The Seventh Stone (2 page)

Samuel yanked Joseph closer with surprising strength. “Like hell you will. The bastards are after it, Joseph. They’re as close as I am to kingdom come, maybe closer.” He sucked in a rattle of a breath. “You’re the only one who can beat them. When you get to the body of that scum who killed me, start climbing.” He released his grip on Joseph’s shirt. “It’s an old toe and hand path up the cliff face. It ain’t easy, but it’s there.” His burst of strength played out, Samuel sank back down.

Joseph closed up Samuel’s shirt and crossed his hands over his chest. “Goodbye, old friend,” he said. He stood and looked towards the river. “We have little time.”

She pointed at Samuel. “He has even less, if we don’t help him.”

“
We can only help him by doing what he asks.”

Blood oozed rhythmically from Samuel’s chest wound. With a rattling cough, he battled every few seconds for a breath. “Joseph, I want to get to that cliff dwelling more than you do,” she said, “but I am not leaving him here. Help me get him into the jeep.”

“
He won’t make it,” Joseph said. “It takes forty-five minutes to reach the nearest paved road. Two hours from there to the hospital.”

“
No damn hospital!” Samuel groaned. He raised his hand, as if grasping at the stars. “I am gonna die here, in my desert. And I don’t want my spirit to hang around here and haunt you, so you better not let them that killed me win. Now leave an old man alone.”

Joseph turned and headed into the cottonwood grove, out of the feeble circle of light cast by the dying campfire.

“
Joseph, wait.” Damn it. It went against every fiber in her being to leave a man to die. What if it was Dad, lying hurt, with nobody to help him? She grabbed her lucky pack. She swooped up the Mayan knife, the blood on it repulsive and sticky. “Hang on, Samuel,” she said. “I swear to you, I won’t let them win.” Samuel’s lips, oddly youthful beneath the white wilds of his beard, cracked into a smile.

CHAPTER
2

One hundred nautical miles

off the coast of Morocco

Ahmed Battar did not sweat, until today. He bore the blood of generations of Arab desert tribesmen, which flowed cool in the heat of the sun and true to the values of loyalty. And yet again he had to wipe the perspiration from his brow. He stood on the upper deck of the
Aquila
, anchored one hundred miles west of his homeland and a world away from his beloved wife and daughter. Beneath the surface, a school of silvery pilot fish gathered in the shadow cast by the hull of the
Aquila
. Ahmed watched as their instinct, or a divine plan, guided them to the deception of shelter, just as it coaxed them to school together, in a mass, the weak with the strong. A tiger shark swam into view, its eyes glassy, without emotion. The shark’s jaws snapped up one, two, and then three fish as the school circled. As a single mass, the fish darted into the sunlit waters. Only escape, not a shadow of a shelter, could save them. The school survived. The shark, satisfied, slid back into the deep.

On the surface, men toiled in the heat, lashing crates and coiling lines. No breeze stirred the heat, as if Allah had lowered a bell jar over them, to watch and wait. Today, the men were happy. The
Aquila
was a treasure hunter, and they had found their treasure.

Ahmed slipped his hand through the slit in his
djellaba, the traditional tunic of his people, and
toyed with the tiny device in the pocket of his khakis. He didn’t press the button, not yet.

With his other hand, he fingered the photo of his wife, Leila, and their daughter, Ambar. The photo, snapped when Ambar proudly walked her first steps, was creased and faded from the salt air, heat and touch. She was six years old now, could write her own name in flowing if hesitant Arabic, and insisted on the best of manners and sweets at her frequent tea parties. But the photo was still his favorite. He saw in it her innocence, her future, and, most importantly, hope. They had not destroyed her innocence, had not stolen her life, not yet. He had to press the button, but he couldn’t.

He eyed the men on the foredeck below him, the men whose lives he would soon put in grave danger. They were securing the last crates under the disciplined but kind direction of Captain Bertoni. Ahmed noticed that the captain’s trademark white cotton shirt with red epaulets was damp with sweat. At this morning’s briefing, it had been, as always, pristine and starched. The captain doffed his navy cap, looked up to Ahmed and saluted him.

“
The captain likes you, kid.” The voice startled Ahmed. It was Stubb, the elder statesmen of their crew, with the mind and know-how of an historian and the physique of a longshoreman. He had been with Bertoni for years.

“
I admire the captain,” said Ahmed, “the way he keeps his ship and crew on an even keel, in calm, or stormy, times.”

“
It’s because he chooses his crew wisely,” said Stubb. He pulled out his trademark pipe from his pocket. He no longer smoked it, just chewed on its black nib. “Like when he hired you as translator six months ago. I thought you were a bit too eager to get the job. He said that you reminded him of himself, when he was your age.”

The words, meant as a compliment, stung Ahmed like the bitterest insult. He had thought himself clever to secure a position that would allow him to fulfill his vow to Thaddeus Devlin. Now the manipulations needed to retain this job shamed him, but he had no choice. “I knew Captain Bertoni would succeed,” he said.

“
He had to,” said Stubb. “This treasure will buy back his father.”

Ahmed couldn’t hide his surprise. “The captain has never spoken of this.” He thought of his wife, his child. Had the pirates also threatened Bertoni’s father?

Stubb clenched his pipe. “His father disowned him,” he said. “Dear old Papa got tired of ticking off the years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Told the captain that a delusional fool could be no son of Antonio Bertoni.”

“
Then the captain is hunting for more than treasure,” Ahmed said, his voice soft.

Stubb pointed his pipe at him. “He is seeking redemption.”

“
The most elusive quarry,” said Ahmed.

“
Spoken like someone who seeks it.”

Stubb was fishing. Ahmed couldn’t take the bait.

“
Captain Bertoni almost gave up hope,” said Stubb. “I’d watch him, in the wee hours of the morning, his long, vacant stares across the open sea. I thought he might step over the side. Be one with his treasure like Ahab with his whale. He thinks he has found what he was seeking, but I don’t believe he has.”

“
Without belief,” Ahmed said, “redemption is hollow.”

Stubb slapped Ahmed on the back. “Enough of that. We found the bloody ship, the
San Salvador
, sunk in a storm in this very spot 429 years ago. We’ve got the conquistador’s treasure now. After all these centuries, it will be Captain Bertoni who returns in triumph to Europe with the New World’s bounty.”

Ahmed could almost believe it. He could almost picture Captain Bertoni returning to his father, opening wide the strongbox brimming with gold, silver, emeralds and turquoise. But he knew Mishad and his bloodthirsty pirates were out there, just beyond sight, waiting greedily to rip his captain’s dream from his grasp.

Ahmed couldn’t fathom how Mishad had learned the secret of the Emerald. When Ahmed was deep inside the medina on their last supply run, he had been pulled aside by the pirate. The cat’s eye Emerald, Mishad had said in his hiss of a voice, was of special interest to his “patron.” When the Emerald had been recovered, Ahmed was to press this button, signaling them to attack. Mishad, with his dirty hand, shook Ambar’s favorite doll
. It was so easy to get it
, he had hissed,
just as it would be to get her if you don’t do as I command
.

Stubb bounded down the stairs to the deck, jovially greeting the men. He tightened the lashing on one of the crates.

Ahmed had devised a plan. He had pictured himself saving his family, the men of the
Aquila
, and, most daring of all, the Tear of the Moon Emerald. But now that it was time to take action, an almost incapacitating dread crept over him. The risks were great. His plan could save them, or lead them all into a bloody, painful death. All this, like a poison vine sprouting from a single seed, a gemstone which was better left nascent on the bottom of the Atlantic.

Time had run out. Ahmed saw in his mind’s eye little Ambar’s smile when she invited him to tea. He felt the silk of Leila’s black hair, smelled her lavender perfume. Ahmed fingered the device in his pocket. He flipped it open. He pressed the button.

CHAPTER
3

Christa pawed around for the next notch that the ancient ones carved out of this vertical slab of a sandstone cliff 1,000 years ago. They called this a toe and hand trail; each notch was only big enough to fit the toe of her hiking boot and the tips of her fingers. Back in their heyday, the Anasazi, or ancient ones, had climbed down to the river valley every morning to hunt and gather. Every evening, they had climbed back up so they wouldn’t be hunted and gathered.

After centuries of erosion, the notches were more like dares. Climbing in the middle of the night was crazy. She and Joseph had no choice. Using only the feeble beams of their two headlamps, Joseph had followed Samuel’s blood trail from their camp to the river, and then picked it up again after they forded the frigid waters. At the base of the cliff, they didn’t find a body, only the crushed creosote bush where Samuel’s assailant had fallen. A trail of blood and broken branches led upriver, most likely to his back-up. The tenacious bastard wouldn’t be coming back to haunt them. He’d be coming back to kill them. She and Joseph had to reach that cliff dwelling first or all would be lost.

Every loose rock looked like a notch in the shadows cast by her headlamp. She relied more on touch than sight. They had to be about ninety feet above the valley floor, but it was so dark below that it looked bottomless. About ten feet above her, she could just make out the lip of the plateau.

The bang of a rifle split the night. The bullet drilled into the rock three feet above and to the right of her. She snapped back her hand. Slipped. Scrabbled to regain a foothold. Oh God, she was going to fall. She pancaked herself against the cliff. Her heart hammered.

“
Headlights,” Joseph said. “Opposite rim of the canyon. Quarter mile.” He turned off his headlamp.

Her hands shook. She fumbled with trembling fingers for her headlamp switch and turned it off.

“
Hurry,” he said. As if being shot at wasn’t motivation enough. Joseph scrambled upwards, as sure-footed as a mountain goat.

Christa was no mountain goat. The only time her footing was sure was on the fencing strip with a foil in hand. She had fenced blindfolded once, a coaching strategy. It hadn’t gone well. She looked back. Alongside the headlights, a glow rimmed the high canyon wall. The moon was rising. She and Joseph wouldn’t have the cover of dark for long. The headlights swung around, towards the dirt road that zigzagged down into the valley.

“
He’s coming into closer range,” Joseph said.

“
He can’t get a bead on us in the dark,” she said, based more on desperate hope than experience. The barking howl of a coyote punctuated the drone of a car engine. She felt for the next notch, clamped on and heaved herself up.

Joseph’s moccasin disappeared over the rim.

She clambered up behind him, rolling onto the flat, dusty plateau. The moon breached the horizon. It was full and bright. Its light flooded the cave in a timeless silver. She crouched, too stunned to be sensible and run for the nearest cover. The cliff dwelling was magnificent. It wasn’t in ruins. Its architecture had been perfectly preserved from being buried in sand for five hundred years.

Joseph grabbed her hand. Keeping low, they ran away from the edge of the plateau and deeper into the eyebrow-shaped cave. The cave had to be at least seventy feet wide and thirty feet high, eroded out of the sandstone cliff eons ago. The pueblos clawed into the recesses of the cave, crammed into its shelter like a child’s jumble of building blocks, crafted from crude stone bricks and plastered together with adobe clay. Many didn’t have doorways, and only a few had windows; the ancient ones accessed their pueblos via ladders through the ceiling.

Joseph pulled her behind the ruin of the outermost wall. He was breathing hard. Sweat beaded around the faded red bandana tied around his forehead beneath his headlamp. He corralled his salt and pepper braid back over his shoulder. “This place is not right,” he said.