by Rob Jones
“Now it sounds like you are threatening us. A big mistake. You heard about what happened to Johnny Chan?”
A long silence. “I’m sorry. I can be trusted to keep silent, of course. Is the Russian in China yet?”
“What do you know about the Russian?”
“Nothing. I just thought I could show him some Chinese hospitality.”
“I would concentrate more on staying alive. Don’t call me again.”
Then the line went dead.
“So what do we make of that?” Hart asked.
“Not much...” Ryan said, and sighed. “This Russian guy might be worth looking into, and then there’s the reference to the embassy. I’m guessing that means the Tesla device is no longer in China and that they intend to destroy a foreign city with it.”
“It could be anywhere!” Sophie said.
“Tell Hawke,” was all Hart said. “I need to clear my head.” She picked up her jacket and stepped out of the room.
Ryan emailed the information to Hawke and breathed a sigh of relief.
Sophie pulled her hair-tie out and unbuttoned her top. She began to massage Ryan’s shoulders. “I think maybe we need some down-time after all that hard work. “C’est une bonne idée, non?”
In the mirror, Ryan saw her glance at the bed.
He grinned. “Now you’re speaking my language!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Beijing
After an extended and irritating period at Chinese customs during which Scarlet nearly head-butted an immigration official, they finally got out of the airport and back into the city. On the way, Hawke picked up the email Ryan had sent about Li’s intercepted phone call to the mysterious woman and briefed the others.
It didn’t take them long to track down Dr Jenny Tsao. Her home was on the outskirts of Beijing, in one of the more salubrious districts. Hawke, Lea and Han climbed the steps to the house while Scarlet, Lexi and Bradley Karlsson waited outside in their hired Mercedes SUV.
Dr Tsao turned out to be in her early seventies, and opened the door with a cup of tea in her hand and vintage jazz playing on a radio behind her. Steam rose from a pot on the stove in the kitchen behind her and Hawke smelled pork and star anise. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten a proper meal. Tsao saw Han and nodded sagely, gesturing for them to come in without saying a word. She spoke only when they were all gathered in the front room.
“I have waited for this moment all my life,” she said.
“I felt like that about iPhones,” said Lea.
Luckily, Tsao appeared not to have heard her, and instead approached Han. “So, you are younger than I thought you would be. I thought the Guardian of the Truth would be much older.”
“You are thinking of Wei Zheng. He died a year ago.”
Han handed the small box to Jenny Tsao with both hands and she opened it with great care. Inside was a gold ring. “A gift for you, Dr Tsao, from the Temple.”
“You are very kind.” She nodded again, a thin smile on her face. “Now, let me see the missing chapter.”
Slowly, Han turned and began to remove his shirt.
“Steady on!” Lea said, but before she could make another comment both she and Hawke realized what was happening. There, on the monk’s back, hundreds of tattooed Chinese characters glistened in the flickering candlelight.
“I don’t believe it!” Lea said.
“I know...” Hawke’s voice trailed away. “It’s amazing – that’s the missing chapter.”
“No, I meant you were actually speechless for the first time in your life.”
“Oh, that’s very droll, Donovan...”
Han spoke up. “What you are looking at is the thirteenth chapter. It is the only place it exists in the entire world. Only Dr Tsao, the current Reader of the Truth can understand its code. I decided you were worthy to see it back in Khan’s tomb. Surrounded by some of the greatest treasure in the world, you told me you were not interested in the gold and gems, but only stopping Sheng. That is when I knew I could show you the tattoo.”
Jenny Tsao smiled and a tear came to her eye. “I have spent my life studying the ancient code, but never before have I seen the missing chapter. This is priceless.”
Lea moved into the light of the candle on her desk. “It’s beyond priceless.”
“You’re quite right, of course,” she muttered. “What we are looking at could lead the way to the secret of eternal life.”
Hawke noticed Tsao’s hands were shaking. “So you really believe in immortality?”
“Of course, young man,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I am old... I think about immortality much more than you do. Do you not believe in it?”
Hawke rubbed his face and sighed. This again. “If you’d asked me that a few weeks ago I would have laughed in your face and called you an idiot – no disrespect – but after what we’ve been through recently I just don’t know any more. I never got a chance to find out if Poseidon’s trident could live up to its reputation or not – not yet, anyway, and we never got close to the map back in Europe, so for me it’s all still just myths and legends, and yet being so close to it all like this is turning me into a convert.”
Tsao smiled. “As Lao Tzu once said, to the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
Hawke raised an eyebrow and was on the verge of offering a skeptical reply when Lea stopped him. Tsao walked forward and began to read the encoded characters on Han’s back. She ran her leathery fingers respectfully across the symbols tattooed on the young monk’s muscles. She stopped to take off her glasses and rub her tired eyes and then returned to her analysis.
“It’s written by a different writer than the person who wrote the other twelve chapters. That’s obvious at once. It’s absolutely beautiful prose... look here at the description of the sunset on the last night of Khan’s life.” She ran her fingers over the monk’s back once again as she gazed at the characters.
“I’m sorry, Dr Tsao,” Lea said, “but we have so little time...”
Jenny Tsao didn’t even hear Lea’s words. She was too engrossed in the process of decoding the final chapter of the Secret History. “This part here describes Khan’s search for the Philosopher’s Stone – his desperation for its discovery before he died, but of course death took him before he could find it.”
“Where was he searching for it?” Hawke asked.
“The court poet describes something here about a traveler from the west – a man with fiery hair who traded information for gold. He told Khan about an ancient map which led its bearer to the source of eternal life.”
They both leaned in closer to Jenny Tsao and said in unison: “Yes?”
“Apparently, there was a tomb in the west – the tomb of the Sea God, which contained the map, but it was raided by a party of foreigners and the map was stolen. He notes that they must have known the map was in the tomb because they left the rest of the treasure untouched.”
“I can vouch for that...” mumbled Hawke.
“But who were these foreigners?” Lea asked.
Tsao looked up at her, amazed. “They were the Chinese, of course.”
“What?” Lea said, amazed. “You mean to say that old bastard Zaugg was on a wild goose chase from the very beginning?”
Jenny Tsao tutted when she heard the bad language, but nodded in agreement all the same. “The map was stolen by the Chinese when they raided the tomb thousands of years ago.”
“Who raided the tomb?” Hawke asked. “Does it give a name?”
Dr Tsao nodded again, and squinted through her thick glasses as she re-read the tattooed text to make sure of what she was translating. “It does! The map was stolen by a party of tomb raiders working for the Emperor Qin Shi Huang.”
“Ying Zheng?” Lea asked.
Jenny looked up at her and smiled with unfeigned admiration. “You know Chinese history? I’m impressed.”
“It’s more like I know someone who knows Chinese history. Who was Ying Zh
eng?” she asked.
“He was the king of the Qin State, a territory in China over two thousand years ago,” said Han, speaking up again. “He was eventually the first ruler in China to use the title emperor instead of king and he was responsible for a massive expansion of Chinese power, especially to the south. You might know him as the man who unified the Great Wall of China.”
“Ah, I know that one,” Lea said.
“Anyway, Emperor Qin spent a large amount of his reign – and therefore his life – in a fruitless quest for the secret of immortality.”
“I just love it when all this shit comes together,” Lea said, beaming. “It’s like the A-Team.”
“The what?” said Han.
“Never mind. You had to be there.”
“Han is right,” Tsao said quietly. She seemed suddenly anxious. “Qin was so obsessed with the elixir that he even started calling himself “The Immortal”. Many charlatans came to his court to sell him various potions which they claimed would make him live forever and in his desperation he tried them all.”
“He’d have got along like a house on fire with Hugo Zaugg,” Lea said.
“Qin travelled to Zhifu Island many times in search of the elixir because of a simple legend about a mountain there.”
“He left inscriptions...” Han said.
“Yes, he did!” said Tsao nodding and peering over the top of her glasses at the inked symbols. “Tourists can still see them today.”
“But he never found his elixir?” Hawke said.
Han shook his head. “No. He died eating mercury in the belief it would help him live forever, and anyone who knows about mercury knows that’s pretty much the last thing you want to do if you want to live forever. Or even for a few hours.”
“He ate mercury?” Lea said, horrified.
“He did,” Han replied. “It wasn’t so crazy in those days. Even today in fact, some people think eating gold leaf will extend their life. There’s no accounting for crazy, as you Westerners say...”
“But how does all this fit into today?” Hawke asked.
Tsao whispered the reply, still enthralled by the chapter. “Genghis Khan found out that Qin’s men had stolen the map from the vault of Poseidon and had it brought back to their emperor. But this is where the story takes a turn for the worse – at least if you’re Qin Shi Huang. Apparently he...ah!”
“What is it?” Hawke asked.
Han turned his head. “Yes, what is it? What have you read?”
“We have found the most precious hidden gem of all! It is all true... there was a map from the West, brought into China by Qin’s tomb raiders and... he buried it with him in his tomb at Xian!”
“His tomb?”
“Yes, Khan knew this to be the truth and that is why he tried to invade China so many times... the Map of Immortality is in the Emperor Qin’s tomb.”
“Then we have what we need!” Lea said.
“Not so fast,” Tsao said. “It says the map is located in the real tomb, deep beneath the one we all know...and it says he who wishes to hold the map must complete the five trials...”
“The five trials?” Hawke asked, his mind instantly going back to the cave system in Kefalonia where they nearly all died. “What are they?”
Over the next half an hour or so, Jenny Tsao told them everything she could about Khan and Qin and their quest for immortality, both from her own research and from the new text on the monk’s back.
But then without warning she was stopped by the sound of shooting coming from the street.
“What the hell is that?” Lea said.
“I don't know,” Hawke said calmly. “But I don’t like the sound of it.”
He looked outside and saw their SUV under heavy fire. He watched as Cairo, Lexi and Karlsson tried to defend themselves from inside, but they were the definitive fish in a barrel. “Get out of here, you fools!” he shouted instinctively, knowing they couldn’t hear him. Then a loud explosion signaled their attackers had opened a second front on the house and the next thing they knew they were under attack themselves.
Hawke pulled his gun and fired back through the open door. Jenny Tsao staggered back in horror, clamping her hands over her ears to block the tinny report of the pistol, deafening at such a range, but it was too late for her. She was struck in the back and knocked dead in seconds. She collapsed to the floor and Hawke took cover behind her old sofa, while Lea and Han ducked down behind an antique drinks cabinet in the corner.
“How are the others?” Hawke shouted. “I can’t see them from here.”
Lea fired a few shots through the door to keep their attackers at bay for a second while she flicked her head up and looked over the cabinet and scanned quickly outside the window.
“They’re burning rubber, Joe!”
“That’s something, at least.”
“I’m sending Richard an alert!” Lea screamed. “Just in case these bastards get my phone.”
From his position behind the sofa, Hawke could see the now-dead Dr Jenny Tsao sprawled over the floor beneath her desk, and outside in the hall at least three heavily armed men were trying to enter the room.
“They’re here for Han!” Hawke shouted. “And they’ll want Tsao’s computer as well!”
“We can't let them get it.”
Hawke agreed. He aimed his Sig at the laptop and fired two shots at it, totally obliterating it into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Good work!” Lea shouted.
“We have to get Han out of here!”
Hawke and Lea covered the door with a ferocious burst of gunfire to enable Han to get through the window. He watched the monk begin to climb through it, but it was too late. He turned around to see Lea standing in the door with a gun to her head. The weapon was being held by a woman the same size as her, with a shaved head.
“Wrong, Mr Hawke,” the woman said, pushing the gun’s cold steel muzzle hard into Lea’s temple. “It’s time for you to come with us.”
*
“I told you not to drive away!” Scarlet shouted at Lexi.
“It was either that or get killed, you idiot!” Lexi said.
“You never desert your unit!”
“Ladies, please,” Karlsson drawled.
“Shut up!” They both said to him at once.
Bradley Karlsson sunk into his seat and decided to enjoy the rest of the ride in silence as Lexi cruised the Merc through the backstreets of Beijing.
“It was the right thing to do,” Lexi insisted. “I don’t know about your SAS but I was taught to leave the wounded behind.”
“And the SEALs too,” Karlsson added helpfully with a casual shrug of his broad shoulders.
Scarlet had to fight hard not to punch them both. “The SAS teach the same thing, but they weren’t wounded. They were under attack and we drove away.”
“Same thing,” Lexi said. “Now we live to fight another day, and to rescue your friends.”
“If Sheng’s men don’t kill them first, yes.”
“Your problem is that you’re too negative,” Lexi said. “I think you need more Feng Shui in your life.”
“And your problem is that no one trusts you, including me.”
No one said anything else after that. Scarlet contacted Eden and told him what had happened. Moments later she received instructions to drive to Beijing airport where the private jet was waiting to bring them back to Shanghai. They were to regroup with the others and then meet with Lao. She felt like a total failure, but knew there was one person she could rely on to help her claw things back. She picked up her phone and flicked through the speed dial.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hawke stared hard at the man in the white suit. His eyes were obscured by a pair of Persol sunglasses but he didn’t need to see behind them to know who he was looking at.
The man grinned. “You are a very difficult man to get hold of, Mr Hawke.”
Hawke never broke eye contact with him. He was older than he had expected, with silver in
his temples and an ominous snarl that seemed to be a permanent feature on his lean, clean-shaven face.
“My name is Sheng Fang, perhaps you have heard of me?”
Hawke made no reply. His eyes crawled over the room as he assessed the situation for a potential egress point. That seemed unlikely. The only door was behind him, and guarded by two men wearing shoulder-holsters, and behind Sheng was nothing but an enormous window offering an impressive view of downtown Beijing, but too high to use as an escape route. Beside him, Lea said nothing, and Han stood in silence too, measuring his fate.
“And you are even more elusive, monk. You and your secret.”
Sheng lit a cigarette and blew the smoke at the ceiling. “Where are my manners?” He clicked his fingers and an armed man immediately pushed the silver box of cigarettes to Hawke.
“I’m trying to cut back,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Ah – this I think you already know, and if you do not give me what I want, then I will kill you all, starting with the lady.” He fixed his eyes on Lea. “How nice of you to rejoin us, by the way. I was most disappointed with you in Shanghai. You were supposed to be payment for a portrait I desired.”
“You bastard, Sheng!” Hawke moved forward to attack him – an involuntary impulse caused by the thought of Lea being kidnapped and used as common currency, but a second later he felt a heavy blow in between his shoulder blades and collapsed to the floor in a wheezing heap.
“Please, Mr Hawke, I must ask you to refrain from using bad language in the presence of a lady.”
Hawke got to his feet and saw the person who had struck him was the woman with the shaved head who had held a gun to Lea’s head back in Jenny Tsao’s house. She was dressed from head to toe in black. She was smiling sadistically at him as he tried to get his breath back.
“Meet my personal assistant. She calls herself the Lotus.”
Hawke struggled to get the air in his lungs. “She needs work on her interpersonal skills, Sheng.”