Thick blood washed the decks.
“One a day, every day, forever,” the Blood King grunted. “Tomorrow we will spin the Vodka bottle again. Let some of them have their hope.”
He turned to study the far, purple mountains, the dead man and the horrendous deed already forgotten. “It will be but brief.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The flight from Nassau to Kingston, Jamaica, took a couple of hours. Upon landing Drake received a call from Wells. The SAS commander had no new information whatsoever and Drake found himself wondering if the guy was fishing.
“Look, sir,” he found it hard to give up old habits, “either you’ve been told to pump me for information or you’ve heard something and want in. Either way, just ask.”
“You know I keep tabs on the Japanese chatter,” Wells admitted, then went quiet.
Drake sighed. “Yes, she’s coming.” He filed with the others into passport control. “Look, I’m going to have to go now. I guess I’ll be seeing you soon?”
“Just try to keep me away.” And the line went dead, leaving Drake wondering how, with all this amazing technology around, the great secret of the Blood King still remained.
Half an hour later and they were well on their way through Kingston, seated inside a rumbling, bouncing van. Like the reggae vans of Barbados, this thing was ancient, colourful and extremely noisy. Bob Marley tunes blasted from the music box. The only difference was they were alone on this journey, instead of being crammed in with forty other people on a fifteen-seater ride.
The place they were looking for was called Stony Hill, now part of a warren of roads and housing on the edge of a no-man’s-land. The man they were looking for was Lionel Raychim, an engineer now retired, responsible for several of Jamaica’s main roads that formed the backbone of the island’s transport system.
Rick’s Bar was located in a grubby corner of a cul-de-sac, a ramshackle place surrounded by stone buildings, the very focus of the sun’s baking heat.
Drake paid the driver and headed for a door covered by American beer signs. Budweiser. Coors. Michelob. “Don’t worry,” he said, laying a consoling hand around Ben’s shoulders, “we’ll get you a glass of icy cold milk.”
Rick’s Bar was surprisingly agreeable once the heat and the location were fastened away behind them. The meandering, dimly lit place was wood-panelled and decorated with a mind-boggling array of furnishings: from a pirate cutlass to a Jolly Roger flag that hung next to the green and black Jamaican flag, and from the often replicated picture of workers sitting along the girders of the Empire State Building, to standard bikini babes posing on an idyllic beach. Drake smiled. It was easy to imagine ole Rick tacking stuff on the walls here and there, anything he could get his hands on. The place smelled of beer, sweat and cooking meat.
A family of English tourists, their legs and arms the colour of virgin paper, were finishing off a meal, not looking at their food but studying the locals as carefully and warily as they could. A drunk sat at the bar, head slumped and hair dangling in his own dinner.
“Awesome,” Kennedy shook her head. “Let’s find Raychim and get back to civilisation.”
“This ain’t so bad,” said Hayden looking a little hurt. “Small town girl - I grew up in a place with a bar like this. We can’t all have a Denny’s on the doorstep you know.”
Kinimaka walked slap bang into a table, spilling a guy’s drink and waking up the drunk at the bar. The Hawaiian said: “Oops, sorry,” and skirted around, going red.
“If that’d been me,” Ben commented, “there’d have been threats, fist shaking, maybe even a head-butt.”
Drake glanced at him. “Not while I’m here, there wouldn’t.”
They found a table and sat down, Kinimaka looking especially uncomfortable perched on an undersized chair. A waitress with jet-black curly hair and a dirty pinny came out from the back, spotted them, and hurried over.
“Help you?” Her English was stilted and tuneful, but a million times better than any of their Jamaican.
“I hope so,” Kennedy took the lead. “We’re looking for Buds, all round, and a chat with Lionel Raychim.”
The waitress instantly looked suspicious. “Wha’ you need wit’ old man Ray?”
“A history lesson,” said Kennedy laying some cash on the table. “He around today?”
“Whoever y’ask prob’ly tol’ you he ‘round every day,” said the waitress studying them hard before seeming to come to a decision. “Jus’ wait.”
She went to the bar, took her pinny off, then turned and disappeared around the side into another room. Drake surveyed the place, catching the eyes of Kennedy, Hayden and Kinimaka. They got the message, each abruptly sitting lighter and weighing their options.
Around the corner came a tall, spare man with white hair, a white beard and wearing a white suit. Oddly, he still looked more tanned than the English family who gawped at him and surreptitiously reached for camera phones. Upon reaching their table he sat down, spirited the money away and shouted loudly for beer.
His eyes met Drake’s. “What do you need?”
Kennedy spoke first, butting in with such vigour that her unshod hair whipped forward. “We believe you might be the descendant of a pirate called Calico Jack. His only descendant. And that you still own the farm where his family were brought up.” Out loud it actually sounded ludicrous, though their research was sound.
Raychim glared at them. The waitress made a reappearance, bringing them their Buds and sliding Ben’s across with a little wink. Drake grinned.
“Alcohol, not milk? Wasn’t that a song?”
“Dr Feelgood.” Ben studied the Bud. “We covered it. The band, I mean.”
Kennedy gave Raychim a little push. “Are you that man, Mr Raychim?”
The man’s eyes flicked from left to right. “You eating?”
Drake took a closer look. Lionel Raychim’s hands were shaking, just a little. His nose was a red network of broken veins. His tongue flicked nervously across his lips. The man was a drunk, and probably didn’t eat much. “Choose what you want,” Drake said. “Just do us a favour - talk whilst you eat. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Raychim nodded and ordered the biggest steak and chips dinner on the menu with all the trimmings, and more Bud besides. “I still own that farm, though I hadn’t been there in over five years.”
Kennedy leaned forward. “Hadn’t?” Drake couldn’t help but watch her long black hair fall this way and that.
“There was a break-in two days ago. Many books were taken.”
“What kind of books?”
“Old ones. The kind of thing that might pertain to my ancestor, the famous pirate.”
Drake had been thinking: two days? They were really that far behind their rivals? Then Raychim’s words jolted him.
“They took the books?”
“Hmm,” Raychim became distracted as his food arrived. Kinimaka had ordered a burger. No one else dared the local fare.
“Most of them.”
Kennedy bit. “You saying they didn’t get what they wanted? Do you think that something in these books might be helpful to them?”
“So many questions,” Raychim drained half his first Bud, using his napkin to hold the glass and wiping his mouth on a white sleeve.
“Not everything.” Raychim put his knife and fork down and grinned. “I may be old, I may be a drunk. I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t stupid. I knew, as soon as that cursed old box was dragged up on prime-time TV that people would come sniffing. You ain’t the first, won’t be the last.”
Hayden placed her arms on the table.” But we are the most official.” She flashed her credentials.
Raychim looked relieved. “It’s a book they are looking for,” he said immediately. “I have it in my car.”
*****
Not surprisingly, Raychim’s car was parked outside. Within ten minutes, Ben was thumbing carefully through the pages of the antiquated book. “Yes,” he exclaimed, “this i
s the scribe’s continuation piece. You know . . . ” he mused, “ . . . this book might be worth a fortune if offered in the right circles.”
“Not now,” Drake chastised the youngster. “Speak, or the dummy goes back in.”
“The scribe wrote that after Blackbeard’s battle had finished the pirate could not return to Calico Jack. It doesn’t say why . . .” Ben scanned forward for answers. “No, nothing. Maybe the Queen Anne’s Revenge was damaged?”
Drake nodded. “Or being pursued. There were a lot of British men-of-war around here at the time tasked with ridding the seas of pirates.”
“Whatever,” said Kennedy tapping the table. “What happened next?”
“Blackbeard got word to Calico Jack and ordered him to send the devices to a prearranged meeting place. Look. There’s a map here, and even an X. A real pirate treasure map!” Ben’s excitement made his eyes wide and glassy.
To a person, everyone stood up and craned over to take a look. The revered silence that followed was a testament to notorious pirate history.
Ben continued. “It seems that Calico Jack did send the devices to the agreed meeting place on a small ship, or boat. It’s not clear. But the boat was intercepted by the British, its crew killed and its valuables confiscated.”
“So the British claimed the devices?” Hayden wondered.
“Yes. Blackbeard never collected them, in any event. Maybe he sent a scouting party to the rendezvous point and they saw what happened.” Ben read on for a few minutes and then closed the book.
Hayden glared at him. “Well?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it? What the hell-”
“There are a few passages about how Jack shipped his own treasures home and ordered them to be stowed away in his cellar for when he later returned. Of course, he never did.”
“So the British took the devices-” Drake pulled a face as he chewed the information over in his brain. “Damn the Limeys.”
“And the rusty box ended up on Blackbeard’s ship,” Kinimaka said, moving slightly and making the whole right side of the pub shudder. “At the bottom of the ocean.”
“But that’s because the British killed him and sunk the Queen Anne’s Revenge.”
Lionel Raychim was switching between eating noisily and slurping Bud like his life depended on it. The Jamaican waitress kept close watch from behind the bar. Every time Raychim drained a bottle she came skipping over with another. Maybe she was Rick and she owned the damn place.
“Wait,” Ben said so slowly Drake could almost hear the gears grinding. “Wasn’t Blackbeard offered a pardon by the British?”
“Yeah,” Kennedy drawled. “And he accepted it, according to the Web. Didn’t stay chained to his masters for long though.”
“Exactly,” Ben said. “He accepted the pardon, got himself to wherever they were keeping the box - or device - and promptly escaped with it.”
“Only to be caught and killed by that Maynard guy, his ship sunk on the spot.” Drake ran through what he remembered. “Doesn’t explain why they only found the rusty box though and not the clock, controller-thing.”
“Maybe the British kept it,” Kinimaka suggested.
“I doubt that,” Drake mused. “Not judging by what we know of Blackbeard. If that controller was there, you can bet your bollocks he’d have taken it.”
“And if it wasn’t?” Kinimaka looked confused.
“Then good ole Calico Jack - this man’s esteemed ancestor,” Drake clapped Lionel Raychim on the back, spraying Bud and bits of steak everywhere, “did the one thing we would never have expected of anyone. He double-crossed Blackbeard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Kennedy twisted around in her chair, shuffling and tugging at her jeans as she did so. Drake saw Raychim take a quick gander towards the offending area before looking away with a guilty expression.
“Don’t sweat it, old man. Ass cracks are in this year,” he paused . . . “or out, depending on your point of view. Lol.”
Kennedy sent him a mock glare. “Dick. You don’t say lol. You spell it out in an email or something.”
Hayden was running a hand through her blonde hair, looking tired and overwhelmed. “Jack double-crossed Blackbeard? How?”
“Simple. He just sent the crappy box back to the rendezvous and then somehow alerted the British about the drop-off. His plan’s only failure occurred when Blackbeard himself didn’t turn up. That problem was negated later, though, when the pirate accepted his pardon.”
“That means Blackbeard wouldn’t have known about Jack’s double-cross until the moment he found the box in the British stronghold.”
“Yes,” Ben was on a roll, “and then, of course, he ran off and got dead.”
“Taking the ‘hard-drive’ to the bottom of the sea,” said Drake nodding his head, “where it lay, randomly emitting displacement waves whenever a chain of events set it off, until the salvage team brought it up.”
“Like in Lost.” Kinimaka mentioned a series close to his heart and his actual home.
“Which could be anything,” Hayden said, talking over her colleague. “From sea-bottom earthquakes to crazy currents to-”
“A stroke from a mermaid?” Drake’s soldiers mind couldn’t help it.
Kennedy sat back a bit self-consciously. “That takes care of the box. But what about the controller? What did Jack do with that?”
Raychim slurped down more beer.
“He kept it,” Kinimaka said unnecessarily.
But that simple sentence made Ben sit up. “Of course he did! He ordered all his treasures shipped home and stored away in his cellar. Remember?”
All eyes turned to Raychim. The man in white finished off yet another Bud, wiped grease from his cheeks, and smiled for the first time. “Wondered when you’d catch up.”
*****
Hayden rounded on him in an instant. “Sir, this is an official investigation. We’re on a deadline here. If you have-“
“Calm down, calm down. Keep yer frillies on,” the old man laughed. “I wouldn’t have gotten fed and watered if I gave it up in the first place. Good lesson for you there, young lady,” he cackled. “Any case - I don’t have Calico Jack’s treasure. The whole shebang was donated to a museum about ten years ago. Famous one, too.”
Drake looked at Ben and Kennedy thinking for God’s sake don’t say the Louvre. They hadn’t yet repaired it properly since their last little visit.
“It was all donated to the Key West Museum of Art and History. I remember it, too. Shaped like an hour-glass with brass arms that I’m guessing now are what attach it to this box of yours. Fancy thing. Classic pirate swag.”
“Key West?” Drake looked around at his friends. “End of the line in more ways than one.”
Mano Kinimaka looked thoughtful. “Isn’t there a Hard Rock Cafe there?”
*****
Drake pushed out the door first into the blinding sun. Despite the glare his eyes fell immediately on the trio of men standing around Lionel Raychim’s car. One of them was bent over by the passenger-side door, the other two were watching. Were they working for the council?
Without a word Drake signalled the others and took off at a sprint. By the time the men looked up he was among them. They were untrained, probably local muscle who’d never come up against a trained soldier before.
By the time Hayden and Kennedy arrived Drake stood over two writhing bodies and had the third pinned by his neck against the car.
“What are you doing?” he shouted as the man struggled. Drake slammed him back against the car. “No! What the hell are you doing?”
“Just . . . looking,” the Jamaican wheezed. “We didn’t know it was yours.”
“It’s not.” Drake looked around, assessing the situation. If these guys were locals tasked by an unknown to steal Raychim’s car then they would know nothing. They weren’t even worth beating up. He kicked a few ribs and threw the man to the ground, careful to keep an eye out for weapons.
“Get the hell out of here.”
All the time he searched their surroundings. Empty windows stared back at him from up high. Cluttered gardens and dishevelled yards stood on three sides, a kind of barren no-man’s-land to the north-east. If they were anywhere, they were in there.
“Something’s there . . .” Kennedy said as she quested around. “Can’t actually see a damn thing though.”
Drake shared her unease. Once you’d served a stretch in the 22 Regiment with the SAS you tended to develop extra senses even faster than a three-year-old wants to grow up.
“I get the feeling we’re being watched,” Drake agreed. “But, by Christ, if we are - they’re good.”
“Boudreau?” Hayden’s discomfort showed in her voice.
“Wouldn’t he come out spitting blood?” Drake said. “No. By someone more subtle, someone with a different game to play.” He made a snap decision. “Let’s go. Hayden, . . . you need to make a call. Get Mr Raychim here some protection.”
Hayden nodded at Kinimaka. “Do it.”
Drake smiled at Raychim. “Better put those keys away, pal. You’re not driving. Now where’s the airport?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hayden pulled some strings and their plane was in the air within an hour. A special charter, it did a fair bit of clunking down the runway, making even Drake grip the armrests with more disquiet than usual at take-off.
It would be a short flight. They toyed with the idea of alerting the local authorities, of even sending in the marines, but decided a small incursion would work better, especially since they were betting that no one else had followed the clues this far. Nevertheless, Hayden alerted her boss, Jonathan Gates, who was aware of the security breaches during the last few days.
His words, to her, left them in no doubt as to the seriousness of what was happening behind closed White House doors. “There is no trust, Hayden. No one to trust. Contact me and me alone.”
The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake 2) Page 9
