by Jeff Carson
A few minutes later they were driving well above the valley below, and Luke slowed at a driveway and turned.
Her house was modest, a smallish one-story, but Wolf suspected that the back of the house, which faced the valley below, and west, toward the setting sun every night, would have some views that made up for any lack of living space.
The Tahoe crunched down the driveway toward her garage door, which rose after she pushed a button on her visor. She came to a stop and shut off the engine, and Wolf soon realized why she hadn’t parked inside. The garage was full of boxes of all shapes and sizes, and there were two mountain bikes leaning up against the wall, two kayaks hanging from the ceiling, and a 250 cc dual-sport motorcycle propped on a kickstand.
Wolf got out and whistled. “I see you like the outdoors.”
Luke walked past him and into the garage.
Wolf followed. The space was cold and smelled of the nylon, rubber, plastic and the other synthetic materials her toys were made of. She unlocked the door to the house and walked in.
Inside was open and light, and thankfully warm after a long day of being perpetually damp. They entered a spotless kitchen with shiny hardwood floors and granite counters. A few dishes were piled in the sink, but that one untidy blemish in the otherwise clean space was easily overlooked, as a wide kitchen window yawned, framing the valley below.
“Grab a beer in the fridge if you want,” Luke said as she walked through the eating area and creaked out of sight around the corner.
Wolf opened the stainless-steel refrigerator and heard the faint rattle of bottles. The shelves were empty save a plastic box of baby spinach, a few sacks of vegetables, a package of tortillas, and a twelve pack of Stella Artois. He dug in the box and pulled one out.
“I’ll take one, too,” Luke said as she entered the kitchen again. She’d lost the FBI jacket and her shoes. She took the two beers, produced a bottle opener from a drawer and opened them.
Wolf took the beer back and gazed out the windows. “Nice view you’ve got here.”
“I wish it was mine. I’m renting.”
“Well, still. Nice view.”
The backyard was a flat twenty or so yards of lawn that ended at the natural shrubs and vegetation of the surrounding land. The hill swept down out of sight, and the next piece of visible land was at the bottom of the green valley. There was a small grove of aspen trees flanking the side of the house on the right, a sage-covered hillside climbed up to the left.
“I like it,” she said. “There’re no neighbors in sight from the back, and it’s modern inside. I got lucky. It’s a family friend’s place.”
She walked out of the kitchen, and returned a few seconds later with a wadded-up paper bag held in her palm. Something inside it knocked against the granite countertop as she set it down. Removing the bag with a magician-like flourish, the contents, two bars of gold, were now on display.
Wolf pulled his beer away from his lips and popped his eyes open. “Wow.”
Luke picked up the top piece and held it up for Wolf to inspect.
Wolf held out his palm and she put the bar in it. It was the shape of a credit card, but between two and three centimeters thick. It felt heavy for the size; a sensation only gold could create. He ran his thumb across it, turned it in his hand, feeling small pits on three sides. The second bar was identical or, rather, probably poured and pulled from the same mold, as it had the same pits on the three sides as the first bar.
“These came to my house two days ago,” she said.
“Who from?”
“There was a note.” She put a yellow piece of paper on the counter.
The note read, You deserve some of this, too. I’m sorry, written in black ink, in shaky handwriting.
“Did you check these for prints?” Wolf held the gold bar away from him, suddenly aware of how much he was fondling it.
“Yeah. Nothing. I checked the note, too. They were both clean.”
“What about the handwriting?” Wolf asked.
“Nothing definitive. I checked it against my brother’s high-school yearbook. It’s close, but,” she shook her head, “I don’t think it’s his handwriting. But it’s shaky. Could have been him if he was … on drugs, or …” she stopped talking.
“What about Jeffries? Have you checked it against his handwriting?”
She blinked, looking like she snapped out of some deep thoughts. “No, not yet.”
He twisted the bar for another minute, thinking, and then set it down. It rang out as he set it on the granite counter. Then he walked to the window again, this time seeing nothing of the view outside.
He thought of Wade Jeffries on the trail, with a backpack loaded so full it had almost split at the seams, with material that clanked with every step. With gold. He thought of the load he must have been carrying. It was heavy enough to compact a disc in his back at the least.
“What are those, pound bars?” Wolf asked, turning to look out the window.
Luke shook her head. “Kilogram bars. Kilo bars.”
“That’s worth at least … I have no idea how much that’s worth.”
“A kilo bar is about thirty-two troy ounces. I haven’t checked the price of gold today, but the other day I calculated one of these to be just over thirty-eight thousand dollars.”
Wolf pictured Jeffries’s eyes, with the look of fear that his handkerchief and his baseball cap couldn’t hide. “They were after the gold in his backpack.”
“Wade Jeffries?”
Wolf didn’t hear her. He was over seven thousand miles away, thinking about Tora Bora, Afghanistan. “Bactrian gold?” he asked to no one.
Luke jumped up and sat on the counter next to him. “What?”
“The caves of Tora Bora.” Wolf blinked and turned toward Luke. “They were a Taliban stronghold right around the time of 9/11. That is, until allied forces went in. I had a buddy in special forces who went in after the initial bombing runs, and he talked about how it was a real possibility they’d find some sort of stash, either of money, or gold, or jewels. That was part of the financial life-blood of the Taliban.”
“So what did you say? Bacteria something?” she asked.
“Bactrian gold,” Wolf said.
“What is that, a legend?”
“No, not a legend. It was the real deal. A stash of gold that’s the national pride of Afghanistan.” He looked at Luke. “I heard the story while I was over there. We all did. It was a local hot topic before 9/11. And then after 9/11, when the Taliban was after the gold, it was even hotter.
“In the seventies, the Soviets uncovered some ancient graves in northern Afghanistan, in an area that used to be known as Bactria two thousand plus years ago. There was something like twenty thousand pieces of gold and jewelry found inside. Then the Soviets invaded, and the country went into civil war, and the gold disappeared.
“Twenty years later, in the late eighties, it showed back up, in Afghanistan. The president was flaunting it, making it known it hadn’t been looted by the Russians all those years ago, and it was still a national treasure they’d kept in their homeland. But then it disappeared again.
“Well, it didn’t disappear; it was moved to the vault of the central bank in Kabul. Moved by a few select members of the government who chose to keep the treasure intact, rather than melt it down for however many millions it was worth. But when I was over there, the location of it was still a mystery. There were rumors it was in the central bank, but it wasn’t known if it was in the vault or not, and nobody was telling. And right after 9/11, the Taliban wanted to find out once and for all, so they raided the bank, put guns to the heads of the bank officials, and made them open it up.”
“Did they find it?” Luke asked.
“No. They made off with a bunch of money and bullion, but not the Bactrian gold. Or, at least, that’s how the story went.”
“So it wasn’t in the vault all along?” she asked.
Wolf shook his head. “A couple of years after 9/
11, I remember hearing that they found it was in the vault. They had somehow tricked the Taliban. Hidden the boxes under paintings or something like that.”
“Or,” Luke said, “the Taliban could have gotten away with some of it after all, you’re saying, and the story was wrong.”
Wolf shrugged and took a sip of beer. “That’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to treasure gone missing in the past thirty years in Afghanistan. This gold could be the Bactrian stuff melted down into bars, or this could be some of the bullion the Taliban made off with that day, melted down from the larger bars to a more manageable, or sellable, size. Or it could be some of the national treasure that was never accounted for. We were briefed that seventy percent of the treasure was looted from the Afghanistan National Museum during the civil war, and most of it still hasn’t been found.
“Obviously, I can’t exactly say what gold this is.” Wolf pointed at the bars. “But whatever it is, your brother’s EOD team got it, brought it home, and … whoever came after me and Jack was after Jeffries because he had this. A whole lot of this. And whoever got Jeffries has a new net worth with a long line of digits.”
Luke set down her beer and paced, staring at the ground. “So how did they do it? Let’s say my brother and his team find a bunch of gold, whether it’s the Bactrian stuff, or national treasure bullion, or whatever, then what?”
Wolf shrugged. “Then they get the gold out. Out of the hole, and into a Humvee, and blow up the cave, and disappear into the mountains, or a pay a local to stay hidden, and go MIA. It would be difficult for engineers to come in with the necessary equipment to excavate the collapsed cave, to look for your brother and his team. The terrain, and the overall atmosphere, isn’t suited for it.”
“That’s what my CIA contact told me after my brother’s memorial. He told me that the official word from the army was that it was next to impossible to pull them out of the rubble. But he said the real reason was that it wasn’t high priority. Like it was obvious my brother and his team had been somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, and they’d got what they’d had coming to them.”
They stood in silence for a few moments.
“How many other people were on the EOD team, besides your brother and the other missing men?”
“Four more,” Luke said.
Wolf frowned. “So eight total? And what did the other four say happened?”
Luke shook her head. “They said they were under orders to be there. Not in the caves, but the valley a few miles away. It was apparently a two-day convoy, and they were on their way through to Kabul, and then onward to Bagram Air Base.”
“And your brother and the other three men broke off?” Wolf asked. “What was their explanation to the rest of the team?”
“There was no explanation. One of the soldiers said Hartley, Jeffries, and Quinn disappeared with a Humvee one night, and my brother woke up the next morning and went after them, alone.”
“Alone?” Wolf pulled the corners of his mouth down. “That’s a strange decision.”
Luke nodded. “You’re telling me.”
“They have GPS transponders on those Humvees,” Wolf said. “Your brother could have easily gone after them and tracked them down.”
Luke nodded. “Or maybe he was in on the whole scheme and that’s why he went by himself. Maybe there was a rendezvous point they’d set up beforehand.”
Wolf stared at the floor. “Maybe your brother wasn’t part of this. Maybe he was sucked in somehow.”
Luke looked at him. Her eyes started shimmering and she lowered her gaze to the gold. “So then why would he drop this on my doorstep with a note that says, Some of this is yours, too. I’m sorry?”
Wolf shrugged. “That’s not exactly an admission of guilt from your brother. It could have been one of the other three EOD team guys. You said it yourself, it didn’t look exactly like his handwriting.”
Luke sighed and took a sip of her beer.
“Let’s talk about how they got out of the country,” Wolf said. “Four men and a hoard of gold? How does that go down?”
She stopped and dug another beer out of the refrigerator. Handing it to Wolf, she bent down to get another. “They’d have to have had outside help, right?”
Wolf nodded. “Yeah, they would. They’d need to fly out of Afghanistan, or drive their Humvee into Iran or Pakistan, and then get home, which seems less likely to me. It would have been difficult to go, by road, undetected with a Humvee full of American soldiers and gold. They would have been stopped. Searched. It would have caused some sort of incident that would have gotten around, and into the ears of your contacts at the CIA.” Wolf stared at the unopened beer, lost in thought.
“Well, however they did it,” Luke said, “it worked. Just take a look at the Jeffrieses’ peach orchard and house. Maybe that was the gold money at work there. Maybe you and your son walked into Wade Jeffries being punished. You know, for going outside the circle, the pact, and giving his family money? When you saw him on the trail, they’d probably just killed his family for knowing too much. You saw Julie Jeffries. She’d been interrogated before she was killed. They must have been asking her what she knew.”
Wolf looked at Luke, and then to the gold bars on the counter.
She followed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “If that theory is correct, then I’m next.” Luke shook her head. Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, and her lips moved soundlessly.
Wolf knew what she was thinking: It was bad enough that innocent people were being killed, but it was a whole new level of bad that her brother was involved.
“How did you and your brother get along?” Wolf asked.
“Like, would my brother be willing to come kill me?”
Wolf shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense that he would give you some of the gold, then come after you to kill you. Unless … you two really didn’t get along.”
“No, we were close. He was my younger bro, and I was his big sis,” she said, and then she picked at the label of her beer. “I guess it’s more complicated than that.”
“Try me. I’m used to complicated,” Wolf said.
She smiled meekly, and then looked at Wolf. “My dad left us. When we were kids. I was graduating high school, and he was a couple of years younger. And we both went through some tough times after that. My older brother, he didn’t seem to care as much, but me and Brian … I went to college, and went through my changes and struggles and whatever, and he stayed here and started doing meth and coke. I snapped out of my funk, but he just kept on digging deeper into his. That went on for years, the drugs, and stealing, and … and finally, right before I went to Quantico, I told him he had to shape up. And I told him I’d come back and bust his ass and throw him in jail as many times as it would take for him to stop being a coward, and to start living.”
She stared at the wall in deep thought.
“So you pushed him to join the military?” Wolf asked quietly.
“Yeah. And he did. And according to him, he loved it. I lost track of how many tours in the Middle East he volunteered for. But for eight years he just kept coming and going, happy as ever. I actually wondered if he’d gone suicidal and wanted to die over there. Even asked him that once. But he told me I’d saved his life and not to worry about him over there. He said he loved it and owed me everything.” Her eyes glistened. “Now I wonder if he meant that or was just somehow playing me.”
Wolf turned around and scanned the property outside the window. The bushes swayed in the wind. The grass bent in waves. The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up. Shafts of sunlight lanced out of the sky onto the valley below.
“I missed something,” Wolf said finally, turning back to Luke.
She wiped her eyes and looked up with a hard expression, as if trying to hide the dark place she’d just allowed herself to go. “What do you mean? Where?”
“On the mountain.”
Luke frowned. “Okay, can you be more specific?”
“We’re talking about four men that went missing in Afghanistan, and I killed someone at our campsite that wasn’t any of those men. I’d bet my life on it.”
Luke narrowed her eyes. “Okay.”
Wolf nodded. “The math doesn’t add up. There’re four guys missing from Afghanistan, including your brother, but we’re talking about five different men now.”
“The outside man,” Luke whispered, “who helped them into the country.”
Wolf nodded. “I’ve been racking my brain, and I swear there weren’t any more vehicles in the parking lot that night. There weren’t any when Jack and I parked there earlier in the day, either. So where did all these guys come from? And then where did they go? We have to go back up.”
“Well, it’s going to be dark in an hour, and it’s probably still raining up there. We can’t go now.”
Wolf sighed and took a sip of his beer. “You’ll have to be careful, tonight, that’s for sure. You know about the gold now, and it fits that that’s the reason why Jeffries’s sister and mother were killed. Meanwhile, I need to go back into town.”
“Why?”
“I need to call my deputies and see how they’re doing with my son. Then I need to find a motel, get freshened, and get some sleep if we’re heading back up to the trail tomorrow.”
Luke rolled her eyes. “Shut up, you’re staying here. I have an extra room with a bed in it.”
Wolf looked around. He realized he felt the warmest he’d been in over a day, and didn’t have any desire to argue the point.
“Thanks,” he said.
Chapter 34
Sergeant McCall sat on a barstool in the Mountain Goat sipping a Guinness. He looked at the television and sighed. He could think of a dozen better ways to kill time than watching the Colorado Rockies get tromped by the Reds, but none were available, and he was flat tired from the hiking and driving he’d done all day.
He heard the muffled thumps of car doors shutting outside and turned, squinting into the evening sun that streamed through the west windows. The first wave of cops was showing up for dinner and to belt a few before heading home to their families. Just like Daddy used to do, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking.