Forbidden City

by Alex Archer

"What is it?" Roux asked in French.

  "Nothing. Not really." Annja jerked her attention back to the camp. "I just had the feeling we were being followed."

  "I watched," Roux said. "I didn't notice anyone. Out here, you can't hide."

  Annja reluctantly agreed. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that someone was out there.

  Kelly Swan watched the new arrivals with interest and more than a little paranoia. For the past few months, men and women had hunted her for the price the CIA had put on her head. Although it was unlikely they could have traced her here, she couldn't discount that possibility.

  She sat outside her tent and ate mechanically, hardly tasting the food. Dinner consisted of meat and steamed vegetables.

  Even though she was in excellent shape, Kelly felt worn-out. The work at the dig was hard and never ended.

  One of Professor Hu's assistants went through the camp, talking with different workers. Observing him, Kelly saw that he only talked to the younger men and women among the laborers.

  She finished her meal, then drank water till she couldn't hold any more. By that time the assistant approached her.

  "Good evening." He stood before her, shining his flashlight to one side so the reflected light illuminated the immediate area but didn't shine it into her eyes.

  Kelly responded in kind. She was known as a woman who kept to herself. A few of the men had hit on her, but she'd politely and consistently refused their advances. There were already a few who suspected she wasn't a local and she knew she couldn't hide there much longer. She hoped Ngai Kuan-Yin would put in an appearance soon.

  "Professor Hu is putting together a special expedition," the assistant said. "He's looking for volunteers." He held his clipboard expectantly, pen poised.

  Kelly almost said no. When undercover it was best not to draw attention. Volunteering was all about drawing attention. "Expedition to where?" she asked.

  The assistant pointed up into the mountains. "There are some caves Professor Hu wants to investigate."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  That didn't make any sense. Loulan was here. The work they were doing was here. She looked at the young man. "Are the new people going?"

  The assistant shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. Does it matter?"

  Does it? Kelly didn't know. Either way, she'd left the men – one dead and one alive – up in those mountains. She felt she had better find out what was going on.

  "Well?" The assistant sounded impatient.

  "I'll go."

  He took the name she was going by, jotted it on his list, and kept moving through the camp.

  After taking her plate and cup back to the camp mess, she washed them and put them away. Then she got a bedroll and walked outside the camp, easily slipping by the sentries posted to watch out for bandits.

  Once in the shadows, she made her way to the place where she'd buried her weapons and the bag of bones her father had left for her. She'd finally figured out the secret of the bones, and she was ashamed that she hadn't discovered it earlier.

  Sheltered by a dune, steeped in shadows, she took the ball from the bag. All of the bones had been cunningly cut and shaped. If she'd studied them more back in Shanghai, she might have seen then what the bones truly were. Once she'd divined their nature, she'd put them together.

  When they were all in place, each piece interlocking with the next, they'd formed a spherical, three-dimensional interlocking puzzle. When she'd been little, she'd been fascinated by such things.

  But thinking about those times now, she wasn't sure if she'd been interested in them or if her father had trained her to play them so she would be ready for his "gift."

  Each of the bones held an inscription. But they were nonsense written in Cantonese. And they had designs that she couldn't fathom and had never seen anywhere before.

  After a while, she put the ball back into the bag, then took out her weapons. She wrapped the pistols in the bedroll, folding it so the weapons wouldn't fall out.

  Whatever happened in the morning, she would be ready.

  The phone rang, waking Garin Braden from a tangle of slender female arms and legs. Struggling with a hangover, he cursed Ngai. He'd only gotten drunk so he wouldn't have to listen to the man complain anymore. Garin grabbed the cell phone from the nightstand.

  "Mr. Braden, they're moving," a voice said.

  "Where are they going?"

  "Toward the mountains."

  That was unexpected. "Are the woman and the old man together?"

  "Yes, sir."

  That, at least, meant something. If Annja and Roux were in an agreement on how to proceed they had to know more than he did at the moment. "Is the helicopter ready?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Garin smiled as he walked to the window and looked out across the desert. Darkness from an approaching wall of stormclouds smudged the horizon. "Good. Wake Mr. Ngai and let him know."

  "Yes, sir."

  Closing the phone, Garin leaned against the window. The coming heat was already warming the glass. Morning was barely dawning. They're up and moving early. He knew that may have meant only that they wanted to escape the heat of the day.

  Still, Garin couldn't help wondering if Roux's bones or his were going to bleach in the desert before the sun set.

  Chapter 30

  The sun rose shortly before seven. Annja had been awake since five, worked through a set of t'ai chi forms, and took an abbreviated shower in one of the camp's portable units. She checked her computer and digital camera, then hauled out her working journal and caught up on the entries.

  Roux had risen at six and grumbled about the bad coffee. His attire surprised Annja. He wore khakis, hiking boots, and a broad-brimmed hat with a leopard print scarf tied around it.

  "The hat's a bit much, don't you think?" Annja tried to hide her grin and failed. She'd known Roux had arranged for clothing, but she hadn't had a clue what the wardrobe would be like.

  "Say whatever you must," Roux growled. "Get it out of your system." He clapped the hat on his head. "It's hot out here and the hat protects my head. I hope you brought something suitable."

  Annja reached behind her and grabbed the replica Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap she'd packed. She pulled her chestnut hair into a ponytail and threaded it through the opening in the cap.

  Roux grumbled. "You won't get much protection from that." He stomped off without another word.

  Annja and Roux shared a silent breakfast of rice and pork and some fresh fruit while the rest of the camp came awake around them. Professor Hu approached them while they were cleaning their dishes.

  "I've got ten people accompanying us." Hu took his hat off and mopped his brow. "If Miss Creed's predictions are accurate and we do find evidence of the City of the Sands up there, we may need help."

  Annja looked at the people saddling camels near the motor pool. "Do they know why we're going up there?"

  "No. My assistant simply told them this was to be an ancillary expedition."

  "You do realize that you may have a spy somewhere in your ranks?" Roux asked.

  "Other than myself, two assistants, and six graduate students, there's no one here I've met before. I don't want to take all of my experienced people with us. Work here will come to a standstill. And if we need help, I'd rather not have all of my people exposed to any danger."

  Annja knew that was a good plan. Under the circumstances, it was probably the best that they could do.

  "Are you ready?" Hu asked.

  Annja nodded.

  "Ever ridden a camel before, Miss Creed?"

  "A few times." Annja went to the corral and picked out one of the belligerent beasts.

  The camel smelled bad and loudly complained at her urging it to its feet so she could secure the saddle. She used a riding crop to make it kneel again so she could mount.

  Seated in the saddle, Annja tugged on the reins and commanded the camel to its huge, disc-shaped feet. It surged, pushing up on its hindquarte
rs first, then on the front legs. She sat, very high off the ground and waited for Roux.

  He'd gone back inside his tent for a moment. He reemerged wearing a large pistol strapped to his thigh and a heavy hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

  The weapons caused a stir among the workers, but Roux ignored it as he saddled and mounted his camel. He bobbed off-balance as the animal stood.

  Roux cursed. "I've always hated these foul-tempered beasts." He spoke in Latin, making Annja wonder again if that language rather than French was his native tongue.

  "You've ridden them before?" Annja asked.

  "More times than I care to remember."

  "Where?" Annja wanted to ask when but doubted she'd get an answer.

  "Here. A time or two." Before she could ask anything further, Roux whipped the camel into a trot, falling in behind Professor Hu.

  Annja followed, already feeling perspiration coating her back and dripping between her breasts. By midday it was going to be insufferable. She hoped most of their work would continue in the caves.

  As she rode to join Roux, hoping to coax a few more answers from him, Annja noticed one of the women in the group staring at her.

  She was a Chinese woman about Annja's age. She held Annja's gaze for just a moment, then looked away.

  Annja rode on, rocking to and fro with the camel's awkward gait.

  When they reached the cave less than an hour later, Annja asked Professor Hu to order everyone to stay back and to remain upwind.

  Even Roux stayed back, though his stiff body language clearly marked him as not happy with the idea. But he didn't try to be bullheaded about the situation.

  Annja and Hu went on alone. They wore surgical face masks the professor had brought at Annja's suggestion. She hoped that the mask would help keep any hallucinogenic dust – if there was any – out of their lungs.

  Adrenaline pumped through Annja as she thought about all the stories she'd read, and what Roux had told her about Sha Wu Ying. With the timelessness of the desert spread out all around them, it didn't take much effort for her to imagine what it would have been like two thousand years earlier.

  Vultures rode the slow air currents under the sun. With Loulan's remains in view, she could imagine what the city would have looked like in its heyday. Remnants of walls marked the city's boundaries.

  To the south, though, angry black clouds filled the sky. They'd moved much closer in the past hour.

  "Is it supposed to storm?" The mask muffled Annja's voice as she followed Hu up the incline to the cave mouth.

  "There's a possibility." Hu's words sounded garbled and forced. "Storms out here come up quickly, Miss Creed. Usually there's no rain. Only the wind."

  "That's good. If we go subterranean with this, we don't want to risk getting drowned in a flash flood."

  "The sand is just as risky. It's as fine as powder. If water will flow there, so will the sand."

  Terror touched Annja for a moment. She'd thought about drowning before, had almost had situations come to that before, but being buried alive in sand? The idea of slowly suffocating was horrifying.

  Once on a dig in New Mexico, she'd helped unearth two bodies that had been buried in a cave-in. The heat and the environment had mummified them. Annja knew she'd never forget their dead faces. Their mouths, eyes and ears had been packed with sand.

  Inside the cave, Annja took out her flashlight and peered around. Remnants of the two men's gear lay strewn about the cave. Evidently whoever the professor had sent up to collect their things hadn't been tidy about the cleanup.

  "What about our eyes?"

  Drawn by Hu's voice, Annja looked at the professor.

  Hu pointed to his eyes. "Can't the drug affect us through our eyes?"

  "I don't think so. The poison Sha Wu Ying and his followers used was probably datura. Are you familiar with that?"

  Hu nodded. "It was supposed to have been brought over from the Americas and isn't native to China."

  "There are just as many botanists who will disagree with that," Annja said.

  Hu shrugged as he scoured the ground with his flashlight. "Datura was known to the stone age people. It was used as a painkiller and to trigger vision quests by shamans. I first read about that in The Clan of the Cave Bear."

  Annja smiled. "You read popular fiction?"

  Hu's eyes crinkled as he glanced back at her. "Whenever I can. Popular fiction allows me time to think about concepts, let them gel with other things I've learned." He followed the flashlight beam into the back recesses of the cave.

  Trailing after the professor, her boots shuffling through the loose sand that had blown into the cave, Annja realized something. She felt foolish for not having thought of the possibility earlier. "The sand."

  Hu turned to look at her.

  "The wind blows the sand into the cave," Annja explained. "If there is a crack in here, it may have been buried."

  Hu gazed around. "What do you suggest?"

  "Sweep the floor with trenching tools."

  "That could take hours."

  "If we do it by ourselves."

  "What do you propose?"

  "Put masks on everyone else and bring them inside. You and I aren't feeling any effects from anything."

  Hu hesitated. "That may be because the crack the powder was coming through is filled up. If we uncover it – "

  "We came here to uncover it."

  It took less than one hour. And the crack wasn't where they'd been looking after all.

  Annja used one of the square-bladed trenching tools, dragging it across the uneven cave floor as she searched for a tiny fracture that had let the dust up into the cave. The grating noise was deafening. In the enclosed sweltering environment of the cave, her clothes were immediately soaked with perspiration.

  Roux tapped her on the shoulder. He was covered with sand and his beard and hair looked unkempt from the heat and sweat.

  "What?" Annja suddenly realized that she was the only one still scraping the floor. She'd been so focused on the effort that she hadn't noticed the others.

  Hu and the others stood looking away from her. They were focused on a section of the wall at the back of the cave.

  "The crack wasn't in the floor," Roux said.

  Annja walked to the rear of the cave. The mask across her lower face felt heavy and stiff from grit that had accumulated there as wet muck. She aimed her flashlight at the wall and spotted the thin crack that ran five feet across the solid plane of rock.

  "Get everyone out of the cave," Annja said. "We'll need a chisel and a sledge."

  "We should go in now."

  Seated on the cargo bay of the helicopter, Garin looked at Ngai and tried to hide his disdain for the Chinese businessman. He wasn't altogether certain he was successful. "It's not time yet."

  Impatience tightened Ngai's features. "It's past time."

  Garin sighed and it was all he could do not to reach for the .45 holstered under his arm and put a bullet through Ngai's head. "Let them find their way into the labyrinth first."

  "I'm not even sure the underground passages you say exist are truly there."

  Smiling, Garin pinned the man with his gaze. "If they're not there, then what's the hurry?"

  Ngai didn't have an answer for that.

  "Annja Creed is good at what she does," Garin said. "If the City of Thieves is there, she'll find it."

  They sat little more than a mile from the mountains where Ngai's spy had informed them the expedition had gone. Ngai's guards had spread a sand-colored canvas over the helicopter, hiding it from distant viewers and providing some relief from the unbearable heat.

  Garin was willing to wager an egg could be fried on the sand even in the shade. He took out another water bottle from the supplies and drank. The cold liquid rushed down his parched throat. But immediately his body started leaking it out again.

  "We could go in there and take possession of the area." Ngai sounded bitterly frustrated.

  "And if the City
of Thieves isn't there?"

  "We force her to tell us."

  Garin shook his head. "That woman doesn't work like that. She's made of sterner stuff. If she hasn't sniffed it out by now, we need to let her run with it."

  "You said you could find the City of Thieves." Ngai glared at him.

  "If I have to, I can." However, Garin wasn't sure he could. He'd translated the back of the belt plaque, even seen through the confusion of the surface message to find the deeper one buried within.

  But he didn't have the map of the interior. That was promised in some kind of child's toy. He hadn't figured out what that meant yet.

  His phone rang and he answered before it could ring again.

  "Braden," Garin said.

  "Mr. Braden," the male voice at the other end of the line said.

  "Yes."

  "She's found it."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Yes. There's a passageway behind the wall at the back of the cave."

  "Be ready." Garin closed the phone, then called Ngai's shock troops into action as he turned to the businessman. "Now."

  Ngai cried encouragement to his men as they swept the canvas from the helicopter. By the time they had the canvas packed away, the rotors were churning at full speed, tossing sand in all directions.

  Garin hauled himself into the copilot's seat as Ngai's men clambered aboard. Less than a minute later, Garin flashed the pilot a thumbs-up and the helicopter surged into the air.

  Chapter 31

  Annja drew the sledgehammer back for another strike. Perspiration streamed down her body. Dust, fine as talcum powder, stuck to her exposed skin and drenched clothing.

  Hu closed his eyes and turned his head away. His left hand was wrapped around the chisel poised at the center of the crack. The professor hadn't wanted the responsibility of swinging the sledgehammer while someone else held the chisel, so he'd volunteered for that task. But he couldn't watch.

  "Steady," Annja said.

  "I am." Hu's hand wasn't trembling as much as it had the first time. It was almost still.

  Behind and to Annja's side, Roux and Hu's assistant held high-beam lights that splashed over the wall. So far she'd struck the chisel three times. The crack they'd discovered had grown wider. Dust swirled from the chamber on the other side of the wall.