The Emerald Scepter

by Paul Kemprecos

  He would have been dead a second later if Cait had not seen Amir and his men and stepped in front of Hawkins.

  “Amir. No!”

  Amir limped into the line of fire and waved his cane in the air.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  There was a moment of bow-string tension as all parties froze in place. Then the guards slowly lowered their guns and Amir strode up to the tower.

  “What is going on here, Dr, Cait?” he said.

  “This man is a friend, Amir. He saved my life.”

  Hawkins gently placed his hand on Cait’s shoulder and thanked her, then moved her aside and stepped out in front.

  “And those are my friends,” he said, pointing to Abby and Calvin. “I’d appreciate it if you would allow them to get to their feet.”

  Hawkins strode past the drug lord and helped Abby stand while Calvin got up on his own.

  “Da-yam, that was close, Hawk!” Calvin said as he brushed the dust off his clothes. He looked over at Cait, who was in conversation with Amir, and said, “Wow! Leave it to you to find a beautiful woman in the middle of nowhere.”

  Abby cast an appraising glance in Cait’s direction.

  “Wow indeed. Who’s the pretty lady?”

  “That’s Cait Everson, the historian who did the research into Prester John that sparked our crazy treasure hunt.”

  “What’s she doing in this godforsaken place?”

  Hawkins shook his head. “Looks like you’ll have the chance to ask her yourself.”

  Cait came toward them, walking arm-in-arm with the older man.

  “This is my friend Amir,” she said. “He’s a native of this area who has been helping me with my research.”

  Hawkins introduced himself and his friends. Abby winced when she saw Cait’s swollen jaw up close.

  “You need some cleaning up,” she said. “I’ve got a make-up kit you can use after I give you some first aid.”

  Cait said she would be delighted to accept the offer and the two women walked off, chatting like old friends, leaving Hawkins and Cal with Amir.

  “My apologies for the inconvenience.” Amir said. “From what Dr. Cait told me about how you came to her rescue, I realize now that I was under a misapprehension.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” Hawkins said in a tone that didn’t match his nonchalance.

  Amir picked up on the edge in Hawkins’ voice. “I understand your anger.” There was sadness in his eyes as he watched the bodies of Ghatool and Baht being carried to the armored vehicle. “My judgment was clouded by emotion. I was very fond of those men. They were loyal.”

  Amir’s readiness to order him killed signified a flinty hardness of personality, but he was clearly shaken up over the death of his men. Hawkins was intrigued, too, in the way Amir spoke English, with an American accent.

  Speaking in Pashto, Hawkins said, “A broken hand can work, but a broken heart can’t.”

  Amir’s jaw dropped. It was rare for a westerner to speak Pashto and even more shocking to hear the old Afghan expression of sympathy from the lips of this stranger.

  “True, but in this case the hand still has work to do. To begin with, we have much to learn about each other. May I suggest some refreshments?’

  The warlord clapped his hands and some of the guards who had been standing around went to the carrier and pulled out a plastic bag and a couple of coolers. Within minutes, the contents of the bag had morphed into an open-sided pavilion. Blankets and cushions were spread out in the shade.

  Abby and Cait returned. They had washed the dirt off their faces, and applied touches of make-up that had improved their spirit as well as their appearance.

  Amir served plates of cold spiced lamb and rice to his guests, which they washed down with ice tea. Cait chewed slowly, applying a cold pack to her sore jaw in between bites. While they dined, another cooler was passed to the guards, who had taken up stations at the fort’s gate and around the courtyard.

  Amir took a last bite, cleaned his fingers with a packaged hand wipe and looked around at the others.

  “Now that we have fed our bodies, it is time to feed our souls with stories. Would you be so kind as to go first, Mr. Hawkins?”

  Matt had been thinking how he might reply to the question that would inevitably be asked of him. Amir was too sharp to be deceived by fibs, so Hawkins decided to tell the full story, editing it here and there.

  He began with a short resume of his stint as a SEAL in Afghanistan. Amir nodded when he learned how Hawkins knew Pashto and proverbs. He sat quietly while Hawkins told how he had been wounded and left the navy to pursue scientific studies. He touched on his work at Woods Hole and said that he had been hired by what he termed as a government group to search for the Prester John treasure in the lake. He explained without going into detail that a terrorist organization wanted the treasure as part of a scheme against America.

  “To buy weapons?” Amir said.

  “As I understand it, they think the treasure will give them some historical legitimacy in their attacks on the U.S.”

  “Are you saying that you can explore the lake waters?” Cait broke in with excitement in her voice.

  “We have the equipment that will help us do that. Yes.”

  Amir raised his hand off his lap and held it in front of him as a gesture of disbelief.

  “You plunged right into this mission without question, apparently,” he said. “Weren’t you skeptical?”

  “Yes, I was very skeptical, until the attempt on my life.”

  He told how the two men had broken into his house and tried to kill him.

  When he described the twin attackers, a gasp came from Cait’s throat. “Those are the same men who tried to kidnap or kill me,” she said. “They are the reason I fled the country and came to Afghanistan.”

  “You’re still here Mr. Hawkins, so the assassins must have failed,” Amir said. “What happened?”

  “I killed one of them. The other got away.”

  Amir mulled the answer for a moment, a slight smile on his lips.

  “Go on with your fascinating story,” he said.

  Hawkins told how an acquaintance in Kabul had persuaded him to hire Rashid as a guide. He described their journey up to the theft of the desert buggy and the trek through the night to find the vehicle.

  “When we arrived at the fort we found the bodies of your men,” Abby explained. “We stayed outside to keep watch and Matt went in to check things out.”

  “It’s fortunate for me that he did,” Cait said. “I was so engrossed taking photos in the map room. I wish I had been paying attention, maybe I could have done something.”

  “You could do nothing against an armed and ruthless thug,” Amir said. “Tell me, Dr. Cait, what did you think of the map room?”

  “It’s wonderful, but I’m puzzled by the vandalism to the map. Who would do such a thing?”

  “I had the same thought the first time I saw the room years ago.” He gazed at the tower, a thoughtful expression on his face, then he pushed himself up from the cushion with his cane. “I would like to see this Rashid person.”

  “I’ll show you around,” Hawkins volunteered.

  “I’m coming with you,” Cait said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said with determination in her voice. “I left my camera and my cap behind.”

  Hawkins shrugged and led the way to the tower entrance and up the stairs to the map room.

  If the sight of Rashid’s body bothered Cait, she didn’t show it except for a slight wrinkle of her nostrils. Amir picked the knife from off the floor near the corpse. The blade was short but razor-sharp.

  “A coward’s weapon,” he said with distain.

  He tossed the knife aside, bent over Rashid’s body and brushed away the flies settling on the
mouth and lips. “This pig resembles a family of bandits that lives in a village around fifty miles distant. It’s hard to tell, though. I assume you’re responsible to the wounds to his face.”

  “No,” Hawkins said. “The credit for those goes to Dr. Everson, who fought him tooth and nail.”

  Cait had squatted to retrieve her baseball cap and the plaster fragments. “Not exactly a nail,” she said. She picked up a shiny piece of metal and stood.

  “This.”

  She was holding a chisel in her hand.

  “The mystery of the damaged map is apparently solved,” Amir said. “This tool was used to chop away the missing section.”

  “That only solves part of the mystery,” Cait said. “We don’t know why the damage was done or who did it.”

  Hawkins asked if he could look at the chisel and held it under the flashlight.

  “There are initials here on the shaft. K and an M. Any idea what they might stand for?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t make any sense,” Cait said.

  “Give it a try.”

  “My guess is that the letters stand for Kurtz Mining. I found similar initials on a timber in a flooded mine shaft his expedition dug to get at the treasure.”

  “I read about the Kurtz expedition in your report,” Hawkins said. “Why would he mess up the map?”

  Cait held the two shards with the letters on them side by side. “I think the map had the location of Prester John’s kingdom and Kurtz didn’t want anyone else to know where it was. He was sometimes scoffed at for his pursuit of legends. Think of the glory that would come if he discovered the treasure and found Prester John’s kingdom. Maybe even the Prester’s tomb. My guess is that he made a paper map before covering his trail.”

  “Seems like a reasonable conclusion,” Hawkins said. “How far is the lake from here?”

  “Two hours overland,” Amir said. “I suggest we get moving immediately. How soon can you launch your search?”

  “We can set up camp and start exploring the lake this afternoon.”

  Cait clapped her hands like a giddy child. “I’ve been waiting years for this moment. What are we waiting for?”

  “First, I will have my men remove that animal to the desert where he can feed the vultures,” Amir said. “That will be the end of it.”

  “Wait a second,” Hawkins said. He searched Rashid’s jacket and found his missing satellite phone. He cursed when he saw that the bullet that had killed the guide had smashed the phone to pieces.

  Amir said, “Don’t worry. I have a satellite phone you can use if you need it.”

  As they made their way from the map room, Hawkins glanced once more at Rashid’s body. He didn’t share Amir’s confidence that killing the guide would put an end to it. He wasn’t even sure what it was.

  What he was sure of was that Murphy had produced Rashid and vouched for his character. And that Rashid had then tried to kill him.

  He had expected that the main obstacle to finding the treasure would be the terrorists’ rival salvage expedition, but it was clear that shadowy forces had tried to put an end to the mission even before he arrived in Afghanistan. And when that failed, they had sent in Rashid as a hit man.

  None of it made sense.

  His head was spinning.

  He remembered the advice Jack Kelly had given him in Newport. His old commanding officer had said:

  Never seen it like this, Matt. Real snake pit. Watch your ass and make sure your perimeter is secure.

  As Hawkins stepped out into the courtyard behind Amir and Cait, he saw Calvin and Abby chatting like old friends with the guards who had almost killed them.

  Hawkins couldn’t wait to get back to Kabul and wrap his hands around Murphy’s throat and shake the truth out of him. He’d ask Sutherland to dig around in the meantime. It was time he brought Sutherland up to date anyhow. He asked Amir if he could borrow his phone and tried Sutherland’s number. There was no answer.

  He handed the phone back to Amir. He’d try again later.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  No matter how hard he scrubbed, Professor Saleem could not wash the blood from his hands. He tried different solvents and abrasives but the crimson stain persisted. He scrubbed harder. The skin dissolved, then the flesh deteriorated, and he realized to his horror that he was looking at the pure white bones of his fingers and palms.

  He awoke with his heart hammering in his chest and his face bathed in a cold sweat. He knew the source of the nightmare. He had gone to sleep thinking of a spirited exchange he had had with his cousin at ISI headquarters in Islamabad over the use of violence by unpredictable men with extremist views as a cat’s paw to accomplish the intelligent service’s goals.

  “I agree. This is a foul business,” Cousin Mohamed had said, leaning back in his chair to tent his fingers. “Sometimes we get our hands dirty, but remember that we can always wash them clean.”

  “That’s true, cousin, but sometimes the soap can be so strong that it removes the skin,” the professor had rejoined.

  The professor checked out his hands and was relieved to see that the flesh was attached to his fingers, then he dozed off again. He was awakened by one of the Doctor’s guards carrying a tray with a glass of tea and hard cakes. He was hungry and the meager repast was like a feast to him. They must have gained the Doctor’s trust because they were not blindfolded this time. It was still dark when he went outside and got into the Impala with Marzak and the Doctor.

  The car took them back to the field that had been used for the helicopter drop-off the day before. The unmarked helicopter arrived within minutes. When the professor went aboard, he saw four hard-faced men wearing military uniforms that, like the helicopter, had no designations.

  The professor squeezed past the SCUBA gear stacked on some of the other seats and found space to sit at the rear of the cabin. Marzak got in the front behind the pilot and co-pilot.

  The helicopter lifted off and after a couple of hours in the air, began a vertical descent into a valley between snow-capped mountains, landing on a low hill next to the three Bell Cobra AHI-F guns ships. All markings on the narrow fuselages were painted over.

  Several dozen bearded tribesmen came running over to meet the helicopter. Undeterred by the dust cloud stirred up by the spinning rotors, they surrounded the aircraft and shot bursts from their automatic weapons into the air to greet the landing party. The professor followed Marzak out of the helicopter. A man dressed in a flight uniform came over from one of the Cobras and spoke to Marzak. He couldn’t hear their conversation, but he saw the man nodding his head.

  When the conversation ended, Saleem went over to Marzak. “The Doctor’s followers are excited to see us.”

  Marzak smiled. “They are impatient to see the show.”

  “Show? I don’t understand.”

  “The Doctor asked me to have the helicopters make a practice run on that abandoned village,” Marzak said, gesturing in the direction of a cluster of buildings at the foot of the hill. “He wants his men to know what they can expect when it comes to the real thing.”

  Within minutes, the Cobra’s rotors thrummed the air. The gunships lifted off and gained elevation, then flew along the length of the valley in a single line until they diminished to the size of gnats. At the vanishing point they did a U-turn and sped back at a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour.

  As they approached the village, the gunships angled down on a long descending trajectory, leveling off in a low wedge formation with the lead pilot’s aircraft at point. The sound of buzz-saws cut through the chop of rotors as the Cobras fired the three-barreled Gatling cannons housed under their noses.

  The guns were made to penetrate tank armor and the 20 mm slugs easily ripped through the mud-walls at the rate of more than seven hundred rounds per minute. Buildings crumbled to dust under the fierce fusillade.

  A
s a follow-up, the Cobras unleashed seventy millimeter rockets from pods slung under their stubby wings. The rockets streaked into their targets and exploded in yellow and white blasts that produced billowing clouds of black smoke. The helicopters ended their run and banked around in a big curve.

  The professor was wearing aviator sunglasses, but he averted his gaze from the blinding explosions for a second. When he looked back he could not believe his eyes. Figures were emerging from the columns of smoke. There had been people inside the buildings! Those that had survived the guns and rockets had been turned into human torches. They only made it a few steps before they fell to the ground where they burned like logs in a fire place.

  All around him the bearded men shot their guns in the air and cheered. The Professor pushed his way through the throng to Marzak.

  “You said the village was abandoned!” Saleem said.

  Marzak shrugged.

  “I was telling the truth, Professor. The village was abandoned by its original inhabitants. It has since been used as a prison to hold traitors while it was decided what to do with them. When I spoke to the Doctor this morning we decided what to do with them,” Marzak said. “Why? Is there a problem?”

  So that was what Marzak’s conversation with the helicopter pilot was all about. The professor was enraged at having been made a party to murder, but he was aware of the tribesmen, who had gone menacingly silent, and were crowding in close around them.

  He forced his lips into a smile.

  “No,” he said. “No problem.”

  He turned away and strode back to the transport helicopter. The deadly demonstration had only reaffirmed what he already knew, that his cousin had underestimated the ruthlessness of these men. They would stop at nothing.

  Tomorrow the three Cobra helicopters would swoop in and unleash their power on the warlord’s compound. The transport helicopter carrying Marzak and his newfound friend would land the dive team and their guards at the treasure site. They would be joined by the other helicopters after they had reduced Amir’s compound to smoking rubble.