Circle of Bones (32 page)

“How do you know he isn’t lying to you?”

She glanced at the waiting taxi, and then turned to meet his gaze. “I don’t. But I’m not a fool, and I can take care of myself. I’ll call my father’s housekeeper before I get on the plane.” She leaned in and brushed her cheek against his for an air kiss. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered.

Diggory took her arm and led her to the minivan. He slid open the side door and Riley climbed inside without looking back.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Indian River, Dominica 

March 27, 2008

3:35 p.m.

The taxi van had long since disappeared from view, but Cole stood in the middle of the parking lot staring at the patch of road where he had last seen it. 

“Sorry, mon,” Theo said. 

“I can’t believe she left.”

“If you want, Zeke could drive us to the airport and you could try —”

“No,” he said, shuffling his feet in the dirt. He needed to move, to do something, anything. “It’s not like he kidnapped her. She made her decision. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” 

He was still carrying the soggy backpack, and he slung it off his shoulders and extended it to his friend. “Here,” he said as they walked toward Zeke’s van.

“I’ll take that.” It wasn’t Theo who answered him. 

Cole spun around. Walking up the dirt embankment from a boat that was now tied to the wooden dock were Pinky and Spyder Brewster. Spyder’s T-shirt was caked with mud, and his yellow teeth flashed in a wide grin when he waved at them with the gun in his hand. 

“What’s up, Doc,” he said.

“You look like hell, Spyder,” Cole said. “What happened to you?”

The grin faded when he looked down at his shirt. “Some old fart jumped us up river there.”

“Looks like he got in some pretty good licks.” As the two men got closer, Cole saw that one of Spyder’s eyes was swollen. Pinky, in his long white clothes, looked unscathed. “And it looks like your brother didn’t exactly jump in with his support. No surprise there.”

“Shut up about my brother. He don’t need to get dirty. He’s smart enough to bring a gun.” Spyder tried to brush some of the dried mud off the front of his shirt. “That dude knew karate or some shit. Fought pretty good for a old guy.”

Theo said, “You didn’t shoot him, did you?”

“Nah. Pinky might’ve winged him. Didn’t kill him, though. Dude disappeared into the jungle. He run off our boat and driver, but we stole another one from a bunch of foreigners.” He smiled wide and Cole could see the dark gap where one of the man’s upper eye teeth was missing. 

Cole was tired. Tired of everything going wrong. Tired of these two idiots. He wanted to get back to his boat with this thing Theo was calling a cipher disk. “So what do you want, Spyder? Riley already left with your buddy there.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about them — neither one of them. It’s between you and me, Doc. Always has been. You found something up river there, didn’t you? Gimme that bag of yours.”

“What if I say no? What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”

It was Pinky who answered. “No. But my brother’d have no problem taking out one of your buddy’s knees.”

Spyder laughed. “I like that, bro.” He swung the gun around and pointed it at Theo’s lower extremities.

Without a word, Cole held out the bag.

Spyder stepped forward and wrenched it from his hand. He tossed the backpack to Pinky who unzipped it and began to rummage inside. 

Pinky threw the folded shovel to the ground. “That’s what made it so heavy. Ain’t no gold in here.”

Cole laughed. “That’s what you thought?”

Spyder shrugged. “Hoped, maybe.” Spyder stepped closer to his brother. Pinky was now examining the 40-Years Calendar. Spyder glanced back at Cole. “What’s that thing?” 

“Don’t answer him,” Theo said.

Cole shrugged. “You need your knees, my friend.” He took one step closer to Pinky. “That’s what we found up the river there. When we get out to the boat and get some charts, we’ll use it to figure out where the submarine is.”

“How’s it work?” Pinky asked.

“We’ve still got to figure that out, but we’re pretty sure this is the key we’ve been looking for. It’s a cipher disk that’ll give us the exact coordinates of the sub. Then, we just dive down and get the gold.”

“Then let’s go,” Spyder said. He waved the gun directing them toward a path that led past an island sloop, her keel resting on some rotting timbers in the weeds, several wooden props holding her upright. Vines crawled up her hull and termites had taken up residence. 

They walked single file along the narrow trail, Cole in the lead, followed by Theo and then Spyder who held the gun aimed at Theo’s back. Cole searched the ground under the old boat hoping to spot a tool or something he could use as a weapon, but all he saw was tangled underbrush. He felt inside his pockets. He had nothing but a water-logged cell phone. Beyond the sloop was another small wood dock and tied to it, he saw his own Boston Whaler dinghy.

“You guys been enjoying my boat?” he asked.

“It’s all right,” Spyder said. “Too small, though. Should’a got the one with the steering wheel.”

“You can pick the model you want when you’re buying.”

Spyder coughed out a laugh that sounded more like the grinding gears of a manual transmission. “Me and Pinky don’t never
buy
boats.”

Waving the gun in the air, he directed Theo to get into the Whaler first and start the outboard. 

Cole sidled up next to Pinky who was still examining the marble paperweight. The man turned the brass plates and cocked his head to one side. 

“Figured it out yet?” Cole asked.

Pinky shook his head. 

Cole glanced up and saw Theo pulling on the starter cord for the outboard. The engine wasn’t starting. Theo hadn’t pulled the choke out far enough. He was buying time. 

“See where it says you’re supposed to turn the top plate until you get the year over the month? So you’ve got to find the year 2008, and then line it up with the month which is February. Here — look, I’ll show you.” Cole took the paperweight from the man’s mottled hands. 

Theo continued to pull at the starter cord, and the engine coughed but would not start.

“It’s hard to read the numbers. I can’t tell if that’s 2008 or 2003. The brass is corroding.” Cole pulled up his shirt tail and attempted to polish the brass plate. Then he looked up and shouted, “Theo, give her more choke, man.” 

Pinky turned to look at Theo in the Whaler, then he turned back to Cole.

“Hey, man, give me the fucking disk back.”

Cole raised his arm over his head and said, “You’re not using this cypher disk to find my wreck, man. I’ve worked too long for this. If I don’t get it, nobody does.” Cole lobbed the object far into the bush just as the outboard roared to life.

Spyder ran into the underbrush, the gun dangling in his hand, forgotten. Cole looked at Pinky’s open mouth and eyes and said, “Sorry about this, man.” It only took one punch to the man’s chin, and he went down like a sack of cement.

Cole slipped the dinghy’s bow line off a piling as he leaped into the Whaler. He heard a gunshot just as Theo gunned the engine and the dinghy leaped onto a plane headed down river. Theo zigged back and forth as bullets zinged past. Then they rounded a slight bend and the gunshots stopped. Beyond them, the mouth of the Indian River emptied into Prince Rupert Bay. Theo cranked up the throttle heading straight out into the blue water, then turned the Whaler in a wide arc to head for
Shadow Chaser.
Neither man tried to speak over the screaming outboard engine.

Theo didn’t throttle down until they were a hundred feet off the stern of the trawler. The Whaler slid up to the big boat’s stern on a wave of white foam. Cole grabbed the ladder and motioned for Theo to climb aboard first. “You go on, get her ready for immediate departure.”

“We just leave? Let the Brewsters have the cipher disk?”

Cole nodded. “We’re leaving as soon as I come back with Riley’s dinghy.” He reached into his pocket and extended his closed fist to Theo. “Here, put this somewhere safe.”

Theo reached out and Cole dropped the marble and brass calendar into his palm. “We don’t have much time. I want to be gone before Spyder finds my drowned cell phone out there in the bush.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

In the air 

March 27, 2008

7:20 p.m.

Priest was unable to stop staring at her small hands, at the pink, close-cut but clean fingernails that drummed on the tray table in front of her seat. Ever since take-off when the flight attendant had come through the first class compartment taking drink orders, she had remained silent, her head turned aside, staring out the window at the cloud tops and the distant blue sea. Sometimes, she tugged at her still-damp T-shirt or reached up and tried to smooth down the wild spikes of her hair. Most of the time, though, she stared out the window, her body and face turned away from him.  But those tapping fingers told him all he needed to know.

He’d gotten to her. Not that he’d ever had any doubt. He knew the power he had with women. She was refusing to talk to him. For now. It was all part of the game, and it was so much more interesting when the stakes were high.

At the airport, she had insisted on finding a pay phone and placing a call to her father’s home number. The nurse, Eleanor Wright, had answered, but before the woman could confirm that Riley’s father was indeed at George Washington University Hospital, they had been disconnected. When Riley had tried to call back, she got no answer. After that, she tried calling the hospital, but she had been making her way through the voicemail when the attendant announced the final boarding call for their flight over the airport PA system. Riley didn’t hesitate. She hung up the phone and followed him onto the plane.

He watched out the window as the plane flew over a corner of the island of Guadeloupe. Soon, very soon, it would be his time. He would get his hands on the documents on that submarine and then he would be the one calling the shots. No more errand boy, clean-up man. He winced as he remembered how Caliban had refused to tell him what it was they were after. The man had paid for that lack of respect — as they all would. A little more time, that was all he needed. Time enough to pay one last surprise visit to Yorick, and to allow Thatcher to find the wreck while he was gone. Then he’d go back to the islands, collect what was his, and return to DC — not as a janitor, though. Once he’d
paid his respects
to Yorick, he thought, smiling in anticipation, and taken control of the situation in the Caribbean, they could kiss his shoes.

Diggory remembered the first time Yorick had visited him after graduation. The Company had recruited him in the final weeks of his senior year, and he’d moved straight to DC with his few possessions in a cheap suitcase. He hadn’t known what to expect when he heard the three knocks on his door. He’d moved into the rented room in a house on 17th Street SE across from the Congressional Cemetery. The row house was owned by an obese Ukranian woman and the hallways, wallpapered with horrid floral patterns, always smelled like cooked cabbage. But it was the only room he could afford that wasn’t being rented out by blacks, and while he was poor, he wasn’t that desperate. 

Opening the door, he first saw the sleeve of the Italian Merino wool navy suit, followed by the striped tie and then Yorick’s puckered countenance as he surveyed the tiny room. He slid his one good eye up and down Diggory’s worn slacks and polo shirt.

“A Bonesman living in squalor,” he said. “It’s a disgrace. You’re a fucking disgrace, Priest.”

“It’s only temporary, sir.”

Yorick pulled out a fat gold money clip and began peeling off the hundred dollar bills and letting them fall onto the threadbare carpet. 

“That’s not necessary,” Priest said. “I start on salary next week.”

“Pick it up,” Yorick said.

The older man focused his eyes on Diggory, who glanced back and forth, trying to remember which was the good eye. Then the lazy eye jerked away. The good eye seared into him. Dig dropped to his knees and began collecting the bills.

“It’s going to be a while, Priest, before I can pay you any respect — as long as I have to pay to pull you out of the gutter.”

By the time Dig had collected the last bill, Yorick had started down the stairs. He did not look back.

Diggory sipped from his wine glass, then turned back from the plane window, and sighed. “It’s going to be a long flight, you know,” he said to her. “Do you want to talk? Just to pass the time?”

She didn’t reply. In fact, she’d ignored him so long, he was beginning to think about sleep. The nice pinot noir they served in first class was making him drowsy.

Then the tapping of her nails stopped, and she placed both her hands palms down on the tray table. She faced the seat back in front of him, still not looking at him. “I’ll talk if you’ll give me some answers,” she said.

“All right. What do you want to know?”

“I’ve been thinking about it since we were in the car on the way to the airport. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they send you to find me? Why not have Eleanor Wright contact me?”

“That’s easy. She tried. You weren’t answering your phone. I gather you were outside their signal area. Offshore, perhaps? Anyway, she called the State Department for help locating you. The French authorities had informed our embassy in Barbados when they relieved you of your passport, and since Barbados is my home base these days, they called me. They knew I was in Guadeloupe on company business.”

“And how did you find me?”

He smiled. “That, my dear, comes under the heading of trade secrets.”

She turned to face him for the first time since boarding the plane. He noticed two vertical creases appeared between her eyebrows when she spoke. 

“You trusted me in Lima,” she said.

“Ah, well,” he said. “That was different.”

“How so?”

“Things were different then.”

“Between us, you mean?”