by Matt Lincoln
The mostly sunny skies and calm sea made for a decent boat ride to Freeport. Tessa and I talked about everything but the case. It was nice to spend downtime with her, and we docked in Freeport before we knew it.
Our first stop was where they stored what few archives remained of the turn of the eighteenth century, the library. Grand Bahama, for all its paradisiacal splendor, was vulnerable to hurricanes, and it seemed that they had to rebuild every few years. Because of this, I didn’t hold much hope.
“There’s that official archive in Nassau,” Tessa reminded me. “You should go check it out sometime.”
“Now that I know what to look for, I plan to.” I smiled at her as we walked into the grand library’s front entrance. “Today, however, I want to stand on the same land that I knew Grendel stood on.”
“Definitely.”
She tucked her hand into mine and damned near dragged me toward their info desk and then the archives section. Said area was small, both due to hurricane losses and sparse populations throughout the centuries.
“I’ll search for Grendel and Finch-Hatton on their database while you look for mentions of the Dragon’s Rogue in the records.”
Tessa’s light shone brighter in the realm of research, and I liked this take-charge attitude now that we were in her element. Research and photography were interesting to me, but they weren’t my life like they were hers. Still, I enjoyed the moment.
“Sounds like a plan,” I answered.
They had a computer station to search for books and documents by keywords, as well as records ordered by year. I went over to the shelves and began poking through. In the years since the mid-twentieth century, the records took multiple volumes. The old histories, however, had nothing until the late seventeen hundreds.
“I found some birth and death records,” Tessa told me. “The actual forms are at the Nassau location, but they’ve put most of it online. Unfortunately, they have very little that far back. If Grendel and his wife had a home here, there aren’t surviving records.”
“I’m not surprised,” I admitted. “There probably won’t be anything on the Dragon’s Rogue, either.”
Something rustled behind me, and I spun to face… an old white man holding a newspaper at a nearby desk. He folded it into its original form and set it on his lap.
“The Dragon’s Rogue, eh?” His baritone voice wavered a little. “What brings you digging into that particular story?”
“You know it?” I asked him.
“I’m the archivist. Not many of us still here since this island became all about the tourist dollars.” He stood and hooked his thumbs in his pockets the way I sometimes did while thinking hard on something. “I’ve heard of many pirate ships, including old ‘Mad Dog’ Grendel’s. Some say the Rogue drowned off the shores of this very island.”
“That’s something I hope to find out,” I said with a nod. “For now, I’m looking into some rumors that he may have had a wife living on this island.” I held out a hand. “My name’s Ethan Marston.”
The archivist tilted his head. “Not Toby Lancaster’s grandson?”
I stepped back in surprise. “You knew my grandfather?”
“Well, sure. He came here several times over the course of a few years.” His smile seemed to look back through time. “Toby brought you in when you were a little thing. Told me all about you growing up. Last I saw him, you were in the Navy.” He closed his eyes and nodded. “Word got around when he passed. True gentleman, that Toby.”
A memory sparked that I hadn’t thought about in years. Gramps had a friend in the Bahamas who liked to help look for the Dragon’s Rogue.
There weren’t many he allowed to hunt with him, but there was one…
“You’re the only person allowed to call him ‘Toby.’ Arnold Palmer, ‘not the golfer,’” I burst out. “He used to tell me about you, and how you two spent hours searching for leads and checking out unnamed wrecks in the area.”
“Yes, indeed, that is me.” Arnold jumped up and held his arms out. He hugged me and pounded my back before letting go. For such a frail-looking old man, he was strong. “It is so good to see you, Ethan.”
“Small world,” Tessa laughed. “I bet your grandfather hit up all the historians in the Caribbean.”
“Not all,” Arnold said with a shake of his finger. “Toby knew who to avoid. Some of those historians have the treasure bug as bad as anyone.”
I chuckled as I thought of a historian who now lived in Barbados. She and another friend were helping to preserve archives that had survived on the sturdier island down south. They were on the lookout for anything relating to Grendel’s story, as well. This was becoming quite the team effort.
“The treasure part is great, but for me, it’s about family. Gramps would love the progress we’re making.”
“Is that so? Well, I wish I could help, but Toby and I searched every page in this archive, and there was nothing about the ship or Grendel.” Arnold pursed his lips. “Did you say there was another name?”
“Lord Finch-Hatton. He was the original owner.”
“Ah, yes. Hmm.” He tapped at his bottom lip. “I do recall that now. There aren’t any records on him, either. However, there may be hope.” Arnold ambled over to a ten-drawer flat file, each drawer filled with old, dutifully preserved maps. “Would you believe these are replicas? The originals are in Nassau.”
“That’s incredible.” Tessa marveled at each one he pulled out. “May I take photos of this?”
Arnold shrugged. “No skin off my back. Better check with the library board if you want to do anything with those pictures, though. For research only, it’s fine.”
Tessa was right. The maps really were incredible. Whoever replicated them took the time to apply the inks just so and weather the parchments and papers. It would take an expert to tell the difference.
“What does the map have to tell us?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but a map? Not much.
“Burial plots, cemeteries, that sort of thing.” Arnold moved with the swiftness of a sloth, but I didn’t have the heart to hurry him along. The man was doing his best, which was more than enough. “If I’d known the family was here, I would’ve searched the sites. At least, I would have looked more carefully.”
He stopped at one of the trays and ran a finger along the edge. Tessa and I remained quiet as he put on a white glove and then traced a route from Freeport to West End.
“Are these places still marked?”
Arnold shrugged a little. “Some yes, some no. Most no, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find anything.” He stopped his trace. “Here. This is the oldest-known burial ground. A mission church stood there a long, long time ago. As far as I know, there isn’t much built or remaining in that area, depending on how you want to define it.”
“Nature reclaims what’s been taken,” Tessa mused. “Disasters wipe out human accomplishments, and humans rebuild.”
“Until they don’t,” I said. “Some places need to be left alone, and this stretch of the island, more so. Look at that, Tessa, three old plots along the road, which must have been horse and wagon trails hundreds of years ago.”
“We can start at West End and work our way back,” Tess suggested. “I know how much I wanted to see West End, even though it’s a tourist trap now.”
“True that,” I answered.
Arnold nodded. “I’ve lived on this island for a long time. Before that, I vacationed here with family. It’s changed. Lost its character in most ways. That’s why I sit here. I make sure a few things stay the same.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you again. I’ll be sure to stop in the next time I’m in Freeport.”
“If I’m still here.” Arnold’s wink called my attention to his hazy right eye. “It may not be for long, son, but I’ll be in good company with that rascal Toby.”
He took his seat and picked up the newspaper.
“Thank you, Arnold Palmer, Not-the-Golfer.”
Tessa made it sound like a royal title, and Arnold beamed. “I’ll nag at Ethan to visit you.”
“You do that. Cheers!”
A bittersweet tang followed me as we left the library. I’d clean forgotten Arnold lived in Freeport. It was dumb luck to run into him. At least, that’s what I told myself. If I were a more spiritual type, I might believe Gramps led me to find Arnold at that library. Some people would say he guided me from the beyond.
“What are you thinking?” Tessa asked.
“I’m thinking I’m hungry,” I laughed. “I’m also thinking that we lucked out by finding Arnold. Food and then a graveyard hunt. Sound fun?”
Tessa chuckled. “Let’s go.”
Between food and driving to West End, it was an hour before we arrived at the small, ritzy tourist location. All along the drive was evidence of new construction going up on streets devastated by past hurricanes. At the furthest tip of the island, however, Old Bahama Bay was a bright destination spot with pastel buildings to welcome resort guests. The marina had slick yachts, fishing boats, and even a few sailboats that day.
“Conch salad?”
Tessa pointed at a small, colorfully striped building. Piles of empty conch shells littered the ground behind, and patrons relaxed with dishes of conch salad and other seafood delights.
"Still hungry?" I asked. "If you want a conch salad, be my guest."
"I will."
While she waited for her styrofoam bowl of chopped conch and veggies, I looked around and tried to imagine how the area looked in the early 1690s, back before there was much settlement in the area. The indigenous people were long gone by then, which left the tropical flora and fauna to take over until the Europeans arrived. Where the resort now stood, I imagined grasses and palm trees, bushes with dozens of birds.
Grendel's wife would have been in near isolation here, at the end of a long island, but a pirate who valued what he saw as his would prefer that to leaving his woman alone among strangers in a strange town, or aboard the Dragon’s Rogue with his scurrilous pirates. Maybe she lived with or near trusted friends or neighbors. Or guards. We knew very little about Grendel’s personal life, but, with luck, the South Carolina team would learn more as they processed the archived documents.
“Ethan, there you are.” Tessa walked up and showed me her bowl. “This is pretty good. Want a bite?”
“It’s all yours,” I told her as I turned away from the bay. “There’s nothing left of the original character of the place. It’s all chintz and glamor.”
She paused with her plastic fork halfway to her mouth and then put it back in the bowl. I didn’t mean to ruin her fun, and I started to say something, but she held up her forefinger in the “hang on a minute” gesture. She turned in a slow circle, much as I had moments earlier, and then back to meet my eye.
“It’s true,” she said in a sad tone, “but it’s the way of the world. My job is to preserve as much of the natural world as I can through photos and words before it disappears. If we’re lucky, my work might help protect some of those bits of the world.” She took another bite of her salad.
“We can’t save everything.” I took in the happy and contented faces around us. One couldn’t be sad for long here. “I would love to know how this island was before, but things change.”
“True.” She nodded toward the rental car. “First site?”
“Yeah.” I got as much as I could from the visit. Any sense of Grendel’s presence was long gone.
The first graveyard was almost two miles down the road. It was near a construction zone and covered in brush. As we got out of the car, I wondered if anything was left. There were no obvious grave markers. The most interesting part to the spot was a collection of beer cans and used condoms.
Tessa stayed by the car while I tramped through the weeds and brush looking for signs of what once was there. All I found were more weeds, a tree stump, and a few rum bottles. We moved on to the second location only to find a home built over the space.
The third site was closer to Freeport than West End, and I didn’t hold out much hope. It was a little spit of land sandwiched between two large resorts. Its wild greenery challenged the modern simplicity of the resort style, and I was a little in awe at its existence.
“There’s a plaque.” Tessa pointed to a wrought-iron fence, where a sealed, wood-burned plank made a proclamation. Tessa read, “‘This burial ground is protected by an anonymous trust set forth to honor the Finch name.’”
“It doesn’t say to stay out.” I looked past the fence and only saw palm trees, bushes, and a few other native island plants. “Come on, let’s go look.”
There was a gate in the middle of the fence, and it was unlocked. Tessa looked up and down the street before following me in as if she feared being busted right that moment. Given the hideous shriek of the rusty gate hinges, I wouldn’t be surprised if the police showed up expecting a group of kids to be torturing a cat.
There was a small clearing in the middle of the plot. Thirteen small headstones, each chipped and worn by centuries of weather, were arranged in two rows. It was as though a cemetery began and ended within the same thought. And yet, someone had cared enough to ensure its protection.
I crouched by the nearest stone. Its simple, nearly erased script had a name and year.
Emile ‘Shorty’ Collins - 1704
“Tessa, look at this.”
“You better see this one first.”
She answered so softly I almost couldn’t hear what she said. I rushed over to where she knelt at the other end of the back row. Moss and grime covered much of the stone, which was larger than the others. It had scrollwork engraved at the corners and a finer script than the block letters of the first.
Here Lies Eva Finch ~ Fair as the Sea, Sweet as the Songbird ~ 1701
Astonishment rang through my bones. This could not be a coincidence. My ancestor, Lord Jonathan Finch-Hatton, was the original owner of the Dragon’s Rogue. Guilford “Mad Dog” Grendel stole the ship on its maiden voyage and used it to terrorize the Caribbean for the next five years.
“I’ll take pictures of the stones,” Tessa said. She stood and squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll make sense of it.”
There were any number of possible explanations. The most likely was that Lord Finch-Hatton also took a wife, and she lived with Grendel’s wife, as well as a few friends or servants. We knew Grendel hadn’t killed my ancestor when he took the ship. I’d discovered good old Jonathan’s remains in a cave near where Tessa had discovered a much fresher body back when we first met. The former lord had been dressed as a pirate, shot, and washed up to the cave in a pinnace. That is also where we found the golden coins I’d recently auctioned.
While Tessa worked her photographic magic, I explored the other gravestones. The names included “Pickle Eye” and “Rot Gut McGee,” among other colorful forms. The last one, however, was the seventh in the first row, behind the stone I saw first.
Johnny Finch - 1734.
“I wonder if Grendel had his wife take on the Finch name to protect her from retaliation,” Tessa said once she was done taking photos.
“If so, why name their son Johnny?” I shook my head. “Things aren’t adding up. I can’t imagine wanting to name my child after the man whose ship I stole.”
“Unless Grendel befriended Finch-Hatton,” Tessa suggested. “You said it looked like Grendel didn’t kill him outright.”
“We need to find out the name of Grendel’s wife,” I decided. “If Eva was his wife, then we can expect that Johnny was his kid. If his wife was someone else, then Finch-Hatton took a wife of his own, and she stayed with or near Grendel’s family.”
The stillness of the moment was broken by a call causing my phone to vibrate. This was one of the downsides of having an international SIM card. I checked the caller ID, and it was Warner.
“We got a location,” he told me. “Check that. We almost have a location. Kelley has a few aliases we found since diving in, and one pinged
at Ponce, Puerto Rico.”
“What the hell is he doing there? I thought he was aiming to supply one of the militias.”
“It’s anybody’s guess,” Warner said in a weary tone.
“Do we know if he’s alone?”
“No, sir, we don’t know yet.” Warner spoke in a muffled murmur to someone in the background and then returned to our call. “I have people scrubbing the security footage for the past day at the business where we pinpointed him. By the time you get back, there should be more intel.”
“I’ll be back in three hours unless you need me sooner,” I said.
“Three hours is fine. We’re not sure how long this will take. As it is, we got super lucky just to catch this one.”
“Good work, TJ. We’ll see you in a while.”
Tessa quirked a brow as I put my phone away. “Sounds like we found what we needed just in time.”
“Hell yeah,” I said with a laugh. “Hell to the yes.”
33
Tessa buckled into her seat across from me on Bette Davis, the King Air 350 MBLIS was using to send my team to Puerto Rico. We’d gotten back to the houseboat so late the night before that we had both fallen asleep as soon as we fell into bed.
“I hope our pilots got more sleep than the rest of us,” Tessa told me.
I waved off the concern. “They got their required sleep while the rest of us planned the raid.”
“I’m glad Lamarr and Sylvia are coming,” Tessa admitted. “I don’t understand why you guys don’t have a dedicated pilot, though.”
I studied her for a moment. While the reason wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t broadcast everywhere, either.
“Funding,” I told her. “The approval for the plane went through, and the deal was done before they found out the Pentagon decided we have two fully licensed pilots who also happened to be special agents. Instead of hiring a pilot as promised, they put that on Muñoz and Birn’s shoulders. What a happy coincidence.” Only nobody was happy.