The change in expectations heightened his hunting instincts, especially as the countryside grew more rural and houses farther apart. She pulled over a couple of times, once into a gas station where she talked to someone in the office, then kept going.
He would pounce as soon as he sensed that the moment was right.
When Cait turned off the country road onto a narrow blacktop road that led into the woods, he knew that moment would come very soon.
Cait’s decision had been impulsive.
She had every intention of driving into Georgetown to begin her research, but she changed her mind at the last second. She had been thinking about the treasure, and its long voyage from Afghanistan and across the ocean, when she remembered the fate of the Kurtz yacht.
The boat had ended up as a restaurant on the Eastern Shore of Maryland according to Sutherland’s Prester John file. Cait thought the rediscovery of the yacht and its connection to the treasure would be another whole chapter in her book, and she felt herself irresistibly pulled to visit it.
She wandered the back roads, and was about to give up her search when the gas station attendant told her the restaurant had closed years before, but the boat was still there on the shore. She could hardly contain her excitement when she saw the faded old sign on the leaning post.
The Yachtsman Seafood Restaurant.
She ignored a No Trespassing sign and turned onto the road. Trees and bushes whipped both sides of her car and the wheels bumped over broken blacktop that looked like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The rank smell of the bay became stronger as she drove deeper into the woods. She traveled another quarter mile, rounded a curve and saw the old yacht Kurtz had named after his dead wife. Barely visible on the stern were the words: Sweet Priscilla. Cait stared at the yacht, trying to reconcile the rotting old derelict in front of her with the sleek ocean-going vessel she had seen in the old photographs.
She got out of the car and walked toward the vessel, which had been drawn up onto land. She could see the sparkle of bay water beyond the marsh that bordered the shore. She walked past another restaurant sign, this one hanging by a single nail, and stopped at the bottom of a wooden ramp leading onto the deck. She tested the ramp with her foot to make sure it wouldn’t break under her weight, and walked up it.
Cait stopped in front of a gaping doorway. The doors lay in pieces on the deck. She stuck her head through the portal only to recoil at the over-powering smell of rot and mold. Her eyes could pick out interior details in the light coming through the windows and holes in the walls. She saw some old beer cans and assumed they had been tossed there by fishermen. There were broken tables and chairs, indicating that this once had been a dining room. Birds had built nests in the ceiling beams and decorated the floor with their droppings.
She was overcome by a sense of incredible sadness. Despite the nastiness of her surroundings she found herself being drawn further into the boat.
If only this old wreck could talk, what a story it would tell, she thought.
She walked through the dining room into a space that must have been a lounge.
Light streamed through the windows illuminating the old bar and overturned tables and stools. She tried to picture the bar filled with alcohol-fueled laughter and the clink of glasses, but the task was beyond her imagination. It was clear that this was a fool’s errand. The interior of the boat had been gutted of any trace of Kurtz or his treasure.
She turned and walked out of the lounge, engrossed in her thoughts.
As she stepped through the doorway into the dining room, her heart jumped at a glimpse of movement off to her right and the sound of a creaking board. Before she could react, she felt a quick stabbing pain hitting her shoulder.
Her scream caught in her throat as the intense searing pain surged through her body. Her legs turned to rubber, her knees buckled, and the floor came up to meet her. As she lay on the floor with her limbs twitching involuntarily, she had the vague sensation of something hard and cold pressed against her neck, then came a soft puffing sound and a black curtain fell over her eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Kurtz was dressed like a gangly version of World War II tank commander General George Tecumseh Patton. Twin pearl-handled revolvers hung from his hips. Three white stars emblazoned his shiny black helmet. The short-waist Eisenhower jacket buttoned tightly across his narrow chest was festooned with a rainbow of military service ribbons. Tan riding pants drooped from his thin legs. The steel-shod heels of his leather knee-high boots clacked as he strode across the wooden floor. He whacked the side of Sutherland’s bunk with his riding crop.
“Time to move out, corporal.”
He gestured with his crop to Krause, who unlocked the handcuffs from the bunk. He pulled Sutherland to her feet and re-cuffed her hands in front of her, then prodded her toward the door with his rifle. The skin between her shoulder blades was tender from previous jabs and the gun’s muzzle hurt. She stopped and turned to Kurtz.
“General, please tell your soldier boy that if he pokes me one more time with his make-believe manhood, I will take his weapon and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
Krause blinked at the low, menacing voice coming from the pudgy round face, and then he laughed and turned to Kurtz for reinforcement. The general chuckled and smacked his thigh with the riding crop:
“Do as the prisoner requests or she’ll hit you over the head with the Geneva Convention.”
Krause used his hand instead of his rifle to push Sutherland through the door and out into the gray darkness. The World War II army Jeep was parked outside the barracks with its motor running. A big Ford 250 pick-up with four militia men was parked behind the Jeep.
The general told Sutherland to get in the back seat. Sergeant Paine sat beside her. Kurtz climbed into the passenger seat and Krause got behind the wheel. Kurtz raised his riding crop in the air and pointed forward.
As they drove past the deserted barracks, Kurtz said airily, “You think I don’t know why you came here, corporal? Well I know all about my grandfather and Prester John. You came here to steal our property. Admit it.”
Sutherland answered with her name, rank and made up serial number.
“Military rules? I’m okay with that, but you might not be.”
Sutherland didn’t like his tone, which was smug and threatening, but she kept her mouth shut.
The two-vehicle convey drove past the mansion and through the ghost town. After about a mile the road began to climb through the woods, becoming steeper as it meandered back and forth in a series of ascending switchbacks. The road surface was dirt and gravel and studded with boulders, but the slow-moving vehicles made steady progress. After traveling nearly an hour, they emerged from the woods into an open area at the base of a high ridge.
The general studied a large rectangle of paper for a few minutes and told the driver to keep going another hundred yards.
“This is it,” he said. “Stop.”
The headlights picked out a crumbling shed and behind it, rails emerging from the side of the hill. The mine entrance itself was almost invisible, a rectangular shadow partially obscured by brush that had grown around the opening. Kurtz got out of the Jeep and walked up to the entrance. He flashed his light on, showing a wall of weathered gray boards, and then ordered his men to give him a hand.
At the general’s orders, a couple of his men used crow bars to remove the barrier. The boards easily pried away from the rusty nails holding them in place.