When he got back to his serving station near the great hall, Barnaby was standing near it holding the leash of the Yorkshire terrier.
“Good cover,” said Macaulay before relieving the other bartender.
He waited until there was no one left on the drink line and then knelt behind Barnaby in front of the cellar door lock. Inserting the skeleton key on the end of the fillet knife, he tried to feel his way to a point where enough ridges on the key would engage the pins that turned the cylinder. Moving it in and out, he kept turning it in his hand.
“May I have a glass of red wine?” asked someone behind him. Leaving the key inside the lock behind the bulk of Barnaby, he poured the woman a glass of wine and then knelt again at the lock.
“I think the dog needs to urinate,” said Barnaby as it nuzzled his pants leg. “Hurry up.”
Macaulay felt the cylinder begin to move deep inside the lock. He heard a distinct set of clicks and watched the bolt recede.
“We’re in,” said Macaulay. “Wait for me to give you the word and be careful. If he’s down there, he’s probably being guarded.”
When everyone in sight around the serving station appeared to be occupied with other guests, he said, “Now.”
When Macaulay turned to look back at the door a few seconds later, Barnaby and the dog were gone.
TWENTY-EIGHT
29 May
Casa Grande Brugg
Dunmore Town
North Eleuthera
Bahamas
The stone steps were cut out of sedimentary rock and led down in a rough circular pattern into the darkness. Barnaby had remembered to bring along a handheld fire stick used to ignite Sterno fuel under the chafing dishes.
The duchess’s Yorkshire terrier seemed content to lead the way, and the tiny candle flame gave him enough light to see a few feet in front of him. The reverberating sound of the music from the orchestra slowly diminished to nothing as he reached a depth of twenty feet below the main floor of the mansion. He could hear water dripping from the rock ceiling as he found the bottom step. There was a dank smell in the air.
The dog seemed to know where it was going and it pulled him ahead into the gloom.
A solid steel door emerged in the flame of the fire stick. The door was embedded in the rock wall. There was no keyhole. If it was locked from the inside, there would be no way for him to open it. While he waited uncertainly, the dog went into a crouch and peed on the rock floor.
Come what may, there was no alternative but to find out what was behind it, he decided. He slowly turned the large brass knob and pulled on it. The door came open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Beyond the opening was only more blackness.
When he took a step forward, an automatic switch suddenly bathed the room in brilliant light, and Barnaby could only stand dumbstruck. The enormous chamber was as big as an NFL locker room and both clean and dry. He could feel fresh air flowing into his face from a source that apparently kept the chamber at a constant temperature with controlled humidity.
It wasn’t a torture chamber as Bob Littlefrost had thought. It was a vast exhibition hall, and all the exhibits were exotic birds, each one mounted in situ in its own glass resting place. Some display cases held ten or more birds of the same species. Engraved brass nameplates identified not only the species, but the date of their capture and subsequent stuffing by Juwan Brugg.
It struck Barnaby as ludicrously ironic that many of them bore the same names as the ones he had seen in the photographs in the great hall, including the Kirtland’s warbler, the West Indian tree duck, and the Bahama swallow. If the visual evidence was to be believed, Brugg was a one-man destruction squad for the cause they were celebrating upstairs.
Barnaby took the time to explore the rest of the chamber, looking for other passageways that might lead to where Carlos was confined. The one room was all there was. When he looked around for the Yorkshire terrier, he saw that it had lain down on the carpeted floor and was fast asleep. Barnaby left him there.
• • •
It was getting too dark for Chris Kimball to see any distance with his binoculars from the reclining chair on the foredeck of Trader’s Bluff. Harbor activity had remained quiet through the afternoon and the evening.
At one point, a local police boat had slowly crisscrossed the harbor checking the hull numbers on each craft and doing random inspections aboard some of the vessels. They stopped briefly alongside the Island Time but ignored Trader’s Bluff. Otherwise the only activity close by had consisted of the ten-year-old boys hawking coconut juice from their old skiff.
They were on their way back again. As he watched through the binoculars in the rapidly falling darkness, the boy manning the oars rowed it over to the Island Time. It was moored only thirty yards away from the Hatteras and Kimball thought about shouting to them that no one was aboard.
Then it struck him that the boys already knew there was no one aboard. They had been working the yachts all afternoon and their supply of coconuts was gone. Kimball had bought one himself.
When the skiff pulled alongside Island Time, one of the boys climbed onto the stern deck and raised the lid of the stern locker. A few moments later, he tossed something to the boy on the skiff.
The boy on the boat disappeared into the darkness under the roof of the wheelhouse. Kimball hoped that Carlos had secured the hatchway down to the cabin as he decided to use the boat’s portable air horn for a few seconds to frighten them off.
Kimball was raising the air horn to issue a quick blast when Island Time disappeared in a blinding flash of brilliant light. A searing wave of heat hurled him backward into the front windshield of the Hatteras.
The explosion silenced any sound in his ruptured eardrums. He tried to sit up. A shard of metal, maybe six inches long, was embedded into his left arm. Still in shock, he glanced down at it, wondering how it had gotten there.
He could see small objects raining down from the sky and landing all over the deck. His arm began to pulse with pain, then his flash-burned face. As he sat immobilized against the cracked windshield, he looked back at the mooring where Island Time had been tethered.
There was nothing left of it or the boys’ skiff.
• • •
Lexy stood in the bedroom shared by Varna and Juwan and stared at the photographic reproduction of a young Juwan on the cover of Sports Illustrated that filled one entire wall. Varna was explaining to the tour guests the manufacturing effort that had gone into constructing their ultra-king-size bed.
“Looks rather inviting, doesn’t it?” whispered the duke of Lancaster in her ear.
Gently removing his hand from around her waist, she walked across the room and stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the compound. In the distance, she could hear what sounded like police sirens out in the harbor. The fourth-floor balcony ran ten feet in both directions, and she quickly moved away from the opening.
Emile Bardot watched her disappear into the dusky evening. It was clear to him now that she did not enjoy the inebriated groping of the old royal. What she probably needed was some French persuasion. He was about to follow her out when he felt his smartphone begin to silently vibrate in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.
Turning away from the tour guests, he looked down to see the text message from Sir Henry Pindling in Nassau. Chinese arrive in thirty minutes—North Eleuthera airport—Private jet—Zhou’s son plus twenty commandos—see data link.
The data link consisted of descriptions of the three people being sought by the Chinese oligarch Zhou Shen Wui. There were grainy photographs of two of them. The retired air force general looked very young to have earned the rank. Bardot thought he bore a possible resemblance to one of the bartenders he had noticed downstairs. He wasn’t sure about the second man, who was identified as an English archaeologist. The third photograph was crystal clear. The subject in it was standin
g thirty feet away from him.
Bardot pulled Juwan aside for a few moments.
“From Sir Henry . . . the Chinese will be here shortly,” he whispered. “They are accompanied by a military team.”
Juwan nodded and turned back to his guests.
• • •
From the bedroom balcony, Lexy looked down at the lushly landscaped compound. She had gone out there in the hope that the balcony would provide a vantage point for observing the guard barracks. None of the other rooms they had visited on the tour permitted a view of it through the dense foliage surrounding the house.
The balcony rose far above the trees and Bob Littlefrost had told her where the guard barracks was located in relation to the house. She found it immediately. The brick building was two stories high and hidden from the mansion by the dense screen of banana trees, coconut palms, and eucalyptus trees.
Gazing down at it, she could see a small cone of light at the front entrance and a second at the rear. Three guards in shorts and T-shirts were standing outside the front entrance smoking marijuana. The distinctive smell of it wafted over the trees.
Behind her in the bedroom, she could hear the other tour guests leaving.
“Thank you for taking the time to join us on the tour of our modest home,” she heard the little partner of Juwan Brugg say. “Dinner will now be served in the great hall.”
She wondered if the duke would come out to retrieve her from the balcony and hoped that the duchess might have reined him in when she saw two figures at the rear of the guard barracks move into the cone of light.
The first person was enormous, almost as broad as tall. The second one was wearing one of the red-and-white security guard uniforms and he was carrying something over his shoulder.
It was covered by a sheet, but at one point the cloth dropped away and she saw that it was another man. He appeared to be naked and was clearly overweight. It couldn’t be Carlos, she thought, as the two figures merged into the darkness for several moments, only to reemerge into the dim lights of the barracks parking lot.
While the first figure went on ahead, the guard carrying the body opened the rear hatch of a black panel van and dumped the man inside. After closing the hatch, he followed the first figure toward the mansion house.
“I could not allow you to miss the most exciting part of the tour, mademoiselle,” said a voice behind her.
She turned and saw the man in the white suit with the scars on his cheeks.
“I was just admiring the lovely view,” she said, smiling at him. “I lost track of time.”
“I doubt that, Dr. Vaughan,” he said.
“You must have me confused—”
“Hardly,” he said, holding up his smartphone. “The photograph does not do you justice. Please know that I have no interest in harming you. I simply wish to know why you and your colleagues are so incredibly valuable to our Chinese friends.”
Pulling out a slender object from his side pocket, he pressed down on it and a stiletto blade snapped into position.
“If you will follow me, Dr. Vaughan,” he said.
They descended the staircase to the third floor with the knife held flat against her back and he led her down a side passageway. At the first door they came to, he stopped to unlock it with a key from his chain and nudged her inside. The fluorescent ceiling lights came on automatically. He locked the door behind him.
To Lexy, it looked like nothing more than a large storeroom. Aside from a table and chairs, it had shelves on two walls filled with canned goods and bottles. A stainless steel commercial refrigerator unit occupied most of the back wall.
“Please sit down and enjoy the view,” said Bardot, motioning her toward one of the chairs.
Stepping to a circuit breaker panel behind him, he flipped one of the switches. A floor panel made of solid steel began to slide back to reveal a four-foot-square opening. She leaned forward to look down through it. The room was directly over the saltwater aquarium.
“A bit melodramatic, I will admit,” said Bardot. “Juwan was inspired to build the aquarium after watching an early James Bond movie. No one thought about how the creatures were going to be fed until it was finished. This is their supply room. You would be quite amazed at the quantity and variety of the meals they consume every day.”
TWENTY-NINE
29 May
Casa Grande Brugg
Dunmore Town
North Eleuthera
Bahamas
Macaulay watched as the tour group led by Brugg came back down the main staircase and began to disperse into the great hall. The duchess of Lancaster separated from her husband and came toward him.
“Where is Winifred?” she asked with a worried tone, looking around for her Yorkshire terrier.
“She needed to relieve herself,” said Macaulay with a reassuring grin. “It’s raining quite hard, so I asked one of the staff to take her for a walk on the covered terrace.”
“Excellent,” she said. “I’ll be back to pick her up as soon as we finish dinner. I am certain that she will wish to repay your kindness with a special gratuity.”
“Thank her for me, Your Grace,” he said, glancing back up the empty staircase and wondering why Lexy had not returned with the others.
As the orchestra began to play a Strauss waltz, Varna led Juwan by the hand into the center of the great hall. The crowd of guests parted to let them through. They had practiced the dance together for two weeks.
When they reached the dance floor, Juwan felt Varna’s right arm reach around behind his back. Juwan shut his eyes. As the waltz music reached the precise moment, Varna began leading him in ever-widening circles across the open floor. Juwan kept his eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable laughter that would end the dance as well as the life of the man or woman who did it.
Macaulay suddenly heard the heavy splatter of rain on flagstone and glanced over to see the front door opening. Three men strode quickly into the foyer under wide umbrellas and stopped briefly to remove their raincoats.
From photographs Barnaby had shown him in New York, Macaulay recognized two of them as Zhou Shen Wui and his son, Li. Macaulay turned away from the bar toward the cases of mixer as they strode past his serving station to the entrance to the great hall. The Chinese stopped when they got to the edge of the dance floor and saw the two men dancing.
Li Shen Wui remembered being at a circus in Shanghai as a boy where he had seen a gigantic trained bear dancing with a midget. He was unable to stifle a laugh. Juwan’s ears pricked up at the thin cackling sound and he opened his eyes to see the group of Chinese standing at the entrance. One of them was grinning at him like a spotted hyena.
Zhou Shen Wui issued a stern, one-word rebuke and Li regained his composure as Juwan stopped dancing and came toward them. From the look on Brugg’s face, Macaulay thought that the big man was going to murder the younger Chinese in front of the whole crowd. As he was about to reach him, his dancing partner sped ahead and began shaking the younger Chinese man’s hand.
“I’m Varna. Welcome to Casa Grande Brugg,” he said with an inviting smile.
Li found himself drawn to the younger man immediately. They were the same physical type, short, muscular, with swimmers’ bodies, one of a piece, although Varna had a Latin flavor to his handsome pug-nosed face and Li a Chinese caste.
The rest of the couples began to dance and the tension at the edge of the floor slowly ebbed. The duke and duchess of Lancaster stopped on their way to the buffet and were introduced to Zhou and his son.
“I have always adored the Chinese,” said the duchess. “When we lived in Hong Kong, our children’s school had two Chinese cleaning people.”
Macaulay took advantage of the lull to grab one of the metal serving trays filled with premixed drinks from a waitress. Stepping past the serving station, he headed up the main staircase alone.
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There was no one in the broad hallway on the second floor and he put down the tray. Most of the doors of the rooms stood open. He poked his head into all of them, but the rooms were empty. Two doors were locked, but they yielded easily to his jury-rigged bump key. They were entertainment rooms and empty too.
The third floor reflected the same pattern, mostly open doorways and brightly lit parlors, along with a billiard room and a small movie theater. He was about to head up the staircase to the fourth floor when he noticed a small side corridor leading down a dark passageway. The first door he came to was closed. He stood outside it for a moment and listened.
In the distance, he thought he heard a police siren, nothing from inside the room. He turned the handle, but it was locked. He quietly inserted the bump key in the hole and was about to turn it when he heard a voice from beyond the door. The voice wasn’t talking. The sound it made was more like a moaning wail followed by a low howl of outrage.
He turned the bump key, but this time it wouldn’t engage. He kept twisting it against the locking pins to move the cylinder, but they didn’t budge. When he turned it even harder, the blade of the fillet knife snapped off. From beyond the door, the first voice was replaced by a second one, this one deeper, issuing a snort of laughter.
Macaulay took three steps back to the opposite wall and then hurled his right shoulder into the spot where the door lock met the jamb. It splintered and gave way. A moment later he was in the room.
The space was filled with the vibration noise of a compressor. As he glanced down, his eyes registered the four-foot-square opening in the floor. Beyond it were standing shelves full of canned goods and a big commercial refrigerator along the far wall. In between them, a man was standing with his back to the door.
He had removed his uniform coat, and his trousers were down around his shoes. Taking a step forward, Macaulay saw there was a woman pinned to the table. She was bent forward and the man was behind her holding a stiletto to her throat. Lexy was still wearing her long black cocktail dress. The man was trying to raise the hem above her thighs with his free hand.
The Bone Hunters Page 23