“Abubakar?” Adjo repeated the word, grabbing Bill’s attention.
“That’s right,” King said, cutting in before Bill threw a new tirade of threats at him. He came around from the sofa and crouched down to the other man’s level. “Abubakar was your ancestor. From Egypt.”
The man’s eyes went wide. “Egypt?” His brow creased. “But how? That is not possible.”
“It is possible, Mister Adjo. Abubakar settled in Patagonia in 1713, fell in love, married and had a child. But before he settled in these parts, your ancestor was…” he feared saying it, feeling the inklings of a bond forming between him and Adjo which threatened to collapse at the incredulity of his next word. “A pirate.”
“A pirate?”
“That’s right,” he replied before the other man had time to fully process what he had just been told. “And he had a map — well, part of a map really — which I’m guessing he handed down to his son, who passed it onto his son, and so on, and so on, right up until you.”
Adjo shook his head. “I have never seen this map which you speak of.”
“But you did recognise the name Abubakar, didn’t you Mister Adjo?” King felt Bill’s impatience mounting as Adjo nodded.
“It is a word, scratched into the chest.”
“Chest?” That got Bill’s attention. Nothing like a good old pirate cliché to enrapture the uneducated morons of the military world, King thought.
Adjo nodded again, more vigorously. “There is a chest. A very old chest, made out of wood. It was my father’s, and his father’s before him. It has been in the family for many years, many generations. And, scratched into the inside lid of it there is a word — Abubakar. My father said he never knew what it meant.”
“Where is it?” Bill demanded.
Adjo glanced nervously at him. “It is in the attic,” he explained, then shrugged. “We use it to store blankets.”
“Show me,” King said.
“There is nothing in it. There never has been. It was empty when my father gave it to me. There certainly is no map.”
King’s heart sank. If he didn’t find the map then Adjo’s family would be butchered, and so would Sid. Maybe there would be something, some clue as to the map’s fate. “Show me anyway,” he said, glancing at Bill for permission. He nodded to his guard.
“Go with them. And Ben—”
“I know,” he said, rising to his full height, “Don’t try anything.”
With a significant glance at his family, worriedly taking in the crimson pool of blood from his wife’s gunshot wound, Adjo led the way through the apartment to where he retrieved a wooden ladder. He leaned it against one wall in the corridor leading to the bedrooms then climbed up to remove the hatch in the ceiling. Bill’s guard ordered him back down and then proceeded up first while Bill covered them, then Adjo and King ascended after him.
The attic space was surprisingly large but low and the frigid Patagonia air had crept in so that King could see his own breath escape his mouth in clouds of vapour. Keeping low to avoid the diagonal beams of the building’s roof, Adjo led the way through mounds of discarded items — rolls of carpets, rarely used suitcases, bags of clothes and boxes of toys. In one corner there sat a bulky television set, the faux-wood sticker peeling off.
“Here,” Adjo said. He cleared some of the junk out of the way to reveal an old wooden chest. It was almost stereotypically pirate-esque, about a meter long, half a meter wide and the same again as deep. Its lid rose into an elongated dome and metal strips strengthened the corners. The wood was dark and laced with scratches and gouges, making it look worn and most certainly well travelled.
King crouched down beside Adjo while he opened the lid and threw out the blankets and clothes within in a hurry. Their guard kept his silenced pistol aimed at them.
“There,” Adjo said and he pointed at the inside of the lid, low down near to the rusted hinge. King studied the marking. It was faint and looked like it had been purposely gouged into the wood with a knife.
“Abubakar.” As he read the name he felt a momentary sense of awe come over him. This was the private treasure chest of someone who had become one of Kha’um’s closest allies. It was yet another physical connection to that fantastical world of buried treasure and epic adventures he had read about in Emily’s diary.
He shrugged it off. This wasn’t the time. Even as one part of his mind instantly got to work trying to work out the chest’s connection to the map, the other part was trying to figure someway out of this mess. He knew that once the map had been discovered Bill would kill Adjo and his family. He couldn’t let them talk to the authorities until they were out of harm’s way. Yet if King acted against them then he would order Sid’s execution.
But even if he somehow found Abubakar’s part of the map, he doubted he and Sid would live much longer. He had read the Kernewek Diary cover to cover and, while it had led him to Patagonia in pursuit of Abubakar, he had no idea how to find Emily’s part of the map. His and Sid’s lives were worth only the value of the information King provided their kidnappers.
“So where’s the map?” their guard demanded, surprising King. Not only was it the first thing he had heard the man speak, but it had been said in a strong Welsh accent.
“I told you,” Adjo said innocently. “There is no map.”
The mercenary’s face twisted angrily but King cut in before he could speak. “When your father gave you the chest, was there anything else with it?”
Adjo was exasperated. “No. Nothing. No map, no—”
“It’s okay,” King placed a calming hand on the man’s shoulder. Adjo sighed, rolling back on his haunches. “It’s got to be here somewhere,” he mumbled under his breath. In fact, the rational part of his mind knew it could be anywhere in the world right now, separated from the chest years, even centuries ago. In fact, there was no proof that it had ever been contained within the chest. After all, what self-respecting pirate would keep a map to buried treasure inside his own treasure chest? Yet something told King he was close.
He checked all the surfaces of the chest, running his finger along all the scratches and the gouges, searching for any pattern, any sense of logic that might reveal directions scrawled into the wood. Turning it on its side he checked the bottom, and then the domed lid before finally slamming it closed in frustration.
Something clanked inside it.
King’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I thought you emptied it.”
“I did,” Adjo replied, opening the chest again to reveal its empty interior. King took the lid from him and slammed it closed again. Once more, something shifted inside. It was subtle, barely noticeable in fact. Was he clutching at straws?
“Is everything alright up there?” Bill’s voice crackled through the Welshman’s radio.
“Fine, boss. Just the Doc making a hullabaloo,” he replied. “Looks like another dead-end to me.”
“Well tell King that he has three minutes until my next check in. I’d better see some progress by then or else his girlfriend’s gonna start losing fingers.”
King ignored the man’s threats. He opened the lid again and then shook it on its hinges. The rattle was definitely coming from inside the dome of the lid. The underside of it was nailed shut. “I need something to prise this open with,” he told Adjo.
“I have a toolbox,” Adjo said, rising to his feet. The merc whipped his pistol up and Adjo held up his hands, startled by the aggression. “I have screwdriver,” he explained.
The guard considered this before nodding. “Slowly,” he warned, trailing him with his gun as he scrambled to a metal box lodged against the old TV. Adjo returned a moment later with a flat headed screwdriver and handed it to King.