The Columbus Affair: A Novel

“And you’ve done nothing with it?”

“This place is more sacred than gold.”

He remembered what Tre had told him. “And the Jews? Did they store their wealth here, too?”

Two men appeared from the portal leading out.

Both wet, dressed only in swim trunks.

Bene’s heart thumped with a pang of fear that he quickly quelled with anger.

“I’m sorry,” Frank said in a cold, calculating monotone. “The colonels overruled me. These men are from a group in Spanish Town. Yesterday they came and asked if anyone had heard or seen anything in the mountains the past few days. They say their don is missing and you were the last one to meet with him.”

“Why didn’t they come and ask me?”

“ ’Cause we knows the answer,” one of the black forms said. “Da posses seh you to pay.”

He wasn’t interested in what some gang had decreed. He was more concerned with Frank Clarke’s betrayal.

“Mi nuh like di vides, man,” he said to his friend in patois.

He meant it, too. Lots of bad vibes here.

Frank stared at him. “Mi nuh like, either. But dis your worry, Bene.”

The colonel turned to leave.

“If yu a deestant smadi, mi wi gi yu a cotch.”

He knew Clarke understood him. “If you were a decent man, you’d stay a little while.”

“That’s the thing, Bene. I don’t feel so decent.”

And Clarke left through the portal.

“I wuk o soon done,” one of the men said to him. “We gon kill you.”

No more patois. He’d used it to disarm these two. “I’m going to give you a chance to leave here and we’ll forget this happened. That way you’ll stay alive. If you don’t, I’m going to kill you both.”

One of them laughed. “You nut dat good, Bene. A no lie. You gon die.”

He’d not had a fight in a long while, but that did not mean he’d forgotten how. He grew up in Spanish Town among some of the roughest gangs in the Caribbean and learned early on that to be a Rowe meant to be tough. Challenges came from all quarters, each pretender wanting to be the one who took Bene Rowe down. None had ever succeeded.

The two men flanked him. Neither was armed. Apparently they intended to kill him with their bare hands.

He almost smiled.

Apparently, the idea had been to lure him here using Frank Clarke. He wondered how much the gang had paid for that service, since little in Jamaica was free.

He studied the men. Both were tall and broad. Surely strong. But he wondered how tested they were. British redcoats had been the best-trained, best-equipped soldiers in the world. But a group of runaway slaves with little more than spears, knifes, and a few muskets brought them to their knees.

This was his world.

His time.

And nobody was going to take that from him.

He pivoted, grabbed the nearest lantern by its handle, and hurled it at the man to his left. The projectile was deflected with a bat to the ground. It only broke the glass receptacle and spread the oil, which burst into flames, the fireball driving the one man back. He seized the moment to yank his trouser leg up and free the blade from its sheath.

A diving knife, used when he snorkeled. He kept the thick blade sharp, one edge serrated.

As the one man rounded the flames, he advanced on the other, faking right, then thrusting left, grabbing the man’s arm and whirling the body around. As he did the hand with the knife rushed up and, with one swipe, he opened the throat.

He shoved the man aside.

He heard the gurgle of breath and saw blood spurt out. The man reached for the wound, but there was nothing he could do. The body dropped to the ground, twitching in agony.

The other man pounced, but Bene was ready.

The knife swished upward again and a second throat was slit.

Shock filled his assailant’s eyes.

He watched as death immediately grabbed hold and the body collapsed.

Enough of this.

Frank Clarke was now his concern.

Movement in the darkness beyond the exit caught his gaze. He leaped to one side of the portal, knife ready.