The Columbus Affair

by Steve Berry

  He stared at everything from the packet.

  The Temple treasure?

  How could that be?

  ———

  ALLE SAT WITH BRIAN. THE VIDEO FEED WAS OVER. THEY’D watched as the man on the other end had jumped a ditch and entered an orchard, driving down a rough lane between blooming orange trees. He’d then left the car, gone for about fifteen minutes before returning to report what happened.

  He’d been about fifty yards away, but was able to hear Simon and Tom Sagan yell at each other. Sagan wanted his daughter and Simon made clear she was in Vienna.

  “But I’m dead to him,” she said to Brian. “He’s bluffing?”

  “A good play because there’s no way your father can know the truth.”

  She’d listened while the eyes and ears in Florida reported the meeting place for tomorrow—5:00 P.M., inside St. Stephen’s.

  “Your father thinks he’ll be safe there,” Brian said.

  She’d visited the cathedral a couple of weeks ago. “There’re a lot of people there.”

  “But you said it. You’re dead to Simon. He knows he can’t make a trade.”

  Yet Zachariah had agreed to the exchange.

  Her eyes betrayed her thoughts of concern.

  “That’s right,” Brian said. “Your father’s going exactly where Simon wants him to go. The question is, do you give a damn?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BÉNE FOLLOWED FRANK CLARKE UP THE RUGGED TRAIL through a carpet of ground ferns and across pebbles greased with mud. Luckily, he’d dressed for his trek to Charles Town, wearing old jeans and boots. The colonel was armed with a machet, which he used to hack low-lying limbs that blocked their way. The raucous call of a parrot drifted through the high forest, as did the incessant tapping of woodpeckers. No fear of poisonous snakes. Mongooses imported from India centuries ago to deal with rats had eliminated all of those.

  He was three years shy of forty and in good shape, but this climb taxed him. His face was streaked in sweat, rivulets soaked his shirt. The colonel was thirty years his senior, yet the inclined trail seemed no problem, the older man’s steps slow and cautious, his breathing shallow. Every time he trekked into the mountains Béne thought of his ancestors. Eboes from the Bight of Benin. Mandingoes from Sierra Leone. Papaws stolen from the Congo and Angola. Coromantees captured on the Gold Coast.

  They’d been the toughest.

  Nearly all of the great Maroon leaders had been Coromantees, including his great-great-great-grandfather.

  His mother had many times told him about the African’s tortuous path to the New World. First had come capture, then confinement at a fort or trade post. Next was a clustering with other captives, most strangers, some enemies. The fourth turmoil involved being packed onto overcrowded ships and sailed across the Atlantic. Many had not survived that trip, their corpses tossed overboard. Those who did formed bonds that would last for generations—shipbrothers and -sisters was what they would forever call one another. The fifth trauma happened on arrival when they were prepared like cattle, then sold. The final ordeal, known as seasoning, was when others, already there and accustomed to a yoke, taught them how to survive.

  The Dutch, English, and Portuguese were all guilty.

  And though the physical shackles were long gone, a form of mental slavery remained where some Jamaicans refused to embrace their African past.

  Maroons were not in that category.

  They’d not forgotten.

  And never would.

  They kept climbing. A rush of water could be heard ahead. Good. He was thirsty. The trees were ablaze with the Flame of the Forest. He’d learned about the red flowers as a child, his mother telling him how their stinky juice was good for eye infections. As a boy he’d imagined what it must have been like to be a Maroon warrior, wading up streams to mask his scent. Walking backward to create tracks to nowhere. Luring British soldiers to precipices from which there was no escape, or herding them into narrow passages and pelting them with boulders, logs, and arrows. Goats were used to test water supplies which the enemy liked to poison, but the animals were never allowed into settlements since baying would betray their location. Warriors were masters of ambush, wrapping their bodies from head to toe in cacoon vines. Not even the eyes were exposed. Even their lance, the jonga, was concealed under a dense blanket of leaves. Which made them totally invisible in the forest. A huge advantage. One never spoken about, one of those secrets that Maroons kept to themselves.

  After a battle they would slaughter every opposing soldier but one or two, whom they released so they could report both the defeat and an unspoken challenge.

  Send more.

  Please.

  “The ol’ ones are with us today,” Frank said.

  “You hear duppies, Frank?”

  “Not the bad spirits. Only the ol’ people. They wander the woods and look after us.”

  He’d heard tales of duppies. Spirits that spoke in high nasal voices and were repelled by salt. If they were nearby, your head would seem full, your skin hot. They could even make you sick, which was why his mother had always asked when he was little—after he’d hurt himself—duppy box you there?

  He smiled when he thought of her.

  Such a gentle woman, married to such a violent man. But her only child was also violent. Just yesterday he’d killed two men. He wondered if their duppies now wandered through the trees, searching for him.

  “Strike the match,” his mother said.

  He did as she told him.

  “Now, blow it out, say ‘one,’ and throw it down.”

  He followed her instructions. They were in the mountain forest high above Kingston. They both liked it here, far away from the frenetic pace of the city. Here, she would tell him about the Tainos, the Africans, and the Maroons.

  Tonight it was duppies.

  “Do it again,” she said. “And say ‘two.’ ”

  He struck the match, blew it out, uttered the word, and tossed it away.

  “With the third match,” she said, “blow it out, say the word, but keep it. What happens is the duppy is fooled. It spends the night searching for the third match while you run away.

  “It’s there,” Frank said, bringing his thoughts back to the present. “Careful on the rocks. You slip, you slide.”

  He spotted a slit in a shallow cliff, just beneath a massive fig tree, its roots blocking the entrance like bars.

  “That cave leads through the ridge to the other side,” Frank said. “Maroons once used it for escape. We would attack the English, do what damage we could, then retreat. Soldiers would follow, but we’d be gone through the rock. Good for us the English were not fond of caves.”

  Jamaica was like a sponge with thousands of passages interconnected by a highway of tunnels, rivers disappearing underground in one parish, rising in another. Knowing their way around beneath the surface had proven the Maroons’ salvation.

  Frank led him to the entrance and he saw how cut boards had been fashioned as a makeshift door, blocking the way about two feet inside.

  “Keeps bats out.”

  They removed the wood. He spotted three flashlights.

  “Easier to keep ’em here.”

  They each grabbed a light and entered, the narrow duct requiring them to crouch. He was careful of the ceiling, which was sharp, scalloped limestone, the floor moist clay. At least it didn’t stink with guano.

  A few meters inside, they stopped. Frank trained his light on the wall and Béne saw what was carved into the stone.

  A hooked X.

  “It’s Taino?” he asked.

  “Let’s go farther.”

  The passage finally hollowed out into a tall chamber, the dark air chilly. As they trained their lights across the walls, he counted four openings that led out.

  Then he saw the pictographs.

  Maize, birds, fish, frogs, turtles, insects, dogs, and what appeared to be a native chief in full dress.

  “Tainos believ
ed,” Frank said, “that their first ancestors’ spirits lived in caves and only came out at night to eat the jobos. One night the plums tasted extra good and they were still eating ’em when the sun rose, which turned them all human.”

  Béne had heard that same story of creation from his mother.

  “Caves were their refuges,” Frank said. “Taino were not buried. They were laid out in dark places. It’s said their ashes still cover the cave floors.”

  He felt honored to be here, the place as serene as a chapel.

  “The Tainos hated the Spanish. To avoid slavery they’d hide in caves like this and starve themselves to death. Some went quick, drinking the cassava poison. Others lingered a long while.”

  The colonel went silent.

  “Columbus called them Indians. People today wrongly call them Arawaks. Tainos was what they were. They came here 7,000 years before the Spanish, paddling over in canoes from the Yucatán. This was their home. Yet Europeans destroyed them in only a hundred years. Sixty thousand people slaughtered.”

  He heard the contempt, which he echoed.

  “That hooked X is not Taino,” Frank said. “It’s never been found in any cave they painted. It’s Spanish, and marks an important place. Maroons have known that symbol for a long time, but we don’t speak of it. Those who search for the lost mine also search for that symbol.”

  Which was exactly what Zachariah Simon had told him, without an explanation.

  “So the mine is real? I’ve never heard you speak like that before.”

  “The whole tale makes no sense. Tainos did not prize gold. They placed more importance on guanín.”

  He knew of the alloy, a mixture of copper, silver, and gold. He’d seen artifacts made from the reddish purple metal.

  “They loved the smell when the oil from their skin reacted with the guanín,” Frank said. “Pure gold was yellow-white, odorless, and unappealing. Guanín was different. It became special to ’em, especially since they couldn’t smelt it themselves. They had to be taught by people from South America, who made their way northward. To them gold merely came from streams, guanín was from heaven.”

  “So you’re saying they would not have a gold mine?”

  “I don’t know, Béne. They definitely used gold. So a source of it might have been important. What I do know is that two hundred tons of gold were shipped to Spain from the New World in the hundred years after Columbus. Some of that came from Jamaica, and tens of thousands of Tainos died because of it.”

  Clarke went silent and stared at the drawings revealed by the lights.

  Béne was drawn toward them, too.

  “They would dip sticks into charcoal mixed with fat and bat droppings.” Frank’s voice had gone low. “So simple, yet see how the work lasted.”

  “Who knows of this place?”

  “No one outside our community. Maroons have come to this place for a long time.”

  He, too, felt a special closeness here.

  Frank turned and handed him a scrap of paper. Before they’d started up the mountain, the colonel had disappeared briefly inside the museum.

  He’d wondered why.

  “That’s Columbus’ signature.” Frank shone his light on the writing. “It’s a complicated mess that says much about the man. What’s important are the X’s.”

  He’d already noticed. Both hooked. Just like the one from the grave, in the Spanish documents, the museum, and on the wall outside.

  He stared at Clarke. “You never told me any of this before.”

  “We be doomed, Béne. Like two hundred years ago, Maroons fight among themselves too much. We become our own enemy. The government knows that and, like the English long ago, they keep us bickering. That way they don’t have to listen to our complaints. I try, but the other colonels are hard to please.”

  He knew all of that was true.

  “You, Béne, are a man the colonels respect. But they also fear you. They know what else you do. They accept your money, but they know you kill people.”

  “Only when there is no choice.”

  “That’s how Maroons have justified it since we first fled to the mountains. Every runaway slave said the same thing. ‘Only when there be no choice.’ Yet we have killed so many.”

  Here, underground, standing with this learned man, he decided to be honest. “I do what must be done. Violence is the only thing some understand. It’s true, I make money off gambling, whores, dirty movies. Nothing ever sold to or involving children. Nothing. My women must see a doctor and be clean. I have rules. I try to make it right.”

  Clarke raised a hand in mock surrender. “No need to convince me, Béne. I don’t care.”

  But he felt a need to justify himself.

  Were the duppies working on him?

  “Be who you are, Béne. It’s all we can do.”

  Normally he would never question himself, but this place was definitely affecting him.

  “I believe that the hooked X is the mark of Columbus,” Frank said. “A sign to an important place. Perhaps even to the lost mine itself.”

  “In this cave?”

  The colonel shook his head. “This was not it. They marked here for a reason. What? Who knows. The real place is unknown.”

  Simon had talked of Columbus, the lost mine, and the Levite, supposedly revealing all that he knew. But never had he mentioned Columbus’ signature, or anything else that Frank Clarke had just said.

  Because he did not know?

  No way.

  Simon knew a lot. Enough to be in Florida doing something with some man and his daughter. A woman who wrote a magazine article about Columbus, which he’d not read.

  Time to correct that mistake.

  “Everyone wants to preserve us,” Frank said. “They talk of Maroon culture, and of us, as if we’re gone. But we’re still here.”

  He agreed.

  “If you find the lost mine, Béne, perhaps you’re right. That wealth can be used to change our situation. Money is always power, and we have neither. Unlike other Maroons, I never blamed the Jews for profiting from us. We needed supplies and ammunition. They provided it. The British needed the same and they provided. That’s the way of the world. Those Jews are gone, but we’re still here.”

  He thought back to what Tre had told him about the Cohen brothers and the Jews’ hidden wealth from the time of the Spanish.

  And the Levite.

  Who knew it all.

  “You think the Jews may have hid their wealth in the mine, too?”

  Frank shrugged. “It’s possible. All the legends seemed to have merged. That’s the thing, Béne. Nobody knows anything.”

  He was glad he’d come.

  Finally. Answers.

  And what Clarke said was true. Money was indeed power. He was deeply connected with the left and the People’s National Party, but he preferred the ruling center-right Labor Party. Never were his phone calls to government officials ignored. His requests shoved aside. He rarely asked for anything from any minister but, when he did, the answer was always yes.

  Something the Maroons believed came to mind.

  Di innocent an di fool could pass fi twin.

  He was neither.

  “I’ll find the mine,” he told both his friend and the ancestors.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ALLE RESENTED BRIAN JAMISON’S HOLIER-THAN-THOU ATTITUDE. Two hours had gone by since the video from Florida ended, and Brian had stayed on the phone in another room with the door closed the entire time. She sat in the house’s small kitchen and nursed a cup of coffee. The scene outside the windows was rural and wooded, no roads or other houses in sight. It was after 7:00 P.M. Czech time, which meant early afternoon in Florida. Her father was apparently coming to Vienna to make a deal for her release.

  Which still surprised her.

  A door opened and footsteps pounded the wooden floor. Brian walked into the room, still wearing a shoulder holster holding a weapon. He poured himself a cup from the coffeemaker.


  “This is changing fast,” he said to her.

  “I don’t like you.”

  He laughed. “Like I care. If it were up to me, I would have let Simon kill you.”

  His bravado was beginning to wear thin. “What happens now?”

  “Aren’t you the least bit concerned about your father? He’s put his ass on the line for you. What do we do about that?”

  She said nothing.

  “He’s walking into a trap at that cathedral.”

  “So stop him. Have your man in Florida tell him what’s going on.”

  “How do you suggest I do that? We have no idea how he plans to get to Vienna. My man lost him after the orchard. He surely isn’t going to fly out of Orlando. I’m betting he drives to Tampa, or Jacksonville, or Miami. And he’s not a dumb-ass, contrary to what you might think, he won’t fly straight to Vienna. He’ll come in another way. So there’s no way to deal with him until he gets to the cathedral.”

  “You don’t give a damn about my father. You just want what he has.”

  “Sure I do. But I still have the problem of him in Vienna. And so we’re clear, he’s not my father so, no, I don’t give a damn.”

  “My father was one of the best reporters in the world,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  She’d never said any of those words before.

  “Is that how you convince yourself to feel better? I assure you, your father has never dealt with a man like Zachariah Simon.” He sipped his coffee. “I want to know what this is about. The least you can do is tell me what’s going on here.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then tell me what you told Simon.”

  In 71 CE, after crushing the rebellious Jews and destroying Jerusalem, Titus returned to Rome. His father, Vespasian, was now emperor and welcomed his son back with the greatest celebration Rome had ever seen. Over one million had died in Judea, and now all of Rome came out to pay homage. Eight years later, after Titus himself rose to be emperor, he immortalized the day with a stone relief that showed him, as conqueror, parading the streets by chariot, the Jews’ Temple treasure—the golden Table of Divine Presence, the silver trumpets, and a seven-branched menorah—carted ahead of him.