The Bone Hunters (21 page)

29 May

Casa Grande Brugg

Dunmore Town

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

Light rain began to spatter the windows of the jitney buses as they arrived at the mansion entrance and were allowed through the immense bronze gates.

Mike McGandy was driving the first bus with Barnaby, Macaulay, and Lexy aboard. A slew of mansion security guards armed with semiautomatic pistols and wearing red-and-white uniforms flanked the open doors of the buses as the catering staff emerged. Each new arrival was carefully patted down and given a scan with a security wand.

Heading inside the kitchen, Littlefrost's small teams of professionals began to organize for the event. While one team brought in the provisions from the refrigerated truck, others began spreading out across the main floor of the mansion to stock the predesignated serving stations with wine, liquor, and mixers.

In the great hall, they began decorating the large plantation tables with flowers and serving pieces while the prep staff in the kitchen began warming the refrigerated
dishes and the serving staff arranged the array of food selections on faux silver platters.

By the time the guests began arriving an hour later, Macaulay and Barnaby had found by process of elimination the only entrance door to the cellar. It was behind a massive oak door off the great hall. The door was locked.

Macaulay went outside with two of the bartenders at one point when they took a smoke break. Twenty yards away across the compound, Macaulay saw the steel door to the utility building. It was windowless aside from two large vents mounted on the second story of the concrete block wall. He wondered if Carlos was inside just steps away from him.

A security guard was deployed at each corner of the building and another two at the entrance door. He would have to wait until dark to make his try, he decided. As Macaulay watched, a white panel truck with the letters BEC stenciled on the sides drew up at the entrance. Two men in uniforms lettered with the BEC logo got out and approached the guards. They were allowed inside.

“Maintenance guys from the Bahamas Electric Corporation,” said one of the bartenders to the other. “They must be having problems with the generators again.”

“The mansion isn't on the local power grid?” asked Macaulay.

The bartender shook his head. “They wanted to be completely independent. Even the fresh water in here comes from the big desalinization plant over there.”

With all the required access to the utility building, Macaulay scratched it off the list of places they might be holding Carlos.

By five o'clock, guests were streaming through the entrance to the compound in the rain under brightly colored umbrellas, all of them gaily dressed, most of the men in ties and sports jackets and the women in a range of dresses and outfits tailored to their ages and figures.

The British royals arrived in a succession of four Bentley limousines. Juwan stood beside Varna to personally greet the duke and duchess of Lancaster as they came up the flagstone steps to the formal entrance.

“Welcome, Your Grace,” said Varna with the flourish of a brief curtsy.

The old duchess looked to Juwan as if she hadn't eaten in a week and was carrying a dog the size of a big Gambian pouched rat under her right arm. She was wearing a yellow crinkled dress that reminded Juwan of the ones worn by the Southern belles in
Gone With the Wind
.

He stood impassively as the old lady extended her hand. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to kiss it. Instead he just took her thin fingers inside his own massive hand and gently shook them. They felt like dried twigs.

He wished that he had never allowed Varna to accept the invitation to host the event. There were too many things happening at once, including the imminent arrival of the Chinese. As he led them inside, he had an impending sense of doom that this wasn't going to turn out well.

Inside, the full orchestra that Lexy had seen playing on the deck of the Danish yacht out in the harbor was now ensconced in the great hall and playing a medley of hits from Sir Elton John.

A white banner hung above the partiers that read
SAVE OUR PRECIOUS BIRDS
. The guests passed through a gauntlet of blown-up photographs of endangered Bahamian bird
species before they reached the entertainment area, including the Bahama swallow, the red-bellied woodpecker, Kirtland's warbler, and the West Indian tree duck. Lexy moved about them with a tray of canapés, serving each new cluster of guests as they arrived.

Macaulay had asked Bob Littlefrost if he could man the serving station that had been located near the locked door that he already knew led down to the cellar. While setting up, he had stacked four wooden crates of mixers in front of it.

Now mixing drinks for a long line of customers, he watched as the hulking Brugg made his way around the great hall with his diminutive partner, shaking hands and welcoming the guests.

“I would like a gin martini, as dry as the Kalahari,” said the next voice in line. “Straight up.”

It was the duke of Lancaster. Macaulay recognized him from his entrance into the hall, which had been accompanied by applause from the other guests. In his late seventies with a silver ponytail, he was wearing flaming red Bermuda shorts under a safari jacket. A purple scarf was tied at his neck.

Macaulay reached for a martini glass. The duke shook his head.

“One of those,” said the duke, pointing to the big glass tumblers that were used for mixed drinks.

“Yes, Your Grace,” said Macaulay, filling a cocktail shaker with gin and ice and adding a dash of vermouth and bitters. After giving it several shakes, he served it in the tumbler with a cocktail napkin.

“Heavenly,” said the duke, moving off.

Thirty minutes into the reception, Lexy saw Brugg
approach the royal entourage. It was clear that he and his little friend were about to begin the tour of the house. Taking her tray, she walked quickly back to the kitchen. Laying the tray on the serving counter, she reached down to a lower shelf and retrieved the backpack she had brought with her on the bus.

In the servants' bathroom off the kitchen, she quickly changed into the cocktail dress that Cora had lent her and put on high-heeled black pumps. Unpinning her thick auburn hair, she ran a brush through it several times and then added a touch of lipstick.

Back in the great hall, she made her way to the group that had already formed up at the foot of the main staircase for the guided tour. Sidling next to the duke, she said, “You are really going to enjoy this, Your Grace.”

His eyes came to the same level as her breasts.

Looking up into her violet eyes, he said, “Heavenly,” and put his arm through hers.

As the group was about to begin ascending the staircase, the duchess put down her dog on the floor and led it on a silver-studded leash to the closest serving station where Macaulay was bartending.

“Could I entrust you with Winifred?” she asked him. “She is very dear to me and descended from the Yorkies raised by Queen Victoria.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” said Macaulay, taking the silver-studded leash as he watched Lexy head up the stairs with the others. “I adore Yorkshire terriers.”

A tall, light-complexioned black man with livid scars on both his cheeks was waiting for the tour group when it reached the second floor. He was wearing the
red-and-white uniform of Juwan's security guard with a gold star on each collar. His shoes were two-toned, white and black.

“I am Colonel Emile Bardot,” he said in French-accented English. “The first stop on your tour this evening will give you an opportunity to view the incomparable collection of marine life personally captured in the sea by Juwan Brugg.”

What had once been an enormous parlor off the main staircase had been partially converted to a saltwater aquarium, the biggest one Lexy had ever seen outside a zoo. Its walls of brass-framed plate glass ran twenty feet square across the room, and rose to a height of ten feet above the stone floor. Behind the glass was a mass of large colorful fish swimming around live coral outcroppings and over a bed of white sand.

“That sound you hear is from a compressor that continually circulates fresh ocean water into this tank and provides a perfect living habitat for our friends from beneath the sea.”

Juwan stepped to the side of the aquarium and turned to face them. “As you may know, the population of predatory fish in the ocean is down nearly two-thirds over the last twenty years. The species here include some of the most endangered ones, including the giant saw fish you see at the bottom. His saw-studded cutting blades are almost five feet long and he can turn a human intruder into hamburger in seconds.”

“Those things look quite ferocious,” said the duke, putting his arm protectively around Lexy's waist.

“These goosefish kill their prey differently,” said
Juwan, pointing to several fish about four feet long with hideously deformed jaws. They were all chocolate brown in color, mottled with white spots. “Both jaws are armed with inch-long teeth, all pointed inward toward its stomach. Once its prey is trapped inside the jaws, its teeth drive the meat of the victim down its gullet. The goosefish can swallow a full-grown German shepherd in less than a minute.”

The duchess of Lancaster visibly blanched.

“How would you know that?” she asked.

Emile Bardot watched the duchess's husband pawing the young woman and wondered if the old roué was sleeping with her. She was stunningly beautiful with a superb figure accentuated by the black silk cocktail dress. He assumed she was part of the royal entourage, since he hadn't seen her before on Harbour Island. He would have remembered.

Each time Macaulay went to replenish the bar mixers from the wooden crates by the cellar door, he studied its lock. The oak door was at least three inches thick, and the size of the keyhole suggested a key that was probably six inches long. That made the challenge of picking the lock a little easier.

When his first break came, he went to find Barnaby and found him standing behind one of the plantation tables where the buffet dinner would be served, arranging an empty silver tureen over an electric heating plate. He was wearing a white chef's hat that covered his ears.

“You look ridiculous,” said Macaulay.

“Fuck you,” said Barnaby. “I've been meaning to tell you that for a long time.”

Macaulay grinned and quietly told him that there was
no way they were holding Carlos in the utility building, which left the cellar and the guard barracks as the two likeliest possibilities.

“Meet me at my serving station in a couple minutes,” he said. “I think I have a way to get you down there.”

Heading back to the kitchen, Macaulay stopped long enough to brief Mike McGandy on their plan to search the cellar.

“When you're ready, we'll go after Carlos together,” said Mike. “It'll probably be a two-man job.”

Macaulay rummaged through several drawers before finding a thin, six-inch-long fillet knife. At the air force academy, he had once roomed with a cadet who could open just about any door with what he called a bump key. The ridges and valleys along its spine had been filed down so it would fit into most locks and usually engage enough pins inside it to turn the cylinder.

Two of the closets in the kitchen had lever lock-type keys that were smaller versions of the one that fit the cellar door. He removed one of them without attracting attention. Using a short length of tape to fasten the skeleton key to the end of the knife blade, he slipped it inside his shirt.

He was about to head back to his serving station when he saw one of the maintenance men from the Bahamas Electrical Company come in through the kitchen door and head to a room down a side passageway. Unlocking a door, he disappeared inside.

Macaulay followed down the passageway and paused by the open door. The maintenance man was down on his knees with his back to him in front of a green-painted steel compartment that covered most of the wall.
Through its open sheet-steel cover panel, Macaulay saw that it housed the electrical system for the compound, including an inverter and several banks of electronic circuit breakers.

When he got back to his serving station near the great hall, Barnaby was standing near it holding the leash of the Yorkshire terrier.

“Good cover,” said Macaulay before relieving the other bartender.

He waited until there was no one left on the drink line and then knelt behind Barnaby in front of the cellar door lock. Inserting the skeleton key on the end of the fillet knife, he tried to feel his way to a point where enough ridges on the key would engage the pins that turned the cylinder. Moving it in and out, he kept turning it in his hand.

“May I have a glass of red wine?” asked someone behind him. Leaving the key inside the lock behind the bulk of Barnaby, he poured the woman a glass of wine and then knelt again at the lock.

“I think the dog needs to urinate,” said Barnaby as it nuzzled his pants leg. “Hurry up.”

Macaulay felt the cylinder begin to move deep inside the lock. He heard a distinct set of clicks and watched the bolt recede.

“We're in,” said Macaulay. “Wait for me to give you the word and be careful. If he's down there, he's probably being guarded.”

When everyone in sight around the serving station appeared to be occupied with other guests, he said, “Now.”

When Macaulay turned to look back at the door a few seconds later, Barnaby and the dog were gone.

29 May

Casa Grande Brugg

Dunmore Town

North Eleuthera

Bahamas

The stone steps were cut out of sedimentary rock and led down in a rough circular pattern into the darkness. Barnaby had remembered to bring along a handheld fire stick used to ignite Sterno fuel under the chafing dishes.

The duchess's Yorkshire terrier seemed content to lead the way, and the tiny candle flame gave him enough light to see a few feet in front of him. The reverberating sound of the music from the orchestra slowly diminished to nothing as he reached a depth of twenty feet below the main floor of the mansion. He could hear water dripping from the rock ceiling as he found the bottom step. There was a dank smell in the air.

The dog seemed to know where it was going and it pulled him ahead into the gloom.

A solid steel door emerged in the flame of the fire stick. The door was embedded in the rock wall. There was no keyhole. If it was locked from the inside, there would be no way for him to open it. While he waited uncertainly, the dog went into a crouch and peed on the rock floor.

Come what may, there was no alternative but to find out what was behind it, he decided. He slowly turned the large brass knob and pulled on it. The door came open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. Beyond the opening was only more blackness.

When he took a step forward, an automatic switch suddenly bathed the room in brilliant light, and Barnaby could only stand dumbstruck. The enormous chamber was as big as an NFL locker room and both clean and dry. He could feel fresh air flowing into his face from a source that apparently kept the chamber at a constant temperature with controlled humidity.

It wasn't a torture chamber as Bob Littlefrost had thought. It was a vast exhibition hall, and all the exhibits were exotic birds, each one mounted in situ in its own glass resting place. Some display cases held ten or more birds of the same species. Engraved brass nameplates identified not only the species, but the date of their capture and subsequent stuffing by Juwan Brugg.

It struck Barnaby as ludicrously ironic that many of them bore the same names as the ones he had seen in the photographs in the great hall, including the Kirtland's warbler, the West Indian tree duck, and the Bahama swallow. If the visual evidence was to be believed, Brugg was a one-man destruction squad for the cause they were celebrating upstairs.

Barnaby took the time to explore the rest of the chamber, looking for other passageways that might lead to where Carlos was confined. The one room was all there was. When he looked around for the Yorkshire terrier, he saw that it had lain down on the carpeted floor and was fast asleep. Barnaby left him there.

•   •   •

It was getting too dark for Chris Kimball to see any distance with his binoculars from the reclining chair on the foredeck of
Trader's Bluff
. Harbor activity had remained quiet through the afternoon and the evening.

At one point, a local police boat had slowly crisscrossed the harbor checking the hull numbers on each craft and doing random inspections aboard some of the vessels. They stopped briefly alongside the
Island Time
but ignored
Trader's Bluff
. Otherwise the only activity close by had consisted of the ten-year-old boys hawking coconut juice from their old skiff.

They were on their way back again. As he watched through the binoculars in the rapidly falling darkness, the boy manning the oars rowed it over to the
Island Time
. It was moored only thirty yards away from the Hatteras and Kimball thought about shouting to them that no one was aboard.

Then it struck him that the boys already knew there was no one aboard. They had been working the yachts all afternoon and their supply of coconuts was gone. Kimball had bought one himself.

When the skiff pulled alongside
Island Time
, one of the boys climbed onto the stern deck and raised the lid of the stern locker. A few moments later, he tossed something to the boy on the skiff.

The boy on the boat disappeared into the darkness under the roof of the wheelhouse. Kimball hoped that Carlos had secured the hatchway down to the cabin as he decided to use the boat's portable air horn for a few seconds to frighten them off.

Kimball was raising the air horn to issue a quick blast when
Island Time
disappeared in a blinding flash of
brilliant light. A searing wave of heat hurled him backward into the front windshield of the Hatteras.

The explosion silenced any sound in his ruptured eardrums. He tried to sit up. A shard of metal, maybe six inches long, was embedded into his left arm. Still in shock, he glanced down at it, wondering how it had gotten there.

He could see small objects raining down from the sky and landing all over the deck. His arm began to pulse with pain, then his flash-burned face. As he sat immobilized against the cracked windshield, he looked back at the mooring where
Island Time
had been tethered.

There was nothing left of it or the boys' skiff.

•   •   •

Lexy stood in the bedroom shared by Varna and Juwan and stared at the photographic reproduction of a young Juwan on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
that filled one entire wall. Varna was explaining to the tour guests the manufacturing effort that had gone into constructing their ultra-king-size bed.

“Looks rather inviting, doesn't it?” whispered the duke of Lancaster in her ear.

Gently removing his hand from around her waist, she walked across the room and stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the compound. In the distance, she could hear what sounded like police sirens out in the harbor. The fourth-floor balcony ran ten feet in both directions, and she quickly moved away from the opening.

Emile Bardot watched her disappear into the dusky evening. It was clear to him now that she did not enjoy the inebriated groping of the old royal. What she probably needed was some French persuasion. He was about to
follow her out when he felt his smartphone begin to silently vibrate in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

Turning away from the tour guests, he looked down to see the text message from Sir Henry Pindling in Nassau.
Chinese arrive in thirty minutes—North Eleuthera airport—Private jet—Zhou's son plus twenty commandos
—s
ee data link.

The data link consisted of descriptions of the three people being sought by the Chinese oligarch Zhou Shen Wui. There were grainy photographs of two of them. The retired air force general looked very young to have earned the rank. Bardot thought he bore a possible resemblance to one of the bartenders he had noticed downstairs. He wasn't sure about the second man, who was identified as an English archaeologist. The third photograph was crystal clear. The subject in it was standing thirty feet away from him.

Bardot pulled Juwan aside for a few moments.

“From Sir Henry . . . the Chinese will be here shortly,” he whispered. “They are accompanied by a military team.”

Juwan nodded and turned back to his guests.

•   •   •

From the bedroom balcony, Lexy looked down at the lushly landscaped compound. She had gone out there in the hope that the balcony would provide a vantage point for observing the guard barracks. None of the other rooms they had visited on the tour permitted a view of it through the dense foliage surrounding the house.

The balcony rose far above the trees and Bob Littlefrost had told her where the guard barracks was located in relation to the house. She found it immediately. The
brick building was two stories high and hidden from the mansion by the dense screen of banana trees, coconut palms, and eucalyptus trees.

Gazing down at it, she could see a small cone of light at the front entrance and a second at the rear. Three guards in shorts and T-shirts were standing outside the front entrance smoking marijuana. The distinctive smell of it wafted over the trees.

Behind her in the bedroom, she could hear the other tour guests leaving.

“Thank you for taking the time to join us on the tour of our modest home,” she heard the little partner of Juwan Brugg say. “Dinner will now be served in the great hall.”

She wondered if the duke would come out to retrieve her from the balcony and hoped that the duchess might have reined him in when she saw two figures at the rear of the guard barracks move into the cone of light.

The first person was enormous, almost as broad as tall. The second one was wearing one of the red-and-white security guard uniforms and he was carrying something over his shoulder.

It was covered by a sheet, but at one point the cloth dropped away and she saw that it was another man. He appeared to be naked and was clearly overweight. It couldn't be Carlos, she thought, as the two figures merged into the darkness for several moments, only to reemerge into the dim lights of the barracks parking lot.

While the first figure went on ahead, the guard carrying the body opened the rear hatch of a black panel van and dumped the man inside. After closing the hatch, he followed the first figure toward the mansion house.

“I could not allow you to miss the most exciting part of the tour, mademoiselle,” said a voice behind her.

She turned and saw the man in the white suit with the scars on his cheeks.

“I was just admiring the lovely view,” she said, smiling at him. “I lost track of time.”

“I doubt that, Dr. Vaughan,” he said.

“You must have me confused—”

“Hardly,” he said, holding up his smartphone. “The photograph does not do you justice. Please know that I have no interest in harming you. I simply wish to know why you and your colleagues are so incredibly valuable to our Chinese friends.”

Pulling out a slender object from his side pocket, he pressed down on it and a stiletto blade snapped into position.

“If you will follow me, Dr. Vaughan,” he said.

They descended the staircase to the third floor with the knife held flat against her back and he led her down a side passageway. At the first door they came to, he stopped to unlock it with a key from his chain and nudged her inside. The fluorescent ceiling lights came on automatically. He locked the door behind him.

To Lexy, it looked like nothing more than a large storeroom. Aside from a table and chairs, it had shelves on two walls filled with canned goods and bottles. A stainless steel commercial refrigerator unit occupied most of the back wall.

“Please sit down and enjoy the view,” said Bardot, motioning her toward one of the chairs.

Stepping to a circuit breaker panel behind him, he flipped one of the switches. A floor panel made of solid
steel began to slide back to reveal a four-foot-square opening. She leaned forward to look down through it. The room was directly over the saltwater aquarium.

“A bit melodramatic, I will admit,” said Bardot. “Juwan was inspired to build the aquarium after watching an early James Bond movie. No one thought about how the creatures were going to be fed until it was finished. This is their supply room. You would be quite amazed at the quantity and variety of the meals they consume every day.”