Island of Thieves (19 page)

Stopping only to buy a couple of delicious chicken sandwiches from a wooden shack by the side of the road, we got to Lima twice as fast as any bus. We bypassed the city itself and found a cheap hotel near the airport. The clerk at the desk said we couldn't have a room unless we showed our passports, but she changed her mind when Uncle Harvey offered to pay double.

Why didn't we want to show our passports? In case the clerk was one of Otto's spies, reporting back to him on the movements of two suspicious-looking gringos. He might have been dead, of course, but Otto Gonzalez looked like a survivor, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd picked himself up, dusted himself off, grabbed a phone, and called all his pals up and down the country, promising an enormous reward for our capture, dead or alive.

We sauntered out of the hotel, telling the clerk that we'd be back for dinner. Then we took a taxi straight to the airport, where Uncle Harvey bought a couple of tickets on the next flight to Miami. They cost almost four thousand dollars. For five thousand more, he got us both on a connecting flight from Miami to New York. His credit card didn't even flinch.

 

Two planes, a train, a taxi, and twenty-one hours later, we climbed the steps to Uncle Harvey's apartment. My parents were due any second. I looked up and down the street, but I couldn't see the family wagon. Maybe their flight had been delayed.

Uncle Harvey's keys were still in his bag, which might have been anywhere by now, so he rang a neighbor's bell and borrowed his spare set from her. She was a little old lady with white hair and bright pink spectacles. As she handed over his keys, she said, “It's a lovely morning, isn't it?”

“Beautiful,” said Uncle Harvey.

And it was. The sun was shining. The birds were singing in the trees. All was well with the world.

We went upstairs. I had a shower and changed into some clean clothes that my uncle had unearthed for me: a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that had belonged to one of his ex-girlfriends. To my surprise, they fit almost perfectly. He shaved and showered too, then put the kettle on, and it had just boiled when the doorbell rang.

“You want to get it?” he said. “Or shall I?”

“I'll go.”

Running down the stairs to the front door, I suddenly wondered if I'd find Otto and Arturo standing on the steps, their guns drawn, but, no, there were Mom and Dad, tanned and smiling. They took turns to hug me, then came inside and climbed the stairs. They'd bought two bottles of wine for Uncle Harvey and he suggested opening them right away, but Mom and Dad both opted for tea instead.

“How's your week been?” asked Mom.

“Great,” I said.

“What have you done? Come on, Tom, I want to hear everything. Where have you been? What have you seen? Tell me about your week in the big city.”

I glanced at Uncle Harvey. He nodded back at me encouragingly. I tried to remember everything that we'd discussed on the plane, all the names that he had made me learn. “We went to the Metropolitan Museum,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers. “The Empire State Building. The Natural History Museum. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Then we went to the Guggenheim and MoMa. Then we saw two plays, one concert, and five movies, and we went for a long walk in Central Park, and we had lunch at the Russian Tea Room, which is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in all of New York, if not the whole world.”

“It all sounds amazing,” said Dad. He turned to Uncle Harvey. “Thanks, bro. You've really shown him around. I hope
you've
managed to have some fun too.”

“Oh, it's been great,” said my uncle. “Tom is the perfect companion. We've had a really wonderful time together.”

“I can see that. It's all been so cultural too. All those museums! I thought you might just spend the whole week playing computer games.”

“Not once,” I said, smiling proudly.

Mom was uncharacteristically silent. She was giving me one of her long, hard stares. Eventually she said, “You look different.”

“What do you mean?” I said nervously. “What kind of different?”

“I don't know. Tanned, maybe. Have you been in the sun?”

“Oh, yes. The weather here's been fantastic. Probably as hot as the Bahamas.”

Dad looked dubious. “I thought it had been raining all week. That's what the paper said.”

“The paper must have got it wrong.”

Mom was still frowning. “No, it's not just a tan. There's something about your face. You look older, somehow.”

“It's only been a week,” said Dad. “He can't have aged that much.”

“I know he can't,” said my mom. “But he has. Don't you think he looks older?”

They both stared at me. I started feeling a bit uncomfortable. I knew it was impossible, but what if they could see something in my face? What if they could see that I was lying?

“I'll tell you what it is,” said my dad. “In your mind, you remember him as a little boy. You still imagine him being five years old. You haven't got used to our Tom growing up.”

“He's not grown up,” said Mom.

“Yes, but he's growing up. He's getting older. You'll be leaving home soon, won't you?”

“Not that soon,” I said. “Give me a chance to be a teenager.”

“I suppose you're right,” said Mom. “You haven't changed in a week, have you?”

“No,” I said.

“Maybe you just look a bit thinner. Harvey, have you been feeding him?”

“Oh, yes. All the time. I've been stuffing him like a pig.”

There was a slightly awkward silence, as if no one could think of what to talk about next, and then Uncle Harvey said, “So, tea?”

Tea would be lovely, said both my parents.

“Could you give me a hand, Tom?” said Uncle Harvey.

“Sure. No problem.”

I followed him into the kitchen. He put cups, milk, and sugar on a tray. “Tea for you?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Coffee?”

“Ha, ha.”

“You never know, you might like it.”

“I already know I don't.”

“Fair enough.” He poured boiling water into a teapot, placed it on the tray, and turned to me. In a whisper, he said, “Tom, I think you should—”

“I'm going to.”

“You don't know what I was going to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I just do.”

“Go on, then. What was I going to say?”

“You were going to say you've changed your mind and you were wrong about telling lies to my parents and actually it's a really bad idea and I shouldn't do it and what I should actually do is go out there and tell them what really happened last week.”

“Not bad,” whispered Uncle Harvey. “Pretty good, actually. So, how about it?”

“I'm going to,” I whispered back.

“When?”

“Right now.” I gestured at the door. “After you.”

“Oh, no. After you.”

I carried some cookies into the other room and Uncle Harvey followed me with the tray. We sat down. Uncle Harvey poured the tea and I told Mom and Dad about my trip to Peru. I'd hardly started when Mom said, “If this is a joke, it's not very funny.”

“Don't you want to know where I went?” I said. “Would you rather I lied to you?”

Dad told me to stop being silly, I was upsetting my mother, and they looked at Uncle Harvey as if they were appealing for help from the other adult in the room.

“The thing is . . .” said Uncle Harvey, and then he stopped. I think it was the first time I'd ever seen him lost for words. He picked up a cookie, broke it in half, and stared at the crumbs as if they held the secrets of the universe.

So I fetched my passport and showed them the stamps from Lima Airport.

Dad said, “These aren't real. They don't even
look
real. You did them yourself, didn't you?”

Before I could respond, Mom told him to keep quiet, gave me one of her looks, and said, “Is this true?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Mom sighed. “You'd better tell us all about it.”

So I did.

Their tea went cold. They didn't eat a single cookie. They just sat there, holding hands, listening to the story of John Drake and Otto Gonzalez and the Island of Thieves.

I expected them to be furious, but they weren't. Not at all. The opposite, actually. Before I even got to the end of the story, they both jumped up and hugged me as if they were making sure that I was really there. Then they sat down again and I told them about Miguel and Otto and the cliff and the prison and the car and coming home. Mom cried, but she said they were tears of happiness, and Dad said, “It's my fault. I'm an idiot. Why did I let him stay here? I should have known Harvey would do something like this.”

Uncle Harvey was about to reply, but I jumped in first. “I told you already, he didn't want to take me with him.”

“He could have—” started my dad, but I interrupted him, too.

“It's my fault,” I said. “It really is. Mine and no one else's. If you want to blame anyone, blame me.”

“We don't want to blame anyone,” said Mom, putting her hand on Dad's knee. “You have to understand, Tom, we're still feeling quite shocked. And amazed. And not quite sure what to think. But we're not angry. Are we, Simon?”

“I am,” said Dad.

“No, you're not.”

“I am. I'm angry with Harvey, anyway. And I'm probably quite angry with Tom, too.”

“Well, I'm not,” said Mom. “I don't care what you did or where you went, or why. I'm just so glad you're safe. My beautiful boy is here. That's all I care about, Tom. Nothing else matters.”

I thought I wouldn't see New York again
till I was old enough to go on my own, but a month later I was back there, eating a five-course meal at the Peruvian embassy. A crisp white invitation had come in the mail from His Excellency the Ambassador. It was only addressed to me, but Mom and Dad said I couldn't go without them, so Uncle Harvey wrangled two more invites.

We had dinner in a long room lined with enormous paintings of Great Peruvians. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and waiters carried dish after dish from the kitchens. To my relief, there was no more guinea pig, just some delicious fish and the best steak I've ever tasted. It was probably Argentinean, my uncle informed me in a whisper, not wanting to upset any proud Peruvian patriots sitting around the table.

There were ten of us. Our hosts were the ambassador and his wife. Then there was the director of the National Museum in Lima and a journalist from one of Peru's main papers, who was writing a story about us. Down at the other end of the table were the old couple from the mountains, Señor and Señora Draque.

Did you notice that name?

Yes?

You're probably wondering why we didn't.

Well, we had a good excuse. We'd never actually heard it. We couldn't speak their language and they couldn't speak ours, so we'd never introduced ourselves.

Sure, the spelling had changed a little over the years and they pronounced it in a Spanish way—kind of like “drah-kay”—but it was the same name. The same family, too. Tomorrow morning, the director of the National Museum and the journalist were going to fly with the old couple to England, where they would visit Buckland Abbey, Sir Francis Drake's home. They would be staying in a hotel in Tavistock, the town where John Drake was born.

Señor Draque was going to cross the Atlantic to see the land of his ancestors. It was the first time that he had ever been out of Peru. If you'd asked him a month ago, the old man would have said he didn't have any connection to England. Now he knew he was the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of John Drake.

I might have gotten the wrong number of greats, but you get the general idea. Four hundred and thirty years ago, John Drake settled in Peru and started a family. With his last breaths, he would have told his son to look after the journal that was sitting in a box under the bed.
There's a secret in there,
he would have said,
that will make you rich.

Maybe
his
son told
his
son the same thing too. But over the years, the story had got mixed up and forgotten. No one could read the funny foreign writing on those old bits of paper. Nor was anyone quite sure why they were taking up valuable space in the house. Eventually the manuscript was yanked out to make room for some shirts or a thick wooly blanket, and dumped in the barn, scattered amongst the straw.

There it stayed until the current Señor Draque used a piece of it to wrap up an old necklace.

When we got back to New York with the manuscript, Uncle Harvey had contacted the National Museum in Lima and asked if they'd like to buy it. The director said yes. But he also said: “Where did you get it?” Uncle Harvey ummed and ahhed, but eventually admitted the truth.

Which was why Señor and Señora Draque got all the museum's money, rather than us.

Uncle Harvey was furious. The manuscript was ours, he said. After all, we had paid for it. Only sixty dollars, sure, but money is money, and the old couple had taken ours. He explained this to the director of the National Museum, who threatened to hire the most expensive lawyers on the planet and fight him in every court in the United States and Peru.

In the end, they made a deal. I don't know exactly how much the museum gave Uncle Harvey, but it was enough to pay for our flights, buy a nice shiny new car for Alejandra, and have a few dollars left over.

During the negotiations, Uncle Harvey kept quiet about the treasure. Only three people on the planet knew the actual location of the gold. Him, me, and Otto. Maybe someone in the museum would read the manuscript and work it out. If not, one day, we might go back to Peru with a team of divers and again risk the wrath of the Pacific.