The Columbus Affair: A Novel

by Steve Berry

  And he wondered. Could this poor soul even be motivated to act? Was anything important to him any longer? His background work on Sagan ended a few weeks ago, and there’d been no mention of suicidal tendencies. Obviously, some major life decision had been made. He knew that another manuscript had just been completed, written so anonymously that not even the publisher or the “author” knew Sagan’s identity. The literary agent had suggested the tactic, since it was doubtful anyone would have consented to Sagan even ghostwriting for them.

  That was how complete the downfall had been.

  Five of the seven books Sagan had written became top-ten New York Times bestsellers. Three had been number ones. Critical praise for the cover authors on all seven had been admirable. Which was why, he supposed, work had continued to flow Sagan’s way.

  But apparently, it had all taken a toll.

  This man was ready to die.

  Perhaps he should allow him?

  Or maybe—

  “Your father was the keeper of a great secret,” he said. “A man trusted with information that only a few in history knew.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “I assure you, it is not.”

  He saw that, despite himself, Sagan was intrigued. Maybe there was enough reporter left inside to motivate him one last time.

  So he said, “And it all started with Christopher Columbus.”

  Columbus stood on the pier. The Niña, Pinta, and Santa María rode at anchor in a branch of the Tinto River, near Palos de la Frontera on Spain’s southeastern coast, not far from open ocean. It had taken months to locate, outfit, and man the three vessels, but now all was ready.

  It had to be.

  Midnight was approaching.

  Breaking with custom, Columbus had not waited to board just before the ships sailed. Instead he’d been present all day, personally supervising final preparations.

  “Nearly all are here,” Luis de Torres said to him.

  Eighty-seven crewmen would man the three ships. Contrary to the gossip he’d heard, none was a convict royally pardoned for volunteering. Instead each was fully capable, as no one but true seamen would endure this voyage. There was one Portuguese, one Genoese, a Venetian, and a Calabrian, the rest all Spaniards from in and around Palos. Two representatives of the Crown were included, required by his commission, and he’d already cautioned de Torres to be careful around one of them.

  “Luis.”

  De Torres stepped close.

  “We must have all on board by 11:00 P.M.”

  He knew de Torres understood. After midnight, when it became August 3, 1492, the police, the militia, and the white-hooded Inquisitors would begin their sweep of houses. Jews had been outlawed from France in 1394 and in England since 1290. The edict expelling them from Spain had been signed by Ferdinand and Isabella on March 31. The church had insisted on the move and the king and queen had agreed. Four months had been given to either leave the country or convert to Christianity.

  Time ran out tonight.

  “I fear that we might not make it away,” he whispered.

  Thankfully, it was next to impossible to physically identify a Spanish Jew. Among the Celts, Iberians, Romans, Phoenicians, Basques, Vandals, Visigoths, and Arabs, there’d been a thorough mixing. But that would not deter the Inquisition. Its agents would stop at nothing to apprehend every suspected Jew. Already, thousands had converted, becoming conversos. Outwardly, they attended mass, offered confession, and baptized their children. Inwardly, and at night, they kept their Hebrew names and read from the Torah.

  “So much depends on this journey,” he said to his friend.

  And so much depended on de Torres.

  He was the voyage’s interpreter, fluent in Hebrew, formerly in the employ of the governor of Murcia, a city that once possessed a large Jewish population. But those people were either gone or converted and the governor had no further need of a Hebrew interpreter. De Torres, like a few others in the crew, had been baptized only a few weeks ago.

  “Do you think,” de Torres asked, “that we will find what you seek?”

  Columbus stared out to the dark water and the ships, lit by torches, where men were busy at work.

  The question was a good one.

  And there was but one answer.

  “We have no choice.”

  “Are you saying Christopher Columbus was Jewish?” Sagan asked.

  “He was a converso. That is part of the great secret your father knew. He never told you any of this?”

  Sagan shook his head.

  “I am not surprised. You are not worthy.”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me what I’m worthy of?”

  “You renounced your entire heritage. How could you possibly understand things such as honor? Tradition? Duty?”

  “How do you know I did that?”

  “Is it a lie?”

  “And you?” Sagan said. “A kidnapper? Things like honor mean something to you?”

  “I have staked my fortune and my life to its fulfillment.”

  Zachariah reached into his jacket pocket and found the folded documents. “I need your signature. These will allow lawyers to petition a judge for an order of exhumation on your behalf. I am told it will not be a problem, provided the closest living relative consents. Your daughter has already signed, as the estate’s representative. Of course, she had little choice.”

  Sagan refused to accept either the papers or the pen he offered.

  “There are but a few minutes remaining for me to call and stop those men.”

  He watched as his ultimatum sank in.

  Finally, Sagan snatched the pen and papers and signed.

  He retrieved them and started to leave. “I will need you at the cemetery, in the morning, at 10:00 A.M. An heir must be present. I will have a representative there on my behalf. Do as instructed. Once the exhumation of your father is complete, your daughter will be released.”

  “How do I know that will happen?”

  He stopped, turned, and apprised Sagan with a curious glare. “Because I give you my word.”

  “I feel better already.”

  He pointed at Sagan. “See, there still is some wit left in you.”

  “I need my gun.”

  He held the weapon up. “You can have it back in the morning.”

  “I would have pulled the trigger. I’d be dead right now, if you hadn’t come along.”

  He wondered whom Sagan was trying to convince. “Please, do not fret. You will have another opportunity, after tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  BÉNE WAITED AS ONE OF HIS MEN DUG OUT THE GRAVE. HIS DOGS had returned and now lay placid beneath the trees, basking in the broken sunlight, satisfied from the hunt. His animals were thorough, a talent bred into them long ago. His mother had told him about the chasseurs from Cuba. Small, swarthy men who’d worn open checked shirts, wide trousers, and light straw hats with shallow crowns and broad rims. But it was their shoes that set them apart. They would skin the thighs and hocks of wild hogs then thrust their feet into the raw hide. The pliant became a kind of short boot, which fit close, and lasted for weeks. They wore crucifixes around their tanned necks and were armed only with a machet, sharpened on one side, the other used to beat the dogs. They first came in 1796, forty of them with their hounds, imported to hunt down the Trelawny Town Maroons.

  Which they did.

  With no mercy.

  Hundreds were slaughtered, and the fear of the dogs was born.

  Which he intended to resurrect.

  While gangs sought favor with the poorest in Jamaica’s cities, he’d always cast his lot here, in the windward mountains and, to the west, in the leeward Cockpit country, places where Maroons had existed for four hundred years. And though each ran their community through colonels and elected councils, he liked to think of himself as their collective savior, protecting the Maroon way of life. In return, his compatriots provided men and women to staff his many ventures. True, prost
itution, gambling, and pornography were covert interests, and they made him millions. But coffee was his passion. All around him, on the slopes for many kilometers, grew shrubs of modest height with glossy, dark green leaves. Every year, sweet-scented, white blossoms sprouted and eventually matured into bright red berries. Once ground and boiled they produced what many said was the finest drink in the world.

  Blue Mountain Coffee.

  His ancestors had worked the plantations as slaves. He now owned one of the largest and paid their descendants as employees. He also controlled the main distribution network for all of the remaining growers. His father wisely conceived that opportunity, after a devastating hurricane in the 1950s wiped out nearly every grower. A national board was established, with membership limited and criteria for quality, cultivation, and processing decreed. If not grown within sixteen kilometers of the central peak it was Jamaican Prime, not Blue Mountain Coffee. His father had been right—scarcity bred mystique. And through regulation of the product, Blue Mountain Coffee became valued around the world.

  And made the Rowe family rich.

  His man continued to dig.

  Twenty minutes ago his other lieutenant had returned to the trucks to meet more of his men. They now arrived through the trees leading a blindfolded prisoner—late twenties, a mixture of Cuban and African—hands tied behind his back.

  He motioned and the younger man was shoved to his knees and the blindfold yanked off.

  He squatted close as the man blinked away the afternoon sun.

  The man’s eyes went wide when he saw Béne.

  “Yes, Felipe. It’s me. Did you think you could get away with it? I pay you to watch the Simon. And watch you do. Except you take his money, and then watch me, too.”

  Fear shook the man’s head in violent nervous gestures.

  “Listen to me, and listen real good, ’cause everything depends on it.”

  He saw that his warning registered.

  “I want to know what the Simon be doing. I want to know everything you’ve not told me. Tell wi di trut.”

  This turncoat was of the streets, so patois would be his language.

  Tell me the truth.

  He’d not heard from Simon in nearly two weeks, but he shouldn’t be surprised. Everything he’d learned had only confirmed what he’d long sensed.

  Trouble.

  The Austrian was enormously wealthy, a philanthropic man obviously interested in Israeli causes. But that did not concern Béne. He had no dog in the fight that was the Middle East. He was interested only in Columbus’ lost gold mine—as, supposedly, was Simon.

  “I swear to you, Béne,” Felipe said. “I know nothin’. He tells me nothin’.”

  He silenced him with a wave of his hand. “What you take me for? The Simon does not live here. He knows no one in Jamaica. I’m his partner. That’s what he says. Yet he hires you to work for him, too. Okay. I come to you and pay you to tell the Simon only what I want him to know and to tell me what he does. Yet you tell me nothin’.”

  “He calls me up, pays me to do some things. I do them and he pays. That’s all, Béne. All.”

  The words came fast.

  “But I pay you to tell me di trut. Which you not be doing. You better start talkin’ quick.”

  “He wants records. Papers from the archives.”

  He motioned and one of his men handed him a pistol. He jammed its muzzle into the man’s chest and cocked the hammer. “I give you one more chance. What. Kind. Of. Things.”

  Shock filled the prisoner’s eyes.

  “Okay. Okay. Béne. I tell you. I tell you.”

  He kept the gun firmly against the man’s chest.

  “Deeds. He wants deeds. Old ones. I found one. Some Jew named Cohen bought land in 1671.”

  That grabbed his attention. “Speak, man.”

  “He bought land and all the riverfront property beside it.”

  “The name.”

  “Abraham Cohen.”

  “Why is that so important to the Simon?”

  “His brother. His brother was Moses Cohen Henriques.”

  That name he knew. A 17th-century Jewish pirate. He captured a great Spanish silver fleet in Cuba, then led the Dutch invasion of Brazil. He ended his life on Jamaica, searching for Columbus’ lost mine.

  “Does the Simon know this?”

  He shook his head. “He’s out of touch. Gone. Don’t know where. I swear, Béne. Don’t know. I haven’t told him yet.”

  “And you not tell me, either. This deed you find. Still in the archives?”

  A shake of the head. “I stole it. I have it at my place in Spanish Town. Your men know where dat is. Go get it. Beside my bed. I swear, Béne. Right beside my bed.”

  He withdrew the gun.

  His man digging in the grave had stopped and was motioning.

  He needed time to think so he tossed the weapon to his lieutenant and walked over. In the shallow excavation he spotted a flat chip of stone. On its face was a symbol.

  “Fetch it out,” he ordered.

  His man lifted the fragment and laid it on the ground. He brushed away the dark earth and studied the etching. The Simon had told him to look for a pitcher on a grave marker and a hooked X.

  The chip he stared at had once been part of a tombstone. He lifted the chunk and saw that it fit at the bottom right corner of the marker with the pitcher, its rough edges close enough of a match to convince him.

  He propped the piece up so the prisoner could see the hooked X.

  “You know wa dis bi?”

  “I saw dat on the deed, Béne. On da deed in the archives. The one beside my bed. Simon told me to watch for dat X thing. I did. I did real good, Béne. It’s there. I can still do real good for you, too. I can.”

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work like that. As a child his mother taught him something she’d been taught by her mother, and her mother before that. Maroons wrote little down. The spoken word had been their history book.

  Speak the truth and speak it ever

  ,

  Cost it what it will

  .

  His mother was always right.

  And something else she said.

  To hide a sin was to commit another.

  Felipe was a minor government official who worked at the national archives in Spanish Town. He was somewhat educated and ambitious, but earned barely enough to survive. His main task had been to search the old records for anything on the lost mine. But, when offered the opportunity to work for someone else, this cheater had decided to bite the hand that first fed him.

  Luckily, Felipe had a big mouth.

  Which was appreciated, since knowing the situation had allowed Béne to cultivate a spy of his own.

  He motioned for his man to bring him a phone. Reception in the mountains was excellent and he pressed one of its memory buttons, the number already programmed. Three rings and the man in Vienna answered.

  “What is happening there?” he asked.

  “It’s becoming … complicated.”

  “Maybe it’s time you act.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “Then do it. All’s quiet here.”

  “Good to hear.”

  He clicked off.

  He’d known for the past few days that the Simon was on the move. Things were happening in both Austria and Florida. As to what, he was not entirely sure, but he knew enough to know that his European partner was double-crossing him. To his great fortune, Béne had found a new cemetery, with both a pitcher and a hooked X. Now he had a deed. All of which helped ease the ache of betrayal, and the anxiety he felt for what had to be done.

  His gaze locked on his man with the gun. He held his minion’s eyes for a split second, then gave a nod. The weapon was aimed down and a bullet to the head ended Felipe’s life.

  Speak the truth and speak it ever, cost it what it will.

  “Dump him in the grave and refill the hole,” he said. “Then go bury the don.”

&n
bsp; His dogs never ate what they did not kill.

  “I’m going to Spanish Town.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TOM SAT ON THE SOFA. ZACHARIAH SIMON HAD BEEN GONE FOR over an hour. Ever since, he’d thought of Alle. His only child. Who hated him.

  What happened to them?

  He could not identify one defining moment where the break occurred. Instead, their estrangement had evolved, starting when Alle was in middle school, as she became more aware of the distance between her parents. By high school, their schism was complete.

  Had Michele encouraged it? Not that he could see. No, this was all his doing. He’d hurt his ex-wife beyond measure. Even worse, he’d appeared not to care. That was back in the days when he could do no wrong. When he was invincible. Or so he thought. How many affairs had he had? He shook his head. Too many to count, in too many places. Michele never knew anything for certain. She’d only suspected. Intimacy bred a radar capable of detecting even the slightest emotional change, and Michele’s had eventually identified his betrayal. Unfortunately, he’d been too self-absorbed to care.

  Regrets?

  So many that he was ready to die.

  “Our time is over, Tom.”

  “And Alle?”

  “I’m afraid if you don’t act soon, that relationship will be over, too. You’ve let that slide far too long. She’s seen the pain in my eyes. I can’t hide it.”

  “I’ll fix it with her. I swear to you, Michele. I’ll fix it.”

  But he never did.

  Alle was seventeen when he was fired, his disgrace reported in every media outlet around the world. Unfortunately, patching up his relationship with his daughter had not seemed a high priority at the time. A mistake? Oh, yeah. Big time. But that was eight years of hindsight talking and there was no way to jam that toothpaste back in the tube.

  He could do something now, though.

  He could get her free of Zachariah Simon.

  He’d signed the papers. Tomorrow he’d appear at the cemetery and make sure she was okay.

  After that?

  Finish what he’d started?

  He rubbed his tired eyes with shaking hands and glanced at his watch. 2:15 P.M. Outside was quiet. Most of the people who’d lived in his parents’ neighborhood while he was growing up were either gone or dead. Trees that had then been saplings now towered over everything. He’d noticed driving in that the block remained in good repair. Time had been kind to this place.