by Jean Thomas
“He was a ceramics restorer in the National Museum there,” Wendy continued. “He told Hank and the others how the government was so weak it was unable to protect the thousands of ancient artifacts in the museum. How so many of the pieces in its valuable collections had already been looted and sold to collectors in other countries.”
Wendy paused, as if searching now for the right words. Words that wouldn’t make her husband sound anything but humanly vulnerable to a temptation that few men could have resisted.
“I want to make it clear,” she went on, “that Hank is ashamed now of what he did.”
“Which was?” Clare said.
“Hamid Zahir proposed, with the support of the four of them, because he needed men of their experience for his scheme to work, that they break into the museum and help themselves to its treasures. The kind of small things, a lot of them in gold and silver, that would have eventually vanished anyway. Not that it made what they did right.”
“So they carried off this stuff on some dark night,” Mark conjectured. “And then what?”
“The plan was for the five of them to share equally in the profits. Only at that point the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated so badly it would have been impossible to get their treasures out of the country. Not with the Taliban at the borders making certain nothing and no one got in or out without their wanting it to get in or out.”
“But one of the five men had a solution,” Mark said.
He would know that from Hank Kolchek’s letter, Clare thought. Just as she knew it.
“Hamid Zahir, yes,” Wendy said. “What he asked was that the five of them agree to hide their treasures until they could be safely recovered and removed from the country.”
“A temporary measure,” Clare said. “Except what none of them imagined was that it would be years before they could go back for those treasures.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry,” Clare apologized. “We keep interrupting you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not if it clarifies the whole thing for you.”
“This hiding place,” Mark said. “Did Zahir suggest that, too?”
“He did. A remote mountain region well away from Kabul. They drove there in his car as far as the road would take them, divided the valuables into five backpacks and set off on foot. It was necessary by then to hire a local guide who led them into an isolated valley. The route was so complicated Hamid drew a map and kept adding to it along the way.”
Because without such a map, Clare realized, they would never find their way back to that valley.
“The guide left them at the foot of what he called a sacred mountain, refusing to go any farther. He told them there were caves everywhere on the mountain. That his people were forbidden to visit them, fearing they would anger the spirits who lived in them. Hamid had heard about the mountain and its caves. He’d counted on the guide not hiking up there with them.
“I remember Hank telling me the cave they finally chose had a mouth so small, and then a ceiling so low once they squeezed inside, they had to crawl all the way through this long, narrow passage on their stomachs.”
Clare could picture those five men wriggling into what must have been no better than a damp, dark hole while dragging their heavy backpacks behind them. Until they reached what?
Wendy answered that question for her. “In the end, they found this deep, black cavity. And that’s where they shoved the backpacks just as far as they would go.”
“The story doesn’t end there, does it?” Mark said.
Wendy shook her head. “By the time they got back to Kabul, they no longer trusted one another. At least that was true of Roy Innes. Hank said he was always something of a loose cannon with an unpredictable temperament. Malcolm Boerner was suspicious, too. With only the one map in Hamid’s possession, what was to prevent him from going back to the cave alone and taking the treasures for himself? His offer to draw four identical maps was no guarantee either that any one of them wouldn’t empty the cave on his own.”
“And that’s where the pendants came in,” Mark said.
“I see you’ve figured that out.”
“It seemed to make sense once we started to put things together.”
“It made sense to the others, too, when Hamid thought of it. They went with him to his home studio to make sure he didn’t trick them. Being as experienced as he was with ceramics, he created a clay disk, etched a picture map into both of its surfaces and divided it into five equal wedges before firing and glazing them.”
Just as Professor Duval surmised, Clare thought.
“Each man received one of those wedges strung on a lanyard for safekeeping,” Wendy said. “Only when the five pieces were fitted together would the map have meaning. After Hamid burned the paper map in the presence of all of them, the five men went their separate ways.”
With the four Americans eventually finding their way home to make other lives for themselves, Clare realized.
Wendy finished her story by telling them, “Hank was essentially always a good man, which is why he came to regret the role he played in the robbery. In the end he wanted to see those stolen treasures returned to Afghanistan’s National Museum, where he felt they belonged. He hoped to persuade the others to agree to that.”
Mark made a sound of disgust. “Obviously, Innes had a much different intention. Probably Boerner, as well. We think they might have been partners before they had a falling out and Innes ended up killing him.”
After he murdered Joe, Clare thought. Was it possible that Joe eventually felt the same guilt as Hank Kolchek? If so, it could account for his drinking all these years. Something her sister had never understood. Terry would be glad to hear an explanation for the husband she had always thought much better than Clare had ever given him credit for.
She had been holding the snapshot all this while. She gave it back to Wendy, who replaced the photo inside her husband’s wallet before returning the wallet to her purse.
“Did the Conch Beach police see that picture?” Clare wanted to know.
“They did, and made a copy of it. I’m not sure, though, they felt it would be of much use to them. It would have been different if I’d witnessed the attack myself. Only Hank can put a name to his attacker.”
If he ever regains consciousness, Clare thought.
“There is one thing I can and will do,” Wendy assured them. “I can tell both the New Orleans and St. Boniface police all I know, which is a good deal. It should help to clear your sister. And, of course, Hank would be ready to give evidence providing...”
She didn’t finish. Clare sadly and silently finished the sentence for her. Providing he survives.
She was about to thank Wendy for her offer when one of the IC unit doors across the hall flashed open. A nurse emerged, spotted Wendy in the lounge and came to the open doorway.
“Encouraging news, Mrs. Kolchek. Your husband is awake and asking for you.”
The announcement couldn’t have been more timely than if it had been staged. Or more welcome.
Wendy surged to her feet and hurried out of the lounge. She was halfway across the hall when she paused and looked over her shoulder, a concerned expression on her face.
“Be careful, won’t you?” she called back to them. “Roy Innes needs that last pendant, and there isn’t anything he won’t do to get it.”
Chapter 18
“She was gone before we got to tell her how glad we were for
her that Hank is awake,” Clare said.
“Or that I wasn’t planning to let that greedy bastard get anywhere near us,” Mark said.
“I suppose she knew that but felt she had to say it anyway.”
Just as Wendy must realize as we do, Clare thought, that her husband’s state of consciousness is a hopeful sign but no guarantee he’ll recover. Or that he’ll be strong enough to talk to the police before Roy Innes comes after Mark again.
She and Mark went on sitting there in the lounge, both of them quiet now.
“I have a suggestion,” he finally said. “I say we go to the cops here and fill them in on all we learned back in Louisiana. Added to what Wendy must have already told them, it should give them a better handle on hunting down Innes.”
“I say you’re right.”
Getting to their feet, they left the lounge and started down the corridor, both of them lost in thought again.
There was more than just the police on Clare’s mind. There was Terry to contact with the positive news which could soon bring her sister’s release, her car to be recovered from that service garage, her classroom waiting for her return back home.
All of these involved some degree of emotion for her. But none of those emotions were as deep or as conflicted as the one concerning Mark and her. Because if what they had shared was winding down, about to reach a conclusion, as Clare felt it was, then it meant what she couldn’t bear to address. A parting of the ways. Unless—
What? The something she so ardently wished for but, given all the complications, all the problems and barriers, she didn’t dare to consider as a realistic possibility?
Not now. Don’t let yourself think about it now. There’s time for that later.
They had crossed the sky bridge and were on their way to the elevator when, rounding a corner, Clare stopped at the door to a women’s restroom.
“I’m going to stop in here for a minute.”
“I’ll wait outside for you right here,” Mark assured her.
* * *
Clare was not the exception. He had never known a woman yet who, just before ducking into a restroom, hadn’t said something like, “Be with you in a jiffy.” And then, of course, she had managed to be forever.
Mark was prepared to wait. There was a window just a few paces away from the restroom door. He went and stood there at the glass, occupying himself with the view of the hospital grounds spread below him.
There was little to capture his attention, unless he was willing to count the figure of a man who swung into view. He wasn’t, but he did idly watch the guy as he stopped on the sidewalk to light a cigarette.
Mark was about to turn his gaze elsewhere when the fellow lifted his head to exhale a stream of smoke. That’s when he saw his face, and even from this height there was something about those gaunt features and that narrow head that seemed weirdly familiar.
Where had he seen that face? Seen it recently. And then it struck him. The photo Wendy Kolchek had shown them!
No, that was crazy. It couldn’t be Roy Innes down there. What would Innes be doing here outside the hospital, of all places, strolling innocently along a sidewalk with a cigarette in his hand as though it wasn’t against the rules? He was imagining it might be him.
The figure moved. Mark moved with him in the same direction, which took him around the corner and out on the windowed sky bridge where he picked up the figure again headed toward the parking lot.
Mark went from window to window, striving to keep him within range. Not easy with shrubs and trees in the way. But he had to know, had to be sure he was imagining it was Innes.
He was on the far end of the sky bridge when the figure disappeared altogether. Not willing to give up, he stood there at the glass in a state of tense frustration. Waiting, searching.
There! The guy was in view again. Crossing the parking lot now. No chance of another glimpse of his face, was there? Damn, he’d gone and vanished altogether somewhere in that sea of vehicles.
Clare, Mark remembered. He had to get back to Clare.
He was returning to his post outside the restroom when, midway along the bridge, his gaze caught a movement through one of the windows. Not the figure of a man this time. A car rolling along one of the parking lot lanes in the direction of the exit to the street. A blue sedan. Maybe not the same blue sedan that had followed them in Louisiana, but it could be.
* * *
Clare had emerged from one of the two bathroom stalls and was at the sink washing her hands when the restroom door swished open and shut again.
A slender figure approached the sink. Clare could see the woman behind her in the mirror above the sink. A striking brunette in a pale yellow sundress similar in style to her own lime-green sundress. She started to move aside to give her room.
“Stay right where you are,” the woman ordered her in what sounded like a faint Hispanic accent.
Clare was aware of something hard suddenly pressed into her back. Something that, to her disbelief, actually felt like a gun.
“No, don’t try to turn around. That would be a big mistake. Just hand your purse back to me.”
Dear God, was she about to be mugged in a hospital restroom? She did the wise thing and passed the purse to the brunette, watching her fearfully in the mirror as she skillfully continued to hold the gun on her with one hand while managing with the other to burrow into her purse that she’d hooked by its strap over her wrist. It was the wallet she wanted, of course.
“Look,” Clare said, “just take the money in my wallet and leave me with the rest, please. I promise you I don’t have any other valuables in there.”
“I don’t want your damn money. I just want to be sure—” there was a pause while the hand still buried inside the purse searched for something “—you have this.”
“What? What do I have?”
“A valid driver’s license.”
What on earth—
“I will take this, though.”
She removed Clare’s cell phone before reaching around her and depositing her purse on the counter.
No money. Just a cell phone. This didn’t make sense. “What’s this all about? Why are you—”
“No more questions. Pick up your bag and turn around. Slowly.” Clare was aware of that gun still directed at her, even though its owner had backed away a few feet. When she hesitated, she was issued a sharp, “Do it.”
By the time she obeyed and was facing the brunette, the woman’s own purse, which had been hanging from her shoulder, was now in her hand. Presumably, the cell phone was now inside it.
“This is what’s going to happen,” she instructed Clare. “We’re leaving here together. You will walk close beside me to the elevator, across the lobby when we get there and out of the building to my car. When we reach my car, you’ll take the wheel and drive where I tell you to. And all the way, all the way, I’ll be holding my gun here out of sight under my purse. If you speak to anyone, try to signal them, I won’t hesitate to use it. Understand?”
Clare, given no other choice, nodded mutely.
“Now move.”
Mark, she thought. Mark was there outside the door. He wouldn’t just let her walk off with a strange woman. He would try to prevent that, not knowing about the gun. He was at risk of being shot if she didn’t find some way of warning him.
But, to her dismay, Mark wasn’t waiting there outside. He had disappeared somewhere. She was both relieved and, at the same time, deeply worried by his absence.
Not a robbery, she thought as, trembling, she accompanied the brunette toward the elevator. This was a kidnapping. But why?
* * *
No Clare. She was still inside the blasted restroom.
Mark was on fire with impatience as he took up his post again outside the door. They had to g
et to the police station. Not just to inform the cops of all they had learned back in Louisiana. He needed to report his sighting from the windows on the sky bridge.
All right, so it probably hadn’t been Roy Innes. A resemblance didn’t mean anything, not when Innes had been on his mind. As for the blue sedan...well, blue sedans were common enough, weren’t they? Anyway, Innes could have switched cars before leaving New Orleans. Just the same...
Where the devil was she?
No longer willing to keep his vigil, Mark cracked open the restroom door just far enough to call out a loud, “Clare, what’s keeping you?”
No answer. Silence.
He didn’t care what females were in there or what objections they might make. He was going in. Smacking the door wide with the flat of his hand, he strode into the restroom. And found it empty, stalls and all.
He walked out of the place concerned but not alarmed. All the while he’d been waiting for her, and here she was gone. But where and why?
It occurred to him then that she had to have come away from the restroom only to find him not there. She’d probably wondered the same thing he was wondering. Where had he gone and why? She must have taken off in search of him.
Cell phone. He could reach her on her cell phone, ask her where she was. Tell her to stay there until he joined her.
But when he slid his cell out of his back pocket, opened it, scrolled down the list to her number and hit the send button with his thumb, he got nothing.
It rang on her end, yes, rang repeatedly, but Clare wasn’t picking up. Now he was getting closer to being alarmed. Something wasn’t right.
The image of that figure below the sky bridge windows flashed through his mind. What if it had been Innes? What if he had grabbed Clare? No, that wasn’t possible. For one thing, the timing for such an action had been all wrong. Besides, whoever it was, had been alone down there. Alone, too, when Mark had seen him drive off.
She has to be somewhere in the building. Unless—