Circle of Bones (46 page)

“That gives us twenty-five boxes, but there are twenty-six letters in our alphabet, so start filling in the squares with the alphabet. You can put the last two, Y and Z, on the same square.”

Riley filled the squares with letters as he talked.

“Are you all with me so far?”

They nodded. 

Cole picked up the pencil when she had finished and began using it as a pointer. “Then you select two five-letter words and write them along the outside horizontal and vertical edges. So let’s say your cipher text is AF; you find the A row in the word on the left side and the F column from the word on top. Then follow down to the square those two coordinates lead you to. The key to the cipher is knowing what those two words are.”

Hazel leaned back in her chair. “How on earth are you going to figure out which words to use?” 

Theo said, “Too bad Friday is a six letter word.”

The five of them sat there is silence staring at Riley’s sketch.

“Wait,” Riley said. “Theo’s got something. Look at those lines in the song. The only letters used are RIDAY. Cole, give me that pencil.”

He handed it to her, and Riley added an additional row and column to her box making it six by six. Then she wrote the word FRIDAY down the left side of the page. She used the same F in the top corner and wrote RIDAY across the top. When she was finished, she presented the paper to Cole.

“Riley, you’re brilliant!” Cole said. He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. 

She felt her brain short circuit and flicker for a moment like the lights did during a power surge.

Cole rested his elbows on the table again, pencil in hand. “Theo, read me the letter pairs from the song chorus.”

“Okay.
Ya.”

Cole found the intersection of the Y row and the A column. On another sheet of paper, he wrote the letter X.

“
Then
yd.”

Cole repeated the process and wrote the letter W.

When Theo finished reading him the letters, Cole looked at what he had written: XWMFWHW.

“Does that mean anything to anybody here?” he asked.

They all shook their heads, but nobody said a word. Riley felt sure they were close, but they’d missed something.

Finally Cole broke the silence. “Well, it was a good idea, Riley. But you know, it’s getting late.” 

Riley tried to think like James Thatcher, the man who lived in the ’
Tween
.

Cole pushed the paper aside and stood. “If we want to shake the Brewsters, we’ve got to leave tonight early enough to get a good head start.”

Hazel looked up at him. “But where will you go?” 

“Wait a minute,” Riley said. She had not stopped staring at the Polybius square she had drawn. 

“Riley, it’s already nearly ten,” Cole said.

She pointed to the grid. “What if we use the coordinates backwards?”

“What do you mean?” 

“You know, instead of latitude and then longitude, what if we use them the other way around? Your father was trying to prevent people like Diggory Priest from finding this. He wouldn’t have made it easy.”

Cole shrugged. “It’s worth a try.” He dropped back into his chair.

“Read me the letters again,” she said.

Cole slid the journal across the table and turned it around so he could read it. “Okay.
Ya.”

Riley ran her right index finger across the top of the grid to the Y column. With her other hand, she traced a finger across the A row. She wrote the letter T.

“
Then
y
ou’ve got
yd.”

Using her fingers, she traced down the Y column and across the D row. She wrote the letter O.

When she had finished, she looked at the word: TOMBOLO.

“At least it
looks
like a word this time, but I have no idea what it means,” she said.

“Me neither,” Cole said. He placed his hand on the back of her neck and massaged the tight muscles there. “But again, it was a good idea.”

At that moment, Theo started laughing. 

“Theo,” Cole said. “What is it?”

“You seriously don’t know?” Theo said. 

“Don’t know what?” 

Theo closed his eyes and made a
Mmmm
sound as though he had just eaten something delicious. “It gives me great pleasure when I know more than you, Dr. Thatcher.” 

“You know what a tombolo is?”

Theo nodded, his grin so wide his face looked like it was all mouth.

“Well, spit it out.”

“Your dad, Cole, he was quite the funny fellow. Yeah mon, I know what a tombolo is. You will too if you look it up. In Dominica, we must study our island’s geography in third form, and we learn that our island has the only tombolo in the Caribbean. It is a geographical landform where a small island is attached to the mainland with a thin spit of land. People usually call it a
tied
island, but the proper name is tombolo.”

“Okay, so where is it?”

“At the south end of the island. It’s called Scott’s Head. There’s a village — I have two cousins who live there. The bay formed by the tombolo is called Soufriere Bay. It’s an old volcanic crater and it’s very, very deep.”

“Deep enough to hide a submarine?” 

“Yeah mon.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

The Caribbean Sea off Guadeloupe

February 17, 1942

“
Avions au large de la tribord avant!
” one of the sailors on the bridge shouted. Another man handed a pair of binoculars to the captain when he emerged through the hatch.

Woolsey climbed out behind the captain, blinking in the bright slanting sunlight. He stopped for a moment to revel in the warm wind on his face and breathed deep grateful lungfuls of the flower-scented air. He had been on the French boat long enough to understand
tribord avant
meant starboard bow – and
avions
were planes – but for a moment, he wanted to let the tropical air thaw his bones. Four days in the hold had taken something out of him. Whether it was by the noose in Martinique, or from these damned advancing planes, odds were he was not going to survive this war. Any small pleasure might very well be his last.

He swiveled his head around to squint into the sky, trying to get his bearings. He was startled to see the low green hills of an island close off their starboard beam, and the water the sub steamed through was no longer the dark shadowy blue of the deep Atlantic. Woolsey estimated they were no more than six miles from shore, dangerously close for a sub the size of
Surcouf
. 

The captain was shouting incomprehensible orders, and his second in command repeated his words into the voice tube. Woolsey wished he could understand what they were saying.

“Lieutenant!” the captain barked.

Woolsey stepped to the front of the conning tower. “Whose are they, Captain?” he asked.

Lamoreaux did not lower the glasses when he spoke. “
Les Americains
,” he said. “They are searching to the southwest by the entrance to Pointe-à-Pitre. They have not seen us yet, but it will not be long.”

Woolsey scanned the sky, but he still saw nothing. The planes were not yet visible to the naked eye. Americans. That was a bloody bit of irony for you. He’d loved America the four years he’d lived in New Haven and attended Yale. And they’d loved him. Enough to ask him to join Bones, anyway. Now there were American planes out there searching for him, ready to send him and the lot of Frenchmen to the deep sea floor. 

“Do you think it’s a regular patrol or are they looking for us?” he asked the captain.

“Difficult to say.”

Woolsey didn’t think it was so difficult. The Royal Navy had not heard from the sub since she’d left Bermuda. The Allies didn’t trust the Free French to begin with, and once
Surcouf
went silent, they’d assumed she was no longer a friendly, that she was making a run for the Vichy controlled islands of Guadeloupe or Martinique. Woolsey examined the shore. He had thought all the islands in the Caribbean were high and mountainous, but this was a lush green strip on the horizon. Clouds gathered above the land like a dramatic dome of white and gray cumulous, and a couple of villages of red-roofed houses squatted along the coast.

“Place doesn’t look like much,” he said.

Lamoreaux lowered the glasses and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his wool coat. “This is the low side of Guadeloupe. The volcano is under those clouds.” He turned and pointed aft. “We came through the cut there.” Woolsey followed his finger to the small gray smudge on the horizon. “Between La Desirade and Pointe Des Chateaux.”

Both men turned back to resume their search of the sky off their bow. Surely the planes would spot them soon, Woolsey thought. He noticed the gunners had not taken their stations in the big turret. That could only mean one thing. The captain did not intend to fight.

“What’s our depth?” Woolsey asked.

“Twenty-five meters. That is what makes this the last place to look for us. Or so I thought.”

The
Surcouf
drew nine meters. Woolsey had no idea if the water was deep enough to hide from a plane, but he assumed the captain’s rapid-fire orders were readying the boat to dive. If only they could stay hidden the two hours or so until dark. God, he hated this waiting, but with each minute that passed, their chances for survival lengthened. 

They had been running at the surface these last five days for a reason, though. Woolsey had heard there were problems with the sub’s electric motors. The mechanics had been working on them since Bermuda, but they were Frenchmen. 

One of the sailors shoved a signal lamp into Woolsey’s hands, mumbled something about captain’s orders, then disappeared back down the hatch.

“A few miles ahead,” the captain said, “beyond those small cays called Îles de la Petite Terre, the bottom drops to more than three hundred meters. The question is, will we make it?” The captain turned and spoke orders to his second who again shouted them into the voice tube.

Woolsey examined the small archipelago off their bow. He could make out palm trees and white sand beaches, but no signs of any human inhabitants. The little islets were perfect tropical deserted islands.

The conning tower shook with the vibration of the diesel engines. The captain was pushing the sub at maximum revolutions in her run for deep water. 

Whether or not they would make it in time wasn’t the only question, Woolsey thought. “What about the electric motors, sir?” he asked Lamoreaux.

“
Mon Dieu
. Our mechanics were working on farm tractors one year ago.” The captain shook his head. “We’ll be good for a few hours. On one motor. No more.”

Woolsey turned his attention to the device in his hands. They were counting on him to signal the damn planes, if — or when — they came this way. But he hadn’t used one of these things since his all-too-brief training more than a year ago. And the one he’d trained on wasn’t made by the bloody French.

Henri Michaut appeared at his side. He reached for the lamp. “You want I show you how?”

“Are you good with this thing?” Woolsey asked the French signalman.

He blew air out through his rounded lips. “But, of course. It is my job.”

“Then you do the signals. I’ll dictate.”

“
D’accord
.”

Woolsey stepped to the far side of the bridge with young Michaut, and they rehearsed the English spelling of the words, so that Michaut could send the signals as fast as possible.

He heard one of the sailors call out the depth: thirty meters. They were getting close.

 “
Les avions! Ils arrives!
” The lookout shouted the warning.

The captain barked, “
Préparez à plonger
.”

Ready to dive. Woolsey kept his eyes on the sky. He wanted to ask for the binoculars, but the captain had them glued to his eyes. The sun slid behind a bank of clouds on the horizon, and while the shadows would work in their favor once they dove, for now, the
Surcouf
still stood out as a huge target on that pale-colored sea.

There. He spotted them. Three small dots in the sky. Flying a V formation. Only they weren’t so small anymore.

“Lieutenant, they will make one pass for observations. That is your chance. Tell them we are damaged, but are not stopping here. We are Free French, not Vichy.”

Right, Woolsey thought.

Only the helmsman and two look-outs remained with them on the bridge. The others had already clambered below to ready the boat to dive. He began spelling it out for Michaut. The lantern
clacked-clacked-clacked
as Michaut sent out the signal code, and Woolsey felt his heart hammering just as loud.

Who had issued the orders for these planes? Had their orders come from Washington? In that case, they might believe this story Lamoreaux was fabricating. But if their orders were from New Haven, they were more concerned with that pouch below — and not letting it fall into the wrong hands — than with the sub’s destination.

Woolsey heard the planes’ engines now. The sound started off thin and tinny, like toy planes, but as the V-formation neared, the engine noise dropped in pitch to a throaty roar. He recognized the American planes because of their twin engines. They were P-38’s and they were coming in low. This was no practice run.