The last few days, Eddie DeAntoni had been moping around the marina, despondent. Two nights before, very late, I’d strolled the docks and actually found the tough guy weeping, dimples and all. He’d had a couple of passionate evenings with Beryl Woodward, but now things weren’t going well. She didn’t return his calls. Beryl would make a date, but not show up.
“She’s killing me,” he’d moaned, then was understandably confused when I assured him that that was one of the few things Beryl would not do.
I said to Tomlinson, “Christmas in July. Why not? You’re sure Eddie knows how to rig it?”
Tomlinson said, “Are you kidding? How do you think he won that lottery in Jersey?”
It was true I now had a bundle of unreported, untaxed cash on my hands. Slightly less than a quarter million, after I’d split the take with Sir James and Norma, and sent an anonymous money order to Corey’s family.
The Midnight Star, I kept for myself. Expenses.
Because U.S. Customs is suspicious of citizens carrying large sums, I’d had Eddie drop me on the nearby island of Grenada before he and the girls returned to Fort Lauderdale in his leased, jet-fast TBM-850 airplane.
I spent six days on Grenada making phone calls to old contacts and making new friends at the U.S. embassy. Turned out I had some old friends on the island, too. Grenada had changed a lot since the invasion.
My old friends proved helpful. So did my old boss, Hal Harringtononce I applied the right kind of pressure. I was now in possession of a video that compromised a powerful member of the U.S. Senate. But I’m not an extortionist. I didn’t use the video; didn’t mention it-although I did contact the senator who, understandably, was suspicious despite glowing character references from my old friends. The senator and I began a careful dialogue that gradually became genial, and was now friendly.
For Hal Harrington, though, a call from Sir James Montbard was pressure enough.
“Do you know who he is?” Harrington-a man not easily impressedhad asked.
I’d told him, “No, but I’m starting to figure it out.”
Because I already had everything arranged at the embassy, and it was Saturday, I had returned to Saint Lucia for the weekend. Had dinner at Bluestone with Sir James, Senegal, and Norma, too. Sir James was out of the hospital after a successful surgery, and as upbeat as ever-despite a loss that would be debilitating to most men.
“A hook!” he’d called out when I arrived. “They’re going to fit me with a bloody hook. Isn’t it perfect! Until then, they’ve given me this temporary thing.” He’d waved the stainless steel prosthetic strapped to his left arm.
He was more enthusiastic about Norma. She’d stayed by his bed during the worst of it, tending to his every need. She’d given him incredible daily massages, he said.
“I think she’s marvelous. I’ve offered the woman a full-time billet. Top pay, full benefits.” After a wry look, he’d added, “But Norma says she’s come into a tidy sum of money. I don’t know if I should compliment your generosity, or curse you.”
I didn’t tell him the woman had accepted only a small percentage of what I’d tried to give. She would take only an amount equal to six months’ salary-it wasn’t much-and enough for a family crypt so her dead son and estranged husband could finally be reunited. She wanted the crypt to be large enough for a third. Her time would come.
I also didn’t tell him what Norma had told me-that she was falling in love with the man, pirate’s hook and all.
“Hooker has more ching chi toxins than a twenty-year-old sailor,” she’d laughed, but wasn’t joking. I could see her amber, liquid eyes now, and her smile-teeth whiter because of her dark skin. The prettiest widow I’d ever met.
Norma had chosen a seventy-year-old legend over me. It was okay. My ego was intact.
At the Bluestone dinner, Sir James told me the artifacts he’d taken from the monastery had turned out to be a disappointment. Sort of. They were pieces of the stone artifact his grandfather had stolen decades before.
“He was just a lad at the time,” Montbard told me, showing me his grandfather’s journal as we sat in the library, near the stone with the strange glyphs. “Someone came along, surprised him, and he dropped the thing.” He’d gestured at the artifact with his temporary hook. “The Mayan glyph is unmistakable. But it’s only been in the last two years that I’ve had time to break the other cipher-my real job always kept me hopping.”
He’d taken out a sketch pad as we stood over the artifact, and showed me tracings of the glyphs. They were similar to sketches I’d made in my notebook.
I was skeptical when he added, “I think we’re looking at ancient Masonic code-but not as ancient as I’d hoped. See what you think.”
He flipped the page, saying, “Here’s the key to the code.”
There were two tic-tac-toe grids. Each square contained a letter: A-B-C on the top level of the first grid, D-E-F on the next level. Letters followed that progression. In the second grid, there were dots beneath each of the nine letters.
There were also two large Xs, with a letter in each of the eight open triangles. There were dots beneath letters in the second X.
“Look at the glyphs. They’re actually shapes. Partial boxes. Now look at the grid. The first square is a two-sided box, open at the left and top. It represents A. B is a three-sided box, open at the top. C is a two-sided box, open at the right and at the top.
“It’s a simple substitution cipher,” he’d said. “It’s supposedly a Masonic secret, but you see it all the time these days in books and films. Each box, opened or closed, replaces the letter it contains. Understand?”
“I think I do.”
I took the sketch pad and matched the glyphs to the tic-tac-toe grids. The result was a series of meaningless letters.
“It makes no sense. Did I do it right?”
“Perfectly,” Montbard had replied, grinning. “But it’s also perfectly wrong. The actual Masonic key-the one used for many hundreds of years-really is secret. The popular books, the films, the cipher they use, is actually gibberish when properly translated.”
“You know this because you’re a Freemason?”
“No. I know because the actual cipher key is here-” He held up his grandfather’s journal. “It has been in the family forever, but it wasn’t obvious, even to me.
“You’d have to be a Mason to understand that we have codes that represent codes that replace other codes. I have no idea of the meaning of half the things we learn as Masons. The language is archaic. But I finally figured out this one.”
He’d flipped the page of the sketch pad. “I can’t show you all of it, old boy. I’m breaking a rule, showing you this. But see what happens when I turn this… add this… then join this?” He used a charcoal pencil to change the key, then he translated the glyphs.
" ’tubal,’ ” I said, “is that a word?”
“If you’re a Freemason, my boy, it has great meaning. That’s all I can say.”
Sir James then took portions of the broken fragment he’d found at the monastery. On it were three more glyphs. When he fitted the stones together, the five glyphs, using the new cipher key, now translated as: "MDCXV.”
“Another secret word?”
Sir James said, “No. Roman numerals. It’s a date: 1615.”
I smiled, impressed. “It’s a great find.”
“Yes,” he said, “but it’s also disappointing. The Mayan glyph, of course, was carved long before 1615. Frankly, I expected the new section to provide missing numerals-thirteen. As in 1315. Still… it’s suggestive. Even encouraging, in its way. I’m not done looking, Ford. By God, I’m not!
“One more surgery, a spot of rest, then I’m off to Central America. Descendants of the Knights Templar were here. What I’ve found proves it-to me, anyway. I’m convinced the warrior monks sailed here long before Columbus, their ships loaded with gold and jewels, and relics from the Holy Land. Their treasure’s out there, Ford. Somewhere in the jungle.”
The next day, back on Grenada, Monday, July 1st, I sent duplicate packages to the Eastern Caribbean tourist board, to the Miami Herald, and to the French DST, which is the equivalent of our FBI. The packages contained evidence I’d collected against Isabelle Toussaint. I included a letter that suggested blackmail was a boutique industry on Saint Arc, and possibly Jamaica, too. I used data assembled by Tomlinson.