Moon Mask (33 page)

“Lady Kernewek was certainly revolutionary for her day,” Sid commented. King glanced at her, absorbing her beauty. The awkward distance that had developed between them still existed, despite both of their attempts to deny it. He loved her very much, but even now, with their relationship feeling shaky, he could think of nothing but the Moon Mask, contained in a lead-line case up on the helicopter, along with the fake mask and the map they had found.

Behind this door, the answer to all his questions lay.

“All teams,” Raine whispered into the com. “Stand by. We’re going in.”

Raine led the team into the shadowed interior of the museum. Immediately inside the door he had to turn left and open a second door. It caught an old fashioned ship’s bell hanging above it and the loud
dong
echoed throughout the museum. It was followed instantly by the booming voice of a woman with an almost impenetrable Jamaican accent bellowing from up a flight of rickety old stairs.

“Stay where you are and touch nothing you’re not prepared to pay for!”

Raine froze in his tracks. “Friendly welcome,” he muttered.

“It would explain the lack of custom,” Nadia added.

The four of them stepped deeper into the labyrinth of dusty display cabinets. Through the grimy glass, Raine could make out artefacts within: rusty shackles that had once clamped slaves together, tools used to work on the plantations. There were dusty paintings from the days of Lady Kernewek depicting the sufferings of African slaves, the tight confines of the hellish slave ships, and the brutality of the men who oversaw them in the plantations. There were more recent sepia and black and white photographs, capturing the real life anguish of actual people, and newer still, more triumphantly perhaps, photos of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, added to the collection centuries after Lady Kernewek had founded this museum to document the history of King’s ancestors. There were also piles upon piles of old books and papers stacked on the wooden floor or thrown haphazardly onto bookshelves, small ornaments, and the occasional period musket or cutlass. The wooden stairs led to a small, equally cluttered platform recessed into the northern end of the building which then led upstairs to Mrs Marley’s private chambers.

The Hand of Freedom building wasn’t so much a museum, nor a library, as it was a living, breathing piece of history. Even the musty air tasted old and the brilliant Caribbean sunlight was filtered through the smeared and dirty windows into a muted haze which caught millions of dust motes bobbing lazily in the air.

Raine let out a low whistle. “Mrs Marley could sure do with a spring clean.”

“Mrs Marley could sure do without cocky interfering Yanks meddling in other peoples’ business!” the thunderous voice boomed from upstairs.

“I like her,” King said, shooting Raine an ever-so-smug grin.

With a plodding momentum and a pounding of heavy meat against creaking wood, the impressive bulk of Mrs Marley thumped down the stairs and turned to face them.

“I s’pose you be wantin’ a tour ‘ll ya?” She said the words as though having potentially paying customers was the worst thing she could imagine.

Massive to the extreme, Mrs Marley could easily have been getting on for thirty stone. She wore an enormous, brightly coloured dress of yellow and green stripes. Her black-as-night skin shone with a perpetual sheen of sweat from the effort of simply shuffling instead of actually walking. Her eyes were bloodshot, her few remaining teeth were bright yellow and even from a distance her putrid breath stank of strong marihuana.

Then, her red eyes fell upon King and any façade of pleasantness evaporated.

Uh oh.

“You!” she shouted, pointing one accusing, podgy finger at him. “I warned you not to come back here!”

“Mrs Marley,” Raine tried to cut in but the woman ploughed right on over his words.

“I told you if I ever saw your thieving little face round here again I’d blow you to-”

“Mrs Marley,” Raine snapped with all the authority of a man used to commanding troops in battle. For someone like Mrs Marley, King knew from first-hand experience, nothing less would suffice. “My name is Nathanial Raine, Attorney of Law.”

“Attorney?! Well that figures! The little thief ‘ill sure as hell need an attorney when I’m through with him!”

“Thief?” Nadia enquired. King cringed but before he could defend himself, Mrs Marley gave her version of events.

“That’s right,” she hollered. “Caught him in here one night trying to steal a rare book!”

“I wasn’t trying to steal it,” he argued, feeling the accusing eyes of Nadia and Raine fall on him. Only Sid knew the truth, and even she had been less than happy at having to contact his old professor to get him to throw his weight behind releasing him from jail.

He shrugged, feeling sheepish, like a boy caught with his hand in a biscuit jar. “I thought it was the Kernewek Diary,” he explained. “I was only going to borrow it then return it.”

“I told you one time, mon, I’ll tell you a hundredth! There is no such thing as the Kernewek Diary. Bringing your little posse of lawyers and tarts-”

“Hey!” Sid and Nadia protested together.

“-ain’t gonna do jackshit to change that, you hear me!”

King felt the confrontation spiralling out of control but Raine jumped to the rescue.

“I’m afraid we have evidence to the contrary, Mrs Marley,” he said in his most diplomatic voice.

“Evidence? You mean that fabricated paper trail of wills and testaments he showed me two years ago? Bah! It don’t prove nothing,
mon
!”

“I’m afraid it does,” Raine replied. Trying to calm the situation he added, “Mrs Marley, is there some place we can talk?”

“Sure there is. Right here, right now! Only thing is, I don’t got nothin’ I wanna say to you so I give you thirty seconds-”

“Mrs Marley, are you aware that according to the last will and testament of Lady Amelia Kernewek, amended in the year 1754 and witnessed by a Reverend Thomas Kelly, all of Lady Kernewek’s belongings, including this very establishment, are in fact the legal property of my client, Doctor Benjamin King.”

King had to admit, Raine sounded convincing. Then again, he guessed traitors tended to be good liars.

A mixture of fury and amusement painted across the old Jamaican woman’s face. She burst out laughing, a loud and grating noise that didn’t sound like a regular occurrence. “Are you crazy? I’m Kernewek’s descendant Mister Attorney. I have all the proof I need of that; birth papers, death records of my old mon, of his parents and theirs, all the way back to Kernewek.”

“No one is disputing your ancestry, Mrs Marley,” Raine replied. He took a breath and turned to the two women. “May I introduce you to Doctors Siddiqa and Yashina-”

“The tarts, you mean?”

Raine smoothly brushed over the comment. “Doctors Siddiqa and Yashina are the world’s foremost genealogists.”

“Genie-whats?”

“We study family history,” Nadia spoke up. Her frosty, Russian accent seemed even stronger than normal.

“You know,” Sid added, her natural kindness flowing. Good cop, bad cop. “Family trees.”

“I’m sure you saw them both on the news last year,” Raine ad-libbed. “They accurately identified the human remains of a hundred and six year old woman as being those of Princess Anastasia, the daughter of Tsar Nicolas II of Russia-”

King nearly choked as he tried to stifle a laugh. Raine carried on smoothly. “You must have heard about that, surely?”

“Of course I did,” Mrs Marley snapped irritably. “So what are you trying to say? That these two tarts-”

“Hey!”

“-reckon they can prove I’m not the descendant of-”

“Nothing of the sort, Mrs Marley,” Sid stepped forward, opening the black briefcase they had purchased in Kingston and pulling out a folder.

“In fact, our research proves that you are most definitely a descendant of Amelia Kernewek,” Nadia added.

Mrs Marley looked confused. “Then . . .what?”

“It has also identified, through a number of marriages stemming back to the year 1726, that Benjamin King is also a direct descendant of Amelia Kernewek.”

“And the original last testament and will of Lady Kernewek specifically stated that any male heirs would-”

“This is crazy! Are you insane?! Are you all insane?!” Mrs Marley practically exploded. She shook with rage. “You expect me to believe all this?”

“As the only living
male
descendant,” Raine concluded, trying to wrench back control, “this building, this business, and all its contents, officially belong to my client.”

“I’ll see your client in hell before-”

“However,” Raine spoke over her. “Doctor King is not without his generous side.” Mrs Marley halted mid-rant, her blood-shot, yellowed eyes boring into King. He could think of nothing more to do than grimace under her attention.

“He has agreed to sign over the papers to all of Lady Kernewek’s possessions to you, Mrs Marley,” Raine produced his own folder of official-looking documents downloaded from a prominent American law firm. They all ignored the fact that they were divorce papers.

“All but one of her possessions,” Raine added.

Mrs Marley’s face darkened like a gathering thunderstorm. Tears - of anger or terror, King wasn’t certain - began rolling down her podgy cheeks. He felt a pang of self-loathing for the turmoil they were putting her through. He felt no better than the playground bullies that had tormented his school-life.

“All I want,” he said softly, “is the Kernewek Diary.”

Mrs Marley stared at him for several long, drawn out moments. It was as though everyone else in the room had vanished. He tried to read her face. Would she capitulate?

Then, like Vesuvius, she erupted.

“You will never get your hands on that book, you hear me! Not with an entire army will I ever let you touch it! And you’ll have to raze this entire building, this entire island to the ground before you throw me out of my home! Now get out!” She screamed, the noise vibrating through his body.

“Mrs Marley,” Raine pleaded.

“Get out!” Her voice was shrill, her breathing ragged.

“All I want is the book,” King said, stepping towards her.

The massive woman made her move. Before he could react, she swung one mighty, meaty fist and slammed it into the side of his head, knocking him out cold.

Sid
and Nadia gasped and rushed to King’s side as Raine caught the woman’s arm and pushed her firmly but carefully backwards by her shoulders. She pushed him harshly away, with far more strength than he had anticipated. He lost his footing and sprawled across the floor, hitting his own head on one of the glass and wood cases.

“Raine, what the hell’s happening in there?”
Gibbs’ voice came over his com.

Nadia rushed to his side and helped him sit up. Enjoying the Russian’s arms around his lower back, he knew he was putting it on a bit thick, pretending to be more dazed than he really was.

“Are you insane?” Nadia shot at Mrs Marley, angry and oddly defensive of him.

Interesting,
he thought.

“Raine?”

“Standby,” he muttered under his breath. He watched the Jamaican woman turn her back on them and stalk up the steps to the platform at the rear of the building and then pushed up to his feet. He crouched beside King whose head was being held in Sid’s hand. His eyes fluttered open and levelled angrily on him.

“You never said that was part of the plan,” he growled.

“Well you never told me that you tried to rob her,” he shot back.

“I didn’t try-”

“Um, Nate,” Nadia cut in. Raine glanced at her. She nodded towards the platform and he turned to see Mrs Marley’s enormous form turn back to them. She stalked back, feet thumping loudly on the floorboards, expertly loading what looked very much like an antique musket.

“I think we might have outstayed our welcome.”

“You think?” King groaned.

“This woman is insane,” Nadia commented.

“Get out!” Mrs Marley bellowed at them, pulling out a small bag of gunpowder from between her considerable bosom and stuffing it into the barrel.

“Who the hell keeps bags of gun power down there?” Raine said.

“I told you she’s eccentric,” King reminded them as they helped him clamber to his feet. They all backed away towards the door as the mad woman screamed at them again. She levelled the musket.

“You’re in a lot of trouble, Mrs Marley,” Raine called angrily as they filed, one-by-one, out of the door. This was the endgame. “You better take one last read of that journal, because we’ll be back here to get it real soon. As well as this dump you call a museum!”

“Get out!” Mrs Marley screamed and fired the 18
^th
century musket. It smashed through the window of the inner door just as Raine ducked through and rolled outside. They all scrambled back into the Humvee and moments later Raine sent them bounding down the dirt road, a plume of dust blooming up behind them.

No
one said a word until they clawed back onto the tarmac of the highway and headed back towards the township of Port Royal. Nadia broke the silence.

“I feel terrible,” she said from beside him in the passenger seat.

“
You
feel terrible?” King grumbled. Raine glanced in the rear view mirror. The archaeologist nursed a purple eye but he’d live.

“We practically terrorised that poor old lady with nothing but lies,” the Russian continued. Raine glanced at her, eyes flicking momentarily to the exposed flesh between the V of her blouse. Then he settled on her ordinarily severe face, her blue eyes, set off by locks of brown hair which now hung loose around her neck and shoulders. The more casual look had been agreed upon for their little melodrama in the museum. It was a good look.

Nadia met his gaze. Her concern for the old woman revealed a far greater glimmer of humanity than he gave her credit for.

“She’ll live,” he replied casually, slipping his sunglasses back on and turning back to the windshield. He felt Nadia’s eyes linger on him a moment more. Analysing. Contemplative. Was she searching for his humanity too?