Hawkins slid the envelope back across the polished surface of the table and rose from his chair. “In that case we’d better not waste another minute.”
McCormick watched on the screen as Hawkins left, then he said, “Never expected him to demand the psychiatric discharge and the other stuff. Didn’t you say he’d take the job for patriotic reasons with the report as sweetener?”
“His demands surprised me too.”
“I thought you said Hawkins was predictable.”
“Up to a point. He has a problem with self-control — he certainly responded to your demeaning taunts exactly the way I said he would.”
“Yeah, he wanted to tear my throat out. How do you reconcile that with his obvious control in negotiating a deal?”
“Are you familiar with chaos theory?”
“Somewhat. It says it’s impossible to predict accurately what a dynamic system will do. You know a hurricane is coming, but you’re not always sure where it will hit. What’s that got to do with anything?’
The gaunt man gestured at the screen. “Hawkins is chaos theory personified.”
McCormick said, “That’s not good. I read about his record in Tora Bora. He was with the SEAL unit that would have got Bin Laden the first time if command hadn’t screwed up. He makes Rambo look like Little Lord Fauntleroy, only he’s no muscle head. He thinks as well as he acts. Look at the way he just played Fletcher. I hope we’ve made the right choice.”
“We have. Don’t forget, I signed his psychiatric discharge papers. I know he’s intelligent. But Hawkins is headstrong and impulsive as well as smart. Look at his insistence, against all logic, on forming his own team. He’s like a guided missile. Point him in the right direction and he’ll explode. The unknown quantity is the extent of the damage. Predictable unpredictability.”
McCormick got up. “I have to get back to the meeting.”
As he walked the short distance to the former poorhouse, the captain chewed over the gaunt man’s assessment. He didn’t like the way Hawkins had taken command of the situation. Didn’t like it one bit.
But the chaos theory analogy bothered him even more. He shook his head and muttered under his breath.
“Predictable unpredictability, my ass.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Quisset popped out of the doggy door on the front porch and greeted her master, then padded behind him as he climbed to his study carrying a computer disk Fletcher had given him and a glass of the whiskey Fido had liberated from the ocean bottom.
He settled behind his desk and slid the disk into the laptop. While the computer chirped through the booting up process he sipped his drink, wondering if he’d taken on the role of Johnny Carson in the old Mission Impossible parody, when the comedian gets stuck in the phone booth as the tape self-destructs. Funny, he thought, unless you’re the one in the exploding phone booth. Hawkins was no wide-eyed child. The war college meeting stank worse than a week-old codfish. The participants could have come from a casting company. The script had been orchestrated perfectly, with the navy guy playing bad cop to Fletcher’s good cop.
His instincts told him that the assignment was insane, but he needed to take it. Having his discharge reversed, his navy contract reinstated, and the Osprey reimbursed would be nice, but what he really wanted was to learn the truth about what happened five years ago to set him on the course to official derangement. And he was convinced he would find the answer back in Afghanistan.
The computer finished booting up, and Hawkins opened the folder on the disk. The first file it contained was a biography of Cait Everson. He gave her photograph more than a casual glance, memorizing the even features of the dark-haired woman.
Cait was a California girl. San Diego. She had majored in Middle-East and Central Asian history at UCLA, ultimately working her way up to her doctorate degree. She went on to teach at Georgetown as an associate professor. She had visited every country in the Mid-East region at least once and was fluent in or familiar with all of the region’s major languages. She had written several books on her specialty, the Silk Routes. She was in her thirties and already divorced.
He looked again at the photo. Hawkins’ love life had been sporadic since his divorce. Women liked his rugged good looks and his sense of humor, but they were put off when they learned that Hawkins viewed a long-term relationship as anything beyond three dates and a sleep-over.
Dr. Everson was smart as well as pretty. He hoped she hadn’t come to harm.
Hawkins next clicked on the report Cait had sent the State Department. It was entitled:
A New Look at the Prester John Legend.
The report started with a detailed historic overview, fleshing out the Prester John summary Hawkins had heard in Newport. He quickly blew through this part and got right to Cait’s summation, which said:
“Based on the evidence, I have come to the following conclusions. Prester John was a real historical figure who ruled a kingdom whose location is yet to be determined. He received Pope Alexander’s letter and responded by sending the Pope a letter and a treasure, which disappeared in Afghanistan en route to Rome.”
He scrolled down to a document marked Exhibit A and entitled The Kurtz Expedition.
The document contained copies of newspaper articles, dating back to the 1920s, that chronicled the expedition Kurtz had led to Afghanistan. An archeologist with the expedition described the project as “desert road archaeology.” He explained that the ruins of ancient settlements often could be found along ancient caravan routes that seemingly led nowhere. The articles were arranged chronologically, spanning a number of months. The first headline read:
Mining Tycoon
Leads Archaeology
Team To Mid-East
Hiram Kurtz Looks
For Amazon Women
On His Expedition
Datelined Ouray, Colorado, the article said that Hiram Kurtz, 58, owned a copper mining empire, but the newspaper apparently held him in little esteem, evidenced by the headline’s mocking tone. Still, it was essentially correct in describing the expedition’s purpose. Kurtz was quoted as saying that he hoped to locate archaeological sites along the forgotten trade routes, but he was particularly interested in stories of legendary women warriors.
Other clips, based on dispatches from Kurtz himself, told of him sailing from New Orleans on his private yacht across the Atlantic. He sailed across the Mediterranean, and through the Suez Canal to India, where he met up with a ship carrying his expedition staff and gear, including a customized Cadillac modified for desert driving. Then came the train journey to Kabul.
The dispatches became less frequent as the expedition set off into the wild countryside, until they eventually ceased altogether. Sensing a lost explorer story, The New York Times got in touch with an enterprising Reuters correspondent who learned that the expedition was still intact. He came across a list of supplies that had come through Kabul for delivery to Kurtz in the field. On the list were two pieces of gear called Schraders. It appeared that Dr. Everson had circled this term on her report and written the words “diving gear” beside it.
Hawkins took a moment to gaze at the Schrader helmet in his collection, then he looked back at the documents. Several months later, Kurtz had been in the news again when his expedition quietly arrived back in Kabul. The Reuters reporter caught up with him and reported that the Cadillac had blown its engine and been left behind. He asked where Kurtz had been. The laconic reply became the headline as well as the story: