Circle of Bones (16 page)

Caliban resumed walking and caught up to him. “You and I are the only ones on the island, Thor.”

“I see. Then maybe she was playing sex games.”

“Hmm. I suppose. The whole thing made me a bit curious, you see.”“Really?” Diggory stopped walking and looked at the other man, raising one dark eyebrow. “Are you interested in those sorts of games, Caliban?” 

The older man looked away, shaking his head from side to side. They had arrived at the place where the dirt path ended. To continue up the hill, they would have to pick their way across an outcropping of jagged limestone rock. The surf thundered against the rocks to their left. Caliban turned back to face him, his mouth smiling, his eyes not. “After you?” he said.

Diggory did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He plunged forward stepping carefully from rock to rock, his arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. The rocks were covered with algae because, Diggory knew, the tide was at dead low.

“There’s something else, Thor,” Caliban said and Diggory was surprised that the voice was right behind him. The older man was having no trouble keeping up. “It’s about the woman sailor.”

That nearly stopped him. “What about her?” Diggory chose the rocks he stepped on with great care, inching the two of them closer to the tide line. 

“Her name is Marguerite Riley.” A fine mist floated over them from the waves crashing to their left and white foam swirled around the rocks at their feet. “Does that name mean anything to you, Thor?” 

This time he did stop — without warning. He turned and saw Caliban almost lose his balance as he tried to refrain from running into the younger man. Diggory kept on pivoting out and around and simultaneously he heard the pop of the other man’s gun and saw the barrel pointing skyward as Caliban struggled for balance. Diggory’s own hand flew out of his pocket. The sap came down hard on the back of the silver-haired skull, and the big man collapsed into a pool of receding foam.

Diggory looked around to see if there were any witnesses, but he saw no one on the isolated peninsula of rock. The beach was more than half a mile away and hidden behind several sculptured rock spires.  He bent to the other man and felt for a pulse. Beneath his fingers, the warm skin on the man’s neck throbbed with life. The half-opened eyes suggested it would be a long time before he regained consciousness. Diggory went through Caliban’s pockets removing the secure satellite phone. He retrieved the gun from a pool of water. He left the wallet. 

Sliding his fingers into the silver hair, Diggory gazed at the face in his hands. It was a handsome face with a strong chin like his own. He could not see the weakness, but it was there or it would not have been so easy for him. He wrapped his hands around the neck, then fought the urge to squeeze. No, that would not look like an accident. Dig grabbed the ears in both his hands, lifted the head stretching the neck to its limit and then slammed the head down on a sharp pinnacle of black limestone. He heard the bone crunch and saw the blood seeping down the slime-covered rock. He checked his watch. The tide would turn in the next few minutes and soon these rocks would be covered with water.

Diggory stood, cocked his head to one side and looked down at the crumpled form. Already, the man looked smaller as though some part of him were now gone. Dig sighed and shook his head. “These rocks are slippery, you know,” he said aloud. Then he turned, and smiling, he leaped from rock to rock back toward his car. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Fort Napoleon

Iles des Saintes

March 26, 2008

3:20 p.m.

Riley stepped into the weeds on the side of the road as a bus lumbered up the hill engulfing her in a cloud of hot diesel fumes. She turned her head to the side and held her breath for a few seconds but kept on walking. A French family with two morose-looking teenage girls stood on the other side of the road, hands on their hips, wheezing and coughing in the cloud of exhaust. Aside from a single man who was several switchbacks behind them, they were the only ones attempting the climb on foot. Riley was pleased to note that she was more than half-way up the hill to Fort Napoleon, and she didn’t even feel winded. The daily exercises and morning swims had paid off.

The island of Terre de Haut, the largest of the eight small islands that make up the archipelago known as Les Saintes, wasn’t all that large. Three miles long and less than half a mile wide, with only the one village, Bourges des Saintes, it was small enough that Riley figured if Bob was there, she’d run into him eventually. She’d started at the dinghy dock shortly after her noon arrival and roamed the streets of the quaint little town, looking in the doors of restaurants and doing a quick turn around the touristy souvenir shops, chatting with other yachties, bringing the conversation around to this guy she had met in Deshaies who had a tattoo on his collarbone, shaggy brown hair, built like a wrestler. No luck. In the bakery, she’d lingered a little longer admiring the pastries and breathing in the smell of the fresh baguettes, querying the teenaged girl behind the counter about this cute American guy, but she was met with a blank stare.  On the beach, the local wooden racing sloops with bright, candy-colored hulls and yellow, green and blue sails were the object of many a tourist’s camera, but while Riley had scoured the beach for over an hour, she’d not seen a glimpse of the one tourist she sought: Bob.

So, her next goal had been to search the fort. All afternoon the buses had picked up the hordes of tourists who jammed the square as they hurried off the ferries from the main island. With their cameras at the ready, they rode up the many switchbacks that led to Fort Napoleon with its commanding view of the channel between Les Saintes and Vieux Fort on Guadeloupe, as well as the other smaller Fort Josephine (named for Napoleon’s wife) on Îlet à Cabrit. 

Nearer the top, the road widened a bit where the tour buses stopped, turned and disgorged their cargo. At the front of a tiny clapboard shack, Riley bought an orange Fanta and stopped to watch the mobs. The French family passed her, continuing on up the hill, but the other intrepid hiker, the man who had been far behind her, stopped at the lookout point just beneath her to admire the view.

She’d only noticed him because she felt a camaraderie with the others who had climbed up the long hot hill — even with the two French sisters who had complained the whole way using language so vulgar it shocked Riley — and because she thought, judging from his ratty-looking shorts, red tank top, and green Crocs, that he looked like an American. She could tell from the charcoal color of his skin and the texture of his ponytail that he was of mixed race, but there was something in the way he carried himself that screamed Yank — not French — in spite of the shells in the braids on either side of his face. She’d waited for the fellow because she wanted to congratulate him on the climb, but after ten minutes, she gave up. 

The elderly woman in the ticket kiosk had nodded her head in the direction of a group of people and told her the tour was starting
tout de suite.
Taking her change, Riley thanked the woman but headed off past the pot-bellied guard. She preferred to explore the fort on her own.

Keeping to the paths, she climbed past the door to the sod-covered ammunition bunker and on to the highest part of the bluff. The point jutted out here forming one half of the protected bay off Bourges des Saintes. Out here in front of the fort, the cliff plunged down to the open sea. The view of the channel was her reward. Off to her right, on the other side of the point was another sheltered bay where a lone commercial fishing boat lay at anchor. The boat was an odd one for these waters with her dark blue hull and her tall outriggers. She looked more suited for Louisiana or the Gulf Coast. While Riley watched, the tiny figure of a man came on deck and launched a rubber dinghy. It looked more like a beach toy than a real boat. He climbed into it and began to row to shore. She thought it odd that such a big boat wouldn’t have a better dinghy — something at least with an outboard on it — for getting to shore. 

Looking back out to sea, she identified Guadeloupe’s other off-lying islands of Marie Gallante where the villagers grew sugar cane, and Îles de la Petite Terre, which consisted of two uninhabited islands connected by a reef. As she surveyed the broad maritime battlefield, she tried to imagine what it would have been like to stand on this headland, canons at the ready, watching an enemy fleet of over thirty ships of the line sail into range. How on earth did they aim their canons? When she turned around to check out the cannon behind her, she saw a flash of red as someone slipped behind the bunker below her. That was him wasn’t it? That ponytailed guy who had been behind her on the climb? She turned back to face into the trade winds again, feeling rather exposed up here like Kate whatshername on the bow of the Titanic. What was Mr. Ponytail’s story?

Then from close behind her and off to her left, she heard what sounded like a footstep on the gravel, and she spun around only to see more of the view over the anchorage off the town. There was no one there. She could feel her heart thudding in her chest, and she coughed out a half laugh. That guy was probably exploring like she was, and he just happened to move when she turned around. That was it, right? 

No. She didn’t think so. What was going on? Why did she feel so spooked? But she was certain she had heard something. She was puzzling over it when she heard it again, right at her feet. She looked down to see a prehistoric-looking three-foot long iguana advancing on her boat shoes.

Laughing, she said, “So you’re my stalker, eh?” She took a step toward him, and he turned and skittered over the edge of the cliff. She would have leaned over the edge to see where he’d gone, but she still felt a little too spooked to venture beyond the safety ropes.

As she walked down the grassy slope toward the two-storied stone structure that housed the maritime museum, she glanced at the side of the bunker. There was a white cigarette butt in the grass. It was the only piece of trash she had seen on the immaculate museum grounds, though. 

A French-speaking tour guide was just exiting the museum building along with her charges, so Riley took the opportunity to wander the rooms alone. She loved poking around among the glass cases. With Michael, she’d wandered through dozens of museums from Barbados to Paris to Madagascar. There in the cool corridors, they pointed and laughed and learned, all the while feeling safe from the children who made the streets their turf.

The Fort Napoleon museum contained an odd combination of treasures from a stuffed mongoose to Louis XV furniture, and as she walked into the second room that held a variety of dioramas, she saw Ponytail enter the museum through the opposite end of the building. He hadn’t seen her yet, and he was swiveling his head all around. He moved on to the next room, and he wasn’t looking at any of the exhibits. Riley walked to the far side of the diorama room, out of his line of sight.

Who was he and what was he after? She was certain he had not been following her when she first came ashore. She would have noticed. Was he just some creep who was following her to get his rocks off or did he have some other purpose? 

She looked around the room trying to decide whether she should try to ditch the perv, confront him, or simply ignore him, but her attention was drawn to an elaborate ship model across the room. Here she was — in a neat museum — and she wasn’t going to worry about some weirdo who was following her. 

She walked over to the display and thought about how much her brother would have loved the intricate model.  

“Hey bro, look at this!”
she whispered as she admired the three foot tall replica of one of French Admiral de Grasse’s ships at the Battle of the Saintes. When she and Mikey first started sailing, their father had introduced them to the Hornblower books, then O’Brian, then Bernard Cornwall. Mikey had read them all, while she had soon tired of the exploits of the all male cast. But her brother would have loved this place. 

“
Awesome, eh?”
she said in a low voice. From a placard in front of a huge model of the battle with dozens of tiny ships on a painted blue sea, she read about the French defeat. They didn’t have any large models of Admiral Rodney’s ships there in spite of the fact it had been his victory.

There it was again. That feeling, like someone was breathing on the back of her neck, watching her. She whirled around and saw a flash of red as the man ducked out of the doorway that led to the costume room. Okay, she thought. Enough. Time to have a little talk with Mr. Ponytail.

The exhibition hall was the old fort’s former barracks. Essentially a long barn-like structure with walls dividing the space into different rooms, it had doors in the center of each wall that formed a corridor down the center of the structure. Riley crept forward on the wood floor so as not to make a sound. As she moved, her view into the next room panned across half the space, but she saw no sign of Ponytail. She imagined he was hiding farther from the door, outside her line of vision, but off to her left.

“Hey,” she said in her loudest “giving orders” voice. “You want to talk to me? Here I am. Let’s talk.”

When she stepped into the room facing her left, she realized she had guessed wrong when a mannequin crashed against her back, knocking her to the floor. She struggled in the folds of velvet fabric as the sound of Ponytail’s retreat pounded across the floor. By the time she got to her feet, he was entering the next room, with only a hundred feet between him and the museum’s entrance, going as fast as his Crocs would let him.  

From MSG School at Quantico, to all the years at the different posts, Riley had trained to take down intruders in a secure building and to protect embassy employees.  She didn’t make a conscious decision to go after the man; she simply reacted.

She was on her feet and running flat out within seconds. As the man entered the last room, a large woman with a sign at the top of a long stick entered the museum and behind her flowed a crowd of Japanese tourists. Half the group had already entered the building when Ponytail plowed into them, sending them scattering in and out of the museum. When he made the door, he glanced over his shoulder and his eyes widened. Riley was right behind him. The tourists had slowed him down enough and cleared an open passage for her. He made it only about a dozen steps outside the building when she hit him from behind, and the two of them went sprawling in the dirt.