The Golden Elephant

by Alex Archer

  In fact Annja was scarcely even surprised, after the initial shock of having the door slammed on her. It was a monastery, after all. She’d been raised in an environment from which all males were scrupulously excluded, except the occasional visiting priest, and maintenance and repairmen squired as closely by the sisters as weasels touring a hatchery. She hadn’t enjoyed it that much. But she came out of it with a conviction that people ought to be able to hang out with whomever they liked and exclude whomever they liked.

  She stood a moment to take careful stock of her surroundings. This wasn’t triple-canopy rainforest. The tall, thick-boled trees stood widely spaced, with plenty of undergrowth between, and they grew close by the great weeping-eaved structure.

  “All right, then, Phran,” she said to her guide, who stood by looking as if his pet guppy had just died. “Surely they can’t object if I take some photos of the outside of their monastery with my digital camera.”

  Phran seemed to reinflate, his skinny shoulders rising and squaring. “No,” he said slowly and guardedly. Apparently he’d had some experience with Westerners who had an exaggerated sense of their own importance.

  Annja smiled encouragingly. “So now I’m going to wander around outside and snap some shots. Then do you think you can find me a nice hotel in town?”

  His expression brightened. “Oh yes, Miss Annja!” he said. “For you, double nice.”

  CLAD HEAD TO FOOT in the darkest long clothing she’d packed, Annja lurked in the bushes forty yards from the Red Monastery. Night was in full effect. That meant prime time for the loudest, most aggressively hungry creatures, especially bugs. She particularly noticed the bugs because they acted out their aggressive hungers on her, notwithstanding the long sleeves and pants. Although she had to give some credit to the tree frogs yammering raucously as damned souls above her head and from all the trees around.

  At least the noise sort of lowers the bar for stealth, she told herself. She could go in wearing wooden clogs and with bells sewn all over her and it was unlikely anybody’d notice for the nocturnal racket. Nature was a wondrous thing sometimes.

  Nonetheless, when she slipped from cover she tried to move as noiselessly as possible, if for no other reason than to keep herself in the proper state of mind. There would be no striding boldly around, looking as if she belonged, which was usually less conspicuous than sneaking. She was a tall white woman who spoke not a word of Thai, out here on the verge of a great reeking swamp far away from anything but the forbidden monastery. She might as well sneak, since she was going to be suspicious as hell to anyone who spotted her no matter what she did.

  With Phran’s help she had gotten rapidly ensconced in a reasonably clean and reasonably cheap hotel. Nakhon Sawan lay far off the paths beaten for Thailand’s infamous sex trade, and its swamps were not a mad tourist draw even with the monsoon petering out. She showered and changed and treated herself to a very good dinner. Having downloaded her photos of the monastery to her notebook computer and reviewed them while sitting cross-legged on the bed making a token gesture at drying out, by the time dinner was finished she had worked out what she thought was a decent plan of attack.

  The doors all looked forbiddingly solid behind their frequently replenished lacquer coats. However, like many Thai roofs, the one on the main temple structure was compound. Between the upper roof, steeply slanted, of red fired-clay tiles, and a second tier ran a row of windows. These looked to be about two feet by three and were clearly opened for ventilation. As far as Annja could tell they weren’t screened.

  As was to be expected, given its function as a residence, as well as a place of prayer, the monastery comprised a whole cluster of buildings, including dorms and storage structures. Some butted right up against the tall main building.

  That made her smile. There’s my way in.

  Back in her room she dressed in her best stealth outfit, went out and putted away into the hot tropical night on the little Honda scooter she’d rented with the help of a well-tipped hotel clerk after Phran dropped her off. The monastery lay half a mile or so up a dirt turnoff from the river highway. Annja hid her bike in dense undergrowth a hundred yards off the main road and hiked up the dirt path. A fair amount of traffic ran along the main route, noisily enough she felt confident it had covered the sound of her little engine, but nobody seemed to be driving up to the Red Monastery after hours. She figured if anyone did turn up the cutoff, between the engine sound and the headlights she should get ample warning.

  At first glimpse of the few pale lights from the monastery Annja ditched off into the underbrush. The monastery had been built on a slight rise, probably just high enough to keep it from flooding when the Chao Phraya got frisky. The ground around it was mostly solid. That was a relief—wading through swamps wasn’t her favorite thing to do in the world.

  Of course, crouching in humid darkness with thorns sticking into her right thigh and something sucking the blood out of her left earlobe, preparing to commit criminal trespass didn’t exactly top her favorites playlist, either.

  She drew a deep breath and tried not to notice she’d sucked in at least one unfortunate gnat. If it was just for the commission, she told herself, I wouldn’t do this. But it’s gone beyond that now. And it’s not as if I’m going to steal anything….

  “Oh, stop it,” she said softly. “Quit making excuses and go.”

  She went. Bent almost double, she slipped from the saw-edged foliage as quietly as she could. She half ran to a structure protruding from the backside of the main hall like some sort of growth, away from view from the road. Climbing up a tree growing right alongside it, she walked along a big branch, using smaller ones for handholds, right onto the substructure’s roof.

  Its steeply pitched tiles were glazed ceramic and slick as wet glass. But their flared, knobby ends provided traction of a sort.

  From there she proceeded up onto the main roof’s lower course and began to work her way gingerly around. She held on to the upper-course tiles, although they provided more the illusion of a purchase than anything that was actually going to stop her from falling a dozen feet onto hard-packed clay if she lost her footing. Thanks to Google she knew the statue she sought stood in a side chamber toward the back, near the main altar with its traditional larger-than-life seated Buddha.

  At what she hoped was the right spot she hunkered down and peered inside. She saw a wide space lit dimly with the wavering yellow glow of oil lamps. She slid inside, being careful to keep her feet on the base of the window frame. Shutters to keep out the rain hung beneath, presumably to be pushed shut with long poles when necessary. The last thing she needed was to put weight on one, have it give way, and have the whole monastery come running to the racket to find her lying on the floor of their sanctum with her leg broken.

  It was farther to the floor than she expected. Perhaps ten feet. She let herself hang from a lower corner of the window frame by one hand and drop. Her long, strong legs flexed, easily taking up the shock. She put a hand on the floor to help support her in a crouch and listened.

  Her rubber-soled shoes hadn’t made much noise hitting the polished hardwood floor. Straining her senses, Annja heard nothing, felt no vibration transmitted through the wood to her fingertips. She seemed to have the hall to herself.

  Outside the monastery the insects trilled and tree frogs screamed. The air within hung thick and still as a swamp backwater. Keen incense sliced the humid air; she smelled the pungent oil used on the floors and mustiness lingering from sweaty monks’ robes.

  A quick survey took in an altar with its big golden Buddha to her right, illuminated from beneath by brass lamps whose tiny, flickering yellow glows made the seated figure’s plump, benign face seem disconcertingly alive. Alcoves lined the walls, each containing its own figure and lit by a single lamp.

  Annja doubted any of them was her guy Avalokiteshvara. None was wider than her palm. Not for the first time she wondered why anyone would bother, or how anyone would even come to, scrawlin
g a map on the bottom of a statue in some obscure monastery in a swamp in the Thai central plains.

  No doubt von Hoiningen had explained how that came to pass in his journals, which were meticulous to the point of stereotypical Prussian anal retentiveness. Perhaps an earlier explorer, seeking a more permanent form in which to transcribe details fading from memory or a scrap of paper decomposing in the inevitable constant dampness? Some refugee, perhaps from one of the wars that had constantly racked this region throughout known history? Maybe the archaeologist even explained how he happened to find out about it. She was sure either in itself would prove a tale worthy of a modern action film or two.

  But either those journals had gone to the bottom of the Bosporus, like von Hoiningen himself, or succumbed to water damage after the torpedo attack. Also like von Hoiningen, she supposed.

  She straightened and moved forward. She walked carefully, placing the lead foot fully on the floor before beginning to transfer weight to it. It not only stilled her footfalls but also made it far less likely a loose or humidity-warped floorboard would creak more than with normal walking. She stood upright; it made balancing easier, and any monk chancing in was not going to be any less likely to spot her in the middle of the open floor if she scuttled like a spider.

  Stopping at the intersection, she leaned forward to look left for three seconds, drew back, then took a peek right. To her left ran a hallway, lit by a faint gleam from somewhere. Its steadiness betrayed its electronic origin. A short step led up; a door opened beside it, presumably to a rectory or some other kind of office.

  To Annja’s right lay a small chamber. In the midst of it, upon a waist-high pedestal of gleaming polished teak, danced the many-armed figure she recognized from her research as Avalokiteshvara.

  She entered the chamber, stepping quickly to the side so that anyone walking through the hall wouldn’t spot her. She studied the statue. It was about two feet high and gleamed gold in the light of a small overhead electric light in a recessed niche, as well as eight oil lamps placed on the octagonal pedestal around it. The statue’s base was the size of a dinner plate, sufficient for a respectable if compressed treasure map. Of course if the statute were solid gold it could weigh fifty or sixty pounds or more; Annja wasn’t sure, but she knew gold was heavy.

  She tried it. As she hoped and expected it was hollow. Likely it was also some other metal, possibly bronze, cast as thin as feasible and then gold-washed. It was still very heavy. But Annja was strong. She found the weight manageable.

  She tipped the object to the side. She was able to hold it in the crook of her right arm as she crouched to examine the base. To her exhilarated surprise the map was clearly visible. A quick inspection by the light of her digital camera, held in her left hand, suggested the inscription had been gouged with some kind of fine, sharp tool, then inked. The ink had aged and fallen out in places, but the map seemed mostly legible. Her quick examination showed a legend in, of all things, French.

  She snapped a couple of images. Then she tucked her camera away in a cargo pocket of her long pants so she could lower the icon from its pedestal to the floor. She intended to examine it carefully, to memorize the details, then replace it. It wouldn’t take more than five minutes, and then she’d be gone.

  A squawk of outrage made her start and look up.

  At the entry to the alcove a wizened, bent man in scarlet stood holding a flashlight. Flanking him were four younger acolytes in saffron robes. They carried staffs in their hard brown hands.

  14

  “Just leaving,” Annja said, smiling and nodding in what she hoped was harmless affability but suspected made her look like a deranged clown, especially in the dodgy light. Oh, well. She started to tip the heavy statue back onto its plinth.

  The wizened little monk uttered a screech of surprising volume. Somewhere a bell began to ring. This is all getting rapidly out of hand, Annja thought.

  The yellow-robed acolytes came for her. She noticed that while none of them were what she’d call burly, they were certainly wiry and moved with a grace that suggested something other than a life of peaceful contemplation. She knew there was lots of hard physical work to do around a monastery.

  One of the monks whacked her on the shoulder with his staff. Annja yelped, more from astonishment than pain.

  “Ow! Hey! I thought you Buddhists were pacifists!”

  The young man grinned at her. The expression suggested he understood her meaning perfectly, even if he didn’t grasp the words. The young man’s expression did not suggest contemplative serenity.

  She rolled the heavy statue toward him. “Catch.”

  His staff clattered to the hardwood floor as he dropped it to catch the relic. I am so going to archaeologist Hell for that, she thought as she darted past him. Even though all she’d wanted was for him to grab it and do something with his arms other than whack her again.

  His partner held his staff horizontally to bar her way. Annja kicked up, caught the hardwood staff painfully on her shin, knocked it into the air right out of the startled monk’s grasp. He blinked and drew back. She shouldered him out of the way. Surprise had rocked him off balance onto the heels of his sandals, and she knew she likely outweighed him. She was a head taller than he was.

  As she ran out into the main nave another of the saffron-robed quartet cracked her sharply on the shins with his staff.

  She tripped but managed to tuck a shoulder and roll without doing any more damage than the staff had, much less doing a face plant on the hardwood floor.

  It wasn’t exactly a neat and graceful roll. She landed heavily on her back, blasting the air out of her as she skidded clear across the floor to fetch up against the wall on the far side beneath a statue of a figure she didn’t recognize.

  The bell still tolled. She didn’t need to guess for whom. The great hall’s imposing double front doors had been flung open. More monks poured in. They clutched not only staffs but nasty curved swords.

  Annja managed to snap to her feet, quickly if not quite gracefully.

  Sandals slapped wood behind her. Apparently still more monks were pouring into the hall from the corridor across from Avalokiteshvara’s alcove.

  “Yikes,” she said. “This is not good.”

  She spun. A monk was rushing her from behind with his staff raised in both hands. She side-kicked him in the gut. It was a maneuver she’d picked up from an archaeologist she’d been on a dig with in Colorado and involved her turning away from her opponent and rolling her hips so that the kick shot straight out like a back kick. It was very powerful, especially when you added in the energy of an onrushing target. The monk went flying back with his robes, limbs and staff colliding with the half a dozen monks behind him.

  She used the momentum the kick imparted to dash right at the monks streaming in the doors. Charging into the faces of the greater concentration of foes might not have seemed the best idea. Then again a foreigner trespassing on hallowed ground in the middle of the boondocks in a reasonably repressive Southeast Asian country wasn’t the brightest idea, either. Thinking fast, Annja had formed a plan—disorganize the more threatening group with a whirlwind attack and thereby gain breathing room to form a better plan.

  The charging monks raised staffs to smite the infidel. Annja dropped and slid into them sideways. It was a risk—but a calculated one. She expected sheer unexpectedness to work in her favor.

  It did. The monks faltered, blinking in confusion with staffs wound up and nothing to whack as the tall, strong American woman slid across the slick floor into the shins of three of them.

  Since they kept charging, they obligingly tripped right over her. She came upright nose to nose with a startled acolyte. She plucked the staff out of his shock-weakened grasp and rapped him across the nose with it. He promptly fell down clutching his face and keening, probably more in shocked outrage than actual pain. Two of his buddies tripped over him. Annja sidestepped them neatly.

  It was too good to last. But her sneak attack
had transformed a concerted surge of angry monks as if by magic into a milling mob of confused monks. They were all around, now, so she held the purloined quarterstaff by one end, like a bat. She was mainly trying to make it whistle menacingly and keep the mob back, but she wasn’t afraid to bounce it off a saffron-clad shoulder or shaved pate.

  The monks duly gave way. Of course now Annja formed her own special island in the midst of the mob. The momentary disorder was quickly transforming to focused anger.

  She tucked the staff under an armpit and turned, holding her other hand out stiffly. It was a move she’d seen in Hong Kong martial arts flicks. It did seem to have the effect of encouraging the monks to keep a respectful distance. For the moment.

  Turning to face the main door, she saw through the crowd the ferociously scowling face of the abbot who had turned her away in the first place. She toyed with the notion of taking him hostage then discarded completely the notion of heading that way.

  It was time for plan B. Mooting the fact there was never a plan A.

  A monk stepped forward. He wore a red robe over a saffron T-shirt. This suggested things Annja didn’t want suggested, such as a greater resolve than the juniors, none of whom seemed eager to get a knot on the crown from a mere foreign woman who couldn’t even receive enlightenment. And greater levels of skill, which he quickly displayed. With a stern expression over his iron-colored mustache he closed with her, crossed staffs and wound one end of his stick around the inside of hers between her hands. A nasty-quick twist of his hips and the stick torqued right out of her hand. It was as irresistible and inexorable as if some kind of giant machine had snatched it away.

  Instead of pressing his advantage, the man paused. Annja kicked him in the groin.

  As he doubled over, she realized she needed to start pressing back. Hard.

  She formed her right hand into a fist and reached with her will.