“Where does Marzak fit in?” Calvin asked.
Hawkins said, “Marzak was running the military operation for the Shadows. The professor suggested he was more than just a soldier for hire like the others.”
“What did he mean?”
“Marzak’s role is more complicated. He and his twin tried to kill me, which suggests that they wanted to torpedo our mission even before it started. Somehow, they knew about the operation.”
“I don’t get it. How could that happen?” Calvin said.
Hawkins laughed. “Because the security surrounding our top-secret expedition seems to have sprung more leaks than the Titanic. I suggest we go back to the beginning, the Prester John legend, and carry it to the present,” Hawkins said. “As our resident historian, you have the podium, Dr. Everson.”
A smile came to Cait’s face. She was happy to be back on familiar territory. She went to her room for her computer, placed it on the table and pushed back the cover.
“I’ll run through what we know. Let’s go back to the 1100s. Rumors of Prester John circulate in Europe. The Pope writes a letter to John suggesting an alliance and entrusts it with his personal physician, a man named Philip. That fact is well recorded. So is the fact that he made it as far as Jerusalem. He disappears from sight after that. Now we know what happened to him. Defying the odds, Philip apparently found the lost kingdom of Prester John.”
She opened an image on the computer.
“This is a fragment of the vellum scroll that Kurtz found in Kabul. On the front is part of a letter Philip carried from Prester John to the Pope, in which he mentions a gift that will allow for an alliance that will rally the troops against the infidels.”
“The emerald scepter,” Hawkins said.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Abby said. “The Shadows want to use it for the same purpose, to rally people to their flag.”
Cait nodded. “History is merely the same things happening over and over. On his return trip, Philip passes through the caravan stop and sees the wall map showing a short cut to the Mediterranean coast. Somehow, he strays off the intended route into a box canyon named the Valley of the Dead, a region thick with bandits. For whatever reason, Philip takes refuge in a tomb where he dies. He or someone else draws a map on the back of the vellum and hundreds of years later, it ends up in Kabul where Kurtz finds it. Finally, we find the coin, which may have been placed on his eyes as was the custom.”
“The coin proves that the treasure made it to the mine with Philip,” Abby said.
“And raises the question of what became of the rest of the treasure,” Calvin said.
Hawkins said, “You’ve got a couple of narratives here. Philip’s story and Kurtz’s expedition. The tomb is the nexus where those two story lines meet.”
“So old Hiram ran off with the treasure?” Calvin said.
“Let’s look at what we know about his expedition,” Cait said. “Kurtz was looking for the Prester John treasure. We know too, from the chisel we found, that he was at the caravan stop. He sees the map of the Silk Road trade routes and uses it to track down the Prester John caravan route.”
“But first he obliterates the location of Prester’s kingdom with a chisel so no one will follow in his footsteps,” Hawkins said.
“Exactly,” Cait agreed. “He heads for the valley and finds that it is now a lake. That’s when he calls in a diver who goes into the lake, but the tomb is blocked. Using the camel’s back hill as a reference, Kurtz drills a shaft to the tomb, which is flooded.”
“We saw what’s left of the diver,” Hawkins said. “It’s clear that the mine shaft collapsed and plugged up access. But when Abby and I entered the shaft, there was no treasure, which suggests that Kurtz found it before the cave-in. Based on the historical house of cards we’ve built, if we follow Kurtz, we’ll find the treasure.”
“I’m not sure if I even care about the treasure anymore,” Cait said. “I have my proof in the cross and the coin. The scepter has caused so much misery.”
“It’s likely to cause a lot more misery if the competition gets its hands on it,” Hawkins said. “The professor told me that Marzak is going to carry out the Shadows’ plot in the U.S. as soon as he finds the treasure.”
“Exactly what sort of plot is this?” Abby said.
“Marzak has planted sarin bombs near U.S. population centers. The professor didn’t know where, only that Marzak will trigger the explosives once he has the scepter in hand. As you said, Abby, the Shadows want to use the historic symbolism of the emerald scepter to rally extremists to their cause.”
“Sarin is one of the deadliest substances on earth,” Calvin said in a hushed tone. “Tens of thousands of people could die if this thing goes down.”
“Damn,” Abby said. “We can’t let that happen.”
“No argument there,” Hawkins said. “We have to leave tomorrow as early as possible.”
“How can we stop it, Matt?”
“Simple. We find the scepter before Marzak does.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Sutherland’s internal alarm clock went off at four o’clock in the morning. She switched on the light next to the bed and noticed her newly-laundered jeans, shirt, and underwear stacked on a chair. She dressed and went out to the patio. The temperature had dropped drastically during the night, and she could see her breath. The stars were like sapphires in black velvet. She focused on the North Star. Polaris seemed to beckon.
She went back inside, grabbed her computer bag and went to the kitchen where she wrote a long note thanking the McHughs and promising to keep in touch. She put on her leather jacket, wheeled the motorcycle out of the car port, but didn’t start the engine until she was a hundred feet from the house. She headed north on the empty highway. The sun was coming up as she passed through the outskirts of Tucson.
As she rode along, she formed a plan of sorts to lose herself in Utah’s vast back country, but she had an epiphany in the Navajo town of Chinle where she stopped to buy the makings for a picnic. She rode a few miles to Canyon de Chelly, pulled into the parking lot and walked out onto a bluff that overlooked the red sandstone walls of the ancient canyon.
She sat with her feet dangling over a ledge and munched contentedly on a mountainous cold-cut sandwich, gazing off at the 800-foot tall column known as Spider Rock. Not far from where she sat, the Indian fighter Kit Carson had cornered the Navajos at the blind end of the canyon, and then he drove the ones he didn’t kill from their land. There was a lesson to be learned. No matter how fast and how far you run, you have to keep moving or you’ll eventually be cornered.
If she didn’t fight, she could end up with her back to the wall like the unfortunate Navajo.
She finished lunch, got on her motorcycle and headed north to Route 66, riding past the historic road’s commercial hodge-podge until she stopped at a motel with units built in the shape of concrete wigwams. A fifties vintage car sat in front of each unit. Her kind of place. After she registered, she went out for a supply of chips and Coke, then set up her computer in the circular bedroom. No danger of being cornered here.
She wrote an account of the last few days, in case the next attempt on her life was successful and sent the file to Hawkins. At the end she wrote the words: PLS CALL.
Sutherland backed up the file using an online data storage service, and pondered where she should point her investigation. It was too dangerous to snoop around Arrowhead. After a moment of thought, she opened the Prester John folder, clicked on the TREASURE file, and went down the index until she came to a name. Hiram Kurtz.