by Don Potter
“This is a new tent. You can smell the fresh canvas. But it won’t be long before the desert winds and relentless sands make the tent old like the rest of them.” Daby put Kurt’s maps and briefcase on the table where other papers were sprawled out. Kurt poured a hefty drink, sat in a director’s chair and took off his shoes.
“So what’s the game plan, Daby?”
“Well, Boss, unless you say different, the shovelers can start at the spot pinpointed on the map. We will expand in all directions from there. The heavy equipment can wait until later.”
“Okay. Are you ready to go?”
“I will give the word immediately.”
“Then do it. But let me know the moment something is uncovered. I’ll supervise the work from that point on. With your help, of course.”
“Right away, Boss.” Daby left the tent.
Kurt refilled his glass. He put his shoes back on but left the laces untied and rolled open a map of Europe and Africa. With an architectural rule he drew a straight line from where he found the first angel to the spot where the second angel was discovered. The line intersected a spot not far from the current camp site.
“Wow,” he exclaimed. “If we come up with another angel here, we may have something really big on our hands.”
Kurt went to maps of each individual site and marked the exact place where the angels were buried in respect to the midpoint of the camps. Armed with this information, he drew a second line from England to Swaziland and marked the spot where he wanted to conduct a private dig of his own, a mile to the northwest of where the men were digging now.
“Daby, you and I need to leave the camp for awhile. Bring some tools for digging.” Kurt jumped onto an ATV and waited for the foreman to drive them into the vast desert.
“Good thing it’s only April. A month later and the desert will be heating up to a hundred degrees or more. Where to, Boss?”
“Follow my directions as you drive.” Kurt opened the local map and took out his compass as they pulled away from the camp.
“Look ahead,” Daby said. “Is that a little cloud hugging the sand? Never saw something like that before.”
“Drive up to it and stop.” Kurt made a circle on the map at the precise spot where he had made an ‘X’ earlier.
The sand was uncooperative as the men dug. But they persevered and soon the shovels struck something. It did not take long to retrieve a case from the hole. The find was similar to the others but larger than the first one and smaller than the second.
“Let’s get back to camp,” Kurt ordered.
Not a word was said on the short ride back. Kurt held on to his precious cargo. Once there, he entered his tent and closed the flap.
The shell opened and revealed a foot high angel exactly like the others with one exception; this one had a chain with a gold key around its slender neck.
Kurt took the statue from its resting place and removed the key from the chain. He examined the little treasure and found a keyhole on the bottom of her right foot and wasted no time in placing the key into the lock.
He turned the key and heard a click. The angel opened on a seam that was hardly visible. Kurt used both hands to get inside and discovered a piece of electronic equipment, the likes of which he had never seen before. At the top and bottom of what appeared to be a hi-tech generator were prongs to plug into receptacles of another device. Before he could examine the equipment further, his watch alarm went off.
“The satellite is due. Better call Texas and give them the good news.”
“Anything to report?” the sponsor asked.
“You bet I do.” Kurt explained what he found and how the coordinates were all on a straight line. “I want to try and figure out what this device is all about.”
“No, you might disturb something. Pack up the find. I’ll have the chopper pick it up before sundown. You stay on and see if there’s any other treasure to be extracted from that God-awful desert.” The voice faded as the satellite passed out of range.
Kurt had a thought. “How can he be so nonchalant about the angels and all the actual finds being on a straight line stretching from the top to the bottom of the world?” he said to the empty tent. “Something’s not right. So why does he want me to stay here? The dig won’t turn up anything else. My job is to make sure the angel and the device make it safely to the States.”
He rushed over to Daby’s tent to tell the man he would be leaving soon with the angel. The foreman was not there, but Kurt noticed a gallon glass jar on a table. He approached it and saw there were a dozen or so scorpions inside. Peering into the container made his skin crawl.
“Can I help you, Boss?” Daby asked as he entered the tent.
“I was looking for you.”
“Well I found you, instead.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t snooping but I saw the jar and could not help taking a closer look.”
“Ha.” Daby responded with a weak laugh. How do you like my desert zoo?”
“It’s a little unsettling.”
“Better the scorpions be safe in here than roaming around the camp looking for someone to sting.”
“You’re right about that. Only I’d hate to have them get out. That many scorpions could do some damage.
“No one comes in here, so I don’t expect there to be any problems, Boss.” He hit the last word hard to suggest that ‘no one’ included Kurt.
“I was looking for you to say I’ll be going with the chopper to see that the find gets packed properly and all the papers are in order to expedite her trip to America.”
“What about the work here at the main site as well as where we dug up the angel?”
“You can handle everything until I get back tomorrow afternoon. Hope you turn something up while I’m gone.”
The helicopter landed and took off without incident. As the ship headed toward Tamanrasset, Kurt thought about his decision to leave and the flack his benefactor was likely to give him for abandoning the dig. Since he had the angel and the device in his possession, Kurt reasoned that he held the winning hand.
Rather than stay in Tamanrasset, which was within striking distance if Daby chose or was ordered to pursue him, Kurt thought it best to spend his sponsor’s money to charter a plane and fly all the way to Niamey. There he could connect with carriers that would take him to an international airport with direct flights to the United States.
As expected, the price was steep to accomplish his goal. But after flying for most of the night with his angel in hand, Kurt boarded a Delta flight headed for Atlanta. He booked reservations to fly to Dallas and from there to midland, Texas and then on to Odessa, the home of the oilman who was paying the bills for these last digs.
“Where the devil have you been and where are you now?” the angry Texan asked.
“You know where I’ve been and I’m currently at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport about to board a plane for Midland. Do you want to pick me up or should I take a cab to your ranch?”
“What about the angel and the device?”
“Got both of them on my lap as we speak.”
“Good. Give me the flight information. And be careful with those things.”
Joshua Parker was all-Texan with an appetite for expensive things and a penchant to show off in a big way. He inherited his daddy’s oil drilling business and made a fortune wildcatting around the world. With no wife and no children to interfere he was free to do whatever he liked whenever he liked.
For the past decade, Parker financed archeological exploration in dozens of countries. He kept what pleased him and displayed his private collection in his home. And Parker got publicity for the hundreds of artifacts he gave to museums throughout the country. Behind his broad smile and apparent good nature was a tough businessman who many believed would stop at nothing to fulfill his desires.
“I see you have our treasure,” Parker said as Kurt walked into the airport waiting area. “Give her to me.”
“Glad to be back,” Kurt said an
d relinquished the case.
“We’ll go to the ranch first, so you can clean up.”
“I don’t have any clean clothes. In fact, I don’t have any clothes at all. Left the desert pretty quickly.”
“There’s something at the house you can wear, I’m sure. But I’ve been meaning to ask, why did you disobey my orders and take it upon yourself to hand deliver the package?”
“Something is not right. I can’t put my finger on it. Let’s just say I have a bad feeling about what happened at each dig. So I thought it best for the safety of the find as well as my own to come home.”
“You may have missed other treasures by being so hasty.”
“For some reason, I think I got everything I was sent to get.”
“What makes you say that?”
“On the trip home I got to thinking about the events associated with the digs. To begin with I was attacked by the foreman on the job in England. He was ready to kill me for the angel. When you saw photos of the treasure, the first thing you did was to send me off to Africa.
“Sources told me there was more booty to be found.”
“You didn’t mention anything about staying in Swaziland once I got the angel. I was instructed to get out of Dodge, send you the find, and move on to the Sahara. The foreman in Swaziland wanted to hook me up with a beautiful woman who happened to have AIDS. Did you know about that?”
“How on earth would I know anything about that? You didn’t partake of this deadly beauty did you?”
“Fortunately no, but in the Sahara the foreman kept a jar full of scorpions that I expect would have ended up in my tent had I not left when I did.”
“I must say, you do have a vivid imagination, my boy. Maybe it’s jet lag, dig fatigue or something,” Parker said as they reached the entrance of the ranch. “In any event a good night’s sleep will put things back into perspective for you. Because tomorrow we’re going for a little ride.”
Kurt slept well but was not fully awake until the Lincoln Navigator, which had been speeding north on Route 385, veered left and onto Route 214. They were sixty miles from Odessa but he knew their destination without being told.
“Feel better?” Parker asked. Amazing what a little sleep can do to bring a man back to his senses.” Both he and Kurt knew the reference was to squelch anymore discussion about conspiracy theories.
“Yeah. Guess the fast pace of things in recent days got to me. I’m starting to feel human again.” Kurt was more interested in learning the mystery behind the angels than advancing unsubstantiated claims. He reasoned that if the big question is answered the smaller ones will be too.
“You might have already figured it out; we’re headed to Roswell.” Parker was in the passenger seat and had to turn to face Kurt sitting behind him while a ranch worker, tall and muscular, drove the SUV.
“What’s the game plan when we get there?”
“That’s you. Always direct and to the point.”
“It’s the only way I know.”
“I realize that. I, on the other hand, have to look at the big picture and be sure the ultimate goal is achieved.”
“And what would that be?”
“Unlocking the secret of the angels and discovering the wisdom of the universe. Maybe even immortality itself.”
“Guess these little statues have greater meaning to you than to me.” Kurt said.
“That’s because I paid a great sum of money to make myself informed. I agreed to co-sponsor the England dig before I came across a journal that has been missing for years. It was written by a professor digging near Roswell when the UFO incident occurred in 1947.”
“It was big news back then. People swore a flying saucer crashed and aliens were seen before they were rounded up by the military and hauled off someplace to be tested and probed.”
“Right, but the government says it was a weather balloon that crashed. For the most part this put an end to the story. But in 1978, some physicist interviewed an ex-military guy who claims it was all a government cover-up,” Parker said.
“And the tabloids had a field day.”
“The UFO enthusiasts jumped on board and wrote articles and filmed documentaries. Plus the people in and around Roswell need to keep the story alive so they can benefit from the tourist business the alien story brings to town. Funny thing is they can’t really agree on where the crash site is. At last count there were about a dozen different spots that folks swear are the exact spot where the space ship hit the ground.” Parker chuckled.
“So why are we going there if this is all a hoax?”
“Because I have the book that shows the exact spot were the UFO landed.”
“You mean crashed.”
“No, I mean landed.”
“According to my information, the ship came to rest in a desolate area...”
“The entire area is desolate,” Kurt quipped.
“Let me finish, please. The creatures left the ship, buried something in the ground, and took off. The whole thing took only a couple of minutes and they were gone. Before leaving for parts unknown, the inhabitants of the space ship dumped debris all over the ground but not near the place where they did the digging.”
“Pretty tricky guys those aliens.”
“Be serious for a minute,” Parker demanded.
“Sorry. I can’t get behind the UFO thing.”
“But you do believe there’s something magical about the angels.”
“That’s different. I’ve seen them and touched them. I even held the device housed inside one of them. And I know there’s science behind them. Be it from outer space or manmade. It’s real.”
“Open your mind so you can see more.”
“I’m willing. Tell me more.” Kurt could see the best way to get the complete story was to play along with Parker. Maybe there could be some money in it if he did.
“When we get to the location outside Roswell, which is away from the commercial activity going on there, I am going to plug into the power of the universe,” Parker exclaimed.
“That’s rather ambitious. Isn’t it?”
“Not when you have your facts in order.”
The three hour trip ended north of Roswell when their vehicle turned onto a dirt road and edged around a hill, which shielded them from the eyes of all passersby.
“Okay. Here we go,” cried Parker.
After the angels had been removed from their cases and arranged on the ground. He took the device in one hand and placed the feet of the tiny four inch angel at the top. The device made a whirling sound as a hole on each foot opened to accept the prongs protruding from the strange contraption. He repeated the same procedure with the large thee foot angel while he straddled the twelve inch angel, the one that held the key and the device.
“This is it boys! Next stop universal knowledge.”
As if all available energy was concentrated in his hands, a surge of electricity raced through Parker’s body and killed him instantly. The device separated from the angels as they fell from the man’s lifeless hands. He crumpled in a smoking heap.
“My God,” said the driver. “What happened?”
“I don’t know but it appears that Mr. Parker didn’t realize how much power he was holding.”
“Are we going to get blamed for this?” the driver asked.
“Not if we handle this in the right way,” Kurt said looking at the storm clouds moving their way. Get the angels and put them in the rear storage area. Cover them with a blanket or whatever you can find. I’ll get the device.”
“Now what?”
“Help me put Parker in the back seat. And let’s get him to the nearest hospital.”
“But he’s dead.”
“Yes, but we need to make it official.” Lightning struck less than a half-mile from where the men stood. “He was hit by lightning while we were investigating a site for a possible dig.” A clap of thunder roared over his words. Kurt had to repeat them so the man understood the story they must tell un
til no one disputed it, including themselves.
After an overnight stay at the Roswell Inn, the men were on their way back to Odessa. Arrangements had been made for a local funeral director to pick up the body and have Parker buried on the ranch next to his father. They were not far south of Roswell when Kurt shouted for the driver to stop.
“Look at that,” Kurt said as he pointed to a small patch of fog barely two feet off the ground and only a hundred yards from the road. The vehicle pulled next to the area, and Kurt grabbed a shovel.
After a few scoops he saw a small a case that looked exactly like the one found on the Salisbury Plain. Kurt quickly opened it and found a four inch angel.
Upon returning to the ranch, the men were greeted by Parker’s attorney.
“Guess the Good Lord has His plans for Josh. He always wanted to go out in a memorable manner. By the way Mr. Mason, he left a letter for you.” The attorney handed Kurt the sealed envelope. It appears that you’re mentioned in the Will as well. So you might want to stay on for a few days until we get all this legal mumbo-jumbo sorted out. There’s certainly enough room in this house. Hell, you could house the entire Texas Tech football team here and have room left over.”
“Thank you.” Kurt said and went directly to his room.
Safely behind closed doors, Kurt opened the envelope and sat on the side of the bed to read the letter dated the night before they went to Roswell.
‘Kurt, my boy,’ the letter began. ‘I have not been totally forthright with you. I had some information prior to your selling me on partnering the England dig. The lost journal I purchased told of alien space ships landing near Stonehenge. In fact that landmark may have been their handiwork. The journal tells us that angels are the guardians of the universe and the answer to all knowledge.
‘I hired the foreman to keep track of what was found, particularly angels. The man, as you know, turned out to be a common crook. I am truly sorry about the attack and any problems it caused you, but he is gone and that’s that.
‘Again, I hired the foreman in Swaziland, but I did not know anything about the diseased woman. He must have acted on his own. I instructed you to leave in a hurry; because once the second angel was uncovered nothing could stop us from searching for the third one. The journal said she held the key – and she literally did.