When they
reached the door to Lorenzo’s ill-gotten treasure stash Jonathan turned and
smiled at his guard while poking a finger at his own chest. “Jonathan.” Putting
on his best boyish grin, he motioned the plodding man to follow him in. When
the man shook his head, he pointed again at his chest, “Jonathan,” and then
added, “Your mother’s a whore.”
After what felt like forever, the pardoned
killer from Isla Margarita shrugged his shoulders and nodded receiving a grateful
thumbs-up in return. …
… Despite her
delight of seeing her husband come in Naunet looked up from her notes and
calmly waited until Jonathan reached her desk.
“How nice to see
you,” she said. A quick sideways glance at B. Stiff hunkered down on one of the
packing grates warned Jonathan they were not alone.
“I just wondered
how you were getting along. Anything on these tablets about Crete?” Jonathan
asked emphasizing the last word.
“I gleaned some
hints about it,” Naunet answered with slightly arched eyebrows. “Though
definitely not Minoan.”
“I remember
something from the Book of Samuel.” Again Jonathan pronounced the last word
slowly. “It spoke about hope being afloat. Or, as we say in Spanish,” he
grinned as if he were saying something funny, “La esperanza está a flote.”
Naunet stared at
her husband guessing more than seeing him nod. She ventured, “I don’t think
Samuel wrote anything about Crete. As I recall, he wrote about the Arc.”
“Good old
Samuel,” Jonathan nodded, this time openly. “It is possible he followed the Arc
to Crete.” He saw Naunet’s eyes grow wide and answered her unspoken question
with another slight nod.
“What are you
two blabbing about?” B. Stiff was working his way toward them when the ship
suddenly lurched forward. …
The sudden movement
threw B. Stiff off balance. To prevent from brushing against a large painting
to his left, the little man grabbed onto the nearest handhold. It turned out to
be the protruding penis of one of the prone Greek statuary he was supposed to
be looking after—besides spying on Naunet. With an audible crack, the shiny
marble phallus detached itself from its curly base.
“Oops,” Jonathan
grinned, “I guess even the magic of your name won’t put Humpty-Dumpty back
together again.” …
“You clumsy
oaf!”
None of them had
heard Jabari slide into the huge room. “What have you done! This is a priceless
relic!”
The look on the
man’s face as he held the ancient artifact at arm’s length was priceless in
itself and both Jonathan and Naunet tried hard not to burst out laughing.
Jabari, on the
other hand, found no humor in the situation and continued to berate the man. As
with his former self, Dr. Jabari El-Masri’s explosive anger produced the
desired effect. The grinning guard had just time enough to step aside as a
terrified B. Stiff, clutching his precious penis, yanked the door open and fled
out into the corridor.
Jabari motioned
to the Wilkinses. “What a lucky break, if you pardon the pun.” He bent over
Naunet’s desk pretending to look at some of the photographs. “We need to talk.
As you know, we are all in the same boat …”
“No kidding,”
Jonathan challenged.
“We need to
trust each other and exchange ideas how we can survive this ordeal together.”
“Sure we do.”
Jonathan’s sarcasm was not lost on Jabari who chose to ignore it.
“I mean it,
Jonathan.” He waved an impatient hand at the handsome American wondering how
best to tell them what was on his mind. “We need to trust and help each other,
and protect each other’s back. You have to back me up.”
“Against
any wall in particular?” Whatever scheme the Egyptian had in mind, Jonathan was
not ready to let him off so easily.
“Jonathan!
We don’t have time for your jokes. I beg you. Please, both of you, listen to
me.” …
“It’s
about Crete.” Jabari said. “Or rather what I told Lorenzo about the Ideon
Cave.”
“Are
we back to your belief you sprung from Zeus’s loins?”
“Jonathan, this
is serious. And, no, I did not tell him about that. Well, not all of it,
anyway.” Jabari turned to Naunet. “It’s about the crystal you wore around your
neck when you boarded this ship.”
“I would hardly
put it that way, Jabari. I didn’t exactly board this crate voluntarily,” Naunet
snapped.
“I am truly
sorry, my dear. But tell me. Do you recall anything special about the crystal
when you handled it? Perhaps when you touched it for the first time?” …
She decided not
to say anything until she found out what Jabari was up to. “Special? In what
way?”
“Perhaps
peculiar would be a better word. A certain property. A strong
light or a variance in temperature.” Jabari too was testing the waters before
giving too much away.
“I think you better let us know what you have in mind.
No telling how long we’ll be left alone in here.” Jonathan glanced at the guard
leaning against the door. He gave the man one of his thumbs-up and called out,
“Your mother’s a whore.”
The guard nodded happily before going back to looking
bored.
“I beg your pardon!” Jabari stiffened.
“Just making sure the guy doesn’t understand English,”
Jonathan grinned, not altogether displeased with himself despite Naunet’s quiet
‘Jon!’ …
* * *
For once, Jonathan itched to get back to the tunnel to
tell Bill about the new developments.
Before he did so, he felt the need for fresh air. He had always done his
best thinking staring out at the sea. Through sign language he made his
ever-present burly guard understand. Once outside, he leaned over railing and
gulped salt air into his lungs. It took him a moment to feel the guard behind
him standing so close they almost touched. Good
God, don’t tell me this prison rat has designs on me. He turned to get his
rear end out of its danger zone.
Now, the two were face to face and the guard poked him
hard in the chest. “Jonathan!” Then the man touched his own chest. “Vergil.”
“Vergil. Well, what do you know. The man has a name,” Jonathan
grinned. As pleasantly as possible he added, “And your mother’s still a whore.”
The guard grinned back. “That maybe so. But next time
I’ll throw you overboard.”
If there was ever an oh-shit moment, this was it.
Jonathan was so shocked to hear an unmistakable New York accent all he could
manage was, “Brooklyn?”
“The Bronx.” Vergil was obviously enjoying the moment.
Not for the first time, Jonathan noticed the height of
the man, unusual for someone he had taken as a native Venezuelan; still, there
was a swarthy Latin look about him.
“So why were you in a Venezuelan prison?”
The man’s lips stretched into a wide grin. “For raping
my mother.”
Jonathan pushed himself away from the railing and inched
his back against the peeling superstructure. “Shit, man. You might have told
me.”
”That I’m a rapist? Or that I know what’s going on?”
“Preferably both. By the way, what is going on?” It was worth a try. Anything to stave off real or
imagined attention from a sex-starved jailbird.
“You’ll find out.” The man put his dinner-plate hands on
Jonathan’s shoulders and spun him around as if he were a child’s dreydel.
Sphincter-clenching time again! To Jonathan’s relief, his guard laughed,
“Relax, man. I only do women. Besides, we wouldn’t have time to enjoy it. I
need to get you back to your tunnel before we both get in trouble.”
When they reached the vault, the guard ratcheted the
lock. Before he pulled the heavy door open he stabbed a hard finger into
Jonathan’s chest. “Jonathan,” he grinned and nodded in the imbecilic way he
used to. “You were right. My mother was a whore. From Puerto Rico. Perhaps that’s
why she named me Vergil. She told me it means rod bearer. I am sure her
interpretation and mine are quite different.” He gave his hips a couple of
forward thrusts. “But I didn’t rape her. Lucky for me, she died before I got
interested in sex.”
“That’s comforting,” Jonathan coughed. “So, what were
you in for, really?”
“You could call it bad timing. Being too impatient.”
Was there a wink? Jonathan couldn’t be sure.
“We were getting so good at stealing, me and my buddies
got sloppy. That’s how we wound up in that shithole of a jail.”
Jonathan tried to figure out why Lorenzo might have had
this guy released from Isla Margarita’s notorious San Antonio prison. He
decided to take a stab at it. “So, you were stealing art for Lorenzo?”
“No, man,” Vergil laughed. “We let him think we were
ruthless killers. Well, sometimes, you could say we were. He hired the lot of
us.”
The man stepped again uncomfortably close toward
Jonathan who expected anything but what came next.
“We weren’t stealing art. We were stealing ships.
Containers, trawlers, yachts, even a tanker or two. Twenty-five years we got,
for what their crappy court called piracy on the high seas. And here we are,
stuck on another stinking rats nest without women.” A disturbing gleam stole
into the man’s eyes. “Say, how would you consider giving your new friend a
break?”
“Afraid I don’t do men,” Jonathan said through his
teeth.
The guard broke into laughter as if he had just heard a
great joke. “Not you, dummy. I was thinking of your woman.”
It took all of Jonathan’s willpower not to hit the
insolent bastard in the face. Instead, he gave the door such a violent push
that he literally tumbled into the ballast tunnel. Half embarrassed and five
times as furious, he shoved the heavy steel shut with his foot slamming it into
the guard’s face. At least, the swine had the decency not to follow.
Bill stood in front of their work table delicately
filing away at something he kept turning around in his hand. Jonathan assumed
it was a new thick bolt for the metal frames. As he went closer he saw it was
B. Stiff’s guillotined piece of marble. At that instant, what had just
transpired outside the tunnel hit him squarely in the nuts.
“God-damn-it, Bill! Stop playing with your dick! We’re
sitting on a powder keg here.”
The imperturbable Dr. William Jefferson Browning gently
laid the exquisite penis down. He then carefully positioned his flat file in
front so it would not roll off the table. Looking over the rim of his bifocals
he put an arm around his younger colleague’s shoulders.
“In that case, my friend, I strongly suggest you get a
longer fuse.”
