Map of the Masons Read online

  “You’re not going to believe what I just found in the conference room,” he laughed.

  There wasn’t much point in answering, because when I turned, he was holding up two brand new satellite phones, complete with bright red bows.

  “You’re shitting me!” I said, snatching the one that he extended toward me out of his hand. The tension from the moments before was completely forgotten as we started to look them over. Suddenly, my phone vibrated and then a single ding sounded. I almost dropped it.

  In the same instant, Ishi’s phone dinged as well. We both had a text message. We opened it and read it aloud together:

  This is what following protocol will do for you. Great job!

  Like a couple of kids with new Christmas toys, we started scrolling through the different menus and commenting on them. What had promised to be a very tense flight had turned into something that was the complete opposite. We were well on our way back across the Pacific before either of us grew tired of our new toys and set them aside and even then the conversation remained light and fun as we recounted the happenings in the forest and our run-in with the wrath of Pele.

  When I looked up, Ishi had his head buried in his headrest, with his mouth wide open and the sat-phone still in his hands.

  Ah, the little Gipper finally played out. When it came right down to it, even during those rare occasions when we wanted to kill each other, we were still pretty tight and I sort of thought of the Tawankan as a little brother. I leaned forward, took the phone out of his hands and placed it in the basket beside his seat and then leaned back in my own seat, hoping to allow those visions, which I’d planned on enjoying during the flight back to the mainland, to start working their magic.

  Of course, that’s not what happened. Although I hadn’t wanted to listen to Ishi’s lecture, it had penetrated my ears and conscience and lodged itself inside my thick head, anyway. I tried to push his words out and allow that space to be occupied by the visions of Anouhea, but in spite of my best efforts, my beautiful Polynesian princess got crowded out.

  Forced to consider what Ishi had said earlier and already feeling that familiar ache that usually came with parting from someone with so much romantic potential, I finally took a serious look at what he’d said. There was a pattern there and it was the same one that had played out every single time since I’d pissed off Aphrodite at that sorority house. Not a story that needs to be explored any further. Let’s just say that from that point forward, my luck with women had been dismal, at the very best of times.

  In every case, but one, the same pattern had left me grasping after something that made about as much sense as Don Quixote battling windmills. In the case of Marie Da Vinci, however, things had been different, but now even she was gone from my life. The empty ache that I felt in that moment—despite having wrapped up one of the most magical nights I’d ever spent with a woman only a few hours before—bore witness to my partner’s profound insights.

  “I guess you’re right,” I whispered as I finally relaxed and drifted off to sleep.

  It was unlike me to sleep soundly while traveling but the airplane had an easy job of soothing my tired mind and rocking my weary body into a deep slumber. I also rarely dreamed. Maybe it was Spence’s recent ominous missions that sparked the dream.

  I saw my uncle sitting in the backyard of our house on an old bench he favored. He was telling all the children stories as he was apt to do. It was one of my favorites; the story of Captain Morgan and the pirates of Port Royal. I woke up wondering how it was that in all our travels, Ishi and I had still been unable to make it to Jamaica.

  “Tell us a story, Uncle!” we had all clamored. The old man had acted bothered by the request as he usually did, but I always knew better. While my cousins and neighbors would beg and plead, I would sit silently watching the expression on his face turn to delight as he relented and everyone would settle in for the story. To reward my patience, he would always ask me which story he would tell. I think it was because he never tired of telling the story I never tired of hearing.

  “Tell us about Captain Morgan, Uncle.” The other children would cheer loudly, pretending to brandish pirate swords above their heads.

  “Of course, Nick. Of course! Well, children as you probably know, Henry Morgan was born around 1635, in Llanrhymney, Wales. He was the son of a farmer but even in his youth, Henry had no inclination to follow in his father’s footsteps, so as a teenager, he left home to seek his fortune. On his way to London, however, young Henry fell victim to a con artist. He was kidnapped, sold into indentured status and shipped off to the island of Barbados in the West Indies.

  “In the sixteen hundreds, farm labor was a problem on the sugar plantations of the West Indies. The native Arawak and Carib Indians were not hardy enough to survive in slavery so when they were all dead or had run away, Africans and white Europeans were brought to the islands to work. The Africans were sold into slavery but in the case of the Europeans, a system of indenture was often practiced. There were many such young men and women in the Caribbean and North America at the time. A few had taken the option voluntarily, not fully aware of what they were getting themselves into. Many were transported to the colonies to serve for petty crimes or debts owed, sometimes as little as 25 shillings, but others were simply kidnapped like Henry had been.

  “Those who managed to survive the ordeal and regain their freedom were usually released unceremoniously from the plantations. They went from overworked, poorly fed and badly sheltered men to being penniless and homeless; and often left wondering which was worse. Men like Henry Morgan found themselves with no prospects in the New World and no means of returning to their homes.

  “Hardened in their hearts by their ordeal and with embittered souls, they often banded together with others of their own kind and turned to a life of crime to survive. They were the pickpockets in the marketplace and the three-card men in the town square and eventually the highwaymen along the interior roads of the islands. It wasn’t long before they discovered that crimes directed against victims of unfavorable political alliances were not only profitable, but unofficially condoned by the local law keepers.

  “The nationality of those preferred victims tended to change from time to time throughout the course of the century as wars and alliances came and went, but in Henry’s time, due to the political, religious and economic climate in the Caribbean, the targets of choice were Spanish ones.”

  Chapter Three

  The sound of my sat-phone ringing in the basket beside me brought me up out of a deep sleep and had my heart pounding out a panic-driven beat. What the…? It took me another couple of rings before the sound registered, but I was still shaking like an addict trying to break a heroin habit. The voice on the line when I answered it didn’t help me any.

  “Listen carefully. Your flight is being diverted to Panama City. When you land, there will be a small, plain, white, compact car parked in front of the terminal exit. Do not speak to anyone or interact with the driver in any way. The driver will take you to a church where you will wait for further instructions.”

  “Who is this?” I asked, still struggling with the cloudiness in my brain.

  “This is your employer,” was the only response I got before the line went dead.

  “My employer?” I said in a low tone, staring at the screen on the phone. It didn’t sound anything like my employer; Spence or Jacobs. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

  “What the hell was that?” Ishi mumbled. Evidently, the sound of my phone ringing hadn’t sent a surge of adrenaline through his body like it had mine and he’d been allowed to peacefully awaken.

  “I just got a strange call on the phone,” I responded.

  “Okay?” He pronounced the word slowly, waiting for me to follow up with an explanation.

  “We’re being rerouted to Panama City.”

  “Panama?”

  “Actually, this Panama City is in Brazil,” I groused. “Of course, Panama, Ishi!”

  “Why did the boss reroute us to Panama City?” He asked, ignoring my sarcasm. He’d gotten pretty efficient at that over the years.

  “That’s the thing,” I frowned. “It wasn’t Jacobs or Spence on the phone. I’m not sure who it was and I’m not sure if we should even be thinking about carrying out what we were told to do.”

  “Okay. That explanation certainly cleared everything up.” He tried his own hand at sarcasm.

  “Sorry, it was just confusing,” I replied. I repeated what was said in the phone call, so he’d be on the same page with me. “You get what I’m saying?”

  “Why did they go from being out in the open to this super-secret spy crap?”

  “They do move offices a lot; do you think Golden Eye is a clandestine spy agency? I mean, what do we really know about it?”

  Ishi had made a valid point.

  “So, do we do as the caller said?”

  “Who else do you think has the number to these brand new phones?” he asked.

  “When you bring that up, it certainly makes sense that it’s Golden Eye, but this new twist is rather odd.”

  “There’s going to be another dead giveaway pretty soon.”

  “Okay, what?” I asked, needing to catch up with wherever his mind was going.

  “If we land in Panama City, then that part of the message will certainly be true, so we could assume, from that, that the other part is accurate as well.”

  “You know, since you started using computers, I’ve started to like you less and less.”

  “You’re loving me more and more and you know it.”

  “Okay, fine, I have to admit that your new grasp of technology has added a lot to what we do. You’re supposed to be the ignorant, comic, sidekick, so it gets on my nerves when you make so much damned sense.”

  “I’m not the one that wanted to kiss someone on the mouth back in Hawaii.”

  “Hey. It was an impulse. I didn’t do it.”

  “Maybe you’re becoming the ignorant, comic sidekick and I’m the brains of the operation now.”

  “Nice try,” I said, looking out the window. I could see that we were approaching land and what looked like a city, spread out on a narrow strip. It wasn’t my first time flying into Panama City, but the approach was usually from the other side. As the jet got closer, I started recognizing things. I was just about to comment to that effect when Ishi beat me to it.

  “That, my faithful partner, is Panama City,” he announced with authority.

  “Okay, so our flight was diverted. I’m assuming that only Golden Eye would be able to order their own pilots to do that, right? They’d have some code or protocol or something. The pilots wouldn’t just accept a call from anybody and then do as they said, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, when we land, we’re going to find the white car and ride with whoever it is to the church?”

  Ishi shrugged.

  “Is this the stupidest thing we’ve ever done?” I asked, not sure that I wanted to hear the answer.

  “I could think of several others that would rank above it, but, yeah, it probably makes the top ten.”

  “Top three.”

  “Eeeehhh, maybe eight.”

  I considered responding with five, but decided that would just be stupid.

  When we landed in Panama City, we exited the terminal designated for private planes and saw the white compact, sitting exactly where the caller had said it would be.

  “That’s another confirmed part of the given instructions,” Ishi pointed out.

  I didn’t comment. I was nervous about getting into a strange car with a stranger, especially when I really had no idea where we were being taken. I wonder how many churches there are in Panama City?

  “Caine and Cuyamel?” Those were the only words the driver said. He appeared to be Panamanian rather than a super-secret Russian spy judging from his accent.

  “That’s us,” I replied flippantly. “Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us what’s going on?”

  “Get in.” The way he said it, gave me the distinct impression that he had probably just exhausted his knowledge of the English that he’d memorized for the occasion.

  We got in.

  As he pulled into the lane that led out of the private plane terminal and into the main flow of traffic, it suddenly hit me that he could be a super-secret Cuban spy.

  “You aren’t going to introduce yourself?” I asked after some minutes. It was mostly a test.

  “No talk.”

  So, I quit talking. That’s exactly what the voice on the phone had instructed me to do. It wasn’t easy, especially because I was nervous. I tend to want to run my mouth when I’m nervous. I considered carrying on a conversation with Ishi, but decided that if we didn’t know anything about our driver, then it might be better if he didn’t know anything about us.

  We traveled through Panama City, making enough turns in all different directions that it would be nearly impossible for either Ishi or me to figure out where we were going. No doubt, our driver had been told to take the longest, slowest route he could find for getting us to wherever our destination was.

  Having completely lost my bearings, especially as a person who always knew where I was, made me even more nervous than I’d already been. I glanced at Ishi at least a hundred times during our drive. He was as much on edge as I was. I think we’ve topped our stupidest-things-we’ve-ever done list.

  When what seemed like hours of making turns in every neighborhood in Panama City finally came to an end, the car slowed in front of a small church in what appeared to be the roughest part of town. I couldn’t have put together enough saliva to spit by the time the driver pulled to the curb, stopped and waved a hand toward the church.

  “Go. I wait.”

  After glancing at Ishi, I pulled the handle on the door, opened it and stepped out. Thank God, my ever present partner did the same.

  Chapter Four

  “Okay, so killing someone in a church is supposed to be like the worst thing you could ever do, right?” I said in a low tone as Ishi and I approached the arched double doors of what was, in reality, only a little bigger than a common chapel.

  Ishi shrugged.

  “See,” I answered, forcing an uncomfortable smile to my lips. “That’s why I’m the leader and you’re the sidekick.”

  Without giving a response, Ishi reached for the handle, pulled the door open and stepped inside. I’d been in churches before and this one wasn’t any different. There was a small vestibule inside the doors and then about 20 rows of pews on each side of an aisle leading to the altar area, which featured its typical lectern, Eucharist table and the chairs for the priest and his attendant to sit in. Above the Eucharist table was a large, round stained glass window with Christ on the cross looking down upon the congregation.

  Instinctively, we crossed ourselves, and then started down the aisle toward the front. The only sound in the empty sanctuary was that of our footsteps on the terrazzo floor. When we reached the space between the altar and the first row of pews, we stopped and turned to look at each other.

  “Okay, what now?” Ishi asked in a hushed tone. It always seemed better to talk that way in an empty church. Maybe there was some commandment somewhere instructing people to speak that way.

  “If this gets any weirder, then maybe we ought to pray,” I replied.

  “Nicholas Caine and Ishi Cuyamel?” We heard the baritone voice echo through the church, but didn’t see anyone at first. For a moment, I wondered if it was God; after all, He was the only one who could speak that loudly in a church.

  “Yes,” we responded together, turning a full circle in search of the speaker.

  “Come with us,” the man said, stepping forward from off to our left. At the same moment, three other men materialized from the shadows. We were, effectively, surrounded by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, The Rock and that dude who played Jaws in the James Bond movies. Okay, not the actual guys, but you know the type. Each one of them could have surrounded us by themselves.

  We went with them.

  I’d always wondered what was through those doors behind the altar and I was about to find out. The man who had spoken led us to one of the doors, opened it and allowed us to pass through, followed, of course, by the other three monsters.

  “Put these on,” the same guy said, extending black bags toward each of us that were meant to go over our heads. Evidently, whatever was behind those doors isn’t meant to be seen.

  Ishi and I put the bags over our heads.

  We were escorted, though I think my feet only touched the ground a half dozen times during the trip, with a monster on each side of us. We were put into a van and sat quietly while we were driven through Panama City for what seemed like another hour. When the van finally stopped, we were escorted out of it and, probably through a service entrance, into a building that neither of us ever saw. Then we were unceremoniously pushed into two chairs.

  “Remove the hoods, please,” the familiar voice of William Spence said.

  Thankfully, the light in the room was dim or that sudden burst of light would have been a killer on eyes that had been without use for quite some time. I looked around and saw the four monsters step back to the wall behind us and stand like they were at parade rest.

  “What’s with the goons and all the spy versus spy bullshit?” I asked, having wanted an explanation since I’d received the phone call.

  “Deniability,” he answered.

  “And the goons?”

  “Insurance.”

  “Can I have something other than one-word answers, please?”

  “Fine,” Spence said, rising from the chair behind the desk, walking around to the front and leaning on it. “I’ve got an operation for the two of you that’s outside of our normal purview.”