Island of Thieves

by Josh Lacey

  On another page there was nothing except descriptions of the speed and direction of the wind. The crew must have been sailing across the Atlantic or the Pacific for day after day, driven crazy by the monotony, the endless unbroken horizon.

  I was getting better at deciphering the spidery black handwriting. The spelling still stumped me, but I now knew the way that the writer did particular letters and I could skim through a page fairly easily, searching for interesting information, skipping words that didn’t make sense.

  Then I found something extraordinary.

  It wasn’t the page that I was looking for. There was no mention of gold, silver, or the Island of Thieves. But halfway down, I read this:

  My friend Nycolas Tindal, having been syke for three daies now, cried out last nighte and then dyed. I was sitting with hym. He held my hande and asked me to take a message to his mother in Tavistok. So I shalle. He dyed like a gode Christian man and shall never be forgot. I swear this to be true and signe it now with mine owne name, John Drake. I commend his memorie to the Lord Our God.

  I read those sentences several times, making sure that I hadn’t misunderstood them, and then I smiled.

  John Drake.

  My couzen, the Captayne.

  The pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Now I knew what I was reading and who had written it. We had found the journal of Francis Drake’s cousin, John Drake. I’d never heard of him before. When we did British history, no one mentioned his name. Maybe no one even knew he existed.

  I showed my uncle what I’d discovered. I could tell he was impressed, although he didn’t show it, not wanting to alert our bodyguards. He said in a quiet voice, “I’ve never heard of John Drake. Have you?”

  “No. But he was the captain’s cousin. If you were going on a voyage around the world, you’d want to take people you could trust, wouldn’t you? Like your cousin.”

  “Or your nephew.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Uncle Harvey. He pushed back his chair and walked around the walls, looking at the shelves. I waited for him, wondering what he was looking for.

  He came back with a single volume of an old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. On the side it read DELUSION TO FRENSSEN. Uncle Harvey opened the book on the table and flicked through the pages till he found the entry on Sir Francis Drake. We read it together, skipping the sections on his early life and concentrating on the voyage of the Golden Hind.

  Midway down a page, we found this:

  Contemporary accounts mention a cousin, John, born in Tavistock, the second son of Robert and Anna Drake. He was an excellent draughtsman and artist, responsible for recording the voyage in maps and drawings. These documents, along with a journal supposedly penned by John Drake, are assumed to have been presented to Queen Elizabeth when the Golden Hind returned to England. No trace of them has ever been found and historians suggest that they were probably lost in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698.

  “That’s him,” whispered Uncle Harvey. “That’s our man.”

  18

  We asked the thugs to summon Otto. When he arrived we showed him what we had found. We didn’t tell him about the Golden Hind or either of the Drakes, but we didn’t need to. We had enough good stuff without that. Using the journal, the encyclopedia, the maps, and our imaginations, we had pieced together the voyage of a small ship that sailed from England to the other side of the world.

  “She had a crew of Englishmen,” explained my uncle. “Who are, as you know, the best and bravest sailors in the world. Or were then, anyway. Most of them had been born in Devon, just like their captain. None of them knew where they were going. He refused to tell them. That was part of the deal. If they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to come with him. They set sail from Plymouth. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to Plymouth?”

  Otto shook his head. “I never been to your country.”

  “You’re welcome anytime. How about you, Tom? Been to Plymouth?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “You should go. Your ancestors were from the West Country. It’s your heritage. Anyway, here it is. The lovely town of Plymouth.” Uncle Harvey plonked his finger on the map. “From here they sailed across the Channel. They went round the edge of France, over the top of Spain, and down the whole length of Portugal. Popped across the Gibraltar Straits and got to Morocco.” He traced the route on the map, running his finger down the eastern edge of Europe and touching the bulk of Africa. “Not far from Essaouira, they filled their barrels with fresh water and headed south and west.” Now his finger plunged across the vast emptiness of the Atlantic Ocean. “The monotony of weeks at sea was relieved only by stopping at a few islands. Here, the Canaries. And here, Cape Verde. Finally they reached your own continent. South America. They went down the coast of Brazil. Presumably you’ve been there?”

  “Of course,” said Otto. “Many times.”

  “They sailed down its long coast. Past Uruguay. Past Argentina. Round Cape Horn and up the other side. Up the long, long coast of Chile. And here, just into Peru, they moored at a tiny little island. The sailors traded with locals, offering knives and trinkets in exchange for fresh food and water. Midway through their negotiations, the locals made off with their booty without leaving anything in return. They were dirty thieves, said the captain, and he named the place after them.”

  “The Island of Thieves,” I explained, in case Otto hadn’t gotten the point.

  He didn’t take any notice of me. All his attention was focused on the map, his eyes scanning for the island’s exact location.

  “From there they sailed north,” continued Uncle Harvey, his finger creeping slowly up the map. “They were heading for Lima. But things didn’t go according to plan. They spotted another ship on the horizon. It was a Spanish galleon, so heavily laden that it couldn’t sail fast enough to escape. The Englishmen captured it after a short battle. They went aboard and found that the hold was packed with silver and gold. There was too much treasure to carry on their own small ship. The weight would have sunk them as soon as they hit bad weather. The captain could have abandoned the treasure or tipped it overboard, but he couldn’t bring himself to surrender so much delicious booty, so he sailed the galleon and his own ship back to the nearest island. Once they reached the Island of Thieves, the captain took a small crew of trusted men and ordered them to load eight chests onto a little boat. They rowed or sailed to the northern tip of the island and buried the eight chests, letting no one else know the secret of their location. They returned to their own ship and sailed onward. Ten days later, they were in Lima. From there they went north, past Panama and Mexico, and landed on the shores of California, not far from modern San Francisco. They turned west, cut across the Pacific, and headed for home. But that’s a different story. Now let’s move to the other map.”

  We had used two maps, one of the world and the other of Peru. Each of them was dotted with a trail of tiny penciled crosses.

  “Do you see these?” said Uncle Harvey.

  Otto nodded. “That’s the boat, huh?”

  “Exactly. That’s where it went. Each cross marks a date in the manuscript. A location mentioned by the writer. One of them is the Island of Thieves. That’s where we’ll find five chests packed with gold and three more with silver.”

  “So where is it?” asked Otto impatiently.

  “Right here.” Uncle Harvey put his finger on the map. “It’s a tiny little place. Barely more than a speck on the map. It does have a name, though, and we wondered if you’d ever heard of it. It appears to be called . . . Isla de la Frontera.”

  Otto threw back his head and shouted with laughter.

  We both stared at him in amazement.

  “What’s so funny?” I said.

  “You want to know have I heard of Isla de la Frontera?”

  “Well, have you?” asked Uncle Harvey.

  “Of course! Everyone knows Isla de la Frontera.”

  “I don’t,”
I said.

  “Nor do I,” added Uncle Harvey.

  “You are not from Peru,” said Otto. “You ask anyone in Peru, he will tell you. Isla de la Frontera, it is the most famous island in our country.”

  “What’s it famous for?” I asked.

  “It is a prison,” said Otto.

  “A prison,” I repeated like an idiot.

  “You understand what is a prison?”

  “Yes. But, um, what sort of prison? For criminals?”

  “Of course for criminals. What else is prison for? In truth, I spend a little time there myself. It is the place where I get this.” He touched the tattoo on his neck, the snake’s head. “I am there only a few months. Because of politics, you know? Here in Peru, everything is politics.”

  For the past few decades, Otto told us, Isla de la Frontera had housed some of the most dangerous men in Peru. The cells were stuffed with terrorists and murderers. High walls and rough seas prevented the prisoners from escaping.

  He remembered a little about the security arrangements from his own months of incarceration. The guards had to stay in the prison, away from their families, and the solitude drove them a little crazy. They took out their frustrations on the prisoners and anyone who was unlucky enough to come anywhere near the island. Shoot first, ask questions later—that was their mantra.

  The prison was on the east coast, facing the mainland. As far as Otto knew, the rest of the island was empty and uninhabited.

  “No one never go to there,” he said, his eyes gleaming with greed and excitement. “Not in a hundred years. Not in four hundred. The gold is there right now. Waiting for us. In my heart, I can feel it.”

  19

  Later that afternoon, we flew south in Otto’s little twinpropellered plane. Inside, there were three rows of wide, luxurious seats with big padded cushions. Otto sat in the first row. Then came me and my uncle. Miguel went behind us. I could imagine his eyes fixed on the back of my neck, his large hands twitching, longing to choke me to death. Don’t even try it, I wanted to say. Or I’ll bop you on the head with another vase.

  Before we boarded the plane, I got a chance to talk to my uncle alone, and he told me not to worry, everything was going to be fine. Otto liked us, he said confidently. And trusted us. Which was why we were flying to Isla de la Frontera, rather than languishing in a cellar or staring down the barrel of a gun. I hoped he was right. I couldn’t help wondering when Otto would get tired of us, or annoyed with us, and decide it was easier to kill us than keep us alive. When I said this to my uncle, he just laughed and, once again, told me not to worry.

  The flight took a couple of hours. As the plane circled before landing at a small airfield near the sea, I stared at the coastline, stretching to the horizon in both directions. Not far from the shore, I could see a couple of islands. From the plane I couldn’t tell much about them. They just looked like big lumps of rock dumped in the ocean. One of them must be ours, I decided. I couldn’t help grinning. We were so close! A few hours from now, we’d be setting out to sea in a little boat, making our way across the water to the Island of Thieves. I felt a sudden flutter of anticipation in my stomach. I don’t know if it was fear or excitement. Probably a bit of both.

  Two vehicles were parked on the airstrip; a bright red fire engine and yet another of those big black Toyota Land Cruisers. Otto must have got a discount from the dealership. Or maybe he just stole them.

  A large man was standing beside the car, waiting for us. Like all Otto’s drivers/bodyguards/thugs, he was wearing the familiar uniform of jeans, cowboy boots, and a leather jacket with a bulge under the left arm.

  “This is Arturo,” said Otto. “He is working for me down here.”

  Arturo nodded to me and my uncle, shook hands with Miguel, and conferred quietly with Otto. I wished I could understand Spanish. I wanted to know what was going on and what they were planning.

  I still had a lot of unanswered questions. About the gold. About us. About Otto’s plans. If we found the treasure together, would he give us some? Or keep it all for himself? Was he going to kill us? Or let us go? Had he already decided what to do? If not, when would he make his decision? Should we try to run away tonight? Or take our chance tomorrow? I’d whispered these questions to my uncle in the library, but he’d just shrugged and said he knew nothing more than me.

  Once we were in the car, heading for Las Lomas, Otto told us what he had been told by Arturo: “The boat is ready. We can go now, but he say it is better to wait for the morning. I think he is right. We will stay in a hotel and leave one hour before dawn. That way, we are not be seen. We sail to the north. We are tourists trying for fish. We have rods and lines to make it look true. You like fishing, Harvey?”

  “To be honest, I’ve never really seen the point.”

  “The point is,” said Otto, “it’s fun.”

  “I don’t like killing things for fun.”

  “That’s your problem,” said Otto. He turned to me. “How about you, Tom? You like fishing?”

  “Actually, I do, yeah. I’ve only been a few times, though. And never like this. I’ve only done it in a river, not at sea.”

  “The sea is best,” said Otto. “The fish are bigger, you understand? More strong. More fighting. Maybe, after, we catch some fish. You like that?”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  Las Lomas was a quiet little town. Dinghies bobbed in the harbor and brightly colored fishing boats were lined along the dock. Old men sat in cafés, sheltering from the weather. The water was as gray as the sky.

  “Here it is,” said Otto, pointing out to sea. “Isla de la Frontera.”

  I could see a distant silhouette, a dark shape resting on the edge of the horizon.

  There it was. The Island of Thieves.

  20

  On the other side of the street from the hotel, there was an Internet café. I saw it when we drove into the parking lot, and again from the window of our room. I thought about sneaking out and sending a message to the U.S. embassy or the CIA, asking for help. We’re trapped in a hotel with Otto Gonzalez, I could say. Why don’t you come and arrest him? Or has he bribed you too?

  In the end, I didn’t even get a chance to wander around the hotel on my own, let alone sneak out and use the Internet. Miguel escorted us wherever we went. He took us upstairs to our room—my uncle and I were sharing—and waited in the corridor while we showered and changed. Then he led us back downstairs again for supper.

  That night there were five of us sitting around the table in the small restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel: me, my uncle, Otto, Miguel, and Arturo. A few old men made up the rest of the clientele. I don’t know if they actually recognised Otto or just got the sense that he was a dangerous customer, but they were careful to sit far enough away that they had no chance of overhearing any of our conversation.

  Arturo had brought a large map of Isla de la Frontera, which he unrolled and spread over the table. It was a proper nautical chart, showing the depths of the ocean and the location of navigation buoys and two lighthouses, one at each end of the island.

  “This is the prison,” said Otto, pointing at a structure on the eastern side. “This is the harbor. But we go here, yes?” He pointed at the northern tip of the island.

  “That’s right,” said Uncle Harvey. He turned to me. “Tom, will you do the honors?”

  “Which honors?” I said.

  “Will you read out our instructions? So we know where we’re going.”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry. Sure.” I had copied the relevant sentences onto a sheet of the hotel’s notepaper. Now I fished it out of my pocket and read it aloud: “Our Captayne took the pinnace ashore and I went with him and six men also, who were sworne by God to be secret in al they saw. Here we buried five chests filled with gold and three more chests filled with silver. We placed them at the northern tip of the Islande in a line with the small rocke which lookes likke a fishes head. If anyone comes after us, you must go to the angel. Look to her fif
teen feete. Her mouth is black. She has no teethe but she has a deep hart and ther you will find it.”

  I’d pored over those words again and again till I almost knew them by heart, but they still filled me with a sense of foreboding and excitement. They made me imagine John Drake sitting in the cabin of the Golden Hind, hunched over his desk, scrawling notes, remembering where he’d just been, what he’d just seen. And they put an image in my mind: a vision of gold nuggets and silver coins spilling out of wooden crates, a fortune waiting to be found.

  While I was reading, Miguel and Arturo looked thoroughly bored—which was fair enough because they couldn’t understand a word I was saying—while Otto listened with an expression of intense seriousness.

  “It makes no sense,” he said as soon as I finished. “I can tell you, there is no angels on Isla de la Frontera. Devils, maybe. But angels? Oh, no.”

  “It’s probably not a real angel,” said my uncle.

  “You trying to be funny?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I’m just saying—”

  “I know what you’re saying, Harvey. I’m not an idiot. It just don’t make no sense to me.”

  “It doesn’t make much sense to me, either,” said my uncle. “But I’m sure everything will become clear as soon as we get to the island.”

  “I hope so,” said Otto.

  Further discussion was prevented by the arrival of the waitress with five plates of chicken and fries.

  Supper was quick and quiet. While we were eating, no one said much, and we mostly watched a big TV in the corner of the room, which was showing a soccer match. The teams were Brazilian and Argentinean, my uncle told me, and they were playing in the Copa Libertadores, the biggest tournament in South American soccer. By the end of the first half, the Brazilians were leading two to one. We didn’t see the second half. After supper, my uncle pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’d like an early night,” he said. “It’s going to be a big day tomorrow. Sleep well, Otto. You too, guys.”