long gone.”

  “Probably thinking that I had help in the citadelle.”

  “That was the idea. Can I have the page?”

  “I assume you’re not going to let me leave with it?”

  “Payment for the favor I did you with Dubois.”

  He reached into his back pocket and removed the curled page, still in its plastic bag. He’d broken the bottle to free it. The sheet was filled with nineteen lines of writing in faded black ink, along with the mark of the Admiral, just as Simon had described.

  “Can we at least be provided with a copy?” he asked.

  “I don’t suppose you would take my word that none of this is important to anything related to America.”

  “It’s not my nature.”

  “Then that copy you made on the way here should alleviate all of your government’s fears.”

  He assumed Schwartz knew they’d stopped at the hotel on the way to the airport.

  He handed the page over and said, “Any idea what this is? I speak several languages, but I can’t read it. Simon said it was Old Castilian.”

  The Israeli shrugged. “Our people will translate it, as I’m sure will yours.”

  “Simon killed a man for it.”

  “I know. Which makes us all wonder. But people higher up than me will deal with this now.”

  He understood. “Being at the bottom of the pile does come with disadvantages.”

  Schwartz smiled. “I like you, Malone. Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

  “Maybe so.”

  The Israeli gestured with the bag. “Something tells me we’ve not seen, or heard, the last of Zachariah Simon.”

  He agreed.

  “All we can hope,” Schwartz said, “is that next time he’s someone else’s problem.”

  “You got that right.”

  And he headed for home.

  About the Author

  Steve Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson Key, The Emperor’s Tomb, The Paris Vendetta, The Charlemagne Pursuit, The Venetian Betrayal, The Alexandria Link, The Templar Legacy, The Third Secret, The Romanov Prophecy, The Amber Room, and the short stories “The Balkan Escape” and “The Devil’s Gold.” His books have been translated into forty languages and sold in fift
y-one countries. He lives in the historic city of St. Augustine, Florida. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have founded History Matters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving our heritage. To learn more about Steve Berry and the foundation, visit www.steveberry.org.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  THE

  COLUMBUS

  AFFAIR

  by

  STEVE BERRY

  Published by Ballantine Books

  ONE

  TOM SAGAN GRIPPED THE GUN. HE’D THOUGHT about this moment for the past year, debating the pros and cons, finally deciding that one pro out-weighed all cons.

  He simply did not want to live any longer.

  He’d once been an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, knocking down a high six-figure salary, his byline generating one front-page, above-the-fold story after another. He’d worked all over the world—Sarajevo, Beirut, Jerusalem, Beijing, Belgrade, Moscow. His confidential files had been filled with sources who’d willingly fed him leads, knowing that he’d protect them at all costs. He’d once proved that when he spent eleven days in a D.C. jail for refusing to reveal his source on a story about a corrupt Pennsylvania congressman.

  The congressman went to prison.

  Sagan received his third Pulitzer nomination.

  There were twenty-one awarded categories. One was for distinguished investigative reporting by an individual or team, reported as a single newspaper article or a series. Winners received a certificate, $10,000, and the ability to add three precious words—Pulitzer Prize winner—to their name.

  He won his.

  But they took it back.

  Which seemed the story of his life.

  Everything had been taken back.

  His career, his reputation, his credibility, even his self-respect. In the end he came to see himself as a failure in each of his roles—reporter, husband, father, son. A few weeks ago he’d charted that spiral on a pad, identifying that it all started when he was twenty-five, fresh out of the University of Florida, top third in his class, with a journalism degree.

  And his father disowned him.

  Abiram Sagan had been unrelenting. “We all make choices. Good. Bad. Indifferent. You’re a grown man and made yours. Now I have to make mine.”

  And that he had.

  On that same pad he’d jotted down the highs and lows that came after. His rise from a news assistant to staff reporter to senior international correspondent. The awards. Accolades. The respect from his peers. How had one observer described his style? Wideranging and prescient reporting conducted at great personal risk.

  Then, his divorce.

  The estrangement from his only child. Poor investment decisions. Even poorer life decisions.

  Finally, his firing.

  Eight years ago.

  And since then—nothing.

  Most of his friends had abandoned him, but that was as much his fault as theirs. As his depression deepened, he’d withdrawn into himself. Amazingly, he hadn’t turned to alcohol or drugs, but neither had ever appealed to him. Self-pity was his intoxicant.

  He stared around at the house’s interior. He’d decided to die here, in his parents’ home. Fitting, in some morbid way. Thick layers of dust and a musty smell evidenced the three years the rooms had sat empty. He’d kept the utilities on, paid the meager taxes, and had the lawn tended just enough so the neighbors wouldn’t complain. Earlier, he’d noticed that the sprawling mulberry tree out front needed trimming and the picket fence painting. But he’d long ignored both chores, as he had the entire interior of the house, keeping it exactly as he’d found it, visiting only a few times.

  He hated it here.

  Too many ghosts.

  He walked the rooms, conjuring a few childhood memories. In the kitchen he could still see jars of his mother’s fruit and jam that once lined the windowsill. He should write a note, explain himself, blame somebody or something. But to whom? And for what? Nobody would believe him if he told them the truth.

  And would anyone care when he was gone?

  Certainly not his daughter. He’d not spoken to her in two years. His literary agent? Maybe. She’d made a lot of money off him. Ghostwriting novels paid bigtime. What had one critic said at the time of his downfall? Sagan seems to have a promising career ahead of him writing fiction.

  Asshole.

  But he’d actually taken the advice.

  He wondered—how does one explain taking his own life? It’s, by definition, an irrational act, which, by definition, defies rational explanation. Hopefully, somebody would bury him. He had plenty of money in the bank, more than enough for a respectable funeral.

  What would it be like to be dead?

  Are you aware? Can you hear? See? Smell? Or is it simply an eternal blackness? No thoughts. No feeling. Nothing at all.

  He walked back toward the front of the house.

  Outside was a glorious March day, the noontime sun bright. He stopped in the open archway and stared at the parlor. That was what his mother had always called the room. Here was where his parents had gathered on Shabbat. Where Abiram read from the Torah. The place where Yom Kippur and Holy Days had been celebrated. He stared at the pewter menorah on the far table and recalled it burning many times. His parents had been devout Jews. After his bar mitzvah he, too, had first read from the Torah, standing before the room’s twelve-paned windows, framed by damask curtains his mother had taken months to sew. She’d been talented with her hands. What a lovely woman. He missed her. She died six years before Abiram, who’d now been gone for three.

  Time to end the Sagan clan.

  There were no more.

  He’d been an only child.

  He studied the gun, a pistol bought a few months before at an Orlando gun show. He sat on the sofa. Clouds of dust rose then settled. He recalled Abiram’s lecture about the birds and the bees as he’d sat in the same spot. He’d been what—twelve? Thirty-three years ago, though somehow it seemed like last week. As usual, the explanations about sex had been short, brutish, and efficient.

  “Do you understand?” Abiram asked him. “It’s important that you do.”

  “I don’t like girls.”

  “You will. So don’t forget what I said.”

  Women. Another failure. He’d had precious few relationships as a young man, marrying the first girl who’d shown serious interest in him. There’d been a few since the divorce, and none past the downfall. Michele had taken a toll on him, in more ways than just financially.

  “Maybe I’ll get to see her soon, too,” he muttered.

  His ex-wife had died two years ago in a car crash.

  Her funeral marked the last time he and his daughter had spoken, her rebuke still loud and clear.

  Get out. She would not want you here.

  And he’d left.

  He stared again at the gun, his finger on the trigger. He steeled himself, grabbed a breath, and then nestled the barrel to his temple. He was left-handed, like nearly every Sagan. His uncle, a former professional baseball player, told him as a child that if he could learn to hurl a curveball he’d make a fortune in the major leagues. Left-handers were rare. But he’d failed at sports, too.

  He felt the metal on his skin. Hard. Unbending.

  Like Abiram.

  And life.

  He closed his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger, imagining how his obituary would start. Tuesday, March 5th, former investigative journalist Tom Sagan took his own life at his parents’ home in Mount Dora, Florida.

  A little more pressure on the trigger and—

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  He opened his eyes.

  A man stood outside the front window, close enough to the panes for Tom to see the face—older than himself, clean-cut, distinguished—and the right hand.

  Which held a photograph pressed to the glass.

  He focused on the image of a young woman, bound and gagged, lying down, arms and feet extended as if tied.

  He knew th
e face.

  His daughter.

  Alle.