The Emerald Scepter

by Paul Kemprecos

  “Neither do I. If it makes you feel better, Matt, I have no feelings of guilt whatsoever over our break-up.”

  “Happy to hear that, but there is a difference, Abby. You and I were married. Calvin and I were comrades in arms.”

  She gave him a stage sigh. “You’ve forgotten that we spent a lot of time in each other’s arms, too.”

  Hayes saw where the conversation was heading and scooped up the plates. “I’ll clean up. You can take the lunch shift.”

  He disappeared into the galley where he did a fairly good impression of Fats Domino singing Blue Monday, obviously aimed at drowning out the conversation in the main cabin. Hawkins and Abby exchanged glances and they both started laughing.

  “Maybe we should put aside the serious stuff,” Hawkins said. “We’re going to have enough to deal with out in the field.”

  She flashed him a smile that could have melted an iceberg, leaned forward and kissed him on the lips longer than was necessary.

  “You won’t regret this, Matt.”

  He felt heat come into his cheeks. Another reason to regret the loss of his beard. He dug a leather portfolio case out of his duffle bag. He riffled through the dossiers until the warm glow faded from his face, and spread out the contents of the folders on a table.

  When Hayes rejoined them, Matt said, “We’ve got the insertion and extraction down. I want to go over the dive plan.”

  Abby yawned. “Can we put it off until later?”

  “Sure,” Hawkins said. “We’ve got a long flight ahead of us.”

  “Good.” She grabbed a pillow and blanket from the overhead. “I’m going to take a little nap.”

  She stretched out on a row of seats and promptly fell asleep. Hayes yawned and said it must be catching. He camped out on another row and a few minutes later he was snoring.

  Hawkins gazed pensively at the sleeping forms. He didn’t like using other people, even if they went along with it. He’d always had the feeling that it was his bad judgment five years ago that had put him in front of the oncoming freight train of a faceless entity. Now the past had caught up with the present, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

  He was convinced that the key to his past remained in Afghanistan, where he and his unit had been ambushed. He had done everything right that day five years ago, but somehow he had screwed up. The bomb had smashed his leg and cost the lives of three men.

  There had been the hot blinding light and the kaboom and he was flying through the air like a cannonball. When he regained consciousness, he was stone deaf and the whole scene was a silent movie. Some men were staggering to their feet. Others lay lifeless on the bloody ground.

  His hearing was almost ninety-nine percent recovered when he appeared before the board of inquiry. He heard every word when the presiding officer went stone-faced and said, “This hearing is at an end.”

  “With all due respect sir, I believe there is more to this matter than has been presented.”

  “Not as far as this board is concerned. I’d advise you to count your lucky stars, try to forget this incident and get on with your life.”

  “Then this is the end of it?

  “Correct, Lieutenant Hawkins.”

  The board members started to pick up their papers.

  “Well it’s not the end of it for me, sir. If the navy doesn’t intend to get to the bottom of this, then I will.”

  Hawkins recalled how the guards had moved in closer as if he were a rabid dog. After the board made its escape, he sat alone in the room, alone with his thoughts, full of rage at what had just transpired. It had been a slippery slope from there, leading to the shrink’s office and his discharge.

  He could live without having his psych discharge reversed, but he was single-minded in his quest to find out who had shattered his leg and his navy career.

  And when he did?

  What then, Hawkins? he asked himself. What then?

  He had no immediate answer. He knew only that he was going to do everything he could to make this new mission succeed, an outcome that was highly unlikely given the collection of oddballs he had assembled to back him up. The thought reminded him that he had one more thing to do. He reached for his cell phone and punched out Sutherland’s number.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Tubac, Arizona

  Sutherland lived in a one-story stucco house atop a scrub-covered hill on rolling land that was once part of an abandoned ranch about ten miles north of the Mexican border. The only people she ever saw on her property were illegal immigrants heading north and the border police in white SUVs trying to intercept them. They were the ideal visitors because they didn’t linger.

  She had settled in Arizona after wandering around the Southwestern desert vaguely in search of the kind of spirituality that had vanished along with her innocence. Sutherland had seen the listing for the stucco house in a real estate office window during a stopover in the artsy little town of Tubac. She rode out to take a look at the house and immediately fell in love with its isolation and panoramic view. She bought it and about five surrounding acres with her winnings from internet poker. Her navy disability pension kept her in tacos and burritos and paid the utility bills.

  The quiet beauty of the desert had lulled the anxieties that seemed to hound her wherever she traveled. Inspired by the fiery vermilion of the sunsets she saw in the western sky from her patio, she had ventured into town and acquired acrylic paints, brushes and an easel in a local art supply shop. After she took a few painting lessons in a local gallery, she had been spending less time at the computer and more of her days in front of a canvas.

  She painted landscapes at first. Her paintings were technically well-executed, but they made her uneasy because of what they revealed about her psyche. She didn’t have to be a psychologist to detect the disturbing hints of paranoia in the beastly eyes lurking in the shadows and in the menacing postures of saguaro cacti. She had put her landscapes in storage and switched to another subject, the hummingbirds that darted in to dine at the dozen or so feeders she had hung around the house. It was impossible to instill menace in her paintings of the tiny birds and she captured the luminescent hues of their colors with amazing accuracy.

  She had set up her computer in a small bedroom that had a window view of the crumbling walls of an old ranch house and stables in a shallow valley around a quarter of a mile away. She had carried her coffee into her office to check her computer when the call came in from Hawkins.

  “We’re on our way, Molly. Crossing the Atlantic. How’s it going?”

  “Fine. Prester John file is done. I’m setting up the internet surveillance program, but nothing has come up so far that relates to the mission.”

  “Great, Molly.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t really have a handle on the folks who hired me.”

  “You told me about the Newport meeting.”

  “Yes, but those characters could have been bit players for all I know. Dumb not to vet the people at the meeting.”

  “Yeah, pretty dumb. No problem. I’ll start files on all the names you gave me.”

  “That would put my mind at ease. I’ll let you know when we get to Kabul.”

  After they said their good-byes, Sutherland turned to her computer. She compiled bios on the Newport group. Nothing popped up to catch her attention. There was one name on the meeting list that she didn’t check out. Matt Hawkins.

  Sutherland already knew everything there was to know about Hawkins. She had opened a file the day she met him in Trask’s office, adding to it every step of his life since he’d left the navy, returned to college and established a new career. She had watched electronically from afar, only rarely corresponding with him. Her fault mostly. She was aware that she had a crush on Hawkins. My god, she thought, what female wouldn’t be attracted to him? Sutherland knew Hawkins liked her, but probably mor
e like a kid sister. She was comfortable with that arrangement, with its implicit bond of trust. It was why she had answered his IM. And the reason she took on this nutty assignment.

  Although she had to admit that her heart had skipped a beat when she saw his face during the teleconference, and she was pleased to hear him praise her skill as an investigator. Out of idle curiosity, she called up the Hawkins file and clicked on the transcript of the navy hearing after the ambush in Afghanistan. She read down to the tense exchange between Hawkins and the lead officer:

  Q. Lieutenant Hawkins, could you tell the board who, besides yourself, knew about the operation?

  A. The only one who knew the specifics was Commander Kelly. My men were aware of the nature of the operation, but not the name of the target.

  Q. So you and Commander Kelly were the only individuals in the chain of command who knew that the target was a drug runner known as Abrahim Noor Kahn.

  A. Sorry. My brain is still fuzzy. There was one contact outside the chain of command. I consulted with a CIA agent.

  Q. Can you give us his name?

  A. I would have to get his permission before I did that.

  Q. Unfortunately, that’s not practical with our schedule.

  A. I understand. For the time being, I’ll use his code name. Southie.

  Q. What was the nature of your discussions with Southie?

  A. I asked him what he knew about the warlord. He said the target was a protected asset.

  Q. An informer, in other words.

  A. Yes sir. That was my understanding.

  Q. Did you at any time tell Southie of your plans to arrest the warlord?

  A. No. I told him only that Abrahim was a person of interest in connection with an ambush a few weeks earlier.

  Q. What was Southie’s response?

  A. He advised me to look elsewhere. We checked out his leads, but they were dead ends. We pursued our mission plans.

  Q. So you disregarded his advice?

  A. Abrahim may have had some intelligence value, but I was convinced that the target was responsible for American deaths and could be a potential danger in the future.

  Q. Have you considered that if you had called off your mission, it might not have cost the lives of three men and several injured, including yourself?

  A. In every operation, you weigh the possible casualties with the outcome if the mission is not carried out. You do your best to insure the safety of your men.

  Q. It was your testimony earlier that you did everything by the book, and that your mission must have been compromised. Yet you say no one knew the details of the operation. How could it then have been compromised?

  A. I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know.

  Sutherland found the rest of the testimony hard to read. The board took turns demolishing Matt’s theory that dark, unknown forces had doomed the operation. Without explicitly saying so, their questions seemed to suggest that it was Matt’s fault the mission went awry. Matt was still feeling guilt about his leadership. The outburst that ended his career and led to a less than honorable discharge was inevitable given his precarious mental state.

  She had read the transcript before, but except for her friend’s flashes of anger, it seemed straightforward. Hawkins was on the defensive, visibly frustrated with the board’s unwillingness to look further into the ambush. She sat back in her chair and stared out the window.

  Something was out of kilter. In reading the transcript before, she had concentrated on Hawkins and his anguished testimony rather than the facts presented at the hearing. She had the feeling she had missed something.

  Sutherland glanced at her wall clock. She had to run into town for art supplies and her painting class. She snapped the cover down on her computer and pushed back from the desk. She’d get back to the hearing later. Maybe a few hours slapping paint on canvas would clear her mind.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The panicked call came in a few hours after Professor Saleem had contacted his cousin to tell him about Hawkins.

  “Events are moving faster than I expected,” Mohamed said. “You must come home.”

  Saleem was standing in the history department hallway outside his classroom, phone close to his ear, after excusing himself from his pupils.

  “Are you mad? I can’t come home. I have classes to teach. What is so important that you must drag me away from my duties to my students?”

  “Your duty to your country and the intelligence service you are sworn to obey.”

  “I thought I was fulfilling those duties with my service here at the university.”

  “Saleem, this is not negotiable!”

  The professor had never heard his normally self-possessed cousin on the verge of hysteria.

  Saleem asked Mohamed to hold on for a moment and went back into the room to dismiss his class early. When he was alone in his classroom he sat at his desk and said, “I can talk now. Please tell me what has happened. What is your situation like?”

  The interlude gave his cousin a chance to settle down. “It is like trying to control a tiger with a leash made of thread. The lure of treasure had diverted our friends as we hoped. I have delayed them to this point with excuses of government bureaucracy. But now they want to move ahead immediately with a mercenary operation to secure the treasure. I can’t help but think it has something to do with Hawkins.”

  “You said before that they were not ready to mount an operation,” the professor said. “You said it would take them a while and keep them occupied while we worked on the Grand Plan. That it would keep them from hanging the Prophet’s Necklace around the neck of the United States.”

  “True. That was what I thought until I talked to the Doctor and told him about Hawkins. He said he wants to move right away. He also said that the designer of the necklace is a mercenary named Marzak who had been hired to lead the expedition as soon as he finished putting the strands in place. It seems that he is at last free.”

  “If this operation slips out of our grasp it would be extremely dangerous,” the professor said, trying to keep alarm from elevating his voice.

  “Which is why it isn’t going to happen. Our main goal remains the same. Control of the lithium fields. I want you to go on the operation and keep an eye on Marzak. A plane is flying in from London to pick you up.”

  “You forget that my skills are more professorial than operational, cousin.”

  “You’ve gone through training the same as the rest of us. Besides, you’re the only one I can trust who can help me hold this thing together.”

  “I may need someone to hold me together.”

  “Be of good cheer. We may end up with the lithium and the treasure. The Doctor tells me he has summoned Marzak. I’ve arranged for him to be on the same plane as you. I told the Doctor that you will be in operational control of the treasure mission.”

  “What? Are you crazy?”

  “Not at all. Marzak cannot be wandering about the U.S. We can’t risk having him set something off that will bring the United States more into the region before we make the minerals grab. This development could be to our advantage.”

  “Please elucidate, dear cousin.”

  “You may be able to glean information about the necklace. Even if you don’t, we can take care of Marzak and at the same time call the American birds in to drop their eggs on the Shadow leadership. Whether the Shadows get the treasure or not, their leaders will assemble to plan strategy and thus be vulnerable.”

  “I hope you are right. What about the Hawkins mission?”

  “The mercenary force includes formidable air power. The American operation doesn’t stand a chance. They’ll be wiped out along with the drug lord, leaving the field clear for us. In the meantime, don’t let Marzak out of your sight.”

  They chatted a few minutes longer, then Saleem hung up. His cousin had
a talent for making lemonade when handed lemons, as the Americans said, but as the professor began to pack his suitcase, his thoughts of the future were pervaded by a deep sense of foreboding.

  The plane his cousin had arranged for Saleem arrived in Washington to pick up a dozen Pakistani officers on their way back from a training mission with the U. S. Army. As the professor followed the officers onto the plane, he saw the man sitting toward the rear of the cabin.

  Fresh from their training in Texas, the chattering officers hardly paid any attention to the man who had a baseball cap pulled down on his head and wore aviator type sunglasses. He had a copy of The Washington Post in his hands. Although his eyes were covered, the professor had the distinct feeling that he was not reading the newspaper, but instead was watching every person who boarded.

  Saleem had no idea what Marzak looked like, but this had to be the man he was supposed to keep his eye on.

  The officers settled in a group toward the front of the cabin and Saleem took a seat in a row behind them. Minutes after they boarded, the plane took off and began the first leg of its journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Saleem had often regaled those attending his history classes that the past, present and future could not be treated separately, but as a single organism occupying space and time. Now here he was, proving his point. His present was caught up in a momentous past event that had its origins centuries before in the long lost kingdom of a legendary ruler. He preferred not to think about the future.

  His cousin had asked him to watch Marzak. Easier said than done. If he turned around in his seat the man would notice. Nature in the form of a full bladder showed the way. He got up from his seat and made his way to the restroom at the rear of the cabin. As he walked down the aisle, he kept his eye on the flight attendant, who was puttering around in the space at the rear of the cabin.

  He smiled at her, but at the last second, glanced at Marzak.

  The man had removed his cap, revealing a platinum head of hair. He was reading a book that hid his face. Saleem was surprised to see from the cover that it was a book of poetry by William Blake. He was still looking at the title when the man lowered the book, pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead and gazed at the professor with topaz eyes.