The Nassau Secret (The Lang Reilly Series Book 8) (21 page)

44.

Gongstown

New Providence Island

That Evening

              Donkeys were more common on the dusty road in the center of one of the island’s oldest native districts than automobiles. That was why all who happened to be outside tonight stopped to watch the big black car glide along the twin ruts that were the community’s sole street.             

              When it came to a stop in front of the only dwelling that had no neighbors within a hundred feet, the older members of the population averted their eyes. A number dug a cross with their toes (few wore shoes) in the sandy soil and carefully spat in the middle of it.

              The house-if a thatched hut could be so described- was that of Papa Willet, rumored to be the Island’s most powerful Obea Man.

              Obea, Voodoo, Santeria, all folk religions of the African diaspora.

              No one knew a lot about Papa Willet and most did not want to. He had been in that hut since before the collective memory. It was accepted as basic truth he was a caster of spells, a creator of curses. When someone drowned at sea, a house caught on fire, someone suffered any significant misfortune, the people of Gongstwon cast apprehensive glances at the thatched roofed hut.

              Based on the most elusive of rumors, his talents had been employed to end the closest thing to a feud the little collection of cottages had seen in a long time. In 1938, Mose Samuels had accused his neighbor, John Tratt, of stealing a hen, an accusation Tratt denied, claiming it was and always had been his hen no matter into whose roost the wayward fowl chose to wander. A dispute of this magnitude was almost always destined to end in violence.

              Not this time.

              John Tratt, his wife and infant child were dead within the week from the first cases of smallpox the islands hand seen in over a century.

              More than one person claimed to have seen Mose Samuels coming out of Papa Willet’s house on the dark of the moon a week earlier, although it was never explained what those witnesses were doing to be in place that time of night.     

              A uniformed chauffeur got out of the big car and opened the passenger door. There would be a subsequent debate as to the sex and identity of the passenger. Granny Rosa White, who was perhaps closest to the automobile, would contend with certainty it was a woman. Others said there was not enough light to be sure plus the arrival wore a hat pulled low and an ankle length coat of some sort, perhaps of the variety white women favored when gardening, riding in an open car or some other activity that might result in dirt getting on their clothes. White women, it seemed, had a racial aversion to contact with dirt of any kind, sand, dust or soil.

              Whatever the sex, the possibilities of ownership were limited. Few black people owned automobiles and none one so elegant. The car had to belong to either Government House or one of the Bay Street Boys.

              Whatever business a person of such elevated status might have with Papa Willet, it bode ill for someone. The Obea Man’s spells were rarely benign and he shared information about his clients with no one. In fact he shared very little, period. The prudent crossed the road on the rare occasions he left his abode, crossed the road and themselves as well as other anti-evil eye precautions.

              The hut’s sole illumination came from a pair of candles on a rough altar shared by a human skull, a desiccated iguana, a wooden crucifix and a faded print of the Virgin Mary behind the cracked glass of a picture frame. In the flickering light, Papa Willet was more shadow than substance.

              His visitor shifted weight uncomfortably. The place smelled of human sweat, rotting vegetation, candle wax and an odor not quite recognizable. There was a rustling in the darkness that could have been one of the geckos that darted across the walls like tiny specters. Or something else.

              It was this latter possibility that was making the visitor increasingly nervous.

              Best to get to the point, transact the business at hand and be gone.

              “A spell?” the old man asked. “You wants pain so bad dot mon can’ git outta bed?”

              The visitor’s head shook. “Not interested in pain, anything like that.”

              Two gloved hands reached into the light, a hundred pound note stretched between them. There was a soft tearing sound as the bill was ripped in two.

              One hand extended a half. “The other half is yours when he is dead, do you understand?”

              Papa Willet emerged from the shadows long enough to accept the mutilated bill. “You care how?”

              The visitor tried not to look at him. One eye socket was a shiny gray as though it contained something metallic. Can a person have a cataract in one eye only? There were more gaps in the mouth than teeth and those remaining had yellowed like fine ivory. The visitor’s head shook again. “Not as long as it is done quickly.”

              “I gots some powder here. You just sprinkle. . .”

              “No! I’m not interested in magic powders, potions or sticking pins in dolls. I came to you because I was told you did work like this. I understand you sometimes leave signs and things that warn off the local police.”

              There was no answer, no affirmation or denial.

              “You want the other half of that bill, you will use something more effective than powder.”

              Again, no response 

              “Perhaps make it look like a ritual murder.”

              “Ritual?”       

              “You know, voodoo, whatever.”

              Papa Willet knew quite well.

45.

2 Palace Green

Kensington Palace Gardens

London

The Present

              The redbrick house was one of the most tightly guarded places in all of the United Kingdom. Photographs were forbidden and pedestrians who lingered too long in this neighborhood of embassies were likely to be questioned by the officers of London’s Metropolitan Police Diplomatic Protection Group. After all, the building had survived three bomb attempts, one each in the decades of the ‘70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

              Built in the mid-nineteenth century for William Makepeace Thackeray, the British writer and satirist, the edifice now flew the flag with the Star of David on it.

              Jacob Annuluwitz had taken London’s Tube from his flat at South Bank, London’s phoenix neighborhood which had risen from the ashes of the
Lufwaffe’s
World War II urban renewal efforts to host a trendy collection of high rise apartments, offices and galleries. Twice he had switched lines, doubling back on himself to make sure he was not followed. He had no reason to think he had acquired a tail but after the incident at Cavanaugh House, he saw no reason not to be careful.

              He approached the guard at the embassy’s gate.

              “Akim Chazan,” he said. “He is expecting me.”

              Jacob had first known him as Schneider. To eliminate the frictions inevitable among a largely immigrant population, Ben- Gurion,  Israel’s first prime minister, had insisted that a certain level of diplomat or public servant change their names to the Hebrew equivalent. The policy was still observed. The German word for tailor became the Hebrew one, Chazan.

              Without reply, the guard punched numbers into the key pad of his cell phone. “A Jacob Annuluwitz to see Akim Chazan.”

              In less than a minute, Jacob was standing in a short line to submit to a metal detector. He was removing his belt when a young man with embassy credentials around his neck approached him.             

              “No need, Mr. Annuluwitz,” he said in English, Come with me.”

              Jacob followed him down a hallway to a bank of elevators. They rode down two floors, exiting into another hallway, this one featureless as a dial tone. There was a faint hum of machinery that seemed to come from all directions.

              Jacob’s young guide stopped in front of a door indistinguishable from a dozen others and knocked. A voice responded and the door swung open.

              Jacob was looking at a man somewhat younger than himself. His scalp was surrounded by a semicircle of what Jacob guessed was the last of what had been a head of red hair. Glasses perched dangerously near the tip of his nose. Wordlessly, he motioned Jacob to enter.

              The room was as anonymous as the hallway outside: A metal desk with a computer monitor its sole adornment, a desk swivel chair and two steel folding chairs. The walls were an institutional bilious green on which hung no pictures, certificates or other indicia of human habitation.

              When the door closed, he took Jacob’s hand in both of his. “It’s been a long time, Jacob!”

              “Too long, Akim. In fact, I was surprised to learn you were still active.”

              The other man slid into the swivel chair. “Retire and sit around the house? I’d rather be posted to a nice, comfortable war zone.”             

              Jacob smiled. The relationship between Akim and his wife Leah had been the subject of both discussion and jokes in the international intelligence community for years. The Jews and the Palestinians lived together more amicably.

              One night at an overpriced Italian restaurant in Kinsington, Leah and Akim had been dining with two of his superiors and their wives. The subject of the marital spat had long been forgotten but what happened was legend in the agency. Leah had stood, announcing she was leaving. But not before tipping a plate of very hot pasta along with more than ample tomato sauce into her husband’s lap before making her departure. 

              Once asked why he endured the incessant fighting instead of getting a divorce, Akim had given the questioner a surprised look and said, “What? And give her the satisfaction?”

              Akim produced a manila envelope and handed it across the desk. “Your flash drive and our translation.”

              “Were you able to crack the code?”

              Akim nodded enthusiastically. “You didn’t need a Mossad cryptanalyst. A reasonably perceptive sixth former could have figured out the St. Cyr. Slide. A cypher, really, rather than code.”

              “The difference being that in a
code
every word is represented by another word, number of symbol, whereas a
cypher
substitutes a letter, number of symbol for every letter of the message.”

              “Precisely. In the St. Cyr. One starts with the letter, say, ‘K’, standing for the letter ‘A’.”

              “Then, ‘L’ would be ‘B’ and so on.”

              Akim stood, the meeting over. “The only problem was ascertaining what letter the
tipesh
began with. It became quite easy when we noted that if your
mamzer
was using one letter, the reply would come in the next letter of the alphabet. His response would use the next and so on. Then he broke the message up into five letter groups, usually ending with a shorter block.”

              Jacob folded the envelope, stuffing it into a jacket pocket. “I won’t get shot for a spy walking out with this?”

              Akin chuckled. “No, no old boy. Had I put your business there on one of Mossad’s flash drives, you would have set off more alarms than the London fire of 1666. That’s why I went down the street and spent a couple of quid on one anyone could buy.”

              Jacob reached for the door. “Couple of quid? I’ll have to buy you a black and tan when we can get together for a pint or so. That
is
what you drink, right?”

              The other man shook his head sadly. “Forget the pint. You owe me a favor.”

              “Such as?”

              “Such as, I may show upon your door step some evening seeking asylum from Leah.”

              Jacob’s hand was on the door knob. “I suppose you had to read the material once you broke the cypher.”

              “How else could I break it?”

              “And?”

              “And there were no names, none that I could recognize. The references were intentionally oblique. You want to tell me what this is all about?”

              “Where ignorance is bliss. . .”

              “’Tis folly to be wise . You’re not the only one to read Grey.”

              Outside, Jacob walked past some of the world’s most expensive real estate, homes owned by Arab princes, Russian oligarchs and former African dictators who had managed to flee their homelands with both life and fortunes intact. The embassies of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nepal were also there.

              What wasn’t were the old fashioned red phone booths. Although these British mainstays were still liberally scattered throughout the rural towns, they had disappeared from London streets as the availability of cell phones made them obsolete. The desirability of the old pay phones was that they were largely land lines, not susceptible to ECHELON or most other of the alphabet soup of eavesdropping agencies.

              What, Jacob asked himself, made Alred James, a high ranking member of MI6, leave his country retreat protected by only locks obtainable in the smallest ironmonger’s or largest chain DIY? Had he, Jacob, missed something? Maybe not. The man chose what was almost a child’s code (or cypher, rather) for his communications. James thought he was, as the Americans say, bulletproof.

              Simple arrogance.

              Jacob reached back into his long-ago childhood in a displaced-persons camp just after the war, more dream than memory. His father had read from the Jewish scriptures, the
Tanakh,
every night, more an effort to hold the family together than for any religious purpose, Jacob now suspected. A passage from Isaiah, 13:11 came to mind “. . .I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.”

              Well, Jacob wasn’t going to make the same mistake. He needed to get the flash drive’s contents to Lang without the St. George’s society learning the information had, in fact, been stolen.

              The haughtiness of the terrible laid low indeed.