He made to step towards her, but as he did so she became pale and began to shrink, like an unhappy ghost.
Suddenly, the walls of the room began to crumble, and he found himself standing in sand, and there were dunes all round him, and beyond them mountains of sand. When he tried to walk he found himself trapped up to his knees, and no amount of struggling would allow him to break free.
And then he woke, calling Sam’s name loudly into a darkness he did not recognize.
Part V
FLAME OF A BUTTER-LAMP
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The tunnel lay beneath the minbar, a short wooden staircase built to serve as a pulpit. From a wreathing pattern of arabesques, a tiny handle emerged to give purchase on a little door with grimy, creaking hinges. It had not been opened in a very long time. A mass of cobwebs filled the opening, and as the door pulled back, tearing them, dozens of black bodies scurried in all directions, fleeing back down into the darkness and solitude beneath.
'There are steps down to the tunnel itself,’ said Jenwen. 'They were built of wood, so be careful. Nobody’s been down there in a century and a half, and for all I know they’ve rotted away completely.’
‘What about the tunnel?’ asked Nabila. ‘What keeps that in place?’
‘I’m not sure. My father never told me. But the chances are it was wooden struts. It’s a long tunnel, they wouldn’t have used stone.’
‘So they could have rotted away as well?’ said David.
‘I suppose so.’ Jenwen looked downcast. Only now was it dawning on him that the route to the tomb might be closed, and that his father’s last wishes might not be capable of fulfilment. The old man’s body lay behind them on a trailer. Dark stains had already started to appear here and there on the tight bandages that strapped him about, little messages from the world of corruption to the world of light.
At the moment, David wasn’t sure just how bright things were looking for himself or Nabila. He didn’t know how they were going to get out of the city if the tunnel had collapsed. And if his guess was right, staying in Kashgar wasn’t such a clever idea.
He took a large torch from one of his bags and swung a powerful beam of white light into the opening. More cobwebs everywhere, and steps staggering down into the blackness.
‘They don’t look all that straight to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t see much point in risking our necks just to find out.’ He switched off the torch and turned to Jenwen. ‘Any chance of finding a ladder in here?’
Jenwen nodded.
‘This way,’ he said.
The mosque had a small minaret. Five times every day, the muezzin would climb to its top by means of a long ladder. It could be dismantled if it ever needed repair, and it took Jenwen and David only minutes to uncouple the long bottom section from the rest and drag it to the tunnel entrance. It hit the ground with about a yard to spare.
‘Thank you, Jenwen,’ David said. ‘You’ve been more helpful than I could have hoped for. I promise we’ll get your father buried as close to the shrine as possible. You can visit his grave once this is over.’
Jenwen thanked them, but he still looked glum.
‘Something’s going to happen here in Kashgar, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ David answered. ‘I have no way of knowing. But, yes, it is a possibility. Later, when we’re clear away, let Osman know about this tunnel, and tell him to start sending as many people out as possible, provided he can do it without starting a panic’
They embraced quickly, then David climbed into the opening. The ladder held steady, and once he had negotiated his way past the opening, the rest was easy. The descent could not have been much more than twenty feet, but by the time he reached the bottom, he was covered in spiders’ webs and, as far as he could tell, every spider from here to the tomb. He had a revulsion, bordering on a phobia, for the creatures, and once down he beat and shook and jumped to rid himself of them. They scampered off, heading back into the darkness, leaving him shivering.
Nabila lowered the four-wheeled trailer on a rope. It bumped and grated as it went down, then thumped to the ground and crouched there like a cat waiting to pounce on the next passer-by. It was followed by the old man’s body. David shone his torch on the mummified figure as it twisted down, scratching and banging on the ladder’s rungs as the rope holding it slackened and tightened, turned now this way, now that. It too hit the floor less smoothly than intended. David grabbed it by the shoulders and manhandled it on to the trailer. He stepped back quickly. The old man stank abominably.
Next came the bags holding their basic equipment. They’d have to find anything else they needed outside, once they had camels on which to carry the load. David straightened them, manoeuvring a couple on to the trailer next to the body. At the same time, he heard Nabila’s feet in the space above him.
Moments later, she appeared at the foot of the ladder. There wasn’t much room for them to stand together. Jenwen called from above, checking they were safely down.
‘Everything’s fine,’ shouted Nabila. ‘Get back to your house. And take care. There’s still a curfew.’
A muffled farewell came from above. Then the ladder was pulled up, a few rungs at a time. When it was clear of the opening, Jenwen closed the door. It slammed down heavily, blotting out the little light there had been to connect them to the outside world.
David shone the torch up along the way they had come. About twelve feet above their heads, the rotten steps had given way. They were trapped. The only way out lay ahead, down the tunnel. If the tunnel hadn’t caved in years ago.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Western Region, Military Installation 14 (Chaofe Ling) [Coordinates classified]
Level 7 Security Classification: Maximum
‘Lock in five!’
A heavy bolt shot into place. A voice incanted, ‘Suoshang le.’
‘Lock in six!’
The regulator’s finger pressed an illuminated button and there was a sound of a bolt slamming, followed by a hiss of escaping gas.
‘Suoshang le.’
The routine continued. Right across the operations room a buzz of concentration kept everyone bowed over his terminal or display screen. Lights flashed and dimmed, screens filled with information and grew still, there would be bursts of conversations, then absolute silence that seemed to go on for ever. It would take over two hours to complete the installation, and they all knew that a single mistake could disrupt the procedure for hours more, or even days. Some mistakes could be fatal. Some could wipe out the entire complex at a stroke.
Chang Zhangyi stood at the back of the room. He was only an observer here. His men were scattered through the complex, asking questions, double-checking answers. The entire security operation for Chaofe Ling was in his hands, and he liked to pay regular visits just to make sure everything was running smoothly, or, if it wasn’t, to find out why.
He frowned and thrust a long toothpick between his upper incisors, hunting out what remained of his supper. Things had not been going forward very easily in the past couple of weeks. Each of the last three tests had been delayed, one for no less than four days.
The Iraqis were growing impatient. They’d already started troop movements and could not now pull back. Their battle plan rested on accurate use of the new weapon: if it went well, Saddam Hussein would seize control of the entire Middle East, from Israel to Pakistan; if it went badly, he had opened himself wide to defeat on a scale unparalleled in modem military history.
And that, thought Chang Zhangyi, would spell disaster for China. He wasn’t supposed to know that, and he was well aware that, if he so much as breathed a word about it to anyone, he’d end up in one of his own dungeons.
All the same, he knew it was true. He’d seen estimates that the oil reserves in the Tarim Basin, covering the Taklamakan and some of the region beyond, amounted to between twenty and forty million tons. That was still the official line: some Western oilmen were talking about potentia
l reserves as big as Saudi Arabia’s. He’d met them when they came over to carry out surveys on the fringes of the desert. Big men, strong men; but easily deceived.
In fact, the Tarim Basin was almost empty, and it was getting emptier with every day that passed. The oil was leaking away, into God alone knew what unreachable depths. Decades of nuclear testing in the nearby Lop Nor had produced the most undesirable of results. Across both deserts, the bedrock had cracked and, in places, sheared across. Vast oil pools had started to drain away entirely. Visitors were shown only carefully selected sites, and sent away with promises for future development that were sown with procrastination.
Chang Zhangyi watched the composite screen overhead, on which each stage of the operation was being plotted. So far, so good. First, they had to pump a series of biochemical agents into the shell of the bomb, then they had to mount it on to the delivery vehicle. This would be the first time they had been deployed together. The big challenge would come the following week, when they would carry out their first live test on the population of a large town.
Without the oil, he thought, China would begin to die. A little at first, then with increasing rapidity. The country needed to be self-sufficient in oil if it was to drag itself out of the last century. Now, as it was beginning to develop a solid industrial base, the dream of wealth and security was once more slipping from its grasp. To import oil, it would have to sell something. There was plenty of coal, but countries with oil didn’t want it, and middlemen would rake off more than they were worth. Hence the project. Hence the urgency to ensure that Saddam did not lose his last war. They’d sold him weapons in the past - who hadn’t? - but this would put him in permanent debt to the People’s Republic. And when he had control of all the oilfields of the Middle East, he could dictate terms to the West and provide all the oil China wanted for less than it would have cost to extract it at home in the first place.
There was a bleeping noise. At first he thought it came from the console in front of him, then he remembered his pager. He hated it, just as he’d hated his mother’s voice summoning him as a child. He’d never married for that reason; he wanted no wife to call him home, or scold him, or bicker with him. He’d devoted his life to the service, and risen in it faster than any of his fellow-graduates. Whatever the political climate, he’d stood alone, and he’d ridden the storm. A wife and a family would have got in his way, like compassion or guilt.
He told the security officer beside him to keep an eye on things, then slipped through the door into the short corridor that gave access to the main throughways of Level 7. An elevator took him to Level 1, and a buggy to his office. Pan was waiting inside, a little impatient.
'It better be important.’
Pan withered, but rallied as he thought of his reason for calling his superior from the test preparations.
‘I think so, sir. There was a call from London. Secure satellite. He’ll try again in a few minutes: I said you had a little way to come.’
‘Farrar?’
‘He didn’t say, sir.’
Just then the phone rang again. Chang Zhangyi picked it up this time. Farrar’s voice came on the line, sharp and clear. Chang Zhangyi waved impatiently at Pan, telling him to clear off.
‘How are you, my old friend?’ he said.
Farrar got straight to the point. Chang Zhangyi listened carefully, jotting down notes. When Farrar came to an end, he smiled to himself, anticipating the coming manhunt.
‘I’m exceedingly glad to hear it, old chap. Because, if you don’t stop Laing, you and I most definitely will be dead.’
‘Rest assured, Mr Farrar, he’s as good as dead.’
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
There was a scent in the tunnel like the breath of long-dead roses, something that would not wash out of the soil or vanish from the air. David breathed it in unwillingly. It smelt corrupt, almost infected, and yet it had in it the sweetness of recently laid flowers piled high on one another over centuries.
The tunnel roof was not high enough to allow either of them to walk unbent. The walls and the wood-slatted ceiling pressed in on them, and at times the floor itself seemed to rise, as though to lift them yet closer to the roof. David hauled the trailer and its load along by means of a coarse rope that had partly unravelled in several places. The rope cut into his hands, drawing blood, its irritating fibres slipping beneath his skin.
In numerous places the walls sagged: they were astonished that there had not been several cave-ins. Struts were bowed or half-broken, and here and there the soil behind them had broken free.
Nabila went a little in front of him, shining the torch-beam down into the plummeting dark. He could see her only as a rupture of the light ahead, and he felt an appalling guilt, knowing what he was bringing her to.
‘Why does the tunnel smell of flowers?’ he asked.
She paused and breathed in deeply.
‘Roses,’ she said. She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make much sense. My father once told me about this tunnel. He said that, in the days of Yakub Beg, the ground was strewn with roses. They grew them all year round, in great quantities, then they brought them down here and laid them on the ground all the way from Kashgar to Abakh Hoja’s Tomb. The practice continued for almost fifteen years, then Yakub Beg was defeated and the tunnel sealed. It was known as the “Velvet Path”. Others called it the Tariqat Allah or the Sabil al-Firdaus, the “Path to Paradise”. They used to carry the sick along it. Some went all the way on their knees. There are stories of miracles.’
David looked round him at the naked walls and uneven floor. He saw no miracles. Yet something in the soil or the air conspired to hold the last traces of the flowers that had been left there by a short generation of pilgrims. He glanced up. Every so often, he could see glass lamps hanging from the struts, grimy now and without light; but in every one a candle still waited for the touch of flame.
Less frequently, he could see the ends of narrow ventilation shafts. Putting his hand to one, he could feel a faint touch of fresh air. They must have been skilfully hidden in the fields above, and angled or cowled in some way to allow rain to run off without flooding the tunnel.
He halted for breath. Nabila waited for him a few yards ahead. At first he could hear only his own breath, rasping a little in the close atmosphere. Then, as his head cleared, he heard something else, It sounded like footsteps. Behind him. Even as he strained to listen, it stopped.
‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.
‘Hear what?’
‘That sound behind us. Here, let me have the torch.’
She passed it to him, and he swung the beam back into the tunnel the way they had come. There was nothing
visible but the trailer and the frail bundle on it, walls and floor, the marks of the little vehicle’s wheels.
He passed the torch back to Nabila, and they headed on. David had calculated that roughly two yards separated one set of struts from the next. Keeping a mental record of how many they had passed, he stopped when they had reached an estimated mile. He glanced at his watch. Just over half an hour had elapsed since they entered the tunnel.
‘Would you like me to take the trailer?’ asked Nabila.
‘No, I’m all right. Another mile, perhaps - then you can take over.’
They did not talk much as they progressed through the tunnel. The thick air made breathing difficult, and talking a struggle.
They paused to manoeuvre the trailer round a heap of earth that had fallen into the tunnel. As they did so, David heard the sound again, soft footsteps cushioned by the soil. Nabila turned too.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard it that time.’
David took the torch and went back several yards.
‘Jenwen?’ he called. ‘Is that you, Jenwen?’
There was no answer. He called again, but his voice was swallowed up by the thick walls and the darkness and the stillness.
‘It must be Jenwen,’ he said to Nabila. ‘There’s no one else back there, su
rely.’
‘He may be following his father’s corpse.’
‘Then why doesn’t he just stay with us?’
‘I ... I’m not sure.’
He sensed the hesitation in her voice, but did not pursue the matter. If Jenwen wanted to dog their footsteps, it could do no harm to let him. It was irritating, no more than that.
They went on. Half an hour took them another mile. Feet followed them all the way: feet that kept pace yet never caught up. It was hard to tell whether it was one pair of feet or more. Sometimes David stopped suddenly, and then, for half a second, he would catch it behind him.
They halted at the end of the second mile, and Nabila walked back to take the trailer. As she did so, she looked back down the tunnel. ‘Look,’ she whispered.
David turned. Everything was silent. The scent of long-dead roses multiplied. Nabila switched off the torch.
Along the tunnel behind them, as far back as they could see, candles were burning inside the little lamps. The flames flickered and grew still, flickered and grew still. David held his breath. He expected to see someone at last, to catch sight of their pursuer - or pursuers -stepping into the light like an actor on to an illuminated stage. But no one moved.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘We won’t harm you.’ He said it in Uighur, then in Chinese, but no one stirred. Out there, on the edge of the dark shadow, where the light ended, he saw what might have been movement and equally might have been a candle bending with the weight of its own flame.
‘Let me have the torch again,’ he said. Nabila put it in his hand, and he switched it on. For a quick moment, he was certain he saw something move, a low, crouching figure, very pale. But it had been no more than a flash. and within moments his certainty had faded. ‘Let’s keep moving,’ he said.
They pressed on as before, their feet thick against the soft soil. ‘I think I know who they are,’ whispered Nabila. ‘My father once told me a story about the people who live in the tunnels beneath Kashgar.’
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