Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

So Caliban had contacted the barbarian to check up on him. He wondered if the older man was following orders or merely trying to assert his power by keeping Diggory on a short leash. The late hour led him to believe the latter.

  “It is a woman sailor who knows Thatcher. I have reason to believe she will lead them to him if they follow her.”

  “I see.”

  “You brought me in to do a job. Either leave me to do it or get someone else.”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I understand, but you do need to keep me informed.”

  “As soon as I have something concrete, I’ll be in touch. Is there anything else?”

  “Thor, I know I don’t have to tell you this, but —” Caliban began.

  Dig held the phone a distance from his ear, disgusted with the man’s pedantic tone. He was losing patience.

  “We are headed toward this election at home, and though I cannot say any more about what exactly is at stake here, I can stress to you that this project is of the utmost importance to our future.”

  “I understand,” he said. He closed the phone before the other man could answer.

  In the dark room, her body was an undistinguished lump under the sheet and comforter. Her dark brown hair splayed out across the pillow. The snoring had resumed. He sat on the side of the bed and she stirred. She murmured to him in German, “Who was that on your phone?”

  He said nothing.

  She rolled over to face him. “Is something wrong?”

  He reached out his hand and traced his fingers along the side of her face, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “My phone was inside my jacket.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t see anything. I just got out the phone.”

  Of course she would not be so quick to say she had not seen anything unless she had. She would not have been able to miss the heft of the gun.

  “You should not have answered that phone.”

  “I’m sorry.” She ran her tongue around her lips, her intentions bare. “It’s just that you were outside, and I thought it might be important. I was a bad girl, but that’s what I like about you. You’re a bad boy and you like bad girls, don’t you?”

  He looked away from her, out the window, and thought about what she did know about him. The gun. The phone. And she’d called him Thor. He looked at the open sliding door. The hour was late. He wondered how much noise she would make.

  “I won’t do it again,” she said and squirmed her body to press her breasts through the sheet against his thigh.

  He placed his left hand on the mattress on the far side of her body, then he pulled down the sheet to admire her long neck and the heavy breasts with large pink areolae. He leaned down close, pressing his rib cage against her naked skin and watching her eyes as his fingers traced the line of her jaw then slid up under her chin. “No,” he said. “You won’t do it again.”

  She was an athletic woman and the tendons in her neck were strong. He saw it in her eyes when the pressure registered, when the last vestiges of sleep were ushered out by the arrival of terror. She began flailing at his back with her fists, trying to reach his head, but he fended off her blows by pinning her arms with his elbows. Her feet were tangled in the bed clothes and she arched her back, her eyes growing wider, her face starting to darken. She tried to kick her legs free.

  He increased the pressure on the carotid and her eyes flicked and darted around in their sockets, panic driving out all reason. But the lack of oxygen and the blood that continued to pump into her head slowed her struggles. When her eyelids drooped, he released his grip on her throat. He heard the intake of air and was pleased. He needed to see her eyes to watch for that exquisite moment. Her eyelids fluttered, and he watched as the eyes rolled and began to focus and the realization flooded back into her that he was still there.

  He felt her chest expand as she made ready to scream, and her eyes locked on his with a hatred so vile he imagined he could feel the heat. Once they were resigned to what was going to happen, they always turned from terror to a venomous enmity. They wanted to let him know what they thought with their last thoughts, and he found a strength in that. With his powerful right hand he squeezed hard, cutting her scream so that she only emitted a feeble squeak before her face darkened again and her eyes began to bulge. This time he reached over with his left hand and held her eyelids open as she lost consciousness and the life drained out of her.

  He watched, wondering if there would be a moment when he would see the change in her, when she would see if there was something beyond this world or not. There were so many stories of visions, of a light, a tunnel, of people seeing the other side, and he always watched for that moment when he might learn if it was so. But like all the other times, she merely departed. One second, she was there, then came the instant when he knew that even if he released his grip, she would not breathe again. When she was gone, he moved his face close to hers and tried to find the words to explain how different the eyes looked without that inner light. Dull, glassy, inert. The eyes were now all these things, but none of those words got to the essence of what had changed.

  Heaven, Hades, angels, Lucifer — all that seemed quite preposterous if you thought about it. The only way people could possibly believe in that was to force themselves to suspend their reason and disbelief – and that he could not do. As Hegel said, “The rational alone is real.” Saints, sinners, miracles, the Bible. It was all as fantastic as something made up by Poe or Disney. Ludicrous. And if it didn’t exist, then what on earth would drive men to act except their own desires and appetites and self interest? If the whole structure that defined good and evil was based on falsehoods, then his life made perfect sense. As did her death, he thought as he flexed the fingers of his right hand, remembering the feel of her smooth, warm skin as she struggled.

  But in the back of his mind, there was always that little niggling doubt that said, yes, but, what if it all were true?

  He went to work with the precision of a Broadway set dresser. From another pocket of his jacket, he removed a pair of latex gloves and a small microfiber cloth. He cleaned the room, flushed the spent condom and then stood, one gloved hand on his chin and stared at the corpse. Her clothes, underwear, bra and pantyhose were draped over the armchair where she had left them. He looked up at the ceiling fan still turning over the center of the room — then back at the pantyhose, and he nodded. They’d started this back in England, and it would be amusing to repeat it. Tying the pantyhose around her neck, he gave her one last smile, even though the blank eyes showed no appreciation for his charm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Aboard the Bonefish

  March 26, 2008

  10:05 a.m.

  The volcano stood off to starboard, invisible beneath its cloak of snagged trade wind clouds. The lower, gentler slope of the mountain was dotted with red-roofed homes, towns, and farms. Riley hummed to herself as she sailed the Bonefish hard on the wind bound for the Iles des Saintes. The wind was from the east-southeast and she was sailing due south to clear Capesterre Belle-Eau. In truth, the autopilot did most of the steering leaving her free to play with the lines, adjusting the trim of the sails, trying to eek out an extra half knot from each wind shift. She moved from one side of the cockpit to the other, her yellow oilskins streaming water from the waves that smashed against the small boat’s bow and the wind-blown spray that stung her cheeks.

  She shook her head like a dog whipping the water off his fur. The hood of her jacket was pulled tight round her face, cinched in by the drawstring under her chin, so it was only her face that got wet. The salt water streamed into her eyes. She didn’t care. The stout little boat smashed into another wave and spray reached nearly to her mast’s first cross-trees.

  She whooped like a rodeo cowboy, ducked under the dodger and patted the boat’s closed main hatch. “Atta girl,” she said aloud. Her Caliber 40 was no racing boat, but she was making a solid seven and half knots punching through the seas, rarely slowing down. This was the kind of adrenelin-pumping
sailing Riley loved, with the lee rail almost underwater and the lower edge of the genoa dripping seawater. Off her stern, the quarter wave rose up with a whoosh as the Bonefish slipped through the water pushing to reach beyond her own hull speed. She was a sweet boat all right, and Riley had grown to trust her, aware that the boat was tougher than she was. This morning Bonefish was over-powered with full jenny in the eighteen to twenty knots of wind, but she was pounding her way through the Caribbean chop without a care. All the hatches and port lights were closed down tight, and Riley was proud of the fact that her boat never leaked a drop in bad weather. The only seawater that made its way below would be what she tracked in once she arrived.

  Riley braced herself in a corner of the cockpit and admired the view of the island she was leaving behind. She still hadn’t worked out what she was going to do about her passport situation. The night before, she lay in her bunk staring at the overhead unable to sleep, thinking about Diggory and wondering if she should sail to the Saintes with such thin evidence Bob might be there. She knew she was looking for an excuse to stick around and go find Dig in the morning.

  Finally, she got out of bed and dug into her chart table for her old scrapbook. In it were family photos, plastic sleeves filled with yellowing newspaper clippings, her discharge papers, and the various ribbons and medals she’d once worn so proudly. She opened the book to the snapshots from Lima. In one, she and Diggory were sitting at an outside cafe table, smiling for the camera, arms entwined. She looked so happy, so ignorant. Then she’d slammed the book closed, stuffed it into the bookcase behind the settee, and climbed back into her bunk.

  Riley saw she had cleared the cape, and she eased off the wind a bit. The boat speed picked up by another half knot. It wasn’t even mid-morning and she was more than halfway there. Her predawn departure had paid off. She had been tempted one more time — when she’d ventured on deck in the dark and found her oars tucked inside her cockpit — to stay and find Dig. But then she remembered what Hazel said. He would never tell her the truth. If only she’d trusted her instincts instead of her libido, she never would have slept with him in the first place. Now, she would have to find the truth on her own. And to do that, she needed to get her passport back first.

  Ahead, the small islands rose out of the sea like dark green gum drops. At this rate, she should be able to get the anchor down before lunch, go ashore for a fine French midday meal, and then work it off with an afternoon walking the streets — all the while keeping her eyes open for the elusive Bob.

  She checked the GPS chart plotter at the helm and saw that her speed was sometimes exceeding eight knots. Bonefish was flying on her favorite point of sail, rolling as the seas lifted her stern quarter. Riley sighed, sorry that this sail would end too soon, and she would have to get back to the real world of people and officials and finding this jerk who had put her into this situation.

  When she began to see the red roofs of the village and the masts of the many boats anchored in the harbor, Riley peeled off her oilskins. The seas had quieted in the lee of the island and she was sweating inside the waterproof fabric. As she tucked her jacket up under the dodger, she heard her cell phone ring inside the velcro-sealed pocket. She fished the thing out and recognized the number of her father’s townhouse in DC.

  “Hello?”

  “Maggie? It’s Eleanor Wright, here.”

  She closed her eyes for moment picturing the woman standing next to the wheelchair where her father spent his days propped up in front of the second story bay window. He liked to watch the neighbors hurrying to work or walking their dogs or pushing strollers on the sidewalk in front of his Foggy Bottom townhouse. “Your father has been asking about you. We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  She opened her mouth prepared to defend herself, then closed it again and breathed in through her nose. “Communication is difficult down here. How is he?”

  “He’s having a good day today. Would you like to talk to him?”

  It was the last thing she wanted to do, but of course, she couldn’t say that. “Sure. Put him on.”

  Even over the sound of the wind, she could hear the muffled noise as Mrs. Wright passed him the phone. He would be talking on the wired handset. He hated wireless phones. Always said he couldn’t hear through them.

  “Maggie?”

  “Hi, Dad. How are you doing?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m just sailing into the anchorage at the Saintes. You know, off Guadaloupe.”

  “What the hell are you doing down there?”

  She had to laugh sometimes. Her father had been such a proper man, never swearing before this dementia changed his personality. It seemed to have erased all his protocol filters. “I’m having a grand sail, Dad, on the Bonefish. Remember my boat?”

  “I’ve got a boat named Bonefish.”

  “Not anymore, Dad.”

  “No? I’ll ask your mother when she calls.”

  Her parents had been divorced for more than a decade, and he would be waiting a long time before his ex-wife, now remarried and living in France, was likely to call him.

  “Where did you say you are?”

  Most of the time now, she told him anything, true or false. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t remember the next time she talked to him. She tried to find something that would connect in his muddled memory. “Yesterday, I was in Pointe-à-Pitre.”

  “What for?”

  “If you can believe it, I ran into someone I knew. He’s a Yale man like you, Dad.”

  “Yale? Maybe I knew him.”

  “I don’t think so, Dad. You were there a long time ago.”

  “You make me sound like an old man.”

  She reached for the autopilot to adjust her course. “You are an old man, dad.”

  “I’m a Yale man. What’s his name?”

  “Diggory Priest.”

  “You met a priest?”

  She took the phone away from her ear and looked skyward. You had to laugh or you’d cry. “No, Dad, Diggory Priest is the man’s name.”

  “I once knew a priest.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Did you, Dad?”

  “He was a Yale man. He knew Michael.”

  She shook her head. This disease mixed everything up in her father’s head. Dig had been more than five years gone by the time her brother went to the school. “Not the same man, Dad.”

  “I didn’t think much of him. Priests are supposed to be men of God.”

  It was strange how there were moments like this when his voice sounded so sane, and she could almost forget that he was so ill. “Dad, the man I know once told me that his mother named him after the hatter who sailed from England on the Mayflower.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  She laughed out loud. “No, Dad, you’re not quite that old. Is Mrs. Wright taking good care of you?”

  “Damn woman won’t let me smoke a cigar.”

  “It’s your doctor who says you can’t smoke.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you, Maggie.”

  “No, Dad, don’t worry about it.”

  “I can’t keep the secret any longer.”

  She heard his voice crack and knew where the conversation was headed. Every time she spoke to him now, no matter where she steered the conversation, it always came back to this.

  “It was all my fault.”

  “Dad, don’t worry about it.”

  “They called me. Told me they were going to throw me out if I said anything. I had to go along with it.”

  “Dad, it’s over now. Everyone has forgotten.”

  “Not me.”

  “I beg to differ, Dad. You’ve forgotten most things.”

  “But Maggie, I was so angry. After everything I had done for them, to ask for that sacrifice.” He stopped, choked on a sob. “I wanted to tell you and your mother, but they wouldn’t let me.”

  “Dad, I know. It was a long time ago.” Truth was, she didn’t know. She had gone thr
ough everything she knew about his diplomatic service career, and she couldn’t come up with anything this story could be based on. He never went into specifics. His doctor told her it might even not be a real memory at all. This was not unusual in dementia patients. They often started inventing stories. On one call, her father told her that the State Department had just phoned him and asked him to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Taiwan.

  He was crying now, sobbing into the phone. Before this illness, she had never seen her father cry. Not even at Michael’s funeral.

  “I’m sorry. If I had only known I would have stopped him from coming. Please, Maggie, please, say it wasn’t my fault. Maggie? Maggie?”

  She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes tight, not knowing if her eyes burned from tears or salt spray. “Dad, it’s okay.”

  Mrs. Wright was on the line then. “I’m putting him to bed. He wouldn’t get this worked up if you’d call him once in a while.” She rang off without saying good-bye.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Grand Terre, Guadeloupe

  March 26, 2008

  10:10 a.m.

  As he undressed again, in his own room this time, Diggory set out the two phones, the disposable local cell and the satellite phone, as well as the Baby Glock. He usually carried the weapon in an inside waistband holster, but he had slipped it into his jacket pocket when he’d disrobed with the German woman. He also removed the small custom-made leather and lead blackjack from his pants pocket and set it on the nightstand with the other articles he always liked to keep close at hand.

  He had selected his own hotel, l’Auberge de la Vieille Tour, both for the impressive amenities and the discreet staff who were accustomed to keeping very quiet about the hours at which their guests returned to their rooms. He stretched out nude on the Egyptian cotton sheets and tried to sleep for several hours, but his mind kept circling around images and memories of Riley. She could be a threat, yes, but once whatever was on that submarine was in his possession, he would be immune to threats. He didn’t want to eliminate her immediately, but it pleased his sense of symmetry that he should have this power now to decide her fate. Some religious types might call it Karma, but in Diggory’s mind, they owed him this. Do unto others as they have done to you.