“A sniper’s rifle is like an artist’s favorite brush,” Jack murmured. “An old Soviet bolt-action can kill as well as the latest Barrett.”
“One question,” Costas said. “Your family’s been part of this since the time of the First Emperor. Sixty-six generations. How do we know you’re not one of the bad guys?”
Katya cast him a baleful look. “Because they murdered my uncle. Because there are no others in my family. Because of a pledge my ancestors made more than two thousand years ago. And because the creed of Shang Yong has nothing to do with that history. It’s an abomination. And because he will try to kill me—and all of us—as soon as we lead him to the jewel. It’s as simple as that.”
“So this valley we’re heading to,” Costas said, looking at Jack. “Sounds like sniper alley. Do we get any ISAF protection?”
“You could have a battalion of special forces up there combing the slopes, rangers, SAS, and they still wouldn’t see a sniper that good,” Jack replied.
Pradesh had been listening quietly, and glanced at Costas. “Jack and I have talked about this. If we want ISAF help to hunt one man and a rifle, that’s a no go. Up here some of the local warlords are strong enough to confront the Taliban themselves. The ISAF commanders know that’s the way forward. Let the warlords get on with it themselves, and don’t make yourself their enemy too. The Taliban murdered and raped their way through here when they were in power, and Afghans have long memories. So we’ll only get limited reactive assistance or medevac. Once we pass through the air-base at Feyzabad, we’re on our own until we meet this former mujahideen chap Altamaty knows, the local warlord. Then we have to run the gauntlet of a couple of villages where there might be Taliban infiltrators, and there’s always the possibility of IEDs, suicide bombers. But if Altamaty really can get the warlord on our side, that’s a big step forward.”
“What’s our cover story?” Costas asked. “Aren’t they going to assume we’re CIA or something?”
“Film crew,” Jack said. “We’re following the exploration of John Wood in 1836 in search of the source of the river Oxus. We’ve even got the battered old book for authenticity.”
“Sounds like a dream project of yours, Jack,” Katya said.
“One day.” Jack flashed her a smile. “I’d love to. When the fighting’s over.”
Costas peered at the map. “What’s the place with the mines called again?”
“The Koran Valley,” Jack said.
The aircraft banked to port, and they heard the rumble of the undercarriage lowering. Altamaty had been staring out of the window, but turned as Jack spoke, hearing the word. He looked at Katya, and spoke softly:
“Agur janub doshukh na-kham buro
Zinaar Murrow ba janub tungee Koran”
Costas turned to her. “Meaning?”
She gave him a steely look. “It’s Pashtun. Something Altamaty learned when he was captured by the mujahideen up here. If you wish not to go to destruction, avoid the narrow valley of Koran”
The plane bounced on the runway. “Perfect,” Costas grumbled. “Another choice holiday hot spot.”
Afghanistan, 22 September 1908
THE TWO MEN BOUNCED AND TUMBLED DOWN THE pile of rock chippings that half filled the entrance to the mine, desperately scrabbling for handholds and kicking against the scree to find some kind of purchase. They came to a halt side-by-side, lying near the bottom of the pile. They could still see the mine entrance, the gray sky outside, a slit of light at the top of the mound about a pistol shot away. Beyond them the shaft continued into pitch darkness. At more than twelve thousand feet of altitude the air was thin, and they panted and coughed in the pall of dust they had raised as they slid down the slope. John Howard turned his head toward the figure beside him, then blinked hard and peered at the wall of the mineshaft. He could see pick marks, all over the rock. A shaft of light from the entrance lit up the ceiling. There was no doubting it. Streaks of blue, speckled with gold. He began to laugh, or cry, he hardly knew which, then coughed painfully. “Robert,” he whispered. “Have you seen? It’s lazurite.”
“I’ve just collected a specimen.” Howard felt relief to hear Wauchope’s voice, the Irish accent with its American twang still strong despite all his years in British service. In the desperate fight outside, Howard had wondered whether he would ever hear it again. He blinked hard, and tried to take stock. He was lying on his front, limbs splayed out, hands forward, his right hand still holding the old Colt revolver, a wisp of smoke coming from the chamber he had fired a few moments before. His left hand was clasped tight around the ancient tube of bamboo, ten inches long, blackened and shiny with age. They had taken it out to read the papyrus inside just before they were attacked, after they had stowed their bags on the valley floor, and he had clutched it close to him through the desperate climb to this place, seeking paths that the horse of their pursuer could not negotiate.
Wauchope rolled onto his back beside him. Howard watched him break open his Webley revolver, eject the spent cartridges and reload from a pouch on his belt, glancing up at the tunnel entrance as he did so. He put down the revolver and picked up something in his left hand. It was a fragment of blue rock. He fumbled with his other hand for a little leather pouch hanging from his neck, raising himself on one elbow, wincing as it bit into the rock. He took out a scratched old monocle from the bag, placed it over his left eye and then craned his neck forward, inspecting the fragment closely. “When Lieutenant Wood came to this place seventy years ago, he said there were three grades.” Wauchope peered again. “This is the superior grade. That sparkle of gold is iron pyrites. It’s the nielo, just as Licinius described it.” He took off the monocle and slumped back. For a moment all Howard could hear was the sound of his own breathing, sharp, rasping. He watched his exhalation crystallize in the cold mountain air. Wauchope rolled his head over and looked at him. “You know what this means.”
“It means,” Howard said, “that by some act of divine providence those ghouls chased us into the right mine-shaft. Wood said there was only one shaft that produced the superior grade. And look at those pick marks on the rock above us—and the soot from fires used to crack the rock. This shaft has been mined for thousands of years.”
Howard closed his eyes. The rock chips he was lying on were jagged and unforgiving, but he seemed hardly to feel them at all. It was strange. He opened his eyes and peered at Wauchope. The two men were scarcely recognizable from three months before, when they had left Quetta one night and made their way toward the border, disappearing into the wilds of Afghanistan. And now here they were, thirty years after their escape from the jungle shrine, their faces sun-scorched and craggy like the mountain valleys, weather-beaten old men with matted gray beards. They both wore turbans, impregnated with dust, and heavy Afghan sheepskin overcoats tied around the middle, the matted wool turned inward as protection against the bitter cold that had begun to course through the mountains in their final treacherous approach to the mines. Beneath Wauchope’s upturned collar, Howard could see the leather Sam Browne belt and khaki of his uniform, the colonel’s pips and crown visible on one shoulder. They were both officially retired, but they knew they would be treated as spies by the Afghans if they went without uniform and would suffer a fate worse than death. It had been their profession for thirty-five years, as officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, and it seemed the most natural thing to wear the uniforms they had worn all their adult lives, on their last and greatest adventure together.
Howard caught Wauchope’s eye. They both grinned, and then began to shake, laughing uncontrollably. They had made it. Howard suddenly coughed, and spat blood over the rocks.
“Good God, man,” Wauchope said, pushing himself upright and leaning over him. “You’re wounded!”
“I took a sword thrust.” Howard swallowed hard, tasting the tang of blood on his lips. “The horseman who came behind us on the trail. The one with the gauntlet sword. Just as we were scrambling up that rock on the way in he
re. In my back. Left side.”
Howard felt Wauchope untie his sheepskin coat. He eased the bamboo tube out of Howard’s left hand, placing it carefully on the rocks, and took his arm out of the sleeve. “Gently does it.” He lifted the coat up, and felt the dampness down Howard’s side. He let the coat back, tucking it carefully under him, and put his arm back in the sleeve, gently lying it on the rocks in its original position. He put his hand on Howard’s right shoulder. Howard could feel the tenseness in the other man’s fingers.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he said quietly.
“It missed the liver, that’s for certain. It may have gone into the pleural cavity, beneath the lung. I’ve seen men bounce back from a wound like that, up and about in no time.”
“It’s gone into the lung, Robert. The blood’s frothy. My breathing’s getting shorter.”
Howard saw Wauchope kneel up, stare hard at the entrance to the cave, take a deep breath then untie his waistband and shrug off his sheepskin. He adjusted his Sam Browne belt, slid his holster into the correct position and brushed off the front of his tunic. Howard shut his eyes. So this was it.
“We know it’s in here somewhere. What we’re after.” Wauchope jerked his head toward the darkness behind them.
“They know too.”
“They don’t know which mine entrance we hid inside. When I emptied my revolver at them, they fell back. That bought us some time. And when they do find us, they won’t know this is the one. They won’t know that we happened to stumble into precisely the shaft we were looking for. The place where Licinius hid the jewel two thousand years ago.”
“They’ll search every one. They’ll find us, then they’ll find the jewel.”
The jewel. Howard felt the blood well up in his throat. He felt as if he were slowly drowning. He would show no fear. He looked at the ancient bamboo cylinder that Wauchope had laid on the rock beside him. The velpú, the sacred relic they had taken from the jungle shrine nearly thirty years before, their guarantee of safe passage out of hell that dark night, so etched in Howard’s consciousness it could have been yesterday. Howard had kept it, along with the tiger-headed gauntlet, the shape that had so terrifyingly reappeared on the arm of their pursuer only a few hours ago. They had guessed that they were being followed, but their enemy had only struck on the valley floor below, once they had reached the fabled lapis lazuli mines of Sar-e-Sang. Howard had seen the mounted warrior who had led the phalanx of armed men up the valley toward them, masked like a tiger dragon, had glimpsed the flash of gold at his wrist as the warrior drew out his great gauntlet sword, the shape of the tiger head just like the one Howard had taken from the jungle tomb.
That gauntlet was not with him now, but they had brought the velpú for what it contained. Ten years after their jungle escape their paths had crossed again at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, and one night they had locked themselves in the library and opened up the bamboo tube. What they had found was no idol, no god, but a roll of ancient papyrus, paper made from pressed reeds that Howard had recognized from his visits as a boy to the British Museum. Egyptian papyrus, in the jungle of southern India. That had been incredible enough. But it had writing on it, letters that Wauchope recognized as identical in style to the words he had glimpsed carved on the tomb in the jungle shrine. Hic iacet Licinius, optio XV Apollinaris, sacra iulium sacularia. Here lies Licinius, optio of the 15th Apollinaris, guardian of the celestial jewel. But the inscription on the papyrus was longer. And what it said was astonishing, words that had been etched in Howard’s mind ever since. They had used their knowledge of Latin to decipher the message, hunched together over candlelight. They were words that had taken Howard back to his boyhood dreams, dreams of high adventure. They seemed to draw him from the darkness that had embraced his soul since that day in the jungle, given him something to strive for other than redemption for a deed he did not even know if he had committed, but which had lurked just beneath his consciousness every moment of his life since he had pulled that trigger on the river steamer. The little Kóya boy, the weeping boy he could not allow to suffer, when his own son was crying out for him in his final hours. Now, in this mineshaft, at the end of his journey, he looked up at Wauchope, and whispered the final words of the passage they had first read that night: Cave tigris bellator Beware the tiger warrior.
Howard felt light-headed. He swallowed again, and felt the blood go down. He had seen the tattoo on the horseman’s arm, the snarling dragon-tiger, as the rider had thundered toward them in the valley below. Somehow, those who had driven Licinius to his jungle hideout two thousand years before were still in existence, still stalking any who had chanced upon the trail, seeking what Licinius had found and hidden away. Howard had racked his brains as they scrambled up the mountainside, wondering how they could have been discovered. In Quetta, during their preparations, they had planned to let others know, who might ask, that they were intent on retracing Wood’s expedition to find the source of the river Oxus, up the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan. They had sought advice from the explorer Aurel Stein, but had not divulged their true intent. Stein thought they were suicidal going into the Hindu Kush without bearers or guides, but he had wished them godspeed. They were a pair of eccentric old colonels intent on a final adventure, in the best British tradition.
Then Howard had remembered. Years before, when he had returned to England after his service with the Madras Sappers. When he had tried to take his wife Helen away from their grief for little Edward, tried to give them a new life. He had been a newly promoted captain, teaching survey at the School of Military Engineering. He had given a lecture at the Royal United Service Institution in London on the Roman antiquities of southern India, a passion of his since boyhood when he had collected silver and gold Roman coins bought for him by his father and uncles in the bazaars of Madras and Bangalore. He had mentioned a rumor, nothing more, of a cave temple, one that contained carvings that appeared Roman. He had postulated scenes of battle. He had wanted to show that there could have been Roman soldiers as well as traders in southern India. It was an extraordinary possibility. It had been an extraordinary discovery.
He had let his enthusiasm get the better of him. He realized, now, that he had wanted something good to come of that experience in the jungle that so haunted him, and he had let his guard down. He had said nothing more than that, had intimated nothing about a location, about any truth behind the story. He and Wauchope had made a pact never to reveal what they had found inside the shrine, yet in the lecture there may have been something in his enthusiasm, a glint in his eye, the suppressed part of him that wanted to tell the world of their discovery, that revealed something to the careful observer.
Afterward, an official from the Imperial Chinese Embassy had come up to congratulate him, and to inquire about his sources. Howard had politely declined, repeating that it was merely a rumor. That was more than twenty years ago. Could it be that he had been followed, watched, for anything unusual, anything that might reveal what he knew? The bamboo vélpu had been concealed in a locked room in the School of Engineering at Chatham, among a clutter of exotic artifacts brought back by officers over the decades. Howard had been the curator, and only he had the key. It was impossible that anyone else should have known about it. Then he thought about those who had served him over the years. Only one had been with him throughout, his faithful Huang-li, great-nephew of his beloved childhood ayah from Tibet. Huang-li had been with him from Bangalore to Chatham and then back again through his final postings in India. Huang-li had always had his oriental friends, coolies, sailors, men he met in the opium dens at night, but Howard had turned a blind eye, knowing it was better to tolerate the secret societies and rituals than to ban them. Huang-li had been there at the end, packing food into their rucksacks in Quetta, waving them off as they tramped up toward Afghanistan. He had been enthusiastic, perhaps strangely so for a man who might be seeing his master for the last time. He had packed their bags with more than they neede
d, Chinese medicines, herbal remedies, packages they had quickly discarded. He had been doing all he could to ensure that they stayed alive until they reached their destination. That had seemed only right for a faithful servant, and Howard had been touched. But now he thought again. Keeping them alive until they reached their destination, so they could lead others to it. Could it be?
Howard coughed. None of that was of any consequence now. He tried to move his head, and suddenly retched, bringing up a mouthful of frothy blood he tried to swallow. He felt excruciating pain. Huang-li had packed some laudanum, and he wished they had it now. Wauchope leaned over him, holding his head. Howard eyed him. “I’m not giving up the ghost just yet,” he whispered hoarsely. “We still have to find that jewel.”
Wauchope jerked his head back toward the darkness of the shaft. “It’s in here somewhere. I’m sure of it.”
“And then the other jewel. The jewel taken by the other Roman mentioned in the inscription, Fabius.”
“One thing at a time, old boy.”
Howard grimaced. “Immortality. That’s what the celestial jewel is all about, isn’t it? We could do with a dose of that now.”
Wauchope looked at the entrance, scanning anxiously, then back down at Howard. “Maybe in the end, in the jungle, Licinius felt that too. I’ve wondered what manner of man he was. Whether we can see ourselves in him. Sometimes, that has seemed the only way of fathoming out this mysterious path we’re on.”
Howard gave a weak smile. He coughed and swallowed, breathed for a moment to calm himself, then carried on talking, his voice little more than a murmur. “You remember that carving we saw on the shrine wall, the woman and the child? For Licinius to seek immortality would have been to seek an immortality where loss and grief are also there forever. What is the point if all those you have loved have gone before, and if you have expended your reservoir of love? I think he took his chance with mortality. Maybe Elysium was a better bet after all.”
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