Circle of Bones (22 page)

Diggory followed the man named Pinky up several steps and into what looked like a living room with a couch and a kitchen just beyond. Dirty clothes and towels lay scattered about the floor and the stuffy interior stank of sweat and cigarettes. In the kitchen sink, stacked dishes teetered several inches higher than the counter level. Pinky sat down in front of a computer on the dining table and slid large earphones onto his head. Diggory stood there surveying the mess as Spyder came in the door.

“You want sumptin’ to drink?”

“You’re living like pigs,” Diggory said. “Doesn’t this boat have air conditioning?”

“Hey, you want to pay for the fuel, I’ll be happy to fire up the generator and turn the AC back on. We ain’t been running the AC at night.”

Pinky pulled off his headphones. “Didn’t you guys hear me? She left. And a guy was with her. The Doc, I think.”

“First, get the AC running and clean this place up.” Diggory went down the steps into the accommodation area. One of the brothers had already settled into the master stateroom. He took the man’s things and tossed them into the hall. He set his own bag on a bench at the foot of the bed and retrieved a small black case from his shoulder bag. Had Thatcher been the man on Riley’s boat? If only he had told the barbarian to plant a listening device in the cockpit of her boat. He would like to know what those two had to talk about.

When he returned to the living room, the generator was running and the vents were blowing cool air into the cabin. Both brothers now held cans of beer. Diggory set the black case on the table, then pulled the headphones off Pinky’s head. “Go down to my cabin and put clean sheets on my bed.”

The man glared at him. “What you talking about?”

Diggory grabbed Pinky’s throat in his right hand and lifted him out of the chair until the barbarian’s face was mere inches away from his own. Dig saw that his irises were such a light blue they looked almost white — just before the man squeezed his eyes shut. Shame, that, Diggory thought. The pudgy limbs flayed about ineffectually and odd clicking noises came from between his clenched teeth.

Spyder looked up from the TV remote control he’d been studying, then jumped to his feet. “What the fuck? That’s my brother! Put him down, you son of a bitch!”

Diggory dropped the splotchy man to the floor. He lay crumpled on the carpet gasping. “Remind him who gives the orders here.”

Spyder helped his brother to his feet. The two disappeared down the stairs, and Diggory heard them moving about and talking, but the low rumble of the generator prevented him from hearing what they said.

Yorick had taught him the importance of establishing dominance during his first dinner at the Tomb. Diggory had arrived early and was wandering the rooms alone. The building held him with an almost erotic fascination as it was filled with hundreds of artifacts some of which dated back to the founders in 1832. There were bones, including real skulls — both human and animal — paintings, images on crockery and silver, and quirky, odd mementos dating back to the Civil War that all depicted and glorified death. Most of his fellow Bonesmen got a laugh out of all the paraphernalia. It wasn’t unusual to find them tossing footballs or playing Hacky Sack around the many valuable objects. They had no doubt grown up in grand old homes decorated with original oil paintings and ancient objets d’art. They found the death motif amusing. They didn’t walk through the rooms as he did, feeling the low warm tingling of power growing in his groin.

That night he had been standing in front of the fireplace in the library admiring an enormous painting of a nude woman hanging above the mantle.  In the painting, a small red man with pointed ears and an over-sized erect penis was dragging her toward a gaping, glowing hole in the earth. The woman’s white belly and thighs were scratched and bleeding, but she continued to claw at the dirt. Her mouth was open and round, and Diggory imagined he could hear her screaming.

“Like that one, do you?” 

Diggory jumped. The voice was at his shoulder, but he hadn’t heard anyone come into the room. An older man stood behind him, his chin lifted, hands clasped behind his back, staring up at the painting that stretched all the way to the fifteen-foot ceiling. When the man turned to face him, Diggory saw the wandering eye and knew this was the man who had played the part of Uncle Toby at his initiation. Without warning, ‘Uncle Toby” crashed his forearm into Diggory’s neck pinning him to the stone fireplace mantle. He felt the older man’s hot breath on his cheek. He concentrated on staring at the one good eye.

“So, you think you’re one of us now, Priest?” The man pressed harder, trying to make him squirm. He seemed intent on crushing Diggory’s larynx, but Dig tried not to struggle. He could go a bit longer without air. “I know your old man, and he doesn’t want you here, either. How are we going to turn a half-Irish bastard like you into a Bonesman?” 

The edges of the room began to disappear into the creeping blackness. 

“I decide when and if you breathe. Understand?” Yorkick said. He released the pressure on Diggory’s throat and stepped away, as if from something distasteful. 

Dig settled into a chair at the yacht’s dining table. He opened the black case and the small flat screen glowed blue. He was adjusting the settings when the brothers returned to the salon.

“You don’t need a little DVD player, man. This boat’s got a whole entertainment center.” Spyder slid open a teak panel to reveal a flat screen TV and an array of black boxes. “We even got satellite TV, but my brother said not to use it ‘cuz they could probably track us with it.”

Pinky gave Diggory a wide berth when he came upstairs. He headed straight for his laptop, but when he saw the small black case and screen, he edged closer to take a look. Diggory saw that the whites of the freak’s eyes were bloodshot. 

“That ain’t no DVD, Spyder,” Pinky said. “It’s a computer.” He blew out air and waved his mottled hand dismissively. “We got one of them on this boat already.”

“Not like this one.”

Pinky took another step closer to look over Diggory’s shoulder as he removed the voice encryption module and plugged a cord into the data port on his sat phone.

“So, we gonna up anchor and follow that bitch’s boat or not?” Spyder asked.

Diggory placed his finger on an icon on the touch screen and the zoom changed. He was now looking at the northeastern end of the island Terre-de-Haute. The wedge-shaped icon of a boat was located off the entrance to the next bay to their east, and it crawled across the screen, turning into the anchorage.

“Not tonight,” he said. “We won’t have any trouble finding them in the morning.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Aboard the Bonefish

March 26, 2008

9:25 p.m.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Cole sat up so fast, the chart table lid slid off his head and slammed down on his hands. “Ow!” He lifted the table top, extracted his hands, then grinned sheepishly up at her. “This looks bad, eh?”

Riley pulled the dive knife out of the scabbard on the bulkhead. She took the companionway steps one at a time keeping the knife between her body and his. When she reached the bottom of the ladder, she eased her way forward to the settee. She motioned with the knife, “Get up and go sit down over there.” Her voice was flat, a soldier’s voice. Giving orders. But she felt like she was going to be sick. He had conned her so easily. 

The corners of his mouth dropped and the look that replaced the smile was difficult to decipher. Sad? Scared? She wasn’t sure. 
Who was he? 

He sat down on the settee, and she switched on the overhead florescent light. 

“Yesterday —” he began.

But before he could go any further, she said, “Quiet.” 

She held the knife on him, remaining absolutely still as she thought it through. Under the settee, she had a package of large wire ties. She would bind his hands, his feet. Then sail back to Pointe-à-Pitre, back to that snooty immigration officer. Once she had her passport, she’d be off to Dominica to her job appointment, and get back to the life she’d had before she plucked Cole Thatcher out of the sea.

“Riley, let me explain.” 

The knife in her hand twitched. But he didn’t look at the weapon. He kept staring into her eyes.

“When you picked me up out there in the water,” he continued.

Dammit, she’d been conned enough by this Speedo-clad character. She wanted to tell him to shut up but her lips wouldn’t move. 

“The coin I was wearing. You saw it?”

She didn’t move.

“It’s an 1899 fifty-franc French Angel. Very rare. This one was given to me by my father. The Brewsters want it.” He paused but held her gaze. 

She’d had many a stare down as she stood sentry in front of her embassy posts. But this time, when she attempted to force her mind into that cool void, images of his bare chest and smooth shoulders popped into her head. Damn. She turned away, relieved to preserve some sense of dignity.

She shifted the knife from hand to hand, wiping her palms on her shorts. “What does that have to do with you digging through my chart table?”

“I hid it in there. The coin.”

“What?”

 “Before I hitched a ride back to my boat yesterday. I couldn’t take a chance they were watching. Can’t let them get their hands on it. So, I hid it inside some sort of scrapbook that was in your chart table. The book was there yesterday, and now it’s gone.”

Behind him, tucked in among the books on sailing, emergency medicine, 12-volt electronics, and sail repair, she saw the scrapbook.  

“Turn around,” she said. “It’s behind you. Next to the red book,
The 12-volt Doctor’s Practical Handbook
. I moved it last night.”

He twisted at the waist. “Damn. It’s hard to recognize spine out.” He pulled it out and handed it to her. “Look in the back,” he said. “Inside the last plastic sleeve. I hid it with a bunch of newspaper clippings in Spanish.”

She took the scrapbook from him but hesitated before opening it. The newspaper clippings were stories from
La Republica
and
Diario del Sol
she had saved, but never looked at once she’d returned stateside. That was nightmare country. She patted the last page and felt the bulk of the coin and chain. It slid out when she tilted the book on end and fell out with a solid clank onto the teak table.

He didn’t move to take it. “Pick it up,” he said. “Look at it.”

Riley set the knife down on the settee beside her. She picked up the coin. The heft of it was surprising. There were those words again:
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.  

He said, “It’s almost half an ounce of ninety percent fine gold — minted in Paris in 1899.  There are plenty of the twenty-franc ones around, but they didn’t make many of these fifty-franc pieces. Hardly any made it into circulation.”

Riley turned the coin over and examined the design. It showed an angel depicted in profile, a male nude, well-muscled in the style of Greek statuary, with feathered wings sprouting from the back and a cloth thrown over one shoulder. The angel was writing on a stone tablet. The first word was
Constitution
. Beneath that there was something else, numbers maybe, but the print was too small to read. On the right of the angel was a rooster and on the left, a cup.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“There are tons of legends about these French Angel coins. They’re supposed to provide protection, good luck, health, you name it.”

“Back to luck again.”

 He hunched his shoulders and spread his hands palms up. “It all started with the coin’s designer, Augustine Dupres. He was a medalist to King Louis XVI. After making several medallions in honor of the newly minted French Constitution, Dupres fell out of favor and was sentenced to death. According to the story, on the day of his execution, he knelt in his cell to pray, clutching the coin in his hand, and when the executioner saw a flash of sunlight reflected off the gold, he broke into tears and allowed Dupres to escape.” Cole chuckled.

“Quite a story,” she said.

“Oh, it gets better. See, it’s more likely that Dupres used the gold to bribe the guard, but from that day on, this design was known as the Lucky Angel. It wasn’t used again until 1871 when France started minting the twenty-franc coins. Those coins became good luck talismans for sailing ship captains, and fighter pilots have carried them from World War I to Vietnam and even now in Iraq.”

“So where are you going with all this history?”

“Give me a chance to finish. These fifty-franc coins were only minted intermittently between 1878 and 1899. Few were ever released into circulation. They were kept in the vaults of the French National Treasury — that is, until the Nazis invaded, stole the gold and sold it to the Swiss to finance the German war machine.” He paused and when she looked up at him, he said, “Or so the story goes.”

“And you know another version?” 

He grinned. “Indeed I do.”

She didn’t know whether this was going to be another of his paranoid conspiracy tales, but the historical connection was intriguing. “Okay, you’ve hooked me. What happened?”

“Well, my father was British, you see, and a bit of an amateur historian. He wrote about this in his journals. His version states that in June, 1940, as the Nazi Panzer tanks rolled toward Paris, a French submarine was in dry dock in Brest. A small group of Free French patriots, one of whom owned a small winery outside Paris, did not want to see their country’s gold fall into Nazi hands. They had been planning for this day and they had made several hundred special Champagne bottles. They loaded several trucks with what looked like a simple wine shipment. They took off on a dash for Brest.” He paused and grinned. 

She couldn’t help it. She had to ask. “Did they make it?”

 He nodded. “Although there are no reports or cargo lading documents, my father claimed to have found proof that in the dark of night, with no help from the crew, they loaded all the wine crates into the sub’s cargo hold. On June 18th, 1940, she sailed for England. Those resistance fighters who stayed behind were killed as the Nazis rolled across France. But, on June 20th,
Surcouf
arrived in Plymouth, England, tied up at the Devonport Naval Dockyards, and no one but her captain knew she had more than a thousand pounds of gold from the French National Treasury hidden in her hold.”