The Scorpion's Tail (Nora Kelly Book 2)

by Douglas Preston

  “Nora—wait.”

  “Go to hell.” She turned to leave the room.

  “Nora, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was causing you such problems.”

  Nora hesitated, breathing heavily.

  “You said you got something valuable in return.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I can use that as an excuse, keep us both out of trouble.”

  Fury vented, Nora felt herself cooling down. It wasn’t like her to blow her top—that was more Corrie’s department. She wondered if she should demand an apology and realized she wouldn’t get one. Anyway, she’d been out of line as well.

  Corrie continued. “It’s not considered unreasonable for an FBI agent to give something in exchange for information of value.”

  Nora forced herself to turn and sit down again.

  “All right,” Corrie said, “if you’re ready, let’s resume.” She turned the recorder back on.

  Nora took a deep breath. “After I gave him the medicine bag,” she began once more, “Taza asked me to fetch a wooden box. Inside were two items: a heavy gold watch decorated with constellations, and a piece of parchment with a Native American drawing on one side and faded Spanish script on the other.”

  “A piece of parchment?” Corrie asked, leaning forward with an astonished expression. “Was it cut in half ?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Corrie didn’t answer the question, instead asking another. “What did the old man tell you about it?”

  “He said that the Jornada del Muerto and all the surrounding land, all of WSMR, once belonged to the Apaches. Many centuries ago, he said, his ancestors encountered a group of friars hurrying down the Spanish trail with soldiers and mules. They attacked the pack train and pursued it into the foothills, where the Spanish fled, looking for a defensible site. They took refuge on a small peak. The Apaches surrounded them, but the Spanish soldiers kept them at bay while the mules were unloaded and their cargo placed in the mountain. The Spanish defended themselves for a while longer, but they had no water and eventually the Apaches prevailed and killed them all. A day later, the Apaches caught a boy from the pack train, carrying a letter down the Camino Real. He had escaped from the peak during the fight. The Apaches took the letter from him. The boy said it was terribly important and was written to the high chief of Spain himself. The Apaches kept the parchment, not knowing what it was but believing it to be of great significance to the Spanish. At some point many years later, one of the keepers of the parchment drew pictures on its back. Sacred pictures, he said, of a battle where Geronimo defeated his enemies. The pictures were to counteract the negative power of the written words on the other side.

  “Taza went on to say that, through inheritance from his father, he became the keeper of the parchment. He was only seventeen, he said, and didn’t take it very seriously. He’d developed a youthful curiosity about the white man and his ways. He struck up a friendship with a man named James Gower, much older than he was, and the two of them spent a lot of time hunting for relics and treasure in the mountains and desert Taza knew so well. Taza had lost both his parents, and Gower became a kind of surrogate father. At some point, Taza showed Gower the document, and Gower immediately understood its significance.”

  “Gower was able to read the letter?” Corrie asked.

  “The language, it turns out, isn’t hard to translate. It’s the script that’s difficult. Gower apparently knew how to read that old script and was also fluent in Spanish. He may not have been educated, but he was clever.”

  “Go on.”

  “So the two decided to become partners and find the treasure described in the letter. As a way to seal the bond, they gave each other their most precious possessions. Taza gave Gower his medicine bundle, and Gower gave Taza his gold watch. And they cut the piece of parchment in half, each keeping a piece as a symbol of their partnership.

  “Taza knew, deep down, that hunting for the treasure was wrong: the lands they scoured were sacred, and there was evil attached to the Spanish hoard. But the lure of gold was great. They established a camp at High Lonesome, obtained a mule, and began searching the Sierra Oscura for the hill mentioned in the document. They kept at it for a number of weeks … and then something unthinkable happened.

  “They’d decided to split up temporarily, in order to cover more territory. When Taza returned to camp that night, Gower and the mule were still gone, searching in the foothills to the south. Then, just before dawn the next morning, Taza saw it—a sudden light brighter than the sun. There was no sound at first, he told me. The light expanded with unbelievable speed, until it was like a gigantic eye, and he described how it rose into the dark sky, shimmering with every color of the rainbow. And only then did the sound come. It was, he said, the roar of the devil—nothing else could have been so powerful, or so terrible. Moments later, a wind like a hurricane threw him to the ground. When he managed to struggle to his feet, he saw a dirty pillar rising to the heavens, spreading in all directions, dropping rain and flickering with lightning, while the mountains and deserts echoed and re-echoed with thunder.”

  “Jesus,” said Corrie.

  “Frightened almost out of his wits but unwilling to desert his friend, Taza waited at the camp for Gower to return. At sunset, he finally did. His skin was hanging from his body like rotten leather; he was injured, bleeding and scorched; his eyes were as red as blood. And he was raving mad. The mule, too, was half-crazed. Gower babbled about the devil, gold, and Armageddon. He lived only half an hour, Taza said, and then Taza buried him and shot the mule. He left that evil place, never to return, unfortunately overlooking the medicine bundle in his panic and haste to get away. And he never did return, or even speak of it again—until now.”

  Nora stopped. The emotional toll of telling the story had drained any residual anger from her. And what she’d said clearly had the same effect on Corrie.

  After a silence, Corrie said: “Can you show me the parchment?”

  Nora took out her leather portfolio and removed a clear archival sleeve containing the parchment. She laid it on the desk.

  For a moment, Corrie stared at it. Then she took the evidence packet from her briefcase and removed her own piece of parchment. She placed it on the table beside Nora’s. The two cut edges fit perfectly together.

  Nora stared in disbelief. “My God. Where did you get that?”

  “Up at the Gower kid’s place. Hidden in the henhouse.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “No. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “It’s directions,” Nora told her. “Directions to the Victorio Peak treasure.”

  51

  NORA STARED AT the two pieces of parchment, now placed together on the desk. “I have a translation of my half,” she said. “Done by Orlando. We have to translate your half.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Corrie asked, peering at the parchment. “Not only is it a squiggly mess, but some of the letters are so faded I can’t read them.”

  “Back at the Institute, Orlando photographed my section in UV light and then digitally manipulated the photo to increase contrast. Maybe we could do the same. Do you have anything that’s blue and transparent?”

  “I have something better: a handheld UV examination light. Standard FBI equipment.” Corrie rummaged around in her office supplies and pulled out a small black penlight.

  Nora took it. “You shine it on the parchment and I’ll take a picture with my cell phone.”

  Corrie positioned the light and switched it on, illuminating the document. Nora could see that in the eerie purple glow, the script stood out much better. She took a series of photographs with her cell phone and transferred them to Corrie’s iMac. Corrie loaded the photos into an image editor and, selecting the best exposure, started working with it. In a short period of time, by cranking up the contrast and adjusting the brilliance, the script on the screen became clear enough to read.

  Corrie peered at it. �
��It doesn’t even look like letters.”

  “Watch and learn.” Nora, suddenly grateful for Orlando’s pedantry, loaded the website of old Castilian scripts and pulled the alphabet chart for Cortesana. “I’ll use this.”

  A

  uppercase

  lowercase

  “See? Those are all the variants of A.”

  Corrie stared. “Very cool. I had no idea you could find something like this on the web.”

  “It’s just going to take a while.”

  Nora started to work, taking Corrie’s piece of parchment one letter at a time, looking it up on the chart, and then seeing which modern letter it represented. It was laborious at first, but after ten minutes she started to recognize the letters from memory. An hour later, she had transcribed Corrie’s half of the document. She sat back. “There it is.”

  “Can you translate it?”

  “You bet.” She took a blank piece of paper and began with the first line, working slowly and sometimes having to check unusual words with Google Translate.

  —to Your Majesty from the province of New Spain

  —ust the various Pueblos rose in revolt and martyred

  —edge of said revolt, Fray Marcos, Fray

  —rescued much of the holy ecclesiastical treasure

  —ions. We burdened sixty-two mules and horses

  —mino Real in the vicinity of Senecú we were

  —ward, where we were so pressed that we hid

  —peak called El Aguijón del Escorpión in the

  —to the mine and made the mark of the cross on

  —scorpión we made a second mark of two crosses

  —aled the northern entrance to the mine with no mark.

  —send you this letter through a messenger and pray that

  —ure may be rightfully returned to Your Holy Roman

  —of Your Majesty’s northern possessions.

  —kisses your Royal feet and hands,

  Nora finished the last sentence and pushed the paper toward Corrie. “Done.”

  “And the first half ?”

  “Right here.” Nora took out the paper on which Orlando had written his translation of the other half of the document. She put the two translations together on the table with trembling hands, and they both looked down to read the letter in full, in English.

  S.C.C. Majestad:

  On the 20th of August 1680 I write in haste

  to Your Majesty from the province of New Spain

  along the Camino Real. On the 10th of Aug

  ust the various Pueblos rose in revolt and martyred

  many of the holy fathers. Having foreknowl

  edge of said revolt, Fray Marcos, Fray

  Angelico, and Fray Bartolomé and soldiers

  rescued much of the holy ecclesiastical treasure

  of the cathedral, the churches and the miss

  ions. We burdened sixty-two mules and horses

  with treasure and fled southward. Along the Ca

  mino Real in the vicinity of Senecú we were

  beset by savage Apachu Indians and forced east

  ward, where we were so pressed that we hid

  the treasure in the old Reina de Oro mine in the

  peak called El Aguijón del Escorpión in the

  Sierra Oscura. We concealed the south entrance

  to the mine and made the mark of the cross on

  a stone five paces to the right. At the base of E

  scorpión we made a second mark of two crosses

  on a large stone directly below. We conce

  aled the northern entrance to the mine with no mark.

  We are yet pressed by the Apachu and I

  send you this letter through a messenger and pray that

  you receive it, and that the holy treas

  ure may be rightfully restored to Your Holy Roman

  Catholic Majesty upon the recapture

  of Your Majesty’s northern possessions.

  Humble servant and vassal of Your Majesty, who

  kisses your Royal feet and hands,

  Fray Bartolomé de Aragon

  They read in silence, and the stillness in the room continued as

  they looked up at each other.

  “This is incredible,” Corrie finally murmured.

  “Yes,” said Nora. She shook her head as if to dispel a dream. “Which peak is this Aguijón del Escorpión—the Tail of the Scorpion?”

  Corrie leaned over the keyboard, and soon Google Earth popped up on the screen, showing the Sierra Oscura at the northern end of the missile range, west and south of the Trinity site. The range ran north-south for twenty-five miles and encompassed hundreds of hills, peaks, buttes, and ridges.

  “You’re asking which one is the Scorpion’s Tail?” Corrie asked, peering. “It took Gower and Taza weeks to find it.”

  “They didn’t have twenty-first-century technology,” Nora said. “Think about the strange name of the peak. Could it look like a scorpion’s upraised stinger? Or is it called that for some other reason?”

  Corrie shrugged. She expanded the view, zeroing in on the northern end of the Oscura range, nearer to the Trinity site. There were almost too many peaks and ridges and hills to count.

  “Here’s a thought,” Nora said. “After Gower found the treasure, he would have made a beeline back to High Lonesome, carrying that cross as proof of his find. High Lonesome is here on the map. His route must have taken him within about a mile of ground zero on either side of the Trinity site, here, to have been caught in the blast. So let’s draw lines from High Lonesome to within a mile on either side of the Trinity site, and see which hills they intersect.”

  Using Google Earth’s line-drawing facility, she drew the two lines. The lines cut through the Oscura foothills, crossing a dozen or so peaks. Nora and Corrie leaned forward to peer closely at the screen.

  “Whoa!” said Nora. “Look at that hill. You see that?”

  Corrie zoomed in. The hill was named Mockingbird Butte on the map.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Not the hill itself,” said Nora. “The little canyon just below it, cutting into its base.”

  Corrie stared. The little canyon curled up from below, shaped very much like the raised tail of a scorpion with a bulbous stinger at the end. “Holy shit.”

  “Holy shit is right,” Nora said, tingling with excitement, heart pounding. “That’s the peak. That’s where the Victorio Peak treasure is hidden! Not in Victorio Peak at all, but there!”

  *

  An hour later, Corrie and Nora each held an empty glass of wine they had drunk to celebrate. The precious parchments had been carefully sealed back up in the plastic evidence envelope and stored in the FBI-issue safe in Corrie’s home office. She had tried to call Morwood but gotten only voice mail.

  Nora rose. “I’d better get back to Santa Fe,” she said. “Skip will be holding dinner for us, and he gets cranky if it dries out in the oven.”

  “Okay.” Corrie rose, too. “Meet me in my cubicle at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We’ll take this in to Morwood together.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  Corrie smiled at the thought. “It’s going to blow his mind.”

  52

  AS THEY APPROACHED the crest of the pass leading down to High Lonesome, Morwood pulled the vehicle to one side of the road. “We’d better not let our headlights show over the ridgeline,” he said. “Let’s have a look and see what’s going on.”

  Watts got out, put on his hat, and buckled on his six-guns. Morwood didn’t say anything during this ritual but was privately amused. He took a pair of binoculars out of the glove compartment, and they walked into the ponderosa forest and climbed to the ridgeline.

  Below, the town of High Lonesome came into view, a thousand yards away. There were lights. Morwood peered down with the binocs and could see two pickup trucks parked at right angles to each other, their beams illuminating a work scene. Several men were busy taking apart the second-f
loor wooden wall of the building in which Gower’s body had been found. Two others, armed, stood nearby, apparently on guard.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Watts.

  Morwood counted the men and confirmed there were five visible. “We need to call in backup,” he said.

  Watts grunted. “How long is that going to take?”

  “Hours, but the alternative is to apprehend them ourselves, which is suicide.”

  After a moment, Watts nodded. “Backup it is.”

  They returned to the vehicle. Morwood pulled down the radio, but they were out of range, and there was no cell coverage. He started the truck. “All we can do is head back until we find coverage and call it in.”

  Watts pursed his lips. “Can I make a suggestion, Agent Morwood?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s approach a little closer and see if we can’t ID some of them, or at least get a plate number. By the time we drive out, call for backup, and return, those guys are going to be gone.”

  Morwood thought about this. It entailed risk—but also reward. Even a plate number would be crucial information.

  “Okay,” he said. “Not a bad idea.”

  Morwood eased the truck forward, headlights off. The moon hadn’t risen, but there was a desert azimuth glow in the sky: just enough to see by. He eased the truck over the pass, and they proceeded down the switchbacks, slow and quiet, brakes only, in neutral to prevent the sound of gears. Reaching the far end of town, Morwood snugged the truck up behind an adobe wall where it would be well concealed. They got out. Watts took out one of his .45s and slowly spun the cylinder while Morwood checked his own weapon.

  “We’re going to get close enough to ID a plate and that’s it,” Morwood said.

  “Right.”

  They crept out from behind the adobe wall. The town was sunken in darkness, with a bright glow from the headlights at the opposite end. Keeping adobe walls between them and the lights, they worked their way closer.

  About halfway through town, as they came around the wall of a ruined building, two additional lights suddenly switched on, pinning them in the glare. They must have been hidden, awaiting just such an intrusion: their beams seemed to come out of nowhere. Morwood heard a simultaneous racking of weapons.