by Alex Archer
She drew in a deep breath, then let it out, shaking her head. “I didn’t hang around after I woke up. For one thing, I was still desperately weak. For another, I was half-crazy from hunger. I used an M-16 as a crutch and somehow made my way back down to the Lamasery of the Winds. I have no idea how long it took—I really don’t remember anything about the trip. Which is probably for the best.
“The lamas helped patch me back together. Whatever treatment they gave me seems to have worked really well. They also got a message out by satellite link to the Japan Buddhist Federation. It took a whole week before I was back on my feet.”
For a moment they sat while the traffic growled and honked around them. Pedicabs jingled impatiently at one another. Roux looked indecently cool, composed and somehow superior. He said nothing. A hint of a knowing smile played around his full lips.
She practically felt his unspoken question. It had nagged her, too. “I don’t have any idea how Pan did it,” she said. “He must not have died at once from Jagannatha’s gunshot after all. He somehow got the armor off his…his counterpart…put it on and came to help me fight one last time.”
The look on Roux’s face was almost pitying. “The truth is so plain,” he said, “yet you refuse even to consider it.”
“And that would be what?” she asked, daring him to continue.
He set down his cup and sat back, gesturing grandly. “Why, what else? That your savior was the long dead General Pantheras himself. The great champion, the hero who chose to become eternal guardian to the treasure he had been sent to steal. In the last extremity he rose up from his sleep of millennia to carry out his task. Your Pan’s sacrifice must have given him the strength.”
“You’re right,” she said quietly.
He blinked at her. “You mean, for once you agree with me?”
“Not about Pan. I mean, you’re right, I won’t consider that.”
He sighed peevishly. “And I suppose you’re also in denial that the one who finished off your attackers in the storm and the one who ministered to you and laid you beside your Pan were one and the same. Who but the famous yeti, the other guardian of the Golden Buddha?”
“Yep,” she said. “I sure do deny that. It was obviously an angry bear that killed Chatura and the rest. And it was pilgrims who tended to me. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Ah. Your precious rationality, which means so much more to you than truth.”
He picked up his cup on its saucer again and drank. “Well, I hate to add to your sorrows by bearing bad news. But I must.”
She frowned and leaned forward. “What bad news?”
“The team the Japan Buddhist Federation sent to secure the Highest Shrine claims they found no cave.”
“But I gave them the GPS coordinates! It kept track of every step we took.”
Roux shrugged. “Nevertheless. That is what they claim.”
She fell back against the uncomfortable back of her white-painted metal chair. Her whole world had suddenly imploded.
All that sacrifice and sorrow and loss, she thought. All for nothing. I’ve totally failed.
To make matters worse, she had undoubtedly deep-sixed her own credibility. If the JBF claims my story is false, I’ll be lucky to hang on to my job at Chasing History’s Monsters, she thought. To say nothing of the grim fact that she would certainly lose both her standing in the academic community and even the chance of continuing employment as an undercover archaeologist.
Roux sat studying her face. Then he smiled.
“While it’s a shocking, cynical lie that every cloud possesses a silver lining,” he said, reaching inside his coat, “this one, as it happens, does.”
He produced an envelope. He handed it over. After a quizzical look at him she tore it open.
Inside was a check. From the Japan Buddhist Federation. The amount made her suck in her breath sharply.
“Not only are the JBF paying off on your full contract,” Roux said, “they’ve thrown in a healthy bonus. They also prefer to maintain complete discretion about the whole affair. Insofar as they are concerned, you have successfully carried out your assignment of surveying and cataloging a number of historical shrines in Nepal. Nothing else happened.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
He shrugged. “How would I know? Am I a Buddhist? Or Japanese?”
He held up a hand to forestall an angry verbal onslaught. “Peace, woman. If I had to form a guess, and no doubt I do to keep you from flying at my eyes like a Harpy, I should guess that a guilty conscience can sometimes pry open the tightest purse.”
Annja’s shoulders slumped. “And in the end,” she half whispered, “it was still all for nothing.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Except maybe—”
“Except?” Roux asked.
She raised her face hopefully. “Maybe Pan found the prize he was really seeking all his life. As his namesake before him did. Peace?”
Without much interest, Roux shrugged. “As to that, you and I will never know.” He leaned forward with elbows on the table and a gleam in his blue eyes. “But come, you must still have your GPS unit, with the coordinates saved. As the saying goes, the ball is in your court, yes?”
Annja leaned back. From an inside pocket of the light cream jacket she wore, she took her GPS. She recalled the cave’s coordinates.
For a moment she sat looking at the display. Tears fuzzed out her vision. She blinked them away.
“Farewell, Pantheras Katramados,” she whispered.
She pressed Clear.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3593-3
SEEKER’S CURSE
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Victor Milán for his contribution to this work.
Copyright © 2009 by Worldwide Library.
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