The Columbus Affair: A Novel (38 page)

A man and a woman.

One was a stranger.

The other was Zachariah.

Here?

———

Z
ACHARIAH SPOTTED
A
LLE
.

Too late for a retreat.

She’d clearly seen him.

“Time to deal with her,” the ambassador said.

And he watched as the woman walked away, back toward the cemetery’s main entrance.

He headed for the iron gate and the exit.

———

T
OM WATCHED AS
S
IMON LEFT THE CEMETERY GROUNDS, WALKING
down the street toward Alle.

The woman.

That’s who he wanted.

From his vantage point he saw her follow a path through the graves, going against the grain of tourists entering in a steady pace.

He turned back toward Alle. Simon approached her, grasped her arm, and they headed away from the ceremonial hall, on the street that led back toward the house where they’d been held.

More visitors were climbing the stairs around him.

He quickly descended and rushed toward a glass-enclosed placard that detailed the quarter. He located the cemetery and saw that the entrance point was a block over.

Where the woman was headed.

A quick glance and he saw Alle and Simon, their backs to him, still moving away.

If he hurried, he could catch his one chance to right the wrong.

B
ÉNE RAISED THE BLOODIED KNIFE TO
F
RANK
C
LARKE
. “I
SHOULD
slit your lying throat, too.”

“Don’t you find it odd, Béne, how you so detest lying, but don’t mind doing it to your own mother?”

Not what he expected Frank to say.

“And the point?”

“Only that you did exactly what I knew you’d do.”

Not a hint of fear laced Clarke’s words. In the light from the remaining lamp and the glow of the dimming fire from the broken one, he saw no concern in the hard eyes.

“The gang came,” Frank said, “offered money, and some of the colonels took it. When you called earlier and told me that you had found the mine, I had to report that information.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I’m Maroon, Béne. I take my oath of allegiance to my brothers in a serious way. Is their don dead?”

“He’s scum. My dogs hunted him down.”

“You killed both of them?” Tre asked, pointing at the bleeding bodies.

He raised the knife. “They got what they deserved, too.” He turned to Frank. “And why shouldn’t I kill you?”

“This had to happen. You know that, Béne.”

The voice never rose above a whisper.

“And what will the colonels say when I emerge from this cave?”

“That you’re a man to be feared.”

He liked that. “And there will be debts to be paid. By them.”

And he meant it.

“Why did you come back?” he asked Clarke.

“You need to see why this place was special to the Spanish.” Frank pointed to the upper portion of the chamber. “We have to climb up there.”

“Lead the way.”

He was going to keep this man in his sights and he wasn’t about to discard the knife. Halliburton was still shaken by the corpses.

“Forget them,” he told Tre.

“It’s not easy.”

“Welcome to my world.”

He motioned for them to follow Frank up rough boulders that acted as a makeshift stairway to the next level. There he spotted three exits from the chamber, each a dark yawn in the rock wall.

“Which one?” Béne asked Clarke.

“You choose.”

He assumed it was some sort of test, but he was not in the mood. “You do it. We’ll get there faster.”

“You tell me all the time that you’re Maroon. That you’re part of us. Time to start acting like one.”

He resented the implications.

“They call you B’rer Anansi,” Frank said to him.

“Who does?”

He hated the mythical reference. Anansi was often depicted as a short, small man or, worse, a spider with human qualities whose most notable characteristic was greed. He survived by cunning and a glibness of speech. Béne’s mother used to tell him how the slaves told tales of Anansi.

“I don’t think they mean to insult you,” Frank said. “It’s just their way of describing you. Anansi, for all his faults, is loved. We’ve told his stories ever since being brought here.”

He wasn’t interested in what others thought. Not anymore. He was here, finally, in the lost mine. “Which tunnel?”

“I know,” Tre said.

He faced his friend.

“I read in the journal we found in Cuba, the one from Luis de Torres, how this place was chosen as the
cripta
.”

“A vault?”

Tre nodded. “A hiding place. Columbus himself came, inspected, and chose it. They hid something away here. Something of great value, or at least that’s what de Torres wrote.”

“Like crates of gold from Panama?” he asked.

Tre shook his head. “I don’t know. He talked of this mine and three paths. He wrote that to know where to go is to know where you are from. Then he rattled off a list of things.
‘The number of vessels for the altar of burnt offerings, the altar of incense, and the Ark. The number of sections for the blessing. The number of times the word holy is repeated in the invocation of God. And the percent the Holy of Holies occupied in the First and Second Temples, per God’s command.’
 ”

None of which meant anything to him.

“You have to be Jewish to know the answers,” Tre said. “I looked them up. There were three vessels for each altar. Three times the word
holy
is repeated. And one-third, .33 percent, is the amount of space the Holy of Holies occupied. That was the Jews’ most sacred spot in the world.” Tre pointed to the third opening. “That’s the way.”

Clarke nodded.

“What’s down there?” Béne asked.

“Something that is not Maroon or Taino.” Frank approached the doorway and shone his light inside. “Maroons discovered this cave long after the last Taino died. We respected them. So we protected this.”

Béne wondered who Clarke was speaking to. Him? Or the ancestors? If duppies did in fact exist, this would be their home.

Frank led the way into the cavern, its walls the same coarse stone. He wondered about gold veins since he’d seen little evidence of any mining. He asked Clarke about them.

“In the other tunnels there are offshoots that lead to crevices. In some the Tainos found gold. Not much ore, but enough to attract the Spanish.”

The duct meandered in a straight line, the air becoming progressively more stale. Béne felt light-headed. “Why is it hard to breathe?”

“That sound you heard when we entered from the pool, like the earth sucking lungfuls of air, then exhaling? It creates a suction. More bad air here than good, which was why the Tainos chose this place to die.”

Not comforting, and he saw Tre was likewise concerned. But with his eyes he said to his friend,
You chose to come
. And he could understand why. For an academician this was the ultimate experience—a chance to see firsthand something history could only talk about.

His head began to hurt.

But he said nothing.

“The Tainos knew religion,” Frank said, “in every way the Spanish did. They just didn’t think themselves superior to everyone. They respected their world and one another. Their mistake was thinking white men felt the same way.”

They’d walked maybe fifty meters, as best he could estimate. And they’d risen slightly. Their three lights revealed only a few meters ahead, the darkness around them absolute. No moisture anywhere, which was unusual for Jamaica’s caves, which were generally saturated from underground lakes and rivers.

Then he saw something.

In the first wash of Frank’s light.

Ten meters before them.

A wooden door, the planks warped and misshapen, blackened from time. No hinges lined any side. Instead the rectangle simply fit into an opening carved from the stone. Chunks of rock and boulders lay scattered on the tunnel floor, nearly blocking the way.

Béne stepped forward, intent on climbing over the debris and seeing what was there.

Frank grabbed his sweaty arm. “You sure you want to go in there?”

“Try and stop me.”

“W
HAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
A
LLE ASKED
Z
ACHARIAH
. “I thought you wanted me to handle this.”

Her anger toward Berlinger and her father was now spilling over. Did anyone think her capable of anything?

“I am here because it is necessary. I’ve learned more about the Americans. They are definitely trying to stop us.”

“Why would they care about finding Jewish religious objects?”

They stopped walking, not far from the house where she and her father had been taken. The street here was not as crowded with visitors.

“Alle, American foreign policy has long included active intervention in everything associated with Israel. They provide billions in aid and military support, and think that entitles them to tell us what to do. Our current situation is directly their fault. I am assuming that obtaining our Temple treasures works into their plans in some way.”

She would ordinarily think him paranoid, but Brian Jamison had been real.

“Who was the woman you were talking to?”

“Someone providing me information on the Americans. What have you learned?”

“That my grandfather told my father a lot more than we thought.”

She told him what the message from the grave actually said, as best she could remember. “Berlinger and my father are in the ceremonial hall.”

She pointed to the building fifty yards away, around a slight bend in the street.

“How long have they been in there?”

“An hour.”

“I was in the cemetery, behind the hall. Was there any mention of seeing me?”

She shook her head. “They told me little. I was dismissed to the synagogue for prayers.”

She heard a hum and watched as Zachariah found a cell phone in his pocket.

“It is Rócha.”

He answered, listened for a moment, then said, “Keep me posted.”

He ended the call.

“Your father is on the move.”

———

T
OM TROTTED DOWN THE STREET TOWARD THE
O
LD-
N
EW
S
YNAGOGUE
. From the map on the placard he knew he had to round the block, circling the cemetery’s outer wall and an array of buildings. The woman he sought was exiting from the entrance to the cemetery and, if he hurried, he could catch her.

He’d slipped away from the ceremonial hall without Simon or Alle seeing him. They’d disappeared around a bend in the street that led away from him. He was moving as fast as he could without drawing attention. At the end of the street, he turned right and passed more souvenir shops. Sidewalks here were less congested, so he ran.

Who was this woman? How could she possibly know what had happened to him? At first, he’d tried to tell people that he’d been manipulated. But the effort had been futile. He was saying exactly what they expected to hear and, without proof, he sounded even more guilty.

Which had surely been the idea.

That was when he disappeared, went silent, stopped defending himself. Newspapers and television shows across the country filleted him. His silence only added to their furor, but he came to discover it had been the right response.

Especially after that visit in Barnes & Noble.

He kept moving, turning another corner, now headed back parallel to the cemetery wall up an inclined street toward the Pinkas Synagogue, which sat at the cemetery entrance. Buses lined the curb, people streaming toward a concrete ramp that led down to the original street level. Signs indicated the cemetery’s entrance was there.

He spotted the woman.

Coming up the incline, against the wave of visitors, making her way to the sidewalk.

He slowed his pace.

Stay calm
.

Don’t blow this
.

She turned away from him and walked up the sidewalk, paralleling a wrought-iron fence that guarded the synagogue. The street to his left was one-way, but a busy boulevard could be seen at its end, past the synagogue, maybe a hundred feet away.

Then he saw the car.

A black Mercedes coupe, parked at the curb, engine running, wisps of exhaust evaporating from its tailpipe.

He quickened his steps.

The woman approached the car.

A man emerged from the passenger’s side—young, short-haired, dark suit—who opened the rear door.

The woman was ten feet away from entering.

“Stop,” he called out.

And he ran the last thirty feet toward her. Dark Suit spotted him, and he saw the man reach beneath his jacket.

The woman whirled.

Tom came close, then stopped.

Dark Suit advanced toward him, but the woman grabbed her protector’s arm.

“No need,” she said. “I’ve been expecting him.”

———

Z
ACHARIAH DECIDED TO PLACE SOME DISTANCE BETWEEN HIM
and Alle and the ceremonial hall. He was unsure where Tom Sagan
had gone, and the last thing he needed was to be spotted. He wondered if Sagan had seen him in the cemetery. Alle had finally provided him with some useful information, telling him more of what Sagan had learned from his father. Rabbi Berlinger now seemed a player in this game.

His mind reeled, processing all the new information.

At least he now knew.

This place, long held sacred by Jews around the world, was a part of the quest. But how? And Jamaica seemed an important locale, too. The curator from the museum in Cuba had called to say that Rowe and his companion had fled before the police arrived, no way to stop them.

“He said you and he will talk soon.”

That would not be a friendly conversation. He’d thought himself through with Rowe. But that might not be the case. Abiram Sagan had included a road map of Jamaica for a reason.

His phone vibrated.

He found the unit and saw it was Rócha.

“Where are you?” he asked, answering.