The restaurant on the veranda at the Caneel Bay resort overlooks the crescent-shaped, white sandy beach that is the private property of the hotel. The restaurant is very big—perhaps fifty feet square—and it’s protected from the Caribbean sun by a pyramid hip roof with cedar shake shingles. Cedar shake is a favorite among those who can afford it, in tropical places like St. John where the sun is particularly hot and where there is also an abundance of rainfall. When the cedar gets wet it expands and when it’s especially dry, the cedar shingles loosen up. The result is a kind of filter effect. The roof breathes, allowing heat to dissipate. It helps to keep a house cool. In the case of this restaurant, it was little more than a pleasant bonus. Its roof covered an otherwise open area built in exactly the right place to get the most of sea breezes. On the most uncomfortably warm days, the veranda was a nice place to be.

Walter arrived on time. He had a thing about that. Timeliness was next to godliness, they say. For Walter, it was a good distance in front. Being late made him nervous. If he was expected at noon, he thought that was when he ought to be there. A little early was okay. A little late was not. Likewise for those who made appointments to meet him. Years ago he gave up the lame practice of saying things like, “it’s all right,” or “that’s okay,” when somebody showed up late cavalierly apologizing for their tardiness. Such automatic, clearly bogus sentiments were taken by Walter for what they were—arrogance. He never humiliated anyone by challenging what he felt was their disrespect, but he did forego the allowance and acceptance of that behavior that is so much a part of most people’s routine. The girl was also on time for this meeting. She asked for it. It seemed only right that she should already be there when he showed up.

She had called Walter yesterday, introduced herself as Aminette Messadou, and said she needed to talk with him. Talk about Harry Levine.

“Why?” he asked her.

“I think it’s best to wait until we meet, face to face, as it were.” She sounded like a young, American girl except for the slight vee when she said, “. . . until we meet . . .” Walter allowed there was a chance it was just the phone, a poor quality instrument and not the voice.

“If I told you I had no idea who—what did you say his name was—Harry Levine is?”

“I would say it is best we speak of it when we meet.” There it was, again, the vee. Walter agreed to meet Ms. Messadou at Caneel Bay, the next day. He’d wait until then, he determined, to place her accent.

He spotted her immediately. She sat alone at a table near the front, facing the entrance, not the beach. Nobody ate alone here and most of the other diners arranged their chairs so all at the table could view the sea. She did not look comfortable or at ease. In fact, Walter thought she appeared visibly on edge. Her legs were crossed, but her feet were in constant motion, up and down, side to side. She moved silverware around with her hands. When he entered, stopped and stood by the hostess’ stand for a moment, she looked up. When she rose, sporting a pasty smile, he began walking her way.

“Walter Sherman,” he said in his friendly, everyday St. John voice.

“Aminette Messadou,” she replied, holding her hand to him. He took it politely, then gave it back. He figured her to be young, but this was younger than he thought. She was quite beautiful, but surely no more than twenty—if that—slim, skinny to some, with long, thin arms, legs to match and a neck that seemed to never quit. Her complexion was dark, Mediterranean, Central Asian perhaps, with no obvious imperfections save a single, small dark brown birthmark on the right side of her neck, near the ear. She wore her exceptionally straight, black hair long. Walter didn’t know much about women’s haircuts, but he was certain this one cost a fortune. Her smile was, as he noticed right away, forced. He decided to see how nervous she was.

“I don’t take well to strangers,” he said. “Especially those who come to my island and have balls big enough to invite me to lunch. Of course, you don’t appear to have any balls, big or otherwise.”

“Please,” she motioned, any sign of nerves gone, floated away with the gentle breeze off the water, “sit.” Pretty quick adjustment, he thought.

A waitress approached, a middle-aged black woman, very short and considerably on the hefty side. She smiled at them both and took her notepad and pen out. “Miss?” she said looking at Aminette Messadou. “Have you decided?” The girl ordered a cheeseburger with bacon, onions, mushrooms, lettuce and tomato, French fries and a vodka martini with an olive and a twist. Not the salad and Evian Walter might have expected. Then the waitress turned to Walter and asked, “What would you like, Mr. Sherman?”

“Turkey sandwich, on rye toast please,” he answered. “And Margaret, no mayo.” Margaret smiled again, at both of them, and was off to place her orders in the kitchen.

“You are not drinking anything, Mr. Sherman?”

“She knows what I drink. Now, tell me, who are you and what can I do for you?”

“My great-uncle, four generations removed, was the great man Djemmal-Eddin. His brother was my father’s great-grandfather. I am named for Djemmal-Eddin’s daughter, Aminette Messadou, who died more than eighty-five years ago, in childbirth, as women will. It is my mission in life to be worthy of her memory. My family has not forgotten her. The man you are hired to find, Harry Levine, has something that belongs to Aminette’s husband. He too was a great man, her husband, a powerful man among his own people, widely respected and honored among mine. Now that he is gone we seek to recover what is rightfully ours.”

“And . . . ?”

“When you find Mr. Levine, you shall also find the document. We very much want you to persuade Mr. Levine he should give it to us.”

“How badly do you want this . . . document?”

“You are not familiar with it?”

“The document?”

“Yes.”

“No, I am not. May I ask, what is it that brings you to me in the first place? How do you know me and what makes you think I have any interest in this man you call Harry Levine?” Aminette Messadou was wearing a lime green summer dress made from a smooth and silky polyester. Catching the breeze as if it owned the wind, it barely fluttered about her shoulders, its scooped neck shimmering even without benefit of direct sunlight. The color was just right for her tan skin and black hair. She leaned forward across the table, elbows resting on the glass, and chuckled. Walter could see nearly all of her small breasts. It was a lovely sight, still he could not help himself. He looked carefully for tan lines. There were none. A girl with her skin color, he thought, it was hard to define a suntan. Either she had none or she regularly sunbathed topless. He had no time to figure that one out. Not now.

“We are too cute,” she laughed, her smile now genuine and warm to the eye. “You and I are to be allies, Mr. Sherman. We have nothing to fear from one another. Harry Levine’s aunt is among the most famous people on Earth. When she visits you—a man who makes his way through life finding others—it is both not a secret and not a mystery. Not much of one anyway.”

“Did you ever meet Lord Frederick Lacey?” Walter asked. For an instant, nervousness, maybe even fear, reappeared in Aminette Messadou’s deep brown, almond eyes. She sat back in her seat as Margaret served them. The last thing the heavy-set black woman did was put a Diet Coke in front of Walter, in a glass bottle.

“No,” Aminette Messadou said. “I never met him. Yet he was one of us, family to us. And we to him.”

“Just why do you need this document? What’s in it?”

“That I cannot say. To be true, I do not know. But I was told that when you asked such a question, I was to tell you, you would be better off not knowing.”

“Humm,” said Walter taking a small bite of his sandwich, watching this lovely girl do battle with her huge burger. She took a bite so large she closed her eyes tight. Juice, cheese and a little tomato dripped from the side of her burger bun farthest from her and nearest to him. He could hardly restrain himself. It was all too funny. Had he just been threatened? He chose to be direct. “Your people have sent a child to do the work of a grown-up,” he said. “A delightful child, to be sure, beautiful as an afternoon on St. John—like this one—but still a child.” If he had been threatened, he steadfastly refused to acknowledge it.

“I assure you . . .” she said, trying hard not to talk with her mouth full.

“It appears there’s very little you can assure me of.” Walter sipped his drink, took another, bigger bite of his turkey sandwich and relaxed a little. The ball was in her court, if indeed she had a court. Either he was right—they had sent a kid to do an adult’s job—or this was her defining moment, the time for her to stop shitting him and say what it was that was on her mind. He had no place else to go, plenty of time. It was a lovely day. The food was on her tab. He’d wait, at least until he finished his sandwich.

“I will tell you,” she finally said. “Because you are known to be a man of discretion, a man of trust.”

“You will tell me the truth?”

“I know no other way. As you have seen, I have been reluctant to say anything, but I have not been false. And I will not be.”

Djemmal-Eddin Messadou was a leader, a Georgian with a strong following also in Dagestan, the land of his ancestors. He was not unknown either in Azerbaijan. Aminette Messadou told Walter that when Georgia, together with Dagestan and Azerbaijan, formed the anti-Bolshevik Transcaucasian Federation, in 1917, and later on, when the Federation collapsed and Georgia declared its independence on May 26, 1918, Djemmal-Eddin was a leader of both movements. It was during those years, Aminette related to Walter, that her namesake met and married the dashing young Englishman, Frederick Lacey. “He was a military man of great reputation. He was in the British Navy. All my life I have heard him spoken of and no one has ever been sure of his place, his rank as you say. So many stories. So many different ranks. There is more mystery than fact about him, of that I’m certain.” She continued on with her story. The freedom of Georgia was short-lived. The British and Americans, like the Turks before them, and many others before the Turks, abandoned their Asian outposts on the edges of mother Russia. One by one, the free republics that had declared their independence from the Czar and the Bolsheviks fell before the might of the Red Army. Lithuania, Moldavia, Don, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Armenia—all of them. And Georgia too, in February 1921.

Djemmal-Eddin marshaled his forces in retreat, having no choice but to run from the advancing army of Russians. Finally, she told Walter, the nephew of the Lion of Dagestan brought his men through the Klukhori Pass, to the edge of the sea, to the last remaining spot of free Georgia, the old Turkish fortress of Sukhum-Kale. All hope was gone. Bloody defeat was a certainty. Aminette told her story with a depth of feeling Walter found irresistible. He saw eighty years of telling it in her youthful face. This may be the story of a defeated people, but there was a majesty and wonder about it. It was with grace that Aminette presented to him the glory that was Georgia and the memory of her family’s proud role there.

Just as the inevitable end approached, Djemmal-Eddin was saved by his son-in-law, Frederick Lacey. Under Lacey’s command, a fleet of ships rescued him and many of his men, sailing from the Turkish port only hours in advance of the Russian onslaught. “There were many items, of a personal nature, important to my family, that were carried out of Georgia on those ships, Mr. Sherman. We have waited many years to reclaim them.”

“I don’t understand,” said Walter. “Why didn’t you—your family, I mean—get them off the ships when you reached safe harbor?”

“Those were difficult times. My people were in exile, stateless, in need of friends. Much of what we had went to secure those friends. Other things were best hidden for safekeeping. It is those things we seek now.”

“Why didn’t Lacey give them back years ago? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I told you I never met Lord Lacey, and that is true. But I have heard him discussed many times. And always he is described as a special man, a strange man in certain ways, a man devoted to my father’s great-grandfather’s brother, Djemmal-Eddin. When Lord Lacey lost his wife, in the birth of their daughter, he turned to Djemmal-Eddin for comfort and found it there. When he too died, not long after free Georgia died, Lacey decided not to reveal the hiding place to anyone. I said earlier, he is of our family and we are of his, but Lord Lacey was not a trusting man, never close, in a personal way, to my family after his beloved wife and her father were gone.”

“You believe the hiding place for your family’s jewels is written down in Lacey’s journal?”

“Yes, we do. And, I said nothing about jewels.”

“Just a saying,” said Walter. “Not meant literally.”

“Will you help us?”

Walter gazed into her tender eyes. God, he thought, if you could bottle that and sell it, there’s no telling how rich you would be. There was nothing he could do now, no way he could help with a document he did not have, no way he could encourage cooperation from Harry Levine unless and until he found him. “Who knows what the future will bring,” he said and told her she should stay in touch. Then he invited Aminette Messadou to dinner at Billy’s. She declined, saying she had to leave the island immediately. She was expected elsewhere.