Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 58
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Inside, Mullins’ body lay where they had left it. Woolsey felt Michaut’s grip tighten on his arm at the sight of it. The sailors released the captain and he began talking to Ensign Gohin in earnest.
“Michaut, what’s he saying?” Woolsey whispered.
“He tell Gohin that he know a secret. That he want to talk to Gohin alone.”
“What’s Gohin saying?”
“He say Captain want to play trick. He must talk in front of all the men.”
Michaut stopped talking when the captain began to speak and Woolsey heard several of the men draw their breath in. Then the captain walked over to Woolsey and held out his hand. “Give me your knife,” he said in English.
Woolsey reached into his pocket and drew out the folded rigging knife. He handed it to Lamoreaux. Walking to one of the wine crates, the captain crouched down and proceeded to pry open the rough wood. He removed what looked like a large, antique, hand-made champagne bottle and held it up for Gohin to see the label. There was something odd about the way he handled the bottle – he held it with two hands as though it were very valuable. Woolsey wondered if he was trying to buy Gohin off with the promise of an exceptional vintage. Just like a frog, he thought. Lamoreaux kept talking, explaining something in French, but when Woolsey looked to Michaut for a translation, he saw the young man’s mouth hanging open and slack, his eyes wide in anticipation. Woolsey was trying to figure out what the old man was up to, when the captain lifted the bottle with a sharp jerk upward, then frapped it down hard on the steel deck. The dark green glass shattered and dozens of shiny gold coins clattered to the deck.
For several seconds, it was as though they were in a film and the reel had stopped. The group of a half dozen men stood frozen in an open-mouthed tableau. Then, in a single instant, the film started up again, and they were all thrust into motion at once. Officers and sailors alike, they ran to the crates and began pulling them apart with their bare hands. Gohin stuffed the pistol into his back waistband and fell to his knees with the others. Bottles crashed and broke, as the men scrambled across the floor shouting and laughing and stuffing their pockets with the bright, shiny coins. Broken glass soon covered the deck, but the oblivious sailors ignored the red stains at the knees of their white duck trousers as they rushed to open more crates.
Though the men holding his arms had forgotten about him and released him, Woolsey stood there and watched the pandemonium, trying to make sense of it. Did they know about this back in New Haven? Did they know about this gold and still want to send the Surcouf and her treasure to the bottom? Or was it possible their intelligence was not so accurate after all? With the bomb gone, Woolsey had failed in his mission to destroy the sub. Might he rise in their estimation if he could deliver to them a fortune in gold?
The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the relatively small chamber. Woolsey swiveled around, unsure, at first, who had fired. Then he saw Captain Lamoreaux standing over Mullins’ body, the gun in his hand pointed at the dead man’s torso.
Gohin slapped at his empty waistband then scowled at the captain. Woolsey figured that the captain had shot into the body to avoid killing anyone else with a ricochet. It worked, and he now had their attention. He turned the gun on them and spoke in French. One by one, they began to empty their pockets and place the coins on the bloody, glass-strewn deck.
Lamoreaux pointed the gun and barked an order. His men started toward the door. When the last of them had exited, the captain turned to Woolsey and said, “The men will get their way. We go to Martinique.”
“And what about your orders?”
The captain spit on the deck. “After the Allies tried to sink Surcouf, you think they deserve my loyalty?”
“And what about me?”
“When we arrive in Martinique?” He shrugged his shoulders and blew air out through his rounded lips. Then he rested one hand on the edge of the door. “You will hang,” he said giving the door a strong push.
The door slammed closed and the lights shut off, plunging the hold back into darkness.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Iles des Saintes
March 27, 2008
8:40 p.m.
Cole sat on the bench seat of the galley dinette with his left leg stretched out straight, his foot braced against the doorway, so he wouldn’t slide off the seat as Shadow Chaser rolled in the southeasterly swell. He bit his lower lip and turned the brass plate on the green marble calendar for the hundredth time. On the table before him lay various charts of the area, the lockbox, and his father’s well-thumbed journals.
He had told the Brewster brothers that the object was a cipher disk that would give him the exact coordinates of the location of the submarine. Talk about wishful thinking. He had no idea how the thing might work. As far as he could tell, the purpose of the calendar was to learn the day of the week for any given date. First, you had to know the date — month, day and year — and then the calendar would tell you what day of the week that date fell on. As for how that could be translated into a cipher disk, he was stumped.
He thought about setting it to his own birthday, November 19, 1971 and then realized that the calendar only started in 1998, so that wouldn’t work. Most of the possible dates were in the future. Assuming his father wanted him to set it to a certain date, what date did he have in mind?
Cole turned his attention back to the books and picked up the last of the journals. He opened it to the last page and read the words there for the umpteenth time.
Dear son,
Wits end is where I am. Spent a bit of time there. Expect to be there til the end of days. Got to stop. Them. American president is part and parcel. What goes up must come down. Not a nickel to my name. It’s all yours now. Got to stop. Them. The Creoles sing a song in the islands. It’s called Fais pas do do. Like this.
Fais pas do do, Cole mon p’tit coco
Fais pas do do, tu l’auras du lolo
Yayd d’dir
Y’did yd
Jamais fais do do.
Cole had been certain since the first day he’d read this page that there was something different about it. His old man was trying to tell him something secret here, but doing it in such a way that it wouldn’t be clear to anyone who might look through the journals. Cole had tried everything to decode those words during these past months, and when he was trying to use the French Angel coin as key, nothing had worked. Not until Riley came along, that is.
Cole shook his head to try to clear it. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on the problem at hand all night. His mind kept returning to her. What was happening to her? Where was she at this moment? Had she arrived in Washington? He thought about the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, how she smelled like the orange blossoms he remembered from his childhood, and the way the light danced in her eyes when they dug up the calendar.
The calendar. Concentrate, he told himself. This blasted calendar paper weight that his father thought he would understand and yet, he had been at it most of the night, and he still had no idea what it meant or how to use it. What was the connection to the journals or Surcouf? The calendar had the names of the months written in the center, the years on the background plate, and the day names and numbers on the two plates. How did that relate to his father’s cryptic note and this odd French Creole song? Or did it relate at all? In the end, the message of the French Angel had nothing to do with this journal, other than maybe the reference to the word nickel.
He started to read the page through one more time, and he paused at the end of the second sentence. His father had used the word “time.” Wits end. Where on a calendar is wit’s end? How much time did he spend there? He wrote expect to be there until the end of days. Cole sighed and rubbed his tired eyes with both hands. The old man could never make anything easy for him. Wits end. Cole felt like he was already there. He wished he could understand what his father was trying to tell him.
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