The Columbus Affair: A Novel (15 page)

———

T
OM CAUGHT THE BITING SMELL OF DECAY
. T
HE MEDICAL EXAMINER
advised him to move quickly as things would only get worse.

He stepped close and peered into the coffin.

Not much remained. Alle had apparently kept to tradition and not embalmed. The corpse was wrapped in a white shroud, most of which had disintegrated, exposing what little was left of a face. Empty eye sockets looked like black caves—the querulous, sometimes hostile gaze he remembered was gone. Flesh and muscle had collapsed. A fold of skin, like the wattle of a lizard, sagged from the neck. He tried to recall the last time he’d seen that face alive.

Five years ago?

No, closer to nine. Before the fall. At his mother’s funeral.

Had it been that long?

Not once in the intervening years had Abiram tried to contact him. No note, letter, card, email, nothing. While the press and pundits destroyed him, his only surviving parent remained silent. Only after dying, in his final note, sent with the deed to the house, had some consolation been offered—
“I felt the pain of your destruction”
—but that was nowhere near enough. True, Tom could have called, but he never did, either. They were both at fault. Neither willing to give.

And they’d both lost.

He struggled with waves of fear, apathy, resentment, and resignation. But he drew himself up and regained a measure of poise.

A sealed packet lay embedded in what had once been Abiram’s
chest. It appeared vacuum-sealed, airtight creases evidencing that fact. He reached for it, but the medical examiner removed it for him.

“Better that way,” the man said, displaying gloved hands. “Bacteria is everywhere on a corpse.”

The packet was paper-thin, about a foot square, and appeared light. The medical examiner asked if there was anything else. He saw nothing else unusual inside so he shook his head.

The lid was replaced.

A sink adorned one wall—used, he remembered, for cleansing. The medical examiner rinsed the package off and brought it over to him.

Ms. Lawyer stepped forward. “I’ll take that.”

“Like hell you will,” Tom said. “Last I looked, I’m the petitioner here.”

Anger fortified him.

“And by the way,” he said. “Do you have something for me?”

She seemed to understand and retreated to a satchel that lay on the floor. From within she removed a small FedEx box and handed it to him. She then turned back to the medical examiner and asked for the packet again.

But he grabbed it first. “That’s mine.”

“Mr. Sagan,” the lawyer said. “That was to be given to me.”

He was not in the mood to argue. “I’m going to assume that you have no idea what’s really going on here. Let’s just say that you don’t want to know. So how about you shut up and stay out of my way.”

He’d decided that whatever may have been in the grave was his only bargaining power, and he wasn’t about to give that away. He had to make sure Alle was okay. Never had he believed in a heaven, or an afterlife, or anything more than when you died, just like Abiram, you turned to mush, then dust. But on the off chance that his parents and Michele would be waiting on him after he finally did blow his brains out, he wanted to be able to say that he’d done the right thing.

He backed toward the door.

The lawyer advanced.

He asked, “I assume you know what’s in this FedEx box?”

She stopped. Apparently she did. And she also seemed not to
want to have too much of a conversation in front of the medical examiner.

“Tell your client that I’ll be in touch about a trade. He’ll know what I mean.”

“How will you find him?”

“Through you. What firm are you with?”

She told him.

And he left.

A
LLE WATCHED THE VIDEO FEED
. S
HE SAT WITH
B
RIAN IN A
house across the Austrian border in the Czech Republic. They’d driven here last night from Vienna. She was still unsure about any of this and had spent the day in her room, her mind simmering with anxiety. Now, watching the images from Florida, new worries lunged at her.

She recognized the place where her grandfather lay buried. The pictures they were receiving were being shot through a car windshield, from a distance, and elevated. The cemetery was located in Lake County, which had the distinction of having some of Florida’s highest terrain. There were actually hills there, along with over a thousand lakes. Brian’s man had chosen a hillock near the cemetery as his vantage point. She recalled it. A wooded mound of scrub oak, pines, and palms. She’d watched an hour ago while workers exhumed her grandfather, hauling the coffin into the burial house, the same wood-sided building where she’d kept vigil over him after he died. The camera offered a clear view of its front door.

“Why are you filming this?” she asked.

“To try and find out what the hell is in that coffin.”

“What are you going to do? Steal it?”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but if I can get it I will.”

Matsevahs
dotted the foreground, a portion of the waist-high brick wall enclosing the grounds visible. During summer visits with her grandparents she’d often visited the cemetery, helping her grandmother tend the graves.

She’d yet to see Zachariah and commented on that.

“He gets others to take all the risks,” Brian said. “It’s his way. But he’s out there. Watching.”

Her father and another woman had disappeared inside the building about twenty minutes ago.

“You don’t know anything about my family,” she had to say to Brian.

“I only know your father didn’t deserve that crap yesterday. He thinks you’re in danger. Every decision he’s about to make is based on that lie.”

“All we wanted him to do was sign papers. He would have never done that by me simply asking.”

“What’s the
we
crap? You’re part of whatever it is Simon is doing?”

“You speak like it’s a crime.”

“I assure you, this is not about signing some papers. Simon wanted you dead. He’s going to want your father dead, too. That’s why I have a man there.”

This was all so hard to believe.

“Doesn’t it bother you,” Brian asked, “that your father was about to kill himself last night?”

“Of course it does. What I did stopped him.”

Brian looked incredulous. “And that’s how you justify it? You had no idea what he was about to do. You just wanted to help Simon any way you could.”

She resented his tone and accusations.

Her father appeared on the screen, rushing outside, holding what appeared to be a blue-and-white box in his right hand and a packet in his left, which she recognized. The same one she’d placed in the coffin.

“You see that,” a voice said through the computer.

“Oh, yeah,” Brian said. “Get ready to move.”

———

Z
ACHARIAH HAD WAITED LONG ENOUGH
. T
HIRTY MINUTES WAS
plenty of time. What was taking so long? He and Rócha were parked a kilometer away, far enough that no one would know they were there,
but close enough to act. He’d instructed the lawyer that once she held the packet she was to provide Sagan with a telephone number for a disposable phone he’d bought yesterday that would allow a call to lure the former journalist to where Rócha could deal with him.

Hopefully, Sagan would save them all the trouble and kill himself. That was why he’d returned the gun. A suicide would make things so much easier. He should have kept Alle Becket alive at least until today, but with Brian Jamison in Vienna, no chances could be taken. The last thing he needed was for Béne Rowe to know any more of his business. He’d told the Jamaican only what had been absolutely necessary, and he had to keep it that way. He’d not come this far to have everything snatched away. Especially by a Caribbean hood only interested in some mythical gold.

His phone rang.

“Sagan took the packet and left,” the female voice said.

“And you allowed him?”

“How was I to stop him?”

Useless. “Did you give him the phone number?”

“There was no time. He said he would contact you through me.”

“When he does, give him the number.”

He ended the call and faced Rócha.

“Seems Mr. Sagan has decided to grow a backbone. He should be along here shortly. Take care of him before he drives too far.”

———

A
LLE WATCHED AS HER FATHER RAN TOWARD A CAR PARKED IN
the graveled lot just beyond the outer brick wall.

“Tell me the layout there,” Brian said.

She stared at him.

“The layout,” he said, voice rising. “The road in and out. Where does it go? What’s on it?”

She searched her memory. “The cemetery sits about three miles off the highway. There’s a paved road to it that passes farms and orange trees. A few lakes parallel the road for a while.”

“Houses?”

She shook her head. “Not many. Pretty lonely out there. That’s why the cemetery is there.”

“You get all that?” Brian asked to the computer.

“I’m on it.”

Her father was in his car, backing out and leaving. The woman from earlier appeared at the doorway with a cell phone in hand.

“You know who she’s calling,” Brian said to the computer. “Follow him.”

Movement on the screen confirmed that the car with the camera was leaving its position.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Your father is trying to save your hide. He probably figures that keeping whatever he was holding made more sense than just turning it over. And he’s right. But he has a problem. Rócha’s there.”

Her heart pounded.

Which surprised her.

“He took your flight last night. Your father’s in a whole lot of crap.”

———

T
OM SPED AWAY FROM THE CEMETERY
.

He’d made his escape.

“Now I take those secrets with me to my grave.”

His father had meant that literally and what lay on the passenger’s seat was apparently those secrets. He wanted to pierce the vacuum bag and see for himself, but not now. He had to get out of here. He wheeled the car away from the cemetery and caught site of the lawyer leaving the building.

Making a call.

To Simon?

Who else.

He’d wait an hour or so, then make contact through the lawyer. He didn’t own a cell phone. No need for one. Who’d call him? So he’d find a phone somewhere. Going back to his house was not an option since Simon surely knew where he lived.

He sped down the drive between groves of live oaks. Palmetto scrubs hugged the shoulder. The putrid smell of death lingered in his nostrils. At the highway he turned left and headed for Mount Dora, the asphalt winding a path through orange country. Most central Florida orchards were gone, growers long ago switching to squash, cabbage, lettuce, or strawberries.

Here, though, citrus remained.

In his rearview mirror he saw a car.

Coming fast.

———

Z
ACHARIAH SAT IN THE PASSENGER’S SEAT AS
R
ÓCHA DROVE
. They were closing in on Tom Sagan. What an unexpected irritation. He’d not anticipated resistance. The exchange should have been made, Sagan accepting that there was little he could do but cooperate. Instead, this fool had decided to change the rules.

“We must stop him before he finds the next highway,” he told Rócha.

They were less than five hundred meters away.

“Force him from the road into the fields.”

B
ÉNE STEPPED FROM HIS TRUCK AND WALKED TOWARD THE MUSEUM’S
entrance. He’d come alone. He never brought men or guns here. No need. The tiny village of Charles Town sat in the Buff Bay River valley, a peaceful notch a few kilometers south from Jamaica’s north shore. After the Maroons Windward sect, led by Captain Quao, defeated the British in 1793, a signed peace treaty between former slaves and masters granted 1,000 acres of land to the Charles Town Maroons, tax-free, in perpetuity. About 1,200 Maroons still lived on that land, in the shadows of the mountains, beside the river, struggling with high unemployment and continual impoverishment. Farming remained their main source of income, tiny mountainside tracts leased from absentee owners that produced coffee, nutmeg, and charcoal. But there was also a block-making and furniture shop, a school, and a few rum bars.

He knew all of the prominent families. Dean, Duncan, Irving, Hartley, Shackleford. Most sat on the Council of Elders. Frank Clarke served as the Maroon colonel, elected three years ago to be in charge of the community.

Béne liked the colonel, an educated man full of expertise and caution. A graduate of the University of the West Indies, born nearby, Clarke worked in the United States for three decades as a stockbroker before rediscovering himself and returning home to Charles Town. He now championed causes islandwide, becoming as close to a national spokesperson as the Maroons ever had.

“Ah, Béne,
yuh noh dead yet
?” Clarke called out.

He smiled at the patois way of asking
how have you been?

“Not dead yet, my friend. But not for the lack of trying.”

Frank grinned. He was pushing seventy, but with only a dusting of gray in his short brown locks. Little fat adorned his lanky frame. He wore thick glasses with round metal-rimmed lenses that provided a singularly intense look to his dark eyes. He was dressed in jeans shredded at both knees and a dirty black shirt that hung shirttail out. One hand held a rusted
machet
.

“You working today?” Béne asked, pointing to the old clothes.

“Taking some people up the mountain. To the ruins. Going to teach them the old ways.”

Frank Clarke was passionate about Maroon history. He’d been taught by a great-grandaunt who’d been a local chieftain. Last year Clarke had brought life to that heritage by starting the Charles Town Maroon Museum. Béne had helped with money for the construction of a building, erected in the old style of hewn timber pilings, tin sides, and a thatched roof.