by Matt Lincoln
I snorted. “Considering there are tourists on every inch of the island, that’s not hard to imagine. I think we can swing it, eh partner?”
“I’d hate to risk my reputation,” Holm mused, “but diving out there would be a treat.”
I borrowed the tablet Diane was using and scrolled through some maps. Diving in Barbados could be a treat, but there were some treacherous areas that even we would be hard-pressed to get through without getting beat up by rocks and waves. One of Bonnie’s suggested beaches was right in the middle of the karst outcroppings. The actual beach was small but accessible by skiff in competent hands.
“I’m telling you right now, that’s the spot.” I zoomed in on the zone and passed the tablet around for everyone to examine. “It’s as remote as anything gets on that island. There’ll be caves where he can store God knows what until he can move it.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Birn objected. “There are seven other sites that could match the criteria.”
“All but one share beaches with resorts. That’s no good for smuggling because there could be witnesses at any hour.” I returned the tablet to Diane. “What do we know about the owner of that karst beach?”
“Not much,” Bonnie answered. “It’s held in a private trust. The people who live there keep to themselves, according to a few things I found online. There are rumors of people disappearing out there, but I can’t find anything solid.”
“What about the other estate with a private beach?” Muñoz wanted to know. “Do we know anything about them?”
“Alvin Wright, a British expat.” Bonnie scrolled through info on her tablet and shrugged. “Had some non-violent offenses in London, moved to Barbados and cleaned himself up.”
Bonnie sent a photo of the man to each of the tablets in the room.
“Shit!” Holm cried.
I found Forde’s number and dialed as Holm explained to everyone else.
“That’s the informant who told us where to find Sealy,” he said as the line rang on my phone. “We spoke to the bastard ourselves.” I switched to speaker mode so the whole class could listen.
Forde’s line rang so long without going into voicemail that I nearly ended the call. He answered as I started for the “End” button.
“This is Inspector Forde.”
“This is Special Agent Marston of MBLIS. We met the other day.”
“Yes, Agent Marston! Have you any new leads?”
“Tell me about Alvin Wright, Tomás.” I waited for a beat. “You know, the ‘informant’ you took us to last. Samuel.”
“Yes… That was Mr. Wright.” Forde spoke with admiration. “He is a good man who knows some not-so-good people because of his past. Please do not think badly of him for this.”
“How do we know he isn’t the Trader?” I growled. “That was damned convenient for him to know exactly where Sealy was.”
“Mr. Wright keeps track of the island’s most, let’s say ‘colorful,’ characters,” Forde explained. “He goes under the table to keep the peace as much as possible. If he were the Trader, do you think he would hand one of his own men over to you?”
“I’ve seen stranger things,” I told him.
“Agent Marston, I assure you that Mr. Wright is not the Trader. All I have is my word, and I hope you can trust that.”
Holm shrugged when I turned to him. I then met Diane’s eye. She nodded, but it didn’t seem as confident as her praise of the man when she recommended him to us before the first trip to Bridgetown.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” I told Forde and then ended the call. I faced the team. “I don’t know about you guys, but I smell all kinds of rats around Alvin Wright.”
24
The rest of the day freed up after that briefing. Even though the thing with Alvin Wright didn’t sit well with me, I had to let it go for the time being. There wasn’t anything I could do about it until we were in Barbados, so I tried working on the stack of paper waiting on my desk. My head wasn’t in it, but I wasn’t ready to return to the Mariah Jean and my guests.
I kept thinking about Gramps. He would’ve been over the moon, as he loved to say, about those coins. But would he have sold them? I needed to think and to think, I needed to take the coins to Gramps.
I fetched the coins’ box from the vault and headed out on the hour-drive to the family homestead inland. My great-grandparents bought the property in cash not long before the Great Depression. They lost most everything else, but they held onto that land and built a life out of it.
When Gramps was a child, he climbed the orange trees along with hired hands. He inherited the orchard and house, married Mariah Jean, and raised my mother there. A dry-season wildfire devastated the property in 1971. He rebuilt, but smaller. My mom was their only child, and they didn’t need a large home like his parents had built. She died when I was little, so the two-bedroom home was passed down to me.
Nearly an hour after picking up the coins, I turned off the main road and onto the slightly overgrown driveway of my family’s homestead. Even though I tried to get out to the place once a month, I didn’t always make it, so the driveway and other areas of the property had a tendency to get covered in greenery. The Florida ecosystem had a way of taking back what humans didn’t maintain.
At the end of the long drive, I parked under the carport, took the box out, and headed over to a massive live oak that marked the edge of the orchard. The oak’s canopy now reached over the small Lancaster burial plot, a fitting tribute to a close-knit family.
My grandparents were buried next to each other. A romantic until the end, Gramps had a rose-quartz stone commissioned after Grandma passed. Two hearts intertwined, and their names were engraved more in the style of a wedding invitation than a memorial.
Tobias Jacoby Lancaster and Mariah Jean Lathem Lancaster met under a tree in 1948 and forever dedicated their hearts to one another. Their love now continues for eternity.
Someone cut the grass recently and refreshed the ever-present silk bouquet, which made me smile. The neighbors, Hank and Mallory DeVries, often brought their young grandchildren to pick oranges. Hank drove them in the cab of his tractor with the grass cutting attachment, and Mallory always followed in the car. It was an arrangement I had with a handful of people. Feel free to take oranges to keep or sell, and help keep the property from growing completely over.
Mallory’s new silk flowers were as fitting as ever, with Grandma’s favorite, daisies and sunflowers, sprinkled with baby’s breath.
“Hey, Gramps, Grandma.”
I set the box at the base of the headstone and stood. What do you say to loved ones who couldn’t hear you anymore? I paced in a circle and then sat next to the box.
“I found something. Turns out we’re descended from Finch-Hatton. Would you believe I found his body?” I shook my head. It still didn’t seem real that not only had we found it, but that DNA proved the relation. “We’re connected more than you imagined.”
I lifted the box and jiggled it a little. There wasn’t much to hear because of the plastic baggies around the coins, but that wasn’t the point.
“Finch-Hatton left us a present.” I opened the box as if Gramps could see what I was doing. “Gold coins. Rare ones, nowadays. They’re worth a lot of money. We’re talking life-changing money. But you didn’t care about the money. You taught me the history was more important, and you were right.”
I took a few deep breaths and allowed the sweet aroma of overripe and dropped oranges to wash through me. The scents of cut grass and a nearby lake mixed together with the oranges and made me feel, for a brief moment, as though I’d never left.
“Selling the coins will make it easier to search for the Dragon’s Rogue. Get a water plane, a boat, some sonar equipment. If the wreckage dropped into the Florida Strait, I’ll need to rent a submersible.”
The reasons to auction off the coins sounded practical, but I felt like it’d be selling out. I laid back and stared up through the oak’s branche
s. Frog and cicada and cricket calls overlapped each other in the muggy heat in their timeless symphony.
I chuckled. Those were Gramps’s words, “timeless symphony.” He wasn’t wrong.
I remembered the day he first used that phrase with me. It wasn’t long after my dad died. Gramps sat with me against the oak’s trunk and talked about how life sucked sometimes, but it went on. Just like nature continued after a disaster. He pointed out the orchard’s regrowth, his rebuilt house, the lake’s recovery, all of it moving on from the wildfire disaster, despite a few scars. Gramps said it was the same for me. The scars from my parents’ deaths were also his scars from losing his wife, daughter, and son-in-law. Yet, there we were, Gramps and I, alive and moving forward.
After Dad was gone, I fought against having an estate sale. I didn’t want to sell any of his belongings. Gramps told me to choose a few things that would fit in a box he gave me and then let go of the rest.
“Sometimes you have to let go of old things in order to find what’s next,” he told me. “What’s important are the memories those things left to you. Record those memories, Ethan. The power those things hold over us lies within the memories we’ve made. When we’re done with those belongings, we let them go. They’ll make new memories for other people until it’s time for them to be passed on again.”
That conversation was so long ago that I hadn’t thought of it in years. I got to my feet and retrieved the box.
“Thanks, Gramps.” I lightly touched the headstone. “I miss you.”
I stowed the box in the car and then saw to the house and a few other chores I’d neglected for a couple of months. Thanks to help from Hank and Mallory, there wasn’t much to do. They loved my grandparents as much as anyone.
Before leaving, I found an envelope and went out to the car. I dug through the box until I found what I was looking for. The least I could do was leave them one of the coins. It was worth a little over a hundred thousand, and it would make a world of difference to their family. I scribbled William Meyer’s contact information on a slip of paper and stuck it in the envelope with the coin.
It only took a couple minutes to drive over to the DeVries house. They were out front with the grandkids.
“Ethan! We’ve missed you.” Mallory ran over and hugged me as if I was her long-lost son. In some ways, I guess she was like a second mom. “Stay and have dinner.”
“I wish I could, but I’m prepping for a mission.” At her disappointed sigh, I grinned and handed her the envelope. “I just stopped by to leave you something. Gramps would want you to have it.”
Hank moseyed over for a hug and a handshake, and the kids plowed into me, as well. I promised myself to visit soon. It’d been too long.
“Oh, my God!” Mallory shrieked when she opened the envelope. “Ethan, you found it?”
I laughed. “Not yet, but I’m getting closer.” I hoped. “This definitely came from the ship.”
Hank looked at the coin and then back at me with wide open eyes. “That’s honest-to-God pirate’s gold?” he asked. “I mean, I believed your granddad that it existed, but I never expected to see a thing from it. Ho-lee shit.”
“Hank!” Mallory shook her finger at him. “Not in front of the kids.”
Mallory handed me the envelope. “We can’t take this, Ethan. You and your grandpa worked too hard for it.”
I shook my head. “It’s yours. I found twenty of them.”
“Ho-lee shit,” she whispered. “Ho-leee shit.”
“What are you going to do with the rest?” Hank wanted to know.
“I’m going to auction all but one.” I smiled as big as my face allowed. I only needed one to remind me of Gramps, a James II guinea from 1686. He would’ve wanted me to get the most I could from the auctions. “I’m gonna sell them and use that money to find the Dragon’s Rogue.”
25
I don’t know who looked more like tourists, the MBLIS agents or our tagalongs. Our gear was in the back of the King Air, and Emily and Luci’s bags topped off the cargo space. Birn checked fuel and weights while Muñoz went through preflight checks. Then, a bad thing happened.
Holm found the sound system. He hooked in his phone’s music list, and Air Supply started piping into the cabin.
Don’t get me wrong. My partner was the best in history. That’s a hill I’d die on any day. But wow, his taste in music was sad. His penchant for puns, worse.
“Get it?” He laughed. “It’s perfect.”
“No. No, it’s not.” Muñoz yelled from the cockpit. She finished her last few checks and then marched out. “Pilot’s choice.”
Holm shrugged and disconnected his playlist. Muñoz fiddled with her phone, and something worse happened.
The Beach Boys started rocking the plane. I groaned and damned near got up to kill the speakers. Emily hid a laugh behind her hand. Poorly.
“What the hell?” Birn boomed from the hatch as he boarded the plane. “Don’t we have to hear that enough in town?”
Muñoz grinned. “I’m just messing with you.” She laughed. “Here.”
Guitar riffs pulsed in a familiar beat. Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” was not a bad choice.
“Luci, this song is for you, chica,” Muñoz said. “You don’t deserve anything that happened to you. You know that movie where the hero slays his demons to this song?”
Luci’s eyes brightened. “I saw that.”
“Let’s do this,” Muñoz told her. She held out her fist, and Luci met it for the best fist bump ever. “Everyone, we’re wheels up in five. Get buckled in. I’m not your mommy, and Birn ain’t your daddy, so if you don’t get your asses secure in those seats, don’t cry to me if you fall out during takeoff.”
This was the best mood I’d ever seen Muñoz in since she transferred to our section a few months earlier. She fist-bumped with Emily also and then went to the cockpit. Birn joined her and closed the door.
We all took seats facing forward. The craft came with eight single-file seats, two facing rear, two forward, two rear, and two forward. For the sake of legroom and to give the girls a modicum of privacy, Holm and I were in the forward seats in the back, and the girls had the front two. We were all settled by the time the plane started taxiing.
“My father’s pilot was boring,” Luci volunteered. “I like Sylvia.”
I glanced over to Holm, and he gave a pleased nod. Nobody expected Luci to rediscover her sense of normalcy, but hell, it was good to hear her speak up for something other than answering questions.
Once we got to cruising altitude, Birn opened the cockpit door.
“Belts optional now,” he said. “Marston, the tablet is in the blue case.”
I retrieved the tablet we’d brought for Luci. Cyber had loaded it with images taken mostly from Bridgetown but also throughout the rest of Barbados. Although she was held with captives throughout her time as a captive, she said there were a few outings where she was forced to go with others to learn etiquette skills necessary for catering to rich clients.
“They kept me drugged most of the time,” she reminded us as I handed her the tablet. “I had to play along to convince them I was falling in line, as you might say.”
“They didn’t blindfold you like they do the buyers?” Emily asked.
“Sometimes, and always when going back to ‘base camp.’” Luci took a deep, shaky breath. God, this had to be brutal for her. “It was a fact that we would not have the opportunity to need those directions. The only things hidden were the Trader’s identity and the location of where we were held.”
Emily pulled her knees up to her chest and watched in silence as Luci put on headphones and started going through the visuals. One thing I liked about Emily was the level of empathy she showed for others. Not many people would go all-in on a situation like this simply because a stranger needed help.
Across the narrow aisle, Holm cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his head. No matter how much awful shit we saw, Robbie kept his humanity intac
t. Sometimes, I wondered about mine.
“I guess we better work on our cover while she’s busy,” Holm said in a quiet tone. We’d agreed to avoid talking directly about the business part of the mission in front of her. “I’m Carl Stevens, a personal trainer to rich guys. I’m going to Barbados to buy sex workers because these guys want hot women.”
“I’m Ben Winters.” I shook my head. This stuff disgusted me more than damned near anything. “I’m the money guy who’s bankrolling you.”
We discussed our backgrounds, so we’d have our stories straight when talking with the Trader’s people. Everything hinged on passing whatever tests these people had in place. Our cover had to be perfect.
Muñoz came back to the cabin and turned the music down. She braced her hands on the two most forward seats, and Luci took off her headphones.
“There’s some weather ahead,” she told us. “We’re going to veer south to avoid it. With the headwind we’re getting, the plan is to set down in Kingston to refuel.”
“We didn’t have to do that last time, and we had weather on the way back,” Holm protested.
“Betty’s range gets us all the way there in good conditions,” Muñoz explained. “When we came back the other day, we had a tailwind.”
“So we have a headwind today?” Emily asked. She looked out the window. “How long will we be on the ground?”
“A little over two hours. You’ll have to get off the plane during that time.”
Emily brightened. “If we can rent a car, there’s a place with the best beef patties and bammy only fifteen minutes from the airport. My cousins took me there last time I visited my mother’s family.”
Muñoz shrugged and looked at me. “Your call.”
It wasn’t something we’d normally do, but the hopeful look on Emily’s face was hard to resist. We weren’t prepared to stop in Jamaica, but I knew her mom’s side lived there.
“We won’t have time to see your family,” I warned her. “Just a food run and convincing Customs to not make a deal of it.”