The Goddess Legacy

Chapter 16

When they returned to the houseboat, an ebony-topped Spencer listened as Allie recounted the episode with the phone. After inspecting the device, he shrugged.

“Beats me. I know less than nothing about iPhones,” he said. “Sounds like something got messed up.”

“That’s the technical term,” Drake added.

“But let’s see what you got,” Spencer said.

They gathered around the little dining table as Allie brought up the first photo she’d taken — the golden dagger. Next came the satellite image, and Spencer nodded.

“That’s the one I saw. He never showed me the knife.”

She zoomed in, but the resolution wasn’t sufficient to make out much detail. “Did he say specifically where this is?”

“All he said was Kashmir.”

“That’s a big area.”

“He was looking for a temple. Carson believed that if you could find the temple, you’d find the treasure.”

“Did he mention why?” Drake asked.

“Based on his research.”

“That’s pretty specific,” Allie mocked.

“Hey, I’m just repeating what he told me. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Allie continued through a list of websites and stopped at a screen with a long string of numbers and letters. “You ever see anything like this?”

Drake shook his head. “Not really.”

“Wonder what the significance is?” Spencer asked.

“IP address or something like that?” Drake speculated.

“No. Too long for an IP. Maybe coordinates? Latitude and longitude?” Allie said.

“Not unless they smushed them together,” Spencer said. “Or if it’s some kind of substitution cypher.”

“What do you mean?” Allie asked.

“Well, you could create a code where every third, or fifth, or whatever, digit is to be ignored. And it could then be read either forward or backward. Or alternatively, you could transpose every few numbers or letters, or substitute a different letter — like, say, an F actually means an R.”

“So this could be anything — a book ID from a library, an address, a bank account, or even a phone number with a bunch of gobbledygook inserted to mask it,” Drake said.

Spencer nodded. “That’s one of the problems with codes. Cracking them. If you don’t know where to start, it can be impossible. I mean, with computers it should be faster, but if you don’t have any idea what you’re looking at…”

“What else does he have on here?” Drake asked. Allie swept her finger across the screen, and a grainy black-and-white photograph of a Hindu mosaic popped up — a stylized depiction of a grotesque woman with her tongue hanging out to her chin, sitting atop a man’s chest with a sword in one of her six hands, another holding a chalice, and another a severed head.

“Looks ancient,” Spencer remarked. “The photo, I mean.”

“Wonder what the significance is?”

“Maybe a clue?”

“We’ll have to add it to the research list,” Drake said. “What else?”

The final screen was a list of names and places.

“Dr. Rakesh Sharma. Gulab Singh. Ravi Lohar. 49 Nalwa Street, #202. 8701 Panhar Gang.” She read off more names and addresses.

“What are those, you think?”

“We can look on a map and find out. Run the names through the computer. You never know,” Allie said.

Half an hour later they were staring at her tablet, Drake shaking his head. “Well, we now know where the local Western Union office and Carson’s favorite car service, antique shops, tour guides, strip clubs, and pharmacies are.”

“Which does us a whole lot of good,” Allie said.

“Maybe we should drop by and check them out?” Drake suggested.

“Right. Ask whether anyone’s seen any lost treasure,” Spencer said. “I’ll take the strip clubs.”

Allie switched to the sat image and opened Google Earth. After a few minutes, she’d matched up the contours of the terrain and had zeroed in on a hundred-by-hundred-and-fifty-mile area of Kashmir.

“This is the spot,” she announced in triumph.

“That’s about half of Kashmir. Kind of like saying you narrowed the treasure down to… Nevada,” Spencer said.

“It’s a start.”

“We knew it was Kashmir already. So not much of one.”

Drake tapped the screen. “And part of this area is controlled by Pakistan. That could be a border-crossing problem.”

“This just keeps getting better.”

Allie switched to the string of numbers again. “Any ideas on how to tackle this?”

Spencer and Drake exchanged blank stares and Drake slowly shook his head. “Not really.”

“None of us is a code cracker.”

“What about Betty?” Allie asked. Drake’s assistant had proved resourceful in the past.

“I can send it to her and ask her to put it out to some people. Probably can’t hurt,” Drake agreed. “Can I see the tablet? I can email her.”

Allie handed it to him and passed her phone over so he could copy the string. He tapped in his password and carefully entered all the letters and numbers, along with a request to her to figure out what it was, and pressed enter.

Finished, he returned the devices to Allie, who began doing web searches on artifacts that might be a description of their dagger. There were hundreds of hits, and she began wading through them, discarding those that weren’t from India or Pakistan.

“I don’t know. I’d keep Afghanistan in the mix, too. There was a lot of travel between India and Persia through there at one time,” Spencer said.

Allie cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“Carson was big on the history of the region. Sort of fixated, actually. Which makes sense. If you’re going to spend your golden years chasing a treasure, you probably have it on your mind most of the time.”

“But the treasure is just a rumor. I mean, like so many of these, it could have been embellished over the years,” Drake pointed out.

“Sure. But Carson wasn’t stupid. He didn’t let on about everything he knew, but he was obviously convinced it was real if he was willing to pay the last of his savings for some relic he thought would lead him to it,” Spencer said.

Drake snorted. “Another oral tradition. On the Internet, the only part of the treasure that’s ever mentioned is the Peacock Throne, which went to Persia before it disappeared there.”

“Right, but he knew all that. Frankly, if it was all over the web, I’d have been less interested. It would have been too crowded a field,” Spencer countered.

“Did he say how exactly he tumbled across it?” Allie asked.

“Said he found it when he was researching the Peacock Throne. That he started out thinking he could trace it down and wound up convinced that was only part of the story. That’s all he told me. He was vague, and frankly, I wasn’t all that interested in how he picked up the trail.”

“Well, it’s obvious none of this is going to go smoothly, so we should look at dividing up our labor to cover more ground today,” Drake said. “We’ll need to run down every image on Allie’s phone.”

“I want to see Spencer with makeup,” Allie said with a smile.

“Nice to see you’ve been able to preserve your sense of humor in all this,” Spencer fired back.

“Well, you have to admit, it’s fertile ground for some ribbing,” Drake observed.

“Come on, Spencer. Be a sport. It’s for your own good.”

He stood and headed to the bathroom. “The doctor used to say that when I was a kid right before he stuck me with a needle. Why is it that whenever something bad is going to happen, it’s for my own good?”

“Just pretend I’m Dr. Allie, if it makes it any easier.”

“I think I need an exam, Dr. Allie,” Drake whispered.

She rolled her eyes, and he pretended he didn’t hear her murmur, “Pervert.”