And the day these journals arrived, Cole had learned how far into the ‘tween his father had gone. Theories only remain theories until someone proved them right or wrong. James Thatcher hadn’t been given the chance to do that, but he’d sent his words on to his son. And the more Cole read, the more he, too, became a believer, not only in the theory, but in the idea that it was his father’s search for the truth that had got him killed.

“Hey Cole, you want me to take her into the cove?” Theo called out from the helm.

“Hang on. I’m coming.” He slid the journals back in the box, locked it and returned it to its place in his cabin.

Little more than two miles down the coast from Marigot Bay, Cole eased the big vessel in close to shore while Theo stood out on the bow with a hand-held spotlight. The younger man panned the light down the beach but there was no sign of the Whaler.

Cole stuck his head out the wheelhouse door and asked Theo to come take the con.

After the younger man had taken the wheel, Cole went alone onto the foredeck and searched the beach with the spotlight himself. No doubt about it. The Whaler was gone. He shut off the light and sat in the darkness for several minutes, contemplating how he was going to continue diving with nothing but that rubber ducky of a dink. They had no more money. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to do when they ran out of fuel. Finally, he stowed the spotlight and returned to the wheelhouse.

Theo sat in the comfortable chair in front of the wooden ship’s wheel, his feet propped up on the console above the helm. Over his head, several screens glowed including a computer GPS chart plotter, radar, and a down-imaging sonar/depth finder, while resting on his lap was a small laptop that could convert into a tablet computer. Theo’s fingers danced on the keys with the speed of a court reporter.

“Are you paying any attention at all to the con?”

“It’s called multitasking, my good man.”

“Take us out, then, Mr. Multitasker.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Theo said without removing his eyes from the tiny screen. “Back to Marigot, then?”

Cole stood in the doorway to the galley, his eyes bouncing from Theo to the chart to the radar. The vessel was turning and he heard the RPMs increase as the bow of Shadow Chaser cleared the land. Theo had not touched the wheel or the throttle.

“What the hell?”

Theo grinned. “You like my new toy?”

“You’re controlling everything from there?” Cole pointed at the laptop. “How?”

“The magic of wireless, my dear friend. I don’t even need something this big. I could do it from a Wi-fi enabled cell phone. Back to my question. What course, Captain?”

Cole shook his head. “Damn. You’re really something. The Saintes. We’re going to Bourges des Saintes,” he said, trying to make his mouth into the right shape to say the French words, but mangling it in the end.

Theo looked up from his computer, his eyes wide behind the glasses. “Really? Why? What about the journals? Surcouf? As you said, we’re getting close.”

“I told you — I saw the Brewsters going into Point-à-Pitre. I couldn’t take a chance that they’d see me on the streets. It’s got to be the coin they’re after. I had to hide it. I left it on her boat.”

Theo’s feet dropped to the floor. He flipped the laptop shut and slid it across the console. “You did what?”

“Don’t worry. She’ll never find it.”

“But what about us? Are we going to be able to find it?”

“No problem. We’ll find her, I’ll get aboard her boat and get it back.”

Theo threw back his head and started laughing, then he collapsed into the helmsman’s seat. He flipped open the laptop and began punching in waypoints, his shoulders still shaking.

“What?” Cole said finally.

“I got my answer. She was hot.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Pointe-à-Pitre

March 25, 2008

8:45 p.m.

“Monsieur?”

Diggory Priest heard the boy’s voice before he made out his shape at the bottom of the steps. The child scrambled up to the door of the Immigration offices dragging two aluminum oars. Diggory paid the urchin and the boy ran off into the night without another word.

From his high vantage point, Diggory leaned on the oars and considered how best to take advantage of the evening’s events. Across the Place de la Victoire, he noticed a man hurrying through the crowd, shoving people aside. He was wearing a red windbreaker over his T-shirt and frayed cut-off jeans. It was the bright color that had caught Diggory’s attention. The man rushed past an elderly couple who were coaxing a well-coifed tiny dog toward a patch of grass. The red-jacket man failed to see the dog until his leg tangled in the leash. The small ball of fur was whipped into the air and Diggory heard the high-pitched yelp from fifty yards away. The man turned, swearing in English, then kicked the dog airborne again while disentangling himself. He rushed on, leaving the elderly man shouting curses and the woman bending over the whimpering fluff.

By the time Diggory reached the sidewalk, the barbarian had already disappeared into the Rue Victor Hugo.  He recognized the man from a photo Caliban had shown him. Diggory allowed him to get ahead and disappear among the pedestrians, autos and motorbikes that jostled  along the narrow street. The man’s destination, Le Mambo, was a small bar up an even darker alley, the place where Diggory was supposed to meet him at eight — in fifteen minutes.

Maggie Riley would have to wait.

Le Mambo had once been a back street dive, but it had now been discovered by a younger French crowd. Dig squeezed past a voluptuous woman standing in the narrow doorway. She was trying to talk into a cell phone without dislodging the largest hoop earrings he had ever seen. Her white blond hair was molded into dozens of short, sharp spikes. When she paused, she stuck a cigarette between her lips and sucked until the end of the butt grew cherry red and her cleavage swelled.

Once inside, Diggory waited for his eyes to adjust to the minimum light provided by the few red-tinted bulbs that hung from the ceiling on wires. The tables were only half-filled as it was still quite early for the French. The clientele tended toward the pierced nose and leather crowd, and the music pounding out from the large black speakers was the frenetic Franco-Caribbean pop they called zouk.

The man he was looking for was sitting at the corner of the bar with his back to the door, the red windbreaker appearing almost black under the red lights. It was obvious he was a mongrel, a mixed breed. His skin, or what Diggory could see of it round his neck, looked more gray than brown and his dark frizzy hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Along his face hung several long thin braids with cowry shells knotted into the plaits.

Diggory leaned the oars against the bar and slid onto the stool around the corner from the windbreaker man. He rested his arms on the bar, his steepled fingers very close to the barbarian’s sweating glass of beer.

When the man turned to face him, Diggory was amused to see a silver skull and cross bones hanging by a chain through his left ear.

“D’ya mind?” the man said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, d’ya mind? Stay on your own fuckin’ side of the bar.”

Dig did not move. “Caliban told me I’d find you here.”

“Shit. Why didn’t ya say so.” The man tipped up his glass and drained his beer. Then he stuck out his hand. “Name’s Spyder, with a Y.”

Diggory ignored his hand as the bartender approached. He was an effeminate black man with hair shaped like abstract topiary and contact lenses that tinted his eyes an unnatural green. He asked Diggory if he wanted a drink.

“He don’t speak nuthin’ but French,” the barbarian said. “I tried.”