The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

TOM INSERTED THE KEY INTO THE SILVER BOX AND TURNED THE lock. Whatever was inside had been placed there by his grandfather. He felt a connection to the man, one he’d never experienced before. Now he was the last link in an unbroken chain that stretched back to the time of Columbus. Hard to believe, but it was true. He thought about all of the other men who’d assumed this duty, what they might have thought. Most of them probably had little to do except pass the information on to the next in line. Saki, though, was different. And he could understand why his grandfather had been paranoid. There’d been pogroms in the past, Jews had suffered and died, but never on the scale they endured from 1939 to 1945.

An unprecedented time called for unprecedented actions.

He was alone inside a room off the nave in the Maisel Synagogue. An older woman had opened the glass display case and removed the silver box, never saying a word. She’d laid it on a wooden table and left, closing the door behind her. His thoughts flew back to the room at the cemetery and Abiram’s coffin, lying on a similar wooden table.

A lot had gone unsaid between the two of them.

Now there were no more opportunities to right any wrongs.

True, as Berlinger had said, time had brought everything into focus, but it was not an image he wanted to see. Even worse, it seemed the same mistake he had made twenty years ago was being repeated by his own daughter toward him.

He flushed those troubling thoughts from his brain and opened the lid.

Inside was a black leather bag, identical to the one from Abiram’s grave that had held the key. He pressed the outside with his finger and felt something hard beneath.

He lifted out the bag and opened the top.

What came out was spherical, about four inches wide, and looked like a large pocket watch with a brass face.

But it wasn’t.

Instead it was an assemblage of five interlocking disks, one above the other, held together by a central pin. On top were pointers that could be rotated and lined with symbols that appeared on the disks. He noticed the lettering. Some was Hebrew, some Arabic and Spanish. It weighed maybe half a pound and seemed of solid brass. No tarnish marred its exterior, and the disks freely turned.

He knew what this was.

An astrolabe.

Used for navigation.

Nothing else was inside the box.

No explanations, no messages—zero to explain what he was supposed to do next.

“Okay, Saki,” he whispered.

He laid the astrolabe down and found Abiram’s note and the Jamaican road map, laying both on the table. He added the key from the lock.

All of the pieces of the puzzle.

He opened the map and pressed its folds flat, careful not to tear the brittle paper. He saw again the ink additions to the map, numbers scattered around the island. He made a quick count. Maybe a hundred written in faded blue ink.

He lifted the astrolabe and tried to remember anything he knew about the device. Used for navigation, but how he had no idea. Across the rim of the outer disk were symbols laid out at intervals. A pointer, notched like a ruler, stretched from one edge to the other and connected symbols from opposite sides. All of the writing was either Hebrew or Spanish. He knew no Spanish and only a smattering of Hebrew.

He turned it over.

The back side was a grid of rows encircling the disk, five in total, everything in Hebrew. One row he recognized.

Numbers.

As a child Abiram had insisted he study Hebrew. Unlike many languages numerals were formed using letters, and he recalled the number combinations. He recognized 10, 8, 62, 73, and most of the others. Another pointer stretched from one end to the other. He rotated the disks, which spun easily on their central axis. His gaze drifted to Abiram’s message and the main point Saki had explained.

3. 74. 5. 86. 19

.

He searched the astrolabe and found 3, amazed that he could still translate. He twisted the pointer and lined one end with the symbol for 3. At the opposite end was Hebrew for 74.

Not a coincidence.

The second number from Saki’s message was 5. He twisted the pointer and found the symbol for 5. The opposite side rested at 86.

One left, which seemed the whole point. The first two were there simply to confirm, Yeah, you’re on the right track.

He searched the grid for 19 and found what he thought was correct.

The opposite number was 56.

He immediately surveyed the map, looking for 56. He found it east of the center of the island, south of a town called Richmond, adjacent to the Flint River. Small print on the map, just beside the inked number, noted that the area was called Falcon Ridge. He searched the remainder of the map. The number 56 appeared nowhere else.

He smiled.

Ingenious.

Absolutely no way existed for anyone to know which of the hundred or so numbers was relevant without the sequence and the astrolabe.

He gathered up the map, note, key, astrolabe, and the black leather bag large enough to hold them all.

He left the building and walked back toward the Old-New Synagogue.

He debated trying to find Alle. But how was that possible? And what was the point? She’d made her choice. He’d done all he could for her, but she was Simon’s now, and he only hoped that she’d be okay. He could go to the police, but what would he say? He’d sound like a crazed nut, and he doubted Berlinger would back him up.

“My duty is done. The rest I leave to you.”

The only thing for him to do was leave.

He glanced around one last time. The clusters of buildings that at first seemed protective in their familiarity were now cold and unappealing. His stay had been short, but memorable. Like his parents’ home, there were a lot of ghosts here, too. But he wondered. What waited ahead, in Jamaica, at Falcon Ridge?

There seemed only one way to find out.

But his heart sank in disappointment.

“Take care, Alle,” he whispered.

And he walked away.