Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

  “When I leave the radio room,” Michaut said, speaking in his broken English so they all could understand, “Gohin go up to deck to take some air and smoke.” He pointed up with his index finger.

  “What about the others?” Lamoreaux asked.

  “Most men is sleeping from wine, Capitaine. Gerard is the helm and Fournier navigateur. No diving, so no one do planes or vents.”

  “Reckless way to run a boat.” Lamoreaux’s eyes locked on Woolsey. “Bon, Lieutenant, allons-y. Let’s take back my boat.”

  The four of them stayed together as they headed forward through the compartment containing the auxiliary pumps, hoses, and motors that brought fresh air into the sub when she ran at the surface. Their path would take them to the ladder just aft of the control room. Michaut went ahead to distract the men on watch there, and McKay followed him. Just before the big man peeled off into the radio room, a sailor stepped out of that compartment and into the companionway. His wide eyes registered surprise at seeing the captain there in the company of the two Brits. Before the seaman could open his mouth, McKay stepped behind him, wrapped one of his ham-sized arms around the man’s neck, then lifted, bending his head back and pressing the sharp glass against the taut skin.

  “Non!” the captain rasped in harsh whisper. He glanced forward toward the control room. He could hear Michaut chatting with the other men on watch just a few feet away. He lowered his voice. “C’est pas necessaire, n’est-ce pas, Bertrand?”

  The sailor attempted to shake his head in spite of the glass at his throat and the meaty hand clamped on his forehead.

  The captain held his finger to his lips while staring at the sailor’s face. “Release him,” he whispered to McKay. When the big man obeyed, the captain stepped up and spoke in low, rapid French as the sailor gasped for air and clutched his throat.

  The captain’s words seemed to calm him, but when the old man finished, the sailor turned aft and took off at a dead run. Woolsey said, “That was a mistake, Captain. You should have let McKay kill him.”

  McKay stepped up to Woolsey and backed him into the bulkhead. “Sod off,” he whispered. “I wasn’t gonna kill him. No more needless killing on this boat.” The spray of spittle caused Woolsey’s right eye to blink. McKay spun away and disappeared into the radio room.

  Lamoreaux grabbed the side of the steel ladder, and Woolsey watched as he climbed through the first of three hatches that would take them to the conning tower. Looking straight up he saw only darkness above the captain, but he knew the conning tower hatch was open. He smelled the sea air. Woolsey was glad to let the French captain take the lead. No sense being the first to poke his head out there since Michaut had told them that Gohin was now armed. Their weapons would work up close, but they would have no effect at all against bullets.

  Woolsey began to climb once Lamoreaux disappeared. When he got closer to the hatch, he could make out the stars. Then, the captain’s head appeared. Putting his finger to his lips, the captain pointed aft. Woolsey eased himself onto the conning tower deck and remained in a crouch. Even behind the bridge the cold wind lifted his hair and whistled around his ears. Looking aft, he saw the silhouette and the red glow of the cigarette on the gunnery deck just below them. Gohin had his back turned as he leaned over the rail and dragged deeply on his smoke.

  The weather was on the mild side for February in the North Atlantic, but the sub’s forward speed of ten knots, coupled with the ten knots of breeze over the bow, resulted in a stiff and loud wind. Woolsey shuddered when he looked down at the black water rushing past the hull. One slip and he’d be in that water, drowning. He stifled a groan. Woolsey feared that any sound would carry straight back to Gohin. There was no moon, but the stars seemed all the brighter in her absence.

  There were only two ways off the conning tower: back down the hatch or down the aft ladder to the gun deck. They would be totally exposed in the event that Gohin turned, but he hoped the noise made by the sub slicing through the water would offer them a chance — as long as they moved before the big man finished his cigarette.

  Woolsey kept his eyes on Gohin as the captain eased himself down the ladder backwards. When it was Woolsey’s turn, it took all his willpower to turn his back on Gohin, but it was the only way to get down the ladder. He stepped gingerly, testing his footing on each rung before shifting his weight. Though there were only five steps in all, Woolsey felt his chest loosen a bit when his foot touched the flat steel deck.

  Then he felt the sharp jab of a gun barrel thrust against his ribs.

  From the corner of his eye, Woolsey saw Lamoreaux backed against the guard rail, his hands raised over his head. Gohin barked something in French. The press of the pistol on his side eased, then something slammed into the side of his head, causing him to stumble and fall to the deck at Lamoreaux’s feet. Damn, he thought, not again. Gohin kept yelling, but as Woolsey’s head cleared, he realized the Frenchman wasn’t directing his words at him. Gohin had turned his back to them. He was pointing the gun upwards at the conning tower.

  Woolsey pushed himself to a sitting position, and from there he could see what had distracted Gohin’s attention. Sean McKay stood atop the conning tower ladder, the wooden crate held tight against his chest.

  Lamoreaux shouted over Gohin’s tirade. “He’s telling you to come down here, or he will shoot.”

  “Bugger him,” McKay said.

  “Sean,” Woolsey yelled, “for God’s sake, do as he says, man. He shoots that box and we’re all dead.”

  McKay just grinned and raised the box over his head like a prize fighter hoisting the championship cup.

  Gohin never stopped yelling, but his voice was drowned out by the explosion from the gun.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Aboard the Shadow Chaser

  March 27, 2008

  12:25 a.m.

  “You two have lost me here,” Theo said. “What number? What are you talking about?”

  “She’s discovered something.” Cole grinned, then he picked up the coin and held it out to his first mate. “Did you ever notice something written on the tablet under the word Constitution?”

  Theo assumed a mock shocked expression. “Me? You’re going to let me touch it?” he said, taking the coin. He paused and turned to Riley. “He’s been a bit territorial about the thing. Never takes it off.”

  The two of them continued talking, but Riley had ceased hearing them. Her mind felt like a cotton candy machine spinning wispy fragments. Ponytail man was following her. Cole said Ponytail’s name was Brewster and he was after the coin. The coin that was a key. A key to the location of some old submarine. A submarine full of gold. And now, Diggory Priest lands in the middle of it all. Why? What’s the CIA’s stake in this? Did his handlers even know about it? She was certain Dig didn’t always play by the book, and it took a great deal of money to support him in the lifestyle to which he had grown so very accustomed. Had Diggory turned pirate? Traitor? And where did Michael fit in?

  “I see something.” Theo’s words brought her out of her reverie. He held the coin up close to the right lens of his glasses, squeezing his left eye shut. “Can’t really make it out, though. It looks like a scratch or a flaw on the coin. Are you telling me that’s a number?”

  “So you can understand why I never saw it before,” Cole said. “Here, try this.” He handed Theo the magnifier, then grabbed the flashlight and shone it on the coin.

  “Good Lord. You’re right. Even with the magnifier, it’s difficult to make them out. How did your pop make such tiny numbers?”

  “I have no idea,” Cole said.

  Riley interrupted them. “Micro etching with electron beams or lasers — we’ve been doing it for quite a while, but it’s not technology that just anybody can put their hands on. Your father put some effort into keeping that number hidden. Does it mean anything special to you?”

  Cole shook his head.

  “I’m a little surprised,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” />
  “Well, you’ve just been going on for the last hour or so about secret societies, so I figured you would have heard of Skull and Bones.”

  “Of course I’ve heard of them.”

  “You’ve never seen their insignia then?”

  “Well, sure. It’s a skull and crossed bones. Like the pirate flag.”

  “True. But that’s not all. Under the skull and bones, in small print, is the numerological symbol of their society — that number,” she said, pointing to the coin. “Three-two-two.”

  “Oh great,” Theo said, throwing his hands into the air. “Now she’s into secret societies and numerology. You two were made for each other.”

  Riley stepped back, her hands up, palms open. “Wait a minute. I didn’t say I was into this stuff. I consider myself a rational person.”

  Cole rolled his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and said, “But you seem to know quite a lot about this society.”

  Riley shrugged. “I told you about what happened to my brother.”

  “You said he died in a fraternity hazing and he had written this number on his hand.”

  “Was the fraternity Skull and Bones?” Theo asked.

  “No, Bones isn’t a fraternity. They’re a senior society. Future Bonesmen are tapped in the spring of their junior year at Yale. Their on-campus membership only lasts through their senior year. Of course, they stay members the rest of their lives.”

  “I’m still not getting the connection here,” Cole said.

  “Okay. Once I realized the significance of those numbers on my brother’s hand, I read everything I could get about them. The number 322 comes from the year Skull and Bones was founded, 1832. It was started by a Yale student, William Russell, who went to Germany for a year and joined this dark, Goth-like secret society over there. When he came home, he started the second chapter in the US, named it Skull and Bones, and made their symbol 322. The first two digits, three-two, are for the year they were founded, while the last number two signifies that it was the second chapter.”

  Cole nodded. “Okay. I get it.”

  Then his eyes met hers and she felt that jolt again.

  “Did you ever figure out what your brother was trying to tell you?” he asked.

  She dropped her eyes and shook her head. “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” She paused as she took the coin from Theo, then stared down at it in her hand. “But maybe we’ll have better luck with this coin,” she said.

  “We?” Cole said.

  When she glanced at his face, his smile was so big his dimples looked like craters.

  She cleared her throat. “Wipe that grin off your face,” she said. “We have work to do.”

  Riley glanced at her dive watch, then flopped back against the dinette seat. The table in front of them was covered with a chart of the island of Guadaloupe and several pieces of scribbled-on paper. Pencil scratchings covered the chart, and the table was dusted with the pink fibers of a much-used eraser.

  “We can’t give up,” Cole said.

  Riley massaged her shoulder and rotated her head in a circle to stretch the muscles in her neck. “We’ve been at this for almost two hours and we’ve got nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. We’ve figured out lots of ways that you can’t use 322 on this island.”

  She laughed and, in spite of the look of exhaustion on his face, he started to laugh, too. Soon, he clutched at his side, and she felt her eyes fill with tears as she continued to giggle and gasp for air.

  Theo stood up from the stool he’d been perched on. “You two need coffee. I’ll put the kettle on.” He crossed to the opposite side of the galley and lit the stove.

  Riley wiped her eyes. “It’s ridiculous to drink coffee at two in the morning.”

  “Not really,” Theo said. “Captain, we need to be gone by sunrise. Remember?”

  Cole nodded, his laughter subsiding at last.

  “Where will you go?” Riley asked.

  “Well, let’s see.” Cole reached into the lockbox at the edge of the table and pulled out a small coin. “You want to call it?”

  “How am I supposed to know where you want to go?”

  “Just call it, Magee.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Okay,” she said. “Heads.”

  Cole flipped the coin high into the air and caught it in his right hand. He slapped it onto the table.

  “Heads it is,” he announced when he lifted his hand.

  Riley stared at the coin, her mouth open. He had taken the coin out of his lockbox. “You said your father sent that coin to you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “They aren’t all that rare, but I hang on to it anyway. It’s a 1915 Indian Head nickel. Cool, huh?” He leaned over the table and pulled the box toward him. “There’s another one in here he sent me when I was a kid.” He dug around in the box. “This one’s a Kennedy half-dollar.” He held it up. “This was the first coin he ever sent me.”

  “And so this one was the second.” She stared at the image of the Indian with a braid flowing down his shoulder and the feathers in his hair. She whispered, “Not a nickel to my name.”

  Cole waved the half-dollar in front of her eyes. “Riley?” he asked. “What’s going in in that head of yours?”

  She looked at Theo who was leaning against the counter waiting for the kettle to whistle. “Forget the coffee, Theo,” she said. “Can you find us a chart of Dominica?”

  Theo stepped over and looked down at the coin on the table, then he nodded and chuckled to himself. As he walked into the wheelhouse, he said over his shoulder, “You know, Cole, I like her.”

  Cole looked at Riley. “I don’t get it. What is it?”

  She picked up the nickel. “This,” she said, waving it at him and bouncing on her seat. “This is what 322 takes you to.” She grabbed the pencil and one of the pieces of scratch paper on the table. Turning the paper over, she began to write. “Look,” she said and she wrote out the figures 3+2=5. “Three plus two equals five. Five cents is a nickel. That takes care of the first two digits.” Then she wrote the number 2 followed by a small nd. “And the last digit 2 signifies second. Like Skull and Bones was the second chapter? This is the second coin your father sent you. This one,” she said holding the French Angel coin on the flat palm of her left hand, “is the key that takes us to this one.” She opened her fist to display the Indian Head nickel. “Remember your father’s last journal entry? He wrote he didn’t have a nickel to his name. That’s because he had sent it to you.”

  “So what? What does that old nickel tell us?”

  Theo appeared then with a large chart and after sweeping the rest of their debris to the far end of the table, he spread the new chart out on top of the marked-up one. It was a chart of the large, nearly oval-shaped island of Dominica.

  “Captain,” Theo said, “it’s an Indian Head nickel.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “Dominica, mon, it’s my home. And the number one most photographed spot on the island, the place where Johnny Depp came and played Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean II, the place on every tourist’s itinerary is none other than—” He stabbed his finger on the chart. “The Indian River.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  From Bonefish to Shadow Chaser

  March 27, 2008

  2:15 a.m.

  Cole paced the foredeck of Riley’s sailboat, while she packed her rain gear, set a second anchor, and locked up all the hatches and ports. He couldn’t sit or hold his body still now. He couldn’t wait to get underway, but she had insisted on coming over here to secure her boat. He understood that, but they were so close. This might be it — after all the months of searching, Riley had come up with what looked like their best solution yet.

  But she wasn’t telling him everything. She was holding back. She knew more about this connection to Skull and Bones, and she recognized something in that photo on Theo’s camera. Was it the boat? The man? He didn’t
know and worse, he was afraid to ask. He watched her rigging a second anchor light in her cockpit. She was so damned methodical, and he feared that pushing her to talk to him might wind up pushing her away. He’d just have to wait until she was ready.

  She clicked closed the padlocks on the two seat lockers in the cockpit. Yeah, he admired her diligence and the super fastidious condition of her boat, but he wanted to be out of sight — over the horizon — by the time the Brewsters came looking for them. He wished she’d hurry up. Her attention to detail was borderline obsessive, and it was making him a little crazy. If her boat was a bunk, you’d be able to bounce a quarter on it.

  Riley had only agreed to accompany them to Dominica after Cole had assured her that the twenty mile crossing would be no more than a three-hour trip in the big trawler, and they would be back by nightfall. He repeated several times that her sailboat would be fine, and he promised they would dash back even if the weather just hinted that it might turn sour on them.

  He stopped pacing and watched her as she climbed out of the cockpit and started toward him. Even in the dim starlight, he admired the confident, fluid way she moved about her boat. Again, he thought of a dancer. He’d promised her that he would see to it that she and her boat were safe — because he needed her. He blinked his eyes and looked away. He needed her to help him find the Surcouf.

  “You ready?” he asked when she joined him.

  She gave a curt nod. “We’ve still got a couple of hours before dawn.”

  “I hope to be long gone by then.”

  The noise of the outboard prevented conversation on the dinghy trip back to his boat. When they arrived back alongside Shadow Chaser, the aft crane was ready, and Theo had fashioned a lifting harness for Riley’s inflatable. They’d decided to take her dinghy with the outboard engine instead of attempting to paddle ashore in Cole’s rubber ducky. Riley helped him get the boat on deck while Theo lounged in the wheelhouse doorway and raised the anchor with his tablet computer. Fifteen minutes later, they had cleared the headland and were beginning to feel the slow rise and fall of the open ocean swell.