Hawke: A Novel (45 page)

“Well, well, well. Alex Hawke himself,” came a sugary voice from the center of the room. Directly beneath the chandelier was a massive oval desk. The owner of that velvet voice was unseen, seated at the desk but hidden by the back of a tall leather chair facing away from the new arrivals. “We finally meet,” the voice said, floating upwards on a cloud of pale opium smoke.

“A dream come true,” Hawke said.

“Let me get a look at this famous Hawke,” the voice said, and a tall, slender man rose serenely from the chair. He was naked from the waist up, his well-muscled back toward them. A long black ponytail reached halfway to his waist.

Hawke sucked down a quick gulp of air as he regarded the man.

There was a spider tattooed on the man’s shoulder. Black with a red spot on its belly.

Spiders were bad. Alex had been terrified of them ever since he’d awoken one night to find one crawling across his face. On his cheek. By his mouth. Had he not awoken, it would have crawled inside—

Hawke managed to let the shock of seeing and hearing this man wash over him without a trace of it registering on his face. By the time the man had pulled a dressing gown from the chair and turned to face him, Hawke had regained the same faintly amused smile he’d been wearing since entering the
finca
.

As Manso walked around the massive carved oval desk, Hawke eyed him evenly. The candlelight flickered darkly in those dead black eyes set in a face of decidedly feminine beauty. The long hair, still jet black, tied at the back. Too beautiful for a man. Too much raw brutality for a woman.

He was slipping his muscle-corded arms inside a long flowing robe of red Chinese silk trimmed at the neck and cuffs with black pearls.

“The night I first saw you,” Hawke said, “I thought you were a woman.”

“Really?” Manso said. “How very interesting. When was this?”

“It was a very long time ago,” Alex said. “I was just a boy.”

“We were both boys long ago, weren’t we,
Señor
Hawke?” Manso smiled at the thought. “Something to drink? Or smoke? Our Chinese friends supply us with lovely opium.”

“No, thank you,” Hawke said.

“How about your friend? Who is he, by the way?”

“I can speak for myself. My name is Stokely Jones, United States Navy, retired. NYPD, retired. And I ain’t thirsty either,” Stoke said, dropping his hands from his head for the first time. When Hawke saw the Cubans had no reaction to this, he did the same.

“Shall we relax? Perhaps over there nearer the glass?” Manso said, and he indicated a grouping of mandarin opium beds arranged along one section of the glass wall.

He stretched out languorously on the largest of the beds, strewn with silk pillows of gold and black and red. He stretched, flexing the fingers of both hands.

There was something very odd and studied about the general’s movements, Alex thought. He moved like a fine athlete or dancer, with exaggerated elegance and drama, as if this were his stage and all that happened here was a performance. One whose significance only Manso understood.

Indeed, he and his brother seemed supremely indifferent to the explosive events that had so recently occurred within their own compound.

“Tequila,
señor?”
General Juan de Herreras said, taking a swig before offering the opened bottle.

“Later, perhaps,” Alex said.

Alex suddenly understood the lack of activity in the big
finca
. The two de Herreras brothers had clearly just been woken up. One, Juanito, from an alcohol-and drug-induced sleep, the other, Manso, from some blissful dream here in this soundproofed room.

General Juan de Herreras, weaving slightly as he moved, waved his tequila bottle in the general direction of his brother Manso, indicating that they should all join him on the sofas. Alex and Stokely exchanged the briefest of looks, each of them right on the edge, waiting.

Something about the edge. Having worked together for so long, they both knew exactly where it was. All the time.

Alex sat on the corner of the sofa opposite Manso. Stoke remained on his feet, head darting back and forth, his eyes constantly monitoring the six Chinese whose weapons were unwaveringly trained on him.

“A lovely view, is it not, Mr. Hawke?” Manso said. “I modeled this room on a far more modest construction created by my mentor,
el doctor
. He’s the one who taught me to enjoy killing a man like you. You know of Escobar?”

“Enough to know that I wish I’d been the one to put a bullet in his head. Interesting room. But don’t threaten me. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses?” Alex said.

“A man with an arsenal of boulders, doesn’t worry about a man with mere rocks,” the general said, allowing himself a small giggle.

“This guy could go toe-to-toe with Jay Leno,” Stoke said, remaining on his feet. Hawke could see that Stokely’s patience was wearing thin. He wanted this done so they could confirm Vicky’s safety, Hawke imagined. He was having similar thoughts himself.

“Watch this,” the general suddenly said.

Reaching back beneath the pillows, Manso withdrew a gleaming sword. At first, Hawke thought it was a broadsword. Then he saw that, of course, it was a machete, polished to a lustrous silver, with precious stones embedded in the ebony handle.

Manso rapped the blade smartly three times on the glass above his head. A moment passed, and then three mermaids floated down through the crystal green layers of water and appeared at the window. There they hovered, naked, save for jeweled tiaras, and their long hair floated about their lovely faces as if blown by a light wind.

“Exquisite, aren’t they?”

“Quite,” Hawke answered. “Indigenous? Or paid by the hour?”

“You know, Commander, I’m beginning to take an intense dislike to you, even though you have done me an enormous service.”

“Service?”

“Yes. You locked up my troublesome brother Carlitos, and so saved me the trouble of killing him myself. Now, tell me why you came here to my island before I kill you.”

“I came here to get someone you took away from me. I succeeded.”

“According to Major Diaz, you killed at least seventy of my men and wounded many more. Your timing was good. Many hostages were to be executed at first light. Including your whore.”

Hawke smiled, letting nothing show.

“Without giving me a chance to meet your demands? Apparently you haven’t read many books on business etiquette, have you, General?”

“Ha! This is a good one! Now tell me, Hawke. You are a businessman. Wealthy, powerful, with many, many powerful connections. I am a man with a country to feed, arm, restore to power. Why can’t we be civilized and work together to rebuild a once proud nation?”

“Work together? Don’t be ridiculous. Victoria Sweet is not the only person you took from me, General,” Hawke said, laughing at the man’s insipid notion.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you, Mr. Hawke.”

“Then let me be perfectly clear, General de Herreras. Thirty years ago, you and your two brothers boarded an unarmed British yacht moored in a small cove near Staniel Cay in the Exumas. She was named the
Seahawke.
Do you remember that?”

“Seahawke?”

“Yes. That was her name. There were people aboard. A husband and his young wife.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,
señor.”

“You murdered them. And you laughed while you did it. You and your brothers.”

“Ah, he’s right, my brother!” Juanito said. “I remember this night! I think we were—”

“Shut up, you idiot! This man is insane. Coming into my house making wild accusations. I won’t stand for it. 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,
sí?”
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?”