“The terminus of the Silk Road,” I said, glancing at Anand.
“Indeed,” Anand said. “China was once the richest kingdom in the world.”
“The Celestial Empire,” Dan said. “Ultimate prize for the Mongol warrior who’d never been defeated in battle. He planned and prepared the invasion for years. It was to be his final campaign.”
“I thought the invasion never happened,” Phoebe said.
“It didn’t,” Dan said. “Not long after he embarked with his army, severe winter snowstorms brought the march to a halt. Tamerlane fell ill with a fever and died. He was 69 years old. His body was carried back to Samarkand and interred in the mausoleum.”
“So he never found the place where the lotus grew,” I said.
“Baghestani believed he did,” Dan said. “He just never made it there himself.”
“What do you mean?”
Dan watched warily from the corner of his eye as Phoebe applied a salve to the abrasion on his jaw. “Like I said, Tamerlane had spent years preparing the invasion. That was his usual method. His planning was meticulous, and he placed a premium on collecting good intelligence. A net of spies had fanned out across Asia into China—traders, craftsmen, laborers, wandering hermits, itinerant monks, dervishes, fakirs, Sufis. For years they reported back all they saw or heard. His most trusted emir, a man named Allahdad, developed a detailed survey for the king, of every city and village, every tribe and castle, every river, mountain and desert he might encounter.”
“And you believe they found the source of the lotus,” I said.
“According to Baghestani, when Tamerlane died, the intelligence was passed on to his grandson, Ulug Beg, the eventual heir to the throne in Samarkand.”
“The one who built the tomb,” Phoebe said.
I thought of his final resting place at the foot of his grandfather, just as Tamerlane rested at the foot of his imam.
“Ulug Beg’s writings about the tomb are deliberately obscure,” Dan said. “Baghestani was trying to decipher them. They seem to suggest that some form of tribute was left in the grave, in honor of his grandfather’s final, unfulfilled desire.”
His unfulfilled desire. That was the sense I’d had, standing over his grave: that the insatiable Conqueror of the World, his dreams curtailed at last by death, was condemned to spend eternity beneath a block of stone.
“If there was something in the grave,” Anand asked, “wouldn’t the Soviet archaeologists have found it?”
“Baghestani read their records. They make no mention of soma, or of any maps or information related to the lotus. He thought they must have missed something, or possibly been censored. Baghestani petitioned the Uzbek government to allow him to open the grave. They refused.”
“Not surprising,” I said, “given what happened the last time.”
“Of course that didn’t stop you,” Phoebe said. She was cleaning crusted blood from his ear.
“I’m determined,” he said.
“So was Tamerlane,” she said. “The truth is, like him, you’re afraid.”
“Here we go. Afraid of what?”
Phoebe stopped fussing with his ear. “Afraid of dying before you find this thing you’re dying to find.”
Dan stared back, blinking.
“REGISTAN SQUARE,” Anand announced, pulling the car to the curb.
We peered out through the tinted glass. A vast expanse of open courtyard stretched out beneath the high facades of three massive monuments—former madrasahs, or religious colleges, their entry arches soaring between pairs of minarets. One building formed the far end; the other two, flanking it, mirrored each other perfectly across the empty space. The vastness and the symmetry evoked a sense of calm. Tourists meandered leisurely. Vendors hawked their wares. We seemed a million miles from the murder in the tomb.
But Anand remained uneasy. “Wait here,” he said, unlatching his door. “If you see the police, or anyone suspicious, don’t hesitate, just drive away. As quickly as you can.”
He left the engine running. We watched him cross the square.
“RAW?” Dan asked.
“That and more, I imagine,” Phoebe said.
“He looks like the mountain men I met in Nepal. Only he’s evidently got a bigger appetite.”
“He told us he was born in Kathmandu,” I said. “But he’s lived most of his life in Delhi.”
Phoebe tried to reassure Dan. “He saved our lives,” she said.
“More than once,” I added.
We watched Anand pause to briefly scan the square, then disappear into the darkness of a madrasah’s towering portal.
“That school was built by Ulug Beg,” Dan said. “If he knew it had been converted into tourist shops, he’d be turning over in his grave.”
I thought again of his modest block of marble, set at the foot of his grandfather’s massive block of jade. “Did you say Ulug Beg’s writings about the tomb were deliberately obscure?”
“There’s no other way to describe them,” he said. “The tribute was implied, never specified. As though he were hiding something.”
“The source of the soma, you mean.”
“Ulug Beg was a brilliant astronomer and mathematician,” Dan said, “with a passion for medicine and philosophy, and for poetry and music and the arts. He never had the military ambitions of his grandfather. After seeing all the terror Tamerlane wrought, he must have thought it best to leave the soma hidden.”
“Maybe he was right,” I said. I was beginning to feel a kinship with this fellow, Ulug Beg. Especially in comparison to his psychopathic granddad. Better to be a stargazer mapping out the heavens than a warmonger piling up pyramids of skulls. “If soma’s been hidden for centuries, why bring it out into the world again now?”
“I don’t want to bring it out,” Dan said. “I just want to find it.”
“Why?”
He looked at us as if he were debating whether to say.
Phoebe grew impatient. “Dan?”
“I think...” He paused, looking uncomfortable. “I think the source of the lotus plant is the kingdom of Shambhala.”
“Shangri-la?” I said.
“You can’t be serious,” Phoebe said.
“The monasteries of Shambhala were reputed to hold the most powerful secrets of the sages of the East—”
“Shambhala is a utopian myth,” Phoebe said. “Like the Garden of Eden or the Fountain of Youth.”
“It may have once been a real place,” Dan said. “If I could discover where the soma plant is grown, it might tell me where that place was—or is.”
“So you believe Shambhala really exists,” Phoebe said.
“I want to find out if it does. I don’t ‘believe’ anything. I told you, I’m a scientist. I trust only my experience—what I can prove or I can see.”
“All this you’ve put us through,” I said. “People killed. You tortured. For what? Why is it so important? Why does it matter to you?”
“It matters,” he said. “I’m sorry about what’s happened. I didn’t mean it to. But I can’t help myself; it’s just the way I’m wired. I have to know the truth.”
That word again.
“Ever heard that saying,” Phoebe asked: “A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can?”
Dan stared off thoughtfully at the madrasahs in the distance. “What do you see—out there? Minarets? Madrasahs? Look at the basic structure. See those giant portal arches? Every major madrasah, every traditional mosque has one. It’s a basic feature of Islamic architecture—it represents the gate to paradise. Over the portal of the madrasah he built in Bukhara, Ulug Beg inscribed a quote from the Hadith: ‘It is the duty of every true Muslim, man and woman, to strive after knowledge.’ For him the search for truth was the path to paradise. Ulug Beg ruled Timur’s empire for nearly half a century. It was a golden age of learning and science.”
“Another paradise on earth,” I said. “A Muslim Shangri-la.”
“Not eve
rybody thought so. Even his own son felt he’d gone too far. Ultimately, Ulug Beg was beheaded by religious reactionaries.”
“Some things never change,” Phoebe said.
I agreed. “One man’s utopia is another man’s hell.”
We gazed off across the plaza. Phoebe asked, “I wonder if Anand’s all right?” He had yet to emerge from the madrasah.
I noticed a group of vendors nearby, their wares set out on the flagstones. “I’ll be right back,” I said.
Something had caught my eye—something dark and gleaming.
72.
Kukri
I CROSSED THE SHORT DISTANCE to the cluster of trees where the vendors sat cross-legged in the shade. Among the items on display—silk slippers, jewelry, painted porcelain tiles—one seller had laid out a lacquered chess board arrayed with the traditional pieces. The black pieces looked similar to the camel in my pocket.
The secret is right before your eyes.
I picked up the black king to have a closer look. It was indeed tinged inky green, that same exquisite night-jade color. Sinister, yet seductive. So black it seemed to suck in light, so sensual it made you want to clutch it.
Fear, I thought. And craving.
Black jade embodied the antithesis of soma. The opposite of fearlessness. The converse of contentment.
I thought again of Tamerlane’s somber cenotaph, the black block installed over his tomb by Ulug Beg. With the same dark luster as this king in my hand, the stone expressed the yearnings of the howling corpse beneath it, exuding a gleaming emptiness, a sort of vivid void.
Was it not the perfect tribute to his unfulfilled desire?
A wizened Mongoloid face peered up at me, curious at my expression.
“Where was this made?” I asked.
“Jay!” he said emphatically.
“Yes. But where? Where does the jade come from?”
“Xitoy,” he said.
“What?”
“Xitoy!”
It sounded like some magical, Oriental kingdom. Or maybe just a Samarkand toy store. “Where is…Xitoy?”
The man slowly raised his arm and pointed toward the street. “Tha’ way,” he said.
I looked and saw nothing. No store, just the street.
The man deadpanned his fellows. They slapped their knees and laughed.
“Xitoy eez China,” one man said. Another cried, “Made een China!”
Amid their laughter, a horn beeped; I turned toward the car. Phoebe rolled her window down and gestured off behind me.
Across the square, two tall, bearded men shuffled toward the madrasahs. One of them limped, severely. Both were wearing dirty clothes, tattered and disheveled—dark vests over white kaftans and baggy pajama pants.
Black turban. Checkered turban. The Taliban men we tossed from the train!
Phoebe frantically waved me to the car. They’d kill us if they spotted us. I casually set down the chess piece and started walking toward her, resisting the temptation to break into a run.
The two jihadis paused and scanned around the plaza. Praying they wouldn’t see me, I turned my face away and strode on quickly toward the car. Phoebe’s tinted window rose, concealing her from view. I raced to the driver’s door. Just before I climbed inside, I stole another glance.
The two men were rushing toward Ulug Beg’s madrasah. Anand had emerged from the portal. Struggling to fold up a map.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Phoebe cried as I climbed behind the wheel.
The men were snaking through a crowd of tourists. Anand had still not noticed them.
I threw the car in gear, hit the gas—and rammed up over the curb.
“Jack?!”
“We’re not leaving without him,” I said. Rumbling over the flagstones, I headed straight for Anand.
Pedestrians fled our path in a panic. Anand saw us coming and turned to look behind. Emerging from the crowd were the two jihadis, one limping, the other at a run.
“He’s got a gun!” Dan shouted.
The limper in the black turban paused to raise his pistol, aiming directly at Anand.
Tourists bolted, screaming.
“Get down!” I shouted. Dan and Phoebe ducked. I swung the car around Anand, skidding across the flagstones and blocking the Pashtun’s shot. The bullet pierced the rear windshield and ripped the front-seat headrest. I flinched as a second shot sparked the rim of my door.
Despite his bulk, Anand moved fast. He jumped into the passenger seat without my even stopping. But as he reached to close his door, the jihadi in the checkered turban grabbed hold of his arm. The man ran alongside, tugging at Anand.
I hit the gas, then slammed on the brakes—an old woman with a walker stood petrified before us. We skidded to a stop at her toes.
Another gunshot zinged the trunk.
The jihadi swiped a pocket-size dagger at Anand. In a flash Anand pulled a machete from his jacket and slashed across the Pashtun’s chest.
The man fell backwards, wailing.
Stunned, I wheeled away from the lady with the walker and floored it across the square. Two more gun blasts echoed behind us. I cringed behind the wheel, but no bullet struck the car. Hurtling over the curb, we flew back onto the pavement and roared off up the street.
I glanced into the rearview mirror, my heart pounding furiously. Dan and Phoebe raised their heads. Anand pulled out his handkerchief and coolly wiped his knife.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
“From a very talented blacksmith in Surya Benai.”
The weapon looked as vicious as a Hashishin dagger, but longer, and made out of ordinary steel. Curved slightly inward, the blade broadened toward the tip and stretched the length of his forearm.
“A kukri knife,” Dan said, peering over the seat. He slapped my shoulder. “You just rescued a Gurkha, Jack!”
“Former Gurkha,” Anand said, sliding the knife back into its sheath. “And one most grateful for your gallantry.”
I returned his gaze incredulously. The gratitude in his glistening eyes betrayed no lingering tension, as if he’d just awakened from a catnap. “Gurkha—what is that?—like a Ninja?”
Anand giggled.
“They’re legendary,” Dan said. “Bravest of the brave. ‘Better to die than be a coward’ is their motto. It’s said that if a man claims he’s not afraid of death, he’s either telling you a lie or he’s a Gurkha. Which brigade?” he asked Anand. “Nepalese or Indi—?”
Phoebe interrupted, peering out the back. “The police will be looking for us—we’ve got to get rid of this car.”
My hands still trembled uncontrollably on the wheel. I couldn’t seem to focus on the street signs. “I don’t even know where we’re going,” I said.
“I do,” Dan said. “Make a right at the next corner. Circle back to Tashkent Road and take it north to the edge of town. We’re going up to Ulug Beg’s Observatory.”
“What now?” Phoebe asked. “A lecture on astronomy?”
I began to imagine some long-forgotten camel constellation. Or maybe a Silk Road lodestar. And of course there was that story about soma and the moon—
“You think it’s where Ulug Beg hid his secret?” Anand asked.
“No,” Dan said. “It’s where I stashed my car.”
73.
The Observatory
WHEN ULUG BEG built his hilltop observatory in the 1420s, it was the biggest and best equipped in the world, with a colossal marble sextant hewn into the rock, a huge rotating quadrant mounted on curving brass rails, a rooftop azimuth-calibrating circle, a massive concave solar clock integrated with the sextant, and a scholars’ library consisting of some 15,000 books. A cutting-edge research facility, Dan asserted, the Stanford or Scripps of its time.
Which is why it was torched and razed to the ground by the same fundamentalists who beheaded Ulug Beg. All that remains today is what was carved into the earth: the giant semicircular trench of the sextant, excavated in 1908.
; A tall, white-marble plaque nearby displays the astronomer-king’s epitaph:
Religion disperses like a fog,
Kingdoms perish,
But the works of scholars
remain for an eternity.
“Some scholars, anyway,” Phoebe lamented. “Most I’ve known are numskulls.” As Dan glowered, she smoothed down the bandage that loosened on his cheek. “Or criminals,” she added.
“Certainly beats Tamerlane’s epitaph,” I said. “Do not disturb, or else!”
Anand neatly summed up the two contrasting kingships: “Tamerlane used his religion to seek more power,” he said. “Ulug Beg used his power to seek the truth.”
Here we go again, I thought, and spoke the thought out loud: “Truth alone triumphs.”
This delighted Anand, who seemed surprised I knew it. “Satyameva Jayate,” he said. “‘Truth stands invincible.’ The national motto of India!”
“Dr. Fiore translated it for me. It was on Maya’s government stationery.”
Anand became dispirited at the mention of her name. The memory of Maya seemed to weigh on him. “She was a practicing Buddhist, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “Unusual occupation for a Buddhist.”
“Not all Buddhists are pacifists,” Anand said. “Many at times have been quite violent. But Maya often did feel conflicted.”
I thought of her crawling up the staircase to save me. “I’m sorry to admit it, but I’m glad she wasn’t conflicted in Rome. I wouldn’t be here now.”
We continued walking toward the parking lot where Dan’s rental car sat waiting. For safety’s sake, we had abandoned the Mercedes in a neighborhood nearby and hoofed up the hill to the observatory.
I asked my long lost brother how he had come to meet Felix Fiore.
“We met at a Gyuto monastery in northern India,” he said. “You’ve heard of the city of Dharamshala?”
“Where the Dalai Lama lives?”
“They call it ‘Little Lhasa’—home to the Tibetan government-in-exile. Fiore and his granddaughter had traveled there for a mandala ceremony.”
“The mandala in your sketchbook?” Phoebe asked.
The Assassin Lotus Page 31