Moon Mask

by James Richardson

  “Attorney?! Well that figures! The little thief ‘ill sure as hell need an attorney when I’m through with him!”

  “Thief?” Nadia enquired. King cringed but before he could defend himself, Mrs Marley gave her version of events.

  “That’s right,” she hollered. “Caught him in here one night trying to steal a rare book!”

  “I wasn’t trying to steal it,” he argued, feeling the accusing eyes of Nadia and Raine fall on him. Only Sid knew the truth, and even she had been less than happy at having to contact his old professor to get him to throw his weight behind releasing him from jail.

  He shrugged, feeling sheepish, like a boy caught with his hand in a biscuit jar. “I thought it was the Kernewek Diary,” he explained. “I was only going to borrow it then return it.”

  “I told you one time, mon, I’ll tell you a hundredth! There is no such thing as the Kernewek Diary. Bringing your little posse of lawyers and tarts-”

  “Hey!” Sid and Nadia protested together.

  “-ain’t gonna do jackshit to change that, you hear me!”

  King felt the confrontation spiralling out of control but Raine jumped to the rescue.

  “I’m afraid we have evidence to the contrary, Mrs Marley,” he said in his most diplomatic voice.

  “Evidence? You mean that fabricated paper trail of wills and testaments he showed me two years ago? Bah! It don’t prove nothing, mon!”

  “I’m afraid it does,” Raine replied. Trying to calm the situation he added, “Mrs Marley, is there some place we can talk?”

  “Sure there is. Right here, right now! Only thing is, I don’t got nothin’ I wanna say to you so I give you thirty seconds-”

  “Mrs Marley, are you aware that according to the last will and testament of Lady Amelia Kernewek, amended in the year 1754 and witnessed by a Reverend Thomas Kelly, all of Lady Kernewek’s belongings, including this very establishment, are in fact the legal property of my client, Doctor Benjamin King.”

  King had to admit, Raine sounded convincing. Then again, he guessed traitors tended to be good liars.

  A mixture of fury and amusement painted across the old Jamaican woman’s face. She burst out laughing, a loud and grating noise that didn’t sound like a regular occurrence. “Are you crazy? I’m Kernewek’s descendant Mister Attorney. I have all the proof I need of that; birth papers, death records of my old mon, of his parents and theirs, all the way back to Kernewek.”

  “No one is disputing your ancestry, Mrs Marley,” Raine replied. He took a breath and turned to the two women. “May I introduce you to Doctors Siddiqa and Yashina-”

  “The tarts, you mean?”

  Raine smoothly brushed over the comment. “Doctors Siddiqa and Yashina are the world’s foremost genealogists.”

  “Genie-whats?”

  “We study family history,” Nadia spoke up. Her frosty, Russian accent seemed even stronger than normal.

  “You know,” Sid added, her natural kindness flowing. Good cop, bad cop. “Family trees.”

  “I’m sure you saw them both on the news last year,” Raine ad-libbed. “They accurately identified the human remains of a hundred and six year old woman as being those of Princess Anastasia, the daughter of Tsar Nicolas II of Russia-”

  King nearly choked as he tried to stifle a laugh. Raine carried on smoothly. “You must have heard about that, surely?”

  “Of course I did,” Mrs Marley snapped irritably. “So what are you trying to say? That these two tarts-”

  “Hey!”

  “-reckon they can prove I’m not the descendant of-”

  “Nothing of the sort, Mrs Marley,” Sid stepped forward, opening the black briefcase they had purchased in Kingston and pulling out a folder.

  “In fact, our research proves that you are most definitely a descendant of Amelia Kernewek,” Nadia added.

  Mrs Marley looked confused. “Then . . .what?”

  “It has also identified, through a number of marriages stemming back to the year 1726, that Benjamin King is also a direct descendant of Amelia Kernewek.”

  “And the original last testament and will of Lady Kernewek specifically stated that any male heirs would-”

  “This is crazy! Are you insane?! Are you all insane?!” Mrs Marley practically exploded. She shook with rage. “You expect me to believe all this?”

  “As the only living male descendant,” Raine concluded, trying to wrench back control, “this building, this business, and all its contents, officially belong to my client.”

  “I’ll see your client in hell before-”

  “However,” Raine spoke over her. “Doctor King is not without his generous side.” Mrs Marley halted mid-rant, her blood-shot, yellowed eyes boring into King. He could think of nothing more to do than grimace under her attention.

  “He has agreed to sign over the papers to all of Lady Kernewek’s possessions to you, Mrs Marley,” Raine produced his own folder of official-looking documents downloaded from a prominent American law firm. They all ignored the fact that they were divorce papers.

  “All but one of her possessions,” Raine added.

  Mrs Marley’s face darkened like a gathering thunderstorm. Tears - of anger or terror, King wasn’t certain - began rolling down her podgy cheeks. He felt a pang of self-loathing for the turmoil they were putting her through. He felt no better than the playground bullies that had tormented his school-life.

  “All I want,” he said softly, “is the Kernewek Diary.”

  Mrs Marley stared at him for several long, drawn out moments. It was as though everyone else in the room had vanished. He tried to read her face. Would she capitulate?

  Then, like Vesuvius, she erupted.

  “You will never get your hands on that book, you hear me! Not with an entire army will I ever let you touch it! And you’ll have to raze this entire building, this entire island to the ground before you throw me out of my home! Now get out!” She screamed, the noise vibrating through his body.

  “Mrs Marley,” Raine pleaded.

  “Get out!” Her voice was shrill, her breathing ragged.

  “All I want is the book,” King said, stepping towards her.

  The massive woman made her move. Before he could react, she swung one mighty, meaty fist and slammed it into the side of his head, knocking him out cold.

  Sid and Nadia gasped and rushed to King’s side as Raine caught the woman’s arm and pushed her firmly but carefully backwards by her shoulders. She pushed him harshly away, with far more strength than he had anticipated. He lost his footing and sprawled across the floor, hitting his own head on one of the glass and wood cases.

  “Raine, what the hell’s happening in there?” Gibbs’ voice came over his com.

  Nadia rushed to his side and helped him sit up. Enjoying the Russian’s arms around his lower back, he knew he was putting it on a bit thick, pretending to be more dazed than he really was.

  “Are you insane?” Nadia shot at Mrs Marley, angry and oddly defensive of him.

  Interesting, he thought.

  “Raine?”

  “Standby,” he muttered under his breath. He watched the Jamaican woman turn her back on them and stalk up the steps to the platform at the rear of the building and then pushed up to his feet. He crouched beside King whose head was being held in Sid’s hand. His eyes fluttered open and levelled angrily on him.

  “You never said that was part of the plan,” he growled.

  “Well you never told me that you tried to rob her,” he shot back.

  “I didn’t try-”

  “Um, Nate,” Nadia cut in. Raine glanced at her. She nodded towards the platform and he turned to see Mrs Marley’s enormous form turn back to them. She stalked back, feet thumping loudly on the floorboards, expertly loading what looked very much like an antique musket.

  “I think we might have outstayed our welcome.”

  “You think?” King groaned.

  �
�This woman is insane,” Nadia commented.

  “Get out!” Mrs Marley bellowed at them, pulling out a small bag of gunpowder from between her considerable bosom and stuffing it into the barrel.

  “Who the hell keeps bags of gun power down there?” Raine said.

  “I told you she’s eccentric,” King reminded them as they helped him clamber to his feet. They all backed away towards the door as the mad woman screamed at them again. She levelled the musket.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, Mrs Marley,” Raine called angrily as they filed, one-by-one, out of the door. This was the endgame. “You better take one last read of that journal, because we’ll be back here to get it real soon. As well as this dump you call a museum!”

  “Get out!” Mrs Marley screamed and fired the 18th century musket. It smashed through the window of the inner door just as Raine ducked through and rolled outside. They all scrambled back into the Humvee and moments later Raine sent them bounding down the dirt road, a plume of dust blooming up behind them.

  No one said a word until they clawed back onto the tarmac of the highway and headed back towards the township of Port Royal. Nadia broke the silence.

  “I feel terrible,” she said from beside him in the passenger seat.

  “You feel terrible?” King grumbled. Raine glanced in the rear view mirror. The archaeologist nursed a purple eye but he’d live.

  “We practically terrorised that poor old lady with nothing but lies,” the Russian continued. Raine glanced at her, eyes flicking momentarily to the exposed flesh between the V of her blouse. Then he settled on her ordinarily severe face, her blue eyes, set off by locks of brown hair which now hung loose around her neck and shoulders. The more casual look had been agreed upon for their little melodrama in the museum. It was a good look.

  Nadia met his gaze. Her concern for the old woman revealed a far greater glimmer of humanity than he gave her credit for.

  “She’ll live,” he replied casually, slipping his sunglasses back on and turning back to the windshield. He felt Nadia’s eyes linger on him a moment more. Analysing. Contemplative. Was she searching for his humanity too?

  “Besides,” he added. “It was better than Gibbs’ alternative.”

  He pushed the Humvee back through the escalating ‘pirate party’ and continued down the highway back toward the mainland and the rendezvous point.

  Nadia’s gaze finally peeled away from him. “I just hope that we got what we went for.”

  Mrs Marley sat shaking on the floor of her museum where she had collapsed after her confrontation with the attorney. Shards of shattered glass were scattered around the smashed window and the sulphurous, rotten egg smell of gunpowder permeated the air.

  Could the attorney be right? she wondered for the thousandth time. Could Doctor King be telling the truth? Was she days, perhaps hours away from losing her home, her business, the legacy of the great people that had come before her?

  Eyes gushing tears, all she could do was chuckle at the irony of her thoughts. To lose this place, this ball and chain that had dragged her down because of loyalty which her father had taught her. Loyalty to an oath once taken by a man or a woman who had lived hundreds of years before she had been born.

  “Protect our family legacy,” her father had told her every day of her life. “Protect the memory of those that fought for our freedom,” he had said on his death bed. “But most importantly, protect the mask.”

  The mask. The goddamn mask.

  Her entire life she had been told the story of the Moon Mask. She had been told how she would be the next guardian of the Kernewek Diary. She knew the diary page for page, word for word. She alone in the world knew the secret of the Moon Mask and to honour a vow made centuries ago, she had forgone her own life, her own dreams, to protect it.

  And now an end was in sight. If the lawyer told the truth then the responsibility, according to that very same oath, would at last fall to another.

  Yet now she found, after a lifetime of resentment, allowing the memories of the past to become tarnished and forgotten, this building, a symbol of freedom, to fall into ruin, she did not wish to give up her charge.

  Her ancestors had been strong. Now so would she.

  The sun was beginning to set by the time she heaved her considerable bulk up off the floor and lumbered over to the stairs. Slowly she climbed them to the top floor where her tiny bedroom, as cluttered as the rest of the building, lay. She walked up to the filthy double bed upon which she spent most of her days staring at the ceiling contemplating a life that could have been. She heaved and slid it to one side.

  In one of the floor boards there was a finger hole and, slotting her index into it, she lifted one board, then two others.

  In the compartment within, she lifted out a large chest and, retrieving a heavy metal key from a chain between her drooping breasts, she unlocked it.

  “That’s it,” King breathed.

  Along with Raine, Sid, Nadia and Gibbs, he huddled around West, the SOG operative assigned to communications. On a XGA Rugged laptop, encased in a chassis made of ballistic armour, designed to survive the extremities of military field work, they watched a live-streaming video being transmitted from the microscopic video camera which Raine had attached to Mrs Marley’s dress when he had pushed her away.

  On the screen, Mrs Marley plucked a battered, leather bound book from within the chest and almost reverently opened the cover to the first page.

  “There,” King snapped. “Pause it there.” West did so, freezing the image on the elegant scrawl of the first page.

  He retrieved another book from his own satchel. The same one he had shown Raine five nights ago on the summit of Sarisariñama.

  Emily Hamilton’s diary.

  He opened it to the last page, mysteriously cut off three quarters of the way through the book, and held it up against the laptop screen.

  The writing was an exact match.

  Emily Hamilton and Amelia Kernewek were one and the same.

  Just as Raine had planned, frightening the old woman had forced her to take them straight to the Kernewek diary.

  And the diary would take them to the Moon Mask.

  27:

  Ambush

  Off the coast of Jamaica

  High above the tiny Caribbean island of Jamaica, a full blanket of stars spread as far as the eye could see, reflecting in the mirror–like surface of the waters which sloshed gently against the island’s shores.

  But despite the hundreds of people who still partied around the north western beaches, no one noticed the black plane that passed in front of the stars, its light absorbent paint making it all but invisible to the naked eye at night, its stealth technology hiding it from any obtrusive radar scans.

  Yet this plane was no Next Generation Stealth Fighter. In fact it wasn’t even equipped with jet engines, but relied on two traditional propeller engines outfitted with state of the art silencers. Its body wasn’t the curvaceous, sleek wannabe star of a new sci-fi blockbuster like the famous B2 bomber, but was in fact the somewhat ungainly frame of a WWII-era Catalina “Black Cat” Amphibious Flying Boat. Outfitted with new technology, it was designed to function as an operational command base for an elite force of soldiers.

  There was no insignia upon the plane, no flag, no name. These soldiers belonged to no country.

  The Catalina Flying Boat touched down in the waters of the Caribbean, two miles off shore, and pushed through the gentle swell towards the Jamaican coast. Pitch black, with no running lights, it was as invisible in the water as it was in the sky, even as it circled the Palisadoes and deposited eight black-clad soldiers - two abreast on four black motorbikes - upon the spit of land connecting Port Royal to the mainland.

  The Hand of Freedom building was dark.

  Only a single light shone dimly through the upstairs bedroom window and shortly before midnight that was extinguished. The only light now came from the stars.

&nb
sp; Benjamin King ran low and fast, struggling to make sense of the alien world he saw through the Night Vision Goggles attached to his face. A sickly green pall enveloped everything he looked at, including the two figures of O’Rourke and Garcia as they flanked him to either side.

  It was a low risk mission, the highest threat coming from a two hundred year old musket, but nevertheless his two escorts treated the assault on the museum as though they were invading Saddam Hussein’s palace.

  Crossing the courtyard, they hit the wall, backs to it, O’Rourke with a SCAR Assault Rifle and Garcia with a Heckler & Koch HK416 held at the ready. Garcia silently picked the lock and the three man team slipped into the museum.

  Raine watched the team’s progress on the screen of the XGA Rugged Laptop. Its screen set to night-mode, the image gave off very little light so as not to give away his position as he lay in the boughs of a tree to the west of the museum. West worked the controls while Gibbs, Sid and Nadia looked over his shoulder, all clad in black Kevlar armour. Nelson and Murray held sniper positions somewhere around the building, while Sykes and Lake circled the island high above.

  He still seethed from another confrontation with Gibbs. He had insisted on accompanying King into the building, declaring that his purpose on this mission was to protect King and help him retrieve the Moon Mask. Since they knew the mask was not present here, Gibbs had argued, his presence was not necessary. He had even tried to confine him to the helicopter but when the heated debate grew overly confrontational, Rudy O’Rourke had stepped in and negotiated this compromise. Raine was allowed to be an observer while O’Rourke took full responsibility for the archaeologist’s welfare.

  Raine hated sitting out on the action but he had very little choice. All he could do now was lie in the brittle grass in the grounds of the museum and watch the transmission from King’s NVGs on the laptop screen.