Island of Thieves

by Josh Lacey

  The doctor was waiting for us, a black leather bag perched on his knees. He couldn’t speak more than a few words of English, but he managed to communicate all he needed in smiles and sign language. He untied the tourniquet and carefully inspected my uncle’s wound, then reached into his bag and pulled out a couple of bottles and a packet of gauze. He dabbed the wound with disinfectant and wrapped it in a fresh dressing.

  “You lucky man,” he said with a wide grin. “Very lucky man.”

  “It’s the luck of the Trelawneys,” said Uncle Harvey.

  The doctor looked at him with a quizzical expression, then shrugged his shoulders and went back to work. Looking at the wound, I could see he was right. Uncle Harvey was exceedingly lucky. The bullet had gone cleanly in and out. He had lost a little blood and probably gained a scar, but nothing worse.

  Uncle Harvey grinned at me. “Let’s hope you’ve got it too.”

  “Got what?” I asked.

  “The family luck.”

  “How do I get it? Just by being a Trelawney?”

  “No, no. Not all of us have it. Your father doesn’t, for instance. But I think you might. I still don’t know you very well, Tom, but I suspect you may be a good, old-fashioned Trelawney.”

  “What does that mean? What’s a good, old-fashioned Trelawney?”

  “You don’t know about our family history?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a little village in Cornwall that used to be full of Trelawneys. You should go there. Maybe we’ll go together one day. Anyway, those Trelawneys were fishermen by day and smugglers by night. Some of them were hanged, others were lost at sea. A few even got sent to Australia. Those are your ancestors, Tom. Cornish pirates. I’m surprised your dad’s never told you about them. Actually, no, I’m not. He probably doesn’t want you to know what it means to be a real Trelawney.”

  The door swung open and the governor came into the room. He put our passports, money, and credit cards on the table. “Here are your documents,” he said. “I’m sorry that my men confiscated them, but they are naturally suspicious of any trespassers on this island. I have faxed copies of your passports to the British and U.S. embassies. They will call me soon to confirm your identities, and then I can arrange for transport back to the mainland. I hope you’re comfortable in here. Is there anything that you need?”

  “Dry clothes would be wonderful,” said my uncle.

  “Of course. I will have some brought to you.”

  “And I wouldn’t mind my penknife.”

  “Your what?”

  “I had a penknife,” said my uncle. “A little knife that I’ve owned since I was a boy. It’s not worth anything, but it has a lot of sentimental value. One of your men nabbed it. Is there any chance of having it back?”

  “One of my men took it, you say?”

  Uncle Harvey explained how one guard had pocketed the knife while another took the money and passports. The governor looked shocked and angry. Promising to find out exactly what had happened, he hurried away.

  The doctor finished his work and left us, locking the door behind him. However friendly the governor might have been, we were still prisoners.

  We didn’t have to wait long before a guard arrived with a bundle of clean clothes and dumped them on the floor. Once he’d gone, we sorted through the jeans, shirts, and socks, choosing what to wear. Most of the clothes fit my uncle, but they were all much too big for me, even with the shirtsleeves and the legs of the jeans rolled up. There couldn’t have been anyone as small as me in the prison. I hung my own clothes over the end of a chair and hoped they’d dry soon.

  “Let’s call room service,” said my uncle. “I’m going to have a beer and a club sandwich. What do you want?”

  “A glass of water, please.”

  “That’s all? Nothing else? Come on, Tom. We’re in the best hotel on Isla de la Frontera. We might as well treat ourselves to a decent lunch. If you could order anything right now, what would you order? Steak and fries? Burger and chips? Fried chicken and chocolate cake?”

  “You know, Uncle Harvey, I’m not really in the mood.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. For once, he didn’t tell me not to call him Uncle Harvey. “Take no notice of me. I’m just being an idiot. But you can relax, Tom. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’re safe here.”

  He sounded so confident that I almost believed him. “Really? What do you think is going to happen to us now?”

  “With any luck, the British embassy will send someone to fetch us. Even if they don’t, they’ll confirm I’m British, and we’ll get out of here. Velasquez won’t want to keep a British and a U.S. citizen in his prison without any charge. Especially if he thinks one of them went to Cambridge. He seemed to like my story, didn’t he?”

  “Your story?” I said. “You mean, you didn’t go to Cambridge?”

  “Oh, no. I was at Edinburgh. Only for a year, actually, before they chucked me out. But I knew he’d like it if I said I went to Cambridge. Let me tell you, Tom, you should never underestimate the power of the old-boy network. There’s something about those people who went to Oxford and Cambridge. If you say you went there too, they can’t resist it.”

  I have to admit, I was shocked. I don’t know why. My uncle had already confessed to me that he made a living by selling fake paintings to criminals, so what was so surprising about one more lie?

  It was the ease with which he did it, I suppose. The way that he fibbed so confidently without even needing to think. It made me wonder how many other lies he might have told. To me or anyone else.

  On the other hand, I was also quite impressed. Not by his lying. Anyone can lie. But by the fact that he knew exactly which lie to tell. He was right: the governor’s attitude to us had changed completely once he thought that he and my uncle had been students of the same university. Without that extra little nudge, perhaps he wouldn’t have treated us so nicely. He might have thrown us in a cell and left us to fester for a couple of days while he called the British embassy and waited for them to look up Uncle Harvey’s details on their computers.

  “Seriously, Tom, you don’t have to worry.” My uncle smiled at me. “I’ve been in much worse situations than this. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Have you been in prison before?”

  “A few times.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “Where?”

  “Once at home. That wasn’t my fault. Once in Morocco. That was my fault. Once in Italy. Was that my fault? Yes, I suppose so. I got caught stealing a rather fabulous statue from a palazzo in Venice. I only did it to impress a girl, and she ran away as soon as the police arrived. Never seen her since. How many times is that?”

  “Three,” I said.

  “There must have been more than that. Let me think.” He counted them on his fingers. “London, Marrakech, Venice. Oh, and once in India. That was a bit more serious. I spent a couple of months in one of the nastiest prisons on the planet. I’d met this Australian surfer on a beach in Goa . . .”

  Uncle Harvey told me a long, complicated tale about a famous supermodel, a priceless diamond, and an Indian billionaire who owned one of the biggest software businesses on the planet. I wasn’t sure how much of it was true, but I didn’t really care. It was a very good story.

  When he finished, he said, “Your turn.”

  “My turn for what?”

  “To tell a story.”

  “I don’t have any stories. My life is boring. Nothing ever happens to me.”

  “Oh, come on, Tom. I know that’s not true.”

  “It is, actually.”

  “You burned down the garden shed, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve already told you that story.”

  “There must be others. Haven’t you ever been in trouble before?”

  “Millions of ti
mes.”

  “So tell me what happened.”

  I described a few of my past misdemeanors. It was probably foolish of me, but I told him things that I’d never told anyone; I confessed to crimes that still hadn’t been pinned to me. How I set off all those fire alarms at school, for instance, and the truth about Mr. Spencer’s missing bicycle. In exchange, my uncle told me about his own childhood. His wicked deeds. His appalling punishments. And what it was like having such a goody-two-shoes—my dad—for a brother.

  I don’t know how much time passed. A couple of hours. Maybe three or four. But we were mid-conversation, laughing about something or other, when the door suddenly swung open. We both stopped talking and looked up.

  I was hoping to see a guard with a tray of food. Even better, something to drink. My throat was parched.

  To my disappointment, the man who walked into our room wasn’t carrying a tray or a glass of water. I was about to complain when I saw it was Arturo, one of Otto’s thugs, the guy who had met us at the airfield. He reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a pistol.

  We were both on our feet, ready to fight for our lives, when someone else stepped into the room and said, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Trelawney, but you have to go with this man.” It was Javier Velasquez, the prison governor. He was holding two sets of stainless-steel handcuffs. “If you don’t mind, I must put these on you.”

  “Where’s Otto?” asked my uncle.

  “On the mainland. This man will take you to him.”

  “He bribed you, did he?”

  Javier Velasquez had the good grace to look embarrassed. “He is a powerful man.”

  “You’re a prison governor! You’re meant to be on our side, not his!”

  “If only life were so simple.” Velasquez gave us a mournful smile—as if we should feel sorry for him!—then asked us to put our hands behind our backs.

  I looked at my uncle, wondering if he would try to argue, but he simply did as he was told. I could see why. Arturo had a gun; we had nothing. And we were in a cell in the middle of a heavily guarded prison.

  With a clickety-clunk, clickety-clunk, the governor handcuffed my uncle’s wrists, then mine. He said, “Goodbye, Mr. Trelawney. Goodbye, Tom. Again, I am very sorry. I wish things could be different. And . . . good luck.”

  He mumbled those last two words almost under his breath, as if he knew that they were meaningless. Our luck had run out. Then he took two quick paces to the door and called for the guards.

  30

  A boat was waiting for us in the prison’s harbor. Arturo helped us aboard. We sat in the stern and he sat opposite us, his gun resting on his lap.

  The boatman gave me a quick, curious glance, then never looked at my face again. I knew why. If anyone asked him any awkward questions, he wanted to be able to say, I didn’t see anything.

  As the boat plowed through the water, heading for the mainland, I looked at the waves and thought about jumping overboard. Then I noticed Uncle Harvey looking at me. He gave a little shake of his head. Somehow he knew exactly what I’d been thinking. He was right, of course. With my hands fastened behind my back, I’d have drowned in moments.

  For the rest of the journey, I shuffled my hands around in the cuffs, seeing if I could get some kind of purchase. In movies, even if people are tied up, they always manage to escape. They wriggle out of their ropes or pick the lock with a safety pin that they happen to have in their pocket. Unfortunately, these handcuffs were tougher than that.

  Once the boat docked, Arturo walked us from the dock to the hotel. We couldn’t have escaped. He was right behind us, his gun in his pocket. He took us through a side entrance. A dark corridor led to the kitchens, where two women in white aprons were chopping vegetables on a wide wooden table. One of them started complaining. Then Arturo took out the gun. She laid her knife carefully on the tabletop. Arturo issued a curt order and the two women filed out, their eyes fixed to the floor.

  My uncle asked a few questions—“Where’s Otto? Dónde está Otto?”—but he didn’t manage to get any response out of Arturo. Then he looked at me. “I’m very sorry, Tom.”

  “For what?”

  “All this.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s not, Uncle Harvey. I mean, Harvey. Sorry. I don’t know why I keep calling you that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m growing to like it.”

  “Are you?”

  “No, not really. But forget it. Listen, Tom, I really am very sorry. This is my fault. I’ve behaved like an absolute idiot.”

  “It was my choice,” I said. “I wanted to come.”

  “I don’t just mean bringing you here. I mean even thinking I could have left you in my flat. You’re just a boy. Of course you couldn’t stay in my flat for a week. I should have told your dad the truth. I thought it was all a bit of a joke. Now I’ve messed up your whole life.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Come on, Uncle Harvey. We’ll be fine.”

  He gave me a funny little smile. Kind of sad. And he said, “You’re a good kid, Tom. You really are.”

  Something about the way that he said those words made me realize he thought we were going to die. Saying sorry was his way of saying goodbye. I wanted to say something cheerful back. To make him feel better. To make both of us feel better. But I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound amazingly idiotic. Also, I realized he was probably right.

  No, there wasn’t any “probably” about it. He was right. I saw that. Otto would come here and shoot us and that would be that.

  I wish I could tell you that I faced the fact of my own death with dignity and courage, but that simply wouldn’t be true. I mostly felt annoyed. I liked being alive. I didn’t want to die. Not now. Not so young. Life was fun. I wanted more of it.

  The door swung open and Otto entered the room. He wagged his finger at my uncle. “You people,” he said. “You make me a lot of trouble, you know that?”

  “You can’t blame us for—” started my uncle, but Otto interrupted him immediately.

  “I don’t wanna hear it.”

  “But you have to let me—”

  “Harvey Trelawney, you are one idiota! And not just one idiota. You are one idiota who owes me a lot of money!”

  “I’ve already told you, I can get you a hundred thousand dollars. Just give me a couple of—”

  “Forget a hundred thousand,” said Otto. “Now you owe me a million!”

  “A million? Why?”

  “Because of that guy. The governor. He try to arrest me. Can you believe it? He try to arrest Otto Gonzalez! Lucky for him, he change his mind. But I have to pay him a lot of money.”

  “We’ll pay it back,” said my uncle.

  “You will?”

  “Of course we will.”

  “How you gonna do that when you’re dead?”

  “If you want your money,” said my uncle, “you’ll have to let us live.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Otto. “And I decided, I’ve got enough money already.”

  Otto told us that he’d thought of leaving us in the prison for the rest of our lives. No one would ever know where we were. People might search the whole of Peru for us, but no one would ever think of looking in the prison on Isla de la Frontera. Unluckily—or luckily, depending on your point of view—the governor said no.

  “He make me promise I take you a long way away,” said Otto. “He don’t want you to cause any trouble for him. Even when you’re dead. So I think of another plan. Is better, actually. I take you to the mountains and I drop you over the edge. With your car. You gringos, you always cause so much problems. Your governments, they ask questions. If you disappear, people come looking for you. This way, they will find your car, they understand what went wrong. Two gringos, driving in the mountains. They drive over the edge. Very sad, huh?”

  “That’s a good p
lan,” said my uncle. “Can I suggest one small modification? You can kill me if you want to, but why don’t you let Tom go?”

  “Let him go?” Otto blinked as if he’d never heard such a crazy idea. “Why I wanna do that?”

  “Because your quarrel is with me, not him. And, even more important, because he’s only a child.”

  “What if he talks?”

  “He won’t.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “He really won’t,” said my uncle. “He’s a good kid. He understands. He’ll keep his mouth shut.”

  “Everyone talks,” said Otto.

  “He won’t. Let him go, Otto. Kill me. Torture me. Do whatever you want to me. But let him go.”

  Otto didn’t even consider it. “Is not possible. Very sorry. Now, I have to be going. Business, business, always business. Bye, guys.”

  He nodded to Arturo and said something in Spanish, then swiveled on his heel and marched toward the door.

  “Wait!” I called after him.

  Otto looked back at me, surprised. “Yeah?”

  “If you kill us, you’re kissing five million dollars goodbye.”

  “I don’t need you for that,” he said. “I send for divers already.”

  “I’m not talking about the gold. I’m talking about John Drake.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who wrote the journal.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Have you heard of Sir Francis Drake?”

  “You mean that old guy who goes around the world?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I heard of him. You told me about him. So what?”

  “He was John Drake’s cousin,” I said. “They sailed around the world together. John Drake wrote a journal of the voyage. That’s what we found. That’s how we discovered the location of the treasure. We’ve got his journal. It must be worth millions.”

  “He’s right,” said my uncle. “Francis Drake was the second man to circumnavigate the globe. A journal of his voyage is a priceless historical document. Any collector would die for it. Museums will go crazy for it. They’ll be bidding millions of dollars. Tens of millions. And the best thing is, it’s not even stolen. It’s absolutely legitimate. The deal can be done on the open market. Kill us, Otto, and you’re kissing goodbye to twenty million dollars.”