Bluewater Quest Read online

  Bluewater Quest

  The 14th Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series

  C.L.R. Dougherty

  Copyright © 2017 by C.L.R. Dougherty

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  rev February 2019

  Contents

  Leeward and Windward Islands

  Southern Martinique to Bequia

  Soufriere Bay

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Join my Mailing List

  A Note to the Reader

  About C.L.R. Dougherty

  Also by C.L.R. Dougherty

  1

  "Bullshit! A quest? To prove the Moors discovered America?" Dani Berger's face reflected her disbelief. She took a sip of passion fruit juice and put her glass back on the cockpit table.

  Liz Chirac smiled at her partner's reaction. She and Dani were aboard Vengeance, at a dock in the marina in St. George's, Grenada. "I told Elaine that's what you would say; I almost got it verbatim."

  "Who are these people? They actually believe that load of crap propaganda from the president of Turkey?"

  "A couple of university professors," Liz said. "Richard and Michelle Everett."

  "Academics," Dani said, shaking her head. "How did they come up with this? They must be rich. And gullible, to spend money on such a bullshit 'quest.' I'll bet they've got some kind of grant."

  "I don't know," Liz said, "but Elaine says the money was wired to her escrow account on their behalf the day they booked the charter."

  "Really? On their behalf? So they're not footing the bill themselves," Dani said, her frown fading. "This is serious, then? Or do you think this could be some kind of scam? A boondoggle?"

  "If it's a boondoggle, Everett's got some heavy financial backing," Liz said. "The deposit came from some foundation in Washington."

  "How long's the charter?" Dani asked.

  "They're committed for a month, with the option to extend it for two more, depending on how their quest develops."

  "Whoa! Quest? There's that word, again. That makes it sound like a treasure hunt, or a crusade, or something."

  "Elaine said 'quest' was his word. It does sound kind of quaint, doesn't it?"

  "Academics talk like that, I guess, but three months is forever, Liz. We'll lose prime-time business if they cancel after a month; Elaine can't book anybody else all winter if they've got an option that ties us up like that."

  "Take it easy, Dani. Elaine got the three months paid up front. The first month's guaranteed, and they've got a thirty-day notice for cancellation after that. So effectively, they're committed for two months once they show up today. We're golden; our winter's revenue is in the bag, already."

  "That's a quarter million dollars," Dani said, awestruck. "What kind of foundation is this?"

  "I don't know. Elaine told me the name, but it didn't mean anything to me. You can ask them this afternoon."

  "When are they getting in?"

  "Three o'clock, on the Miami flight. Felix is meeting them and bringing them straight here."

  "That's an awful lot of money," Dani said. "Why would anybody think it was worth that much to find out if some Moorish fleet beat Columbus here by 600 years? You know that's foolishness. There's no way they can prove that, even if it did happen. There has to be more to this. Nobody would put up that kind of money for an academic exercise with no payoff."

  "You'll have to ask him," Liz said. "I thought you might find it interesting."

  "It is interesting. I can't imagine what could be behind this; I'll definitely ask him." Dani took another sip of her juice, and they passed several seconds in silence, watching a flock of seagulls fighting over a dead fish out in the harbor.

  "What did you and Connie talk about while I was chatting with Elaine?" Liz asked, after one of the seagulls managed to fly away with the prize. "You were on the phone for a long time."

  "That showdown she and Paul had with Montalba. I'm still pissed off about that."

  "I can tell. But why?"

  "She didn't even kill the bastard. She had him dead to rights. I wouldn't have let the scumbag go to prison. He deserves to be dead," Dani said. "Stealing my boat. Bastard."

  "Well, there's not much you can do about that now. And we got Vengeance back with no damage. You're just frustrated because you missed the action," Liz said. "Try to put it behind you. We've got an open-ended charter for most of the winter. We're lucky to have the business, after all the hurricane damage up north."

  "I'm still pissed at Connie."

  "Of course you are."

  "And Phillip and Sharktooth. And Marie. They deliberately cut me out of the Montalba thing."

  "Get over it, Dani. Elaine thinks we'll enjoy the Everetts. She says they're really nice people. Let's focus on their 'quest,' as he called it. It might even be fun. We're bound to learn something out of it, however it turns out."

  "You're right, Liz. Sorry for being grouchy about the other. I'd almost put it behind me until Connie called and reminded me of it."

  "That's not why she called, is it?"

  "No. She didn't bring it up; I did. I wish I hadn't, now."

  "What was on her mind, then?"

  "She just wanted to let us know they'd be in Ste. Anne in three weeks. If we're up that way, they'd like to get together for a few days."

  "That would be nice," Liz said. "Maybe it'll work out for the Everetts to meet them. Who knows?"

  "Maybe. That could be a blast. Everybody enjoys Connie and Paul."

  "That's more like it," Liz said, smiling. "Try to stay positive for our guests, okay?"

  Dani's face lit in an easy smile. "I'm okay, now. Thanks for talking me around, Liz. You saved me from myself one more time."

  "That's what friends are for," Liz said. "Part of my job, skipper."

  "I hope Elaine's right about the Everetts," Dani said. "I'm up for some pleasant company. Guess we'd better get to work and get Vengeance squared away. Three o'clock's not far off."

  "The American professor and his wife are en route to Grenada, your highness," the Saudi colonel reported, when Abdullah al Saud, one of the many princes of the House of Saud, had acknowledged him.

  "How much does he know?" the prince asked.

  "Only what we agreed upon. He has been manipulated by our agents so that he believes his own research led him to request the documents from our archives. A translation of Abul-Hassan’s work was forwarded to him, and he now plans to search the islands for artifacts which would substantiate the voyage of Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn Aswad."

  Khashkhash sailed from Palos, Spain, in 889 CE, to explore what th
en was known as the sea of darkness and fog, now called the Atlantic Ocean. After many months, Khashkhash's fleet had returned laden with treasure. The voyage had been documented a few years after its conclusion by Abul-Hassan, a well-known historian and geographer. His original work was among the many items in Saudi Arabia's archives. The translation mentioned by the colonel had been prepared for the professor from Abul-Hassan's manuscript.

  Ali ibn Abi Bakr, a mullah who had accompanied the fleet, had elected to remain behind with three ships and a sizable party of the faithful. He intended to establish a trading center and explore and map the islands. He also planned to investigate rumors of larger land masses to the northwest and south.

  Ali, a scholar and a distant relative of Mohammed, had been carrying an ivory quran case containing documents which he was compiling into a history of Islam. He was the last man known to have possessed an eighth-century document written by Ibn Ishaq, one of the most important biographers of the Prophet.

  Entitled Sirah Rasul Allah (Life of God's Messenger), the document was a history of the life of Mohammed. Ibn Ishaq had assembled it from near-contemporaneous accounts of the prophet's companions. His work had disappeared with Ali, though its previous existence was well established.

  Some of the documents in Ali’s casque were believed to have been written by the prophet himself. All of this information was in the translated material which had been provided in response to the professor’s request.

  "Does the professor have a copy of the map fragment?"

  "Yes, your highness. He will begin by visiting the islands which might be shown by the facsimile of the map fragment, hoping to find one which matches the geographic features depicted on the fragment."

  "And does he understand the sensitive nature of our involvement?"

  "No, your highness. In fact, he doesn’t know of our interest. As far as he knows, his funding comes from a grant established by an anonymous American donor who is interested in determining the accuracy of the claim by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that Columbus was attempting to retrace the route that Khashkhash took to the West Indies."

  "Very well done, colonel. Keep me apprised of his progress."

  "Can you even believe this is happening?" Michelle Everett asked.

  Her husband grinned at her and shook his head before he took a sip of coffee. "I've never flown first-class before," he said. "These foundation people have a different attitude about travel expense."

  "They've booked this yacht for three months, Rick?"

  "He said, 'Up to three months.' They're hoping we'll finish sooner."

  "Why are they doing this? What's in it for them?"

  "Bragging rights, I guess. If they're right, we'll be part of rewriting history. That's for sure."

  "Do you believe it?" she asked. "That the Arabs discovered America before Columbus, I mean."

  "Stranger things have happened. It's certainly possible. We know the Vikings began to colonize North America in the late tenth century, and fishermen from Europe were probably working the Grand Banks before that. It's not hard to imagine that some of them spotted the coastline, is it?"

  "No, but that's different."

  "Why do you say that, Shellie?"

  "You said the documents mentioned a hundred ships, or something."

  "Actually, Abul-Hassan alluded to hundreds of ships, not a hundred."

  "How can that be, Rick? Columbus only had three ships."

  He shrugged. "Columbus was a beggar. The Moors ruled the Iberian Peninsula for hundreds of years. Khashkhash was a wealthy man. He would have sailed when their rule was at its peak, I think. So it's not crazy that he would have had a big fleet. It's possible that he knew where he was going, too. The Arabs led the world in terms of geography and all the sciences back then. His skill as a navigator probably far exceeded that of Columbus.

  "Besides, Abul-Hassan would have been in his late teens when the fleet left. He didn't write about it until later in his life. There could have been some embellishment. And this could be behind all the rumors that Columbus knew perfectly well where he was going. He could have found references in some of the material the Moors left behind after the Christians re-conquered the Iberian Peninsula."

  "Why did the foundation pick you for this?" she asked.

  "They liked my background and the work I've published on the role of alien artifacts in documenting prehistoric cross-cultural contacts."

  "Like the stashes of Roman coins that pop up in unexpected places?"

  "Exactly."

  "But you always end up finding an explanation that doesn't involve visitors from the Roman Empire."

  "They mentioned that. It was an important factor in their decision; it gives me some extra credibility, in case I find something. There will be plenty of opposition to the idea that the Muslims discovered America hundreds of years before Columbus. We’ll need as much credibility as we can get."

  "No kidding. You'll be a pariah in the west."

  "Only if I find out the theory is right. And if the evidence is convincing, I'll be remembered as one of those people who rewrote the history of the world."

  "Yes, you will. And as a traitor to Christianity. Don't forget the way people look at Muslims these days."

  "What do you want me to do, Shellie? It's a little late for second thoughts. Why are you bringing this up now? I didn't just spring it on you."

  "No, you didn't. I'm sorry. It's been building up over the last few weeks. I'll get over it. Like you said, it's a big opportunity. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."

  "You were part of the package, you know," he said, patting her on the arm. "Your background in art history was a big factor in their decision. We're looking for distinctive artifacts, after all."

  "Yes, you said that before. About my background, I mean. But why didn't they want to interview me? Why just you?"

  "Who knows? We got the grant. Try not to let it bother you."

  "I'm working on that," she said, as the captain announced their preliminary approach to Grenada.

  2

  Hossein Rahimi sat at attention across the desk from his commanding officer, the assistant to the deputy commander of the Quds Force.

  Little known outside Iran, the Quds Force is a special forces unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Its commander reports directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah. The Quds Force, among other things, runs clandestine operations all over the world. Rahimi was responsible for one of the Quds Force's eight geographically defined directorates. His territory encompassed the Arabian Peninsula.

  "What do you have for me this evening, Rahimi?" the steely eyed man across the desk asked.

  "One of our agents in Saudi Arabia reports that Abdullah al Saud has dispatched an American university professor to the Lesser Antilles to search for evidence that a Moorish fleet that left from Palos in 889 reached the Caribbean Islands."

  "Why would the Saudis do such a thing?"

  "They want to correct the infidels' notion that the New World was discovered by Christopher Columbus."

  "You sound skeptical, Rahimi. Do you question their motive?"

  "No, not as far as it goes. But we think there may be a less obvious reason, as well as their stated one. The fleet was under the command of Khashkhash ibn Saeed ibn Aswad. It returned after an extended period, laden with treasures of the sort that the Spaniards plundered hundreds of years later." Rahimi paused and took a sip of the tea his host had ordered for him.

  "So they believe this Khashkhash was successful," the steely eyed man said. "How do they know what you have told me so far? Where does their information come from?"

  "The voyage was documented by Abul-Hassan, the historian and geographer, not long after the voyage. His work is in their archives."

  "So they seek to validate his history? Is that it?"

  "Yes, but there is more. A mullah remained behind when the fleet returned to Spain. He retained three ships and a hundred men. His name was Ali i
bn Abi Bakr. The mullah had in his possession some documents which dated from the time of Mohammed. Our source thinks there may have been writings from the prophet himself. Ali ibn Abi Bakr was supposedly a distant relative of the prophet."

  "And this Ali ibn Abi Bakr, what became of him?"

  "There is no record that we know of. The presumption is that he died in the New World, but the Saudis may know more. We are checking."

  "You think the Saudis are looking for the documents this mullah had?"

  "Our source in Abdullah al Saud's organization thinks that is a strong possibility. The prince thinks the documents may have a significant impact on Islam."

  "If that is true and those Sunni bastards want them, it cannot bode well for us. Give me a full written report; I need to brief the commander. Perhaps even the Ayatollah. What do you know about this mullah?"

  "We are researching him. I will include our findings in the report."

  "Very well, Rahimi. Carry on."

  "Welcome aboard," Liz said, raising a moisture-beaded glass of chilled white wine.

  "Yes, welcome to Vengeance," Dani said, raising her own glass. They sat in Vengeance's cockpit, tied to a dock in the luxury marina in St. George’s, Grenada. Their guests had been aboard long enough to unpack and freshen up from their day's travel.

  "Thank you," Richard Everett said. "We're glad to be here."

  "Your yacht's a beauty," his wife said, as the four of them touched the rims of their glasses together. After they had each taken a sip of the wine, she asked, "Is Vengeance an antique? She has classic lines."