The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3)

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘And this Brotherhood?’

  ‘If they actually follow us to Sri Lanka, Jack has a plan for smoking them out. They’re a very xenophobic group. They might stay in China.’

  ‘Or they might hire some mercenaries to wipe you out,’ Copeland suggested.

  Papineau noted a hint of glee in his voice. ‘Again, sir, Jack has a plan.’

  ‘So, to sum up,’ Copeland said with a sarcastic chuckle, ‘you have aroused the wrath of a criminal syndicate that may or may not chase you to Sri Lanka where you’ll probably have to kill some people and, knowing your crew, probably blow up half the island. You know, they’re just coming off a war that was, like, forty years long? I’m guessing they won’t be keen on gunfire and explosions.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m aware.’

  ‘And even though you have Polo’s personal diary, you can’t narrow down the location to more than … what? A twenty-five-thousand-square-mile radius? Do I have all of these facts correct?’

  Copeland paused, waiting for Papineau’s response.

  Just then, Papineau’s phone beeped in his hand. He glanced at the screen and saw a text from Maggie that completely changed his mood. It read: We found it: Sigiriya.

  ‘You have things nearly correct, sir,’ Papineau said, a grin clawing its way across his face. ‘There’s just one last thing.’

  ‘Really? And what would that be?’

  ‘Maggie just texted me. The team has found the location.’

  ‘That was fast,’ Copeland said. ‘And just in time, too. I was tempted to fire you. These pep talks are really paying off for you, aren’t they? Maybe we should have them more often.’

  ‘Does that mean I still have a job?’ Papineau asked.

  ‘I hope that’s not sass, Jean-Marc.’ Anger fueled Copeland’s tone. ‘Remember, you and your team are only as good to me as the next treasure.’

  With that, the line went dead.

  59

  Before charging off to Sigiriya, the site of an ancient palace that sits upon a massive column of rock in central Sri Lanka, Cobb needed to know how Maggie had reached her conclusion. Stationed with McNutt at a tiny guesthouse in Colombo, they set up a secure, encrypted video chat through Cobb’s computer.

  Not surprisingly, Garcia answered the call.

  ‘Cool news, huh?’ he said as his face filled Cobb’s screen.

  ‘That depends on the details,’ Cobb said. ‘Is Maggie there?’

  Garcia turned his computer so Maggie could be seen on the webcam, too.

  ‘Hey guys,’ she said, beaming. ‘I think we found the site. We won’t know for sure until we get there, but I’m fairly confident that the treasure is at Sigiriya, which is in the Matale district of the country near the town of Dambulla.’

  ‘Tell us why,’ Cobb said, sitting next to McNutt.

  ‘The diary tells us of Polo’s interest in a place that Lobsang described as a “heavenly monastery”,’ Maggie explained. ‘I didn’t catch it at first, but then it dawned on me—’

  ‘Buddhists don’t believe in heaven,’ Cobb said. ‘At least not in the same way that Polo would.’

  Maggie smiled. ‘Exactly. What Lobsang really meant was “elevated”.’

  ‘So the guy was high,’ McNutt said. ‘How does that help us?’

  ‘He wasn’t high,’ Maggie said with a laugh, ‘the monastery was.’

  McNutt grimaced. ‘So you’re saying that all the monks were stoned?’

  ‘Josh,’ Cobb grunted, ‘let her finish.’

  Maggie was too excited to be offended by the interruptions. ‘Anyway, I cross-referenced this new understanding with the Thokmay manuscript, and something jumped out at me. Thokmay explains that Lobsang spent a significant amount of time at a monastery on top of the giant rock known as Sigiriya.’

  ‘An elevated monastery,’ Cobb said. ‘One near the heavens.’

  ‘Precisely!’ Maggie replied. ‘And that’s not all. Hector, if you would …’

  The screen changed to an image from the Thokmay codex that Kunchen had given them at the Potala Palace. Cobb could see what looked like blueprints of a building or maybe a series of buildings. Rectangles and squares indicated rooms or plazas, and zigzagged lines resembled stairs. Based on the complexity of the drawing, it could have been a university or a small town.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘It is a floor plan,’ Maggie said. ‘Lobsang created it during his stay on the island, as an architectural study.’

  ‘And this floor plan matches Sigiriya?’ Cobb guessed.

  ‘Almost,’ Garcia said. ‘With one major exception.’

  The image changed to a modern blueprint of the site with the Thokmay plans overlaid on top of it. A single discrepancy was circled in red.

  ‘There’s an extra room,’ Maggie stressed. ‘A hidden room.’

  Cobb smiled at the significance. ‘Nice work, you two.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Maggie said. ‘Do you want us to head there now?’

  ‘Not until Josh and I scope out the place,’ Cobb said before shifting his gaze to Garcia. ‘Hector, what have you learned about the Fists?’

  ‘They started courting gang members from all over China in the 1990s. They lured them in with promises of better money, a better lifestyle, and a China for the Chinese – not foreigners. Most gang members were quick to take to the propaganda, since it meant an increase in income. I can find a lot of rumors about it in chat rooms and private forums until 2010 or so. After that, things started to go quiet. By that point, a lot of the former gangs were just gone, either absorbed or eradicated by the Brotherhood.’

  Maggie spoke up. ‘No one knows for sure who runs the Brotherhood, but a few key businessmen in Hong Kong are rumored to have gotten their start in the gangs.’

  ‘Feng He is the most prominent businessman on the list – and the most secretive.’ Garcia displayed a photo of Feng on the cover of a Chinese financial magazine on the screen. ‘He owns both the mining operation in Loulan, and several steel factories throughout Gansu province, via holding companies. I had to hack through a shit-ton of firewalls and protected VPNs, but it looks like he’s running the Brotherhood. And best of all …’

  Garcia paused with a flourish as the screen changed once again, this time to a CCTV camera photo taken of a Chinese man in a dark suit, handing his passport to an immigration official. ‘He just landed at Bandaranaike International Airport, two hours ago. So he’s in Sri Lanka. We can assume he’s not alone even though there was only one other person on the private flight with him. A man named Lim Bao.’

  The screen changed to show a corporate photo of Lim.

  ‘Anything on him?’ McNutt asked.

  ‘Just business stuff. He runs a lot of deals for Feng. He’s seen in a lot of media photos with him. But nothing more than that.’

  ‘Stick with it,’ Cobb said. ‘As for Feng, he’s most likely going to converge on us at the site – if he’s figured out where it is. So you should be safe in Kandy for the time being.’

  ‘About that,’ Maggie said, ‘I’m not sure how he could know about the site without the information we possess. We’ve been very careful on our end.’

  ‘Hector, any thoughts?’ Cobb asked.

  Garcia nodded. ‘My guess is that they’re hacking the CCTV feeds at airports and comparing the video stills to photos that they’ve taken of us. Once we leave the airport, they lose us until we pop up again on another camera. Thankfully, Sri Lanka doesn’t have a huge number of cameras, at least not compared to Western countries.’

  ‘Still,’ Cobb said. ‘If they’re in country, they’ll be coming for us eventually. Contact Papi and tell him to move tonight. I’ll let Sarah know as well.’

  ‘Wait,’ Garcia said. ‘We’re out of the line of fire, and Sarah and Papi will have distance on their side. But what about you guys? The Fists will be coming, sooner or later.’

  McNutt grinned at the thought. ‘I’m hoping for sooner.’

  60

&n
bsp; Sigiriya, Sri Lanka

  Cobb and McNutt had considered flying from Colombo, but the owner of the guesthouse had arranged a van and a driver. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he smelled a hell of a lot better than their guide in China. It had been two hours and twenty minutes on roads quite similar to those they had driven in Xinjiang, but the surroundings were far different.

  The vegetation was green, and lush, and full of wildlife.

  With absolutely no camels in sight.

  During their long, bumpy ride, Cobb had more than enough time to discuss his battle plans with McNutt and to make sure everyone had completed their tasks during the previous night. Shortly after speaking to Papineau, Cobb realized that he hadn’t spoken to Seymour Duggan in quite some time. He wondered whether the New Zealander had fallen off the grid or if he had misjudged the man’s reliability.

  A moment later, his thoughts of Duggan vanished completely.

  They were replaced by awe at the site that loomed ahead.

  Cobb signaled for the driver to loop around the massive rock plateau before taking them to the main gate of the compound. When they looked through the bug-stained windshield of the van, all they could see was the multi-colored stone edifice rising high above the dense foliage. It stood 660 feet high and dwarfed everything in the area.

  McNutt whistled softly. ‘I’ll be damned. That’s a big fuckin’ rock.’

  * * *

  The driver stopped the van at the western side of the complex. Cobb and McNutt got out, tucked handguns in their belts and some extra magazine in their cargo pockets, then started down a dirt path through sculptured gardens that led to the rock. They walked past long rectangular pools restored in the twentieth century and now filled with rainwater. The gardens were little more than dusty squares set off by low brick walls and seeded with scrub grass clawing for a tenuous hold in the dry soil.

  At the far end of the path, they saw a man walk through a natural archway formed by two gigantic boulders leaning against each other. He wore a white business shirt, tan slacks, and leather sandals, just like most of the men they had passed at the airport. He had dark hair with just a touch of gray at the temples and the deep brown skin of the Sinhalese.

  He smiled and reached out his hand. ‘Mr Hall?’

  Cobb stepped forward and shook the man’s hand. In order to stay off the radar, the team was forced to use aliases at the site. ‘Yes, and this is my associate, Mr Davidson.’

  McNutt was tempted to say, ‘Please, call me Harley.’

  But he played it cool and merely nodded instead.

  ‘I’m Doctor Nuwan Senanayake,’ he said with a faint English accent. ‘I’m the director here at Sigiriya. UNESCO told me to close the site immediately and await your arrival. They really didn’t say why, but I did as instructed. I was hoping you could tell me more.’

  The site was under the purview of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. After serving as a fortified palace to a fifth-century king, the rock had been a monastery for centuries before it was eventually abandoned. In 1831, it had been rediscovered by British colonial officers, who notified historians about the ‘bush-covered summit’. More than a century and a half later, UNESCO had designated Sigiriya as a World Heritage Site, meaning it was a place of special cultural significance. Despite the crumbling state of the structures, the site fed a prosperous tourism business.

  Thanks to an urgent phone call from Papineau and a follow-up call from Petr Ulster, who had worked closely with the organization on a number of his recent endeavors, UNESCO was willing to close the site to tourists for the foreseeable future.

  Cobb nodded gravely. ‘Yes, sorry we couldn’t tell you more over the phone. We’re with a private security firm that works with UNESCO from time to time. Unfortunately, we received a credible terrorist threat to the site. Not from the Tigers, but a foreign group.’

  The Tigers were the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a group of freedom fighters – or terrorists depending on one’s perspective – that had thrown the nation into a civil war for decades. Cobb knew that Senanayake would be well versed in the Tigers and hoped the mere mention of their name would drive home the severity of the situation.

  Cobb needed all the cooperation he could get.

  ‘I see,’ he said, suddenly concerned. ‘What is it you need?’

  ‘We just want to inspect the area as thoroughly as possible. Later today, we’ll have more personnel on the site, including a helicopter to drop off some supplies. We’ll assess the threat and then send a report back to headquarters in Paris. As long as we don’t find anything wrong, you should be up for business in a few days … Can you show us how to get up top?’

  ‘Of course.’ Senanayake led them up several staircases while rambling on and on about the history of the site. Cobb slowly tuned him out and focused on military tactics. He needed to know the site’s positions of strength and areas of weakness in case the Fists paid them a visit.

  Next came a fenced-in cast-iron spiral staircase, leading up to a gallery carved into the rock. This was the home of the famous Sigiriya frescoes: over twenty paintings of half-naked buxom women. They were thought to be ladies from the King’s harem, or possibly women taking part in some religious festival. At one time, nearly five hundred paintings covered the western face of the rock, an area 460 feet long and 130 feet high.

  Needless to say, McNutt found them fascinating.

  ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ Senanayake asked.

  ‘I guess it really was good to be the king,’ McNutt replied.

  Senanayake laughed. ‘Indeed it was.’

  He led them across a treacherous path of loose wooden planks resting on metal bars that protruded from the side of the rock just below the base of a manmade wall. The wall ran between ten and twenty feet high, its height changing as it marched up and down a natural rise in the rock. It reminded Cobb of the way the Great Wall had hugged the contours of the Chinese terrain.

  ‘The Mirror Wall,’ Senanayake explained. ‘Constructed from brick and covered in plaster, it was eventually coated with honey and egg whites then buffed to a remarkable shine. It is said King Kashyapa could actually see his reflection in it.’

  ‘Not so shiny now,’ McNutt commented.

  ‘Unfortunately, no,’ Senanayake conceded. ‘It has lost most of its luster over the years. Now it has a different reputation. At some point around the eighth century, tourists began to inscribe graffiti on the other side of the wall. Despite the historical verses from the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, people could not help but to add their own modern messages. We tried to stop them, but in the end we were forced to close this section entirely.

  McNutt grabbed Cobb’s arm as Senanayake marched on.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘I’m so going to write my name on that wall,’ McNutt whispered.

  Cobb stared at him. ‘No, Josh, you aren’t.’

  ‘My name’s not Josh. It’s Harley.’

  ‘Well, neither of you can write your name on the wall.’

  Eventually they came to a small plateau. Against the base of the rock stood the carved paws of a giant lion. They were nearly sixteen feet in length with a stairwell running between them that led up the side of the rock. Cobb walked around the plateau, putting on a good show as he examined the area and halfheartedly listened to Senanayake, who said there was once a head to the lion and the stairs used to pass right through the lion’s mouth.

  The steps were concrete for the first few flights, and then a series of black metal stairs had been bolted to the rock face like a fire escape. The treads of these were quite narrow, in some cases only wide enough for one foot. About halfway up, a metal cage had been placed around the stairs for safety purposes. Otherwise, people could fall or jump to their deaths.

  Near the end of their climb, the stairs were concrete again. Cobb could see long grasses and trees growing on top of the rock. He also noted the weathered holes that pa
ralleled the metal steps – the original hand-carved footholds. Water, sunlight, and ferrous minerals had streaked the cliff-like face with wide, vertical swaths of color in white, black, and orange.

  ‘Doctor,’ Cobb said, ‘any other ways up or down?’

  ‘Not without a rope,’ Senanayake said. ‘Or wings.’

  ‘Good to know. Can we have a look around up top?’

  The director nodded and started walking forward.

  ‘Sir,’ Cobb said, ‘we’ll need to ask you to wait down below for us. Between you and me, I don’t think there’s a bomb up there, but I have rules to follow. Can’t endanger civilians.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ Senanayake said. ‘It’s your show. If Paris says you’re in charge, then you’re in charge. I was about to head down to my office anyway. There are fences up near the edges. They’re not terribly stable, and people have fallen, so don’t get too close. When you’re done, I trust you can find your way down. My office is on the edge of the car park at the south side of the compound. You can’t miss it.’

  Cobb and McNutt waited until the man was long gone before they started their final ascent. The director had said there were 1,200 steps to the top of the rock from the gardens below. It looked to Cobb like most of those were ahead of them.

  As they made their way up the rock face, Cobb and McNutt didn’t notice the sets of eyes that watched their every move from the shadows of the foliage below.

  They had been there for several hours.

  And they were ready to attack.

  61

  Having ascended the series of rusted steps that led to the rock’s expansive top level, Cobb stopped and stared at the foliage below, admiring the view. The morning rains had collected the dust from the air, and the clear skies allowed him to see for miles in every direction. The distinct hills of the landscape were a quilt of lush forest interspersed with the occasional barren areas of dirt.