The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER TEN

BÉNE WAITED AS ONE OF HIS MEN DUG OUT THE GRAVE. HIS DOGS had returned and now lay placid beneath the trees, basking in the broken sunlight, satisfied from the hunt. His animals were thorough, a talent bred into them long ago. His mother had told him about the chasseurs from Cuba. Small, swarthy men who’d worn open checked shirts, wide trousers, and light straw hats with shallow crowns and broad rims. But it was their shoes that set them apart. They would skin the thighs and hocks of wild hogs then thrust their feet into the raw hide. The pliant became a kind of short boot, which fit close, and lasted for weeks. They wore crucifixes around their tanned necks and were armed only with a machet, sharpened on one side, the other used to beat the dogs. They first came in 1796, forty of them with their hounds, imported to hunt down the Trelawny Town Maroons.

Which they did.

With no mercy.

Hundreds were slaughtered, and the fear of the dogs was born.

Which he intended to resurrect.

While gangs sought favor with the poorest in Jamaica’s cities, he’d always cast his lot here, in the windward mountains and, to the west, in the leeward Cockpit country, places where Maroons had existed for four hundred years. And though each ran their community through colonels and elected councils, he liked to think of himself as their collective savior, protecting the Maroon way of life. In return, his compatriots provided men and women to staff his many ventures. True, prostitution, gambling, and pornography were covert interests, and they made him millions. But coffee was his passion. All around him, on the slopes for many kilometers, grew shrubs of modest height with glossy, dark green leaves. Every year, sweet-scented, white blossoms sprouted and eventually matured into bright red berries. Once ground and boiled they produced what many said was the finest drink in the world.

Blue Mountain Coffee.

His ancestors had worked the plantations as slaves. He now owned one of the largest and paid their descendants as employees. He also controlled the main distribution network for all of the remaining growers. His father wisely conceived that opportunity, after a devastating hurricane in the 1950s wiped out nearly every grower. A national board was established, with membership limited and criteria for quality, cultivation, and processing decreed. If not grown within sixteen kilometers of the central peak it was Jamaican Prime, not Blue Mountain Coffee. His father had been right—scarcity bred mystique. And through regulation of the product, Blue Mountain Coffee became valued around the world.

And made the Rowe family rich.

His man continued to dig.

Twenty minutes ago his other lieutenant had returned to the trucks to meet more of his men. They now arrived through the trees leading a blindfolded prisoner—late twenties, a mixture of Cuban and African—hands tied behind his back.

He motioned and the younger man was shoved to his knees and the blindfold yanked off.

He squatted close as the man blinked away the afternoon sun.

The man’s eyes went wide when he saw Béne.

“Yes, Felipe. It’s me. Did you think you could get away with it? I pay you to watch the Simon. And watch you do. Except you take his money, and then watch me, too.”

Fear shook the man’s head in violent nervous gestures.

“Listen to me, and listen real good, ’cause everything depends on it.”

He saw that his warning registered.

“I want to know what the Simon be doing. I want to know everything you’ve not told me. Tell wi di trut.”

This turncoat was of the streets, so patois would be his language.

Tell me the truth.

He’d not heard from Simon in nearly two weeks, but he shouldn’t be surprised. Everything he’d learned had only confirmed what he’d long sensed.

Trouble.

The Austrian was enormously wealthy, a philanthropic man obviously interested in Israeli causes. But that did not concern Béne. He had no dog in the fight that was the Middle East. He was interested only in Columbus’ lost gold mine—as, supposedly, was Simon.

“I swear to you, Béne,” Felipe said. “I know nothin’. He tells me nothin’.”

He silenced him with a wave of his hand. “What you take me for? The Simon does not live here. He knows no one in Jamaica. I’m his partner. That’s what he says. Yet he hires you to work for him, too. Okay. I come to you and pay you to tell the Simon only what I want him to know and to tell me what he does. Yet you tell me nothin’.”

“He calls me up, pays me to do some things. I do them and he pays. That’s all, Béne. All.”

The words came fast.

“But I pay you to tell me di trut. Which you not be doing. You better start talkin’ quick.”

“He wants records. Papers from the archives.”

He motioned and one of his men handed him a pistol. He jammed its muzzle into the man’s chest and cocked the hammer. “I give you one more chance. What. Kind. Of. Things.”

Shock filled the prisoner’s eyes.

“Okay. Okay. Béne. I tell you. I tell you.”

He kept the gun firmly against the man’s chest.

“Deeds. He wants deeds. Old ones. I found one. Some Jew named Cohen bought land in 1671.”

That grabbed his attention. “Speak, man.”

“He bought land and all the riverfront property beside it.”

“The name.”

“Abraham Cohen.”

“Why is that so important to the Simon?”

“His brother. His brother was Moses Cohen Henriques.”

That name he knew. A 17th-century Jewish pirate. He captured a great Spanish silver fleet in Cuba, then led the Dutch invasion of Brazil. He ended his life on Jamaica, searching for Columbus’ lost mine.

“Does the Simon know this?”

He shook his head. “He’s out of touch. Gone. Don’t know where. I swear, Béne. Don’t know. I haven’t told him yet.”

“And you not tell me, either. This deed you find. Still in the archives?”

A shake of the head. “I stole it. I have it at my place in Spanish Town. Your men know where dat is. Go get it. Beside my bed. I swear, Béne. Right beside my bed.”

He withdrew the gun.

His man digging in the grave had stopped and was motioning.

He needed time to think so he tossed the weapon to his lieutenant and walked over. In the shallow excavation he spotted a flat chip of stone. On its face was a symbol.

“Fetch it out,” he ordered.

His man lifted the fragment and laid it on the ground. He brushed away the dark earth and studied the etching. The Simon had told him to look for a pitcher on a grave marker and a hooked X.

The chip he stared at had once been part of a tombstone. He lifted the chunk and saw that it fit at the bottom right corner of the marker with the pitcher, its rough edges close enough of a match to convince him.

He propped the piece up so the prisoner could see the hooked X.

“You know wa dis bi?”

“I saw dat on the deed, Béne. On da deed in the archives. The one beside my bed. Simon told me to watch for dat X thing. I did. I did real good, Béne. It’s there. I can still do real good for you, too. I can.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t work like that. As a child his mother taught him something she’d been taught by her mother, and her mother before that. Maroons wrote little down. The spoken word had been their history book.

Speak the truth and speak it ever

,

Cost it what it will

.

His mother was always right.

And something else she said.

To hide a sin was to commit another.

Felipe was a minor government official who worked at the national archives in Spanish Town. He was somewhat educated and ambitious, but earned barely enough to survive. His main task had been to search the old records for anything on the lost mine. But, when offered the opportunity to work for someone else, this cheater had decided to bite the hand that first fed him.

Luckily, Felipe had a big mouth.

Which was appreciated, since knowing the situation had allowed Béne to cultivate a spy of his own.

He motioned for his man to bring him a phone. Reception in the mountains was excellent and he pressed one of its memory buttons, the number already programmed. Three rings and the man in Vienna answered.

“What is happening there?” he asked.

“It’s becoming … complicated.”

“Maybe it’s time you act.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“Then do it. All’s quiet here.”

“Good to hear.”

He clicked off.

He’d known for the past few days that the Simon was on the move. Things were happening in both Austria and Florida. As to what, he was not entirely sure, but he knew enough to know that his European partner was double-crossing him. To his great fortune, Béne had found a new cemetery, with both a pitcher and a hooked X. Now he had a deed. All of which helped ease the ache of betrayal, and the anxiety he felt for what had to be done.

His gaze locked on his man with the gun. He held his minion’s eyes for a split second, then gave a nod. The weapon was aimed down and a bullet to the head ended Felipe’s life.

Speak the truth and speak it ever, cost it what it will.

“Dump him in the grave and refill the hole,” he said. “Then go bury the don.”

His dogs never ate what they did not kill.

“I’m going to Spanish Town.”