Chapter Ten

 

SANTIAGO, MARTIN, AND CHARLIE ENDED up making one detour before they went back to the Gypsy to formulate a plan. Santiago had an English friend who had been living in Havana since even before the British took temporary control of the city in 1762.

Thomas Drake—apparently no relation to Sir Francis Drake, at least none that he would claim—had come to Cuba many years earlier and fallen in love with the place, so he decided to settle down there.

Drake was an intrepid adventurer who loved a challenge. In fact, he thrived on adversity. Santiago was sure that bringing him into the fold as they came up with a plan to not only rescue Adam but to put a stop to these criminals would be beneficial.

The four men—Santiago, Drake, Martin, and Charlie—explained their ideas to Captain Phillips and the crew as soon as they boarded the Gypsy. The plan, at its core, would involve getting money together and then leaving it as the requested ransom, but only as a decoy. While the ransom would be a lot for the crew of the Gypsy to come up with, it was something Santiago could easily provide as a favor to his old friend Emmanuel. Not just that, but he explained he was absolutely determined to follow that money to its destination and to recover it, along with Emmanuel’s apprentice. It was a relief to Captain Phillips, since having to dip into the ship’s coffers could be catastrophic if they had to return with both the money and the boy gone.

There would need to be someone to wait back on the ship in case Adam returned, but that would be easy, since the captain was already planning to stick around to work on rigging repairs. Another contingent would go to the location where the ransom was to be left and lie in wait until someone else brought the ransom and left it in the designated location. That man would then leave, and those in hiding nearby would continue to wait until they saw someone come to pick up the money. Once the ransom was collected, they would follow whoever it was at a distance until they arrived at their intended destination—presumably the bandits’ hideout.

Meanwhile, back in town, friends of Santiago and Drake, with the help of the peanut vendor who had seen Adam following Hector out of the plaza, would be covertly waiting around all four entrances to the market square so that if and when Adam was released, they could apprehend the men who brought him into town and try to extract information from them about their operation.

Since the letter said Adam wouldn’t be released near the plaza until noon—a full six hours after the money was to be delivered—their hope was to make it to the bandits’ hideout, taking them by surprise, and rescue Adam, then apprehend anyone involved with the scheme and bring them bound and tied back into Havana to be handed over to the local authorities.

It was decided that Santiago, Drake, Martin, and Charlie, along with Jones, Willis, and Canady, would be the ones to hide near the location indicated for the ransom.

Santiago enlisted one of his most trusted servants from his family’s estate to deliver the ransom, which was to be made at a little building—although they couldn’t tell from the map whether it was supposed to be a hut or an old guard house—near the ruins of the Torreon de la Chorrera, a fortified tower that had been blasted by British cannons during the siege of Havana a few years earlier.

Once their plan had been formulated and thoroughly discussed, the only thing left to do was wait.

As the core group of men sat around outside the tower looking out onto the Atlantic, some of them shared stories about their own previous encounters with rogues and scoundrels.

Santiago explained that he had only ever had to kill men on one occasion, close to a decade earlier when he was sailing between the Philippines and Malaysia and a crazed group of Iranun pirates tried to overtake his vessel. He and his crew fought bravely and ultimately defeated the ruffians, sending them sinking to the depths of the Sulu Sea. He said he didn’t relish taking a man’s life, but he was not about to let thieves snatch his livelihood from him by force.

The group numbers dwindled as men wandered off to the makeshift pallets they had made inside the ruins of the tower. Eventually, Martin was the only Gypsy crew member out there with Drake and Santiago. All three of them were feeling too anxious to sleep.

Drake asked Martin, “How long have you and this Fletcher boy been friends?”

Martin drank a sip of whisky from the flask he had brought before he began to explain. “Believe it or not, I only met Adam last year.”

Drake looked surprised. “Is that so? You seem to think very much of him, like you have known him very long.”

“Nah. He got bound apprentice to Emmanuel last May, and I was already workin there at the shippin company. Emmanuel, he’s got this head cooper workin there named Boaz Brooks. Anyway, Boaz has been there decades and he was supposed to train Adam on makin casks and so forth . . .” He took another sip of his drink. “Well, early on they were buttin heads a lot. I was the youngest fella there, so naturally Adam felt comfortable talkin to me. Well . . . that and he’s in love with my cousin.”

Santiago laughed. “He is in love with your cousin? And this is acceptable to you?”

“What? Adam and my cousin?” Martin wrinkled his brow as though the answer was obvious. “Yeah, it’s fine with me. She’s a few years older than him. She just turned twenty-one not long before Adam turned eighteen, and she knows how to look out for her best interests. And Adam, he’s a good boy—real virtuous and all, not like me.”

“I see.” Santiago smiled and took a sip of rum from his own flask. “So the two of you have become something like brothers?”

Martin nodded. “Mm-hm. How about either of you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I’m the youngest of seven children, all boys,” Drake replied. “Couldn’t wait to get away, so when our father died—and I’m sure he’s in Hell right now, miserable drunken lout that he was—I took my share of the inheritance and decided to travel the world. I finally ended up here . . . It took me a while to really settle down, but eventually I fell in love with a local girl and got married, and we just had our first child two years ago—a boy.”

“Aw, that’s nice,” said Martin. “Congratulations. So how about you, Santiago? Any brothers or sisters?”

Santiago shook his head. “No, sadly I was an only child. I would have loved to have grown up with brothers and sisters, though. Most of my friends when I was a young boy had many brothers to play with, and I was very—how you say?—jealous.” He took another drink. “But Tomás here, he is like a brother to me.”

“That’s right,” Drake agreed. “In fact, Santiago is the one who first invited me to Havana on the day we met—it was in 1744 in Venice.”

Santiago nodded and grinned at the recollection. “Yes, that is right.”

“Venice, Italy?” asked Martin.

“That’s the only Venice I know anything about,” Drake replied.

“What in the world were the two of you doin way over there?”

“We were young men in those days, each of us taking our Grand Tours of Europe. I was coming by way of England, of course, while Santiago here was coming all the way from Havana. There was a very famous composer visiting Venice at the time, and the city was even busier than usual. There was a popular café in the Piazza San Marco, but there weren’t many places to sit, so Santiago and I found ourselves seated at the same table—quite uncomfortably, mind you. Anyway, we started to chat a bit, and before long we had passed hours debating international politics, trade, religion, and other such subjects.”

“But it was all very civil,” Santiago added.

“And you just extended an invitation to him to visit Havana,” Martin said to Santiago. “And you took him up on it?” he said to Drake.

“Well, yes. In a roundabout way, of course. A few years passed before I actually made it to Havana.”

“I reckon y’all had very different ways of thinkin about things,” said Martin. “It’s kind of surprising you turned out to be friends.”

“That is true,” said Santiago. “We had very different views about many things, especially religion, because I am católico and Tomás is protestante, but the more we conversed, the more we realized that there were other subjects about which we agreed.”

“Yes,” Drake said, “such as the abuses of power by kings and politicians, regardless of the flag they wave.”

Santiago nodded in agreement and handed Drake his flask.

“What is your profession?” Martin asked Drake.

Drake took a drink, then passed the flask back to Santiago and said, “Oh, I do different things. I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, really. I even sailed on La Dama once, but I discovered it wasn’t something to which I was particularly well suited.”

Santiago laughed. “No, it was not.”

“What in the world happened?”

“Let’s just say I really don’t do well at sea. In fact, it’s a miracle I made it to Havana in the first place.” Drake took another drink. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I agreed to go with Santiago on one of his expeditions.”

“Did you meet my boss, Emmanuel Rogers?” Martin asked Drake.

Drake seemed as though he was thinking, trying to recollect if he had.

Santiago answered for him. “No, he has never met Emmanuel Rogers. Anyway, I have only been to your colony a few times myself, and when Drake joined us on La Dama, I do not think we even made it as far as Beaufort.”

“Oh, I see,” said Martin.

“Probably that’s one of the reasons I never have bothered to leave Havana. I’m too sick at sea to make it anywhere anyway, so best I just stay here.”

The three of them laughed.

Santiago poked at the fire with a long stick, and there was silence among them for a moment or two. The only thing that could be heard were the waves crashing and the fire crackling.

Martin spoke up and asked Santiago, “So how is it you came to know Emmanuel?”

“Emmanuel? I had heard he was looking for someone to supply sugar and Cuban rum, and I was looking for a source for naval stores, and even livestock at one time, so it was beneficial to us both to begin trading with one another.”

“Even though it was smugglin?” Martin asked slyly.

Santiago rolled his eyes. “It was business. There are a lot of politics in all of that, and it gives me a headache just to think about it.”

Silence again.

“So that’s all?” said Martin. He was disappointed. He had hoped there’d be a better story in there somewhere. He took another drink and looked out at the full moon over the ocean, and it appeared to be at its zenith, which meant it was about midnight. He was also starting to feel very relaxed. They still had several hours left before they needed to get into their positions for their plan to foil the bandits, so he thought it would be a good idea to ask Santiago, “You got any pirate blood?”

“What?” Santiago was visibly surprised by the question. “Pirates? No, I do not have any pirate blood. At least not that I know anything about, anyway. What a strange question that is to ask!” He took a big swig of rum.

Martin laughed. His speech was becoming more slurred. “Ha-ha. It’s not as strange as you might think. A lot of the men back home—especially ones Emmanuel knows—were once involved in piracy one way or another, or they’re somehow connected to somebody who was.” He threw a piece of wood on the fire, which looked like it was dying down. “My grandfather was a pirate, you know. He sailed with Blackbeard.”

“Oh, you are such a liar,” Drake countered, chuckling.

“He is joking,” said Santiago, laughing. “El está borracho. The whisky must be turning him into un perico.” He pinched his fingers up and down to mimic the squawking of a parrot.

“I feel pretty good, but I am not drunk . . . yet . . . and I am not lyin,” Martin insisted. “I don’t even care if you believe me, though. I know it’s the truth.”

More silence. All three men looked like they were getting sleepy, but Martin was too anxious to retire for the night. He wanted to keep the conversation going. He asked Santiago another question, even more slurred than the last: “Sooo how does a Cuban captain come to know . . . an English merchant? I mean, I’ve always wondered how Emmanuel establishes all these contacts of his. He has foreign friends like you all over the place . . .” He started ticking off the fingers on his hand as he said, “I mean France, Hispaniola, St. Maarten, Portugal, Nassau, and so on. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never traveled anywhere, so I always wonder how he finds you folks.”

“Nassau is British,” said Drake, laughing. “You really must be drunk.”

Martin rolled his eyes at him but turned his attention to Santiago to wait for an answer to his question.

Santiago laughed a bit too, then said, “Ah, well, I know Emmanuel because of my mother.”

“Huh? Is your mother English?”

“My mother? Ay, no! She is a proud española hasta la muerte—Spanish to the death! But she and my father knew Emmanuel, and when my father died and I decided to visit America, she looked in my father’s ledger for the names of his associates and told me I should visit him if I went to North Carolina, that he might have some good contacts for me.”

That piqued Martin’s curiosity. Now he couldn’t help but wonder if Santiago’s father might have been one of Emmanuel’s friends from his pirating days. He would have to wait before he could probe any further, though. He passed out before he could ask another question.