The Super Stallion remained at a high altitude, keeping an eye on the Humvee. King knew it was as much to keep Raine on the straight and narrow as it was to watch for any threats. Just convincing Gibbs that the convicted traitor should accompany the civilians had been ‘more difficult than sunbathing in a cave’, to quote the rogue agent. The team leader had eventually relented, though not without a warning. The SOG team would be watching Raine’s every move. Waiting, no doubt, for the wrong one.
Still unsure of the other man, King was thankful that the soldiers wouldn’t be far away.
“Roger that,” Raine replied over the com. “Gibbs?”
Despite whatever grievances there were between the two men, now they were in the field, both Raine and Gibbs acted with highly trained professionalism.
“All units in position,” Gibbs’ disembodied voice replied. King knew the plan. The soldiers had surrounded the Hand of Freedom building, just in case Raine’s plan didn’t pan out. Or, he knew, in case it was all a ruse. “Delivery Team, you have a go.”
“Copy,” Raine acknowledged. He pushed harder through the crowd, keeping his hand on the horn. Shocked, the mass of revellers scattered out of the Humvee’s path, shooting angry glances his way.
They broke out of the party and Raine put his foot down. Following King’s directions they wound their way through town and out towards the southern tip of the Palisadoes. Behind the ruins of Fort Charles and the modern establishment of the Jamaican Defence Force Coastguard Headquarters, Raine guided the vehicle off the main road and down a rutted, disused dirt track. A handful of tatty, broken and pealing signs pointed towards their destination, a single lonely building, half a mile out of town, nestled against the southern shore. Beyond it lay nothing but the crystal Caribbean waters and a handful of seabirds gliding on the warm Jamaican air.
“I don’t think this road is used all that much,” Sid commented as the vehicle bounced and bumped over the track. A thick nest of weeds were slowly devouring it, making it difficult to discern.
“I don’t think the museum gets many tourists these days,” King replied. “And the owner, Mrs Marley—”
“No way…”
King ignored Raine. “-has become somewhat of a recluse. The Jamaican Defence Force has been trying to buy the estate for years but she won’t sell.”
Raine pulled up outside the oddly shaped building and stopped the engine. “This it?” he asked, stepping out of the Humvee and lowering his glasses. Out of the car’s air-conditioned interior, the Caribbean heat was almost overwhelming, but a fresh breeze skittered over the gentle waves of the sea and cooled him.
“This is it,” King confirmed as the others exited.
The building was a peculiar shape, starting wide on its northern face and tapering into a narrower point towards the south before splaying out like the fingers of an outstretched hand. It was coated in moss and vines and seagull excrement; the windows were so dirty as to be impenetrable and the paintwork was faded, mottled and pealing.
“Why is it shaped so strangely?” Nadia asked. Like Sid, the Russian woman had discarded the tactical gear she had only just been issued and now wore a black knee length skirt, white silk blouse and a form hugging blazer. Also following the unexpected shopping spree in Kingston, King now wore a pair of blue jeans, a white shirt, open at the neck, and a black suit jacket, looking very much the traditional modern day university lecturer. Raine finished off the professional image by wearing an expensive black business suit and tie and had slicked his normally wild hair straight back.
“It’s the ‘Hand of Freedom’,” King explained. “Lady Kernewek was by all accounts a bit of an eccentric. Apparently the shape of the building represents the hand of the slave reaching out to freedom. It was the motif of her abolition movement.”
“Shall we?” Sid suggested.
They made their way towards the narrower, southern end of the building. Above the dirty glass window of the narrow door, fading red letters peeled off a rotting wooden sign, cut into the vague motif of a blocky, outstretched hand:
“Lady Kernewek was certainly revolutionary for her day,” Sid commented. King glanced at her, absorbing her beauty. The awkward distance that had developed between them still existed, despite both of their attempts to deny it. He loved her very much, but even now, with their relationship feeling shaky, he could think of nothing but the Moon Mask, contained in a lead-line case up on the helicopter, along with the fake mask and the map they had found.
Behind this door, the answer to all his questions lay.
“All teams,” Raine whispered into the com. “Stand by. We’re going in.”
Raine led the team into the shadowed interior of the museum. Immediately inside the door he had to turn left and open a second door. It caught an old fashioned ship’s bell hanging above it and the loud dong echoed throughout the museum. It was followed instantly by the booming voice of a woman with an almost impenetrable Jamaican accent bellowing from up a flight of rickety old stairs.
“Stay where you are and touch nothing you’re not prepared to pay for!”
Raine froze in his tracks. “Friendly welcome,” he muttered.
“It would explain the lack of custom,” Nadia added.
The four of them stepped deeper into the labyrinth of dusty display cabinets. Through the grimy glass, Raine could make out artefacts within: rusty shackles that had once clamped slaves together, tools used to work on the plantations. There were dusty paintings from the days of Lady Kernewek depicting the sufferings of African slaves, the tight confines of the hellish slave ships, and the brutality of the men who oversaw them in the plantations. There were more recent sepia and black and white photographs, capturing the real life anguish of actual people, and newer still, more triumphantly perhaps, photos of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, added to the collection centuries after Lady Kernewek had founded this museum to document the history of King’s ancestors. There were also piles upon piles of old books and papers stacked on the wooden floor or thrown haphazardly onto bookshelves, small ornaments, and the occasional period musket or cutlass. The wooden stairs led to a small, equally cluttered platform recessed into the northern end of the building which then led upstairs to Mrs Marley’s private chambers.
The Hand of Freedom building wasn’t so much a museum, nor a library, as it was a living, breathing piece of history. Even the musty air tasted old and the brilliant Caribbean sunlight was filtered through the smeared and dirty windows into a muted haze which caught millions of dust motes bobbing lazily in the air.
Raine let out a low whistle. “Mrs Marley could sure do with a spring clean.”
“Mrs Marley could sure do without cocky interfering Yanks meddling in other peoples’ business!” the thunderous voice boomed from upstairs.
“I like her,” King said, shooting Raine an ever-so-smug grin.
With a plodding momentum and a pounding of heavy meat against creaking wood, the impressive bulk of Mrs Marley thumped down the stairs and turned to face them.
“I s’pose you be wantin’ a tour ‘ll ya?” She said the words as though having potentially paying customers was the worst thing she could imagine.
Massive to the extreme, Mrs Marley could easily have been getting on for thirty stone. She wore an enormous, brightly coloured dress of yellow and green stripes. Her black-as-night skin shone with a perpetual sheen of sweat from the effort of simply shuffling instead of actually walking. Her eyes were bloodshot, her few remaining teeth were bright yellow and even from a distance her putrid breath stank of strong marihuana.