The Tiger Warrior Part 13

They could hear the sound of the helicopter now, the noise throbbing through the chamber. Jack swung his flashlight to where Costas was pointing at the side of the tomb. To his astonishment he saw five lines, in Latin. He squatted down and read out the words: HIC IACET.

LICINIUS OPTIO XV APOLLINARIS.

SACRA IULIUM SACULARIA.

IN SAPPHEIROS NIELO MINIUM.

ALTA FABIA FRATER AD PONTUS AD AELIA ACUNDUS.

HERE LIES.

LICINIUS, OPTIO OF THE 15TH APOLLINARIS LEGION.

GUARDIAN OF THE CELESTIAL JEWEL.

IN THE DARK SAPPHEIROS MINES.

THE OTHER IS WITH FABIUS, BROTHER, ACROSS THE.

LAKE TOWARD THE RISING SUN.

"Sappheiros," Costas exclaimed. "I remember that from the Periplus. Doesn't that mean lapis lazuli?"

A voice bellowed down the pa.s.sageway from outside. "Time to go!"

Costas swung the flashlight around the chamber one last time. There was another dark fissure at the back, where they had heard the sound of water trickling. He hesitated, then stumbled forward, holding the wall with one hand, and leaned through. For a few moments he was stock-still, the beam s.h.i.+ning into the darkness. "Jack, it's my worst nightmare. I think I can smell it. Get me out of here."

There was another noise outside, the drumming of gunfire. Jack quickly joined Costas. He stared into the pool of light. At first it seemed like another sculpture, white, an extrusion of the rock. But this was different. He realized with horror what he was looking at. A human body. It was stretched out in the waterfall, the arms behind the back, the head tilted forward at a garish angle. The neck was reduced to bone and sinew. The face was grotesquely adiposed, unrecognizable. Costas swayed slightly, and Jack held him by the shoulder. He forced himself to look again. The head was held up by a noose, tied around a rock above the waterfall. It looked as if the man had died by slow hanging, left with just enough rope to stay alive as long as his feet could find some purchase on the rock. He could have survived like that for hours, even days. A scurry of black shapes left the legs, and Jack saw that the calves had been stripped almost to the bone. The man's s.h.i.+rt had been eaten away, revealing the skin of his left shoulder. Then Jack saw it. He felt a cold certainty. It was a tiger tattoo. It was distinct from the ones they had seen on the bodies outside, more elaborate. He remembered what Katya had told him about her uncle's tattoo. Then he realized. She had known they might find him like this.

"It's Hai Chen," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Katya's uncle." He swallowed hard. He had seen enough. There was another burst of automatic fire outside. He turned Costas around and pushed him back toward the chamber entrance. Jack glanced one last time at the sculpture on the wall. His mind was racing. Romans. Raumanas. Rama. A shrine of Rama. He saw the tall one, the legionary in the middle. Was that Fabius? He flashed his torch across the breastplate, the sword belt, the garlands. There was something he needed to see again. He had seen it before, but had dismissed it, some Roman Republican military decoration, lost to history. But now he knew what it was. A round shape, like a sun, with beams extending from it, carried inside a pouch on the legionary's belt. A shape like a jewel. There was another bellow outside, another burst of gunfire. He took out his Beretta and c.o.c.ked it. "Let's get out of here."

The man with the rifle could see the two figures by the lakeside clearly now, motionless among the boulders near the sh.o.r.e, framed by the Tien Shan Mountains to the east, the edge of the celestial empire itself He had been watching them all afternoon, waiting for the sun behind him to lower, to accentuate the forms, but before the shadows were too long. He had learned everything he could about their behavior, watched every intimate movement, just as his grandmother had taught him to do. The tall one, the man, was awkward, angular, given to sudden movements and gestures, especially when he was working the tractor. But he was also given to watching the woman when she was hunched over, sc.r.a.ping and brus.h.i.+ng, photographing. When he did that, the tall man was still for many minutes, sometimes half an hour or more, as if he did not want the woman to know he was watching. The man with the rifle curled his lip. The Kyrgyz were steppe nomads like his own ancestors, but nomads who had given up the ways of the warrior and become little better than sheep. He despised them. He wished he could target the man first, but the woman was the priority. He s.h.i.+fted his gaze to her. She was raven-haired, finely built, the Lycra tight against her thighs as she squatted down, athletic but curvaceous. She aroused him, and that increased his fervor. Her clan had strayed. The Brotherhood would exact its retribution.

The light was perfect now. He looked up at the line of snowcapped mountains across the lake, and then let his eyes drop back to the two figures. Always start at the horizon, his grandmother had taught him, and then everything will fall into place. He remembered her face, the handsome Kazakh features that had adorned postage stamps and murals across the motherland, the very picture of the Zaitsev Soviet march of progress. Only her unit of production had been death. Her master had called her Zaichatel, "little hare," but the Germans called her Todesengel, the angel of death. Her tally at Stalingrad had been in the hundreds. Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. He remembered what she had told him on her deathbed, high in the mountains on the Chinese border, their homeland. She had told him that by the end, she had not killed for a cause. She had killed because it was what she did. She had seen that in his eyes too, as he looked down on her, devoid of emotion, only wanting to take up where she had left off.

He had her rifle now. He pushed himself back, lying on his front in the rocky hollow on the ridge. He opened up the long brown package beside him, the leather cover still supple after seventy years, impregnated with gun oil. He lifted out the rifle and cradled the forestock in his right hand, careful not to touch the scope. He brushed his left hand over the wood below the receiver, touching the dents and scars of war, wounds that had strengthened the weapon, not diminished it. The female Soviet snipers always gave their weapons names. Fire dragon, she had called it. He looked at the markings on the metal. Mosin-Nagant, 1917, made under contract in Williamsburg, Maryland. His grandmother had laughed at the irony of it, during the long years of the Cold War when she had trained generations of snipers to take on the Americans. But she had said the instruments of death held no allegiance. At her own death he had taken it from her, and he had come to know it as he knew himself She had said that each kill was like an act of pa.s.sion with a lover, and the more he fired it the more he would know its needs, and the more it would become part of his very soul.

He opened the bolt, touching the fresh sheen of oil on the receiver. He took two cartridges from a leather pouch. He had hand-loaded them himself, using the same batch of primers, the same powder, measuring the loads to the microgram. She had taught him that too. He had polished the bullets until they gleamed. He pressed the cartridges into the magazine then pushed the bolt forward and down, chambering one round. He slowly raised the muzzle on the small sandbag wedged beside the boulder, careful not to press down on the end of the barrel, then edged himself forward on his elbows and knees, holding the b.u.t.t against his shoulder. He had smeared chalk and dirt on his face, and there was nothing reflective on the rifle. He would be in visible against the setting sun. He saw the two figures again. 880 meters. He sensed it. That was his gift. He dialed in the scope, adjusting the turrets for windage and elevation. The air was thin, and there was little wind. The target was downslope, and gravity would pull the bullet down. He had already compensated for that, adding one eighth to the distance. He had seen a s.h.i.+mmer of air around the tractor engine, the optical distortion. He would aim a meter to the left of the woman's head, at the boulder with the carvings beside her. The bullet would take more than a second to arrive. She would not even hear the report. It would go through her neck, split her spinal cord. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled and stopped breathing. He slowed his heartbeat. Synchronize with your very soul. He curled the ball of his finger around the trigger, then lowered his eye to the scope. Great is the virtue of the First Emperor The entire universe is his realm.

Then he stopped. He slid back down into the hollow and rolled over, face up to the heavens, pulling the rifle with him, holding it against his chest, opening the bolt. He had done it over and over again, bringing himself to the brink. His grandmother had said it was s.h.i.+atse, self-discipline. He had already dealt with the woman's uncle, the one whose place he would soon take among the twelve. He had known the man would say nothing, a man trained in the way of the tiger warrior, so he had left him to die in squalor, to be devoured by rats inside the jungle shrine. He and his men had found the inscription inside, and there had been enough time before the Maoists stumbled on them to read the words and see where the quest for the sacred treasure would lead. But before that he had come here, to watch, to wait, to see whether the woman would lead them farther. He knew that her uncle had told her about his own quest, about the clues he had found. The Brotherhood had eyes and ears everywhere. And her fate was sealed. When one of the twelve strayed, his clan was forfeit. It had always been the way. But he had to remind himself And he was here not just to kill, but to watch, to follow. It was his test, his duty set by the Brotherhood, his rite of pa.s.sage before he could join the twelve. He drew back his sleeve, touching the image tattooed on his forearm, still raw and bleeding. He reached toward the horse which had been standing behind him in the hollow, its flanks rising and falling almost imperceptibly, eyes half-open, red-rimmed. He pressed the tattoo against its flank, and his whole forearm came up red, covered with the blood that was lying like sweat on the horse. He lay back again, exultant. Their blood had mingled. They had become one. The blood of the heavenly steed. The blood of the tiger warrior.

Jack awoke with a start as the plane lurched and shuddered, its engines increasing to a whine and then settling down again. He tightened his seat belt. Rebecca was sitting beside him, reading. Opposite them Costas and Pradesh were dozing fitfully. Jack glanced at the navigation map on the foldout screen in front of him, then looked out of the window to his right. He could see where the valley of the Indus had given way to the crumpled foothills of Baluchistan, the northwestern province of Pakistan. They were close to the border with Afghanistan, over the tribal lands which had changed little since the days of British rule. Beyond Afghanistan lay their destination, the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, wedged between the mountains that led to China on one side and Russia on the other, astride the lattice of caravan routes and rugged upland pa.s.ses that made up the northern arm of the Silk Route. Jack stared into the haze, gripping the armrests. Katya was out there somewhere, in one of the most forbidding landscapes on earth. Up here the prospect of finding her seemed inconceivably remote, yet all being well they would be with her in a matter of hours.

Jack glanced over at the two men. Costas was wearing another Hawaiian s.h.i.+rt he had somehow kept in reserve on Seaquest II, replacing the one that had been shredded in the jungle. There was a bulge on his right shoulder where a dressing covered the bullet wound he had received from the Chinese gunman, fortunately only a graze. Pradesh was wearing Indian army khaki stripped of all identifying insignia, a sensible precaution in Pakistani airs.p.a.ce. The evening before, he and his two sappers had kept the Maoist terrorists at bay while the helicopter had landed in the jungle, allowing them to escape with only a few dings in the fuselage. Pradesh had known exactly what he was doing, and Jack was grateful to him. Once back on Seaquest II they had been able to wash and change, but there was no time to sleep. The IMU Embraer jet had flown out from England to meet them, and in the early hours of the morning the Lynx had taken them from the s.h.i.+p to a military airfield near Madras for the long flight north. Jack glanced at his watch. Almost four hours gone now. They should touch down at the U.S. base at Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan by mid-morning.

The horrifying image from the waterfall was still imprinted on Jack's mind. He had no doubt that the decomposed body was Hai Chen, Katya's uncle. The tattoo they had seen on his arm was more elaborate than those on the Chinese corpses outside, but showed the same image of a fearsome tiger, almost a dragon. It was clear that Hai Chen was not just an innocent victim, a naive anthropologist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone had left him to die slowly, in a cruelly calculated way. He had been on a trail that seemed increasingly to parallel the quest Jack now found himself on, and the outcome looked decidedly unpleasant. There was more at stake here than mining speculation. Jack needed to talk to Katya, in person. She was going to have to tell him everything she knew.

Jack tried to forget the image and focus on the archaeology. His mind was still reeling from their discovery. A Roman tomb in south India. A tomb near the Roman site of Arikamedu had always been conceivable, perhaps a merchant or a sea captain. But they had discovered the tomb of a Roman legionary. A legionary who may have been a survivor of the Battle of Carrhae. It was a remarkable link to the fragment of the ancient Periplus from Egypt, to the proof that some of those legionaries had escaped east into central Asia. If the legionary who had carved those battle scenes in the jungle had really been one of Cra.s.sus' men, he must have made his way south from the Silk Route, somewhere below their flight path now. And there was the extraordinary reference in the tomb inscription. Jack squinted through the window toward Afghanistan, still seeing nothing in the early morning haze. One word from the inscription kept going through his head. Sappheiros. Lapis lazuli. The legionary had found something, something so precious he had left a clue on his tomb inscription. Something that another legionary, Fabius, his brother-in-arms, the soldier in the carving, had also possessed, taken away with him. Something in two parts. Jack began drumming his fingers on the armrest. This had become more than a fantastic trail of escape and adventure from two thousand years ago. It had become a treasure hunt.

"Dad." Rebecca nudged him. "This book is incredible." Rebecca had her reading light on, and he could see the t.i.tle page. Lieutenant John Wood, Bengal Navy. A Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. Jack raised his seat upright. "It's one of my favorites. He wrote it in the 1830s, before the British had begun to interfere in Afghanistan," he said, sipping at a bottle of water. "Like other early British explorers who trekked out there you can see that he really empathized with the people. He was Scottish and says it's something to do with being born and bred in the mountains. It's also a great adventure story. On the trail of Alexander the Great. And that book was a treasured possession of your great-great-great-grandfather. He pored over it. When I put my hand on it, I feel close to him."

"So do I," Rebecca said. She closed the book on a slip of paper, and picked up a typescript Jack had also given her. "And this is incredible too. Your biography of Colonel Howard. I nearly cried when I read about his baby boy, taking ill and dying within a day in Bangalore, while his dad was hundreds of miles away in the jungle. It's heartwrenching. I can't imagine what the boy's mother felt like, waking up one morning with a baby boy in her arms, then watching him lowered into his grave that same evening." Rebecca was talking quietly, trying not to wake the other two, but her words were choked with emotion. "You don't hear much about the women, do you? These adventures, the wars, they're all about men. But the women had to deal with so much loss and anguish. You'd think that all the childhood deaths in those days would have made them used to it, but I bet it didn't. Maybe all that stiff upper lip stuff was a way of dealing with it."

Jack nodded. "It was a big adventure for the British out here, but life was fragile. Diseases like cholera, diphtheria, blackwater fever, could take you within a day, strike without warning. All those images we have of exaggerated Victorian gentility in India - tea parties, the gentle clink of croquet, cosseted families sitting on verandahs - all of that was a kind of veneer. This was a place where you woke up never knowing whether you'd be going to bed again that night, or be lowered into a grave. This was a place for risk-takers, for people who relished living on the edge."

"That's why you love it, isn't it, Dad? All of this history. You really wish you'd been one of these Royal Engineer officers, don't you? You'd get war, adventure, bossing people around, you know, even archaeology if you were a survey officer, plus all those leaves and furloughs they had when they could go off exploring the mountains and looking for lost treasure. Perfect."

Jack laughed. "Luckily, I can be all of those things in the present day, and I can transport myself into the past. To really strike out on the trail of discovery you have to empathize with those you're following, know their minds."

"Costas says your great gift is diversion. He says you're always going after one thing, then something else crops up. He says you need a woman to pin you down. Make you more reliable."

Jack nodded across at the crumpled, snoring figure opposite. "He can hardly talk."

"Does he have, you know, a friend?" Rebecca asked.

"Well, he's got me, and everyone at IMU."

"No, I mean a girlfriend."

Jack snorted, pointing at Costas. "That? You must be kidding. They never last more than ten seconds. Can you blame them?"

Rebecca shook her head. "Men are so stupid about themselves. They don't even know what makes a man attractive to a woman."

"Yeah, well, he's a techno nerd. He couldn't care less."

Rebecca shook her head and sighed. The cabin lights flickered on and the pilot's voice came over the speaker. "Jack, you asked for a wake-up call over the Afghan border. We're less than two hours to destination." Costas and Pradesh stirred, and woke up. There was another jolt of turbulence, and Pradesh peered past Costas through the window. It was four a.m. local time and still dark, and lights were twinkling far below. "That turbulence was bang on time," he said. "It always seems to happen here. We've just pa.s.sed Quetta in northern Pakistan, and we must be over the Bolan Pa.s.s now. We're flying over Afghanistan."

"Load and lock," Costas said, yawning and stretching extravagantly. He raised his seat and took an orange juice from the fridge beside them. "I've got a headache," he said. "I think it was the jungle. I got dehydrated." He gulped the juice, then took another can.

"It's that palm toddy you drank," Jack said. "I did warn you."

"I only had a few sips," Costas said. "But I'll stick to my rule from now on. Never drink on operations." He downed the second juice, and binned the can. "It'll make that first tequila on the beach all the more delightful. When we get to Hawaii. Tomorrow." He gave Jack a bleary, slightly accusatory glare.

"We're sort of heading there," Jack said. "In a roundabout way."

"North from India to Kyrgyzstan in central Asia," Costas said. "Yeah, right."

Kyrgyzstan. In less than two hours they would land at Bishkek airport, and a couple of hours after that he would be with Katya. A message from her had been awaiting him when they had returned from the jungle to Seaquest II, about an amazing new discovery she had made. He had called back immediately and told her about her uncle. Her response had been matter-of-fact, as he had expected it would be, but she had sounded distant. He had steered the conversation toward the archaeology. She had outlined her discovery to him and wanted his firsthand advice. That was a good enough reason to pull the schedule forward, but now there was added urgency. He had immediately put in another call to have the IMU Embraer fueled up and ready for them at the Madras airport when they arrived there less than two hours later.

"Okay, Jack," Costas said. "Bring us up to speed on your ancestor. Here's where I've got to so far. Howard and the other guy, the Irish-American officer, Wauchope, escape from the jungle. And my guess is, what happened to them after that has something to do with why we're flying up here now. And with the inscription in that tomb. We're not just coming up here to see Katya."

Jack took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. The rest of the story. Howard and Wauchope made it with the sappers back to the steamer Shamrock. They had buried Bebbie in the jungle, not at the village where we saw the memorial inscription. But neither of them left any account of what had happened. We've got Lieutenant Hamilton's record of his skirmish in the jungle, and the folk memory of that day from the Koya people, everything Pradesh told us. But nothing from Howard, who commanded the sapper detachment. His diary ends abruptly that morning on the Shamrock. It's at odds with his professionalism. That's what first set the alarm bells ringing for me."

"Maybe it was a cover-up for the death of that guy Bebbie," Costas said. "If he really was shot by the sappers."

"I think there was more to it than that," Jack replied carefully. "I think there was the shock of the sacrificial scene, what they saw from the Shamrock. Then I think they saw what we saw inside that shrine. They would both have been well-versed in Latin from school. Wauchope was known for reading Greek and Latin cla.s.sics when he was on campaign. I think they saw that inscription. I think that was their binding pact. Not to tell anyone what they had read. They saw the earthquake seal in the shrine just after they'd escaped, so the secret was theirs."

"What happened to them after the rebellion?"

"Wauchope left the Madras Sappers to join the Survey of India, one of the most coveted appointments for an engineer officer. He spent most of the next twenty years on the northwest frontier, starting in Baluchistan and working east, carrying out surveys for the Boundary Commission on what became known as the Durant Line, delimiting the border of Afghanistan. His boundary markers are still there like latter-day altars of Alexander the Great. He was famed for his climbing ability and endurance, a born mountaineer. But the malaria he picked up in Rampa finally caught up with him and forced his early retirement, in 1900. After five years recovering his health in the mountains of Switzerland he returned to his beloved India, exploring the remote valleys of the borderland, adopting traditional garb and living with tribesmen. The last we hear of him was in Quetta in the early summer of 1909, when he was fifty-five years old."

"And Howard?"

"He was the last sapper officer out of Rampa, months later, the only one who could withstand the malaria, probably because of his Indian childhood. The death of his eighteen-month-old son Edward in Bangalore while he was in the jungle was a terrible blow. Howard had been slated for great things as a soldier but opted for the engineer route, joining the Indian Public Works Department and then returning to England, to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He taught survey to young officers and immersed himself in the academic life of the corps. He became an ardent supporter of the movement that eventually led to the universal language Esperanto. Perhaps the urge came from his experience in Rampa, where they hadn't been able to speak the Koya language without an interpreter. Maybe it was some kind of atonement. He only returned to India once his children had grown up and gone to boarding school. I always a.s.sumed that his career decision had a lot to do with his son Edward, with his need to provide a better home for his children, in England. But now I think there was more to it than that. I think it goes back to that day in the jungle in 1879. And I don't mean what they might have seen in the shrine. I mean something else, something he saw or did, that traumatized him. Maybe it was human sacrifice. Something he was powerless to stop."

"Not exactly the glorious image of soldiering," Costas said.

Pradesh s.h.i.+fted and cleared his throat. "I can sympathize. The worst thing for a soldier is being sent on a mission where you don't have the political will or the resources to finish the job. I've experienced it, on a peacekeeping mission in Africa. Being powerless to stop genocide. If you do intervene, you may ease one person's suffering, but it can make the feeling of impotence worse. One of my sappers shot a woman who'd been terribly mutilated. He was haunted by her face. He said that all the faces that previously had been one ma.s.s of tormented humanity had suddenly become real individuals, and that was what made it intolerable for him. He had nightmares about them all coming to him, asking why he hadn't chosen to end their suffering too. He couldn't live with it, and shot himself."

Jack saw Rebecca's face, and he squeezed her hand. "It could have been like that for Howard," he said quietly. "So little knowledge of the emotional response to trauma has survived from the Victorian period. Yet men brought up on romance and courtly deeds ended up seeing and doing terrible things. They internalized these experiences all their lives, somehow using the reservoir of manly Victorian courage to live with it, bottling it up to the end."

"You said he went back to India," Costas said.

"That's where it gets really fascinating," Jack replied. "He returned to the Public Works Department, building bridges, ca.n.a.ls, roads, and was princ.i.p.al of a college for native engineers. Then, in 1905, aged fifty, he finally returned to real soldiering. He became commanding royal engineer of the Quetta Division of the Indian army, up against the Afghan frontier in Baluchistan. It was one of the hot spots of the British Empire, about the most dangerous place in the world. Howard relished it, and for a while it was as if he were making up for lost time. But then, in 1907, a full colonel, he abruptly took half-pay and retired."

"Quetta," Costas murmured. "The same place Wauchope was?"

"Exactly," Jack exclaimed. "That's the linchpin of the story. After Rampa, the two men part ways. Perhaps in their pact in the jungle they mapped out their future, the time when they'd get together again. They coincide once, in 1889, when Wauchope takes a refresher course at the survey school at Chatham. They even co-author a paper, on the Roman coins of south India. They were meant to present it jointly at the Royal United Services Inst.i.tute in London, but Wauchope was recalled to duty. Next, they appear together in Quetta almost twenty years later, in 1907, both retired. They dine as honored guests in the regimental messes, they meet the explorer Aurel Stein, they spend hours in the bazaar talking to travelers, equipping themselves. And then, one morning in April 1908, they gear themselves up, hobnailed boots and puttees, tweed jodhpurs, sheepskin coats, turbans, rucksacks, revolvers. Two old colonels off on a final great adventure. Quetta has seen this kind of thing before. Howard's Tibetan servant Huang-li waves them off He's been with Howard over the years, since Howard was taken as a boy to a refuge in Tibet during the Indian Mutiny. Huang-li is never seen again either. The two colonels march off toward the Bolan Pa.s.s into Afghanistan, and disappear into the great cleft in the mountains. That's the last anyone hears of them."

"That's so cool," Rebecca said. "Its just like The Man Who Would Be King, Kipling's story. Now I know why you put that on the top of the pile for me to read on Seaquest II, Dad. Two British soldiers disappearing into the mountains, in search of treasure."

"Treasure?" Costas said.

"I think Rebecca's one step ahead," Jack murmured.

"Chip off the old block," Pradesh said, grinning.

"So what's the pull for these guys, of Afghanistan?" Costas said.

"Adventure. War." Pradesh clicked open a small case on his lap. Inside was a row of eight medals - three elaborate stars on the left and three service medals on the right, two of them with multiple campaign clasps over the ribbons. "These are Wauchope's medals. Before disappearing he bequeathed all of his military possessions to the Regimental Mess of the Madras Sappers, with instructions that they should be auctioned among the officers and the proceeds distributed to famine relief charities. As a young officer before Rampa he had been in Madras during the terrible famine of 1877, and it affected him deeply. But by the time an inquest was held in 1924 into the disappearance and the two men were declared dead, there was little interest in the medals. They've been languis.h.i.+ng in the museum storeroom at Bangalore ever since. I felt that they should be in the old headquarters of the Survey of India, where they'd be displayed alongside the memorabilia of the other pioneers. These men are remembered for committing their lives to mapping India and improving the welfare of the people. They are remembered by their Indian and Pakistani successors with pride and affection."

"Isn't the northwest frontier headquarters in what's now Pakistan?" Costas said.

"That's another reason why I'm coming with you to Kyrgyzstan," Pradesh replied cheerfully. "There's a Pakistani sapper contingent attached to the coalition base at Bishkek. I purchased the medals myself under the terms of Wauchope's will, and saw that the money went to charity. I'm going to pa.s.s them to the commanding officer of the Pakistani sappers and he'll see them safely to the museum."

"I thought you guys were at war," Costas said.

"Only our countries. Major Singh and I are close friends. We were both seconded at the same time to instruct in jungle survey at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. That's how I knew something of Howard and Wauchope's later careers, from the records there. When Jack first told me about his interest in the Rampa Rebellion, I was stunned. I had no idea he was from the same Howard family."

Costas peered at the medals. "Those two on the right, with the clasps. Different campaigns?"

Pradesh nodded. "Those are the Indian General Service Medals, with clasps for Hazara, Waziristan, Tirah. As a survey officer, Wauchope was involved in almost all of the Afghan frontier expeditions of the 1880s and 1890s."

"But no clasp for Rampa," Jack said.

Pradesh shook his head. "The government considered the rebellion a civil disturbance. It was a matter of politics, keeping it hush-hush. n.o.body wanted internal unrest to be advertised in the wake of the Indian Mutiny. They agreed to consider it as active service in the soldiers' records, but no medal was given."

"And this one?" Costas pointed at the third campaign medal.

"The Afghan War of 1878 to 1880. Wauchope was there, as a.s.sistant engineer in the Bazar Valley Field Force, before being deployed to Rampa." He lifted the medal up and turned it over.

Costas' eyes lit up. "An elephant!"

Jack grinned at Pradesh. "I have to apologize for my friend. He has an elephant fixation. We found some underwater off Egypt."

"Underwater?" Pradesh looked incredulous. "Did I hear you right? You found elephants underwater?"

"Later."

Rebecca leaned across and touched the medal. "It looks just like Hannibal in the Alps," she murmured. "My mother told me about that once when we met, and I did a drawing of it. So they used elephants in Afghanistan too. That's so cool." Jack smiled at her, and looked over. It was a beautiful medal, hanging from a red and green ribbon. On the obverse was Queen Victoria, Empress of India. On the reverse was a column on the march, with cavalry and infantry, dominated by an elephant carrying dismantled field guns on its back. Behind it was a towering mountain range, and in the exergue the word Afghanistan and the dates 1878-79-80. It was the medal John Howard would have received had he joined the Khyber Field Force after the jungle, as he was slated to do. Had the Rampa Rebellion not strung on for months longer than expected. Had he not been the only officer to withstand the fever. Had his son Edward not become ill, and had another officer not offered to take his place in Afghanistan, to allow him to be closer to his family. It was a gesture of kindness that made no difference at all, as Edward had died so quickly while Howard was still in the jungle. To Jack the medal seemed to represent all the odd quirks of fate, and the anguish of loss. Plenty of sapper officers had died in Afghanistan. Had Howard gone there, it was possible that Jack would not have been here today.

Costas suddenly saw something, and pressed his nose against the window. "Holy cow. What was that?"

They followed his gaze. A line of red flashes punctuated the darkness far below. "Airstrike against a mountain ridge," Pradesh murmured. "American or British warplanes, maybe Pakistani, low-flying. We're over the Taliban heartland now. Bandit country."

"Do we have any countermeasures? The chaff dispensers?" Costas said, looking at Jack anxiously.

"We're flying high, over forty thousand feet. The Taliban have nothing that can get us. The Americans didn't supply the mujahedin in the 1980s with anything bigger than the Stinger, and those are mostly gone."

"Right," Costas said. "I forgot. We armed these guys."

"Before the Russians arrived, the Afghans mainly had old British weapons, hangovers from the Great Game," Pradesh said. "Lee-Enfield rifles, Martini-Henrys, even Snider-Enfields from the 1860s. They made their own imitations, the so-called Khyber Pa.s.s rifles. These weapons are still around today and not to be underestimated. The Afghans were brilliant marksmen with their own homegrown guns, the matchlock jezails. With British rifles they were superb. This is sniper country, huge vistas with lots of upland vantage points. The traditional Afghan marksman despises the Taliban recruit who sprays the air with his Kalashnikov while shouting jihadist slogans. He despises him for his poor marksmans.h.i.+p as much as for his Wahabist fanaticism. Afghan society is one where violent death is omnipresent, but within an honorable tradition. No Afghan warrior wants to die. He's contemptuous of the suicide bomber. He loathes fundamentalism. The martyr mentality and the Kalashnikov, those are the two weak points in the Taliban armor."

"Sounds like this war should be won for us by the Afghans," Costas said.

"A few hundred Afghan mountain men armed with sniper rifles could cripple the Taliban. The Afghans just have to be persuaded that the Taliban are their worst enemy. And they need to know that the coalition will stay on afterward to rebuild the country."

"A lot of work for sappers," Costas said.

"We're all ready for it," Pradesh replied enthusiastically. "My fellow officers and I have pored over all the archives from the 1878 war, when the Madras Sappers built bridges in the Khyber Pa.s.s. We could do it again." They looked up as the copilot came down the aisle, gesturing at Pradesh. "My turn to fly," Pradesh said, getting up. "I need to get my fixed-wing log up to date. See you later."

"Dad." Rebecca was looking at the book on her lap again. "I've just noticed. There's something in pencil, in the margin. I can barely read it."

"What's the book?" Costas asked.

"Wood's Source of the River Oxus," Jack said. "From my cabin. Howard's own copy. I showed it to you earlier."

"Oh, yeah. Fascinating stuff on mining."

"While you were all snoring away, I got to the part where he discovers the lapis lazuli mines," Rebecca said. "It's incredibly exciting. It's like an adventure novel. He says there were three grades of lapis." She read out a pa.s.sage: "These are the Neeli, or indigo color; the Asmani, or light blue; and the Suvsi, or green. He says the Neeli is the most valuable. The richest colors are found in the darkest rock, and the nearer the river the greater is said to be the purity of the stone."

"Neeli," Costas said. "Sounds like Nielo, from the tomb inscription-sappheiros nielo minium."

Jack nodded. "It's the same word, in Pashtun and in Latin. It must be the Indo-European root. If I'm right, the Roman sculptor in the jungle, the guy who did that inscription, had actually been to the mines in Afghanistan. His choice of that word for 'dark' may well have come from contact with locals who described the best lapis lazuli that way." He leaned over Rebecca. "The writing in the margin. Where am I looking?"

"Beside the paragraph I just read."

Jack peered closely. "You're right. I hadn't seen that. There are so many other notes by Howard in the margins of the book, and I hadn't looked at this page closely." He took the open book from her and peered at it under his seat light. "It's definitely Howard's handwriting, Howard's. It's absolutely distinctive, even though you can barely see the pencil." He peered again, and then slowly read it out. "It is said, if you put together peridot and lapis lazuli, then you have the secret of eternal life. They must be the correct-shaped crystals. Ancient Chinese wisdom, told to me by my ayah." He lowered the book. "Good G.o.d."