The Emerald Scepter Page 39

“What are you talking about, Hawkins?”

  He held the scepter up. “I’m talking about the explosive nature of this thing.”

  “You’re talking like a crazy man.”

  “Maybe, but this thing has already caused a lot of fireworks.”

  Calvin finally realized what Hawkins was trying to tell him.

  Duh. He pushed the forward button. The robot’s treads hit the pressure plate.

  Kaboom!

  The middle of the dock disappeared in a blinding ball of fire. Flaming splinters of wood fell from the sky like rain.

  Calvin was already on the move.

  Cait moaned at the noise of the explosion and tried to lift her head.

  Marzak cocked his ear as the echoes faded. “I forgot to tell you. I set up a surprise for anyone attempting to come ashore at the old dock.”

  “You killed Calvin, you sonofabitch! The deal is off.”

  Hawkins backed up. He wanted to draw Marzak away from Cait.

  Marzak came around the side of the bar, holding the dagger forward like a fencer, and advanced slowly. Hawkins raised the scepter and swung it like it was a Louisville Slugger. Marzak jumped back out of the way.

  Cait was up on one elbow, taking in the confrontation with bleary eyes. She pushed herself off the bar, stood on shaky legs and tried to walk. She was only vaguely aware of knocking something over with her knee as she made her way unsteadily around the bar.

  Marzak thrust the knifepoint at Hawkins, who sucked his gut in and took another swing with the scepter. Marzak circled, trying to drive Hawkins toward the weakened floor in front of the altar. He dodged another swing, and got in a quick swipe of his knife that caught Hawkins in the ribs.

  Marzak saw Hawkins wince with pain and lower the scepter. The next cut of the blade would catch Hawkins below the Adams apple.

  Cait was still unsteady on her feet, but she made it around to the front of the bar. Her groping hand accidentally pushed a candle over the edge. There was a plouff sound as the gasoline she’d knocked over a moment earlier ignited.

  Flames roared up, enveloping the back of the bar and the rotten deck.

  Hawkins jumped back to avoid another knife thrust. He felt a warm wetness in his chest where he’d been cut. He instinctively moved to protect Cait only to feel his feet break through the rotten planks. He crashed through the deck up to his armpits and struggled to keep from falling in any further. His pistol holster was inaccessible.

  Marzak sheathed his dagger and extended a hand.

  “Give me the scepter, Hawkins. I’ll pull you out.”

  Hawkins lifted the relic, but when Marzak moved closer, Hawkins swung it at his ankle. The cross arm connected with skin and bone. Marzak yelled in pain and backed off. His hand went to his belt holster and he drew his pistol and pointed the muzzle at Hawkins’ face.

  Speaking quietly, he said, “Fine, I’ll just go ahead and kill you now, Hawkins. Matter of family honor for killing my brother. Too bad. We’re arrows from the same quiver, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Marzak smiled, but instead of firing the gun, he shuddered, as if he’d been hit by a blast of wind, and his mouth dropped open in a look of shock. His free hand groped at his shirt where two holes had appeared as if by magic. He squinted through the flames roaring around the bar, fired his gun at something unseen then turned and ran into the dining room and out onto the deck.

  Flames were rapidly spreading through the lounge and the air was thick with smoke. Cait rushed forward to give Hawkins a hand, but then a familiar voice was yelling at her to stand aside.

  Calvin stepped past her and reached for the scepter, wrapped his hands around it and pulled Hawkins out like a cork from an old bottle of wine.

  With Calvin in the lead, they ran through the dining room, weaving their way through the swirling pockets of flame dancing around like fiery wraiths. Tongues of yellow fire licked at their heels, but then they were out the door and down the gang plank.

  The massive bonfire consumed the boat from stem to stern and blistered the air with its heat.

  As they hastily made their way to the truck in the undulating light from the blaze, Hawkins scanned the old parking lot and the surrounding woods

  Marzak was nowhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Northern Virginia, Twenty-Four Hours Later

  The conference room in the office labyrinth of Global Logistics Technologies was unremarkable, but the same could not be said about its four occupants.

  Hawkins stood in front of a blank presentation screen holding a laser pointer. He had bagged his quasi-military outfit in favor of Woods Hole casual: jeans, chambray work shirt and work boots. Hawkins’ big-boned physique and craggy features would have been an imposing presence anywhere, but the Afghan sun and wind had brought out the reddish skin tint he’d inherited from his Micmac ancestors and the rigors of the Afghan mission had hardened his features, especially around the dark eyes.

  Seated at a table directly in front of Hawkins was Calvin, who looked like an entertainment lawyer in his thousand dollar Armani suit. Next to him was Abby, smartly dressed in a beige pants-suit and lavender blouse. They both wore a watchful wariness that wasn’t there at the start of the operation.

  The only one not to have changed was Sutherland who sat at a table with her battered laptop open in front of her. She wore her standard outfit of jeans and sweatshirt. With the slight smile under her pudgy cheeks and innocent eyes blinking behind her glasses, she could have been a bank teller about to cash a check at the drive-up window.

  “Cait is still recovering from her drug hangover,” Hawkins announced. “She’ll be okay in another day or so. Unfortunately, Marzak is still on the loose and he’s got the capability to detonate the sarin bombs at any time.”

  “Should we let the authorities know what’s going on?” Calvin asked.

  “Since we don’t know the target cities, there’s not much the authorities could do short of evacuating whole cities. People could be killed in the panic. I think the key here is still the treasure. Abby?”

  “I had the scepter and other chests crated and stored in a temperature controlled vault on the floor below. I’ve authorized vault access for everyone in this room.”

  “Thanks, Abby. With the treasure removed from circulation, we’ve torpedoed the Shadows’ plans for now. But if we believe what Marzak told me, he’s not working for the Shadows and the decision to tie the clasp on the Prophet’s necklace isn’t his. He’s working for someone else.”

  Abby nodded. “Makes sense, Matt. He could have set the plot in motion the second he was clear of the boat, but he didn’t, and he hasn’t since, which means that he’s either biding his time or telling the truth about the sarin attack being out of his hands.”

  Hawkins nodded. “Marzak is only one piece of a jigsaw puzzle that looks like a Pollock painting. That’s why I’ve asked Molly to work on a forensic search to help us assemble the pieces as fast as we can.”

  On cue, Sutherland clicked the computer mouse, and dozens of facial images filled the screen. At the center of the photo-montage was the image of the emerald scepter.

  “These are the faces of every individual, including us, who has a connection to the Prester John mission,” Hawkins said. He pointed the laser dot at a square that had a close-up picture of a rat. “What’s this?”

  “That’s Rashid,” Sutherland explained. “I didn’t have a photo of him.”

  “That rat’s a lot better looking than ol’ Rash,” Calvin said. “Good picture of me, though. Handsome and mean at the same time.”

  “That other one looks like Omar Sharif, the actor,” Abby said.

  “It is. That’s supposed to be Amir,” Sutherland said.

  “Not bad,” Abby said. “But how is this going to help us find Marzak?”


  “I’ll explain. When I first started digging into the lives of people who interested me, I’d go through search engines like Google. What I got was collard greens, turnips and beans.”

  “Pardon me?” Abby said.

  Sutherland blushed. “Sorry. That’s my West Virginia talking. You throw all those things in a frying pan back home and you get a dish called a mess. There’s no way to separate one thing from the other. Same thing online, too, only it’s a mess of data. Lot of it is useless. That’s when I came up with Snoopster.”

  Abby glanced at Hawkins with an expression of distress on her face. He responded with a shrug.

  “My guess is that Snoopster is a computer program,” he said.

  “That’s right. I named it after Snoop Doggy Dog. They use a data miner like this in some human resource departments to figure out someone’s character. It uses a huge list of key words to help sift the weevils out of the flour. In my program the key word at one extreme is Bad-ass. At the other end, it’s Saintly. I came up with a big list of things to measure a person by, and gave each one a point score. I tweak it with stuff that isn’t on the record, but that I know.”

  “That seems pretty subjective,” Abby said.

  “I know it’s not rocket science, but sometimes what I feel about someone is more accurate than what I know.”

  Hawkins said, “It’s called instinct, Molly, and it’s kept me out of a lot of trouble.”

  Sutherland smiled at the praise. “Depending on the point score, the person is dumped into files labeled Good Guy, Bad Guy and Maybe. Then I smooth out the rough files and come up with an estimate of what a person is.”

  Suddenly intrigued, Abby leaned forward. “Could you give us an example, Molly?”

  “Sure. I’ll use me. I got math awards in high school, and good marks for my army service. They gave me an honorable discharge, so that makes me a Good Guy. You take Rashid up there on the screen. Lies, steals, tries to kill and hurt people, and he’s an easy Bad Guy.”

  “What about a Maybe?” Hawkins asked.

  Sutherland smirked. “That would be you, Matt. You did good in the navy, but got screw-up points when you went before a board of inquiry that had you cashiered for being crazy.”

  “That would make me a Bad Guy, wouldn’t it?”

  She shook her head. “You went on to be an engineer who made some contributions to science. The fact that you were evaluated by a Bad Guy like Trask gave you goodie points too, but not enough to move you out of the Maybe category. That’s where I come in. I add in feelings, which could push you to the Good Guy category.”

  Hawkins had to admit that Sutherland’s simple explanation made perfect sense. “Thanks, Molly. Can this program help us locate Marzak?”

  “Not exactly, but it can give us an idea who he hangs out with. Like my mama used to say, ‘Tell me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.’”

  “Hey, sounds like what my mama used to tell me when I got in with the bad crowd,” Calvin said. “Birds of a feather flock together.”

  “Too bad you didn’t listen to your mama, or you wouldn’t be hanging around me,” Hawkins said. “Go on, Molly.”

  “Sure. It’s all about connections. Watch.” She clicked the computer and the montage of faces was covered with a web of black lines. “It’s the Kevin Bacon thing. Everybody’s connected to everybody else. But how you’re connected makes a big difference. Amir is a drug guy, and has bad connections, but he’s also connected to you and he helped find the treasure and fight the bad guys.”

  The lines disappeared and the photos were grouped on two sides of the scepter in clusters that were labeled Good Guys and Bad Guys.

  “No more maybes?”

  “Not when you factor in the details. The program connects the dots and arranges the photos depending on the strength of the link.”

  Hawkins was disheartened that the bad guys greatly outnumbered the good, but he scanned the faces, moving from one side of the screen to the other. Most were pretty obvious, like Rashid and Murphy, who were paired side by side with the baddies, and Cait and Abby on the other side. Then there was him and Calvin.

  But his wandering gaze rested on one photo in particular. He placed the laser dot on the photo.

  “Are you sure this is accurate?” he said.

  “As much as it can be,” Sutherland replied. “You take what you know and apply it to what you don’t know. The computer connects the dots.”

  Hawkins couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The man in the photo had the same necktie he had seen when he met with the Newport Group. Then there was the cottony hair, the goatee and the lips pursed in perpetual disapproval.

  And next to the man’s photo was an all-too familiar face.

  Marzak.

  A thought occurred to Hawkins. “Molly, could you Google the word Arrowsmith?’

  “The rock band?”

  “No. Arrow as in Arrowhead corporation.”

  The first listing that came up was for the Sinclair Lewis novel by that name. He asked Sutherland to click on the next listing, a Wikipedia link.

  Arrowsmith may refer to: A person who makes arrows (see fletching)

  Why hadn’t he seen it before?

  Fletching is the art of putting feathers on arrows.

  And the person who attaches the feathers is a fletcher.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Newport, Rhode Island, Three Hours Later

  The sprawling mansion built on a promontory that jutted defiantly into the dark waters of Narragansett Bay could have been the setting for a Gothic novel. With its octagonal turrets and soaring chimney stalks, the massive pile of granite looked as foreboding as a Norman keep. Surf whipped up by an offshore storm smashed the rocky bulkhead and spray pelted the mansion’s lower level windows, but all was serene in a second floor room that resembled the dark-paneled study of a London gentlemen’s club.

  Five people sat in plush dark leather chairs gathered around a massive fireplace framed in mahogany taken from the gun deck of an 18th century British man-o’-war. Brown-black shellac covered the once blood-soaked timbers that had been carved with scenes romanticizing the ship’s victories at sea.

  Charles Fletcher sat at the center of the half-circle, allotting his time precisely to those on his left and his right. Like the others, he swirled a snifter of Louis Royer brandy and smoked a His Majesty’s Reserve cigar infused with Louise XIII cognac and worth about the same as the median weekly wage of the U.S. worker.

  His audience of middle-aged men all wore tuxedoes, a dress code Fletcher required of his male dinner guests. Their facial features differed, but they glowed with the powerful good health of the wealthy, and their eyes shared the same avaricious hardness.

  Fletcher had been continuing his dinner discussion of naval power and the Big Game, as Kipling called the competition among the Great Powers in the days of tsars and kings.

  “The world outside of Europe and American was nothing more than a big garden full of ripe fruit and vegetables. The Great Powers were the gardeners who carved whole countries out of virgin land. Occasionally, they got into border spats, went at each other with pitchforks, and after a sufficient period watering the plants with blood, they joined together to battle the poachers.”

  “You have a gift for metaphor,” one of the men said. “I would have loved to have gotten my hand on a pitchfork back in those days.”

  “My point is, things really haven’t changed that much,” Fletcher said. “The main difference is the lightning speed at which events move now. We’re in one of those accelerated time warps.” He paused to let his audience chew on his words. “Now, if you gentlemen will all follow me into the media room we will talk about the important matter you came here to discuss.” Ever the thoughtful host, he said, “I’ve sent my cooking staff home. You’ll have to bring your own brandy.”

  Th
ey entered a small auditorium and took their seats in the banked armchairs that faced a stage. Fletcher sat in the first row and tapped a control console in the arm of his chair. The lights dimmed and the curtains behind the stage parted to reveal a large wall screen that displayed a satellite picture of the earth. At a touch of a button, the image zoomed in on Asia, showing territorial borders in white.

  “Here we are above Afghanistan, courtesy of Google earth,” Fletcher said. “This ancient and fabled land is often called the Graveyard of Empires for reasons our own military has discovered. Afghanistan is many things to many people, but I will wager that this is how the people in this room see it.”

  Superimposed over the map was the familiar little man with the sly smile and white handle-bar mustache who symbolized the capitalist in the game of Monopoly. He was leaning on a dollar sign almost as tall as he was. The image triggered laughter that ended abruptly when the picture changed. The capitalist was frowning and he was leaning on a red rectangle with five gold stars. The flag of China.

  The image brought forth a round of hoarse boos.

  Fletcher smiled. “I can see there is unanimity of opinion in this room.”

  “Is it that bad, Charles?” said Frank Sturmer, president of a vast minerals cartel and spokesman for the group.

  “As I tell my navy students, without understanding the past we can’t change the future. Let’s go back a few years.” The red flag became a hammer and sickle. “The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. With the help of the CIA and U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles, the Mujahideen send the Russians packing. The military invasion was a failure, but the Soviets left their mark in other ways.”

  “What ways?” Sturmer asked.

  “I’m going to let an expert tell you,” Fletcher said. “Do you hear me, Dr. Davis?”

  “Loud and clear,” a voice said over the speakers.

  A man’s face appeared on the screen. He had thinning hair and a beard of matching gray. His crevassed features had the deep tan of someone who spent a great deal of time in the sun.