“I have been to the Valley of the Dead.”
The article reported that a member of Kurtz’s team had died in an excavation cave-in, suggesting the reason for the tycoon’s mournful reply. But the expedition’s misfortune didn’t end there. It made tragic headlines again just a few weeks later. The archaeologist and other key expedition people died when the Kurtz company minerals carrier they were traveling on sank in the Mediterranean during a fierce meltemi. Kurtz was sailing separately on his yacht or he would have been lost as well. The reclusive Kurtz went back to Colorado. His health had been compromised by the rigors of travel and he died a short while later.
The next few documents detailed more of Dr. Everson’s findings. In one, she described how she had been hunting for traces of lost trade routes in Afghanistan and had come across a lake that was still called the Valley of the Dead.
In another, she revealed how her research had led her to an out-of-print book about the Kurtz expedition, written in 1933, called “The Emerald Sceptre.” The author had relied mostly on news reports, but he had learned from the widow of a project archaeologist about a sheet of ancient vellum the expedition found that may have been part of a longer document.
A message on the vellum, written in Latin, mentioned a great treasure that included an emerald scepter as a gift to the Pope. The letter was signed by Prester John and had what appeared to be a crude diagram on the back. Since no treasure had ever been found, the author speculated that it might have been carried on the freighter Kurtz lost. End of story. Or not.
Hawkins sat back in his chair.
The evidence was sketchy, but Cait believed it suggested that the legend of the treasure was true, and that it might still be in Afghanistan. Believed it enough, at least, to contact the State Department.
Hawkins glanced at his watch. It was one in the morning. If he was going to assemble a team, he needed to get started. He reached for his phone and punched in a name. After several rings, a female voice answered with a sleepy hello.
“Matt? Is that really you?” the voice said.
“Isn’t caller ID a wonderful thing, Abby?”
“Only if you have the brains not to answer the damned phone. How’s my “ex” these days?”
“Fine. I have to see you. How about tomorrow?”
Pause. “Hell, Matt it’s already tomorrow. I’m in the middle of a bunch of big projects. Can it wait?”
“No. It’s important.”
“Where are you now?”
“In my house at Woods Hole.”
Another pause. “The only time I have free is at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks. I’ll be there,” Hawkins said.
They said their good-byes and hung up.
Matt then made a quick phone call to make arrangements for the next day. After he hung up, his eye again fell on the photo of Cait Everson, and he wondered if she were dead or alive. And if she were alive, where she might be.
He ignored his instincts and took the positive view. “Good night, pretty lady,” he said. “Can’t wait to meet you.”
Then he shut down his computer and went to bed.
CHAPTER SIX
The 1921 butternut-colored Cadillac touring car with the over-sized tires churned up a dusty rooster tail as it raced across the desert at more than sixty-five miles per hour. Amir Khan had an expression of child-like joy on his face as he looked over the steering wheel down the length of the long louvered hood that covered the powerful 5.1 liter V-8 engine.
Sitting next to Amir in the seven-passenger vehicle was a ghost-like figure whose hair and face were shrouded under a light blue keffiyah. In the back seats were four men wearing traditional tribal garb: round Pakol caps, long shirts, vests and baggy pants. Cartridge belts encircled their waists and they clutched AK-47s with the barrels angled in the air.
The car swerved off the dirt track, bumped over the rough terrain, and came to a skidding stop near the edge of a large lake. The armed men jumped from the car and shouldered their guns. Each man grabbed a wooden pole from the trunk.
Amir got out next, followed by the shrouded figure who partially removed the keffiyeh, keeping the hair covered but exposing the face of Cait Everson. Cait unfolded a sheet of paper and glanced at a drawing that looked like a camel’s hump. She compared it with the hill set back a mile or so from the lake. The mound was flatter than in the sketch, but it may have been higher in the past. She and Amir walked to the edge of a cliff that overhung the blue surface of the lake around thirty feet below. The guards stretched out in a line, roughly three feet apart, and walked slowly, striking the ground with the pole tips. Cait and Amir followed. After advancing several yards, one of the men stopped and pointed to his feet.
Amir stepped ahead and struck the ground near the guard with his cane. A hollow noise echoed up from the earth. The guards used knives to scrape away the top soil, uncovering a square metal plate around four feet across. They lifted the plate off to reveal a rectangle of darkness.
Cait produced a flashlight from under her smock and dropped to her knees. Ignoring Amir’s warning to watch out for the crumbling edges, she leaned over the opening. The flashlight beam was absorbed by the darkness.
“The Kurtz mine shaft,” Cait murmured. She stood up and dusted off her hands. “I’m going in.”
“The mine is very old. You may be putting yourself in danger.”
“The supporting timbers along the walls look okay,” Cait said. “I’ll be all right. You can pull me out if I get into trouble. Don’t forget, I’m an experienced archaeological field worker.”
Amir had mentioned the shaft to Cait over dinner the previous day. He had assumed it was the work of Russian geologists who surveyed the area years before, but Cait had become excited and insisted on seeing it. Amir had come to regard Cait almost like a daughter. And as with the pleading of his own daughters, he found it difficult to say no.
He gave an order and a man drove the car close to the shaft. Cait retrieved her duffle bag from the trunk and dug out a yellow hard hat equipped with a headlamp, and a pair of fingerless gloves, goggles and knee pads. She kept the head covering in place, but slipped out of the smock she had been wearing and shed her pajama-like pants. Underneath she wore a tan long-sleeve shirt and cargo slacks. She tucked a walkie-talkie into her shirt pocket and gave another one to Amir.
She dug into the duffle again and pulled out a nylon harness attached to a two-hundred-foot-long length of half inch manila rope. Cait’s explorations of old ruins sometimes brought her into tunnels and shafts where she might need help getting out. While she buckled into the harness, Amir’s men tied the other end of the rope onto the front bumper of the car. Cait put on the goggles, knee-pads and gloves and sat down at the edge of the shaft with her legs dangling. Four guards picked up the rope. She slipped over the edge and was lowered several feet until she ordered a halt to look around. As she dangled there, she reflected on the events that had brought her to this dark hole in the desert.
She had visited Afghanistan three years before to do research into the vast transcontinental network of paths that had extended more than four thousand miles between China and western Asia and Europe and northern Africa.
The routes were collectively called the Silk Road, but they had been used to transport other goods, including amber, slaves, incense and precious stones. The roads were also conduits of culture, technology, disease, such as the Black Death, and they had laid the foundation for the global economy,