Sam said, “Not if we can do anything about it. What’s happened?”
“A cruise ship carrying 3,500 passengers and 1500 crew hit an iceberg and sunk. So far there’s still nearly thirty passengers unaccounted for.”
“That’s bad luck, where was the cruise ship traveling that she didn’t heed ice warnings?” Sam asked.
Randy sighed, his lips curled up in the anguish of a story that he knew no one would believe. “The Strait of Gibraltar.”
“It hit an iceberg in the Mediterranean?”
Randy nodded. “I said it was bad, didn’t I?”
“What else?”
“There are more than five class four hurricanes in the northern hemisphere and six class five cyclones in the southern. Each of them recording winds in excess of a hundred and eighty miles an hour, with three being the most powerful on record.” Randy took a breath and then continued. “A set of tornadoes ripped through Germany, atmospheric rains flooded Las Vegas, and icebergs washed up on Venice beach, too.”
“Atmospheric rains?” Billie asked.
Sam said, “Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport water vapor from the ocean. These columns of vapor move with the weather, potentially moving as much water as the Amazon River. When they make landfall, they can release their entire contents in a very short period of time. They’re pretty common, but can be deadly depending on when and where they hit.”
“Back in 2011, for example,” Tom said. “There was a mass die off of oysters in San Francisco Bay after an atmospheric river overnight dumped so much fresh water that it reduced the salinity of the bay.”
“Sounds pretty bad,” Billie said. “But then so do earthquakes, wildfires, and icebergs where they don’t belong. So what are we going to do about it?”
Tom glanced at his dive computer. “We have another hour before our residual nitrogen levels are low enough to enter the water again.”
Sam said, “After that, we’ll return to the submerged hypogeum and place the third sacred stone – then we’re off to Sigiriya to help Elise deposit the fourth stone.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Sigiriya – Palace in the Sky
Elise took a Qantas flight from Lord Howe Island to Brisbane and then a commercial flight to Colombo Airport, Sri Lanka and from there she chartered a local single-engine aircraft into Sigiriya. All told, she’d been in the air nearly fourteen hours. She’d slept intermittently. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. She glanced at the dark clouds in the sky, they appeared to be somehow getting closer no matter where she went.
Sigiriya was an anomaly in the Sri Lankan landscape. Rising 660 feet from the surrounding land, the monolith had been chosen by King Kasyapa in the fifth century of the Christian Era for the site of a new capital after he had wrested the throne from his father and an older half-brother who was the rightful heir. It was a good choice, eminently defensible. After the king’s death, it was used as a Buddhist monastery until the 14th century, and then fell into oblivion until its rediscovery in 1831 by a British army officer.
Archaeological evidence placed the earliest occupancy of the area around the rock in prehistoric times, and the hills surrounding it were filled with cave dwellings and crude rock shelters. When the rock itself had been selected as both fortress and citadel, it provided places for the uppermost palace, other palaces located behind lavish lower gardens, and a mid-level terrace into which had been carved a massive lion guarding a gate that led to the winding stairway providing the only modern access to the extensive ruins of the citadel palace.
She paid a local driver to take her to Sigiriya – which meant Lion’s Rock – and was a UNESCO listed World Heritage Site. As he pulled up to the entrance to the landscaped gardens she paid him the agreed price, giving him a gold-colored 5000 Sri Lankan Rupee banknote as a tip.
The man looked at her and shook his head. He tried to pass the note back to her. “I can not take this. It is too much. Thank you.”
Elise smiled at his honesty. She squeezed his hand closed on the banknote. “I have two more for you if you wait here until I get back. Can you wait for me?”
The driver’s eyes widened. “Yes. Very good. I will wait here.”
“Thank you.”
She walked up the main path where tourists and locals were funneled by two wire fences into a single gate. A small desk and two security guards checked her passport and her payment before she was allowed entrance onto the heritage site.
Elise moved briskly, meandering through the moats, bridges and stone paths that formed the water gardens. Artificial, rectangular lakes were symmetrically aligned on an east-west axis. Each one was connected to the outer moat on the west and the large artificial lake to the south of the Sigiriya rock. All the pools were also interlinked using an underground conduit network fed by the lake, and connected to the moats. A series of circular limestone fountains, fed by an underground aqueduct system, flowed freely – and was said to have done so for nearly fifteen hundred years.
At the end of the longest rectangular lake she followed a path of stone toward Sigiriya. After a few hundred feet she reached a pair of giant boulders that leaned in against one another to form a natural arch. A signpost said the boulders had once come from high up upon the main citadel, where the king’s warriors would roll them off at intruding armies. Elise smiled as she read the description and looking up at the main Lion’s Rock. It must have been an impossible task to try and overtake the ancient city.
She ducked under the twin boulders and into what was described as the boulder gardens. There, several large boulders were linked by winding pathways. The gardens extended from the northern slopes to the southern slopes of the hills at the foot of Sigiris rock. The pathway took her past eight caves, the walls of which were once adorned with beautiful frescoes. She glanced in each one, but there was nothing to suggest the caves had anything to do with the sacred stone she was carrying in her backpack. She read the note outside one of the caves, which said that the remains of meditation limestone seats, used by ancient monks, were found inside.
She left the last of the big boulders, and entered the terraced gardens at the base of the Sigirya rock. A series of terraces rose from the pathways of the boulder garden to the staircases on the rock. These were created by the construction of brick walls in a concentric mold that hugged the main stone. Just before the Lion’s Staircase, she passed through the Mirror Wall.
Commencing at the top of a flight of steep stairs at the terraced gardens, it traversed a distance of six hundred and fifty feet along a gallery once covered with frescoes to a small plateau on the northern side of the rock on which the Lion Staircase is located.
The Mirror Wall was a parapet wall with a seven-foot-wide inner passageway that inched its way precariously along the near-perpendicular western surface of Sigiriya Rock. The outermost section of this passageway was built up to create a protective wall. The walkway was then paved with polished marble slabs. Only about three hundred and thirty feet of the wall still existed, but brick debris and grooves on the rock face along the western side of the rock clearly show where the rest of the wall once stood.
Archeologists believed that its mirror-like sheen was once achieved by using a special plaster made of fine lime, egg whites, and honey. The surface of the wall was then buffed to a brilliant luster with beeswax. Elise stared at the Mirror Wall. It now appeared to be stained in hues of orange. It was lined with various inscriptions, written by visitors both old and new. A few security guards were protecting it, preventing any further damage. Two thirds of the way along the wall, two steel spiral steps led nearly forty feet up the main rock, so that tourists could get a better view of the remaining frescoes.
The frescoes were remarkable artistic feats for their time. They depicted the upper half of bare-breasted women, who were believed to be Sinhalese maidens in the posture of performing various tasks. Some archeologists believed it was poss
ible they were the King’s wives or merely performing some sort of religious ritual. Elise stared at a couple of the frescoes. Despite depicting near naked women there was nothing lewd, indecent or seductive about their appearance.
She walked to the end of the Mirror Wall, where it opened up to the Lion’s Staircase. That stairway now held hundreds of people slowly making their way to the top. Elise eyed the rickety-looking structure with doubt. It looked as if it might collapse with just her weight. How was it holding so many people, and when would it break loose from its moorings and send them all to their deaths?
She shuddered. She’d been documenting dozens of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions around the globe for weeks. Even a minor tremblor in this location would dash everyone on that stairway to the rocks below. She would almost prefer the shallow stone steps carved into the side of the living rock itself.
As the crowd shifted, she moved to the next step and waited again. At this rate, it would take hours to reach the summit. Careful to avoid knocking over the tourist behind her, she removed her backpack and dug in it for a bottle of water. Although the day was overcast, the temperature was already approaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and with high humidity it would have been suffocatingly hot but for the wind.
A monk wearing the traditional orange Kashaya robe, about fifteen feet back from her, met her eye and smiled. It was a perfectly harmless and natural thing to do. A basic form of kind communication. But something about it stirred her most primitive self-defense mechanisms. What was it? He seemed to recognize her. The thought was absurd. Few people outside of Sam’s crew knew her. Even if the monk was connected to the people who’d attacked Sam at the Great Blue Grotto or Tom and Genevieve at Orvieto, it was impossible to think they would recognize her – let alone guess that she would be traveling to Sigiriya.
She smiled back, politely and continued up the steps. Elise was slim and athletic. She was lithe and moved with speed when there was a gap in the tourists ahead. Slowly, she outpaced the monk. The stranger seemed indifferent and made no attempt to catch up with her.
Perhaps she just was being paranoid?
Elise could hardly believe her watch when she reached the top. Granted, she’d bypassed areas where others stopped to take in the magnificent view or detoured to see the frescoes. But she’d made it to the top in only forty-five minutes, according to her watch. It had felt like two hours. Elise made her way to one end of the ruins and moved from side to side, looking for any way to enter the dig where she might access the passages she knew must be inside.
The top of Sigiriya were the remains of a unique masterpiece of architecture. A city based on a precise square module. The tiered layers reminded her of Machu Picchu, as she purposely climbed the series of graded levels toward the palace complex at the summit. From there, she could see that the layout extended outward from the coordinates at the center and the palace complex at the summit, with the eastern and western axis directly aligned to it. A combination of symmetry and asymmetry worked to interlock the man-made geometrical and natural formations.
To the west of Sigiriya rock was a park for the royals, laid out on a symmetrical plan. The park contained water-retaining structures, including sophisticated surface and subsurface hydraulic systems, some of which still worked today. To the south was a large rectangular reservoir. She turned toward the east, looking for any other spot where an opening to an underground area or tomb could have been hidden. There were none.
Instead, she spotted the same monk again. Out of a crowd of more than two hundred tourists, she immediately spied him. Her defensive nerves stirred again. The monk was staring right at her. His dark brown eyes, fixed in a mysterious and indeterminable gaze. He smiled at her again. This time she turned her head without smiling back.
She moved quickly, searching the rest of Sigiriya’s architectural remains. At the end of two hours, she’d exhausted every potential hiding place, with the exception of the large water reservoir to the south. There was always the possibility a hidden tunnel formed beneath the bottom of the murky water, but that would have to be Sam’s problem when he got there, not hers. Without dive equipment any attempt to reach the bottom would be futile.
Elise moved to the stairs. There were two sets running parallel. One for those going up and another for those going down. There was less traffic going down. About half the way down three older tourists slowed her pace to a very slow crawl. It didn’t bother her. There was no rush, she’d exhausted all locations she could think of to find the receptacle for the sacred stone and there was nothing she could do but wait until Sam and the rest of the team arrived.
She took the time to enjoy the view of the Sri Lankan landscape. She turned around, studying the upper reaches of the rock and then stopped. Her hart leapt into a gallop. Moving down the stairs above, was the monk she saw spying on her earlier. He wasn’t going fast and if it wasn’t for the older tourists who were slowing her down, she would have easily reached the bottom before him. She glanced at him and he smiled. She had never known that a smile could evoke such terror.
Elise jumped the railing between the up and the downward stairs and quickly passed the three tourists who were slowing her down. She moved quickly down a dozen or so steps, before stealing another glance at the monk, just to satiate her fears that he was going to catch up to her.
She swore. The monk was now moving quickly, darting across the railing where required to pass any tourists between them. It was the first proof that she wasn’t crazy or paranoid, he really was stalking her.
Elise raced down to the base of the Lion’s Stairs. At the bottom, she looked up to see how much of a lead she’d made. The steep stairs were still crammed full of tourists. Elise frantically scoured the rows of people meandering along the face of the giant stone, trying to find the monk.
She swore.
Because she’d lost sight of the monk.
Chapter Fifty-Six
It’s one thing to see your enemy, but another, much worse beast, when you can’t see him anymore. Elise looked toward the base of the stairs, half expecting to see him there, but instead she simply saw the throng of tourists.
She turned and started to run. She passed the Mirror Wall and kept running, as she descended each of the terraces that made up the terraced garden. On the last tier, just before she descended through the boulder garden, her eyes swept up toward the highest terrace – there, she spotted a monk, but he appeared much younger and more athletic than the one who was following her.
Even so, the sight spurred her into greater action. She turned and ran. This time increasing her pace to a sprint. There were few tourists to hinder her progress within the boulder garden. She breathed deeply and her lungs burned. Determined to reach her waiting driver before the monk caught her, she just hoped her driver was still waiting.
Taking three steps at a time, she ran through the first set of natural caves formed by giant boulders that leaned in on each other and then across a gentle slope, into a small tunnel. Where something caught her left leg.
She stumbled forward, without seeing what she’d tripped on and braced for the hard impact with the stone ground below – but it didn’t come. Instead, she fell into another tourist, who helped brace her, and stopped her falling.
Elise caught her breath and stood up again. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“That’s quite all right,” he said, his low voice accented but his English perfect. “Next time, you must walk slowly and be careful.”
“I’m sorry…” She was about to protest that someone was after her, when she felt the hard steel – of what she could only assume was the barrel of a handgun – digging into her spine just below her backpack.
“Walk this way, will you please?” he told her in a whisper.
Elise’s eyes darted across the tunnel, taking in the innocent group of people from a new tourist bus approaching. Her ears picked out the polyglot sounds of the crowd, and homed in on the higher voices of children. She might have been able to
take escape if she was on her own. But here, it was too dangerous. He might shoot, and with others so close, someone else might be injured by the bullet that would rip through her. A struggle could start a chain reaction. Besides, she needed to survive if the fourth sacred stone was to be placed. Better to wait for another chance. She made her decision in a split second.
“All right. Take it easy,” she answered, her head turned down and her voice as soft as his had been. She began moving forward, careful to keep her pace steady, watching her feet. If she stumbled, he could take it as a deliberate move to escape. It might be her head that the bullet ripped through, rather than her spine. She felt his hard body crowding close, no doubt to conceal the weapon at her back. He was probably of average height, fit.
She kept walking.
Once outside the cave, he said to her, “Turn left here.”
She glanced to her left. There was no path in that direction. Only the gradually undulating slope with a thick forest of ancient Sri Lankan jungle.
She felt the pressure of the gun barrel increase, as her attacker tried to dissuade her from attempting to flee.
“Okay, okay… I’m going.”
“Good. Don’t be stupid. I can make this a lot more painful if you force me to.”
She kept walking. At the same time, she was searching for an escape, somewhere. The gradient increased and she wondered if she twisted, could she bring him rolling down with her? Not if she didn’t want to get shot first. She would need to keep going and hope something would come up. She could hear the thump of her pounding heart in the back of her head and she knew her options were getting slim.
She would need to take a chance. The first one she got.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“The same thing you want.”
“Really?” she smiled at that. “You want to save the human race from extinction, too?”
Code to Extinction Page 23