Текст книги "Circle of Bones"

Автор книги: Christine Kling

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CHAPTER TWO

The island of Guadeloupe

March 25, 2008

10:15 a.m.

Cole Thatcher steered his Boston Whaler dinghy through what passed for surf on the leeward side of the island, cutting his engine and lifting the outboard just before the bow nosed onto the black volcanic sand. He slid over the side and grabbed the line on the bow, then dragged the boat up the beach away from the tug and pull of the waves.

The small, isolated cove was familiar to him. He had been diving a search grid in the area for over two months now. After he peeled off his wet suit and booties, he stood still, leaning his leg against the bow of the boat, feeling the warmth of the late morning sun erase the cold from his naked body. The Caribbean waters were warm enough at the surface, but at the depths where he’d been diving, the chill reached right through the neoprene suit to his bones.

He closed his eyes. From habit, his hand clutched at the gold coin hanging from a chain round his neck, his thumb rubbing over the raised image. It was crazy diving alone and he knew it, but he’d had to let the rest of the crew go. It was down to just him and Theo, and though his first mate was born down here in the Caribbean, he didn’t even know how to swim.

Things weren’t exactly turning out the way he’d always dreamed. As a kid, Cole loved watching reruns of those old TV shows like Adventures in Paradise and Sea Hunt. He thought he’d grow up to be just like Mike Nelson, but here he was feeling more like Gilligan. This three-hour cruise had turned into months of fruitless searching, and after signing their checks over a year ago, his investors were beginning to demand results.

All the supposed experts in World War II maritime archeology claimed the French submarine Surcouf lay somewhere on the sea floor outside Panama where she sank after a collision with the freighter Thompson Lykes on February 18, 1942.

But Cole knew otherwise. He just had to prove it. And he was certain after all these months, he had to be close. But they knew it, too.

Not the academics or his investors. He’d fled the world of academia. But his doctorate and the time he’d spent working on the Ocracoke Shipwreck Survey had brought in most of the investors when he started his company Full Fathom Five Maritime Exploration.  His credentials convinced them he was legit and not some paranoid, crackpot treasure hunter. He’d assured them the old man’s journals were the equivalent of a treasure map that would lead them straight to the wreck.

But today, he’d hit a dry hole. Again. Just as he had every day here in Guadaloupe for the last two months.

His investors weren’t the only ones waiting for news of the sub’s discovery, though. Cole knew there were poachers out there. The cutthroat scumbags waited, just over the horizon, letting guys like him do all the research and discovery work, and then they’d swoop in at the last minute, guns blazing to steal the find out from under him. Modern day pirates. It was the rumors of gold that drew them out of their dark little hidey-holes. He’d dodged a pair of them up in North Carolina, but they were still out there somewhere – he could feel them closing in like a school of sharks – and he wasn’t about to let them near his wreck.

And if it wasn’t the poachers? Then God help him. Pirates, he could deal with, but he wasn’t ready to deal with them yet. He didn’t even know who they were, but he was certain they knew of him. Okay, it wasn’t like he’d seen black helicopters following him around – he wasn’t that crazy – but he’d caught glimpses of them even if nobody else believed him. The strangers whose gazes lingered just a little too long in his direction. They were watching him – had been ever since his father’s death. Of course, if they’d thought the old man’s diaries contained any real intel, the volumes never would have made it to his hands.

He’d heard about what it was like the day they’d found his father’s body, how the local Brit constabulary had kept the press and the old man’s friends at the end of the lane while a fleet of unmarked black sedans had driven in and stayed for hours. He supposed the only reason the cleaners hadn’t taken the journals along with the rest of his father’s notes was because they seemed innocuous enough, personal memoirs and unintelligible rants kept only for the benefit of a distant American son the old man never really knew.

They should have known better.

After several minutes, the tropical sun had done its work and his naked skin began to feel the tingling heat of dried salt. Stretching his arms wide, he opened his eyes and followed the trickle of water that crossed the black sand from deep in the shade of the trees. A small stream flowed down the steep ravine into a pool just back from the beach. The water originated as rainfall up on the cloud-shrouded sides of the volcano, La Soufrière, and by the time it fell into the deep pool here, it was still cold as the depths where he’d been diving. But the water was fresh and that was why he’d taken to stopping here for a cool, revitalizing rinse after every dive.

Broad-leafed taro plants and lacy palm fronds sprouted from the black rocks that ringed the pool. Tall, old growth trees shaded the glen, and the water gurgled over a small waterfall on the far side, ruffling the surface of the dark pool. On the leeward coasts of most of the Caribbean islands, the vegetation was a combination of lush tropic growth deep in the valleys where the streams came down from the mountaintops, and drier cactus and bush high on the sides of the windswept cliffs.

Cole lifted the gold chain over his head and carefully placed the medallion on a smooth rock. He lowered his body into the pool and shivered. The depth was no more than four feet, so he slid his legs out toward the center and dipped his head back until the cold water covered his face.  The noise from the waterfall sounded different underwater, louder and more immediate. Floating on his back, he watched the branches high up in the canopy where little bananaquit birds flitted among the still leaves. He closed his eyes, listening to the water roaring ever louder, wondering if he had enough of his father in him to see this thing through.

Cole bobbed his head back to the surface and rested his bare feet on the soft mud bottom. He shook the water out of his ears. That was no longer just the waterfall he’d been hearing. He stood up, the water streaming off his skin, and he looked over the black sand beach to the sea. A gray inflatable dinghy had rounded the point from the north and was already halfway across the cove heading for the beach at top speed.

“Damn!” Cole ducked down into a squat hoping they had not spotted him.

The noise of the outboard engine wound down and then stopped. He knew the boat was gliding in for a landing on the beach. Barely lifting his head above the beach level, he took another look. The dinghy slid to a stop on the sand and the men leaped out. There were two of them wearing full-body wetsuits complete with black hoods. Both were carrying spear guns.

Cole dropped back into the water, then looked around at the volcanic rock jutting out from the sides of the ravine. Beyond, he could see little but the green of the brush. He heard their muffled voices now. They saw his boat. They would know he was close by. There was nothing for it but to run.

He had both feet out of the water before he remembered the chain and coin. He stopped so abruptly, he lost his footing on the algae-covered rock and fell back into the water. The sound of the splash seemed to echo off the canyon walls. He stood, ran his hand over his face rubbing the water from his eyes, and in one smooth movement, he scooped the chain up, slid it over his head, and leapt out of the pool.

The sharp rock cut into the soles of his feet and the ferns and vines whipped at his bare legs. He couldn’t allow any of that to slow him down. He ran up a narrow animal path, but that route stopped at a huge boulder.  He headed straight up the crumbling dirt wall then, dodged around the scattered prickly fruit of a soursop tree. In places, the side of the ravine was nearly vertical, but he grabbed at roots and branches to pull himself up. Crabbing his way across ledges and over rock outcroppings, he tried to keep under the tree canopy, seeking some sort of camouflage. His scrambling feet let loose a deluge of tumbling stones and dirt that would act like an arrow to point out his route to the men following him. His only hope, he thought as he heard their voices in the glen below, was that he had a good head start.

The higher he went, the more arid the climate grew and the ferns turned to thorny century plants, easy enough to avoid, but providing little cover. He’d never felt more exposed. The dry sandy soil was easier on his shredded feet, but oddly enough, after the first few steps, he felt no pain.

He couldn’t look back. That would slow him down too much. But he could not stop thinking about the men below him with their metal spears and the fact that his most tender parts were out in the open, right above their heads, literally daring them to take a shot.

“Shit!” He’d reached over a large rock to get a good handhold, and his hand had come down on a bed of cactus unseen behind the stone. He held his palm up and saw it was covered in a pale blond fur of tiny needles.

“There!” he heard a shout below him.

Using the side of his hand, cradling the injured palm, he pulled himself up over a dirt ledge and rolled. He sprang to his feet and saw he had come to a flat and narrow plateau on the top of a razorback. He assumed he would start the climb down the other side, but when he ran to the edge of the precipice, he saw that the cliff fell away straight down to the dark sea. The water stretched unruffled to the distant horizon marred only by the white sail of a single boat.

He took several steps back from the edge, and from behind him came the huffing and chuffing of his pursuers. One of them was nearly to the top. The cliff looked straight, even undercut, eaten away by centuries of storms. The water below was inky blue, not the pale turquoise of the shallows.

He made his decision and started running back the way he had come. The black-hooded man looked startled when he crested the ridge and saw a naked man running straight at him, flailing his arms in the air, and whooping like a Hollywood Indian. The hooded man made it to his feet and began to lift his spear gun at the very moment Cole reversed direction.

Cole Thatcher saw a metal spear fly past his right shoulder just as he took a running leap off the cliff and into the air.

CHAPTER THREE

At sea off Guadeloupe

March 25, 2008

11:05 a.m.

Seated on the cabin top, in the shade of the mainsail, Riley cradled the sextant in her left hand, recorded the numbers off the dial into her logbook, then leaned back out of the shadow. She lifted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. The corners of her mouth drew up in a small smile.

Sighing, she sat up straight and glanced down at the instrument she held in her lap. It was secured to a small tether she wore around her neck. She considered celestial navigation a painful necessity. Like her father’s nursing home insurance, it was something you hoped never to use, but if you needed it, you’d be glad you had it. Sure, she had GPS, but on days like this one, when the wind was light and the water was flat in the lee of the island, she dragged out the sextant to get in a little practice. She’d learned that in the service. Drill, drill, drill.

She checked her watch and then ducked under the sail to squint up at the sun again. Her boat was drifting off the southwest coast of the island of Guadeloupe, and she was waiting for the morning sun to rise high enough – and for her boat to sail far enough south – so she could get a more accurate shot with her sextant. She swiveled her head around the horizon checking for boat traffic. Earlier that morning, she had sailed past an empty Boston Whaler flying the red and white diver down flag, but other than one sportfishing boat anchored close to the island, she now had the sea to herself.

Her father, Richard Riley, was the one who had taught her celestial navigation back when he had been posted to the U.S. Embassy in Barbados. She was ten and her brother Michael a year and a half older. The Bajan kids there had been as cruel, teasing her older brother about his small stature and the thick lenses that magnified his blue eyes like the bulging eyes of a grouper.  Their father, who always talked of his youth sailing out at the Cape, had bought a Bequia boat there, the first of a long line of boats named Bonefish. She and Mikey ran home every day, both to enjoy the lively little boat and to escape the taunts of the street. In time, her father taught her to sail the boat alone – and to use the sextant.

“Those were the good years, eh bro?” she said aloud and winked at the light breeze passing under the mainsail. “Captain Maggie and first mate Mikey, the twin terrors of the Caribbean.”

That was one of the best things about sailing single-handed – there was nobody around to hear her when she spoke to her dead brother’s ghost.

God, she was glad to be out here. Alone. Away from the stench of exhaust that flooded in their DC townhouse windows and the pissy smell of her father’s Depends. His doctors said dementia wasn’t deadly, and he could last another ten years, though it had already got to the point where he didn’t recognize her most of the time. A better daughter perhaps would have stayed and wiped his ass every day whether he recognized her or not. She couldn’t. Not after what happened. If her father hadn’t forced Michael to go to Yale, her older brother would be alive today. Every time she looked at her father, the pain of losing Michael hit her all over again. She had gone home to mend her wounds, not to break open old ones. Besides, Mrs. Wright was taking good care of him, and he wouldn’t miss a daughter he didn’t even recognize.

Her computer chimed below to signal an incoming email. “Shit,” she said aloud, then reminded herself of her resolution to stop swearing. The civilian world didn’t look favorably at a woman who could swear like a sailor – even if she was one.

With her satellite hook-up, she’d been able to send and receive email throughout most of the islands. It wasn’t cheap, but her work depended on it. A mug with the remains of her morning coffee stood on the table next to her MacBook laptop, obscuring her view of the computer screen. She assumed the email was from the Mercury Security Group, her employer. Mercury’s home office was in DC, but they were sending her to design a system of cameras and alarms for a perfume factory on the island of Dominica where she had an appointment next week.

And if she didn’t finish with this celestial practice and get her boat moving, she wouldn’t make it to Point-à-Pitre tonight. She’d fall behind on her itinerary and miss her Monday appointment, or worse yet, miss her “date” tomorrow night – the one several years overdue. As important as the work was, the real reason she was headed to Guadeloupe’s capital city was to meet up with the Ivy League son of a bitch who had walked out of her life down in Lima, just disappeared without a word. Call it crazy, or call it closure. She wasn’t sure, but she had agreed to meet him. When the email had come from out of the blue after more than two years of silence, she had not hesitated. She wanted some answers.

Riley lay back on the cabin top and looked up at her clean white sail curving against a sky so blue, the beauty of it made her dizzy.

She didn’t feel like talking to anyone or even reading her email at the moment, didn’t want contact yet with that complicated world. Life was simpler out here. The overnight sail across the channel from Antigua had been spectacular with a moon just past full lighting the island of Montserrat, the dome of that island’s very active volcano trailing wisps of white smoke in the strong trade winds, and Bonefish charging along at seven knots under a reefed main and jib. She sighed, closed her burning eyes, and felt the growing heat of the morning sun wrap around her like a soft blanket.

Flames consumed the bodies that danced and writhed in front of her while the foul smoke filled her nostrils and burned her lungs. Hot, so hot. She could hear their cries, see their mouths, great yawning holes of black as the lips around them curled into ashes, dropped off and floated to the ground. She flung her arms out, reaching, yet she could not touch their flames. She tried to run forward to help them, but it was as though she was on a treadmill floor. She could make no progress. Running, flat out, screaming through her parched throat, she never moved one inch closer to the dying men.

Riley felt something touch her shoulder and her eyes snapped open. She gasped and jerked up into a sitting position. She shook her head, trying to clear away the nauseous tremors and to calm her hammering heart.

She had reached one man that day. Danny Hutchinson. Her fellow prankster, the guy she’d watched Blazing Saddles with more than a dozen times, laughing so hard she’d almost peed in her pants. Hutch had looked like a human torch when she ran into the entry of the burning house, but he was still alive. She threw her damp towel over his head and hoisted him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Now, she touched the same shoulder, running her fingertips over the tender ridges of the scar. When she’d lowered Hutch to the grass in front of the house, his eyes stared without blinking. The fire had burned through her shirt, melting both his flesh and hers.

That was Lima, Peru where she had been posted for nearly a year as an MSG, or Marine Security Guard, at the US Embassy, where she had fallen for the handsome ex-pat Yalie only to find out later he was a spook and their affair was strictly forbidden. By the time she found out his real identity, though, no rules could have kept them apart.  She had never opened her heart and her life to a man like that before.

But after the bombing at the Marine House, she’d spent weeks at Bethesda in the burn unit waiting for the call that never came. She’d played it all over and over in her head. When they discharged her from both the hospital and the Corps, she told herself that she had been a fool to think he’d loved her the way she’d loved him. He had used her, and to what extent, she still wasn’t sure. It had been over two years since the bombing, and tomorrow she intended to get the answers she hoped would make these dreams go away.

She checked the horizon for boat traffic. Nothing. She’d dozed off for – she checked her watch – shit! Nearly an hour. Her fingers went to the spot just past her scars where she had felt or dreamed her brother’s touch. He was always careful not to hurt her.

“Thanks, Mikey.”

It had been weeks since she’d last dreamed of the fire. The sailing had been so good for that – much better than her life back in DC – but no matter how many miles she put between herself and that life, the flames followed her.

Riley raised her arms over her head and stretched her aching muscles. Thank goodness Mikey was always there to look after her.

She lifted the sextant and placed the 6x scope to her eye again. The sea was unusually flat. Facing southwest, she swung the instrument around looking for the sun. Just when she found the glowing orb and started to slide the arc to bring it down to the horizon, she was startled by something waving from the surface of the sea.

Blinking, she lowered the instrument and squinted against the brilliant sunlight dappling the surface. No doubt about it, there was a guy in the water out there about a quarter mile off, waving his arms at her. She glanced over her shoulder at the island. She was close in but still at least three miles off shore. What the devil was he doing swimming out here?

CHAPTER FOUR

New Haven 

April 16, 1992

10:10 a.m .

“Skull and Bones, accept or reject?”

Diggory Priest nearly spilled his café latté all over his copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A hand gripped his shoulder as the deep voice spoke behind him. He attempted to squash the flinch he always felt when a stranger touched him. Though he had been expecting them, he hadn’t even heard them enter his room. He didn’t want to look rattled – didn’t know if he should turn and look at them, or continue facing forward, staring at the stars and stripes on the Bush/Quayle poster he’d hung on the wall above the desk.

“Accept,” he said.

The word had barely cleared his lips when a paper packet landed on his textbook and then, although he could not see them, he felt they were gone.

Dig reached for the packet and closed his eyes for a moment. He’d waited three years for this. He exhaled, then opened his eyes. The folded paper was heavy, red, and wrapped with a black silk ribbon. He ran his fingers over the smooth black silk. It felt rich. When he turned it over, he saw the seal pressed into black wax: a skull, two crossed bones, and the number 322.

He touched the insignia.  Most of them got here by birthright, but his father had denied him that, denied even that he was his son. And now he had proven to the old pater he didn’t need him. He’d earned this all on his own.

The words inside were written in black ink, the letters formed like those on an ancient parchment.

This evening, at the hour of VIII, go forth wearing neither metal, nor sulfur, nor glass. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Pass through the sacred Pillars of Hercules and approach the Temple. Knock thrice upon the sacred portals. Remember well, but keep silent, concerning what you have read here.

The streetlights were on but few stars had appeared when he turned off Chapel and onto High Street. He looked up at the ominous stone pillars on each side of the gate that led to the Old Campus and the Tomb. The dark clouds massing in the sky behind Harkness Tower were still tinged with an eerie sanguine glow, and a cool wind had come up from the river. In spite of the dust and leaves dancing in the gusts, the evening was pleasant. Unusual for that hour, there was not a soul to be seen on the street.

The blue blazer had seemed the right choice back in his rooms, but now on this spring evening, he was sweating. Perhaps he was overdressed. They would notice. They would notice everything about him on this night.

Diggory approached the steps leading to the massive wooden doors, wondering if he was being watched. He pounded three times with his fist.

The door opened a crack but it was too dark inside to make out who was there. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say anything, so he raised the red paper invitation to the crack.

A deep voice spoke from inside. “Neophyte Priest?”

He started to answer, but a thick arm reached out and pulled him through the half-opened door. Someone jammed a black cloth hood over his head before he had a chance to see anything in the darkened room. Iron-like fingers clenched his arms from both sides, and he stifled the urge to squirm out of their grip. It was hot inside the room, hotter yet under the hood, and he heard heavy breathing from all directions. He couldn’t guess how many of them were there.

The crowd propelled him forward, pulling this way and that, trying to make him lose his balance. When his feet got crossed, they held him up and dragged him through various rooms of the house until he managed to get his feet back under him. Other hands were grabbing at his arms, his shoulders, pressing into his ribs, and when his hands brushed against their bodies, he felt slick, sweaty skin. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to maintain control, trying not to demand they stop touching him.

At last, they stood still and it grew silent around him.

Then from far ahead in what sounded like another room, he heard a deep voice call out, “Who is it?”

All around him a wave of voices shouted, “Neophyte Priest!”

They shoved him forward and the arms supporting him vanished. He nearly stumbled. From behind, someone yanked off the hood.

Diggory blinked to clear the sweat from his eyes. He was standing in front of a table in a darkened room lit only by candles and a fire in an enormous fireplace. On the table was a parchment scroll and behind it stood a man in a robe wearing a grotesque Halloween mask of the face from the Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.

As Priest turned his head to take in the room, he saw others dressed in skeleton costumes with jeering masks. To his right was a man seated in a throne-like chair and dressed as the Pope. On the far side of the room was another in the costume of a Spanish knight. Behind him, standing in the doorway through which he had come were four huge fellows dressed only in jock straps, high-top sneakers and their skeleton masks. The sweat on their skin glinted in the candlelight. In all, there must have been twenty of them in the room, and every one of them wore a mask. Except him.

Diggory bowed his head, feigning deference. He saw on the floor between himself and the table was an inlay of mosaic tiles depicting the infamous 322.

Out of the silence, their voices erupted. “Read it. Read it. Read it!” they shouted.

He took a step forward and looked down at the parchment on the table. Before his eyes could focus on the writing in the dim light, they began shouting again.

“He can’t. He can’t. He can’t!”

Then a short character dressed as a Devil ran into the room cackling like a deranged monkey. He danced around Priest beating him with the forked tail of his costume. At first, Diggory raised his arms to fend off the blows. The others were shouting and waving noisemakers, which sparked in the near darkness when they spun them round and round. The noise was just as painful as the whipping, but he lowered his arms and stood straight, his eyes focused on the man behind the table, the man in the robe. Uncle Toby.

The eyes staring out through the mask were so dark they looked black in the candlelight. The holes in the plastic were large enough he could see pouches of pinkish skin sagging beneath the eye sockets. While the noise swirled around them, their gazes remained locked, even when the older man’s right eye flashed white as the eyeball wandered off as though looking at someone on the far side of the room. The left eye continued to stare fixedly into Diggory’s eyes, questioning him, watching to see if he was worthy.

The robed man reached behind him, then raised a cup shaped like a human skull with the cranium sawed off. A dark red liquid sloshed onto the table.

He looked from the cup to the older man’s face, and while the wandering eye still showed only white, the man’s good eye shone with the challenge. He did not speak a word aloud, but Diggory thought he could hear the old man’s thoughts.

Bastard, he seemed to say. Who let you in amongst the chosen ones?

Diggory took the cup from the man’s hands. He wasn’t about to let some old man stop him now. Not after all he had been through to get into this place. Better not to think, just get it over with. He tipped the cup up and drained it in one swift move, the flat metallic taste causing his throat to close. The cup clattered to the table, and he forced the liquid back down his throat.

He stared back at the black eye. There, old man, you see? A barbarian, no more. I’m one of you now.

The skin around both the good eye and the wandering eye crinkled with condescension.  Never. Fool. You don’t belong here.

One of the brawny, near-naked men grabbed his arms from behind, dragged him across the room and shoved him to the floor in front of the Pope. A slippered foot rested on a stone skull. He understood what they wanted him to do, but the thought of it caused his stomach to roil. He lowered his head. With lips that barely brushed the silk, he kissed the foot.

This would be the last time, he thought. His day was coming. Someday, they would all be kneeling in front of him. Especially that old fool Uncle Toby.

His handlers jerked him to his feet again and propelled him over to the Spanish Knight, whom he realized belatedly, was meant to be Don Quixote. Again, they pushed him to his knees. The Don raised a heavy sword above Diggory’s head and brought it down fast as though he were about to take off his head. Diggory didn’t flinch. He couldn’t.

The sword came to rest on his right shoulder. Then the Knight swung it over to his left shoulder.

“I dub thee Thor, Knight of the Order of Skull and Cross Bones.”