Caribbean Gold

by David Leadbeater

  Crouch leaned forward. “What?”

  “There’s a maritime museum in Key West, some of which is devoted to Henry Morgan and his life and the stories that were written about him. Through research, through books,” he shot a glance of disdain Caitlyn’s way, “I learned that a first edition of The Pirate King is stored there and contains a later-removed, rather drab passage that describes exactly where the stronghold lies. I think that’s our way to the treasure. At least, now I do.”

  Crouch considered it. “Even if you’re telling the truth I’m not so sure,” he muttered. “As you yourself said—the maps and this hunt had to have some kind of reason. Was it merely the baubles? Or something deeper?”

  “Wait,” Caitlyn said. “I can corroborate his claim. There should be a copy of The Pirate King online.”

  “And you’re going to read it all now?” Jensen scoffed. “Spare me.”

  Caitlyn held up her cellphone and the screen showing a Word app. “It’s called technology,” she said. “I can search for the word ‘stronghold’ and be taken to the right page in about, oh, half a second. But cheers for doing the grunt work.”

  Jensen grumbled. Alicia smiled at Caitlyn’s effrontery. The girl was clearly annoyed with herself too. Within five minutes she had validated Jensen’s claim.

  “Well, the passage exists,” she said. “But no mention of Key West. I checked the rest of the book.”

  “What makes you believe they have a first edition?” Crouch was looking tired now. Russo came out of the woods and Healey spotted him for a while. Jensen explained that they should check the museum’s online records, and Caitlyn found that it did indeed list a first edition of The Pirate King among its own treasures.

  “That’s some clever research,” Crouch told Jensen. “And thorough. A shame you couldn’t bring yourself to put it to good use.”

  Alicia finished her meal. “I don’t trust this ass one inch.”

  “Of course not,” Crouch said. “But do we stay here and admit defeat . . .” He paused.

  “Or do we go?” Caitlyn finished with a grin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Key West sits at the southernmost tip of the Florida Keys, popular for its Duval Street attractions, its port and its blood-red sunsets. Alicia had initially felt gratified when Crouch called in the authorities and gave Jensen over to them; now as she walked the hot, tropical sidewalks of Key West, she found several moments of second-guessing. And when she voiced her concerns to Crouch the look he gave her only spoke to the fact that he shared her misgivings.

  Still, the mission at hand was an attractive one. A quest that they had thought over still held promise. It wasn’t unusual for newer versions of old tomes to be edited, cut down and repackaged. Publishers tried to make them more marketable, easier on the brain. Jensen had taken the time to research Henry Morgan to the full, but clearly hadn’t trusted any one of his lieutenants enough to send them on this mission.

  A small light bulb went off.

  Where were his lieutenants?

  They hadn’t been present at the Viejo battle. Why not? Something more important was afoot. And Jensen himself had sent the Gold Team on this diversion. Still, they were here now and she wanted to see the outcome.

  Time enough to worry later.

  Tourists thronged the streets, aimlessly wandering between shops and bars, and trying to fit their cars into the tiny parking areas. Palm trees swayed happily in a light breeze. The smell of salt was in the air, tinged by diesel fumes. Colorful music spread from all corners and through shop doors, merging with the colorful locals and besotted tourists. The atmosphere galvanized a smile even from Russo.

  “Feels like we should stay and play,” he said in a rare moment of levity.

  Alicia slapped his back. “There we go. I knew there was a party animal under that rough and ready exterior.”

  “Less animal.” Russo had never been more flippant with her. “More warrior.”

  “The Party Warrior?” Alicia said. “You could probably market that.”

  Crouch led them down a side street and stopped in front of a pair of canons and a clean, tall gray building with lots of windows. Alicia remembered this place from a few years ago when she’d been flirting with the enemy. The memories weren’t happy; the days since much better than those long past. She was thankful now for the change. She’d turned her life around and stuck with the motto: One life, live it.

  We might all be dead tomorrow.

  If she had learned one lesson, achieved one instant of enlightenment, that was it. They were living, they were there right now, so make the most of every moment in which you lived and loved and breathed.

  Because death didn’t care one bit. It didn’t care who you left behind, who cried and who laughed, who missed you every single day. It didn’t care who raised a glass or drove a mile or played a song for you. Alicia had stared death in the face a hundredfold, and told it to go fuck itself every time. She would do so again until that fateful moment finally came when she no longer wished to escape the cold embrace.

  Crouch led the way up the steps and into the cool interior of the museum. In addition to its books it carried one of the largest collections of seventeenth-century shipwreck and pirate artifacts in the world. Just what they were looking for. Crouch nodded in satisfaction as he read as much aloud.

  “We came to the right place.”

  “Or were directed here,” Alicia said.

  “Don’t be a pessimist. This is all part of the hunt. Be excited.”

  “Oh, I’m excited.” Alicia sniffed as she looked around the well-presented and purposely shady interior. “Can’t you tell?”

  Artifacts gleamed from glass cabinets and low, polished pedestals. Maps and manuscripts glowed on the walls. Huge canons pointed the way to more impressive treasures. Crouch sought out the solitary guide among the numerous rooms and asked about the book they had come to see.

  “Yes we have the book, The Pirate King,” the guide, a fifties-something woman with short hair and stern eyes, said. “But we don’t generally lend it out. This is a museum, not a library, sir.”

  Crouch took the acerbity well. “But surely it is an artifact of sorts and could still prove useful. We could go straight to the right page. We’d wear gloves. You don’t even have to move it.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “How about a donation?” Caitlyn asked. “Cash.”

  “You mean to the museum?”

  Crouch shrugged indifferently. “We only need five minutes.”

  “I’ll need to get back to the front.”

  They were taken through a high, dark opening into a small room where the walls were all glass cabinets and the spotlights shone down with bright abandon. Many volumes lay within the cabinets, all open and all covered in an ancient, spidery brown script. The guide led them straight to a corner, stopped in front of a chest-high row and produced a key. Alicia smelled polish in the air and some kind of cleaning chemical.

  “Five minutes,” the guide said. “Be cool. I’ll be back.”

  Crouch opened the glass door and reached right in. Caitlyn had worked out the page number and location of the deleted passage, but hard reality was a little different to theory. It took Crouch two minutes of squinting and careful flicking back and forth to find what they were looking for. Pages rustled and creaked rather alarmingly and he had to fight twice with the glass door which kept wanting to close. “Nothing worth doing,” he said as he worked, “is ever easy.”

  “A guy told me that once,” Alicia said with mock glumness. “Didn’t know whether to thank him or hurt him.”

  “Does this sound right to you?” He stood back.

  Caitlyn moved in. “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  Healey read the passage out: “And though he traveled often and tarried little, Henry Morgan did find himself a stronghold. Not a refuge but a fastness. It lay between Haiti and Panama and Port Royal, spoken of as a large mountain surrounded by a ribbo
n of beach with an unusual feature atop. A wizened, crooked, bent old tree, a hundred foot tall. A marker of passing time. No leaves, no branches, nothing but a stark, warped trunk. Why was it here? It was there to speak to the fanciful mind of the Pirate King. ’ ”

  “Interesting,” Crouch said. “And yet I can see why they deleted it from the book. It really adds nothing of interest.”

  Alicia frowned. “To be fair—not even a location.”

  “Exactly. It’s pretty vague in more ways than it’s helpful. But . . .” Crouch turned with a smile. “A man of the seas, a sailor, a—”

  “Pirate?” Caitlyn interrupted with a smile.

  “Well, yes, whoever sails these Caribbean seas would know that island. All we have to do is find the right person.”

  “You’re buying in?” Alicia asked.

  Crouch grinned. “Who wouldn’t?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  John Jensen cooled his heels for several hours in a thirteen-by-thirteen jail cell. The mattress was narrow and hard, the pillow no better. The air conditioning was as cranky and ineffectual as a pensioner’s complaint, the food bordering between slops and scraps. The police mostly ignored him, no doubt told there were bigger fish on the way to deal with the murderous criminal. He was looking at life. No parole. No sweet smelling lands for him anymore. No sweet tasting food nor women anymore.

  Faced with the prospect of losing his freedom a man might be forgiven for a period of introspection. Brooding. Reflection on a life lived and opportunities missed. He might think hard about all the things that would continue as normal without him.

  But not Jensen. A career soldier, he focused on the plan. A career criminal, he focused on the plan. Nothing wavered. Nothing changed. Grueling times often yielded lucrative results and this would be the best. Friends and lieutenants sometimes capitulated but Jensen simply left them behind. Some he even left breathing.

  But still, time spent in a cell left even Jensen looking back. Where had the transition come between soldier and villain? He couldn’t blame family or a poor upbringing. He couldn’t blame a bad captain or vicious team. He was his own man. Always had been. The truth was—he enjoyed walking along the darker side of the thin line. It made him feel alive. A person existed only for a short span of time on this earth—his future was always diminishing. Jensen thought he might create his own legacy whilst he still lived.

  Drifting from place to place, always moving, always savvy, he had sewn together a shabby band of mercenaries, added discipline and income and a little reward mixed with fear. An intelligent leader, he rarely put a foot wrong.

  Is the risk worth the reward?

  This time, damn right it was. Morgan’s treasure was incalculable, and there were plenty of ruthless collectors out there that would pay twice as much as any government or museum. Jensen wished he knew the time. All he could see through his cell windows was a lessening of the light, so he knew evening was drawing in. All he could smell were microwave meals and his own stale sweat. Panama City was a great, steaming hive tonight, awash with misadventure and opportunity.

  Tonight, he would carve out his own piece of history.

  Jensen sat with his back to the wall, legs kicking gently. His heart beat rapidly. His mouth was dry so he took a drink from a plastic cup. At his back, the light faded away. If there had ever been a point of no return, Jensen knew this was it. His current crimes were serious but paled somewhat against what was soon to come.

  Not soon, Jensen heard the beginning of it. Now.

  They landed on the roof, and they would be led by Labadee, Forrester and Levy. Jensen had foreseen the need for more men, ever since he realized the final clue would not pan out, and had sent his three lieutenants on a search and recruit mission for reinforcements. For one last expedition in search of Morgan’s treasure.

  Panama was not without its corruptions. The right wallets had been filled to bursting; the correct leverages weighed. The doors he needed open would stay that way, at least for tonight.

  The sound of gunfire, the shouting of men and women. An explosion. Some of it was set up by the men he’d paid off, but not all of it. This was how, occasionally, a rival was taken out of the picture or a debt settled. This was how a man with a shadow for a soul worked. Jensen worked hard to maintain his contacts. Ironically, it was a skill he’d learned from Michael Crouch.

  Padding across the floor, he finished the last of his water and threw the plastic cup aside. A small rectangular hole gave him a glimpse into the corridor outside, but all he saw was a sink and a brown wall. Somewhere beyond, men yelled and screamed.

  The sound of footsteps sent him retreating into his cell. After all, it could be anyone. The rattle of a bolt and then the door opened slowly. Labadee poked his head through.

  “You ready?”

  Jensen nodded at the Jamaican. “To get rich? Constantly.”

  “First, we must escape Panama.” His lieutenant’s voice was thick.

  Jensen followed him out of the room and into the booking area. Cops stood around with their hands in the air, and one lay dead on the floor, bleeding out. Jensen gave none of them a second glance. The rear doors were open, leading straight out to an enclosed yard. Barbed wire topped the walls and CCTV cameras stood all around. Vehicles were parked or abandoned across the area. More bodies lay in between, some still groaning. Labadee pointed to the right where Jensen saw Forrester and Levy waiting. Both men scanned the surroundings and even as Jensen walked toward them Levy fired at a hidden cop, making him scurry for safety.

  “Quickly,” Forrester said.

  “Our men?”

  “Those not here are preparing the boat.”

  “Excellent.”

  Jensen longed for a drink; it was rare for a waking hour to pass when he didn’t savor the rich nectar, his greatest companion. How could a man endure himself more than with such fine and luxurious help? Plus, it helped him think and kept all the ghosts at bay. Jensen believed that in keeping the ghosts of his past at bay he was in fact helping his fellow man, since accepting any of that amount of retribution would produce a terrible fallout. Maybe Henry Morgan should have drunk more.

  Jensen wasn’t about to part with any of his hard-earned currency. Not like Morgan. Bury it nearby? Why? To give it back later? Morgan never had. Jensen had read that Morgan started drinking himself to death as soon as he returned to Jamaica from his time in England.

  Having gained a governorship, what then had he lost?

  The guilt of all that plundering; the responsibility for so many innocent deaths. The remorse for a life ill-lived. Morgan had taken a different way out. He lost the will and the courage to be a survivor.

  Jensen followed Labadee out of the station and toward the road. The assault had been direct and sudden. Merciless. Jensen approved. He had been taught by the other side long ago to strike hard and strike mean.

  A sedan stood idling at the curb, its back door open and looking much more inviting than a jail cell. The road to the boat was a long one; the two wenches lounging along the back seat promising a distracting trip. Jensen waited as more shots rang out, preferring on this occasion not to join in with the bloodletting. There would be time enough for all that.

  If Crouch found Morgan’s abandoned island.

  Jensen had gambled that to make time for himself and fashion a safe getaway, a true-enough tale had to be told. So he had given them the one about the abandoned island, the refuge Morgan kept to himself; and the method in which Jensen himself had found it. Hopefully, the quest would keep them involved and Jensen would find the treasure and disappear before they figured it out.

  Hopefully?

  He was talking about Michael Crouch here. No way would he succeed in escaping before Crouch found the island.

  So was it self-destruction? Did he want to be caught?

  Or did he want to test himself against the best?

  Jensen knew the answer without even thinking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Ali
cia exited last from the museum, her senses alert even in the sleepy building. The bright sunlight blinded her for a moment, but then she was checking the streets outside and everything in the distance. Ironically, she remembered ambushing Matt Drake somewhere near here once, a fact she had long wanted to forget, and now looked to where she had positioned her own team during the Blood King conspiracy.

  Key West bumbled along happily, bright, vivid and content in its relative seclusion at the southern tip of America. The only signs of life she could see were tourists, camera-snappers munching on the local and scrumptious item of fame—Key lime pie, and old locals sitting on metal benches, staring out to sea.

  Crouch led the way to a taxi rank and the team decided to slip more comfortably into two separate cabs. The drivers agreed on a route that took them away from the busy Highway 1 and through Key West’s residential suburbs, and pulled away from the curb. Alicia again assured herself that no one was following and that was when Crouch’s cellphone rang.

  She felt a small tingle, sensed trouble.

  Crouch stared at the screen. “Unknown caller. Hello?”

  He listened for a while, gripped the bridge of his nose, and scrunched his face up. “I see,” he repeated four times and then ended with: “Any clue as to where?”

  Alicia perceived that the answer was no and questioned the boss as he ended the call. “Didn’t sound like a lottery win?”

  “John Jensen escaped from prison,” Crouch said with a pained exhalation. “Broke out by what they think was a ten-man team and a few insiders. There are casualties. Survivors gave chase but the man is gone.”

  Alicia closed her eyes in a moment of respect and then asked the obvious. “Where’s he gone?”

  “Wait.” Crouch added Caitlyn and Healey, in the other car, to a conference call and quickly brought them up to speed.

  “You think he’s coming here?” Healey asked immediately. “To find the book?”