“Hey, can’t win ’em all. If every treasure hunt was a success it wouldn’t be worth searching for.”
Caitlyn brought them all water. “Why not check the maps again?”
Crouch studied his mud-caked fingers. “First, a wash I think.”
“You and me both,” Alicia murmured, then flicked her head up. “But not together!”
They wandered down the free-flowing brook. Crouch stopped first around a slight bend, courteously letting her stroll further away to find some privacy. When Alicia came across a suitable place, she knelt in the stream and took her time washing. It was a perfunctory cleansing; she was at heart a soldier and would never let herself become too vulnerable in such an open place. She made do with what she had, and that was good enough.
As they returned to camp, Russo suddenly gave out a yell. “Oh, hell!”
Alicia sprang into action, racing over to the big man and signaling Healey to take a closer look at the perimeter.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But it sure as hell ain’t treasure.”
Of course, Russo did know. He was waiting for Alicia and Crouch to come over before indicating his find. Caitlyn came up as they stared in silence.
“Bones,” Alicia said, and felt a little shiver despite the increasing warmth of the day.
“Old bones,” Caitlyn said. “This might actually make sense.”
“Why? How can you tell?”
“Well, obviously I can’t tell the exact date they were placed here but looking at the condition I’d have to say a considerable time ago. And they were buried. And see the strongbox underneath? Somebody’s going to have to grab that.”
Russo didn’t hesitate, but carefully and respectfully placed the bones aside and hefted the strongbox. It was a basic, metal container with a rudimentary lock, also clearly many years old. He brought it out of the hole and placed it on the ground.
“Wait,” Crouch said as the soldier gripped the lid. “Caitlyn? What did you mean when you said this makes sense?”
“I did a bit of digging of my own,” Caitlyn said with a smile. “The part about the Black Book bugged me. Why include it? Why talk about burying it? Surely it had to have some significance to Morgan and his treasures.”
“And what is a black book?” Crouch asked.
Alicia reached down to help Russo back out of the hole as Caitlyn spoke.
“It started as far back as the 1300s and was a listing of maritime laws and codes of conduct. Offenders were always punished hard. To the pirates it was a collection, physical or verbal, of those of their own kin that committed crimes against them. Their ‘black book’ was buried here.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned that before we started digging?” Alicia asked.
“Well, I wasn’t sure. And you all seemed so eager.”
“And now we know.” Crouch nodded at Russo, who tore the worn metal apart with his bare hands. The edges were sharp and ragged, and Russo took his time. Inside, they found a sheaf of old parchment, partly covered in a thick, black script. Crouch stared at it hard but didn’t dare touch it.
“We can’t mess with this,” he said. “The experts should be allowed to figure it out. But I’ll say one thing for sure — there’s no treasure here.”
“The map was an account of Morgan burying the transgressors,” Caitlyn said. “Maybe we should move on to the next one.”
“Not exactly,” Crouch said. “There was more.”
He moved away and dug out the maps once more. Alicia walked with him. Healey popped his head around a tree to report the all clear and then vanished once more. Still, they were undisturbed.
“Carried away it was, inland with our blood money. The channel behind, the forest ahead. We returned soon enough. Below decks among timber spars it was sent, but the trees they tell a story all their own. Our Black Book, buried there. As the crow flies, through two stands and at the foot of the hill.”
“Now it makes sense,” Alicia said with a grin.
“Always does when you know the answer,” Crouch said off-handedly. He was concentrating on the map. “Come with me. All of you.”
The team gathered as quickly as they could, Russo still slapping at his trousers to remove clinging mud and shrugging into a T-shirt. Backpacks were hefted and Caitlyn pointed out the precariousness of their find.
“Don’t worry. We’ll report it as soon as we can. Problem is, we’re backed into a corner here with nowhere to go.”
“You could always ask a few contacts to find Jensen,” Alicia suggested. “Cut out the treasure hunt.”
Crouch looked at her as if she might be mad. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s why we’re here.”
Alicia sighed. She knew his love of treasure hunting came from a rich youth reading old books and getting into trouble. She also knew he’d dreamed of a job like this through decades of army duties. The joy, for Crouch, was the hunt itself.
Their boss took them back toward the old fort and the waters beyond. Alicia picked out several yachts bobbing on the surface, their polished hulls and golden ornaments shining under a rising sun, their white sails billowing. Closer still, half a dozen tourists walked the ruins of the old castle, cameras dangling around their necks.
Crouch stared at the harbor.
“Imagine it. Half a dozen pirate ships at anchor, day and night for two months. Stocked full with provisions, goods to barter and pirate plunder. Untold wealth. Surrounded by it every moment, it would make a man become suspicious. On edge. It could make a man so distrustful he might come up with a crazy, brilliant plan.”
“What plan?” Russo asked.
“Scupper a ship. Let it go down, the treasure with it.”
Alicia frowned. “How? What? I mean… how would they ever retrieve it?”
“It’s a shallow bay. Remember what Caitlyn said? Morgan and his men had to sail upriver by boat to take out the forts. They would have sailed the ships in very carefully a bit later.”
“Wouldn’t people have noticed a sinking ship?” Caitlyn asked.
“Undoubtedly. But who would question it? Most of the locals probably welcomed the sight of it. Invent some kind of story. Mutiny. Drunken men. Whatever. And let it all die down. There’s even the possibility that the men Morgan buried with the Black Book were thieves, trying to steal some of the treasure, which drove him to come up with this audacious plan.”
“All right. But what’s your evidence?” Caitlyn asked.
“The map. The script. Below decks on timber spars it was sent.”
Alicia shook her head. “That’s pretty vague, boss.”
“Of course it is. It’s meant to be vague. A pirate isn’t about to make it easy for you. But timber spars are how a ship ends up on the bottom of the sea when it’s scuppered and the word sent—I believe means exactly what it says.”
Alicia turned her face toward the bay. “So it’s out there? Somewhere.”
“I believe so. Maybe a spot of research would confirm the number of ships, though I doubt we’d get lucky enough to see their positions. In any case they’d be as close to shore as possible. Pirates weren’t known for putting in extra work.”
“So how do we find out?”
Crouch indicated an area in the distance where rows of huts and makeshift shopfronts had been erected on the beach. “We rent diving gear.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the spirit of diving for treasure the sea bottom gave up very little. Alicia remembered some figure about there being over a million shipwrecks on the sea floor, with 70 percent of them not found. In three recent finds alone estimators guessed they’d netted $4.5 billion in loot. Somebody once said, “We know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the sea. It’s the last frontier.”