Maroon Rising (14 page)

Johnny Blake shook his head. He could care less about Ian Fleming or any of the history surrounding GoldenEye. He was here for a purpose he would soon learn had been turned upside down. After ordering a Black and Stormy, I decided not to burst his bubble just yet. And Ray had no clue what was going on.

“Should have brought Lenny down too, Buck. He’d get a kick out of all this.”

Lenny Jackson, friend and former bartender at Blue Heaven, nephew of Reverend Willy Peebles, was now on the ballot for his second term on Key West’s city council. His initial success had surprised no one more than me. Not that I didn’t believe in his abilities, but his blunt approach to issues could have easily killed his political career. Fortunately for the people of Key West, it had done the opposite.

“I know,” I said. “Knee deep in elections when he could be getting in trouble with us.”

“Us? You mean
your
trouble, my friend. I’m only here to make sure the Beast is safe, and to bail you out of jail if need be.”

“All this happy reunion shit’s gonna make me cry,” Johnny said. “I ain’t heard from you since you went rafting with the lovely professor yesterday, mon. What’s the news?”

Ray’s eyebrows lifted.

“Fair enough,” I said. “But first, what’s the status of our logistics?”

Johnny drank from his rum, then smiled big.

“All set, mon. The boats ready to go in the morning. The charter company got to have a month’s payment up-front—let your friend Greenbaum know I put that on his credit card.”

“Harry Greenbaum is in on this?” Ray said.

“Deeper by the minute.”

Johnny reached into the breast pocket of his tunic-style white shirt.

“And right here’s the permit.”

Ray asked to see it, and he handed it over.

“‘Permit for photographic survey of underwater portions of Port Royal?’” Ray said. “What the heck?”

Johnny grinned. “That should distract the hell out of your boy Dodson. The coordinates are exactly an eighth of a mile to the west of their dive site—far enough so they can’t really see what we’re doing, close enough to drive them crazy.”

Gunner’s warning from earlier today rang in my ears. Screw him.

“Wait a minute,” Ray said. “This is for a dive site next to Dodson and that trigger-happy lunatic Gunner? Buck, no way—”

“Relax, Ray.” I waved to the bartender and pointed to their empty glasses. “They have observers from the Jamaican National Heritage Trust on-site to monitor the restoration of everything they uncover—”

“That guy nearly killed me—both of us—and you’re telling me to relax?”

“You’ll be fine—”

“What do you mean
I’ll
be fine?” Ray threw up his hands. “Where will you be?”

I hesitated. Given my falling out with Nanny, I didn’t really have a plan anymore. Messing with Dodson would be fun as hell, but it wasn’t worth putting Ray in harm’s way. Still, Johnny wouldn’t stick around if there were no payday, and I might need him.

I sipped my rum.

“Buck?” Ray said. “I hope you’re not setting me up as some kind of decoy here.”

Which is exactly what I’d planned on doing, but now I wasn’t so sure. I took a guzzle of rum at the realization that doing it would make me a card-carrying asshole.

A friend not to be trusted?

“What about the professor, Buck?” Not Mr. Buck. Johnny’s respect for me was waning along with my own.

“She has some detailed information about Morgan that’s never come to light,” I said.

His eyes lit up. “Serious?”

“Yeah, but …” I was about to say that Nanny couldn’t be trusted when I spotted a tall woman in a short, tight, low-cut dress in the distance, walking barefoot up the beach toward the bar.

“But what?” Johnny said.

The woman pushed her hair back from her face as she climbed the steps, paused, bent down to put her heels back on, and stepped onto the patio. She zeroed in on me and headed toward us. She was dressed to the nines, and I was sure every head turned to watch her approach.

“Buck?” Ray said.

“You can ask her yourself, guys.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice to a whisper. “Just don’t mention the boats, okay?”

Ray’s eyes shot open.

Nanny stepped into the middle of our threesome, right up between Ray and Johnny, put a hand on each of their chests, and pushed them back a bit. She then leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.

“Makes sense that this was where Ian Fleming lived,” she said. “You gentlemen look straight out of a James Bond movie.”

“Good guys or bad guys?” Ray muttered.

“I never thanked you for your brilliance today, Buck. I came here to do that, properly.”

N
anny was charming to all three of us. She pulled up a white wooden barstool next to me, while Ray and Johnny stood facing us. Ray had that loopy grin he got around pretty women who were being nice to him.

Conversation was light, and neither Nanny nor I mentioned Blue Mountains, petroglyphs, or Gunner with his goons and guns. Johnny chewed on his lip and held his arms crossed, Ray leaned against one of the columns plastered with old rock star photos and stared unabashed at Nanny. I caught myself doing the same thing a couple times. I’d thought her attractive since the moment I met her, but tonight she looked like a Jamaican Halle Berry with longer hair.

Movie star looks and university professor brains.

The nerve endings in my back sprang to life when she ran one of her fingers across my shoulder blade. I cut a glance toward her, a hopeless attempt to be nonchalant, and we caught each other’s eyes for a moment. She slowly raised the eyebrow over her right eye. I swallowed, still wondering what she meant about thanking me
properly
.

“I need to get back to Kingston tonight, get the boats going bright and early,” Johnny said. “And if I drink any more rum, that won’t be happening.”

“Boats?” Nanny said.

“I’ll explain later.”

Ray cocked his head toward me and raised a brow.

“Okay, Johnny. Thanks for getting that rolling. We’ll see you some time tomorrow.”

He held his fist forward and we all gave him gentle fist bumps. Nanny seemed to get a kick out of this greeting, typical for many Jamaicans, especially Rastas. As Johnny left, Ray excused himself and headed toward the men’s room.

“To say I’m surprised to see you here would be an understatement,” I said.

She studied my face. I wasn’t smiling.

“I meant what I said, that I came to thank you. And to apologize.”

“You could have sent me a text.”

She glanced in both directions and leaned closer.

“Cuffee, the crazy one who was with your, ah, friend today, is stirring up trouble in Cockpit Country.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The Leeward Maroons are thriving, more than our small community in Moore Town. Moore Town used to be the center of Maroon heritage, but now the Leewards in Accompong aren’t just clinging to the past—they’re setting their own agenda for the future. They—”

I held up a hand, palm out.

“Whoa. What does that have to do with—”

“Cuffee’s trying to challenge our possession of the Morgan documents.”

My eyes and lips narrowed—involuntarily, but Nanny stiffened.

“I
am
sorry, Buck. I meant what I told you—I wanted Dodson out on the water in Port Royal so I could work with you on this. And yes, I’m not proud of it, but I lied to the committee to make that happen. Nobody thinks he has a prayer of finding anything of value, and Jamaica gets an historic structure salvaged at someone else’s expense—”

“And treasure hunters are considered rogues?”

A flush of color bloomed in her cheeks.

“Didn’t I call you right after you left Jamaica? You kept blowing me off—”

“Nanny, I get everything you’ve said, but you’ve been holding out on me. If I can’t trust you—”

“You
can
trust me.”

“How am I supposed to—”

“Stanley refused to share all the information until you’d proven yourself capable. You did that in the mountains.” She inhaled a deep breath. “But you’re right. I did withhold some pages from Morgan’s diary—”

“I knew it!” I pounded my fist on the bar.

“Which I brought here with me tonight.”

Ours eyes locked. My mind opened like a flower.

What else could be in the archives? Would it connect the circular petroglyphs we’d discovered this morning? Provide a meaningful clue to the treasure? And why was Nanny so dolled up for an apology?

She hadn’t told me what was in the papers she’d withheld yet, so I needed to play this out.

“To answer the question I’m sure you’re wondering,” she said, “Morgan’s documents don’t specifically say anything about the petroglyphs you found today.”

I sagged. Both at what she’d just said and because it wasn’t the only thing I’d been wondering.

“But it does have some detailed statements about Isla Vaca, among other things.”

“You need to fill in the blanks here if you expect me to stay involved,” I said. “You mentioned Isla Vaca before, is that the same as Île à Vache off Haiti?”

“Haiti, yes.”

“Haiti, you say?” Ray had returned from the men’s room but neither of us had noticed him walk up. “I’m not going to Haiti, Buck.” Ray held his palms up toward me and shook them. “You know how I feel about voodoo.”

“Relax, will you? I have no plans to go to Haiti, and I need you out with Johnny anyway.” I checked my watch. It had been a very long day, and I still wasn’t sure what the night might hold, but if Nanny had come clean, and still wanted us to work together, we’d have a busy morning ahead.

I promised to explain my plan to Ray at an early breakfast. He sauntered off to the Lagoon villa we were sharing, and I turned back to Nanny.

“When do I get to see the pages?”

She cocked her head slightly to the side, tugging up on the deep V neck of her dress.

“Well now, Mr. Bond, you do work fast, don’t you?”

I felt my face flush.

She laughed. “The pages are back in the Ian Fleming suite—Chris let me use it for the night. Would you like to come have a look?”

My turn to smirk. “Well now, Moneypenny, I’d love to.”

I stood and held up my arm, which she took. We made our way across the beach, over the illuminated bridge, and on to the very private Ian Fleming suite.

W
hen we arrived at the well-appointed suite, Nanny and I studied the Morgan archives together with increasing excitement. The missing pages added some details about Morgan’s Maroon associates, mentioning Akim, who had sailed with him, and Njoni his son, and noted a date that had been in the future—in fact, after Morgan died. The assumption was that this future date was for a meeting. Other details showed what I assumed to be some type of code:

III =III ^III 0

Could this be some type of map code we had no context to unravel? If we could get a better bearing on the macro of where the stash might be located, maybe it could help us with the micro of details to locate it.

This information calmed my concerns about Nanny—to the point that I said we deserved a moonlight swim on the private beach.

“Don’t fall,” I said a few minutes later. “There are a dozen steps and they’re steep.”

“And the stone is sharp,” Nanny said.

The moon cast a brilliant glow on the private beach below, along with the white-capped waves crashing against it. I stepped from the stone landing onto the still warm sand, the champagne flutes in my left hand clinking against one another. I placed them on the ledge and filled them.

I stood up and held out a flute to Nanny. Instead of reaching for it she grasped the knot on her robe, twisted it, and let the batik print fabric fall to the beach. She turned, and the moonlight that filtered through the sea grape trees cast her breasts into silhouette.

“After we go swimming,” she said—then stepped into the water. No swimsuit, no hesitation, no modesty.

I put the glass down, removed my trunks and robe, laid them next to the champagne bottle, and followed her in. The water was warm, but the night air was cool, so I stayed under except for my head as I caught up to her.