The Tiger Warrior Part 17

"We've got Rebecca to thank for that. While we were at Issyk-Kul she had her head down, deciphering the notes. She thinks she's found clues to the mine entrance they were aiming to reach, among the many shafts in the mountainside."

"She's a great researcher," Costas said.

"She's got a fine eye for detail, and the patience for it. She's got a lot of her mother in her."

"Have you told her that?" Katya asked.

"When the time's right. It's still too raw."

"I'll talk to her. We have that in common. Losing a parent violently. When you want me to."

Jack nodded, and looked out of the window. They were dropping in alt.i.tude now, and the aircraft was below the level of the mountain peaks on either side of the valley. He could see occasional twinkling from houses and the odd splash of light from vehicle headlamps, on the same route that Wood must have taken almost two centuries before. He closed the book. "The beauty of Wood's account is that it predates the Great Game. To understand Afghanistan, you can go back to those travelers who came here before geopolitics came into play. Robert Wauchope in his notes at the end of this book says that, left to their own devices, the Afghans would shrug off all that history of outside interference in an instant."

The PA system crackled again. "This is the captain. Estimated touchdown thirty-five minutes. We're entering SAM missile range. We've armed the chaff dispensers. Just a precaution."

Costas grunted and checked his seat belt. "I got onto him about it when we landed at Bishkek. These ex-fighter jocks sometimes forget they're flying a bus."

Jack turned to Katya. "This is the last chance before we hit the road. If there's anything more to tell us, now's the time."

Katya drank some water, then nodded. "Okay. The Brotherhood of the Tiger. In the late nineteenth century, at the time of the diplomat Wu Che, the one who attended John Howard's lecture, the Brotherhood was one of many secret societies in China. But they were more secretive than most. Few other societies could claim an authentic lineage back to the First Emperor. And they never sought to expand their members.h.i.+p. The First Emperor had come from the Qin family, and as he rose to power he enn.o.bled them, giving his brothers and cousins the land to rule as fiefdoms. Their pledge was to serve the emperor in life and in death. They took the names of their fiefdoms. There were twelve of them: the Xu, the Tan, the Ju, the Zhongli, the Yunyan, the Tuqiu, the Jiangliang, the Huang, the Jiang, the Xiuyu, the Baiming, and the Feilian. These were the original bodyguard. As each one died, the Brotherhood selected another from that clan to take his place. In time, the Brotherhood came to represent all the upper echelons of power in China. They were wealthy landowners, lords of their fiefdoms, but they were also generals, diplomats, ministers of state. All of them had been groomed from birth in the ways of the tiger warrior. Each clan provided a selection of boys ready for the next vacancy, trained in the martial arts, in the wielding of the great pata sword, in the art of becoming one with the akhal-teke, the blood-sweating heavenly horse. One of those would be chosen to enter the Brotherhood, to sit on the council of the twelve. The others would remain throughout their lives as his warriors, a murderous company of a hundred or more who could be called upon at a moment's notice to defend the creed of the First Emperor. And the one who was chosen, the newest of the Brotherhood, became the tiger warrior. It was his role to ride at the head of that company. To execute the orders of the Brotherhood. That was his initiation. The diplomat Wu Che was from the family of Jiang, and he was one of the twelve. My father's family, my uncle's, was the Huang. I am descended from many of those who were chosen for the mantle of tiger warrior."

"And today?" Costas said. "Are we basically looking at organized crime?"

Katya took a deep breath. "Their creed was to defend the emperor's tomb. Until the rise of communism, they retained their land and privileges, and had no need of more wealth. For generations they were behind the scenes in Xian, army officers, counselors to the emperor, bureaucrats, always close to the great tomb whose mound loomed beside the city, ensuring its sacred status. They fostered all of the superst.i.tions about tampering with the First Emperor's legacy, superst.i.tions that linger today even among Chinese archaeologists. They made sure that n.o.body ever dug into the tomb. And the Brotherhood were not thugs. The diplomat Wu Che was typical of the nineteenth century Brotherhood, a highly educated man, eager to represent China's interests abroad. But that was when things began to change. For almost two thousand years the Brotherhood had been part of China's enclosed society, cut off from the outside world since returning empty-handed after losing the trail of Licinius in the Indian jungle. Wu Che reopened that quest, and once again the Brotherhood was on the warpath. The quest rekindled into a pa.s.sion, an obsession. He also did something else. Unwittingly, he provided them with a temptation, one that some in the next generation of the Brotherhood could not resist."

"Let me guess," Jack murmured. "Opium."

Katya nodded. "Wu Che's travels in India had been an attempt to uncover the extent of opium use, to pinpoint the suppliers, to persuade the British government to clamp down on the trade. His papers show that his concerns were moral, and went far beyond Chinese official interests. He visited the Rampa jungle a couple of years after the rebellion and saw the extent of opium addiction among the hill tribesmen, easy prey to dealers after the troops had left. He would have found a sympathetic ear in John Howard. And there was something else. As a diplomat in London, Wu Che inspected the opium dens that were springing up in the port cities of Europe. When he returned to China for the last time in the 1890s, he took with him a prodigious amount of research, a detailed account of opium use and supply in the western world. It could have been the basis for quas.h.i.+ng the opium trade. But it was open to huge abuse. It was a blueprint for control of the trade."

"We're talking about the time of the rise of communism?" Costas asked.

Katya nodded. "China was already fragmenting, and the republic was declared in 1912. The Nationalist Party had only a tenuous hold, and for years there was an uneasy alliance with the Communist Party. Much of the country was ruled by warlords. The abdication of the last emperor in 1912 marks the beginning of the modern Brotherhood of the Tiger. In the foundation mythology of the Brotherhood, the period of the Warring States had been followed by the rise of the First Emperor. They saw an a.n.a.logue to this in what was happening around them in the 1920s and 1930s. It seemed as if a second coming of the emperor might be at hand. The foundation mythology began to twist, and new strands were fabricated. And something else happened. Their fiefdoms were lost, confiscated by the state. They needed another source of wealth."

"The opium trade," Jack said.

"Wu Che was murdered in 1912, a victim of the purge of the Chinese imperial court," Katya continued. "His son succeeded him in the Brotherhood. For the first time, one alone threatened to rule the twelve. He inherited all of his father's records, and built the largest, most secretive drug empire the world has ever known. British complicity in the opium trade had nearly ruined China in the nineteenth century, and he turned that on its head, using all the existing supply routes to feed more and more opium into the west, fueling the explosion in heroin use from the 1950s onward."

Costas jabbed his finger at the route map. "Afghanistan? The main supplier?"

Katya nodded. "For centuries the Brotherhood had been sending warriors up here to get purebred horses. Training with the heavenly steeds had always been part of their creed, an essential rite of pa.s.sage for any who might become one of the twelve. By the 1920s, the horse trade had become a cover for the narcotics trade. Opium was channeled south into India, west into Europe. The Brotherhood relocated its hub of operations outside China, first to Hong Kong and Malaysia and then in the west itself, in London and America. They integrated themselves easily enough, ostensibly the scions of wealthy expatriate Hong Kong and Singapore families who were educating their sons in the elite schools of Europe and America, becoming part of the capitalist infrastructure of the west."

"They must be on the radar screens somewhere, if the drug involvement was as big as you say it was," Costas said.

Katya gave him a wry look. "They were clever. They were not gangsters like other Chinese secret societies. To the Brotherhood, the opium trade was less a criminal enterprise than a kind of payback for western complicity in opium exported to China in the nineteenth century. They had a romanticized notion of fealty to China, to a China that was already ancient history. But it did not serve their creed to become part of the criminal underworld, and they moved out of the drug trade after the Second World War. They reinvested in mineral prospecting and mining. That proved hugely profitable after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The new central Asian republics proved a ripe picking ground for outside entrepreneurs. Their company, INTACON, became ma.s.sively profitable and overshadowed the other business concerns of the Brotherhood."

"What about 1949?" Jack said. "Mao Ze-dong, the communist takeover? Order returns to China."

"Communism had been part of the force that pulled down the old world in which the Brotherhood had existed for centuries, taking their land. But 1949 also represented the return of order over chaos, an a.n.a.logue of the end of the Warring States and the rise of the Qin. The new certainty, the new control, was seductive to the Brotherhood. And the communist regime had its own power structure, its own hierarchy. The Brotherhood soon recovered their place in China, their watchful eye. They fueled the cult of Mao Ze-dong until it almost rivaled the cult of the First Emperor himself But with Mao's death, they returned with renewed pa.s.sion to the original creed."

"Cue the mythology," Jack murmured.

"According to wu di, the concept of non-death, they believe the First Emperor never left, but exists in a parallel world. They await a kind of folding of our reality into that world, the world of wu di. Only then will the emperor once again be able to impose his will on the universe. For the Brotherhood, this mystical hope became a fanatical dogma after 1912. Only with the merging of the two parallel worlds would order come again. They looked for signs in the ancient myth of the elemental powers. The First Emperor had risen under shuide, the power of water, overcoming the power of fire. The Brotherhood believe that the next age of the emperor will be heralded by the coming of siandhe, the power of light."

Jack stared at Katya. "That's it, isn't it? That's why the pair of jewels are so important. The power of light."

Katya nodded. "It was the diplomat Wu Che who reawakened the legend of the lost jewel from the tomb, the celestial jewel, whose two parts would combine to s.h.i.+ne a dazzling light on the tomb of the emperor and breach the barrier of wu di. Only when the jewel is found can siandhe begin, the age of light."

"And when is this supposed to happen?" Costas asked.

"For the First Emperor, shuide was a.s.sociated with the number six, as well as with winter, darkness, harshness, death. The Brotherhood is twelve, a multiple of six. They came to believe that the age of light would begin in the sixty-sixth generation after the tomb was sealed."

"Let me guess," Costas murmured. "That would be the current generation?"

Katya nodded. "That's why this has all heated up now. My uncle confided everything in me. He knew I was intimate enough with the history of the Brotherhood to share his fears, and he also knew the archaeological trail he was on would need someone with expertise to match his own. He'd groomed me for it. He had great faith in me. He knew time was against him, but I never thought it would end so soon." Katya looked down for a moment, then carried on. "My uncle took up where Wu Che left off. But when he realized that the celestial jewel might actually be found, he began to fear the consequences. A decade ago, the Brotherhood lost the representative of the Feilian clan, who suddenly died. He was succeeded by his son, Shang Yong. China was changing again. Communism was eroding, capitalism was in. Some profited hugely, many did not. In Russia, some look back on the time of the czars as a kind of mythical golden age. In China, they look back to the First Emperor. Shang Yong was part of this, though at the same time profiting hugely from the new opportunities. My uncle saw disturbing signs in Shang Yong. His family, the Feilian, controlled INTACON. With the increase in the wealth of the company, Shang became a megalomaniac. He turned the Brotherhood into his own council of war. It was he who took INTACON into exploitative mining, on aboriginal lands around the world. One of those areas was the Rampa jungle of eastern India. A huge fortune was to be had in strip-mining the jungle for bauxite. My uncle vehemently opposed the scheme. He was a committed anthropologist and a humanitarian, one of the Brotherhood who had not let the creed consume him. From the start he had opposed the ascendancy of Shang. My uncle had been naive, and only realized the danger too late. By the time he told me the full story, he was a hunted man."

"And he paid the ultimate price," Jack murmured.

"So just like the diplomat Wu Che, he unwittingly opened a can of worms," Costas said slowly. "Wu Che handed the Brotherhood the opium trade. Your uncle reopened the quest for the jewel, but also led them to a place where another treasure trove was to be found, in mining the jungle."

"That was something else that dawned on my uncle too late," Katya said. "And I fear he may even have entered into negotiations with the Maoist rebels. It would have been an act of desperation, but there may have been n.o.body else to turn to with the government about to draw up a contract with INTACON and the Koya people powerless to resist. It would have been suicidal for him, but then he knew he was under a death sentence anyway. And I know he had rejected the Brotherhood. He saw the creed moving from the First Emperor to Shang Yong himself, as if Shang were seeing himself as emperor, as s.h.i.+huangdi, born again."

"So where is Shang Yong based?" Jack asked.

"In the Taklamakan Desert, on the other side of the Tien Shan Mountains," Katya replied. "A hundred thousand square kilometers of s.h.i.+fting sands and utter desolation, scarred by ferocious winds. For travelers going east on the Silk Road, the Taklamakan was the last great obstacle before dropping down into central China and reaching the end of the road at Xian, source of the silk and site of the First Emperor's tomb. Anyone who strayed into the desert risked being lost forever, and anyone who controlled the desert strongholds could prey at will on the caravans skirting its fringes. The desert remains one of the last great lawless tracts on earth. Even the communists couldn't control it. There are many ruined fortresses half-buried in sand, built beside oases long ago swallowed up. Shang Yong set himself up in one of these, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest road. He's built an airstrip and begun to convert the place into his own fantasy world. For the Brotherhood, the Taklamakan has always had huge symbolic significance, a bastion against the world outside, a place where they could seem to uphold the emperor's claim that there was nothing beyond. For Shang Yong, the desert is also a perfect headquarters for INTACON's mining enterprises in central Asia, in the Tien Shan and Karakoram Mountains. And my uncle knew more. INTACON prospectors have found evidence of huge oil reserves under the desert itself. The Taklamakan has become Shang's fiefdom. And it's no longer inward-looking. Shang threatens to control the whole of the western part of China, and to exert a frightening influence on the world outside."

"So that's what your uncle was really onto," Jack murmured.

"What do you mean about a fantasy world?" Costas said.

Katya paused. "That's where the real significance of the jewel, the real danger, comes into play. For the last meeting of the Brotherhood that my uncle ever attended, he was flown to the desert headquarters. In the center of the ruins lay a domed structure, a former Nestorian church. He was ushered down a ramped pa.s.sage and through great bronze doors. He sat in near darkness at a low table with the other eleven, Shang Yong at the head. What my uncle saw inside stunned and horrified him. It was instantly recognizable from the Records of the Grand Historian. Shang Yong had re-created the First Emperor's tomb inside the church. For the old Brotherhood, that would have been unimaginable heresy. Above them was the dome of the heavens, and on either side were rivers and mountains and palaces. Beyond that were images of the terracotta warriors. He said it was like sitting in a planetarium, with the latest CGI and holographic technology, even the sounds of water and wind, the baying of horses. Over the days he was there he realized that Shang Yong was spending more and more time alone in the chamber. My uncle had worried about Shang as a boy. He had been addicted to computer games, to the world of instant gratification and utter certainty, a world where morality and humanity are irrelevant. My uncle realized that Shang Yong had moved from being a player in front of a screen to being inside the game itself, part of it."

"Computer whiz kids who barely know reality from fantasy," Costas murmured. "Who grow up and make fortunes and think they can take that extra step the boy in the bas.e.m.e.nt can't, and walk into the screen, into a world they think they can control completely in a way they can never control reality."

Katya nodded. "Exactly. In Shang Yong's mind, it was an extension of the concept of wu di, the com mingling of the worlds of the living and the dead that would come with the age of light, with the celestial jewel. But it was as if he had already found a portal to that other world. My uncle knew that the powers of the jewel might prove no more than a figment of myth, but for Shang Yong it could still have terrifying potency. If he believed that the jewel was the final key to his apotheosis, to some kind of melding with the First Emperor, then it might propel him into a terrifying megalomania. That's what frightened my uncle the most. That's when he determined to keep his research secret from others in the Brotherhood and try to discover the jewel himself."

"But Shang Yong already knew," Jack replied. "Your uncle would survive only as long as it took him to find the place where he thought the jewel was hidden."

"So who's the guy you think is shadowing us?" Costas said.

Katya stared at him. "You told me what the Koya had seen in the jungle," she replied. "Seven men from INTACON went in, one came out, armed with a scoped rifle. He was the initiate. The murder of my uncle was his test. He has now become one of the Brotherhood. By tradition, when one of the Brotherhood strayed, he and his immediate family were eliminated. His replacement in the twelve came from another family in the same clan, chosen for their martial prowess by the other eleven in the Brotherhood."

"And this new one is the tiger warrior," Jack said quietly.

"A twisted version. A psychopath. And he has a particular speciality. His grandmother was a Kazakh Red Army sniper during the Second World War, one of those who chalked up hundreds of kills. He learned everything from her. He's a professional, and honed his art in Bosnia, Chechnya, Africa. His count may even exceed hers by now. He uses her old Mosin-Nagant rifle."

"A sniper's rifle is like an artist's favorite brush," Jack murmured. "An old Soviet bolt-action can kill as well as the latest Barrett."

"One question," Costas said. "Your family's been part of this since the time of the First Emperor. Sixty-six generations. How do we know you're not one of the bad guys?"

Katya cast him a baleful look. "Because they murdered my uncle. Because there are no others in my family. Because of a pledge my ancestors made more than two thousand years ago. And because the creed of Shang Yong has nothing to do with that history. It's an abomination. And because he will try to kill me - and all of us - as soon as we lead him to the jewel. It's as simple as that."

"So this valley we're heading to," Costas said, looking at Jack. "Sounds like sniper alley. Do we get any ISAF protection?"

"You could have a battalion of special forces up there combing the slopes, rangers, SAS, and they still wouldn't see a sniper that good," Jack replied.

Pradesh had been listening quietly, and glanced at Costas. "Jack and I have talked about this. If we want ISAF help to hunt one man and a rifle, that's a no go. Up here some of the local warlords are strong enough to confront the Taliban themselves. The ISAF commanders know that's the way forward. Let the warlords get on with it themselves, and don't make yourself their enemy too. The Taliban murdered and raped their way through here when they were in power, and Afghans have long memories. So we'll only get limited reactive a.s.sistance or medevac. Once we pa.s.s through the air-base at Feyzabad, we're on our own until we meet this former mujahideen chap Altamaty knows, the local warlord. Then we have to run the gauntlet of a couple of villages where there might be Taliban infiltrators, and there's always the possibility of IEDs, suicide bombers. But if Altamaty really can get the warlord on our side, that's a big step forward."

"What's our cover story?" Costas asked. "Aren't they going to a.s.sume we're CIA or something?"

"Film crew," Jack said. "We're following the exploration of John Wood in 1836 in search of the source of the river Oxus. We've even got the battered old book for authenticity."

"Sounds like a dream project of yours, Jack," Katya said.

"One day." Jack flashed her a smile. "I'd love to. When the fighting's over."

Costas peered at the map. "What's the place with the mines called again?"

"The Koran Valley," Jack said.

The aircraft banked to port, and they heard the rumble of the undercarriage lowering. Altamaty had been staring out of the window, but turned as Jack spoke, hearing the word. He looked at Katya, and spoke softly: "Agur janub doshukh na-kham buro Zinaar Murrow ba janub tungee Koran"

Costas turned to her. "Meaning?"

She gave him a steely look. "It's Pashtun. Something Altamaty learned when he was captured by the mujahideen up here. If you wish not to go to destruction, avoid the narrow valley of Koran"

The plane bounced on the runway. "Perfect," Costas grumbled. "Another choice holiday hot spot."

Afghanistan, 22 September 1908 The two men bounced and tumbled down the pile of rock chippings that half filled the entrance to the mine, desperately scrabbling for handholds and kicking against the scree to find some kind of purchase. They came to a halt side-by-side, lying near the bottom of the pile. They could still see the mine entrance, the gray sky outside, a slit of light at the top of the mound about a pistol shot away. Beyond them the shaft continued into pitch darkness. At more than twelve thousand feet of alt.i.tude the air was thin, and they panted and coughed in the pall of dust they had raised as they slid down the slope. John Howard turned his head toward the figure beside him, then blinked hard and peered at the wall of the mineshaft. He could see pick marks, all over the rock. A shaft of light from the entrance lit up the ceiling. There was no doubting it. Streaks of blue, speckled with gold. He began to laugh, or cry, he hardly knew which, then coughed painfully. "Robert," he whispered. "Have you seen? It's lazurite."

"I've just collected a specimen." Howard felt relief to hear Wauchope's voice, the Irish accent with its American tw.a.n.g still strong despite all his years in British service. In the desperate fight outside, Howard had wondered whether he would ever hear it again. He blinked hard, and tried to take stock. He was lying on his front, limbs splayed out, hands forward, his right hand still holding the old Colt revolver, a wisp of smoke coming from the chamber he had fired a few moments before. His left hand was clasped tight around the ancient tube of bamboo, ten inches long, blackened and s.h.i.+ny with age. They had taken it out to read the papyrus inside just before they were attacked, after they had stowed their bags on the valley floor, and he had clutched it close to him through the desperate climb to this place, seeking paths that the horse of their pursuer could not negotiate.

Wauchope rolled onto his back beside him. Howard watched him break open his Webley revolver, eject the spent cartridges and reload from a pouch on his belt, glancing up at the tunnel entrance as he did so. He put down the revolver and picked up something in his left hand. It was a fragment of blue rock. He fumbled with his other hand for a little leather pouch hanging from his neck, raising himself on one elbow, wincing as it bit into the rock. He took out a scratched old monocle from the bag, placed it over his left eye and then craned his neck forward, inspecting the fragment closely. "When Lieutenant Wood came to this place seventy years ago, he said there were three grades." Wauchope peered again. "This is the superior grade. That sparkle of gold is iron pyrites. It's the nielo, just as Licinius described it." He took off the monocle and slumped back. For a moment all Howard could hear was the sound of his own breathing, sharp, rasping. He watched his exhalation crystallize in the cold mountain air. Wauchope rolled his head over and looked at him. "You know what this means."

"It means," Howard said, "that by some act of divine providence those ghouls chased us into the right mine-shaft. Wood said there was only one shaft that produced the superior grade. And look at those pick marks on the rock above us - and the soot from fires used to crack the rock. This shaft has been mined for thousands of years."

Howard closed his eyes. The rock chips he was lying on were jagged and unforgiving, but he seemed hardly to feel them at all. It was strange. He opened his eyes and peered at Wauchope. The two men were scarcely recognizable from three months before, when they had left Quetta one night and made their way toward the border, disappearing into the wilds of Afghanistan. And now here they were, thirty years after their escape from the jungle shrine, their faces sun-scorched and craggy like the mountain valleys, weather-beaten old men with matted gray beards. They both wore turbans, impregnated with dust, and heavy Afghan sheepskin overcoats tied around the middle, the matted wool turned inward as protection against the bitter cold that had begun to course through the mountains in their final treacherous approach to the mines. Beneath Wauchope's upturned collar, Howard could see the leather Sam Browne belt and khaki of his uniform, the colonel's pips and crown visible on one shoulder. They were both officially retired, but they knew they would be treated as spies by the Afghans if they went without uniform and would suffer a fate worse than death. It had been their profession for thirty-five years, as officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, and it seemed the most natural thing to wear the uniforms they had worn all their adult lives, on their last and greatest adventure together.

Howard caught Wauchope's eye. They both grinned, and then began to shake, laughing uncontrollably. They had made it. Howard suddenly coughed, and spat blood over the rocks.

"Good G.o.d, man," Wauchope said, pus.h.i.+ng himself upright and leaning over him. "You're wounded!"

"I took a sword thrust." Howard swallowed hard, tasting the tang of blood on his lips. "The horseman who came behind us on the trail. The one with the gauntlet sword. Just as we were scrambling up that rock on the way in here. In my back. Left side."

Howard felt Wauchope untie his sheepskin coat. He eased the bamboo tube out of Howard's left hand, placing it carefully on the rocks, and took his arm out of the sleeve. "Gently does it." He lifted the coat up, and felt the dampness down Howard's side. He let the coat back, tucking it carefully under him, and put his arm back in the sleeve, gently lying it on the rocks in its original position. He put his hand on Howard's right shoulder. Howard could feel the tenseness in the other man's fingers.

"It's bad, isn't it?" he said quietly.

"It missed the liver, that's for certain. It may have gone into the pleural cavity, beneath the lung. I've seen men bounce back from a wound like that, up and about in no time."

"It's gone into the lung, Robert. The blood's frothy. My breathing's getting shorter."

Howard saw Wauchope kneel up, stare hard at the entrance to the cave, take a deep breath then untie his waistband and shrug off his sheepskin. He adjusted his Sam Browne belt, slid his holster into the correct position and brushed off the front of his tunic. Howard shut his eyes. So this was it.

"We know it's in here somewhere. What we're after." Wauchope jerked his head toward the darkness behind them.

"They know too."

"They don't know which mine entrance we hid inside. When I emptied my revolver at them, they fell back. That bought us some time. And when they do find us, they won't know this is the one. They won't know that we happened to stumble into precisely the shaft we were looking for. The place where Licinius hid the jewel two thousand years ago."

"They'll search every one. They'll find us, then they'll find the jewel."

The jewel. Howard felt the blood well up in his throat. He felt as if he were slowly drowning. He would show no fear. He looked at the ancient bamboo cylinder that Wauchope had laid on the rock beside him. The velpu, the sacred relic they had taken from the jungle shrine nearly thirty years before, their guarantee of safe pa.s.sage out of h.e.l.l that dark night, so etched in Howard's consciousness it could have been yesterday. Howard had kept it, along with the tiger-headed gauntlet, the shape that had so terrifyingly reappeared on the arm of their pursuer only a few hours ago. They had guessed that they were being followed, but their enemy had only struck on the valley floor below, once they had reached the fabled lapis lazuli mines of Sar-e-Sang. Howard had seen the mounted warrior who had led the phalanx of armed men up the valley toward them, masked like a tiger dragon, had glimpsed the flash of gold at his wrist as the warrior drew out his great gauntlet sword, the shape of the tiger head just like the one Howard had taken from the jungle tomb.

That gauntlet was not with him now, but they had brought the velpu for what it contained. Ten years after their jungle escape their paths had crossed again at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, and one night they had locked themselves in the library and opened up the bamboo tube. What they had found was no idol, no G.o.d, but a roll of ancient papyrus, paper made from pressed reeds that Howard had recognized from his visits as a boy to the British Museum. Egyptian papyrus, in the jungle of southern India. That had been incredible enough. But it had writing on it, letters that Wauchope recognized as identical in style to the words he had glimpsed carved on the tomb in the jungle shrine. Hic iacet Licinius, optio XV Apollinaris, sacra iulium sacularia. Here lies Licinius, optio of the 15th Apollinaris, guardian of the celestial jewel. But the inscription on the papyrus was longer. And what it said was astonis.h.i.+ng, words that had been etched in Howard's mind ever since. They had used their knowledge of Latin to decipher the message, hunched together over candlelight. They were words that had taken Howard back to his boyhood dreams, dreams of high adventure. They seemed to draw him from the darkness that had embraced his soul since that day in the jungle, given him something to strive for other than redemption for a deed he did not even know if he had committed, but which had lurked just beneath his consciousness every moment of his life since he had pulled that trigger on the river steamer. The little Koya boy, the weeping boy he could not allow to suffer, when his own son was crying out for him in his final hours. Now, in this mineshaft, at the end of his journey, he looked up at Wauchope, and whispered the final words of the pa.s.sage they had first read that night: Cave tigris bellator Beware the tiger warrior.

Howard felt light-headed. He swallowed again, and felt the blood go down. He had seen the tattoo on the horseman's arm, the snarling dragon-tiger, as the rider had thundered toward them in the valley below. Somehow, those who had driven Licinius to his jungle hideout two thousand years before were still in existence, still stalking any who had chanced upon the trail, seeking what Licinius had found and hidden away. Howard had racked his brains as they scrambled up the mountainside, wondering how they could have been discovered. In Quetta, during their preparations, they had planned to let others know, who might ask, that they were intent on retracing Wood's expedition to find the source of the river Oxus, up the Panjs.h.i.+r Valley in northern Afghanistan. They had sought advice from the explorer Aurel Stein, but had not divulged their true intent. Stein thought they were suicidal going into the Hindu Kush without bearers or guides, but he had wished them G.o.dspeed. They were a pair of eccentric old colonels intent on a final adventure, in the best British tradition.

Then Howard had remembered. Years before, when he had returned to England after his service with the Madras Sappers. When he had tried to take his wife Helen away from their grief for little Edward, tried to give them a new life. He had been a newly promoted captain, teaching survey at the School of Military Engineering. He had given a lecture at the Royal United Service Inst.i.tution in London on the Roman antiquities of southern India, a pa.s.sion of his since boyhood when he had collected silver and gold Roman coins bought for him by his father and uncles in the bazaars of Madras and Bangalore. He had mentioned a rumor, nothing more, of a cave temple, one that contained carvings that appeared Roman. He had postulated scenes of battle. He had wanted to show that there could have been Roman soldiers as well as traders in southern India. It was an extraordinary possibility. It had been an extraordinary discovery.

He had let his enthusiasm get the better of him. He realized, now, that he had wanted something good to come of that experience in the jungle that so haunted him, and he had let his guard down. He had said nothing more than that, had intimated nothing about a location, about any truth behind the story. He and Wauchope had made a pact never to reveal what they had found inside the shrine, yet in the lecture there may have been something in his enthusiasm, a glint in his eye, the suppressed part of him that wanted to tell the world of their discovery, that revealed something to the careful observer.

Afterward, an official from the Imperial Chinese Emba.s.sy had come up to congratulate him, and to inquire about his sources. Howard had politely declined, repeating that it was merely a rumor. That was more than twenty years ago. Could it be that he had been followed, watched, for anything unusual, anything that might reveal what he knew? The bamboo velpu had been concealed in a locked room in the School of Engineering at Chatham, among a clutter of exotic artifacts brought back by officers over the decades. Howard had been the curator, and only he had the key. It was impossible that anyone else should have known about it. Then he thought about those who had served him over the years. Only one had been with him throughout, his faithful Huang-li, great-nephew of his beloved childhood ayah from Tibet. Huang-li had been with him from Bangalore to Chatham and then back again through his final postings in India. Huang-li had always had his oriental friends, coolies, sailors, men he met in the opium dens at night, but Howard had turned a blind eye, knowing it was better to tolerate the secret societies and rituals than to ban them. Huang-li had been there at the end, packing food into their rucksacks in Quetta, waving them off as they tramped up toward Afghanistan. He had been enthusiastic, perhaps strangely so for a man who might be seeing his master for the last time. He had packed their bags with more than they needed, Chinese medicines, herbal remedies, packages they had quickly discarded. He had been doing all he could to ensure that they stayed alive until they reached their destination. That had seemed only right for a faithful servant, and Howard had been touched. But now he thought again. Keeping them alive until they reached their destination, so they could lead others to it. Could it be?

Howard coughed. None of that was of any consequence now. He tried to move his head, and suddenly retched, bringing up a mouthful of frothy blood he tried to swallow. He felt excruciating pain. Huang-li had packed some laudanum, and he wished they had it now. Wauchope leaned over him, holding his head. Howard eyed him. "I'm not giving up the ghost just yet," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "We still have to find that jewel."

Wauchope jerked his head back toward the darkness of the shaft. "It's in here somewhere. I'm sure of it."

"And then the other jewel. The jewel taken by the other Roman mentioned in the inscription, Fabius."

"One thing at a time, old boy."

Howard grimaced. "Immortality. That's what the celestial jewel is all about, isn't it? We could do with a dose of that now."

Wauchope looked at the entrance, scanning anxiously, then back down at Howard. "Maybe in the end, in the jungle, Licinius felt that too. I've wondered what manner of man he was. Whether we can see ourselves in him. Sometimes, that has seemed the only way of fathoming out this mysterious path we're on."

Howard gave a weak smile. He coughed and swallowed, breathed for a moment to calm himself, then carried on talking, his voice little more than a murmur. "You remember that carving we saw on the shrine wall, the woman and the child? For Licinius to seek immortality would have been to seek an immortality where loss and grief are also there forever. What is the point if all those you have loved have gone before, and if you have expended your reservoir of love? I think he took his chance with mortality. Maybe Elysium was a better bet after all."

"So what are we doing here? You and I? In this place?"

"The same thing that drove Licinius and Fabius. Maybe they really were seeking Elysium, seeking death with glory, not immortality. Maybe the lure of immortality only came upon them by chance, along the way. Maybe Licinius only learned of it after Fabius had departed, when Licinius had struck off south. Maybe he had the man with him who had brought the two jewels from the east, maybe a trader they had robbed and enslaved, used as a guide. If the Romans had known about it earlier, it's hard to see why Licinius and Fabius would have parted company, and separated the jewels."

"Maybe the G.o.ds didn't want mankind to find the secret of immortality."

"Maybe the G.o.ds have our best interests at heart."

"You still haven't answered my question. What we're doing here." Wauchope was gazing intently at him, his eyes full of concern. Howard knew Wauchope was trying to keep him going, keep him conscious, squeeze every last drop from their friends.h.i.+p, relish all he could in these moments. Howard returned the gaze. "We're here for the same reason those Romans took their last great journey. Remember the inscription we saw all those years ago in the jungle shrine? Fifteenth Apollinaris. For the glory of the legion. They were marching alongside the dead of their legion, shadowing them, seeking the trick of fate that would propel them to the other side, death with glory. They were doing what they were trained to do. They were soldiers. Maybe that's why we're here. The glory of our legion. The Corps of Royal Engineers. For all who have gone before, for all who have fallen. Ubique."

"Ubique," Wauchope repeated softly. "Spoken like a true sapper."