The Goddess Legacy (11 page)

“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.”

Lahore, Pakistan

General William Monroe sat back in his chair and stared at the drab walls of his office as he held his telephone to his ear. As the ranking American in a region that was in constant turmoil, as well as the de facto head of field operations for military intelligence, he worked long hours seven days a week, and today was no different. He ran a hand through thick silver hair and eyed his watch – there was never enough time in his day to accomplish everything that was expected of him.

Monroe listened patiently to the caller as the man finished his report, and grunted approval.

“You’re confident that nothing was downloaded?” Monroe asked.

“Yes, sir. We were able to wipe the phone clean as we siphoned the memory contents, so they couldn’t have gotten anything that would compromise us.”

“What did he have?”

“It appears that our fears were justified, but the area he was triangulating was large. We’re satisfied that he didn’t know anything material.”

“Still – too much has gone sideways on us with this one. We can’t afford any more screwups. The timing couldn’t be worse.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Where are they now?”

“The phone was moving, but it’s now stationary by the Yamuna River and has been for almost an hour. Looks like they’ve gone to ground.” The caller paused. “How would you like to handle this?”

Monroe’s instinct was to send in a platoon of hardened mercenaries to take out the troublemakers, but he dismissed the idea as wishful thinking. The last thing the DOD needed was to be connected with an operation in India – an ally who might take a dim view of the U.S. military carrying out a strike in its capital city.

“I think an anonymous tip to the police would be best. They’ll be anxious to perform after this character made a fool out of them not once, but twice.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“I want a full report as soon as it’s over.”

“Of course.”

Monroe hung up and studied the steel-framed black-and-white photographs from his Vietnam tours hanging on the wall. He’d been a lieutenant, young and brash, little more than a boy, to look at it now. Had that really been so long ago? In reality it was a lifetime, but in his mind he could still smell the elephant grass and hear the chatter of M16 fire as though it were yesterday. Two tours of duty there, his parting gift the shrapnel he still carried in his hip and a missing ring finger he swore he could still feel on rainy days.

Now he was the gray sage who directed the young into battle, who waged war in forgotten backwaters on behalf of faceless men in boardrooms halfway across the planet. Not much, and yet everything, had changed, and it was days like this that he felt every one of his years weighing on him.

Monroe turned over a file and stared at a color image of a thirty-two-year-old intelligence operative who’d disappeared in Kashmir several days ago – an operative whom he’d never authorized to probe around in that area and who had done so after signing out for three vacation days. At the time the request had seemed innocent enough, but then his superior had called in a panic, fearful that he’d lost a man. Monroe had talked him down and ordered him to drop the subject, assuring him that he’d deal with it personally, but he was afraid that the officer would continue regardless of his orders. After all, that was what Monroe would have done in the same circumstances.

“Why can’t anything go smoothly? Just once?” he murmured, and then tossed the file aside with a sigh. There would be no inquiry, no investigation, and the operative’s passing would go unremarked and unacknowledged, other than an entry that he was suspected of having gone AWOL. It was a shame, but Monroe had no choice. There could be no link to Kashmir and the DOD’s involvement there – the stakes were too high.

If some eggs had to be broken, that was sometimes what it took to make an omelet, and Monroe had no sympathy for collateral damage. He wasn’t given to introspection; there would be time enough for that on Judgment Day.

Until then, he would follow orders.

Today, that meant turning over a man who’d done his country proud with the SEALs to the Indian police – a man who was guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that he’d recently become rich and celebrated didn’t alter Monroe’s decision. He would do what was required to keep his secrets, and if this Everett Spencer had to pay the price, it was out of his hands.

He opened another file and studied a photograph of a young Spencer, in his early twenties, hair clipped in a buzz cut, steel in his gaze – a poster boy for the SEALs, had they desired one. Monroe scanned his background and reread three newspaper articles about his startling South American find. In the clipping photos, Spencer stood by the side of a younger man with the slacker look of youth these days, his arm around the man’s shoulder as both beamed at the camera, instant billionaires from their good fortune.

“Hope you enjoyed it while it lasted,” Monroe whispered, and then closed the file and slid it into a desk drawer, his attention required now on other matters – this one a foregone conclusion. He stood and marched to the door, his posture ramrod straight, and called for his secretary; his meeting with Pakistani intelligence was only minutes away. “Get the Jeep warmed up. I’m on my way!” he said, and with a final glance at the photo of his younger self, swung the door open and stepped over the threshold, a man who did his duty with the fearless determination of a bird of prey.

New Delhi, India

Running footsteps sounded from the houseboat deck as Drake and Allie scanned a website while seated at the dining room table. The door burst open and Roland stood in the gap, an alarmed expression on his weathered face and a handheld police scanner in his right hand.

“We have to get out of here. The cops will be here in two minutes,” he warned.

Spencer hurried from the bathroom, his newly darkened skin shining with perspiration. “How did they find us?”

“I don’t know. But they did.”

Allie darted into her bedroom and returned with her bag a moment later. Drake scooped up her tablet and handed it to her, and she dropped it into a zippered compartment before turning to Roland.

“Where to?”

“We can’t drive out of here. There’s only one road, and they’ve already got a car watching it,” Roland said. The scanner hissed with static, and then a voice spoke in Hindi. He listened to the burst of jabber and shook his head. “They’re almost here.”

Allie turned to Drake and Spencer. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll find another way. How about footpaths?” Spencer asked.

“No, they all terminate at the same point on the road,” Roland said.

“Follow me,” Drake said, and rushed past the Frenchman into the sweltering afternoon sunlight.

Spencer and Allie were close behind, and they quickly eyed the other houseboats; any occupants were inside, out of the heat. Brown water foamed around the hulls in the mild current, and Drake’s eyes settled on a skiff tied to one of the houseboats upstream from them. Its hull was scarred, the paint blistered from the river water, and a few inches of leakage rolled in the bottom of the craft as it tugged at its line.

He pointed at the boat. “That’s our way out.”

Spencer nodded. “How do you want to do this?”

“Only one of us needs to climb aboard and untie it. Then we can get in from here.”

“I’ll go,” Spencer said, and before Drake could say anything, he was loping down the gangplank.

Drake eyed Roland as Spencer made his way onto the neighboring boat. “What about you?”

The Frenchman shrugged. “They aren’t looking for me. I won’t have a problem.”

Allie appeared relieved. “Good. I don’t think that thing could fit four of us.”

The sound of motors from the dirt road drifted to them, and Drake urged Spencer to greater speed with a stage whisper. “Hurry up. They’re almost on top of us.”

Spencer piloted the boat to where Drake and Allie were waiting and lashed the skiff to the railing with the bow line. Allie tossed him her bag and hopped aboard. The small craft rocked crazily, and then Drake was by her side. Spencer cast off the line and pushed the boat as hard as he could into the channel.