The Columbus Affair

She kept walking up the street, stepping around several tour groups. She was worthy. She could be the Levite. And do a better job than her father, who seemed not to care about anyone or anything. And where was he? Still inside the ceremonial hall? Her gaze focused ahead and she spotted two people beyond the iron gate, up another inclined path.

A man and a woman.

One was a stranger.

The other was Zachariah.

Here?

———

ZACHARIAH SPOTTED ALLE.

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.

———

TOM WATCHED AS SIMON 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.

CHAPTER SIXTY

BÉNE RAISED THE BLOODIED KNIFE TO FRANK CLARKE. “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 protect

ed 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.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE