Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,109
her pocket and pulled out the two halves of the silver locket. Maybe one day, she would take them to a jeweler and have the two pieces soldered together so the locket was whole again. Even as incomplete as they were now, Gabriela was grateful to Jackie for figuring out the puzzle of Walker’s treasure and restoring her family heritage to her. She seemed to draw a certain amount of emotional sustenance from just having the locket on her person at all times.
Now, putting the two halves of the locket together, she noticed something for the first time. The second locket half also had those indecipherable markings on the inside.
But once the two halves were joined, Gabriela was surprised to see that the markings were no longer incomprehensible. In fact, they now seemed to form something entirely comprehensible—a tiny map of an island. Not Cuba. But a smaller one off the southern coast of Cuba, in Oriente Province. There was a tiny X on the island. You had to squint your eyes to see it. And she was sure that she could view it better with the aid of a magnifying glass. But in the meantime, she felt sure that what she was looking at was a treasure map.
In her mind, she went over the clues Emiliano had told her about. Leprosaria. Campo Santo. 57. AD.
Gabriela began to laugh. She knew that the tiny island, visible from the pirate inlet below the fort, had once been called Isla de Campo Santo, a fact that few people today seemed to know. And that a leper colony had been abandoned there after having been reestablished on the southern coast. Was it possible that there had been a treasure after all, and that Metzger had buried it on the island? Metzger, the former apprentice silversmith who had meticulously etched this treasure map on the inside of Maria Consuela’s silver locket, then deliberately split it in two to prevent just anyone from discovering its secret.
If this were indeed the case, then he was far more ingenious than anyone had given him credit for. Maybe this had been his convoluted way of making sure that his descendants would one day meet Maria Consuela’s descendants. Too bad then that Metzger had died before getting married and having children to fulfill his dream. In the end, though, it had come true in its own fashion, reuniting Gabriela with the family ancestors she had never known.
At the thought of it, she continued to laugh. She laughed so hard and so long that she caught the attention of Emiliano, who was awaiting his turn at bat. He came over to her and asked what was so funny.
And when she told him, he began to laugh too.
XXV
Washington, D.C., May 1952
Caroline Lee Bouvier’s aim was so accurate that Jackie caught her wedding bouquet without even having to reach for it. As her sister’s maid of honor, Jackie received Lee’s bouquet like a prized talisman and earnestly hoped that it would bring her good luck in love.
During the ceremony at Georgetown’s Holy Trinity Church, Jackie’s heart swelled with happiness as she watched her sister exchange marriage vows with Michael Canfield in a fairy-tale wedding. Lee looked radiant in her lovely ivory organza bridal gown and rose-point lace veil, and the tall blond groom, thankfully sober for the occasion, cut an elegant figure in his white tuxedo. Yes, Jackie was genuinely happy for the glowing bride but, at the same time, couldn’t help feeling a gnawing insecurity about her own unmarried state…
Jackie woke up with a start. It took her a few moments to realize that the wedding she had visualized so precisely was only a dream. But the mixed emotions it has stirred in her were all too real. After all, Lee was her kid sister, almost four years younger, and was engaged to be married to Michael Canfield next year while Jackie, having broken her engagement to John Husted, had no real marital prospects in sight.
Being a CIA agent hadn’t left much time for dating. First, there was all that training at Camp Peary, and then, as soon as Jackie had returned from New Orleans, she’d been dispatched to Havana. She hadn’t expected to meet the man of her dreams there, but along came breathlessly handsome, adorably shy, and passionately idealistic Emiliano, and once again, as she had in Paris, Jackie fell in love. But like her romance with Jacques, the one with Emiliano was doomed to be short-lived. That sad