The Columbus Affair: A Novel

by Steve Berry

  There were twenty-one awarded categories. One was for “distinguished investigative reporting by an individual or team, reported as a single newspaper article or a series.” Winners received a certificate, $10,000, and the ability to add three precious words—Pulitzer Prize winner—to their names.

  He won his.

  But they took it back.

  Which seemed the story of his life.

  Everything had been taken back.

  His career, his reputation, his credibility, even his self-respect. In the end he became a failure as a son, a father, a husband, a reporter, and a friend. A few weeks ago he’d charted that spiral on a pad, identifying that it all started when he was twenty-five, fresh out of the University of Florida, top third of his class, a journalism degree in hand.

  Then his father disowned him.

  Abiram Sagan had been unrelenting.

  “We all make choices. Good. Bad. Indifferent. You’re a grown man, Tom, and have made yours. Now I have to make mine.”

  And that he had.

  On that same pad he’d jotted down the highs and lows. Some from before, as editor of his high school paper and campus reporter at college. Most after. His rise from news assistant, to staff reporter, to senior international correspondent. The awards. Accolades. Respect from his peers. How had one observer described his style? “Wide-ranging and prescient reporting conducted at great personal risk.”

  Then his divorce.

  The estrangement from his only child. Poor investment decisions. Even poorer life decisions.

  Finally, his firing.

  Eight years ago.

  And the seemingly nothing life since.

  Most of his friends were gone. But that was as much his fault as theirs. As his personal depression had deepened he’d withdrawn into himself. Amazing he hadn’t turned to alcohol or drugs, but neither had ever appealed to him.

  Self-pity was his intoxicant.

  He stared around at the house’s interior.

  He’d decided to die, here, in his parents’ home. Fitting, in some morbid way. Thick layers of dust and a musty smell reminded him that for three years the rooms had sat empty. He’d kept the utilities on, paid the meager taxes, and had the lawn cut just enough so the neighbors wouldn’t complain. Earlier, he’d noticed that the sprawling mulberry tree out front needed trimming, the picket fence painting.

  He hated it here. Too many ghosts.

  He walked the rooms, remembering happier days. In the kitchen he could still see the jars of his mother’s jam that once lined the windowsill. The thought of her brought a wave of an unusual joy that quickly faded.

  He should write a note and explain himself, blame somebody or something. But to who? Or what? Nobody would believe him if he told them the truth. Unfortunately, just like eight years ago, there was no one to blame but himself.

  Would anyone even care he was gone?

  Certainly not his daughter. He hadn’t spoken to her in two years.

  His literary agent? Maybe. She’d made a lot of money off his ghostwriting. He’d been shocked to learn how many so-called bestselling fiction writers could not write a word. What had one critic said at the time of his downfall? “Journalist Sagan seems to have a promising career ahead of him writing fiction.”

  Asshole.

  But he’d actually taken that advice.

  He wondered—how do you explain taking your own life? It is, by definition, an irrational act. Which, by definition, defies explanation. Hopefully, somebody would bury him. He had plenty of money in the bank, more than enough for a respectable funeral.

  What would it be like to be dead?

  Were you aware? Could you hear? See? Smell? Or was it simply an eternal blackness. No thoughts. No feeling.

  Nothing at all.

  He walked back toward the front of the house.

  Outside was a glorious March day, the noontime sun bright. Florida was truly blessed with some terrific weather. Like California, without the earthquakes, where he lived before his firing. He’d miss the feel of a warm sun on a pleasant summer’s day.

  He stopped in the open archway and stared at the parlor. That was what his mother had always called the room. This was where his parents had gathered on Shabbat. Where Abiram read from the Torah. The place where Yom Kippur and Holy Days had been recognized. He recalled the sight of the pewter menorah on the far table burning. His parents had been devout Jews. After his bar mitzvah he, too, had first studied the Torah, standing before the twelve-paned windows, framed out by damask curtains his mother had taken months to sew. She’d been talented with her hands, a lovely woman, universally adored. He missed her. She died six years before Abiram, who’d now been gone three.

  Time to end this.

  He studied the gun, a pistol bought a few months before at an Orlando gun show, and sat on the sofa. Clouds of dust rose, then settled. He recalled Abiram’s lecture about the birds and the bees as he’d sat in the same spot. He’d been, what, twelve?

  Thirty-eight years ago.

  But it seemed like last week.

  As usual, the explanations had been rough and concise.

  “Do you understand?” Abiram asked him. “It’s important that you do.”

  “I don’t like girls.”

  “You will. So don’t forget what I said.”

  Women. Another failure. He’d had precious few relationships as a young man, marrying Michele, the first girl who’d shown serious interest in him. But the marriage ended after his firing, and there’d been no more women since the downfall. Michele had taken a toll on him.

  “Maybe I’ll get to see her soon, too,” he muttered.

  His ex-wife had died two years ago in a car crash.

  That was the last time he and his daughter spoke, her words loud and clear. “Get out. She would not want you here.”

  And he’d left the funeral.

  He stared again at the gun, his finger on the trigger. He steeled himself, grabbed a breath, and nestled the barrel to his temple. He was left-handed, like nearly every Sagan. His uncle, a former professional baseball player, had told him as a child that if he could learn to throw a curveball he’d make a fortune in the major leagues. Talented lefthanders were rare.

  But he’d failed at sports, too.

  He brought the barrel to his temple.

  The metal touched his skin.

  He closed his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger, imagining how his obituary would start. Tuesday, March 5, former investigative journalist Tom Sagan took his own life at his parents’ home in Mount Dora, Florida.

  A little more pressure and—

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  He opened his eyes.

  A man stood outside the front window, close enough to the panes for Tom to see the face—older than himself, clean-cut, distinguished—and the man’s right hand.

  Which held a photograph, pressed to the glass.

  He focused on the image of a young woman lying down, arms and feet extended.

  As if bound.

  He knew the face.

  His daughter.

  Alle.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALLE BECKET LAY ON THE BED, ARMS AND FEET TIED TO THE RAILS. A strip of tape sealed her mouth, which forced her to breathe rapidly through her nose. The small room was dark and unnerved her.

  Calm down, she told herself.

  Her thoughts centered on her father.

  Thomas Peter Sagan.

  Their last names were different thanks to a marriage she’d tried three years ago, just after her grandfather, Abiram, had died. Bad idea all the way around, especially when her new husband decided that a ring on his finger entitled him to carte blanche use of her credit cards. The marriage had lasted ninety days. The divorce took another thirty. Paying off those balances required two years.

  But she’d done it.

  Her mother taught her that owing people was not a good thing. She liked to think that her mother had provided her with character. God knows it had no
t come from her father. Her memories of him were terrible. She was twenty-five years old and could not remember a single time the man had ever said he loved her.

  “Why did you marry him?”

  “We were young, Alle, and in love, and we had many good years together before the bad ones came. It was a secure life.”

  Not until her own marriage had she understood the value of security. Utter turmoil was a better description for that short union. All she took away was the last name, because anything was better than Sagan. Simply hearing it turned her stomach. If she was going to be reminded of failure, at least let it be of an ex-husband who had, on occasion—especially during those six days in the Turks and Caicos—provided lasting memories.

  She tested the restraints holding her arms. Her muscles ached. She worked out the kinks and readjusted herself. An open window allowed cool air inside, but sweat beaded her brow and the back of her shirt was damp against the bare mattress. The few lingering smells were not pleasant, and she wondered who else had lain here before her.

  She did not like the feeling of helplessness her predicament provided.

  So she forced her mind back to her mother, a loving woman who’d doted on her and made sure she’d earned the grades necessary to make it into Brown University, then graduate school. History had always been a passion, especially post-Columbus America, the time between 1492 and 1800, when Europe forced the Old World onto the New.

  Her mother had also personally excelled, recovering from the hurt of the divorce and finding a new husband. He’d been an orthopedic surgeon, a loving man who’d cared for them both, 180 degrees away from her father.

  That marriage had been a success.

  But two years ago a careless driver with a suspended license ran a stop sign and ended her mother’s life.

  She missed her terribly.

  The funeral remained vivid in her mind, thanks to her father’s unexpected appearance.

  “Get out. She wouldn’t want you here,” she told him loudly enough for the mourners to hear.

  “I came to say goodbye.”

  “You did that long ago when you wrote us both off.”

  “You have no idea what I did.”

  “You only get one chance to raise your child. To be a husband. A father. You blew yours. Leave.”

  She recalled his face. The blank expression that revealed little about what lay beneath. As a youngster she’d always wondered what he thought.

  Not anymore. What did it matter?

  She tugged again at the restraints.

  Actually, it might matter a great deal.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BÉNE ROWE LISTENED FOR HIS DOGS, PRIZED BLOODHOUNDS OF expensive stock. They were first imported to Jamaica from Cuba three hundred years ago, descendants of hounds ferried across the Atlantic by Columbus. One celebrated story told of how, during Ferdinand and Isabella’s successful fight to retake Grenada from the Moors, the great beasts had feasted on Arab children abandoned at the doors of mosques. That supposedly happened barely a month before the bastard Columbus first sailed to America.

  And changed everything.

  “Da dogs are close,” he said to his companions, both trusted lieutenants. “Mighty close. Hear the bark. It quickens.” He flashed a smile of shiny white teeth, on which he’d spent a lot of money. “Dem like it when the end nears.”

  He mixed his English with patois, knowing that his men were more comfortable with the common dialect—a mutilation of English, African, and Arawak. He preferred proper English, a habit ingrained into him during his school days and insisted upon by his mother. A bit uncommon for him and her since, generally, they liked the old ways.

  His two men carried rifles as they trudged the Jamaican high ground into what the Spanish had named the Sierras de Bastidas—fortified mountains. His ancestors, runaway slaves, had used the hills as a fortress against their former masters. They’d called themselves Katawud, Yenkunkun, Chankofi. Some say the Spanish named those fugitives cimarrons—untamed, wild—or marrans, the label given to hunters of sows and hogs. Others credited the French word marron, which meant “runaway slave.” No matter the source, the English eventually mangled the word into Maroons.

  Which stuck.

  Those industrious people built towns named for their founders—Trelawny, Accompong, Scott’s Hall, Moore, and Charles. They mated with native Taino women and forged paths through virgin wilderness, fighting pirates who raided Jamaica with regularity.

  The mountains became their home, the forests their allies.

  “I hear Big Nanny,” he told them. “That high yelp. It’s her. She be a leader. Always has been.”

  He’d named her for Grandy Nanny, a Maroon chieftainess of the 18th century who became a great spiritual and military leader. Her likeness now appeared on the Jamaican $500 note, though its image was purely imaginative. No accurate description or portrait of her existed—only legends.

  He envisioned the scene half a kilometer away. The dogs—equal to the mastiff in bulk, the bloodhound in agility, and the bulldog in courage—red, tawny, and spotted with bristled coats, running aligned, all four behind Big Nanny. She never allowed any of the males to dart ahead, and, as with her namesake before her, none challenged her authority. One that tried had ended up with a broken neck from her powerful jaws.

  He stopped on the edge of a high ridge and surveyed the distant mountainsides covered in trees. Blue mahoe dominated, along with rose apple, mahogany, teak, screw pine, and thick stands of bamboo. He caught site of a fig tree, tough and stubborn, and recalled what his mother had taught him. “The fig dominates. It says to those who challenge it, ‘My will to power rests in your will to endure.’ ”

  He admired that strength.

  He spotted a group of workers on one of the mountainsides, arranged in a line, swinging picks and hoes, tools flashing in the sun. He imagined himself here three hundred years ago, one of Columbus’ misnamed Indians, toiling for the Spanish in slavery. Or a hundred years later, an African subrogated for life to an English plantation owner.

  That had been the Maroons—a mixture of the original Tainos and the imported Africans.

  Like himself.

  “Yu wi go toward ’em?” his chief lieutenant asked.

  He knew his man feared the dogs but hated drug dons, too. Jamaica was overwrought with criminal filth. The don presently half a kilometer away, being hunted by a fierce pack of Cuban bloodhounds, thought himself immune to authority. His armed henchmen had turned Kingston into a war zone, killing several innocents in the crossfire. The last straw was when a public hospital and school came under fire, patients forced to cower under their beds, students taking their exams with bullets whizzing outside. So he’d lured the don to a meeting—a summons from Béne Rowe was never ignored—then brought him into the mountains.

  “A wa yu a say?” the insolent don asked in patois.

  “Speak English.”

  “You ashamed of who you are, Béne?”

  “Ashamed of you.”

  “What do you plan to do? Hunt me down?”

  “A no mi.” Not me.

  He intentionally switched to patois to let this man know that he remembered from where he came. He pointed to the dogs baying in their cages atop the trucks. “Dem will do dat for me.”

  “And what will you do? Kill me?”

  He shook his head. “Da dogs will do dat, too.”

  He smiled at how much the bastard’s eyes had widened, pleased to know that someone who murdered for little or no reason actually knew fear.

  “You’re not one of us,” the don spit out. “You forgot who you are, Béne.”

  He stepped close, stopping a few inches away from an open silk shirt, tailored trousers, and expensive loafers. He supposed the ensemble was intended to impress, but little about this fool did. He was thin as sugarcane, with one bright and one glassy eye, and a mouthful of bad teeth.

  “You’re nothing,” he told the don.

  “I’m enough you think I
should die.”

  He chuckled. “That you are. And if I thought you worthy of respect, I would shoot you. But you’re an animal, one the dogs will enjoy hunting.”

  “The government pay you to do this, Béne? They can’t do it, so they get you to?”

  “I do it for me.”

  The police had tried to arrest the no-good twice, but riots in Kingston had broken out each time. So sad that criminals had become heroes, but the dons were smart. As the Jamaican government failed to care for its citizens the dons had stepped in, handing out food, building community centers, providing medical care, ingratiating themselves.

  And it worked.

  People were willing to riot in order to prevent their benefactors from being jailed.

  “You have thirty minutes before I open the cages.”

  The man had lingered, then realized this was serious and fled.

  Just like a slave escaping his master.

  He savored a lungful of the clean, mountain air. Rings of azure haze, thick as milk, had settled around the far peaks. Three topped 2,000 meters, one nearly 2,500. They ranged east to west, separating Kingston from the north coast. So prominent had been their foggy halo the English had renamed them the Blue Mountains.

  His two men stood beside him, rifles resting on their shoulders.

  “The other problem of the day,” he said, keeping his gaze outward. “Is he coming?”

  “On da way. They’ll wait at da trucks until we ready.”

  All of the land for kilometers in every direction belonged to him. Most Maroons farmed a few square meters of somebody else’s property, paying a yearly stipend for the privilege. Now he owned tens of thousands of acres and allowed them to work it for free.

  The dogs continued to bark in the distance.

  He checked his watch.

  “Big Nanny is gettin’ close. She rarely lets the bait run more than an hour.”

  Fierce, long-legged, and blessed with amazing endurance and strength, his hounds were well trained. They were also skilled climbers, capable of scaling tall trees, as today’s target would shortly discover if he foolishly thought high branches would offer him security.