The Columbus Affair

He knew of the alloy, a mixture of copper, silver, and gold. He’d seen artifacts made from the reddish purple metal.

“They loved the smell when the oil from their skin reacted with the guanín,” Frank said. “Pure gold was yellow-white, odorless, and unappealing. Guanín was different. It became special to ’em, especially since they couldn’t smelt it themselves. They had to be taught by people from South America, who made their way northward. To them gold merely came from streams, guanín was from heaven.”

“So you’re saying they would not have a gold mine?”

“I don’t know, Béne. They definitely used gold. So a source of it might have been important. What I do know is that two hundred tons of gold were shipped to Spain from the New World in the hundred years after Columbus. Some of that came from Jamaica, and tens of thousands of Tainos died because of it.”

Clarke went silent and stared at the drawings revealed by the lights.

Béne was drawn toward them, too.

“They would dip sticks into charcoal mixed with fat and bat droppings.” Frank’s voice had gone low. “So simple, yet see how the work lasted.”

“Who knows of this place?”

“No one outside our community. Maroons have come to this place for a long time.”

He, too, felt a special closeness here.

Frank turned and handed him a scrap of paper. Before they’d started up the mountain, the colonel had disappeared briefly inside the museum.

He’d wondered why.

“That’s Columbus’ signature.” Frank shone his light on the writing. “It’s a complicated mess that says much about the man. What’s important are the X’s.”

He’d already noticed. Both hooked. Just like the one from the grave, in the Spanish documents, the museum, and on the wall outside.

He stared at Clarke. “You never told me any of this before.”

“We be doomed, Béne. Like two hundred years ago, Maroons fight among themselves too much. We become our own enemy. The government knows that and, like the English long ago, they keep us bickering. That way they don’t have to listen to our complaints. I try, but the other colonels are hard to please.”

He knew all of that was true.

“You, Béne, are a man the colonels respect. But they also fear you. They know what else you do. They accept your money, but they know you kill people.”

“Only when there is no choice.”

“That’s how Maroons have justified it since we first fled to the mountains. Every runaway slave said the same thing. ‘Only when there be no choice.’ Yet we have killed so many.”

Here, underground, standing with this learned man, he decided to be honest. “I do what must be done. Violence is the only thing some understand. It’s true, I make money off gambling, whores, dirty movies. Nothing ever sold to or involving children. Nothing. My women must see a doctor and be clean. I have rules. I try to make it right.”

Clarke raised a hand in mock surrender. “No need to convince me, Béne. I don’t care.”

But he felt a need to justify himself.

Were the duppies working on him?

“Be who you are, Béne. It’s all we can do.”

Normally he would never question himself, but this place was definitely affecting him.

“I believe that the hooked X is the mark of Columbus,” Frank said. “A sign to an important place. Perhaps even to the lost mine itself.”

“In this cave?”

The colonel shook his head. “This was not it. They marked here for a reason. What? Who knows. The real place is unknown.”

Simon had talked of Columbus, the lost mine, and the Levite, supposedly revealing all that he knew. But never had he mentioned Columbus’ signature, or anything else that Frank Clarke had just said.

Because he did not know?

No way.

Simon knew a lot. Enough to be in Florida doing something with some man and his daughter. A woman who wrote a magazine article about Columbus, which he’d not read.

Time to correct that mistake.

“Everyone wants to preserve us,” Frank said. “They talk of Maroon culture, and of us, as if we’re gone. But we’re still here.”

He agreed.

“If you find the lost mine, Béne, perhaps you’re right. That wealth can be used to change our situation. Money is always power, and we have neither. Unlike other Maroons, I never blamed the Jews for profiting from us. We needed supplies and ammunition. They provided it. The British needed the same and they provided. That’s the way of the world. Those Jews are gone, but we’re still here.”

He thought back to what Tre had told him about the Cohen brothers and the Jews’ hidden wealth from the time of the Spanish.

And the Levite.

Who knew it all.

“You think the Jews may have hid their wealth in the mine, too?”

Frank shrugged. “It’s possible. All the legends seemed to have merged. That’s the thing, Béne. Nobody knows anything.”

He was glad he’d come.

Finally. Answers.

And what Clarke said was true. Money was indeed power. He was deeply connected with the left and the People’s National Party, but he preferred the ruling center-right Labor Party. Never were his phone calls to government officials ignored. His requests shoved aside. He rarely asked for anything from any minister but, when he did, the answer was always yes.

Something the Maroons believed came to mind.

Di innocent an di fool could pass fi twin.

He was neither.

“I’ll find the mine,” he told both his friend and the ancestors.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ALLE RESENTED BRIAN JAMISON’S HOLIER-THAN-THOU ATTITUDE. Two hours had gone by since the video from Florida ended, and Brian had stayed on the phone in another room with the door closed the entire time. She sat in the house’s small kitchen and nursed a cup of coffee. The scene outside the windows was rural and wooded, no roads or other houses in sight. It was after 7:00 P.M. Czech time, which meant early afternoon in Florida. Her father was apparently coming to Vienna to make a deal for her release.

Which still surprised her.

A door opened and footsteps pounded the wooden floor. Brian walked into the room, still wearing a shoulder holster holding a weapon. He poured himself a cup from the coffeemaker.

“This is changing fast,” he said to her.

“I don’t like you.”

He laughed. “Like I care. If it were up to me, I would have let Simon kill you.”

His bravado was beginning to wear thin. “What happens now?”

“Aren’t you the least bit concerned about your father? He’s put his ass on the line for you. What do we do about that?”

She said nothing.

“He’s walking into a trap at that cathedral.”

“So stop him. Have your man in Florida tell him what’s going on.”

“How do you suggest I do that? We have no idea how he plans to get to Vienna. My man lost him after the orchard. He surely isn’t going to fly out of Orlando. I’m betting he drives to Tampa, or Jacksonville, or Miami. And he’s not a dumb-ass, contrary to what you might think, he won’t fly straight to Vienna. He’ll come in another way. So there’s no way to deal with him until he gets to the cathedral.”

“You don’t give a damn about my father. You just want what he has.”

“Sure I do. But I still have the problem of him in Vienna. And so we’re clear, he’s not my father so, no, I don’t give a damn.”

“My father was one of the best reporters in the world,” she said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

She’d never said any of those words before.

“Is that how you convince yourself to feel better? I assure you, your father has never dealt with a man like Zachariah Simon.” He sipped his coffee. “I want to know what this is about. The least you can do is tell me what’s going on here.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell me what you told Simon.”

In 71 CE, after crushing the rebellious Jews and destroying Jerusalem, Titus returned to Rome. His father, Vespasian, was now emperor and welcomed his son back with the greatest celebration Rome had ever seen. Over one million had died in Judea, and now all of Rome came out to pay homage. Eight years later, after Titus himself rose to be emperor, he immortalized the day with a stone relief that showed him, as conqueror, parading the streets by chariot, the Jews’ Temple treasure—the golden Table of Divine Presence, the silver trumpets, and a seven-branched menorah—carted ahead of him.