The Emerald Scepter

by Paul Kemprecos

  Holding the Prester John coin in her hand to reassure herself that her adventures had not been in her mind, she called Nelson Black, a coin expert acquaintance. Cait had drawn upon Black’s expertise when she was writing her Silk Road books, and his name came to mind the second she saw the Prester John coin. She had contacted him earlier from the 747 saying she had a highly unusual coin he might like to see. He tried to tease out the details, but she said he would have to wait until she arrived to examine it in person.

  “Hello Nelson,” she said. “Cait. I’m home.”

  “Please hurry. You’ve got me all excited with your mysterious phone call from high in the sky.”

  Cait smiled. “On my way.”

  Twenty minutes later, she arrived in National Harbor, Maryland, where Black lived. He had been impatiently awaiting her arrival and eagerly led the way to his coin vault. The spacious basement room contained the shallow drawer filing cabinets that held his collection and a wooden table he used to examine and sort coins.

  “Well, what do we have, Dr. Everson?”

  She handed him the Prester John coin in a plastic bag.

  He slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, extracted the coin, and held it by its edges, examining both sides. Then he placed it under the magnifier, squinted through the ten-power lens for a moment, flipped it over, took it off and weighed it, rolled it between his fingers, and turned to Cait.

  “If I may ask, Dr. Everson, where did you find this coin?”

  “In Afghanistan.”

  He narrowed his gray eyes. “Specifically?”

  “It was discovered in what was apparently a tomb in the central part of the country.”

  “Was the tomb shown to you by a local? Sometimes natives will salt a ruin with fakes.”

  “Its location was based on my research. The tomb seems to have been plundered, but the robbers dropped this coin.”

  “As you said on the phone this is a very unusual specimen. Highly unusual I might say. Prester John was a controversial figure. Many scholars believe that he and his kingdom never existed.”

  “I am in the minority that believes Prester John and his kingdom were real. I was hoping that your examination of the coin would prove it.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, but there are a number of possibilities.”

  “I’d like to hear them.”

  “This could be a coin from Prester John’s kingdom. Or this coin could have been minted by someone who peddled it to gullible buyers. Another possibility is that it is a fantasy item, which memorializes something that may not be real. Like a winged horse or a unicorn. Bottom line, I can’t confirm that this was currency minted in some long-lost kingdom.”

  “I knew it was a long shot.”

  “Don’t be disheartened. What I can do is tell you it is, in fact, an ancient coin, not a more recent fake.”

  “Well, that’s something, at least.”

  Black gave a crisp laugh.

  “Further tests, like a spectroscopic analysis, may prove me wrong, but if I’m correct, and regardless of its origin, we are looking at one of the most important numismatic finds in the past hundred years.”

  Black’s statement echoed in Cait’s ears as she drove back to Arlington. The coin tucked in her purse seemed to be emanating rays from the past. Even if the treasure were never found, the existence of the coin would bolster her Prester John theory and spur even further research.

  Back at her apartment, she slipped out of her Indiana Jones outfit, showered, and crawled into bed. She fell asleep, thinking that she couldn’t wait to see the faces of her colleagues who had described her work as “pop research.”

  She would have slept less soundly if she had known that Marzak was only a few miles away.

  Marzak had a network of contacts around the world. After slipping out of the hotel in Islamabad, he had called a number and told the person at the other end that he had to get out of Pakistan as soon as possible. He was told to hang on and after an excruciating wait, he was instructed to go directly to the airport. A first-class seat was waiting on a commercial flight to London where he caught a British Airways plane to Washington.

  Upon arriving, he had taken a taxi to an apartment building on the outskirts of the city. The unit ownership was under one of his many false names, and the big beehive of an apartment complex offered a degree of anonymity. The two-bedroom unit had served as a crash pad for him and his brother and a storage place for an array of weapons that would have supplied a small army.

  He checked the security camera that kept watch on the apartment, but no intruders had been recorded. He laid some weapons on his brother’s bed and stretched out on the couch. He stared at the ceiling and fell into a watchful half sleep that ended when his eyes blinked open at the chirp of his cell phone.

  The voice on the line belonged to one of the freelance operators he and his brother had employed for special jobs. “We picked up a signal from the transmitter we put in Dr. Everson’s car.”

  “Let me know when she reaches a destination.”

  The phone chirped again an hour later.

  “She went to National Harbor, stayed around forty-five minutes and drove back to her apartment.”

  “Where did she stop?”

  “At a private residence. We checked. It’s owned by Nelson Black, a coin expert.”

  Interesting.

  “Put her under surveillance,” Marzak said. “Let me know if she has visitors or if she leaves again.”

  He stretched out on the couch again to martial his physical and mental resources. His prime target was Hawkins, but he had learned long ago that low-hanging fruit was better than no fruit at all.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  The military jail at Camp Kurtz was a dilapidated barn-sized shed that had been used as a mausoleum for dead mining equipment. The rough-hewn building was crowded with rust-covered, derelict machines, huge wheels, cylinders, riveted boilers and spring-like coils that looked more like industrial art than the mechanical guts of a busy mining operation.

  Sutherland sat on the dirt floor of the shed, her right wrist handcuffed to a giant cable spool. She had been there for hours. Slivers of light sifting through gaps in the boards had provided the only illumination, but even those had disappeared and she was in near total darkness.

  She was uncomfortable, thirsty and hungry. She would have killed for a bag of potato chips. Mostly, she was angry at herself for breaking her own rule against letting her computer out of her hands. She should never have left it in the barracks. She didn’t blame Hawkins for his ill-timed message. She had been hoping he would contact her, but he could never have dreamed that his words would be seen by hostile eyes. But there on the screen, for Kurtz to see, was Hawkins’ mangled attempt at texting shorthand:

  AAS. THX411. CONGRATS. ACKKurtz=PJ$ Home2moro. T2UL. Hawkins.

  A grating sound cut into her ruminations. The shed door swung open and a flashlight beam hit her face. She shut her eyes to block the light. Boots crunched on the dirt. A hand grabbed her by the wrist, unlocked the cuff and pulled her to her feet. Her arm was yanked behind her back and she was cuffed again.

  “March,” Krause ordered.

  He shoved her through the doorway. The Jeep was waiting to drive her to the mansion. They escorted Sutherland through the front entrance and down a long hallway. Wallpaper was peeling away and the corridor had a musty odor. Krause stopped in front of a door and knocked.

  The general barked: “Enter!”

  Krause opened the door, pushed Sutherland into the room and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

  Kurtz sat behind an antique desk of gargantuan proportions that was carved with Gothic motifs. The top of the desk was bare except for a riding crop and an old-fashioned goose-neck lamp that provided the only light, but it was enough illumination for her to see that the suits
of armor flanking the desk were rusty and missing parts.

  “Sit,” the general said, pointing to a plain wooden chair.

  Sutherland did as she was told. Kurtz opened a drawer and pulled out her computer, which was on. He placed it on the desk, screen facing him.

  “Who’re you working for? ATF? DEA? FBI?”

  “You forgot the BVD.”

  “What’s that stand for?”

  “My father wore BVD underwear. He said it stood for Buster V. Davenport.” She paused. “It was a joke. Coalminer humor.”

  He tapped the computer with the riding crop.

  “This,” he said, “Is no joke. It’s code. Tell me what it says.”

  The message from Hawkins said: Alive and Smiling. Thanks for the information. Congratulations. Acknowledge Kurtz has Prester John treasure. Home tomorrow. Talk to you later.

  “It’s not code, it’s texting shorthand. Any teenage kid could tell you what it says.”

  “You tell me what it says.”

  “It’s a message from a friend of mine. It says that he’s on his way home and will call tomorrow.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “An ex-navy guy. I know him from Iraq.”

  Kurtz leaned forward and glowered.

  “I might have believed you corporal, except for one thing.” He slowly spun the computer around so that the screen was facing her and tapped it with his riding crop. “That’s my family name in your friend’s message. How come?”

  She had been thinking how to answer the inevitable question.

  “I wrote my friend that I was coming here to the old mine.”

  “What about the PJ dollar sign stuff?”

  She had expected the question.

  “Shorthand again. P means Poor. J means that I need a job so I can contribute to your cause.”

  He sat back, folded his arms and stared at her for a second before the grin vanished.

  “Know what I think it means, corporal? It means you are lying.”

  Sutherland shrugged. “That’s too bad, because it also means that you feel you can no longer trust me. So I’d like my motorcycle back and an escort to the gate.”

  “You’re not going anywhere until we check you out. And if we find you are a spy, you will be brought up before a court martial.”

  “You have no jurisdiction over me. I’m a volunteer.”

  “The second you passed through the gates of this camp, you came under my authority. My word is the law here.”

  Sutherland’s eyes narrowed behind the round glasses. She had had enough of this jerk.

  “If you don’t let me go, this camp will be history.”

  “Hah! What’re talking about?”

  “I’ve frozen all your financial assets.”

  “Bull crap!”

  “Bull crap yourself. Check your accounts if you don’t believe me.” She gave him the bank name and account number and the quantity of money. “It’s a pretty pitiful amount, but I took it out and I’m the only one who can put it back.”

  He stood up, placed his palms on the desk and loomed over her like an avenging angel. “I. Have. Had. Enough. Of. This.” He smacked the riding crop down on the desk and yelled for Krause, who was outside the door and ordered him to take her back to the jail. Krause grabbed her roughly by the arm.

  “Wait!” she protested. “If I’m under military arrest, I come under the army rules for treatment of prisoners. Treatment at all times should be humane. I’m hungry and thirsty and I don’t like that dark hole. If I don’t get better treatment, you and your men will be on food stamps when I get through with you.”

  They stared at each other. Kurtz knew better than to underestimate an enemy, and he didn’t like the idea that Sutherland knew his bank and account information. And she was right about the military rules.

  “Take the prisoner to the barracks. Give her food and water.”

  Krause prodded her back to the Jeep. They rode to the women’s barracks and he handcuffed her to her bunk. He called someone on his hand radio. Paine showed up a few minutes later with some power bars and Gatorade, which she handed to Sutherland without saying a word or making eye contact.

  Sutherland thought that maybe she shouldn’t have threatened Hak. The general was even more delusional than she was. He was obviously mentally ill and she should have handled him with kid gloves, but she didn’t do well with threats. She could only wish that he still had a shred of sanity and would release her once he checked on the status of his funds. She closed her eyes and dozed off.

  Kurtz paced back and forth in his study, occasionally slapping his thigh with his riding crop.

  The message on Sutherland’s computer had sparked a long-forgotten memory. He’d been a boy when his father told him about Grandpa Hiram going to Afghanistan to look for a fabulous treasure. When he had scoffed at the story, his father gave him a book to read.

  He scanned the shelves and his hand reached out for a book entitled, “The Emerald Sceptre.” He sat behind his desk and leafed through the pages he had first read with youthful excitement.

  He had dreamed of the Prester John treasure for weeks after reading the book. He wondered if his grandfather had actually found the treasure and what he did with it. His father had said that Hiram moved back to the mansion after he returned from Afghanistan and stayed there until he died. The family had wondered why he didn’t retire to the comforts of New York instead of his played-out mines, but figured Hiram’s mind had become addled from travel fever.

  All of a sudden, the shorthand equation on the computer made sense.

  KURTZ=PJ$

  Kurtz equals the Prester John treasure.

  Maybe Sutherland wasn’t a spy. Maybe she was a treasure hunter and thought the Prester John treasure was on Kurtz’s property and had lied her way into the camp to get closer to it.

  He sprang from his chair and went over to an oversized lift-top cabinet. Lifting the lid, he gathered up the yellowed sheets of paper stacked inside. Printed on the three-by-two foot sheets of paper were diagrams of the mines on the Kurtz property.

  He spread them out on his desk and examined each diagram under a magnifying glass. Half-way through the pile he stopped and brought the goose-neck lamp down until it was inches from the paper.

  His boyhood excitement came back as he saw, scrawled in pencil at the end of a mine shaft, a penciled circle drawn around two printed letters.

  P and J.

  The sight of the simple letters was like popping a cork in his brain. This was a gift from the gods! A treasure would give him the means to defeat the forces of darkness conspiring to humble his beloved nation. With advanced weapons he could foment revolution, destroy governments and shoot down squadrons of black helicopters. And he could return honor to the Kurtz name that had been stained by the antics of his drunken father.

  A maniacal light glimmered in his eyes. At any given time, he thought he was the reincarnation of many long-dead military leaders. Patton. Napoleon. George Washington. Caesar. Alexander. But as his fevered brain imagined the future, it seemed that the blood of all the great leaders who came before him now ran through his veins.

  He clicked on the hand radio that connected him with Krause.

  “Make preparations to march as soon as it’s light,” he ordered.

  “We’re we going?” Krause asked.

  “On to glory, sergeant! On to bloody glory!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Southwest Colorado

  After a smooth three-and-a-half hour flight at a speed of Mach .80 the Gulfstream G150 landed at Montrose regional airport. A gray Jeep Wrangler sat in the parking lot, keys in the ignition. Tied down on the roof rack were two long objects wrapped in fabric bags. Attached to the rack between the bags was a cargo box.

  Hawkins got behind the steering wheel. Abby slid
in next to him and started going over a checklist on her IPad. Calvin sat in back doing a weapons inventory. They headed south on Route 550, passing through the sleeping town of Ouray, and continuing on the Million Dollar Highway to the connection with the Alpine Loop. The Jeep followed the same route Sutherland had taken, but near the Kurtz property, they split off on a different route.

  The road was narrow, winding, rutted and at times, non-existent, devolving into a root-bound track that ascended the mountain in a series of tight switchbacks that the Jeep had to edge around in fits and starts. As the Jeep moved higher, the tall pines thinned out, to be replaced by shorter trees, then shrubs, and finally, lichen-covered rocky slabs that were black with moisture. They entered an elevation where groping fingers of fog diffused the headlight beams and rendered them almost useless. Hawkins strained his eyes through the windshield, trying to follow an imaginary line up the middle of the road.

  Abby’s voice broke his concentration.

  “We’re here,” she said.

  Hawkins braked to a stop, leaned on the wheel and stared at the swirling gray mists.

  “We’re where?”

  “On top of the mountain. Sun should be coming up in a few minutes. The operation is now officially yours. I got you here. The rest is up to you.”

  They got out of the Jeep. The temperature was at least twenty degrees colder than at the base of the mountain. They shivered as they unloaded the heavy duty plastic storage box from the luggage rack. Calvin opened the box and handed out a CAR-15 with extra ammo clips, pistol, knife and other first line gear.