The Emerald Scepter

CHAPTER FIFTY

When the Global Logistics plane landed at Dulles, waiting for it was an executive jet Abby had arranged with full crew and handlers who quickly transferred gear from the big plane to the Gulfstream G150. Abby had also arranged for a taxi to take Cait to her condominium, as it had been decided that she would stay and see what she could find out about the coin while the others continued on to Colorado. Within minutes, the sleek Gulfstream leapt into the air like a fighter plane on alert and headed west.

Cait watched the plane disappear from sight, then got into the taxi and gave the driver directions to her condo. She stepped into the living room and dropped her duffle bag on the floor. As she stood there breathing in the stale air, surrounded by familiar furniture and out of date magazines and newspapers, her adventures in Afghanistan seemed like a dream.

The dashing Hawkins was like a hero from one of the bodice-ripper romances she had read as a girl, ready to swoop in and save the fair maiden from the clutches of the nasty villain. Calvin looked as if he could walk through a brick wall unscathed. She had grown to like Abby, and sensed that she still had a lot of affection for her ex-husband, although there seemed to be a barrier between them. If Abby didn’t want Hawkins when they returned from their trip out west, Cait would be willing to step in.

Holding the Prester John coin in her hand to reassure herself that her adventures had not been in her mind, she called Nelson Black, a coin expert acquaintance. Cait had drawn upon Black’s expertise when she was writing her Silk Road books, and his name came to mind the second she saw the Prester John coin. She had contacted him earlier from the 747 saying she had a highly unusual coin he might like to see. He tried to tease out the details, but she said he would have to wait until she arrived to examine it in person.

“Hello Nelson,” she said. “Cait. I’m home.”

“Please hurry. You’ve got me all excited with your mysterious phone call from high in the sky.”

Cait smiled. “On my way.”

Twenty minutes later, she arrived in National Harbor, Maryland, where Black lived. He had been impatiently awaiting her arrival and eagerly led the way to his coin vault. The spacious basement room contained the shallow drawer filing cabinets that held his collection and a wooden table he used to examine and sort coins.

“Well, what do we have, Dr. Everson?”

She handed him the Prester John coin in a plastic bag.

He slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, extracted the coin, and held it by its edges, examining both sides. Then he placed it under the magnifier, squinted through the ten-power lens for a moment, flipped it over, took it off and weighed it, rolled it between his fingers, and turned to Cait.

“If I may ask, Dr. Everson, where did you find this coin?”

“In Afghanistan.”

He narrowed his gray eyes. “Specifically?”

“It was discovered in what was apparently a tomb in the central part of the country.”

“Was the tomb shown to you by a local? Sometimes natives will salt a ruin with fakes.”

“Its location was based on my research. The tomb seems to have been plundered, but the robbers dropped this coin.”

“As you said on the phone this is a very unusual specimen. Highly unusual I might say. Prester John was a controversial figure. Many scholars believe that he and his kingdom never existed.”

“I am in the minority that believes Prester John and his kingdom were real. I was hoping that your examination of the coin would prove it.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, but there are a number of possibilities.”

“I’d like to hear them.”

“This could be a coin from Prester John’s kingdom. Or this coin could have been minted by someone who peddled it to gullible buyers. Another possibility is that it is a fantasy item, which memorializes something that may not be real. Like a winged horse or a unicorn. Bottom line, I can’t confirm that this was currency minted in some long-lost kingdom.”

“I knew it was a long shot.”

“Don’t be disheartened. What I can do is tell you it is, in fact, an ancient coin, not a more recent fake.”

“Well, that’s something, at least.”

Black gave a crisp laugh.

“Further tests, like a spectroscopic analysis, may prove me wrong, but if I’m correct, and regardless of its origin, we are looking at one of the most important numismatic finds in the past hundred years.”

Black’s statement echoed in Cait’s ears as she drove back to Arlington. The coin tucked in her purse seemed to be emanating rays from the past. Even if the treasure were never found, the existence of the coin would bolster her Prester John theory and spur even further research.

Back at her apartment, she slipped out of her Indiana Jones outfit, showered, and crawled into bed. She fell asleep, thinking that she couldn’t wait to see the faces of her colleagues who had described her work as “pop research.”

She would have slept less soundly if she had known that Marzak was only a few miles away.

Marzak had a network of contacts around the world. After slipping out of the hotel in Islamabad, he had called a number and told the person at the other end that he had to get out of Pakistan as soon as possible. He was told to hang on and after an excruciating wait, he was instructed to go directly to the airport. A first-class seat was waiting on a commercial flight to London where he caught a British Airways plane to Washington.

Upon arriving, he had taken a taxi to an apartment building on the outskirts of the city. The unit ownership was under one of his many false names, and the big beehive of an apartment complex offered a degree of anonymity. The two-bedroom unit had served as a crash pad for him and his brother and a storage place for an array of weapons that would have supplied a small army.

He checked the security camera that kept watch on the apartment, but no intruders had been recorded. He laid some weapons on his brother’s bed and stretched out on the couch. He stared at the ceiling and fell into a watchful half sleep that ended when his eyes blinked open at the chirp of his cell phone.

The voice on the line belonged to one of the freelance operators he and his brother had employed for special jobs. “We picked up a signal from the transmitter we put in Dr. Everson’s car.”

“Let me know when she reaches a destination.”

The phone chirped again an hour later.

“She went to National Harbor, stayed around forty-five minutes and drove back to her apartment.”

“Where did she stop?”

“At a private residence. We checked. It’s owned by Nelson Black, a coin expert.”

Interesting.

“Put her under surveillance,” Marzak said. “Let me know if she has visitors or if she leaves again.”

He stretched out on the couch again to martial his physical and mental resources. His prime target was Hawkins, but he had learned long ago that low-hanging fruit was better than no fruit at all.