by Ronan Frost
The Russian looked at him, confused. “No need to thank me. You’re one of us,” Iskra said, going through the dead man’s pockets. Satisfied there was nothing that would lead them to whoever had sent him, she stood up. “I would kill for you. I would die for you. That is the promise I made to Rask when he gave me a second chance. It is what being part of this team means. Of course, I would prefer not to do the second one. Now, give me a hand.”
Quickly, they gathered the dead man into their arms and lifted him up into the bed.
He was heavier than he looked.
Rye checked the thick vein at the side of his throat for a pulse he knew couldn’t be there, not willing to take anything for granted.
“I told you he’s dead,” the Russian said, pulling the white sheet up over Tenzin Dawa’s ruined face.
It was the most effective hiding place they had; a corpse in a hospital bed was not an unfamiliar sight. So, with a little luck, it would buy them the hours they needed to get wheels up and out of this damned country.
She tapped her earbud, and told the man on the other end, “I need you to make it look like our boy was never here.”
“Already on it,” Byrne said in their ears. “Give me a few minutes and it’ll be like Rye doesn’t exist.”
It hurt to walk.
He was forced to lean on the Russian, favoring his wounded side as he limped painfully toward the bank of elevators.
Before they were halfway there, a grinning Carter Vickers appeared around the corner steering a wheelchair toward them. “In you get,” he told Rye.
He wasn’t about to argue.
THIRTY-THREE
Vic waited for them at the main entrance.
He sat behind the wheel of an SUV identical to the one that Dawa had totaled. The thief and the Russian helped Rye into one of the rear seats, then took up their own positions, one in the front, one in the back with him.
Vic drove the thirty-three minutes out to the airfield like a man possessed, barely slowing for any of the lights, weaving in and out of traffic, always alert, his eyes darting to the rearview and wing mirrors obsessively as he somehow found gaps in the traffic that Rye was sure weren’t there to be found.
The mood in the car was as dark as the night outside of it.
Rye finally broke the silence to say, “I still don’t understand how it could be the same man.”
“Imagine if he comes back a third time,” Carter said. The guy was relentlessly happy. That could wear thin real quick.
“Not happening,” the Russian said, ending the conversation before it could get started. “Whatever Rask believes, there are no such things.”
“Things?” Rye asked.
“Demons,” Iskra said, making a show of just how distasteful her practical mind found the idea. “Aliens. I don’t care what he thinks they are. It’s not my delusion. But then I’m not the one dying.”
Rye said nothing.
“I think you owe it to the boss to at least give him the chance to explain for himself, Ice,” Carter said, using the nickname Rye had given her. “Rather than filling Rye’s head with your own prejudices.”
“Not prejudice, common sense. There’s a difference. We live in a rational world.”
“Says the woman who just killed a man for the second time,” the thief observed. “That might be enough to at least make you wonder.”
The Russian didn’t argue. Instead she closed her eyes and settled back for the rest of the short drive to the waiting Gulfstream.
Rask was already on board.
He looked bone weary. He raised a scotch to the newcomers as they came up the stairs into the luxuriously appointed cabin.
“We shall be pushing back in a few moments,” the pilot informed them over the PA. “Anything you need, the lovely Kevin will be happy to see to your needs. Flight time to Bucharest is estimated at two hours and fifty minutes. Conditions up there are good, so it should be a nice smooth flight.”
Kevin, the one-man cabin crew, closed the door and engaged the seals that would keep the plane pressurized at thirty thousand feet.
“Romania?” Rye asked, taking a seat across from Rask.
“The National Museum of Art has one of the best conservation departments of any facility in Europe. A friend there has agreed to examine the Blavatsky canvas for us out of hours. Their equipment is state of the art. With luck we’ll know what lies beneath the original painting soon. But enough about that, how are you feeling, Mr. McKenna?”
“Sore, but alive,” he said, “which is more than can be said for Olivia.”
“I know,” Rask said. “It is a tragic loss. She was a very special person. Quite brilliant. The amount of knowledge that passes with her doesn’t bear thinking about. Arrangements will be made,” Rask promised. “I have already instructed my legal team to see that a scholarship is set up in her name at her alma mater.”
“Which sounds like a rich man’s way of appeasing his conscience,” Rye said, more bitterness in his voice than he had expected, given the fact he hardly knew the dead woman.
“Perhaps it is,” Rask agreed. “So, how about you? Are you thinking of leaving us, too?”
Rye surprised himself by shaking his head. “No. Not anymore. I was. But things change.” There was no need to say what things. “I want to see this through to the end. Whatever end that might be.”
“I’m glad. May I ask you a question?”
“Go for it.”
“Are you a man of faith, Mr. McKenna?”
He laughed at that. “I wasn’t religious before Hannah was murdered, I’m sure as hell not now.”
Rask looked at him. “That’s not what I asked, though, is it? I asked if you were a man of faith, not if you were religious. I have no time for any sort of god if we are made in their image. I mean, look at the world: Would you want to worship something capable of all this horror?”
Rye couldn’t argue with that. The same thought had crossed his mind a hundred times a day over the last few months. “Did you know there are over four thousand belief systems in the world today? They can’t all be right, so, to believe in one god you reject thousands of others. It all seems a bit desperate to me.”
Rye considered Rask’s words for a moment. “This is all fascinating.” The way he said it suggested it was anything but. “Still, I have to ask how this relates to a forged painting?”
“Patience. Another question, first: Have you heard any of these words before? Shambhala? Cintāmani? Syamantaka? Agartha? Thule? The Ahnenerbe?”
“Yes some, no to others.”
Rask nodded.
“Few people have, fewer still remember them. I would like to tell you a story, if I may?”
“Knock yourself out. We’re on a plane, it’s not like I can go anywhere.”
Rask smiled.
Rye felt the Gulfstream rock on its wheels as it began the slow taxi toward the runway.
“Centuries ago, a chest fell from the sky,” Rask said, his gaze shifting involuntarily upward. “It contained a stone of incredible power; they named it the Cintāmani. The stone was a gift from the Sun God. Such was its might that the stone was split into three fragments: One third was given to Solomon, the king of Jerusalem, and set in his famous signet ring, which of course was lost to antiquity after it was stolen by the Knights Templar. Legend has it that the seal allowed him to summon and speak with demons. The second fragment, the Syamantaka, was said to protect the land from natural disasters: flood, drought, earthquake, and famine. It was set into the Seal of Muhammad, the ring worn by the Prophet. This, too, was lost, this time in Medina. The final fragment was put in the hands of monks from the Dzyan Monastery. It is believed that brotherhood of holy men serve, even now, as the protectors of Shambhala, an ancient, lost city hidden somewhere beneath the surface of the earth, where the Cintāmani is kept safe, away from the world. Where the seal of Solomon could translate languages and Muhammad’s was capable of controlling the elements, this fragment offers the gift of heali
ng.”
“And you’re sick,” Rye said, finally understanding where this quest Rask had them all on was going.
“And I am sick. Very sick. The stone is almost certainly the origin of the Holy Grail legends and, of course, the philosopher’s stone, but I believe it is more than that. I don’t believe in magic or the supernatural,” Rask said, earning a grunt from the Russian in the seat across the aisle.
“Glad to hear it, because then I really wouldn’t be able to help you.”
“There is a phrase, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it, but the notion is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The mind can’t grasp how it works so chooses instead to believe in the miraculous.”
“I’m not following. You’re talking about a rock. How can a stone be any sort of technology, even if it fell from the stars?”
That brought a wry smile to Rask’s thin lips, and in it Rye saw again the shadow of the reaper waiting in some close tomorrow. “Aside from the idea that a stone proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics and ushered in a new age of understanding, opening up the history of the world to us, I believe you’re being too literal in clinging to the word rock rather than the idea of the powers it imbues. If we study the Terma—the holy teachings of Tibet—one of the first things we learn is that many of the great wisdoms fell from the sky. Think about it: wisdom falling from the stars.”
Demons or aliens, that was what Iskra had mockingly said. Now the dying man was making his pitch.
“I have spent much of the last year chasing shadows in the search of the stones, finding my own fragments of tantalizing truths, and believe me, as skeptical as I was when I began this treasure hunt, it is becoming harder and harder to ignore the truth.”
“Well, it is out there, right?” Rye said, unable to help himself.
“You are a very cynical man, Mr. McKenna. I rather like that about you.”
“Not being funny, but I tend to believe in what I can see, touch, taste, and feel.”
“Which is generally a good trait in a person. Now, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I believe the miraculous powers the stories promise are otherworldly, yes, but not supernatural. I believe the contents of that chest, the Cintāmani, represent some form of alien technology. Technology capable of healing the sick. Technology capable of manipulating weather patterns. Technology capable of deciphering languages. And bringing together these three fragments once more will unlock their awesome potential. I’m willing to bet my life on it.”
Rye nodded. “Which is a great story. But, not to sound insensitive, what have you got to lose, right? You’ve already said you’ve spent stupid amounts of money chasing miracle cures that aren’t there. What’s a cure falling from the sky if it isn’t a mythical kind of extraterrestrial snake oil?”
“What if I told you that through an artifact auction conducted on the Dark Web I recently recovered a single page from the Book of Dzyan, the ancient holy book of the Brotherhood sworn to protect the stone? In that text there is a partial description of the two men who arrived at the court of King Lha Thothori Nyantsen bearing the Cintāmani, and they are entirely alien. And by that, I mean our interpretation of alien. Picture, if you will, a towering hairless figure with a disproportionately large head and featureless face lacking ears or nose, but most peculiarly of all, possessing opaque jewellike eyes.”
Rye shook his head. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’d say you’ve been had.”
“Perhaps, but there is no denying that the description, written in a form of ancient Sanskrit that hasn’t been used for more than fifteen hundred years, bears a remarkable resemblance to more modern descriptions of alien life-forms, not least H. G. Wells’ Selenites, moon dwellers who were used as food for the Martians he wrote about, and Gabriel Linde’s Unknown Dangers, of which he said, ‘What was most extraordinary about them were the eyes—large, dark, gleaming, with a sharp gaze.’ Chariots of the Gods, and then of course there are the Roswell aliens and Betty and Barney Hill’s Zeta Reticulans. Strieber’s alien visitors, which he compared to the Sumerian goddess, Ishtar. The same imagery appears in film and television again and again and again, even now. It has to come from somewhere.”
“Then that’s where your description comes from,” Rye reasoned. “From all these books and TV shows.”
“You assume it is a forgery, despite the fact the language of the text is a dead one?”
“I do, and so should you. You could read it, or at least get it translated; stands to reason someone else could do the same thing to make it. Especially when there’s a lot of money on the line.”
“Olivia was one of the only people in the world capable of deciphering that text,” Rask said.
“And she wouldn’t lie to you. I get it. It’s about faith. I don’t know you, Rask, at least not very well, but I appreciate what you’ve done for me, and I’m guessing everyone else on this plane, and I’m willing to see this through to the end purely because I owe you for Matthew Langley. I can understand that you are desperate for a happy ending even when there isn’t one. Any old miracle will do, right? It’s your life. In your place, I think I’d be the same, or I would have been before Langley. But that doesn’t change the fact that your desperation makes you gullible, and if there’s one lesson every rich man from Walt Disney on has learned, it’s that money can’t buy you more life, even if you cryogenically freeze your head. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Or,” Rask posited, “you could argue that this is a description that is deeply rooted in our collective psyche, and these artists are merely tapping into those recessive memories.”
“There are a lot of crazy people out there,” Rye said, the inference being that Greg Rask was one of them.
“It is a relatively easy process to authenticate the age of something, and this page dates back over thirteen hundred years, which is around the time that the Dharma was introduced into Tibet.”
“So, before The X-Files then.”
Across the aisle, Iskra Zima snorted. “I think I like you, Rye.”
Rye inclined his head a little, offering a slight smile.
“Very much so,” Rask said, not rising to the bait.
The idling engine sounds changed as they gathered power, ready to roar along the runway and into the night sky.
“I believe that the man you encountered, Tenzin Dawa, was part of the Brotherhood, and the reason that he did not die easily is that he is one of the Asuras that protect the secrets of Shambhala. The Asuras, like the stone, descended from the stars, though in our simple mythology we named them demons—”
“I did warn you,” the Russian interrupted, raising her own glass to Rask’s particular brand of crazy.
“—which of course goes a long way to explaining the demon-summoning powers of Solomon.”
“If you believe the stories,” Iskra said.
“Even if you don’t, there is no denying that the Brothers of Dzyan will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.”
“An occult brotherhood obsessed with their ancient secrets, I can get behind,” the Russian said. “That makes sense. That’s all about power. That I understand.”
“I’m so glad you approve,” Rask told her.
“And the painting is the key?” Rye asked.
Rask nodded. “I believe it contains a map to their lost city, yes. Though I doubt very much that it will be as straightforward as an X-marks-the-spot kind of thing. Find Shambhala, find the first of the three fragments of the Cintāmani. And, the fates willing, some clues to the location of the other pieces.”
Around them the engines strained. The entire structure of the plane shook as the explosive power of the Gulfstream fought against its brakes, and then surged forward, racing down the runway.
“Can I ask you something?” Rye asked, as they climbed toward cruising altitude.
“Of course you can.”
“What happens when we fail to turn up your miracle?”<
br />
“Then we look elsewhere.”
“Which is what I’m worried about. Even if we go searching all the way to the ends of the Earth, it’s got to end somewhere.”
“It does. With me in a box. I am not naïve enough to think that this is anything but a lost cause, but it’s a lost cause I’m willing to bet my life on, which is my right.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Rye said. “Okay, let’s find us some starry wisdom, shall we?”
THIRTY-FOUR
When Rask said he had a friend in the museum, what he really meant was a guard he’d paid handsomely to look the other way for a few hours.
The National Museum of Art wasn’t as majestic as many of its counterparts across Europe. It was a rather austere four-story building with impressive wings to the left and right that were considerably more spacious than the main colonnaded building itself. There were two sets of wrought-iron gates and, in the middle, a small tree-filled lawn with a bronze statue standing guard. It was right on a busy main thoroughfare offering little in the way of cover for any sort of breaking and entering, even with the guards looking the wrong way.
But Rask had them covered. His money had bought an open door through the gift shop. Rye, moving gingerly, followed Carter and Iskra Zima inside, while Vic kept a lookout from the street. They were all connected through the earbuds Byrne monitored from his nest back in Rask’s HQ in the US. There was a slight delay as the signal was relayed back through Rask Industries own satellite, but nothing compared to what it might have been. It meant that Byrne, who never had to leave home, was a serious resource for the team.
Iskra opened the door. She looked up toward the ceiling as though expecting to trip the alarm despite Rask’s assurances, and when it didn’t go off seemed almost disappointed. She led the way with a high-density flashlight. Getting from where they were to where they needed to be meant traversing several galleries as well as negotiating a maze of corridors.
The galleries contained precious—if not priceless—works of art and were all heavily alarmed. No amount of bribery from Rask would have silenced those alarms. So, they were forced to proceed with caution, touch nothing, brush up against nothing, just in case.