29 May
Casa Grande Brugg
Dunmore Town
North Eleuthera
Bahamas
Macaulay watched as the tour group led by Brugg came back down the main staircase and began to disperse into the great hall. The duchess of Lancaster separated from her husband and came toward him.
“Where is Winifred?” she asked with a worried tone, looking around for her Yorkshire terrier.
“She needed to relieve herself,” said Macaulay with a reassuring grin. “It’s raining quite hard, so I asked one of the staff to take her for a walk on the covered terrace.”
“Excellent,” she said. “I’ll be back to pick her up as soon as we finish dinner. I am certain that she will wish to repay your kindness with a special gratuity.”
“Thank her for me, Your Grace,” he said, glancing back up the empty staircase and wondering why Lexy had not returned with the others.
As the orchestra began to play a Strauss waltz, Varna led Juwan by the hand into the center of the great hall. The crowd of guests parted to let them through. They had practiced the dance together for two weeks.
When they reached the dance floor, Juwan felt Varna’s right arm reach around behind his back. Juwan shut his eyes. As the waltz music reached the precise moment, Varna began leading him in ever-widening circles across the open floor. Juwan kept his eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable laughter that would end the dance as well as the life of the man or woman who did it.
Macaulay suddenly heard the heavy splatter of rain on flagstone and glanced over to see the front door opening. Three men strode quickly into the foyer under wide umbrellas and stopped briefly to remove their raincoats.
From photographs Barnaby had shown him in New York, Macaulay recognized two of them as Zhou Shen Wui and his son, Li. Macaulay turned away from the bar toward the cases of mixer as they strode past his serving station to the entrance to the great hall. The Chinese stopped when they got to the edge of the dance floor and saw the two men dancing.
Li Shen Wui remembered being at a circus in Shanghai as a boy where he had seen a gigantic trained bear dancing with a midget. He was unable to stifle a laugh. Juwan’s ears pricked up at the thin cackling sound and he opened his eyes to see the group of Chinese standing at the entrance. One of them was grinning at him like a spotted hyena.
Zhou Shen Wui issued a stern, one-word rebuke and Li regained his composure as Juwan stopped dancing and came toward them. From the look on Brugg’s face, Macaulay thought that the big man was going to murder the younger Chinese in front of the whole crowd. As he was about to reach him, his dancing partner sped ahead and began shaking the younger Chinese man’s hand.
“I’m Varna. Welcome to Casa Grande Brugg,” he said with an inviting smile.
Li found himself drawn to the younger man immediately. They were the same physical type, short, muscular, with swimmers’ bodies, one of a piece, although Varna had a Latin flavor to his handsome pug-nosed face and Li a Chinese caste.
The rest of the couples began to dance and the tension at the edge of the floor slowly ebbed. The duke and duchess of Lancaster stopped on their way to the buffet and were introduced to Zhou and his son.
“I have always adored the Chinese,” said the duchess. “When we lived in Hong Kong, our children’s school had two Chinese cleaning people.”
Macaulay took advantage of the lull to grab one of the metal serving trays filled with premixed drinks from a waitress. Stepping past the serving station, he headed up the main staircase alone.
There was no one in the broad hallway on the second floor and he put down the tray. Most of the doors of the rooms stood open. He poked his head into all of them, but the rooms were empty. Two doors were locked, but they yielded easily to his jury-rigged bump key. They were entertainment rooms and empty too.
The third floor reflected the same pattern, mostly open doorways and brightly lit parlors, along with a billiard room and a small movie theater. He was about to head up the staircase to the fourth floor when he noticed a small side corridor leading down a dark passageway. The first door he came to was closed. He stood outside it for a moment and listened.
In the distance, he thought he heard a police siren, nothing from inside the room. He turned the handle, but it was locked. He quietly inserted the bump key in the hole and was about to turn it when he heard a voice from beyond the door. The voice wasn’t talking. The sound it made was more like a moaning wail followed by a low howl of outrage.
He turned the bump key, but this time it wouldn’t engage. He kept twisting it against the locking pins to move the cylinder, but they didn’t budge. When he turned it even harder, the blade of the fillet knife snapped off. From beyond the door, the first voice was replaced by a second one, this one deeper, issuing a snort of laughter.
Macaulay took three steps back to the opposite wall and then hurled his right shoulder into the spot where the door lock met the jamb. It splintered and gave way. A moment later he was in the room.
The space was filled with the vibration noise of a compressor. As he glanced down, his eyes registered the four-foot-square opening in the floor. Beyond it were standing shelves full of canned goods and a big commercial refrigerator along the far wall. In between them, a man was standing with his back to the door.
He had removed his uniform coat, and his trousers were down around his shoes. Taking a step forward, Macaulay saw there was a woman pinned to the table. She was bent forward and the man was behind her holding a stiletto to her throat. Lexy was still wearing her long black cocktail dress. The man was trying to raise the hem above her thighs with his free hand.
Hearing the door splinter, the man turned away from her and brought the stiletto around to face Macaulay in a smooth underhand motion. Macaulay was about to launch himself across the room when he saw Lexy slide free from the table. Still in a low crouch, she turned and drove her shoulder into the man’s back.
The man stumbled toward him, his eyes staring down at the hole in the floor with abject terror, unable to free himself from the pants shackling his ankles above his two-toned black-and-white shoes. With short stutter steps, he lost his balance and scuttled to the opening, trying desperately to stop.
“Mère de Dieu,” Bardot cried as he tiptoed over the edge and dropped straight down.
Macaulay stepped forward in time to see him land in a huge tank of standing water. It looked as though fish were swimming in it. A few moments later, the surface of the water was alive and churning from the man’s thrashing arms and legs.
Lexy came into Macaulay’s arms. They held each other as the man’s single piercing scream died away and was replaced by the noise of the compressor.
“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” said Macaulay as the water beneath them turned pink and then bright red.
• • •
“Allow me to introduce my son, Li Shen Wui, and Colonel Mu,” said Zhou as the three Chinese settled into the couches flanking the fireplace in Juwan’s first-floor study. “I understand that you have located the people we have been searching for.”
Li looked up at the oil painting above the marble mantelpiece. It was a life-size rendering of a woman who looked like Juwan Brugg and appeared to be wearing a tent. He stifled another urge to laugh as Juwan stood beneath it.
“I only told Sir Henry to report to you that I believe the three people you are seeking are here in Dunmore Town,” he said. “We expect them to be enjoying my hospitality quite soon. One of their friends is already providing some valuable information about their activities as we speak.”
“I am very gratified by your efforts, Mr. Brugg,” said Zhou. “Once you turn them over to me, you will be rewarded well beyond the terms of the original finder’s fee.”
“What makes them worth five hundred thousand dollars?” asked Juwan.
Zhou gazed up and said, “Two of them are archaeologists who we are hoping to honor with a lifetime achievement award.”
Juwan smiled down at him benevolently. “And that is why you are accompanied by a commando team?”
“One can never be confident about one’s safety in this dangerous world.”
“You should know that the people you are seeking have been diving on an old shipwreck off the Devil’s Backbone,” he said. “I assume that this has nothing to do with your plans to honor them.”
“Of course, we are interested in all their achievements.”
It was Juwan’s turn to laugh. “Then we will keep that information to ourselves until you decide to share your real interest with me,” he said, looking up to see Black Mamba silently enter the study through the French doors leading from the terrace.
He watched as she gave him a thumbs-down.
“Gentlemen, I would like to introduce my mother,” said Juwan.
• • •
Bob Littlefrost stood guard outside the door after they gathered to plan their next moves in the servants’ bathroom off the kitchen. While Lexy changed back into her catering uniform in one of the stalls, Macaulay told Barnaby and Mike McGandy about the confrontation with Brugg’s guard commander and the fight leading to his death.
“We stopped on the second floor to look at the aquarium,” said Macaulay. “The circulation system had already cleared the water of any trace of blood. If there was anything left of him, we didn’t see it through the glass.”
Lexy emerged from the stall to tell them what she had seen of the guard barracks from the balcony, including the body of the naked man being dumped in the back of one of the guard vehicles.
“You’re sure it wasn’t Carlos?” asked Barnaby.
“He was too big,” she said. “But if he was imprisoned there, it probably means that Carlos is there too.”
“You said the rear entrance is guarded?” asked McGandy.
“Two of them,” said Lexy.
“We’re going to need a diversion,” said Macaulay.
“I have some thoughts on that,” said Barnaby.
“Let’s hear them.”
“I need to find a way to lure all the bird saviors down to Brugg’s mortuary in the cellar and to do it without leaving my fingerprints,” said Barnaby. “We obviously need to get out of here without a trace so Mr. Littlefrost isn’t implicated.”
“To my knowledge, only Bardot discovered that we were here,” said Lexy.
“Unless he has already shared that information with Brugg and his other lieutenants,” said Macaulay.
“I don’t think he had the time,” said Lexy with an involuntary shudder.
“We have to go forward on that assumption,” said Barnaby, heading for the door. “Make your preparations for getting across the compound to the guard barracks to release Carlos. I’ll focus on the diversion. If I can make it work, how will I send a signal to you across the compound?”
Macaulay remembered the power utility room off the passageway from the kitchen. He told Barnaby what it contained and where to find it.
“I already unlocked the door,” said Macaulay. “After you start the diversion, you’ll need to disable it somehow.”
“I know what to do,” said Barnaby. “I’m off the grid with my own power system back in Cambridge.”
Macaulay handed Bardot’s uniform coat and hat to Mike McGandy.
“This might give you some protective coloring,” he said.
“I already have the right coloring,” said McGandy with a grin.