by Alex Archer
Roux scowled. "There always is. Unless you kill everybody that's got any kind of ambition."
"This general's name was Xiang Yu. After Ziying surrendered to Liu Bang, Liu Bang was going to appoint Ziying as prime minister because he was strong, had killed Zhao Gao, and was liked by many people. Xiang killed Ziying, then burned the Qin palace to the ground. That included the royal library where – presumably – several royal histories were kept."
Roux gestured to the food he'd prepared and served while Annja told her story. "Eat. Before it gets cold."
Annja did even though she was brimming with questions. She knew from experience that it wouldn't have done any good to ask them. Roux wouldn't answer until he was ready to. And even then she might not get the truth.
Chapter 21
"Professor Hu. Do you have a minute?"
Grateful for the interruption, Professor Michael Hu put down the small shovel he was using and glanced up from the sweltering heat of the pit. His back ached from sustained, meticulous effort.
He was thirty-five years old, dressed in sweat-drenched khakis caked in dust and dirt. He was lean and muscular. He knelt on the loose planks he and the other workers in the pit used as a platform to keep them above the ground where they labored.
Buckets held the meager finds they'd discovered. Most of it was junk, not at all what they were looking for, but it would still require cataloguing and might provide some information.
Song Xin, the young graduate student in charge of the computers and files, peered down at him. Xin was slightly built and looked clean beside the rest of the people in the pit with Hu.
"What is the matter?" Hu took his glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief.
"I have something you should see." Song offered a hand up.
Hu hesitated. He'd been so hopeful at the start of the dig. Now, he was beginning to believe that Loulan City's bones had been picked almost clean.
Leaning against the dirt embankment, Hu caught Song's hand, then scrambled up the side as the younger man pulled. Out of the hole, the heat seemed greater. The desert sun burned down on them ferociously, and the wind sucked the moisture from his body. In seconds he felt like he was baking.
Canvas tents were set up beyond the dig site. The ancient city of Loulan had existed on the western banks of Lop Nur, the cluster of seasonal salt lakes and marshland located between the Taklamakan and Kuruktag Deserts. It was the remnants of the mighty postglacial Tarim Lake that had once been there.
In its day, the lake had covered over ten thousand square kilometers. But all that remained of the lake was scars in the form of a helix that was large enough to be seen from space.
A few jeeps and motorcycles shared space with the camels the archaeological team had ridden into the site. With the heat of the desert, as well as other problems, Hu hadn't wanted to depend solely on one means of transportation. Men left out in this unforgiving desert would die in a matter of hours.
Hu followed Song to the tent that housed the crew's communications. Hu had cut deals with several international television agencies to produce shows on things he took from the earth at the dig.
Song sat in front of a computer and pointed at the monitor. "I've been cruising through Web sites like you suggested, looking for any information on Loulan that we might have missed. And talk that might have arisen once people found out we were here."
Shocked at what he was seeing, Hu studied the pictures. "Could you enlarge them a little?"
Song did with a few clicks of the mouse. "This is the image we were looking for, isn't it? The tiger?"
Excitement gripped Hu as he recognized the carving for what it was. "Yes. Where did you get this?"
"One of the archeological Web sites."
"Can you contact the person who posted this?"
Song nodded.
"Do so. I want to speak to them as soon as possible."
Hesitant, Song turned to face him. "You know that Ngai Kuan-Yin is also searching for that tiger."
Hu did.
"The person who posted this may already be working for Ngai."
"If so, we'll soon find out," Hu said.
A moment later, Song turned to him. "It's done."
"Good. Let me know if you get a response." Hu put his hat back on and stepped from the relative coolness of the tent back out into the fetid heat of the desert.
Vultures circled in the sky in the distance, riding the wind.
A chill shook Hu. Something had died out there.
****
Astride the camel, which was better suited to the tall sand dunes than the jeeps or the motorcycles, Hu lurched uncomfortably in the saddle. Song rode beside him on another camel.
Two other men, locals Hu had hired to help with the dig, rode camels on either side of them. The locals carried assault rifles. Hu had tried to talk them out of holding the weapons in plain sight, but they had ignored him.
Finally, after a long climb up a shifting sand dune where they had to traverse back and forth across it, Hu reached the ridgeline. He took out a pair of binoculars and gazed at the dark speck lying on the sand.
There was no question the man was dead. He lay in a fetal position, but the carrion birds worked at his corpse with their sharp beaks.
Song stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes with a hand. "Is it a man?"
"It is." Hu put the binoculars away. "There's no need to hurry." But he wanted to all the same. He knew how quickly the vultures could work.
****
Hu commanded the camel to kneel. He rocked in the saddle as the big animal lowered itself.
Their arrival had scared away the vultures, but the big, ungainly birds continued to circle in the air above. The dead man was covered in blood, along with a light frosting of dust and dirt.
Yao, the oldest of the two locals, looked ill at ease. He propped his rifle on his saddle horn. "You should not be out here, Professor. You should ignore this."
"I can't just leave someone out here at the mercy of those birds. That's inhuman," Hu protested.
The local looked passive. "Yet you root through the graves of others."
"That's not the same thing."
"If this man were to remain out here for a thousand years, some other archaeologist might find him interesting."
Hu ignored the callousness of the man's words. The local people lived by their fingernails in the desert. Jobs were not plentiful, and the desert was unforgiving. The professor supposed men could learn not to care.
Swinging a leg over the saddle pommel, Hu dropped to the ground. The camel remained still on its folded legs. The smell of death was sharp and pungent. Hu pulled his shirt over his nose but it didn't help. Sickness jumped and jerked in his stomach. Looking at freshly dead men was not the same as looking at skeletons a hundred or a thousand years old.
Hu knelt by the dead man and inspected him the same way he would a find on a dig.
The thing that stood out immediately was that a large section of the back of his head was missing. When Hu studied the man's face, he spotted what looked like a bullet hole above his right eye. Hu only knew about bullet holes because some of the sites he'd worked had been in war-torn lands where dead men had fallen as recently as thirty and forty years ago.
The man had been murdered. Or he'd fought for his life against a foe.
The man wore loose, lightweight clothing. He was clean-shaven, and the nails of the hand that hadn't been savaged by the carrion feeders were clean and smooth. He hadn't been a common laborer. Tattoos showed beneath the sleeve of one arm.
Hu slid the sleeve back, trying to avoid the blood spatters. The tattoos continued up the man's arms. All of them were interwoven, a tapestry of myths and legends.
"He was a Triad member." Song joined Hu on the ground but didn't come close to the dead man. "Usually if there's one, you'll always find another. They don't work alone."
Hu didn't ask how the younger man knew that. The criminal organization was a temptation to all the
teenagers at some point in their lives.
"Let's spread out." Hu walked back to the camel. "Maybe there's someone else out here that needs help."
Hu ordered the others to ride out around the dead man in ever-widening circles. Thirty minutes later, he accepted the fact that if another man had come with the dead man they weren't going to find him.
"Professor."
Tracking the voice, Hu saw Song standing at the mouth of a cave.
Song waved. "I found their camp."
****
"How many men do you think?" Hu crouched as the older local surveyed the base camp.
The camp was simple and stripped down. There were sleeping bags, a couple weeks' worth of supplies, and about the same amount of water. There was no sign of transportation. But there were weapons and a telescope. There was even a radio that had been set to the archaeology base camp's frequency.
"Two men stayed here." Yao surveyed the ground noting the shoe treads. "But someone else brought them here."
"You know that from the shoe treads?"
Yao glanced over his shoulder at Hu. "I know that because there is too much water here for two men to pack in alone." He nodded at the large plastic containers against the wall.
Song found a flashlight among the supplies and switched it on. The batteries worked. He walked into the back of the cave.
Hu tried to wrap his mind around everything. He kept coming up with the same answer – Ngai Kuan-Yin. The man had sent these men in to spy on him.
But who had killed them? And why?
"Hey!" Song turned around and waved his flashlight. "I've found another guy! He's still breathing!"
Hu went quickly, but Yao slipped his rifle's safety off and took up a position to cover the cave's entrance.
The second man looked like he was in his twenties. He'd been shot in the abdomen and had nearly bled out, judging from the pallor of his features.
"Get the medical kit and some water." Hu knelt beside the man as Song ran for the needed items.
Even from the quick examination he gave the man, Hu didn't hold out much hope for the man's survival. If the wound had been treated early enough, if gangrene hadn't set in, if he hadn't lost so much blood, maybe he could have been saved.
When Song returned with the water, Hu wet a cloth and pressed it against the wounded man's lips. He didn't want to risk having the man aspirate the water and drown.
Abruptly, the man's eyes opened. "You...must...stop...her." He gripped Hu's shirt in his bloody hand.
"You need to relax." Hu tried to free himself from the man's hand but it was fastened like a claw. "We're going to get you to a hospital. Conserve your strength."
"No!" The man turned his head and glanced around wildly. "She's still here!"
Concerned that there was yet a third person they hadn't found, Hu leaned close to the man. "Who's still here?"
"The fox spirit." The man shuddered. "The fox spirit did this."
Chapter 22
Once dinner was finished, Annja did the dishes and put them away. Then she poured them both another glass of wine.
"What do you want from me?" Annja asked.
Roux was quiet for a time, and Annja had begun to think that he wasn't going to answer.
"I need your help in recovering an object," he said quietly.
Annja's heart beat a little faster. Roux had searched for Joan's sword for five hundred years. What else can you be responsible for finding? she wondered. "Why should I help you?"
"Because you want to."
"No, I don't." I want to know what you know, but that isn't the same as wanting to help you. Annja was very clear about that in her own mind.
Roux grimaced. "It's a shame to ruin the digestion of such a good meal."
"My digestion isn't going to be affected." Annja kept her eyes on him.
"Without my help, you can't go to China."
"Who said I wanted to go to China?"
"You did. The instant you set foot on that plane in California."
Annja knew, there was no way to win that argument. "Maybe I can't go right away, but I'm working on getting the show to pay for the trip."
"Oh, really?" Roux looked smug. "Is that why you've been dodging your producer's calls for the last few days?"
Annja knew Roux wouldn't tell her how he knew about that.
"Look, we're both over a barrel here. Otherwise you wouldn't have come to me. Furthermore, I don't even know why I should want to go to China," she said, bluffing.
"To Loulan, more specifically. And you want to go there because the answers are there."
"I don't even know what the questions are."
Roux smiled. "The man who accompanied you to the grave in Volcanoville was hired by a man named Ngai Kuan-Yin. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"No."
"He's a very wealthy businessman. He's well connected in China, England and Canada. He's starting to make some inroads in the United States."
"Ngai wanted the belt plaque?"
Roux nodded.
"Why?"
"Because he believes in the legends of the City of the Sands."
"He thinks there's some kind of treasure there?"
"Oh, I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a treasure there," Roux said.
"Is that why you're interested?"
"No. Getting treasure of any size out of China in this day and age would be problematic. I'm not after treasure. I already have great fortunes that grow more every day."
"Then what are you after?" Annja asked.
"Something that was lost."
"What something?"
"I can't go into that, I'm afraid."
Annja blew out an angry breath. "I'm supposed to drop everything I'm doing and go with you to China?"
"Otherwise I'll go without you."
"Why do you need me?"
Roux was silent for a time. "Because you're an archaeologist, Annja. This is what you do. Your curiosity about the past pushes you forward through your own life."
"You've lived through a lot of those years."
"I have, but that's the problem, you see. I've lived through those years. I've not studied them. And I only lived in certain areas. Villages, towns, cities. I know those places, and I was fortunate to meet a few important people over the years. But I don't know history the way you know history."
"You could have learned."
Roux smiled. "My dear girl, I'm far too old to be learning new tricks, and those aren't tricks I'm interested in. I've always been more caught up in my own pursuits and diversions than I have been in the world around me."
"You've been more self-involved, you mean," Annja said.
Roux spread his hands. "Most people are. But you see, that's something that sets you apart from a great deal of other people. That's another reason you and the sword were reunited." He nodded at her glass as he stood. "Can I get you some more wine?"
"No. Thank you." Annja didn't want her wits slowed down by the wine. "There's bottled water in the refrigerator."
Roux replenished his own wine.
Annja accepted the chilled water when Roux handed it to her. She screwed the top off and drank, thinking of ways to get around the old man's reticence to tell her what he was truly after. "It might help if I knew what you're looking for."
"If you find the City of the Sands it will be there or it won't."
"If it exists the city was buried over two thousand years ago."
"I know," Roux said.
"Why didn't you go get it before now?"
"Loulan City died out in the fifth century. Do you know why?"
"No one does."
"Really?" Roux frowned. "Pity. That might have answered some questions I had. Oh, well. The point I was making was that everyone thought that if Loulan had died, so had the City of the Sands."
"Because Sha Wu Ying died?" Annja asked.
"I certainly hope he's dead. While he was alive, he was a lot of trouble."
"What kind of
trouble?"
"He interfered with things, and he tried to harness powers that he had no right to." Roux looked at her for a moment, then seemed to waver. "As you know, there are items of incredible power in this world."
Annja found herself almost hypnotized by his words. She knew he was speaking the truth, but she didn't know how she knew.
"Joan's sword – your sword now – is one of those tools." Roux peered at her with his blue eyes, and Annja saw a softness in them that wasn't often there. "There were others. It was up to the individual who possessed them to do what he or she wanted to with them. Most have been lost to this world, but a few have been lost in it."
"Is that what Sha Wu Ying stole?"
"One such object, yes."
"What is it?" Annja asked.
"It was an object of the greatest evil, Annja." Roux's voice was soft. "More than that, I cannot – dare not – say."
Annja's imagination ran wild for a moment. Throughout all of history, mankind had dreamed of – or remembered – weapons and objects of great power. Excalibur, the philosopher's stone, the Holy Grail and hundreds more.
"Let's just say that I can help you find the City of the Sands. If I do, what are you prepared to do with your mysterious object if it's still there?"
Roux was silent for a moment. "I don't know yet. But I know we have to find it."
"Why?"
"Because Garin is looking for it, too."
Chapter 23
Kelly Swan sat in the shade of the main tent where the workers came to eat, rest, and replenish their water. She was covered in sand and dirt, and it chafed at her. She wanted a bath and a comfortable bed instead of the thin pallet she'd been assigned.
But she knew that wasn't going to happen for some time.
She also felt naked without a weapon. Especially in the middle of the desert.
Getting into the camp had been easy. After she'd gotten directions in Dunhuang, she'd purchased an Enduro motorcycle and driven to within five miles of the dig. She'd left the motorcycle buried under a tarp that might preserve it if she needed it. She'd buried her weapons just outside of the camp after she'd used them to eliminate Ngai's spies. It would serve as a warning of sorts. She hoped it might even draw Ngai himself.