Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan

by Jonathan W. Stokes

  Addison sighed. Molly had been making a lot of good points lately. “Okay, Mr. Jacobsen, lick away.”

  The summer constellations blossomed overhead: Sagittarius, Aquarius, and Lyra. Addison was used to seeing only two or three stars at night in Manhattan, where every skyscraper shimmered with light. But here in the Mongolian steppe, there seemed to be millions of stars to speckle the sprawling sky.

  “Let’s have a look at that clue,” said Dax, chewing a fresh sprig of millet. Addison handed over his notebook, and Dax tilted it to the firelight.

  “‘Praise be to the Lord, my Rock,

  who trains my hands for war,

  my fingers for battle.

  God is my shield, my sword, my helm, and my lance.’”

  “Guy really likes saying that, doesn’t he?” said Dax, looking up.

  “He was writing in the Dark Ages,” said Addison. “They started everything with a prayer. What does it say next?”

  The dried crabgrass crackled in the fire, sending up small bursts of sparks. Dax crinkled his brow and read.

  “‘At the palace of Prestor John

  I bested his top warrior in single combat;

  He swore to keep my sign forever hanging

  Among the weapons in his trophy room.’”

  “Again, not big on rhyming,” said Eddie.

  “He was too busy battling Mongol warriors,” said Raj.

  “It’d be a crime to rhyme all of the time,” said Addison. “It’d hardly be sublime,” he added.

  Molly brought things back on track. “Sounds like all we have to do is find the palace of Prestor John. And then poke around in his trophy room.”

  “I’ve read about Prestor John. He was a Mongol lord named Wang Khan. It was the Christians who called him John.” Addison flipped through the index of his copy of The Travels of Marco Polo. “Marco visited Wang Khan’s palace in the Black Forest by the sacred Tuul River. Now, where is the Tuul River . . .” Addison dug his copy of Fiddleton’s Asia Atlas out of his messenger bag.

  “Addison, how many books are you carrying in that bag?” asked Molly. “I thought we were only supposed to carry necessities.”

  “Books are necessities.” He thumbed through the index of Fiddleton’s Asia Atlas and peered at the map of central Mongolia. “The capital city of Ulaanbaatar. That’s where we’ll find Wang Khan’s palace.”

  “Ulaanbaatar is east of us,” said Dax, shaving fresh kindling into the fire with his bowie knife. “There are no roads on the steppe, so the horses can take us straight there. There are mining villages every ten miles or so, but we can steer clear of them.”

  Addison studied Dax thoughtfully. He felt he had misjudged the man. His uncle Nigel had said Dax was useful in a scrape, and Dax had proven that in the past few days. “When did you first meet my uncle?”

  “When I was flying intelligence missions for the navy.”

  “You were a spy?” Raj asked. He didn’t think his admiration for Dax could soar any higher, but Dax kept raising the bar.

  The pilot shrugged. “I just marked the locations of bunkers and silos and tried not to get shot down.” He poked the fire with a stick and fresh sparks drifted up into the night. “Your uncle requested an airdrop behind enemy lines. Some archaeological relic he needed to save.”

  Addison could not picture his uncle Nigel parachuting, but he supposed it was a long time ago. “What country was it?”

  Dax shook his head. “Still classified.”

  “Did he get the relic?” asked Molly.

  Dax nodded.

  “What happened to you, Dax?” asked Addison. “How did you go from navy pilot to smuggler?”

  Dax leaned back, crossed his hands behind his head, and stared up at the starry night. “I became a bush pilot in Tanzania. My job was to follow the elephant herds across the Serengeti and hunt for poachers.”

  “So you were a poacher poacher.”

  Dax nodded. “I liked the work. I tried hard. Soon I was poached by a rival wildlife agency.”

  “You were a poached poacher poacher?” asked Addison.

  Dax nodded again. “They moved me to Zimbabwe to track white rhinos. There, I met a beautiful Danish girl and fell in love.”

  “Here we go,” said Eddie.

  “One night I got back from a sortie and she was gone.”

  “Someone poached her?”

  Dax shrugged. “I only know she took my car, half my pride, and all my money.” He patted Mr. Jacobsen. “All she left me was her Danish dog.”

  “German,” corrected Raj.

  “After that, my luck ran south. I couldn’t seem to win back my money at the blackjack table. I kept trying and dug a deep hole. Don’t ever go into debt, kid.”

  “Do you ever think of going back to Tanzania?” asked Addison. “You were happy there.”

  Dax’s eyes settled on the middle distance as he gazed back into the far reaches of his memory. “I think about it sometimes. There were mornings I’d go up in my Cessna Skyhawk—a beautiful plane—and glide into the golden dawn. I’d see the morning mist rise off the Serengeti and swear I’d gone back in time. I’d swear I was the first man in the world.”

  “You could go back, you know. There’s nothing stopping you.”

  Dax shook his head, returning to the present. “You can never go back, kid.” He stood up and kicked the dust off his boots. “The only direction a pilot needs to look is forward.”

  When Addison was drifting off to sleep, he heard the horses whinnying and stomping on the mesa. He, Raj, and Molly roused Eddie out of bed and crossed behind the barn to investigate. They found Dax saddled up and leading the string of extra mares. “Where you going?” asked Addison.

  “Reconnaissance,” said Dax, reining the horses east.

  “He’s going to sell those extra horses so he can gamble in the next mining town,” said Molly in a low voice.

  Dax’s face was hidden in the dark. His horse chewed its bit and sidestepped until Dax shook the reins. “I’ll be back before you wake.” He kicked the horses into a trot.

  Addison watched him gallop away.

  “Why does he do it?” asked Eddie.

  “Because he’s unhappy,” said Molly.

  Addison suddenly felt very alone on the open prairie, the eerie wind whistling through the barren land.

  • • • • • •

  They assigned watches to guard the remaining horses and prepared to go to sleep. Molly gathered firewood behind the barn, and Addison went to fetch fresh water from the well pump. So they were in two completely different locations when they both saw the shadow of a Mongol warrior slipping through the night.

  Addison and Molly sprinted back to the campfire and were confused when they both blurted out the same story.

  Raj crossed his arms and crinkled his brow. “So what you’re saying is, there are Mongolian ghosts hanging out behind the barn.”

  “You all heard Uncle Nigel talk about the Black Darkhad,” Addison insisted. “Legend says Genghis Khan’s tomb is guarded by ten thousand Ghost Warriors!”

  Raj frowned. “If there was such thing as ghosts, I’d be flabbergasted.”

  “You mean you’d be flabberghosted,” said Eddie.

  Addison insisted that the group set a trap. “If it was just me who saw it, I would assume I was crazy and leave it at that. But Molly saw it, too. And what are the odds we’re both crazy?”

  “Well,” Eddie reasoned, “you are related.”

  “Guys,” said Addison, “I don’t know how else to say this. Code Blue.”

  They stuffed their sleeping bags with straw to make them look occupied and left them in the half-light of the dying fire. Addison gathered the remaining horses and corralled them inside the barn. He, Molly, Eddie, and Raj climbed up the barn ladder and hid in the hayloft. They waited for the
Mongol to appear.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Black Darkhad

  ADDISON’S TEAM STAYED UP late into the night, carefully concealed under a half foot of hay, with Molly heroically suppressing her sneezes. Palest starlight cast the hills in black and white, a photo negative of the world. Under the great black dome of the sky, the grasslands were a dark ocean, unnavigated. Sometime around midnight, Molly pricked up her ears and shook Addison back to full alertness. Two figures appeared in the calico shadows of the campfire’s embers and made their way stealthily to the barn doors, stepping inside.

  In the moonlight, Addison saw two cloaked Mongolian warriors. Dark turbans covered their heads and faces. Only their eyes glittered in the darkness. They moved with the silent grace of wraiths, soundlessly opening the stalls to steal the horses. Eddie watched in terror, but Addison only smiled. The Mongols had taken the bait.

  Raj waited until the Mongols were in place before springing his carefully constructed trap. He toppled a heavy iron plow out of the hayloft. It yanked a rope over a pulley, hauling up a tarp Raj had hidden under the hay-covered floor. The Mongols were scooped up into the tarp and dangled from a crossbeam.

  “Yes!” Raj exclaimed, pumping his fist. Addison had told him his trap wouldn’t work, and here it was working perfectly.

  The tarp immediately snapped under its weight and fell to the ground with a crash. The Mongols rolled free and sprang to their feet.

  “Bummer,” said Raj, completely deflated.

  Addison was already shimmying down the hayloft ladder. He dashed to the barn door and slid it shut, preventing the Mongols’ escape.

  Molly ran straight for them, attacking head-on with a blistering flurry of punches and kicks. Kung fu was a Chinese martial art, and Molly was pretty sure the Mongols wouldn’t know anything about it.

  She was profoundly mistaken.

  The Mongols deflected every strike before turning on Molly with terrifying force.

  Molly saw only a whirling tornado of fists and feet from which she desperately tried to escape, weaving in and out of the horse stalls and through the horses’ legs. One blow caught her on the chin and another above her eye.

  “I’ll save you, Molly!” Raj valiantly joined the fray, providing the Mongol warriors with a second punching bag.

  In the midst of the chaos, Molly scored a single roundhouse kick on the smaller of the two Mongols, and had the satisfaction of hearing the Mongol grunt. She immediately regretted it, as the kick seemed to whip her attackers into a deadlier state of fury.

  The larger Mongol slipped past Raj and tried to jerk open the barn doors. To the warrior’s astonishment, the doors were chained and locked. The warrior rattled the chains and kicked angrily at the door. He delivered a sharp sidekick to Addison’s ribs that sent him sprawling to the ground.

  Addison winced and clutched his side. He could not believe his ribs had been bruised twice in the same spot. He swallowed his pain and stood shakily to his feet. As calmly as he could, Addison smoothed the lapels of his school blazer and removed a stray piece of hay from one sleeve. “There’s no way out, you know.”

  “Give us the key,” the larger Mongol growled in slightly accented English.

  “I don’t have it. We’re locked in here.”

  “What?” said the Mongol.

  “What?” said Molly, Eddie, and Raj.

  “Why would you do that?” asked the smaller Mongol.

  “We’re trapped in here with these things?” asked Molly.

  Addison rubbed his aching ribs and addressed the taller Mongol. “It was the only way to ensure you couldn’t escape. If I had the key, you could just take it.”

  The Mongol looked down at the padlocked door. “Well, where is the key?”

  “I threw it out the hayloft window. Dax can unlock us in the morning when he sees we’re not at breakfast.”

  “You’re assuming Dax will even come back,” said Molly angrily.

  The Mongols looked at each other uncertainly.

  “I have my lock-picking set,” Raj volunteered.

  “That’s great, Raj,” said Molly. “We’ll be trapped in here for months.”

  Addison turned on his flashlight. In its beam, the Mongols didn’t look quite so tall or intimidating. One of them was Addison’s height. The other was shorter.

  “If you’re ghosts,” Raj reasoned, “you should have cleared out of here by now. You know, melted through a wall or something.”

  The Mongols said nothing.

  Addison sighed. “Frankly, I’m disappointed. If we had really captured two ghosts, we would be famous throughout the scientific community. Finally, I could be in National Geographic.”

  The larger Mongol struggled against the door again and gave up. He turned to Addison, defeated.

  Addison smiled. “Well, then. If we’re going to spend the night together, we might as well get acquainted.” He extended his hand. “Addison Cooke. Pleasure to meet you.”

  • • • • • •

  The larger warrior took off his helmet and unwrapped the black turban that hid his face. He was a Mongolian boy, about sixteen, with a suntanned face. “My name is Khenbish.”

  Addison tried to wrap his tongue around the strange Mongolian pronunciation. “Khen-bish?”

  “It means ‘Nobody,’” said the boy.

  “Your name is Nobody?” Raj blurted out.

  “The evil spirits cannot find me if I am Nobody,” Khenbish explained.

  Addison nodded. He had to remind himself he was six thousand miles from Manhattan and that not everything was going to make perfect sense. In fact, things often didn’t make sense in Manhattan, either. “So when you go to the library and check out a book, Nobody checked out a book.”

  “Yes.”

  Addison rarely had to reach far to find a response. But in this instance, he was thrown off his balance entirely. “Wow,” he said finally. “For days we’ve been followed by Nobody.”

  “Explains why we didn’t find any tracks,” said Raj.

  Addison noticed that both Mongols wore swords strapped to their backs, but neither had chosen to use them. He took this as a good sign. “Okay, then,” said Addison, turning to the shorter Mongol. “What is your name?”

  The shorter Mongol was still crouched in a fighting stance. Reluctantly, the warrior relaxed, pulling off both helmet and turban. To Addison’s astonishment, the warrior was a girl, long black hair spilling from her helmet and streaming down her back. She was about fourteen and looked at Addison with haughty resentment. “I Don’t Know.”

  “You don’t know your own name?” Raj was astounded.

  “I do know my name: Medekhgüi.”

  “What does Medekhgüi mean?” asked Addison.

  “I Don’t Know,” said the girl.

  Addison was a little out of his depth, but still felt he could make his way back to shore. “So if you call a friend on the phone, and they ask who’s calling, you say, ‘I Don’t Know.’”

  The girl nodded impatiently. “My name is very common in Mongolia.”

  Addison wanted to make sure he wrapped his mind around this. “So your dad turned to your mom and said, ‘What should we name her?’ And your mom said, ‘I don’t know.’ And your dad said, ‘Sounds good!’”

  The girl nodded. “Mongolians are superstitious people. My name confuses the evil spirits.”

  “I can see how,” said Addison, who was thoroughly confused.

  “Did you follow us all the way from Kashgar?” Molly cut in.

  “What? No. That’s impossible,” said Nobody. “We’re not actually ghosts.”

  “Well, I saw you in Kashgar,” said Molly, “and I’m not actually crazy.”

  “There are many of us, spread throughout the Khan’s empire. We have radios, a whole network of outposts. You must have seen another
member of our order in Kashgar.”

  “We’ve been following you since the Gobi Desert,” said the girl.

  “How?” asked Addison. Somehow, he found everything she said utterly fascinating.

  “We knew your plane escaped Kashgar. But it never landed in Karakoram. My brother and I patrol the Gobi. We’re young, so they give us the patrols no one else wants.”

  Molly planted her fists on her hips and squinted at the girl. “It was you who stole our camels and sold them to a trader in Karakoram.”

  Neither Nobody nor I Don’t Know answered.

  “We could have died out there!” said Eddie.

  “And you were trying to steal our horses again tonight!” said Molly.

  Nobody and his sister suddenly seemed very skilled at not talking.

  “We’ve got all night,” said Addison.

  “We did not mean to harm you,” Nobody said at last. “Our duty is to prevent you from discovering the Mongols’ secrets.”

  “You say you don’t want to harm us,” said Molly, “but you tried to kill us in the Thousand Buddha Caves today.”

  “We did not hit you with any rocks. We were only trying to frighten you away.”

  “Are you Black Darkhad?” asked Addison.

  Nobody bowed. “We are descendants of Muqali and Bo’orchu, the renowned generals of Genghis Khan. When the Great Khan died in 1227, our clans were tasked with guarding his tomb. Our families have kept this vigil for thirty-eight generations. We are the Black Darkhad, the Ghost Warriors.”

  Raj’s mouth hung open. He had never met a Ghost Warrior before. He had never even known he wanted to. And now here there were two of them—an embarrassment of riches. He found he had only one burning question. “How come your English is so good?”

  Nobody shrugged. “TV.”

  “So,” said Addison, getting down to business. “Where is the tomb of Genghis Khan?”

  “I don’t know,” said I Don’t Know. “None of our clan has ever tried to find it.”

  “Then what are you guarding?”

  “We guard the clues that lead to the tomb. It’s safer if we don’t know the actual location—then we cannot be tortured for information.”