The Emerald Scepter Page 9

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Department of History, Georgetown University

  Professor Akram Saleem had just emerged from his classroom when he noticed the tall stranger wading through the crowd of students and academics milling along the hallway. The man’s face looked as if it had been chiseled from oak and he had a physique like a longshoreman. He projected an easy confidence and there was an eagle’s alertness in his dark probing eyes.

  He drew nearer, walking with a slight limp, and the professor saw that he clutched a copy of the latest book Cait Everson had written on the ancient trade routes. The professor’s smile clicked into place automatically and he stepped into the man’s path.

  “I see you’re a fan of Dr. Everson’s writing,” Saleem said.

  The man glanced at the book’s cover which showed a string of camels silhouetted against a red desert sunset. The Title was: “Trading Post Archaeology: The Role of the Silk Roads in Globalization.”

  “I picked this up at the college bookstore. Have you read it?”

  “Oh yes! Some people might find it dry, but it’s a well-written exposition. Dr. Everson is one of the foremost experts on ancient trade routes.”

  Hawkins turned the book over to show the photo of Dr. Everson on the jacket. “You sound as if you know her.”

  “I am Professor Akram Saleem, a colleague of Dr. Everson’s.”

  Hawkins extended his hand in a vise grip. “Nice to meet you, Professor. My name is Matt Hawkins. I run a non-profit outfit called SeaSearch. We find lost ships, purely for educational and historical purposes.”

  “What brings you to the history department?”

  “I was researching old trading routes and came across a reference to Dr. Everson. I happened to be in Washington, and decided to see if I could talk to her.”

  “I’m very sorry,” the professor said. “Dr. Everson is on indefinite leave of absence.”

  “It was a last-minute impulse. Maybe another time. I’m not surprised she’s away. She says in the introduction to the book that she spends a lot of time doing field work.”

  “Yes, she’s fearless when it comes to research. She believes there is no substitute for physically being at a historic site. Is there any area of particular interest to you? Perhaps I could be of help.”

  “Thanks, Professor. Dr. Everson and I are both detectives of sorts. She researches land routes. I do the same on the sea. I wanted to compare methods.”

  “I can put a note in her mailbox, if you’d like.”

  Hawkins took a business card from his billfold, jotted down a note on the back asking her to call and handed it to the professor. They chatted a few more minutes, and then Hawkins glanced at his watch and said he had to go. Hawkins thanked the professor for his time and headed for the parking lot. The professor watched thoughtfully until Hawkins disappeared around a corner, and then went back to his office.

  He looked for SeaSearch using Google and called up an impressive website that displayed photos of the dozen or so shipwrecks that Hawkins’ organization had found. He clicked on a picture of Hawkins and read the biographical sketch, starting with his most recent career at Woods Hole developing robots for underwater exploration and salvage. Then he came to the part about Hawkins’ service record and a frown crossed his usual smiling face.

  Hawkins is a navy veteran with the rank of lieutenant. He served with a SEALs unit in Iraq and later in Afghanistan.

  Saleem’s eyes narrowed. Why would a former navy diver and specialist in underwater salvage come looking for Cait? Coincidence? He read the biography again and looked up a number of related links that added texture to Hawkins’ background.

  The professor’s interest went beyond mere curiosity.

  With his friendly absent-minded professorial manner and warm smile, Professor Saleem epitomized the old descriptive cliché: a gentleman and scholar. He had gained the respect of faculty and student alike for his firm grasp of Mid-East and central Asian history. He was a bona fide historian who had gone to school in the United States and had made numerous friends along the way, qualities that gave him the ideal cover for his real job as an agent for the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, Pakistan’s foremost intelligence agency.

  He had been recruited by his cousin Mohamed, a high-ranking ISI official, who had realized the professor had the two greatest assets for a spy: accessibility and invisibility. Mohamed sent him through training and bundled him off as an exchange professor to Georgetown, hoping that his professorship would allow him to worm his way into corners of the U.S. establishment that embassy spies could never enter.

  His on-going assignment was to ferret out hints of a U.S. raid that would wipe out Pakistan’s nuclear capability, a paranoid fear of the ISI and the military. The arrangement promised more than it produced. Most of what he sent home was interesting but useless. He had little access to the real power centers of government, but kept his assignment secure by sending snippets of academic cocktail party gossip to his cousin.

  At times the informational well went dry, and that’s when he became desperate. It was during one of these dry spells that Dr. Everson told him her latest Prester John theory. He’d listened politely, not thinking there was any value to the information. When she mentioned sending a letter to the State Department, his ears perked up. He had transmitted the story to Pakistan, not because he believed that Prester John and his treasure were real but because he had nothing else at the moment. Mohamed had given the report short shrift, as expected, but when Saleem’s cousin got the follow-up message pin-pointing the treasure site, he set in motion an elaborate and risky plot.

  The professor reached for his phone and punched out a number. The call was patched through several blind circuits that would make it difficult to trace.

  A male voice answered, “Good to hear from you, my cousin.”

  “You won’t think so when I tell you the news. We have a problem.”

  “What sort of problem?”

  “A very big one.”

  Hawkins drove directly to the airport from Georgetown. He was preoccupied with his thoughts, and unaware of the black Chrysler van that had been waiting for him at Reagan airport and had followed him, first to Global Logistics, then to Georgetown University.

  The van tailed him back to the airport car rental return. The man behind the wheel had premature white hair and icy blue eyes. His passenger, who was acting as spotter, was his identical twin. The van pulled up at the departure entrance and the passenger got out. The driver made a loop around the airport and when he returned, his twin was waiting for him.

  He got in the van and reported that he had followed Hawkins as far as the security line. As they drove away from the airport he called a number on his cell phone.

  A gravelly voice that had been digitally altered came on the line.

  “Report.”

  The passenger gave a detailed description of their surveillance.

  There was a pause, and then the altered voice spoke again.

  “I want you to concentrate on one thing and one thing only,” the voice said.

  “What’s that?”

  The order was short and chilling.

  “Terminate Hawkins. Make him disappear. And do it as soon as possible.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Three Miles East of Norfolk, Virginia

  Calvin Hayes stood in the tower of the 25,000-ton Handysize class bulk carrier and watched a man in a thirty-foot Superboat bobbing in the water below bring a pipe-shaped object to his shoulder. A starburst blossomed from the tip of the pipe and a brilliant white streak shot across the carrier’s high bow. Hayes’ eyes followed the rocket’s trajectory and his mouth stretched in a wide grin.

  He was dressed in a tailored olive suit and dark green shirt that went well with his dark chocolate complexion. A custom-made yellow silk power tie was knotted around his
thick neck. Hayes was always impeccably dressed, but no one would mistake him for a fop. Hayes shaved his scalp and his ears were close to his bullet head. The nose between the high cheekbones had been flattened by a hard right during a boxing match, a match he had gone on to win. A broad-shouldered, six-foot-one physique rounded out the picture. But the tough guy look was tempered by the mischievous gleam in his molasses-colored eyes.

  Hayes lowered the binoculars and turned to a pair of men dressed in conservative dark business suits.

  “Gentlemen,” Hayes said in his soft Louisiana drawl, “With your permission, I will proceed with the next phase of the demonstration.”

  The older of the two men was Hank Spence, the razor-eyed CEO of the shipping company that owned the cargo ship. His young assistant was Skyler Horton, a graduate of the Harvard Business School.

  “Go ahead,” Spence said with no change in his flinty expression.

  Hayes nodded and turned to the ship’s commander, a veteran skipper named Rollins. “Please proceed with the new defensive protocol, captain.”

  Rollins called the engine room and ordered full stop. The ship coasted several hundred yards before its weight and hull resistance overcame the momentum carrying it forward. As the ship lay dead in the water, the powerboat darted in.

  Hayes turned back to Spence and Horton.

  “Here’s how the scene typically plays out in a pirate attack. The pirates shoot a real projectile across the bow, not a rocket I picked up in a fireworks shop. Then they board the stopped ship. They corral the crew, take the captain hostage and order him to bring the ship closer to land where it can be looted while ransom is being negotiated. Eventually the crew and ship may be released, but the cargo will go to the four winds.” He paused for drama. “Unless you hire Secure Ocean Services to protect your investment. I’ll let the captain take it from here.”

  Rollins picked up a microphone that would carry his orders to all parts of the ship.

  “This is the captain speaking. All hands to the safe room.” He repeated the order two more times, then said, “If you’ll excuse us.” He and his officers left the bridge in a disciplined fashion.

  “Where are they going?” Spence said.

  “They will join the rest of the crew in a high-security compartment. They have supplies for two weeks and communication with the outside world.” He glanced out one of the big windows that wrapped around the pilot house. “The pirate grapples are hooked onto the port rail. We’re about to have company.”

  Four men climbed over the rail. They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, the standard uniform of Somali pirates, and wore rags around their heads. As the men slipped automatic weapons off their shoulders, the ship’s engines restarted and the cargo vessel began to move.

  “Forgot to mention that the captain can control the ship from the secure room,” Hayes said.

  “So what?” Spence said. “Those guys will get back in their boat and sink the ship with their rockets.”

  “Not if you’ve hired my company,” Hayes said. He raised the radio to his lips and uttered one word. “Now.”

  The pirates had started across the deck toward the base of the bridge tower. They walked single file, AK-47s at waist level. Halfway to their destination, the last man in line crumpled to the deck. Then the pirate leader and the two men behind him collapsed like air dolls that had sprung a leak.

  Spence stared at the four bodies splayed on the deck.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “A two-man sniper team with sound-suppressed weapons took them out. In a real attack, the sniper team next would have gone after the man in the boat before he could get away or send a message to his friends. We would continue safely on our way, the ship effectively sanitized.”

  “Sanitized?” Spence said.

  Hayes nodded. “The bodies would disappear. Word would get around pirate circles that it is unlucky to attack your ships. We’ve even thought about putting a decal of some sort on the hull to warn that a ship is ‘pirate proof.’ Maybe a skull and crossbones inside a circle with a crossbar.”

  Spence studied Cal’s face. “You’re not being facetious,” he said.

  “Not at all. We do whatever is in the best interests of our clients.”

  “By putting a gang of hired killers aboard their ships? Making bodies disappear?”

  Hayes said, “My company is sensitive to the reputation of its clients. But the alternative is losing ships and cargo.”

  “That’s why we pay the big insurance premiums, to cover our losses from these ragged-assed bastards. Ships and cargo are expendable.”

  “What about officers and crew?”

  “Like I said, expendable.”

  Hayes pondered the answer. “I understand you built your company from scratch.”

  “Damn right! Started with one old rust-bucket bought at auction and turned it into an international fleet of top-notch vessels. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Hayes smiled. He was ready to close the deal.

  “I don’t see you letting a bunch of ragged-assed bastards take your hard-earned ships without a fight. Tell you what. Let’s put a team on one of your ships. Give it a test. I’ll even foot the bill up front for the safe room. Run the ship through pirate territory. See how things work out. I can have a team anywhere in the world within 48-hours.”

  “You think I’m crazy enough to risk one of my ships?”

  Hayes said nothing.

  “Damned if I’ll have anything to do with cold-blooded murder,” Spence said. He gave his assistant a tight smile and stalked off.

  Horton seemed unperturbed. “It’s okay,” he said to Hayes. “He’s just covering his rear end. He wants to make a deal. What’s it going to cost us?”

  “The cost varies according to the size of the ship and the team. On a bigger ship you might want to have four snipers.” He threw out a couple of figures. “I’ll throw the hull decal in for free.”

  They dickered over price for a few minutes before reaching an agreement, and Horton left the bridge to find his boss. Hayes made a quick phone call to alert his home office in Bethesda that he’d secured another deal.

  Business was good. Every time a pirate incident hit the headlines, he gained a client. The ragged-assed bastards had made it possible for Hayes to afford his eight-hundred-dollar suit, two-hundred-mile-per-hour Bentley Cabrio, and fast boat.

  He was reaching for a microphone to tell the captain to come back to the bridge when his phone chirped. When he answered it, the voice at the other end said, “You still make the best gumbo in Louisiana, Cal?”

  He brushed back non-existent hair from his shaved scalp. “Damn. Is that you, Hawk?”

  “In the flesh. Maybe a little more of it around the middle than when you last saw me. How long has it been? Four years?”

  “Give or take a day or two.”

  The call triggered a reverse switch in Cal’s brain and he flashed back to a white light and loud explosion and broken men lying on the ground. He’d been deafened by the blast, but he could see their soundless screams. He swallowed hard.

  “I still get flashbacks, Hawk.”

  “Me too. Memory is a wonderful thing. I’ve heard there’s a pill that can wipe the brain clean of bad recollections.”

  “I wouldn’t want to wipe out all my memories. We had some good times, man.”

  “That we did. How’s business?”

  “Can’t complain. I’ve got job security as long as there are bad guys out there. Drive a hot car. Live in a trophy house. Alone, unfortunately. My wife gets the big alimony payments.” He paused. “I owe everything to you, Hawk. You took the hit for me.”

  Hawkins chuckled softly. “My act of heroism was entirely involuntary, Cal. I didn’t go out of my way to set off that IED.”

  “I didn’t get your back, man.”


  “That’s because you were standing beside me.”

  “Not talking about the ambush. Later. When the navy came down on you. SEALs never leave a guy behind. I let the navy chew you up and spit you out. I owe you big time.”

  “You may be sorry you said that once you hear my proposition.”

  He outlined the main points of the Afghan treasure hunt and waited for Hayes to comment, which he did after a moment’s pause.

  “You know something, Hawk, that is the dumbest mission I have ever heard of.”

  “I agree. I wouldn’t take offense if you told me you had better things to do.”

  “That’s not what I’m telling you.”

  “You’re saying you’re in?”

  “I’m in,” Hayes said. “I’ve got a great management staff to watch the shop. There’s one other thing.”

  “What’s that?” Hawkins said.

  “I never answered your question. I still make a hell of a gumbo.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The setting sun was a molten ball of orange hanging over the shimmering waters of Cape Cod Bay as the executive jet made its approach to Otis air base, but the beauty of the scene was lost on Hawkins. Nearly twenty-four hours had elapsed since he’d told Fletcher he’d have a team in place.

  Two down and one to go.

  As he drove back to Woods Hole from Otis, he thought about his whirlwind trip to Washington. Abby and Calvin had been easier to snag than Hawkins had expected. The next call might be the most difficult, and risky.

  Returning home, he fed Quisset, and then climbed to his study, sat at his desk, stared at the computer screen, and thought about his first meeting with the enigmatic Molly Sutherland.

  Hawkins had refused to stop pushing for an investigation into the ambush that had nearly killed him and he’d been ordered to see a navy psychiatrist. He had limped into the waiting room of a navy medical building in Bethesda and flopped into a chair. Sitting opposite him was a young woman in her twenties, wearing army khakis, who was tapping away at a laptop computer. She was slightly plump, with a creamy white complexion and a round, pretty face framed by short black hair.