“I don’t give a rat’s ass about them — neither one of them. It’s between you and me, Doc. Always has been. You found something up river there, didn’t you? Gimme that bag of yours.”

“What if I say no? What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”

It was Pinky who answered. “No. But my brother’d have no problem taking out one of your buddy’s knees.”

Spyder laughed. “I like that, bro.” He swung the gun around and pointed it at Theo’s lower extremities.

Without a word, Cole held out the bag.

Spyder stepped forward and wrenched it from his hand. He tossed the backpack to Pinky who unzipped it and began to rummage inside.

Pinky threw the folded shovel to the ground. “That’s what made it so heavy. Ain’t no gold in here.”

Cole laughed. “That’s what you thought?”

Spyder shrugged. “Hoped, maybe.” Spyder stepped closer to his brother. Pinky was now examining the 40-Years Calendar. Spyder glanced back at Cole. “What’s that thing?”

“Don’t answer him,” Theo said.

Cole shrugged. “You need your knees, my friend.” He took one step closer to Pinky. “That’s what we found up the river there. When we get out to the boat and get some charts, we’ll use it to figure out where the submarine is.”

“How’s it work?” Pinky asked.

“We’ve still got to figure that out, but we’re pretty sure this is the key we’ve been looking for. It’s a cipher disk that’ll give us the exact coordinates of the sub. Then, we just dive down and get the gold.”

“Then let’s go,” Spyder said. He waved the gun directing them toward a path that led past an island sloop, her keel resting on some rotting timbers in the weeds, several wooden props holding her upright. Vines crawled up her hull and termites had taken up residence.

They walked single file along the narrow trail, Cole in the lead, followed by Theo and then Spyder who held the gun aimed at Theo’s back. Cole searched the ground under the old boat hoping to spot a tool or something he could use as a weapon, but all he saw was tangled underbrush. He felt inside his pockets. He had nothing but a water-logged cell phone. Beyond the sloop was another small wood dock and tied to it, he saw his own Boston Whaler dinghy.

“You guys been enjoying my boat?” he asked.

“It’s all right,” Spyder said. “Too small, though. Should’a got the one with the steering wheel.”

“You can pick the model you want when you’re buying.”

Spyder coughed out a laugh that sounded more like the grinding gears of a manual transmission. “Me and Pinky don’t never buy boats.”

Waving the gun in the air, he directed Theo to get into the Whaler first and start the outboard.

Cole sidled up next to Pinky who was still examining the marble paperweight. The man turned the brass plates and cocked his head to one side.

“Figured it out yet?” Cole asked.

Pinky shook his head.

Cole glanced up and saw Theo pulling on the starter cord for the outboard. The engine wasn’t starting. Theo hadn’t pulled the choke out far enough. He was buying time.

“See where it says you’re supposed to turn the top plate until you get the year over the month? So you’ve got to find the year 2008, and then line it up with the month which is February. Here — look, I’ll show you.” Cole took the paperweight from the man’s mottled hands.

Theo continued to pull at the starter cord, and the engine coughed but would not start.

“It’s hard to read the numbers. I can’t tell if that’s 2008 or 2003. The brass is corroding.” Cole pulled up his shirt tail and attempted to polish the brass plate. Then he looked up and shouted, “Theo, give her more choke, man.”

Pinky turned to look at Theo in the Whaler, then he turned back to Cole.

“Hey, man, give me the fucking disk back.”

Cole raised his arm over his head and said, “You’re not using this cypher disk to find my wreck, man. I’ve worked too long for this. If I don’t get it, nobody does.” Cole lobbed the object far into the bush just as the outboard roared to life.

Spyder ran into the underbrush, the gun dangling in his hand, forgotten. Cole looked at Pinky’s open mouth and eyes and said, “Sorry about this, man.” It only took one punch to the man’s chin, and he went down like a sack of cement.

Cole slipped the dinghy’s bow line off a piling as he leaped into the Whaler. He heard a gunshot just as Theo gunned the engine and the dinghy leaped onto a plane headed down river. Theo zigged back and forth as bullets zinged past. Then they rounded a slight bend and the gunshots stopped. Beyond them, the mouth of the Indian River emptied into Prince Rupert Bay. Theo cranked up the throttle heading straight out into the blue water, then turned the Whaler in a wide arc to head for Shadow Chaser. Neither man tried to speak over the screaming outboard engine.

Theo didn’t throttle down until they were a hundred feet off the stern of the trawler. The Whaler slid up to the big boat’s stern on a wave of white foam. Cole grabbed the ladder and motioned for Theo to climb aboard first. “You go on, get her ready for immediate departure.”

“We just leave? Let the Brewsters have the cipher disk?”

Cole nodded. “We’re leaving as soon as I come back with Riley’s dinghy.” He reached into his pocket and extended his closed fist to Theo. “Here, put this somewhere safe.”

Theo reached out and Cole dropped the marble and brass calendar into his palm. “We don’t have much time. I want to be gone before Spyder finds my drowned cell phone out there in the bush.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

In the air 

March 27, 2008

7:20 p.m.

Priest was unable to stop staring at her small hands, at the pink, close-cut but clean fingernails that drummed on the tray table in front of her seat. Ever since take-off when the flight attendant had come through the first class compartment taking drink orders, she had remained silent, her head turned aside, staring out the window at the cloud tops and the distant blue sea. Sometimes, she tugged at her still-damp T-shirt or reached up and tried to smooth down the wild spikes of her hair. Most of the time, though, she stared out the window, her body and face turned away from him.  But those tapping fingers told him all he needed to know.

He’d gotten to her. Not that he’d ever had any doubt. He knew the power he had with women. She was refusing to talk to him. For now. It was all part of the game, and it was so much more interesting when the stakes were high.

At the airport, she had insisted on finding a pay phone and placing a call to her father’s home number. The nurse, Eleanor Wright, had answered, but before the woman could confirm that Riley’s father was indeed at George Washington University Hospital, they had been disconnected. When Riley had tried to call back, she got no answer. After that, she tried calling the hospital, but she had been making her way through the voicemail when the attendant announced the final boarding call for their flight over the airport PA system. Riley didn’t hesitate. She hung up the phone and followed him onto the plane.

He watched out the window as the plane flew over a corner of the island of Guadeloupe. Soon, very soon, it would be his time. He would get his hands on the documents on that submarine and then he would be the one calling the shots. No more errand boy, clean-up man. He winced as he remembered how Caliban had refused to tell him what it was they were after. The man had paid for that lack of respect — as they all would. A little more time, that was all he needed. Time enough to pay one last surprise visit to Yorick, and to allow Thatcher to find the wreck while he was gone. Then he’d go back to the islands, collect what was his, and return to DC — not as a janitor, though. Once he’d paid his respects to Yorick, he thought, smiling in anticipation, and taken control of the situation in the Caribbean, they could kiss his shoes.