Rogue Angel - The Golden Elephant Part 6

She was tall, Annja discovered as she stood up politely, no more than an inch or two shorter than Annja herself. She had that sort of lush tautness Annja a.s.sociated with French women. At close range, as Annja shook her proffered hand, finding her grip strong and cool, she could see the woman's red hair was laced with a few silver strands.

"And you must be Dr. Gendron," Annja said. "I'm so pleased to meet you."

"Isabelle, please," the woman said. "We are not Germans, after all."

Annja laughed as they both sat. "Interesting you should mention Germans and t.i.tles," she said. "But I thought national distinctions were supposed to dissolve over time in the European Union."

The professor made a rude noise. "Many things are supposed supposed to happen. I understand that in America, when children put lost teeth under their pillows the tooth fairy is supposed to bring them money. Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler-aside from being destructive monsters, what had those men in common?" to happen. I understand that in America, when children put lost teeth under their pillows the tooth fairy is supposed to bring them money. Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler-aside from being destructive monsters, what had those men in common?"

"They all tried to unify Europe?" Annja guessed.

"Bon! You You do do know history. Instead of just the pretty lies that are so often told in its place. But enough of events beyond our means to affect. I'm hungry!" She picked up a menu. know history. Instead of just the pretty lies that are so often told in its place. But enough of events beyond our means to affect. I'm hungry!" She picked up a menu.

Annja sipped her coffee as the professor fished a pair of reading gla.s.ses from inside her sweater and perched them on her fine, narrow nose.

The waitress came. Both women ordered pastries. I can see why the professor does it, Annja thought, riding that bike everywhere. I'll have to run around the whole city to work off the starch overload.

Gendron crossed her legs and leaned forward when the menus had been surrendered. "So. Giani tells me you've a question about some antique German expedition."

"How do you know him?" Annja asked.

"Giancarlo studied under me for a time." A slight smile flitted across her features.

Annja felt a stab of curiosity. She also felt a strong desire not to ask. It would have been intrusive, anyway.

"He must have enjoyed it," Annja said. She felt like kicking herself. Instead she drove on. "I actually read one of your books as a textbook my freshman year. Dynamite and Dreams: A Survey of Pre-Twentieth-Century Archaeology. Dynamite and Dreams: A Survey of Pre-Twentieth-Century Archaeology. I found it fascinating. A delightful surprise, I have to tell you." I found it fascinating. A delightful surprise, I have to tell you."

"I hate it when my students fall asleep on me," Gendron said. "I'll try not to let that make me feel old, that you read my book as a schoolgirl."

"In college," Annja said. "It wasn't that long ago."

"I'm just having you on, as the English say. When I was a student I always felt years older than my peers. Now all my students seem to be twelve, and yet my contemporaries all seem decades older than I. I appear to have become chronically unmoored. Alas, it doesn't stop age slowly taking its toll. But I refuse to let that compromise my enjoyment of life."

"Good for you," Annja said sincerely.

"Now, what was it you wanted to know?"

"Whatever you can tell me about Rudolf von Hoiningen and his expedition to Indochina."

"He came of East Prussian n.o.bility reduced to genteel poverty by Bismarck's German unification. By what exact means I do not know. He appears to have burned up what remained of his inheritance to finance his 1913 expedition."

Gendron sipped her coffee. "Rudolf was a gay, apolitical, physical-culture buff obsessed with the mystic knowledge of the ancient Buddhists and Taoists. None of those things was particularly unusual among well-born Prussians of the day, although not so frequently in that exact combination. He was also a premier archaeological explorer of his day, very progressive in his refusal to rely upon dynamite, a staple of the time. As the t.i.tle of my textbook reminds us."

Annja felt a chill run down her spine. The destructive everyday practices of early archaeologists struck her, as they did any well-brought-up modern archaeologist, as actively obscene. At least as abhorrent as the depredations of a modern-day tomb robber like Easy Ngwenya.

"He apparently met with great success, as his letters back to the University of Berlin attest-the few that survived the bombardments of the Second World War. But when it came time to return home, he faced a difficulty."

"World War I?" Annja asked as the waitress delivered their pastries.

"But yes." Gendron picked up a fork and addressed herself to a hearty slice of chocolate cake. "Owing to British control of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, von Hoiningen was forced to travel an arduous, dangerous, circuitous land route. He had to travel up through China to the ancient Silk Road, then through Turkestan into Turkey."

She gestured with her fork. "Having survived all that, he loaded his specimens and journals onto a s.h.i.+p, the freighter Hentzau, Hentzau, and set sail from Istanbul. Whereupon a British submarine lurking in the Sea of Marmara promptly torpedoed it." and set sail from Istanbul. Whereupon a British submarine lurking in the Sea of Marmara promptly torpedoed it."

"Oh, dear," Annja said.

"The explosion killed poor Rudolf outright. The captain, thinking fast, managed to ground his s.h.i.+p in shallow water. Von Hoiningen's a.s.sistant, Erich Dessauer, who may or may not have been his lover, recovered a few of his artifacts and journals. The a.s.sistant made his way back to Germany with as many journals and crates of artifacts as he could, intending to send for the rest later. Instead he was promptly drafted and died in the British tank attack at Cambrai in 1918. Most of what he brought home vanished in the Second World War. What survives remains in the Istanbul University collection."

Annja winced. "That's quite the litany of disasters," she said.

"Almost enough to make one believe the expedition was cursed," Gendron said. She smiled. "But we know there are no such things as curses, yes?"

"Sure," Annja said.

"A Turkish researcher stumbled across the bare facts of the lost von Hoiningen expedition in the middle fifties. In the seventies much of the story was pieced together by a writer for American adventure magazines. In 1997, scholars substantiated the American's account and filled in the gaps."

She shook her handsome head and smiled sadly. "In the modern archaeological world the doomed von Hoiningen expedition is remembered, to the minor extent it is at all, more as a cautionary tale about the dangers and disappointments of the archaeological life than for its science."

"I'd imagine. Thank you so much," Annja said.

Gendron sat back. Despite talking fairly steadily, she had managed to polish off her cake without chewing with her mouth open. Annja admired the feat.

"So why the interest in this most obscure of misadventures? You don't seem to have the taste for others' misfortunes," the professor said.

"Not at all. Recently I've been given hints of important cultural relics the Germans found. Perhaps even a vast temple complex which has yet to be rediscovered."

"A lost temple? In this day and age?" Gendron seemed bemused. But she shrugged. "Still, I read every now and again of such things being found around the world with the help of satellites and aircraft."

"It's a tantalizing possibility," Annja said. "Whether or not it's more than that-well, that's what I'd like to find out."

"To be sure. What archaeologist worth her whip and revolver wouldn't want to be the one to discover a grand new lost temple?"

Annja laughed out loud at the Raiders of the Lost Ark Raiders of the Lost Ark reference. reference.

Gendron's own smile was brief. "Adventures are all good and well. You seem a most competent young woman, well able to take care of yourself. I was always more the scholarly type, at home in the musty stacks of the library, rather than the adventure-seeker. Still, I learn things in this old imperial capital. Southeast Asia does not currently get as much lurid press as, say, the Mideast or Afghanistan, or even Africa, but it is a most perilously unstable place these days."

"I'll be careful," Annja said. "I'm not even to Istanbul yet. I guess that's my next stop."

"Turkey is no picnic these days, either, I fear. So much unrest."

"But where's that not true?" Annja asked.

"Fewer and fewer places these days," Gendron said.

"Really, Professor," Annja said, "I'm in your debt. If there's any way I can help you, please let me know."

Gendron looked pensive. "You might do one favor for me," she said. "There is a certain cable-television personality-if at all possible, I'd be most grateful if you could arrange for me to meet him someday. Or at least put in a good word."

"Well, I'll try. For what it's worth," Annja said.

"A most fascinating gentleman," Gendron said, "of obvious French extraction."

That didn't fit any Knowledge Channel hunk Annja could remember. "Who?"

"Anthony Bourdain."

Annja's smile was half grimace. "Wrong network." She took a sip of her drink. Seeing her companion's crestfallen expression she said, "There's kind of a Montague-Capulet thing between our network and his. Except nastier. Tell you what, though. I only know him as you do, from seeing him on television, but I get the impression he has no more patience for that sort of rivalry nonsense than I have. Should I chance to meet him, I'll tell him he has a fan. One definitely worth his while to get to know."

The professor's own smile was impish. "You'd make such a sacrifice for an old lady, for so trifling a favor?"

Annja snorted. "Old lady my foot," she said. "If I look half as good as you do at your age, I'll consider myself the luckiest woman on Earth.

"And as for sacrifice-well, while I admit he's a very attractive man, I also made a vow a couple years back not to date older men."

Gendron's eyebrows rose. "But at your age, dear child, doesn't that leave you with nothing but boys?"

Annja shrugged. "There is that."

Then she recalled recent events, and brightened. "But perhaps not always."

11.

"It is with very great pleasure that I am able to place the Istanbul Archaeology Museum at the disposal of so distinguished a peer as Ms. Annja Creed," the curator said as he led her through the dimly lit exhibition hall. He was a huge, fat man with a bandit moustache, tapering shaven head and dark wiry stubble on his olive jowls. Ahmet Bahceli looked like the stereotypical evil Turk from central casting. He was in fact a cheerful, gentle-voiced scholar of enormous international repute. He was curator of special collections for the museum and overflowing with enthusiasm.

Annja looked into a case of Byzantine coins so he wouldn't see her slight grimace. Is it because I'm really such a notable archaeologist, she thought, or because I play one on TV?

Still, enough lay at stake that she needed to swallow her ego and go with what worked. Again. She wasn't deceiving the man. She just was taking a hit to her pride. Again.

"It's so good of you to allow me access to the von Hoiningen collection, Dr. Bahceli," she said.

"Please understand," he said, "that it is meager and incomplete."

"I gathered as much from my previous research. But believe me, Doctor, anything will help. Even if it's only something to peer at through gla.s.s."

Istanbul was a modern city, so big and boisterous and full of history that a single continent wouldn't hold it. It sprawled like an unruly giant across the Bosporus Straits, which ran from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, upstream of the Aegean, and separated Europe from Asia. She loved visiting there.

They city was surprisingly green. Although the green was turning rapidly sere with the onset of a chilly autumn. Winter was a ways off yet, but the autumn was damp and cool enough for her.

She didn't have time for sightseeing. She felt driven. She sensed other forces moving around her-probably including the tomb-raiding renegade Easy Ngwenya. That made it urgent to find the truth about the von Hoiningen expedition, beyond the fact of its being well and truly doomed. And if there was anything to the rumors of a fabulous temple lost in the jungle, with its appropriately fabulous treasure, she had to find and secure them before the plunderers arrived like a Biblical locust plague.

The looming, vaguely conical ma.s.s of her guide halted by a case of small artifacts displayed against a cream-silk backdrop. "Here you see such artifacts as we possess. Von Hoiningen's a.s.sistant lacked the means to carry them with him back to Germany. His misfortune proved a blessing for archaeology. No doubt you are aware the bulk of the artifacts he saved from the sunken Hentzau Hentzau were destroyed in the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II." were destroyed in the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II."

Annja nodded.

Bahceli shook his head ponderously. "Even though expeditions are notoriously p.r.o.ne to catastrophe, I have seldom if ever heard of such a concatenation of calamities as befell the von Hoiningen expedition. It is almost enough to make one believe in a curse."

She smiled. "But you don't, do you?"

"Of course not! Especially a curse by infidels. That would be mere superst.i.tion."

Bahceli rather grandly produced a set of keys and opened the case's gla.s.s cover. He gestured for Annja to examine what she would.

Not much to see, she thought glumly as she pulled on the pair of nonlatex medical-style gloves he had provided her. A few coins, a few small carvings and castings, a lacquer medallion.

One object caught her eye. She reached in and gingerly picked up an elephant figurine no bigger than the palm of her hand, in verdigrised bronze. Its workmans.h.i.+p was exquisite. It stood with trunk curled to forehead and mouth open. It almost seemed to be smiling.

"Ah," the curator said. "That catches your eye, as well? There is something to it, some...quality I cannot put my finger upon."

He shrugged. "It has been rumored since Dessauer's departure that it is the replica of a larger statue, of pure gold, to which von Hoiningen referred in his notes," he said. "Sadly, we do not have these notes. It is why we exhibit these items as relics of the tragic expedition itself, since we cannot authoritatively source them or connect them to specific sites or cultures, other than by inference."

With a sigh Annja handed the figurine back to Bahceli. "Thank you," she said. "If I could see the surviving notebooks, now, please?"

His villainous face split in a great benign grin. "Of course," he said.

ANNJA SAT IN THE dark and cool confines of a private reading room with the journal open before her. To her right lay her computer, connected to the Internet via the museum's wireless network. Despite the fact that the museum's exterior was pure faux cla.s.sical, the facility itself seemed most thoroughly up-to-date. She was typing in promising-looking pa.s.sages from the journal and then running them through a translation program.

The work was tedious but she plodded on. And then words jumped out at her-"the jungle a mighty temple gave up."

She stopped, reared back, barely able to believe it. She carefully studied the words surrounding the phrase.

"The climb up the plateau was hazardous. We lost two bearers to a mudslide when a rope in a sudden downpour gave way...."

A few sentences on she read more.

"The guardians of the temple were cautious. Our guide, Ba, managed to convince them we meant no harm. We only meant honor to the ancients and the Buddha to give."

There followed a matter-of-fact discussion of his dealings with the plateau's inhabitants, who were wary of them. They warmed after the expedition's physician, Dr. Kramer, set a child's broken arm. Annja got the notion the natives were capable of the feat-they just appreciated the gesture. At last the visitors got permission to climb a small peak in the center of the plateau.

"The special sanctuary, the holy of holies. The Temple of the Elephant was colossal! Our hearts were in our throats at the splendor of this marvel, this treasure, this golden elephant with emeralds for eyes. The Temple of the Elephant was colossal! Our hearts were in our throats at the splendor of this marvel, this treasure, this golden elephant with emeralds for eyes.

"I made complete sketches of the temples, and the idol, in my sketchbook-"

"Oh no," Annja said softly. None of that had survived the Hentzau' Hentzau's torpedoing.

She sighed and read on. "It can still be found where I found the map. Inscribed on the base of the statue of Avalokiteshvara in the Red Monastery outside Nakhon Sawan, in the Kingdom of Siam."

Annja sat back, frowning speculatively. On the one hand, she thought, it makes me crazy that the solution to the mystery isn't here. On the other, at least there really is a Temple and a Golden Elephant.

"Ms. Creed?"