Guards!”
The guards advanced, racking the slides on their machine guns.
“You were looking for something that night, Manso. Do you remember?” Alex stood and walked over to the glass wall, staring out, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I think you’re mad. Loco, that’s all.”
“I was there, General,” Alex said, whirling around, his eyes blazing. “They were my parents! I was seven years old! I saw it all, what you did to them, you filthy bloody murdering bastard!”
“What are you saying?”
“I was hidden. My father hid me in a small locker. His name was Commander Alexander Hawke. He died saving my life!”
“What is this? I don’t need to listen to this!”
“Yes, you do, General, because at the end of the story comes the map. His name was Alex. Her name was Catherine. He called her Kitty. She was a great actress. They loved each other very much. They only had one child. A small boy who had just turned seven. I was in the very room where you and your brothers tortured and murdered them. I saw everything you did. Everything.”
“It was long ago,” the general said. “Maybe it happened, maybe not. What does it matter? Things are mixed up in your mind.”
“You have no idea how perfectly clear things are in my mind. Now. Send your guards out of the room, General,” Alex said. He was struggling to get his rage under control, taking huge deep breaths, and he became very quiet.
“You are joking, si?” the general finally said.
“No. We have private business to discuss.”
“Business? Whatever business?”
“The map, General. The one you murdered my parents for. You see, you killed the wrong members of what once was the Hawke family. My parents didn’t have the map that night. I did. I still do.”
“The map! You have the map?”
“I do.”
“I don’t believe you for a second.”
Alex bent and ripped open the Velcro seal of a deep pocket on the right thigh of his tigerstripes. He withdrew a small blue envelope and held it aloft.
“Here. This map was drawn nearly three hundred years ago at Newgate Prison in London. The author penned it just before his appointment with the hangman at Executioner’s Dock in 1705.”
“Open it. Pull it, the map, out. Hold it up. Show me.”
Alex did. Since it was a copy, it was far less fragile than the original. The general bent forward, peering at the document in complete amazement. It certainly looked to be authentic.
“This is not a trick?” Manso asked.
“You believe I would come here and chance my life on a trick?”
Alex pulled a lighter from his fatigues, flicked it lit, and held the flame near to one corner of the document. “Now or never, General. Send the guards out of the room.”
“Juanito!” the general said, sitting straight up on the bed. “Send the guards away. Now! Tell them to wait outside. This is a private matter.”
The man did as he was told, herding the guards outside, shaking his head and muttering. His brother Manso was crazy, but what could he do?
When the guards had retreated from the room, Alex returned the envelope to his pocket and resealed the Velcro fastener. Then he gave Stoke a look and started pacing around the vast oval desk.
“In an odd way,” he began, speaking as he moved about, “the rightful owners of this treasure would seem to be your family, General, not mine.”
“Of course! Why do you think I have spent years in search of the de Herreras treasure!”
“They won’t find it, I’m afraid,” Hawke said. “Scribbled at the bottom of the map is a letter from a notorious pirate. Blackhawke. Heard of him?”
“Of course! One of the most brilliant and ruthless pirates in the Caribbean! He’s the one who stole my family fortune!”
“We all have a skeleton in the closet. He is mine. I am his direct descendant. His map has been in my family for generations. Just before his capture and execution in 1705, Blackhawke realized his final and greatest triumph. He took the largest single prize ever captured.”
“Tell me!” Manso shouted, his eyes glittering.
“Blackhawke engaged a Spanish galleon under command of Admiral Manso de Herreras somewhere off Hispaniola.”
“Yes!” the general shouted. “My noble ancestor! He sailed for England with his billions in stolen silver and gold. To deposit his fortune in the Bank of England. But he never arrived.”
“Yes, General. Your history is good. According to Blackhawke’s letter, de Herreras never reached England because Blackhawke intercepted him and sent him to the bottom. But first, he relieved his burden of all that gold and silver.”
“And then?”
“And then he buried it, of course. Fairly standard practice in those days.”
“So! It’s true! You see, Juanito, all these years, I was right! This Hawke family has a map of our treasure’s location! We will find it!” Manso was flushed with excitement. “We will share! Surely there is more than enough to —”
“No,” Alex said, turning to face him. “I have a far better idea.”
“What could be better than—”
“The map is yours. I want you to have this blood-soaked map, Manso de Herreras. You and you alone.”
“You do?”
“I do indeed,” Hawke said. “But there is one very important condition.”
“I am waiting, senor.”
“Tonight, we’re going to put an end to the nightmare you started thirty years ago, General de Herreras.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Simple, really. If you want the map, you’re going to have to kill me for it.”
56
“Kill you for it?”
The general was sliding catlike off the pillowed bed, a hideous grin pulling his lips back, distorting his face.
“Kill you for it? If that’s what you wish, it can be easily accomplished, Senor Hawke.”
He lifted his silver-bladed machete, turned it this way and that to catch the candlelight. Suddenly, it was spinning high into the air above his head where it paused, then made two or three flashing revolutions and started to descend. Manso was dancing beneath it, watching it.
He grabbed it by the handle, right out of the air, and spun toward Hawke, murderous intent flashing in his eyes.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hawke saw Stoke start to move to intercept the general.
“No!” Hawke shouted. “Stay out of this, Stoke. This is unfinished business. Entirely between the two of us.”
“But, boss, you ain’t got nothing to—”
“An unarmed man with vengeance in his heart is the most dangerous of enemies,” Alex said.
Juan de Herreras, wide-eyed at these amazing events, brandished his .357, motioning for Stoke to back off and take a seat, which he reluctantly did. Hawke gave Stoke a look that said don’t worry about this, but Stoke was hardly reassured.
Manso suddenly lunged toward Hawke and leveled a vicious swipe at his neck. Hawke barely saw it coming
