Steve Berry: The Columbus Affair: A Novel

“Maybe I’ll get to see her soon, too,” he muttered.

His ex-wife had died two years ago in a car crash.

That was the last time he and his daughter spoke, her words loud and clear. “Get out. She would not want you here.”

And he’d left the funeral.

He stared again at the gun, his finger on the trigger. He steeled himself, grabbed a breath, and nestled the barrel to his temple. He was left-handed, like nearly every Sagan. His uncle, a former professional baseball player, had told him as a child that if he could learn to throw a curveball he’d make a fortune in the major leagues. Talented lefthanders were rare.

But he’d failed at sports, too.

He brought the barrel to his temple.

The metal touched his skin.

He closed his eyes and tightened his finger on the trigger, imagining how his obituary would start. Tuesday, March 5, former investigative journalist Tom Sagan took his own life at his parents’ home in Mount Dora, Florida .

A little more pressure and—

Rap. Rap. Rap .

He opened his eyes.

A man stood outside the front window, close enough to the panes for Tom to see the face—older than himself, clean-cut, distinguished—and the man’s right hand.

Which held a photograph, pressed to the glass.

He focused on the image of a young woman lying down, arms and feet extended.

As if bound.

He knew the face.

His daughter.

Alle.

CHAPTER TWO

ALLE BECKET LAY ON THE BED, ARMS AND FEET TIED TO THE RAILS. A strip of tape sealed her mouth, which forced her to breathe rapidly through her nose. The small room was dark and unnerved her.

Calm down , she told herself.

Her thoughts centered on her father.

Thomas Peter Sagan.

Their last names were different thanks to a marriage she’d tried three years ago, just after her grandfather, Abiram, had died. Bad idea all the way around, especially when her new husband decided that a ring on his finger entitled him to carte blanche use of her credit cards. The marriage had lasted ninety days. The divorce took another thirty. Paying off those balances required two years.

But she’d done it.

Her mother taught her that owing people was not a good thing. She liked to think that her mother had provided her with character. God knows it had not come from her father. Her memories of him were terrible. She was twenty-five years old and could not remember a single time the man had ever said he loved her.

“Why did you marry him?”

“We were young, Alle, and in love, and we had many good years together before the bad ones came. It was a secure life.”

Not until her own marriage had she understood the value of security. Utter turmoil was a better description for that short union. All she took away was the last name, because anything was better than Sagan. Simply hearing it turned her stomach. If she was going to be reminded of failure, at least let it be of an ex-husband who had, on occasion—especially during those six days in the Turks and Caicos—provided lasting memories.

She tested the restraints holding her arms. Her muscles ached. She worked out the kinks and readjusted herself. An open window allowed cool air inside, but sweat beaded her brow and the back of her shirt was damp against the bare mattress. The few lingering smells were not pleasant, and she wondered who else had lain here before her.

She did not like the feeling of helplessness her predicament provided.

So she forced her mind back to her mother, a loving woman who’d doted on her and made sure she’d earned the grades necessary to make it into Brown University, then graduate school. History had always been a passion, especially post-Columbus America, the time between 1492 and 1800, when Europe forced the Old World onto the New.

Her mother had also personally excelled, recovering from the hurt of the divorce and finding a new husband. He’d been an orthopedic surgeon, a loving man who’d cared for them both, 180 degrees away from her father.

That marriage had been a success.

But two years ago a careless driver with a suspended license ran a stop sign and ended her mother’s life.

She missed her terribly.

The funeral remained vivid in her mind, thanks to her father’s unexpected appearance.

“Get out. She wouldn’t want you here,” she told him loudly enough for the mourners to hear .

“I came to say goodbye.”

“You did that long ago when you wrote us both off.”

“You have no idea what I did.”

“You only get one chance to raise your child. To be a husband. A father. You blew yours. Leave.”

She recalled his face. The blank expression that revealed little about what lay beneath. As a youngster she’d always wondered what he thought.

Not anymore. What did it matter?

She tugged again at the restraints.

Actually, it might matter a great deal.

CHAPTER THREE

BÉNE ROWE LISTENED FOR HIS DOGS, PRIZED BLOODHOUNDS OF expensive stock. They were first imported to Jamaica from Cuba three hundred years ago, descendants of hounds ferried across the Atlantic by Columbus. One celebrated story told of how, during Ferdinand and Isabella’s successful fight to retake Grenada from the Moors, the great beasts had feasted on Arab children abandoned at the doors of mosques. That supposedly happened barely a month before the bastard Columbus first sailed to America.

And changed everything.

“ Da dogs are close,” he said to his companions, both trusted lieutenants. “Mighty close. Hear the bark. It quickens.” He flashed a smile of shiny white teeth, on which he’d spent a lot of money. “Dem like it when the end nears.”

He mixed his English with patois, knowing that his men were more comfortable with the common dialect—a mutilation of English, African, and Arawak. He preferred proper English, a habit ingrained into him during his school days and insisted upon by his mother. A bit uncommon for him and her since, generally, they liked the old ways.

His two men carried rifles as they trudged the Jamaican high ground into what the Spanish had named the Sierras de Bastidas—fortified mountains. His ancestors, runaway slaves, had used the hills as a fortress against their former masters. They’d called themselves Katawud, Yenkunkun, Chankofi. Some say the Spanish named those fugitives cimarrons —untamed, wild—or marrans , the label given to hunters of sows and hogs. Others credited the French word marron , which meant “runaway slave.” No matter the source, the English eventually mangled the word into Maroons.

Which stuck.

Those industrious people built towns named for their founders—Trelawny, Accompong, Scott’s Hall, Moore, and Charles. They mated with native Taino women and forged paths through virgin wilderness, fighting pirates who raided Jamaica with regularity.

The mountains became their home, the forests their allies.

“I hear Big Nanny,” he told them. “That high yelp. It’s her. She be a leader. Always has been.”

He’d named her for Grandy Nanny, a Maroon chieftainess of the 18th century who became a great spiritual and military leader. Her likeness now appeared on the Jamaican $500 note, though its image was purely imaginative. No accurate description or portrait of her existed—only legends.

He envisioned the scene half a kilometer away. The dogs—equal to the mastiff in bulk, the bloodhound in agility, and the bulldog in courage—red, tawny, and spotted with bristled coats, running aligned, all four behind Big Nanny. She never allowed any of the males to dart ahead, and, as with her namesake before her, none challenged her authority. One that tried had ended up with a broken neck from her powerful jaws.