THIRTEEN
BOND ISLAND
I knew how I was going to get to Jamaica. It was simple. When John swallowed, it had told me he was lying when he said there were people at Goldeneye who would watch me and kill me if I ever showed up there. At least, I hoped that was what it meant. There was a secret here that John was hiding, maybe a secret inside a secret. A spy among spies?
I knew that I could simply get off the plane in Buffalo and board one back to Jamaica. I’d take a different route this time—Chicago first, then the Caribbean. But was I running out of time? I had just two days left! And just one in Jamaica. More important, was I right about John? If not, lethal people would be waiting for me on that island, and I was a dead man. A dead man! This was no movie. Suddenly, I wondered if it was all worth it. But I had to know about Grandpa. I just had to. He had taught all of us to be brave, and I was going to be brave now.
But what about Angel? What if things didn’t work out? Would I never see her again? I kept wondering if she had sacrificed our relationship—friendship was a better way to put it—for me, for my pursuit of the truth about my grandfather. I was worried that she was obediently going back to that awful house in Paget Parish in order to make it look like we were both defeated when she knew from that glance we’d exchanged that I was on my way to Jamaica. What if she couldn’t get away? Would I be able to accomplish whatever I needed to accomplish without her by my side? She had been an amazing companion, smart and spy-like, and a kind person to boot.
And even when I did get to Jamaica, what would I be able to do? I had so little to go on: the Cuban Missile Crisis and W marked the spot and then, of course, the W itself. I still didn’t have even the remotest idea what those things meant. And I had so little time!
Before I’d departed New York, I had texted Shirley. John was sitting nearby, watching.
Hi sweetheart, looking forward to seeing you, just another two days, can’t wait!
I couldn’t tell her exactly what was going on. Not yet. I would, after I got home. I told Shirley everything these days. It was the best policy. I’d tell her about Angel too. She’d be cool with that. She was pretty secure. I’d just say that Angel was a nice girl, attractive as a person and that was it. That was the truth, wasn’t it? I didn’t think it was a stretcher.
I thought I’d hear from Shirley right away. But I didn’t.
Instead, I spent the flight to Buffalo thinking about the clues, still getting nowhere. When we landed, I booked a flight to Chicago and found a seat in the departures lounge where I could keep my back to the wall. That’s what I’d read spies do: keep everything in front of them so they can’t be taken by surprise. I also didn’t want to run into my dad. He flew out of this airport all the time, and meeting up with him would wreck everything. I’d have to make up a real stretcher to explain my situation to him—a stretcher in the name of doing the right thing, of course.
Hey, Q, I’m in Buffalo.
He answered immediately. Cool, James, I’m on my way! I’ll get Mom to bring me over.
No, I’m not home. I’m at the airport.
Like I said, on my way.
No, don’t come to the airport! I’ll be gone by the time u get here.
Gone?
To Chicago.
Chi town!
Then Jamaica.
Goldeneye?
U got it.
Ah! Solving things?
No. Got questions for u.
Shoot, A-Murph.
Need to know what “W” might mean and “W marked the spot” and more about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Can u help me out with the way the last one connects to spies?
Likely.
Know lots about it?
Definitely.
Ever hear of a guy named Guy Hicks and if he had anything to do with it?
No, will check, text when I know something.
A text came in from Shirley shortly after that. Sounds exciting, was all it said.
My flight to Chicago was delayed, which was super frustrating. I paced around, wasting hours, waiting to hear the announcement that the plane was ready. I’d only been checking texts from Leon and Shirley, so now I took a look at the others. I couldn’t believe what my cousins were telling me. Spencer was running around Toronto on the trail of something pretty bizarre and Bunny, now without a cell and incommunicado, had disappeared. DJ was in London with no time to talk, pursuing secret codes. Steve sounded intense and in love in exotic Spain, and Rennie had somehow found his way from South America to an even more dangerous place, Detroit. Webb just said, in the US, which was almost as ominous as all of the other messages put together. It sounded evasive. But I couldn’t worry about those guys. I had too much on my plate. I had to get to Jamaica as soon as possible.
Finally, I boarded an evening flight, no Dad yet in sight. I’d been to Chicago once, and it was a very cool city too, right up there with New York and Toronto, but I would only see the airport this time.
O’Hare International Airport is huge. In fact, I think it’s one of the biggest in the world. I raced around looking for the next flight to Jamaica, eyes alert for anyone who might be following me. But it was late by then, and the first flight I could get to the Caribbean left at about three in the morning. I didn’t care. I got my luggage and “collectible” gun through customs and then slept for a while in the departures lounge, right near the exit to the plane so they’d rouse me if I was sleeping when my flight was ready to board.
I woke up about forty-five minutes before departure, almost jumping to my feet, obviously on edge. I turned on my phone and went to the Goldeneye site again. I’d been on it about fifty times since JFK, trying to book a room, with no luck. Now, when I tried again, bingo! There was one available. Someone had canceled. And just for tomorrow night! I booked it and then got up and started to pace, absolutely pumped.
But I still hadn’t heard back from Leon. If he couldn’t find a connection between Guy Hicks and the Cuban Missile Crisis, then no one could. His lack of response wasn’t a good thing—sure I had a place at Goldeneye, but I was heading down to Jamaica without a single thing to work with, and the clock was ticking fast.
My first thoughts—in fact, almost all my thoughts—in the darkness on the flight south were about Angel. I wondered what she was planning. Or was she planning anything at all? She likely had no choice but to go home to Paget and stay there until she was able to fly the coop. But would she ever be able to? Did they intend her harm? I hated to think about that, especially given my grandfather’s central role in all of this. But I comforted myself by remembering that John had assured us he was with the “good guys,” and he certainly did seem to have access to classified information through some sort of powerful organization. It couldn’t be a crime syndicate or anything like that; it had to be a group like the CIA or MI6, with its hands on government sources, with information about private citizens. Otherwise, how would he have been able to find us in New York? But then I wondered if a highly organized criminal connected to the mob or some other group might actually be able to do the same. That really gave me the shivers, given that I was flying away from Angel toward Jamaica. She was a young woman who might be in peril, and I wasn’t being much of a hero.
I thought about what had happened just before John had taken me to my flight to Buffalo. He had demanded Angel’s backpack and gone through it thoroughly. And I mean thoroughly. He had examined every inch of it and even checked to make sure there was nothing sewn into the lining. He found her passport but didn’t confiscate it. She’d need it to get through customs in Bermuda. Then he made her stand up, and he frisked her. He did it really fast, keeping his hands away from areas that were inappropriate. He did the whole thing in an instant and with his back to me and I didn’t see Angel after that. I doubted he’d care about her new cell, if he found it. With her on a plane, and us so far away from each other anyway, it was useless to her now. But I was hoping he had missed something else, something in particular.
The sun started coming up as the plane descended over the Caribbean. I could see the Florida Keys. Then we went out over the water, descending slightly, and I could actually spot some boats, ones that must have been awfully big to be spied from tens of thousands of feet in the air. They were probably luxury cruise liners, which made me think of Mom and my aunts. Maybe they were actually in one of those boats. Man, would Mom be blown away if she knew what I was doing.
We continued our descent. Beneath us a huge island came into view. I immediately knew what it was. Cuba. It didn’t look so awful from up here, sitting there in the blue water between America and Jamaica.
Most Americans hate it. Or at least we are supposed to. It is considered a very un-American place, the land of communism and bad old Fidel Castro in our backyard. Many folks have fled from Cuba over the years to get to our “land of the free and home of the brave,” some taking deadly chances on little boats and life rafts to brave the waters of the Caribbean to get to Florida and freedom. Or at least that’s how most of us like to see it. My Canadian cousins, the few who have actually been there on vacations since Canadians have no problems with Cuba at all, said it was a beautiful place, with political issues, yes, and poverty, but no more so than any other Central American country. They also claimed it had better health care than America (though they said “the US,” of course). I didn’t know how to feel about the whole thing. Dad was a Democrat and Mom was a left-wing Democrat (in other words, a Canadian), and they liked the idea of universal health care and didn’t hold strong views about Cuba. They said they hoped that someday America would make its peace with Cuba and we could all go down there on a trip.
But the Cuban Missile Crisis itself was a whole other story. I’d learned a bit about it in school, but I had googled it in New York and again while I waited in Chicago. I found some interesting things. It would have been difficult to find a single American who had good thoughts about Cuba in 1962. That was right in the middle of the Cold War, when the evil Soviet Union and America were almost daily threatening to blow each other up. Both superpowers had the bombs to do it. Spies were everywhere in those days. James Bond was about to spring off Ian Fleming’s pages and onto the big screen and make a huge impact. Everyone west of the Berlin Wall knew that the bad guys in those films were always the ones with the Russian accents. They were always seriously bad dudes and often nuts, bent on world domination. The year before the missile crisis, America had been so desperate to destroy the commie menace in Cuba that they supported the CIA’s attempt to invade the island at a place called the Bay of Pigs. We lost. We don’t like losing. Then, our secret service spotted big Soviet missiles on the ground in Cuba, right next to us, pointed in our direction. President Kennedy just about had a fit. He told Khrushchev to either get rid of them or it was war, and Khrushchev said if we tried to make him it was war. Their sort of war could easily have meant world destruction—the biggest confrontation of all time. It would have made World War II look like a tea party. Our armed forces went on high alert all over the world. People were stocking up on food, preparing to live in bomb shelters and thinking about killing themselves before the bombs got them. It’s hard to imagine now.
But how was Grandpa—or Guy Hicks or Mr. Know—connected to all of that? John had actually said that Know had been involved.
There was no W in Cuba or Missile or Crisis.
As we flew over Cuba toward Jamaica, I could actually see some of the roads and buildings and the countryside from the air. It looked green and beautiful.
Rather than going to Kingston, which was Jamaica’s capital and biggest city, I was flying into Montego Bay. Montego was on the north shore, where the Goldeneye resort was, facing the sea. Once I landed, I wouldn’t have to make my way through heavy traffic to get where I was going. The airport was just east of the town, in the direction of the resort. I could find transportation and start moving. Time was of the essence.
I stared down at Jamaica as we began our final descent. It was about seven in the morning, and people were beginning to move about down there, starting their day. Wikipedia said Jamaica had one of the highest crime rates in the world and lots of problems with poverty. But it also had some awfully rich people and big businesses, and lots of travelers said it was the most beautiful place on earth. (I guess that’s why Ian Fleming lived there when he wasn’t in London—he liked beautiful places and beautiful women.) Jamaica was home to the late Bob Marley, Mom’s favorite musician, just about the coolest guy who ever lived. She had lots of Marley CDs and even videos of him performing. I looked down at the deep-green grasses and palm trees, the beaches and the blue water, and at the colorful homes and clothing so bright I could actually pick it out from above. I heard reggae music in my head and saw images of Marley dancing, his dreadlocks swirling in the air, that radiant smile on his face, the bass pumping like rolling thunder.
But I wasn’t going anywhere that directly reminded me of the reggae king and his gritty reality, nor would it be much like the colorful streets of Montego Bay beneath me. My destination was a couple of hours away on this resort-filled northern coast: Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming had gone every time he wanted to write a Bond novel, where he lived during those exciting days in the early sixties, in that intense Cold War era. The resort was built around his old place. It was as expensive and romantic as any tourist attraction on the island, and that was saying something.
I couldn’t believe the blast of hot air that hit me when I walked out of the air-conditioned terminal. It was like being in a sauna, even at eight o’clock in the morning and less than forty-eight hours before New Year’s Eve. The taxi and transit area was noisy, filled with people hawking things, yelling for passengers, no one shy and everyone dressed in the most colorful clothes this side of Miami Beach. The Goldeneye website had said I could get a shuttle out to the resort, and I saw it almost immediately. It occupied a central place in the lineup and was painted bright white with the resort name on the side; it looked to be about half full when I boarded.
I made my way toward the back. I was missing Angel, and it struck me that sitting toward the rear of the vehicle would be the sort of thing she would do. So I did too. A small passenger was trudging along in front of me and took a place behind me. I threw myself onto my seat and moved over to the window. I had both seats to myself, with my backpack on the rack above me. I was going to try to enjoy the scenery on the way out, even though I knew I had just one day to solve everything. I glanced over my shoulder. That other passenger was directly behind me, also sitting alone and looking down at a book. All I could see was the top of a black-ballcapped head.
My thoughts kept returning to Angel. I was glad that I had given her a substantial amount of money. She didn’t have a credit card, and she would have no chance of ever slipping away from Jim and getting out of Bermuda without cash. Even with cash, that chance was absolutely minimal. And yet, when John frisked her, he hadn’t seemed to find the money. Or did he?
“You know,” said the person behind me, “the flight from Bermuda to here is much faster than anything you can get from the US. I’ve been waiting for you for a while. What took you so long?”
It was Angel. Angel Dahl!
I turned around and almost leaped over the seat. She was sitting there smiling at me, wearing her trademark shades. She had slipped onto the shuttle and assumed the color of the seats! I calmed myself, but she sprang to her feet and slid in right beside me, her eyes sparkling over the tops of her shades and through her unkempt hair, our legs touching. She had that look girls get when they want to kiss you. Shirley often gets it, and it makes me feel great, really loved. Shirley, I thought. I love Shirley.
“Oh, Angel,” I said, “it’s good to see you.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice losing a bit of its excitement, “it’s good to see you too.”
“I got us a reservation at Goldeneye.”
Her smile returned.
“I knew you would, Mr. McLean.”
“You did?” She seemed to have so much confidence in me, even more than Shirley did. Sometimes, Shirley could be a little critical. “So, what happened with you?”
She grinned again.
“Enter Angel Dahl, sitting in her seat on an American Airlines flight from New York to Bermuda, John-less.”
“I can see it now.”
“Enter her seatmates: a girl of about ten and her mother, coming home after visiting friends on the mainland for the Christmas holidays.”
“Note the hat on the little girl’s head, an old-fashioned, wide straw hat that’s too big for her and tied around the chin with a ribbon. Note also her strangelooking sunglasses. Now, observe Angel Dahl—”
“Perhaps you should say the beautiful Angel Dahl? Isn’t this supposed to be a dramatic story?”
“Yeah, but let’s not stretch things too much.” She sighed. “Observe Angel Dahl making a deal with the little girl, trading one of her I ♥NY T-shirts for the oversized straw hat, and her own shades for the little girl’s big wide ones.”
“Yes?”
“Then, observe Angel Dahl slipping into the washroom before the plane lands and getting her black dress out of her bag and putting it on.”
“You put on the little black dress? The one I got you to buy?” Bad Adam couldn’t help but wonder what she looked like in it.
“Yes…except I didn’t buy the one you wanted me to. I took another one off a rack when you weren’t looking.”
“You did?”
She could see my disappointment and looked a little guilty. “Adam, it just wasn’t me.”
“So, what is this one like?”
The shuttle pulled out. She was sitting there beside me in her baggy sweatpants and baggy sweatshirt, so she’d taken the dress off again on the way to Jamaica.
“Well, it isn’t exactly formfitting.”
“What a surprise.”
“No, it’s long and has long sleeves and a high neck and is very loose and comfortable.”
“Comfortable? So, you’re telling me it looks like a black potato sack?”
She scrunched up her face. “Yeah, kind of.”
I frowned. “On with the story.”
“Enter Angel Dahl getting off the plane at L.F. Wade International Airport with the straw hat pulled down over her face, hair tied up under it, the little girl’s big shades on, wearing the unusual long black dress with the turtleneck pulled up over her chin, using a spy technique she learned from a book about William Stephenson to make herself seem shorter than she really is. It is in the way you walk. Observe Angel Dahl assuming the color of the wall, stepping right past Jim, who is waiting in the arrivals area. All she needs is a few seconds. Observe Angel Dahl making a beeline to the escalators, rushing over to Departures, hustling to the check-out counters for international flights, booking the next one to Jamaica, which was departing very soon since there are many flights between the islands. Oh, and observe Ms. Dahl buying herself a new pair of shades.”
“And,” I said, “observe her boarding a flight to Montego Bay, Jamaica, rushing out of the airport and sneaking onto the shuttle to the Goldeneye Resort before the so-called Adam McLean even sees her.”
“The devilishly handsome Adam McLean.”
“Now you are really stretching things.”
“No, I’m not.”
She gave me a long look when she said that. It felt kind of awkward. Angel was kind of awkward, period, exactly what you’d expect of someone who hadn’t spent a lot of time interacting with people. But there was something about her that was so genuine too.
“I got here long before you, late last night. I had to sleep in the arrivals lounge. I saw you get off the flight and trailed you. You didn’t even notice me! I got in front of you and onto the shuttle. I saw some girls eyeing you.”
“Let’s think about what we have to do next,” I said quickly. “We don’t have any time to lose.”
But then a bad thought came into my mind. Something wasn’t right about her story. How did Angel Dahl really get on that flight from Bermuda to Jamaica? I remembered again that she wasn’t allowed a credit card. Back home, she was given money when she needed it. She had what she wanted, but only when she asked. I had given her quite a bit of cash in New York, but John had frisked her at the airport, so how did she pay for the plane ride? When I thought about it again, it was hard to believe he hadn’t found her money. I had to ask her straight out. I wasn’t going to Goldeneye with her if she was working for the other side.
“How did you pay for the flight?” I said bluntly.
“With the money you gave me.”
“But—”
“Yeah, John frisked me. But he didn’t find it.”
“But that’s almost impossible.”
“Not for a woman.” She smiled.
“A woman?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “Uh, that’s what I am, Adam.” She looked a little miffed.
“Yeah, of course, I uh, I didn’t mean—”
“Excuse me?”
“I put the money in my bra.” She gave me a selfsatisfied grin.
I remembered then that John hadn’t wanted to touch her anywhere that would look creepy, not in public in the airport. She had put the money in the one place he wouldn’t dare search. She’d probably somehow transferred it there when he wasn’t looking. He had no idea how clever she was.
Not a big area to hide money, said Bad Adam to me. Surprised it didn’t slip right through and land on the floor.
Shut up! I shouted at him inside my head. I wanted to punch his lights out.
“You’re brilliant,” I told her. She grinned.
It was now December 30, zero eight hundred hours. We had one day and night at Goldeneye. I had to be back in Buffalo by the next night. Mom would be flying home then. Tomorrow! I couldn’t believe it. There’s a James Bond movie called Tomorrow Never Dies. I wished that was true.
We had to think of what we’d do the minute we got to the resort. But once the bus was rolling out of the airport and moving across Highway A1 along the northern coast, it was hard not to be distracted by the passing scenery. The shuttle was one of those tourist ones with massive windows that went almost floor to ceiling, so you could see as much as possible of the outdoors. And what an outdoors!
It wasn’t that it was perfect out there. There was lots of poverty. But even the few ramshackle houses and huts, the tough-looking men, the poor women, kids in bare feet, the dirt roads, were set in an absolute paradise. It was the most colorful place I’d ever seen, as if God had put some sort of lens over it to make everything look bright, bursting with the most radiant hues on earth. Jamaica was green, very green, but also yellow and red and purple and all the other colors of the rainbow. The air smelled salty. As we moved out of the suburban part of Montego Bay and into the countryside, I spotted jerk-chicken restaurants and little clubs and bars with Red Stripe beer advertised outside. Reggae music just pounded out the doors, even at this hour of the morning. It was real reggae music, from the land where it was born. Marley’s image rose up on billboards and across T-shirts everywhere. Men had dreadlocks down to their waists, and women wore skimpy clothes in vividly colored fabrics.
The driver was talking about Jamaican history and I wanted to listen, but I couldn’t concentrate. I asked Angel if she had come up with any ideas on her flight, but she shook her head. I wanted to will the shuttle forward, zip it along to Goldeneye in a flash. But the driver moved us slowly, so slowly. That was the pace of things in Jamaica. The people walking along looked like they were barely shuffling. Actually, it seemed like the right way to do things, the way the world should move. But not today!
As we traveled next to the Caribbean, a short gray stone wall appeared between us and the water, weathered and only a few feet high. Beyond it was not only an endless stretch of deep blue, but also, unseen in the distance, the other islands of the West Indies. It occurred to me that I must be looking directly toward Cuba’s southern shore. In fact, if we were to sail straight out, I’d likely land near Guantanamo Bay, a piece of land in Cuba that America owned, the site of a famous military prison that was important during the missile crisis and today held the terrorists who wanted to attack and destroy our country. It was a kind of symbol of America’s modern Cold War. It held not only enemy soldiers and terrorists, but probably some spies who hated us and plotted against us, many of them put there by our own spies. There were lots of rumors that torture went on there. I didn’t know whether to salute it or wish it didn’t exist.
Soon we passed the old town of Falmouth, a picturesque place that likely didn’t look much different when pirates were the rogue kings of the Caribbean three or four centuries ago. Then we passed Discovery Bay, where Christopher Columbus supposedly first set foot on the island. It was pretty incredible, but I barely looked at it and hardly heard the driver’s travelogue.
W.
W marked the spot.
The Cuban Missile Crisis.
Just one day.