by Orca Various
But I had seen him swallow, slightly. Had he just told a stretcher? And if so, what did it mean? I glanced at Angel, who looked my way for an instant when John turned back to me. She smiled, ever so slightly. Then the smile vanished.
Goldeneye, I thought. There really is something there.
“I said I would give you something too, and I am a man of my word.” He paused and thought for a moment, looking away, then turned back to me. “Mr. Know indeed had something to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was there in 1962, deeply involved. That is a tidbit that will take you nowhere. In other words, it’s a nice fact for a civilian to possess.”
Within an hour, I was on a flight to Buffalo and Angel was on her way to Bermuda. We didn’t say goodbye. We didn’t have to. We hoped to meet again, and soon.
THIRTEEN
BOND ISLAND
I knew how I was going to get to Jamaica. It was simple. When John swallowed, it had told me he was lying when he said there were people at Goldeneye who would watch me and kill me if I ever showed up there. At least, I hoped that was what it meant. There was a secret here that John was hiding, maybe a secret inside a secret. A spy among spies?
I knew that I could simply get off the plane in Buffalo and board one back to Jamaica. I’d take a different route this time—Chicago first, then the Caribbean. But was I running out of time? I had just two days left! And just one in Jamaica. More important, was I right about John? If not, lethal people would be waiting for me on that island, and I was a dead man. A dead man! This was no movie. Suddenly, I wondered if it was all worth it. But I had to know about Grandpa. I just had to. He had taught all of us to be brave, and I was going to be brave now.
But what about Angel? What if things didn’t work out? Would I never see her again? I kept wondering if she had sacrificed our relationship—friendship was a better way to put it—for me, for my pursuit of the truth about my grandfather. I was worried that she was obediently going back to that awful house in Paget Parish in order to make it look like we were both defeated when she knew from that glance we’d exchanged that I was on my way to Jamaica. What if she couldn’t get away? Would I be able to accomplish whatever I needed to accomplish without her by my side? She had been an amazing companion, smart and spy-like, and a kind person to boot.
And even when I did get to Jamaica, what would I be able to do? I had so little to go on: the Cuban Missile Crisis and W marked the spot and then, of course, the W itself. I still didn’t have even the remotest idea what those things meant. And I had so little time!
Before I’d departed New York, I had texted Shirley. John was sitting nearby, watching.
Hi sweetheart, looking forward to seeing you, just another two days, can’t wait!
I couldn’t tell her exactly what was going on. Not yet. I would, after I got home. I told Shirley everything these days. It was the best policy. I’d tell her about Angel too. She’d be cool with that. She was pretty secure. I’d just say that Angel was a nice girl, attractive as a person and that was it. That was the truth, wasn’t it? I didn’t think it was a stretcher.
I thought I’d hear from Shirley right away. But I didn’t.
Instead, I spent the flight to Buffalo thinking about the clues, still getting nowhere. When we landed, I booked a flight to Chicago and found a seat in the departures lounge where I could keep my back to the wall. That’s what I’d read spies do: keep everything in front of them so they can’t be taken by surprise. I also didn’t want to run into my dad. He flew out of this airport all the time, and meeting up with him would wreck everything. I’d have to make up a real stretcher to explain my situation to him—a stretcher in the name of doing the right thing, of course.
I texted Leon.
Hey, Q, I’m in Buffalo.
He answered immediately. Cool, James, I’m on my way! I’ll get Mom to bring me over.
No, I’m not home. I’m at the airport.
Like I said, on my way.
No, don’t come to the airport! I’ll be gone by the time u get here.
Gone?
To Chicago.
Chi town!
Then Jamaica.
Goldeneye?
U got it.
Ah! Solving things?
No. Got questions for u.
Shoot, A- Murph.
Need to know what “W” might mean and “W marked the spot” and more about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Can u help me out with the way the last one connects to spies?
Likely.
Know lots about it?
Definitely.
Ever hear of a guy named Guy Hicks and if he had anything to do with it?
No, will check, text when I know something.
A text came in from Shirley shortly after that. Sounds exciting, was all it said.
My flight to Chicago was delayed, which was super frustrating. I paced around, wasting hours, waiting to hear the announcement that the plane was ready. I’d only been checking texts from Leon and Shirley, so now I took a look at the others. I couldn’t believe what my cousins were telling me. Spencer was running around Toronto on the trail of something pretty bizarre and Bunny, now without a cell and incommunicado, had disappeared. DJ was in London with no time to talk, pursuing secret codes. Steve sounded intense and in love in exotic Spain, and Rennie had somehow found his way from South America to an even more dangerous place, Detroit. Webb just said, in the US, which was almost as ominous as all of the other messages put together. It sounded evasive. But I couldn’t worry about those guys. I had too much on my plate. I had to get to Jamaica as soon as possible.
Finally, I boarded an evening flight, no Dad yet in sight. I’d been to Chicago once, and it was a very cool city too, right up there with New York and Toronto, but I would only see the airport this time.
O’Hare International Airport is huge. In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest in the world. I raced around looking for the next flight to Jamaica, eyes alert for anyone who might be following me. But it was late by then, and the first flight I could get to the Caribbean left at about three in the morning. I didn’t care. I got my luggage and “collectible” gun through customs and then slept for a while in the departures lounge, right near the exit to the plane so they’d rouse me if I was sleeping when my flight was ready to board.
I woke up about forty-five minutes before departure, almost jumping to my feet, obviously on edge. I turned on my phone and went to the Goldeneye site again. I’d been on it about fifty times since JFK, trying to book a room, with no luck. Now, when I tried again, bingo! There was one available. Someone had canceled. And just for tomorrow night! I booked it and then got up and started to pace, absolutely pumped.
But I still hadn’t heard back from Leon. If he couldn’t find a connection between Guy Hicks and the Cuban Missile Crisis, then no one could. His lack of response wasn’t a good thing—sure I had a place at Goldeneye, but I was heading down to Jamaica without a single thing to work with, and the clock was ticking fast.
My first thoughts—in fact, almost all my thoughts—in the darkness on the flight south were about Angel. I wondered what she was planning. Or was she planning anything at all? She likely had no choice but to go home to Paget and stay there until she was able to fly the coop. But would she ever be able to? Did they intend her harm? I hated to think about that, especially given my grandfather’s central role in all of this. But I comforted myself by remembering that John had assured us he was with the “good guys,” and he certainly did seem to have access to classified information through some sort of powerful organization. It couldn’t be a crime syndicate or anything like that; it had to be a group like the CIA or MI6, with its hands on government sources, with information about private citizens. Otherwise, how would he have been able to find us in New York? But then I wondered if a highly organized criminal connected to the mob or some other group might actually be able to do the same. That really gave me the shivers, given that I was flying away from Angel toward Jamaica. She was a young woman who mi
ght be in peril, and I wasn’t being much of a hero.
I thought about what had happened just before John had taken me to my flight to Buffalo. He had demanded Angel’s backpack and gone through it thoroughly. And I mean thoroughly. He had examined every inch of it and even checked to make sure there was nothing sewn into the lining. He found her passport but didn’t confiscate it. She’d need it to get through customs in Bermuda. Then he made her stand up, and he frisked her. He did it really fast, keeping his hands away from areas that were inappropriate. He did the whole thing in an instant and with his back to me and I didn’t see Angel after that. I doubted he’d care about her new cell, if he found it. With her on a plane, and us so far away from each other anyway, it was useless to her now. But I was hoping he had missed something else, something in particular.
The sun started coming up as the plane descended over the Caribbean. I could see the Florida Keys. Then we went out over the water, descending slightly, and I could actually spot some boats, ones that must have been awfully big to be spied from tens of thousands of feet in the air. They were probably luxury cruise liners, which made me think of Mom and my aunts. Maybe they were actually in one of those boats. Man, would Mom be blown away if she knew what I was doing.
We continued our descent. Beneath us a huge island came into view. I immediately knew what it was. Cuba. It didn’t look so awful from up here, sitting there in the blue water between America and Jamaica.
Most Americans hate it. Or at least we are supposed to. It is considered a very un-American place, the land of communism and bad old Fidel Castro in our backyard. Many folks have fled from Cuba over the years to get to our “land of the free and home of the brave,” some taking deadly chances on little boats and life rafts to brave the waters of the Caribbean to get to Florida and freedom. Or at least that’s how most of us like to see it. My Canadian cousins, the few who have actually been there on vacations since Canadians have no problems with Cuba at all, said it was a beautiful place, with political issues, yes, and poverty, but no more so than any other Central American country. They also claimed it had better health care than America (though they said “the US,” of course). I didn’t know how to feel about the whole thing. Dad was a Democrat and Mom was a left-wing Democrat (in other words, a Canadian), and they liked the idea of universal health care and didn’t hold strong views about Cuba. They said they hoped that someday America would make its peace with Cuba and we could all go down there on a trip.
But the Cuban Missile Crisis itself was a whole other story. I’d learned a bit about it in school, but I had googled it in New York and again while I waited in Chicago. I found some interesting things. It would have been difficult to find a single American who had good thoughts about Cuba in 1962. That was right in the middle of the Cold War, when the evil Soviet Union and America were almost daily threatening to blow each other up. Both superpowers had the bombs to do it. Spies were everywhere in those days. James Bond was about to spring off Ian Fleming’s pages and onto the big screen and make a huge impact. Everyone west of the Berlin Wall knew that the bad guys in those films were always the ones with the Russian accents. They were always seriously bad dudes and often nuts, bent on world domination. The year before the missile crisis, America had been so desperate to destroy the commie menace in Cuba that they supported the CIA’s attempt to invade the island at a place called the Bay of Pigs. We lost. We don’t like losing. Then, our secret service spotted big Soviet missiles on the ground in Cuba, right next to us, pointed in our direction. President Kennedy just about had a fit. He told Khrushchev to either get rid of them or it was war, and Khrushchev said if we tried to make him it was war. Their sort of war could easily have meant world destruction—the biggest confrontation of all time. It would have made World War II look like a tea party. Our armed forces went on high alert all over the world. People were stocking up on food, preparing to live in bomb shelters and thinking about killing themselves before the bombs got them. It’s hard to imagine now.
But how was Grandpa—or Guy Hicks or Mr. Know—connected to all of that? John had actually said that Know had been involved.
There was no W in Cuba or Missile or Crisis.
As we flew over Cuba toward Jamaica, I could actually see some of the roads and buildings and the countryside from the air. It looked green and beautiful.
Rather than going to Kingston, which was Jamaica’s capital and biggest city, I was flying into Montego Bay. Montego was on the north shore, where the Goldeneye resort was, facing the sea. Once I landed, I wouldn’t have to make my way through heavy traffic to get where I was going. The airport was just east of the town, in the direction of the resort. I could find transportation and start moving. Time was of the essence.
I stared down at Jamaica as we began our final descent. It was about seven in the morning, and people were beginning to move about down there, starting their day. Wikipedia said Jamaica had one of the highest crime rates in the world and lots of problems with poverty. But it also had some awfully rich people and big businesses, and lots of travelers said it was the most beautiful place on earth. (I guess that’s why Ian Fleming lived there when he wasn’t in London—he liked beautiful places and beautiful women.) Jamaica was home to the late Bob Marley, Mom’s favorite musician, just about the coolest guy who ever lived. She had lots of Marley CDs and even videos of him performing. I looked down at the deep-green grasses and palm trees, the beaches and the blue water, and at the colorful homes and clothing so bright I could actually pick it out from above. I heard reggae music in my head and saw images of Marley dancing, his dreadlocks swirling in the air, that radiant smile on his face, the bass pumping like rolling thunder.
But I wasn’t going anywhere that directly reminded me of the reggae king and his gritty reality, nor would it be much like the colorful streets of Montego Bay beneath me. My destination was a couple of hours away on this resort-filled northern coast: Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming had gone every time he wanted to write a Bond novel, where he lived during those exciting days in the early sixties, in that intense Cold War era. The resort was built around his old place. It was as expensive and romantic as any tourist attraction on the island, and that was saying something.
I couldn’t believe the blast of hot air that hit me when I walked out of the air-conditioned terminal. It was like being in a sauna, even at eight o’clock in the morning and less than forty-eight hours before New Year’s Eve. The taxi and transit area was noisy, filled with people hawking things, yelling for passengers, no one shy and everyone dressed in the most colorful clothes this side of Miami Beach. The Goldeneye website had said I could get a shuttle out to the resort, and I saw it almost immediately. It occupied a central place in the lineup and was painted bright white with the resort name on the side; it looked to be about half full when I boarded.
I made my way toward the back. I was missing Angel, and it struck me that sitting toward the rear of the vehicle would be the sort of thing she would do. So I did too. A small passenger was trudging along in front of me and took a place behind me. I threw myself onto my seat and moved over to the window. I had both seats to myself, with my backpack on the rack above me. I was going to try to enjoy the scenery on the way out, even though I knew I had just one day to solve everything. I glanced over my shoulder. That other passenger was directly behind me, also sitting alone and looking down at a book. All I could see was the top of a black-ballcapped head.
My thoughts kept returning to Angel. I was glad that I had given her a substantial amount of money. She didn’t have a credit card, and she would have no chance of ever slipping away from Jim and getting out of Bermuda without cash. Even with cash, that chance was absolutely minimal. And yet, when John frisked her, he hadn’t seemed to find the money. Or did he?
“You know,” said the person behind me, “the flight from Bermuda to here is much faster than anything you can get from the US. I’ve been waiting for you for a while. What took you so long?”
It was Angel. A
ngel Dahl!
I turned around and almost leaped over the seat. She was sitting there smiling at me, wearing her trademark shades. She had slipped onto the shuttle and assumed the color of the seats! I calmed myself, but she sprang to her feet and slid in right beside me, her eyes sparkling over the tops of her shades and through her unkempt hair, our legs touching. She had that look girls get when they want to kiss you. Shirley often gets it, and it makes me feel great, really loved. Shirley, I thought. I love Shirley.
“Oh, Angel,” I said, “it’s good to see you.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice losing a bit of its excitement, “it’s good to see you too.”
“I got us a reservation at Goldeneye.”
Her smile returned.
“I knew you would, Mr. McLean.”
“You did?” She seemed to have so much confidence in me, even more than Shirley did. Sometimes, Shirley could be a little critical. “So, what happened with you?”
She grinned again.
“Enter Angel Dahl, sitting in her seat on an American Airlines flight from New York to Bermuda, John-less.”
“I can see it now.”
“Enter her seatmates: a girl of about ten and her mother, coming home after visiting friends on the mainland for the Christmas holidays.”
“Got you.”
“Note the hat on the little girl’s head, an old-fashioned, wide straw hat that’s too big for her and tied around the chin with a ribbon. Note also her strange-looking sunglasses. Now, observe Angel Dahl—”
“Perhaps you should say the beautiful Angel Dahl? Isn’t this supposed to be a dramatic story?”
“Yeah, but let’s not stretch things too much.” She sighed. “Observe Angel Dahl making a deal with the little girl, trading one of her I NY T-shirts for the oversized straw hat, and her own shades for the little girl’s big wide ones.”