After all, how many times over the years had he suffered at their hands. Belittle him? How dare they? The truth was, they saw it in him. That was why they always tried to keep him down. They knew he was extraordinary and they feared him. His father might not have claimed him, but Priest still had his father’s blood in his veins. He was born to lead. They didn’t even know what it was to work hard. He, on the other hand, had earned his rightful place. Yet from the time he had first been accepted at Yale through his years with the Company right up until now, he had often heard the not-so-subtle digs reminding him that he was not quite one of them — that he had no father, no money, no family connections. Of course, Yorick, who had tried to make him his lapdog, had been the worst.
The first time Diggory had been invited to spend a few days at Deer Island, the private island owned by Skull and Bones on the St. Lawrence River, he had not known what to expect. He had packed his bags as though headed for a country estate. It was during “Dead Week,” between having finished his exams and before graduation. He’d brought his new Brooks Brothers slacks and the blue blazer he’d purchased with money his mother had given him for graduation. But he was startled to find the conditions on the island nearer to summer camp than weekending at an estate.
When several of his classmates yelled for him to join them on the lawn for a game of football, he declined saying he didn’t feel well — when in fact, he didn’t want to damage his new clothes. That night in the dining hall, he was sitting at one of the long rough-hewn tables with a group of young men whose faces glowed bronze from their afternoon in the sun. Their khakis and polo shirts were faded and a bit frayed around the edges from years of wear. Diggory was the only one wearing a jacket and tie, and his clothes felt as new and stiff as he did. While he sat there hoping no one would notice such details, Yorick stopped by their table, slapped him on the back and hollered, “Our boy here looks like he’s on his way to the prom!” The whole dining hall roared with laughter, and Dig finally got some color in his face.
That was more than fifteen years ago now, but the memory still stung. After college, while he had willingly taken advantage of Yorick’s recommendations and connections, he had succeeded at the Agency on his own, as he had at Yale. He owed the man nothing. He no longer had to worry about looking or sounding out of place at any level of society. And soon, very soon, he would ascend to his rightful position as head of the organization.
When he had almost fallen asleep, he was awakened by a call on his local cell from the barbarians alerting him that Riley was on the move, headed for the Iles des Saintes. Since sleep was no longer an option, Diggory decided to get up and pack his bags. He would travel to the islands, find her, and she would be in his bed by nightfall.
As he was taking a last check around the room to make sure it was clean, he heard his sat phone ring.
“Yes,” he said into the phone.
“Thor, we need to meet.”
Diggory checked his watch. It was past one. “I was on my way to St. François to catch a ferry for the Saintes.”
“Meet me at Pointe des Chateaux at 3:00.” Caliban rang off before Diggory could say another word.
He decided to drive the rental car to the meeting place. It was during the drive and his stop for lunch in Sainte Anne that he contemplated the true meaning of this phone call. Something had gone wrong. Caliban had had no problem meeting with him in the open in Pointe-à-Pitre only the day before. Why this sudden need to drive out to the secluded point at the far eastern end of the island? Had his superiors somehow connected him to Ulrika? Who were they to deny him these little pleasures? They feared he was becoming too strong. Either they wanted to put him back in his place or Caliban had decided to clean the cleaner.
Diggory arrived early and parked his rental sedan among the half dozen or so vehicles in a dirt lot by the beach. Before leaving his room at the Auberge de la Vieille Tour, he had unpacked his laptop and Googled the location of the meet. He read several online tourist guide descriptions of the place, and examined it via satellite photos in Google Earth. Pointe des Chateaux was a rocky spit of land that jutted out at the easternmost tip of Grand Terre where the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea met in crashing surf. The wave action had sculpted the limestone rock into dramatic formations resembling stone castles, hence the name, and created several small half moon beaches of white sand along the Atlantic side. A marked trail led off toward a hill at the end of the point topped by an imposing white cross that had been erected in the 19th century.
On this afternoon with brisk trade winds dotting the ocean with whitecaps, he did not see a single person walking out to the cross. The waves breaking on the rocks all around the hill sent towers of spume more than twenty feet into the air. Anyone exploring out there was bound to get wet on the slippery rock. He had forty-five minutes to scope out the terrain, and assuming Caliban didn’t also arrive early, he intended to use every second.
He was leaning on the fence that surrounded the parking compound when Caliban drove up in a Mercedes. The older man was fifteen minutes early, but Diggory had expected that.
“Shall we walk?” Diggory asked, indicating the cross on top of the hill. “I imagine the view from up there must be spectacular.”
“Yes, let’s.”
The two men walked in silence for a time. Diggory set a brisk pace. Caliban was the first to speak.
“You’ve had quite an impressive career, Thor.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, bowing his head to indicate his deference to the older man.
“You’ve become an extraordinary asset to the organization.” They walked along, shoulder to shoulder, both of them focused on the path just ahead of their feet. “This morning, though, Thor, I saw something disturbing on the television news. A young woman was killed in Le Gosier last night.” He lifted his head and looked into the face of the younger man. “Did you see it?”
“On the television? No. I rarely turn it on.” Diggory stretched his mouth in a wide smile. “It’s so provincial these days.”
The silver haired man paused, turned away and looked out to sea. “I just wondered. We’ve noticed, you see.”
Diggory walked ahead several steps then turned. “Noticed? What are you talking about?”
“Your little hobby. This time, it surprised me, though. They said she hanged herself by accident, playing sex games. Sound familiar?”
Diggory chuckled. “Was it our people? The ones who did Thatcher?”
Caliban resumed walking and caught up to him. “You and I are the only ones on the island, Thor.”
“I see. Then maybe she was playing sex games.”
“Hmm. I suppose. The whole thing made me a bit curious, you see.”“Really?” Diggory stopped walking and looked at the other man, raising one dark eyebrow. “Are you interested in those sorts of games, Caliban?”
The older man looked away, shaking his head from side to side. They had arrived at the place where the dirt path ended. To continue up the hill, they would have to pick their way across an outcropping of jagged limestone rock. The surf thundered against the rocks to their left. Caliban turned back to face him, his mouth smiling, his eyes not. “After you?” he said.
Diggory did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He plunged forward stepping carefully from rock to rock, his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. The rocks were covered with algae because, Diggory knew, the tide was at dead low.
“There’s something else, Thor,” Caliban said and Diggory was surprised that the voice was right behind him. The older man was having no trouble keeping up. “It’s about the woman sailor.”
That nearly stopped him. “What about her?” Diggory chose the rocks he stepped on with great care, inching the two of them closer to the tide line.
“Her name is Marguerite Riley.” A fine mist floated over them from the waves crashing to their left and white foam swirled around the rocks at their feet. “Does that name mean anything to you, Thor?”
; This time he did stop — without warning. He turned and saw Caliban almost lose his balance as he tried to refrain from running into the younger man. Diggory kept on pivoting out and around and simultaneously he heard the pop of the other man’s gun and saw the barrel pointing skyward as Caliban struggled for balance. Diggory’s own hand flew out of his pocket. The sap came down hard on the back of the silver-haired skull, and the big man collapsed into a pool of receding foam.
Diggory looked around to see if there were any witnesses, but he saw no one on the isolated peninsula of rock. The beach was more than half a mile away and hidden behind several sculptured rock spires. He bent to the other man and felt for a pulse. Beneath his fingers, the warm skin on the man’s neck throbbed with life. The half-opened eyes suggested it would be a long time before he regained consciousness. Diggory went through Caliban’s pockets removing the secure satellite phone. He retrieved the gun from a pool of water. He left the wallet.
Sliding his fingers into the silver hair, Diggory gazed at the face in his hands. It was a handsome face with a strong chin like his own. He could not see the weakness, but it was there or it would not have been so easy for him. He wrapped his hands around the neck, then fought the urge to squeeze. No, that would not look like an accident. Dig grabbed the ears in both his hands, lifted the head stretching the neck to its limit and then slammed the head down on a sharp pinnacle of black limestone. He heard the bone crunch and saw the blood seeping down the slime-covered rock. He checked his watch. The tide would turn in the next few minutes and soon these rocks would be covered with water.
Diggory stood, cocked his head to one side and looked down at the crumpled form. Already, the man looked smaller as though some part of him were now gone. Dig sighed and shook his head. “These rocks are slippery, you know,” he said aloud. Then he turned, and smiling, he leaped from rock to rock back toward his car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Fort Napoleon
Iles des Saintes
March 26, 2008
3:20 p.m.
Riley stepped into the weeds on the side of the road as a bus lumbered up the hill engulfing her in a cloud of hot diesel fumes. She turned her head to the side and held her breath for a few seconds but kept on walking. A French family with two morose-looking teenage girls stood on the other side of the road, hands on their hips, wheezing and coughing in the cloud of exhaust. Aside from a single man who was several switchbacks behind them, they were the only ones attempting the climb on foot. Riley was pleased to note that she was more than half-way up the hill to Fort Napoleon, and she didn’t even feel winded. The daily exercises and morning swims had paid off.
The island of Terre de Haut, the largest of the eight small islands that make up the archipelago known as Les Saintes, wasn’t all that large. Three miles long and less than half a mile wide, with only the one village, Bourges des Saintes, it was small enough that Riley figured if Bob was there, she’d run into him eventually. She’d started at the dinghy dock shortly after her noon arrival and roamed the streets of the quaint little town, looking in the doors of restaurants and doing a quick turn around the touristy souvenir shops, chatting with other yachties, bringing the conversation around to this guy she had met in Deshaies who had a tattoo on his collarbone, shaggy brown hair, built like a wrestler. No luck. In the bakery, she’d lingered a little longer admiring the pastries and breathing in the smell of the fresh baguettes, querying the teenaged girl behind the counter about this cute American guy, but she was met with a blank stare. On the beach, the local wooden racing sloops with bright, candy-colored hulls and yellow, green and blue sails were the object of many a tourist’s camera, but while Riley had scoured the beach for over an hour, she’d not seen a glimpse of the one tourist she sought: Bob.
So, her next goal had been to search the fort. All afternoon the buses had picked up the hordes of tourists who jammed the square as they hurried off the ferries from the main island. With their cameras at the ready, they rode up the many switchbacks that led to Fort Napoleon with its commanding view of the channel between Les Saintes and Vieux Fort on Guadeloupe, as well as the other smaller Fort Josephine (named for Napoleon’s wife) on Îlet à Cabrit.
Nearer the top, the road widened a bit where the tour buses stopped, turned and disgorged their cargo. At the front of a tiny clapboard shack, Riley bought an orange Fanta and stopped to watch the mobs. The French family passed her, continuing on up the hill, but the other intrepid hiker, the man who had been far behind her, stopped at the lookout point just beneath her to admire the view.
She’d only noticed him because she felt a camaraderie with the others who had climbed up the long hot hill — even with the two French sisters who had complained the whole way using language so vulgar it shocked Riley — and because she thought, judging from his ratty-looking shorts, red tank top, and green Crocs, that he looked like an American. She could tell from the charcoal color of his skin and the texture of his ponytail that he was of mixed race, but there was something in the way he carried himself that screamed Yank — not French — in spite of the shells in the braids on either side of his face. She’d waited for the fellow because she wanted to congratulate him on the climb, but after ten minutes, she gave up.
The elderly woman in the ticket kiosk had nodded her head in the direction of a group of people and told her the tour was starting tout de suite. Taking her change, Riley thanked the woman but headed off past the pot-bellied guard. She preferred to explore the fort on her own.
Keeping to the paths, she climbed past the door to the sod-covered ammunition bunker and on to the highest part of the bluff. The point jutted out here forming one half of the protected bay off Bourges des Saintes. Out here in front of the fort, the cliff plunged down to the open sea. The view of the channel was her reward. Off to her right, on the other side of the point was another sheltered bay where a lone commercial fishing boat lay at anchor. The boat was an odd one for these waters with her dark blue hull and her tall outriggers. She looked more suited for Louisiana or the Gulf Coast. While Riley watched, the tiny figure of a man came on deck and launched a rubber dinghy. It looked more like a beach toy than a real boat. He climbed into it and began to row to shore. She thought it odd that such a big boat wouldn’t have a better dinghy — something at least with an outboard on it — for getting to shore.
Looking back out to sea, she identified Guadeloupe’s other off-lying islands of Marie Gallante where the villagers grew sugar cane, and Îles de la Petite Terre, which consisted of two uninhabited islands connected by a reef. As she surveyed the broad maritime battlefield, she tried to imagine what it would have been like to stand on this headland, canons at the ready, watching an enemy fleet of over thirty ships of the line sail into range. How on earth did they aim their canons? When she turned around to check out the cannon behind her, she saw a flash of red as someone slipped behind the bunker below her. That was him wasn’t it? That ponytailed guy who had been behind her on the climb? She turned back to face into the trade winds again, feeling rather exposed up here like Kate whatshername on the bow of the Titanic. What was Mr. Ponytail’s story?
Then from close behind her and off to her left, she heard what sounded like a footstep on the gravel, and she spun around only to see more of the view over the anchorage off the town. There was no one there. She could feel her heart thudding in her chest, and she coughed out a half laugh. That guy was probably exploring like she was, and he just happened to move when she turned around. That was it, right?
No. She didn’t think so. What was going on? Why did she feel so spooked? But she was certain she had heard something. She was puzzling over it when she heard it again, right at her feet. She looked down to see a prehistoric-looking three-foot long iguana advancing on her boat shoes.
Laughing, she said, “So you’re my stalker, eh?” She took a step toward him, and he turned and skittered over the edge of the cliff. She would have leaned over the edge to see where he’d gone, but she still felt a little to
o spooked to venture beyond the safety ropes.
As she walked down the grassy slope toward the two-storied stone structure that housed the maritime museum, she glanced at the side of the bunker. There was a white cigarette butt in the grass. It was the only piece of trash she had seen on the immaculate museum grounds, though.
A French-speaking tour guide was just exiting the museum building along with her charges, so Riley took the opportunity to wander the rooms alone. She loved poking around among the glass cases. With Michael, she’d wandered through dozens of museums from Barbados to Paris to Madagascar. There in the cool corridors, they pointed and laughed and learned, all the while feeling safe from the children who made the streets their turf.
The Fort Napoleon museum contained an odd combination of treasures from a stuffed mongoose to Louis XV furniture, and as she walked into the second room that held a variety of dioramas, she saw Ponytail enter the museum through the opposite end of the building. He hadn’t seen her yet, and he was swiveling his head all around. He moved on to the next room, and he wasn’t looking at any of the exhibits. Riley walked to the far side of the diorama room, out of his line of sight.
Who was he and what was he after? She was certain he had not been following her when she first came ashore. She would have noticed. Was he just some creep who was following her to get his rocks off or did he have some other purpose?
She looked around the room trying to decide whether she should try to ditch the perv, confront him, or simply ignore him, but her attention was drawn to an elaborate ship model across the room. Here she was — in a neat museum — and she wasn’t going to worry about some weirdo who was following her.
Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller Page 12
