The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

BÉNE FOLLOWED FRANK CLARKE AS THEY NEGOTIATED THE EVERTIGHTENING tunnel. Thankfully, he’d never been claustrophobic. He actually felt comfortable within closed spaces, away from a world that demanded he act like one person, but be another. Nobody watched him here. Or judged him. He was just himself.

“You told me the Tainos cared nothing for gold,” he said. “So why have a mine?”

“I said that they didn’t value gold. For them, it was decoration. So when the Spanish asked about the mine, it meant little to reveal its location. It was much later that this place became special.”

Frank kept walking, the dry, rocky floor brittle beneath their wet boots. Luckily the route was a straight line with no offshoots. No evidence of bats or any other creature could be seen or smelled, the unique entrance ensuring that the cave stayed pristine.

He spotted something ahead, just beyond the reach of Clarke’s light.

They came closer and stopped.

A grille of stalactites barred the passage, the rock thick and black, like metal.

“The iron grille?” he asked.

Frank nodded. “A little fact creeps into every legend.”

He recalled what else he’d been told. “And men have died getting this far?”

“That they have.”

“What killed them?”

“Curiosity.”

They wedged their way between the rock. Another tunnel stretched on the opposite side. He heard a rush of water and they found a swift moving underground stream. His light revealed a blue-green tint to the surging flow.

“We have to jump,” Frank said.

Not more than two meters, which they both easily negotiated. On the other side the tunnel ended at a spacious chamber formed from two massive slabs, one the roof, the other the floor. The walls were brick-shaped stones, their surface worked smooth, their rise about five meters. Carvings and pictographs dotted the whitish surfaces.

Too many to count.

“It’s amazing,” Frank said. “The Tainos knew nothing of metal smelting. All of their tools were stone, bone, or wood. Yet they were able to create this.”

Béne noticed another level that extended out from the far wall, up maybe two meters. He shone his light and spotted more ancient art.

Then he saw the bones, all shapes and sizes, scattered on the floor against the far wall. And what looked like a canoe.

“The Tainos came here to escape the Spanish. Instead of being slaves they waited here, in the dark, to die. That’s what makes this place so special.” Frank stepped to a rocky ledge that extended from the wall like a half table. Two lamps were there and Béne watched as both were lit. “Burns castor oil. Odorless. Which is good here. The Tainos knew of it, too. They were much smarter than the Spanish ever thought.”

The mention of castor oil made him think of his mother, and how she’d make him swallow the black, smelly, evil-tasting liquid every year, just before he returned to school. A purging ritual that most Jamaican schoolchildren endured, one he came to despise. He knew that the Tainos and Maroons used the oil to ease pain and swelling, but the only use he’d ever found for the stuff was as a lubricant for tractors.

Their lamps revealed the chamber in all its glory.

“This is where Columbus came,” Frank said, “after he murdered the six warriors. Why he killed them, no one knows. He left the island after that and never returned. But hundreds of other Spaniards did come. Eventually, they enslaved and slaughtered the Tainos.” Clarke pointed upward. “On the second level, there, in offshoots, are gold veins. The ore is still there.”

“And you’ve done nothing with it?”

“This place is more sacred than gold.”

He remembered what Tre had told him. “And the Jews? Did they store their wealth here, too?”

Two men appeared from the portal leading out.

Both wet, dressed only in swim trunks.

Béne’s heart thumped with a pang of fear that he quickly quelled with anger.

“I’m sorry,” Frank said in a cold, calculating monotone. “The colonels overruled me. These men are from a group in Spanish Town. Yesterday they came and asked if anyone had heard or seen anything in the mountains the past few days. They say their don is missing and you were the last one to meet with him.”

“Why didn’t they come and ask me?”

“ ’Cause we knows the answer,” one of the black forms said. “Da posses seh you to pay.”

He wasn’t interested in what some gang had decreed. He was more concerned with Frank Clarke’s betrayal.

“Mi nuh like di vides, man,” he said to his friend in patois.

He meant it, too. Lots of bad vibes here.

Frank stared at him. “Mi nuh like, either. But dis your worry, Béne.”

The colonel turned to leave.

“If yu a deestant smadi, mi wi gi yu a cotch.”

He knew Clarke understood him. “If you were a decent man, you’d stay a little while.”

“That’s the thing, Béne. I don’t feel so decent.”

And Clarke left through the portal.

“I wuk o soon done,” one of the men said to him. “We gon kill you.”

No more patois. He’d used it to disarm these two. “I’m going to give you a chance to leave here and we’ll forget this happened. That way you’ll stay alive. If you don’t, I’m going to kill you both.”

One of them laughed. “You nut dat good, Béne. A no lie. You gon die.”

He’d not had a fight in a long while, but that did not mean he’d forgotten how. He grew up in Spanish Town among some of the roughest gangs in the Caribbean and learned early on that to be a Rowe meant to be tough. Challenges came from all quarters, each pretender wanting to be the one who took Béne Rowe down. None had ever succeeded.

The two men flanked him. Neither was armed. Apparently they intended to kill him with their bare hands.

He almost smiled.

Apparently, the idea had been to lure him here using Frank Clarke. He wondered how much the gang had paid for that service, since little in Jamaica was free.

He studied the men. Both were tall and broad. Surely strong. But he wondered how tested they were. British redcoats had been the best-trained, best-equipped soldiers in the world. But a group of runaway slaves with little more than spears, knifes, and a few muskets brought them to their knees.

This was his world.

His time.

And nobody was going to take that from him.

He pivoted, grabbed the nearest lantern by its handle, and hurled it at the man to his left. The projectile was deflected with a bat to the ground. It only broke the glass receptacle and spread the oil, which burst into flames, the fireball driving the one man back. He seized the moment to yank his trouser leg up and free the blade from its sheath.

A diving knife, used when he snorkeled. He kept the thick blade sharp, one edge serrated.

As the one man rounded the flames, he advanced on the other, faking right, then thrusting left, grabbing the man’s arm and whirling the body around. As he did the hand with the knife rushed up and, with one swipe, he opened the throat.

He shoved the man aside.

He heard the gurgle of breath and saw blood spurt out. The man reached for the wound, but there was nothing he could do. The body dropped to the ground, twitching in agony.

The other man pounced, but Béne was ready.

The knife swished upward again and a second throat was slit.

Shock filled his assailant’s eyes.

He watched as death immediately grabbed hold and the body collapsed.

Enough of this.

Frank Clarke was now his concern.

Movement in the darkness beyond the exit caught his gaze. He leaped to one side of the portal, knife ready. Reinforcements?

Someone entered the chamber. A man.

He lunged and slammed the body to the rock wall, bringing the knife up, its leading edge pressed to flesh, ready to cut.

Tre Halliburton stared at him, eyes wide with terror.

He exhaled and relaxed his grip. “I told you to stay outside.”

Tre aimed a finger at the doorway. “He told me to come.”

Béne’s gaze darted to the man who stood there.

Frank Clarke.