The Emerald Scepter

by Paul Kemprecos

  He had small delicate hands, warm, dark eyes and a soft-spoken manner. He wore no traditional headdress, suggesting that he was urban and educated, which he confirmed when he said he that they could call him the Doctor. “I am pediatrician,” he said, unnecessarily adding, “I treat children.”

  He told his guests to have a seat and poured glasses of tea from a pitcher.

  He acknowledged Saleem with a nod of his head.

  “You must be the professor.” Then he looked at Marzak. “And you are the Jeweler.”

  The professor sensed something unspoken pass between the men. Marzak’s half smile grew into a broad grin, as if he had suddenly recognized an old friend in a crowd. A chill ran down the professor’s spine.

  “Thank you for coming all this way,” the Doctor said. “We appreciate the work on the Prophet’s Necklace that you and your brother have been doing for us. I’m sorry he is not with you. Is he well?”

  “No,” Marzak said, with no change in expression. “He is dead.”

  The man’s heavy mono-brow formed a V. “I am sorry to hear that. An accident?”

  “In a manner of speaking. He was killed during the course of an assignment.”

  “By an American?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to provide more details.”

  “Let me tell you something,” the Doctor said. “When you first made contact and offered to serve us I thought it might be a CIA trick, even after you killed an enemy of ours to persuade us of the sincerity of your intentions. You were mercenaries, working for money, and you were not of the Faith.”

  “I have no faith,” Marzak said.

  “That is not important now. We are kin, bound together by blood. The Americans killed my brother, too,” the Doctor said. “And his wife and children. The cowards sent their drone airplane to bomb their house. That is how I came to be in the Shadows. We have all had friends or family killed by the Americans. Our goal is revenge.”

  “A laudable goal, Doctor.”

  “We have watched failure after failure. The shoe bomber. The underwear bomber. Pitiful attempts by amateurs. Then came the assassination of Bin Laden. We feel that if we do not act, we will become irrelevant. Which is why we are so interested in your plan. Please bring me up to date on the necklace.”

  “The clasp can be connected at any time. The strands run from coast to coast. There are a half dozen beads. Each one represents a location where large numbers of people gather. An explosive device in an innocent form has been hidden in each place. When the explosive is activated, it will spread sarin over a large area. Ingestion through the lungs or skin contact will be fatal.”

  Sarin.

  The professor folded his arms in front of him in an attempt to hide his trembling hands. He needn’t have worried, because the two men were deep into a discussion of the physiological effects of the deadly chemical nerve agent. He knew that sarin was 500 times more potent than cyanide and that it worked on humans the same way bug spray killed insects, but with more horrible effects leading to death.

  As a member of an elite intelligence service, the professor had been exposed to the venality of every type of human behavior, ranging from suicide bombers who killed children to political assassins who killed women. But as he sat in the small room listening to a quiet discussion of how to murder scores of people, he knew he had never before been in the presence of such evil incarnate.

  “How many casualties do you estimate?” the Doctor said.

  “Impossible to say, but it will keep the undertakers busy for a long while.”

  The Doctor closed his eyes, a beatific smile on his face, then opened them. “The simple purity of your plan is appealing. How will you trigger simultaneous explosions?”

  “I will call a certain telephone number and enter a code that will activate the explosions at the same second. Just give me the signal and it will be done.”

  “As soon as we acquire the treasure.” The Doctor stared at the professor, as if reading his thoughts. “I understand that our plans must be daunting to consider.”

  Saleem knew better than to lie, outright.

  “They are very ambitious. I worry about people of Pakistan origin who live in the U.S. and might be harmed.”

  “We have considered that,” the Doctor said. “Those people have gone over to the infidels. They have become one with them in life and so shall they be in death.”

  The professor nodded.

  “But don’t think we are murderers. We merely want to cripple the United States. It’s like disfiguring a man’s wife in front of her husband to teach him a lesson in humility. Marzak understands, don’t you?”

  “With crystal clarity, Doctor,” Marzak said.

  The professor’s mouth felt as if he had eaten sand. His legs wanted to carry him far away from these two madmen, but he willed his facial muscles to show no hint of the emotions roiling inside his chest.

  “Have no fear. I understand as well,” he said.

  “Good. Now that Marzak is here we will pursue our immediate objective.”

  “I have contracted for an assault team I’ve used in other assignments,” Marzak said. “Pulling together the dive team was a little more difficult, but I have four divers with combat and salvage experience. We will have three Bell Cobra helicopters and a transport helicopter.”

  “What do you think?” The Doctor asked Saleem. “Enough to do the job?”

  “More than enough,” the professor replied. “The Cobras are devastating weapons.”

  “Good. An assault force made up of tribesmen has arrived at a staging area closer to the target,” the Doctor said. “While the Cobras deal with Amir Kahn, your divers will go into the lake to retrieve the treasure. The Cobras will also come in handy should the American mission arrive.”

  “A sound military strategy,” Saleem said. “Since we are footing the bill for this mission, ISI maintains operational control, but I will try to stay in the background as an observer.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Doctor said. “I’m sure the arrangement will work out fine, aren’t you, Mr. Marzak?”

  Marzak said, “As long as there is no interference with military decisions.”

  “Of course. We owe a great deal to the ISI,” the Doctor said to Saleem. “Without the intelligence service we would not have known that the Americans were sending an expedition of their own. You and the Jeweler will be our guests tonight and fly out tomorrow to an advance base.”

  The meeting was over.

  The Doctor called in a guard to show the guests to their quarters. Saleem was glad to see that his room had a bathroom with a working shower. He stripped and turned the shower up to full. He didn’t know if he could wash evil away with cold water, but he tried.

  As he toweled himself dry he realized that he had fulfilled the first part of his assignment faster than he could have imagined. He had important details of the Prophet’s Necklace, but without his phone he had no way to share the intelligence with his cousin. He stared at the blank walls of his room, and although he was not a religious man, he began to pray for a miracle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A few minutes after three o’clock in the morning Hawkins and Abby watched as Calvin drove the Desert Patrol Vehicle out of a shed and pulled up to the Boeing Vertol 234 model helicopter. The civilian version of the battle-tested CH-47 Chinook leased by Abby’s company had tandem rotors located at the front and back of the long snub-nosed fuselage.

  The temperature had dropped at least thirty degrees overnight and their breath vaporized in the cold air. They were all dressed in heavy duty beige pants and shirts, tan baseball caps and matching windbreakers over fleece sweaters. The choice of clothing had been the subject of intense discussion. They ultimately chose the civilian work clothes, hoping that they might pass for engineers or archaeologists.

  Calvin got
out of the DPV and he and Hawkins passed a nylon sling beneath the vehicle. The rope from the sling was attached to a single length of chain with a loop at one end.

  They went over the check list to make sure they had all their gear, and that the equipment was securely tied down and protected. Abby signaled the pilot with a wave of her hand. The powerful engines roared to life and the twin rotors started spinning. The team climbed into the helicopter and settled in a row of seats next to Rashid. Abby made a point of sitting far from the guide. There was something about the man she didn’t like. She had caught him staring at her breasts a few times and hadn’t been flattered by the attention.

  The helicopter lifted off and when it was around fifty feet in the air, it shifted sideways until it was over the Desert Patrol Vehicle. A cable was lowered to the ground crew, which attached it to the sling and a winch lifted the vehicle into the air. The helicopter rose at a slow, steady rate to keep the load from swinging wildly.

  The sky was going from black to a blue-gray light that revealed the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush mountain range rising above the city.

  The racket from the tandem engines and chop of rotors ratcheted up to an ear-shattering decibel level. Hawkins put on his headphones and motioned to their hired guide to do the same.

  He unfolded a laminated map of their target area and showed the guide the landing zone he had in mind.

  “That’s good,” Rashid said. He raised his voice even though it wasn’t necessary with the headphones. “It is flat here, with low hills to hide us.”

  “What about the terrain between the LZ and the lake?”

  “Very rugged. But there is a dry river bed that goes almost all the way to the lake like a super highway.”

  “Any chance of someone seeing us on this highway?” Calvin asked.

  “Not much. The village and the fields are on the other side of the lake.”

  “What about planes?” Hawkins said. “There’s an airstrip near Khan’s compound.”

  “The planes go away from the lake, toward Iran, to smuggle drugs.”

  “You seem to know a lot more about this territory than its topography,” Hawkins said.

  Rashid dabbed the map with his forefinger.

  “I come from a village, here. Many of the men have gone to work for the Kahn.”

  The helicopter gained altitude and transected the mountains through a high pass to the south, before turning in a more westerly direction and following the line of the 600-mile-long mountain range running northeast to southwest across the country. They passed over green fields, flat-roofed villages and meandering rivers, but these gentle features were rare exceptions. From the air, much of Afghanistan looked like a battlefield of the gods where unimaginable forces had collided and torn the earth’s crust apart, then stitched the tectonic plates back together like an insane surgeon.

  Hawkins knew from experience that there was a subterranean world beneath the hard surface of the land. Parts of the country were honey-combed with caves. Some were natural. Others had been dug by men as places to live, as religious shrines, to extract lapis lazuli, to irrigate the fields, to hide in while fighting invaders. And just maybe, one had been used to hold a fabulous treasure.

  As the helicopter sped southwest at a speed of a hundred-fifty-miles per hour, the scenery below changed from mountains and valleys to hills and deserts. Hawkins had been keeping tabs on their progress using his hand-held GPS set. After about two hours of flying, he rose from his seat and went to the cockpit to talk to the crew. He returned moments later and said, “ETA is fifteen minutes.”

  The helicopter began a long shallow descent and eventually came to a hover above a relatively flat stretch of terrain. The lake could be seen shimmering in the distance.

  The winch lowered the desert vehicle until the wheels touched the ground. The automatic hook release was activated then the helicopter moved sideways fifty feet or so and descended slowly until the landing gear thumped to the ground.

  The passengers disembarked one-by-one then the door closed behind them and the helicopter was in the air again.

  Hawkins and Calvin checked their weapons—Sig-Sauer 9mm pistol for Hawkins and the short-barreled CAR-15 rifle for Calvin—then while Calvin stood guard at the dune buggy, Rashid led the others to some high ground that offered a wide view of the surrounding landscape. The scenery reminded Matt of the badlands found in the southwestern U.S. Rashid said the river bed ran along the base of a low ridge of sandstone bluffs.

  They heard the engine start, and then the vehicle ascended the hill and skidded to a stop.

  “Going my way?” Calvin said. He had a wide grin on his face.

  “You’re enjoying this a little too much, Cal.”

  “Hey, Hawk, you’ve got to admit it feels good to be back in the saddle.”

  Hawkins glanced around at the washboard topography before he climbed onto the rear of the vehicle next to Abby.

  “Okay. I’ll agree with you that this is pretty exciting.”

  Abby brought them both down to earth.

  “We’ll see just how long that lasts,” she said.

  Sutherland had spent a peaceful day in her studio working on a painting of a Rufus hummingbird. When she was satisfied that the colors were right, she took a break to enjoy the sunset and a cold Tecate. She cooked herself some vegetarian tacos, watched the Bachelor on television and sneered at the long-legged bimbos, then headed to her office desk and booted up her computer. The first thing she saw was a message from Hawkins dated several hours before.

  Sorry message delay. Landed in Kabul. Long flight. All OK. Hired guide on rec of old acquaintance Terrance Murphy. Will contact you later. Incommunicado for now. Thanks. Matt.

  Sutherland read the message again.

  “Crap!” she said. Her fingers flew over the keyboard.

  Murphy is a snake. Check attached report.

  She sat back in her chair and waited for an answer knowing it would not come. Hawkins was out of reach. She raged at the screen. She should never have been away from her computer for so long. How could she be so stupid?

  Now what?

  Her only weapons were her old laptop and her proficiency at using it. Matt still had his satellite phone and he said he would call. She had to assume that he’d keep his promise. She spent the next few hours compiling a report on all the information she had gathered on the links between Murphy, Trask and Arrowhead. Maybe she could get it to Hawkins before he got in too deep with this Murphy character.

  She murmured a prayer and pressed the Send command.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Cait sat in her room going over the photos transferred from the camera to her computer. The photo taken deep in the shaft showed the letters J. W. carved into the timber with a date, March 11, 1920, the year Kurtz launched his expedition.

  She picked up her copy of “The Emerald Sceptre” and began to read. The author, a reporter for the Denver Post named Wayne Valero, opened the book by quoting a letter Prester John had written to the Byzantine emperor of Rome, Manuel, in 1177 in which the Prester bragged about his wealth and power and said he had vanquished the infidels who surrounded his kingdom. Skeptics pointed to parts of the letter that said the kingdom was home to men with horns and giants who had one eye, unicorns and gryphons, places where poison would not work, and a fountain of youth. According to the letter, no one in Prester John’s land could tell a lie.

  Valero then went on to describe how one of the many agents Kurtz employed in his worldwide quest, while foraging in a Kabul antiquities shop, came across a fragment of a letter, written in Latin on vellum. The ragged edge suggested that it had been roughly torn from a scroll. Drawn on the back of the vellum were some child-like squiggles. The letter appeared to be from Prester John. This discovery had been the catalyst for Kurtz’s Prester John expedition.

  The author had
dogged the trail that led Kurtz to Afghanistan. His persistence paid off. He found a journalist’s dream: a reliable source in the widow of an expedition archaeologist who had died at sea on the return trip. She let the reporter see papers her husband had compiled before the expedition.

  The archaeologist had submitted the vellum scrap to experts who dated it to the 12th century. The same tests that verified its ancient origin led to another interesting discovery. The squiggles had been drawn in human blood. The archaeologist had copied down the message on a separate sheet of paper:

  “I-John the priest, by the might and strength of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, King of earthly kings, and Lord of lords, sends to him that stands in the place of God, namely, the Ruler of Rome, through thy messenger, by the wonted munificence of our bounty, twenty casks of precious stones and gold, and this gift, in my name, so that we may strengthen ourselves mutually in our power turn by turn. . . .”

  The mention of a special gift sent Valero back to the origin of the Prester John legend in a letter written by Otto, bishop of Freisingen, who in 1145 met with a Syrian bishop. The Syrian told him about a Christian king and priest known as Presbyter John, whose kingdom lay beyond Persia and Armenia. John belonged to a Christian sect known as Nestorians and had defeated the infidels in a number of battles. He was supposedly descended from the Magi, was rich beyond belief, and used as the emblem of his power and wealth an emerald scepter.

  Valero heard an echo of Otto’s report in the Prester’s vellum letter to the Pope: What better gift to show a willingness to share power but the fabled scepter? Or did the scepter symbolize a gift even more valuable than gold and gems: an alliance to fight the Muslim infidels?

  The archaeologist’s widow told Valero that one of Kurtz’s historic researchers had found a clue in an old map of caravan routes that had an X labeled Itmud. The archaeologists nicknamed the site “It’s mud” after the expedition visited the place and found a cluster of tall tower-like geological formations like those known as ‘hoo-doos’ in the southwestern United States. The researchers would have dismissed the map as a fake, except that the name Itmud meant pillar.