by Steve Berry
“Looks like a mess,” Viktor said.
Malone, too, noticed the cables, shovels, rakes, and piles of dirt on either side of the opening, and what appeared to be a charred electrical box. “More like a fire.”
“Accidents do happen,” Pau said.
But Malone was not fooled.
“You knew the moment that chamber was found, didn’t you?”
“More important, Karl Tang knew. He was here, and he set the fire. He intentionally destroyed Qin Shi’s imperial library.”
Malone wanted to inquire further, but now was not the time. “This place closes in forty-five minutes.”
“We must enter that opening,” Pau said.
Malone again studied the layout. Two additional ramps led down to the pit’s floor. Both were blocked with chains that could easily be hopped. At least four closed-circuit cameras were visible, though there were probably more, the ones in sight sending a message that people were watching, the ones out of sight providing the best views. He counted six uniformed guards patrolling the catwalk and God knew how many plainclothes men scattered about. The crowd was quiet and orderly.
“We need a distraction,” he whispered.
Cassiopeia nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Be cautious,” Pau said. “The security personnel here will react to anything rash.”
“And if we’re caught?” Viktor asked.
“Then we shall be arrested, and we can see if you are truly a friend or foe.”
Malone liked that prospect regarding Viktor, though being detained in China sounded like a bad idea, especially given that they were here illegally and at least two of them were armed.
“I’ll take care of the distraction,” Viktor said.
“I thought you might,” Malone said.
“I have a feeling you three don’t want me along anyway.”
No, Malone thought, he didn’t.
“I’ll be outside when you’re through with whatever you plan on doing. I’ll make some noise, but not enough to get arrested.”
Viktor shuffled off, dissolving into the crowd, working his way to the other side of the catwalk.
“We need to avoid the ramps,” Malone said. “Too obvious. Let’s use that ladder.” He gave a slight motion of his head to where a short length of chain blocked metal rungs. “Get down quickly and into that hole in the ground before the cameras regroup.”
Pau and Cassiopeia nodded their assent.
Malone carried the two flashlights inside a pack slung over one shoulder, colored in the army’s distinctive green with a red star. His gun remained nestled beneath his wet shirt.
A shout rose in the hall.
Malone saw Viktor flailing one arm in the air, and spewing out loud Chinese. It appeared he’d taken offense to something one of the visitors had either said or done.
Viktor shoved a man.
More words.
The crowd’s attention zeroed in on the disturbance, as did security. All six uniforms rushed toward the rapidly escalating situation.
Malone waited for the cameras to angle toward the excitement, then whispered, “Go.”
Cassiopeia hopped the short length of chain and climbed down.
Pau Wen followed.
Malone kept watch. No one seemed to pay them any attention. As Pau found the ground, he slid down the ladder behind him. Together they hugged the earthen wall and avoided the half-restored terra-cotta figures lining the way.
Cassiopeia entered the portal.
Before Pau disappeared inside, the older man grabbed one of the shovels. Apparently tools were needed, so Malone grabbed another and entered the dark space.
Tang watched Viktor Tomas on one monitor and Pau Wen and his two companions on the other. He’d inspected the library chamber thoroughly, prior to ordering its torching, and discovered that nothing of interest, besides the manuscripts, lay inside. Pau knew the manuscripts were gone, burned away—they’d discussed it on the phone—yet the first thing Pau had done on reentering China was head straight there.
Why?
“Order the building evacuated,” he said. “Station a man at all exits and several on the catwalks. Keep this camera focused on that opening. If anyone emerges, have them immediately arrested. If they become a problem, shoot them.”
He tightened his grip on the pistol.
“I’m headed there now. I want that building empty by the time I arrive, except for the foreigner who started the disturbance. Keep him inside.”
Malone surveyed the tight space, maybe ten feet square, the floor and walls rough bricks, the ceiling stout timbers, one section long ago collapsed.
“I first came in through the break in the top,” Pau said.
Three pedestal-like tables fashioned from stone stood empty, the floor littered with ash, the air thick with the smell of soot.
Something had definitely burned here.
“These tables were once covered with bamboo strips and silks, all with writings from the time of Qin Shi. His imperial library. Karl Tang ordered it destroyed two days ago.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Cassiopeia asked. “How could they be a threat to him?”
“Anything he cannot control is a threat to him.”
Malone heard the din of noise from outside begin to recede. He stepped to the exit and peered upward. “People are leaving.”
“I imagine Tang ordered that. Which means we have little time.”
“For what?” he asked.
“To leave.”
FIFTY-FOUR
Ni waded through a tangled mess of wet grass and approached the second of the three low-slung structures. Rain continued to fall. Vegetation had long ago consumed the outer walls, leafy vines thick from ground to roof. Most of the windows remained intact, the panes smeared with a layer of wet grime. He spotted beetles and mosquitoes smashed thick into torn screens.
He approached the wooden door. No lock prevented access, as he’d been told, so he shoved it open. Rusted hinges fought back, then gave way. The door jogged enough for him to slip inside.
He forced it closed once more.
Light from the filthy windows was filtered a gray-brown. Shadows consumed the room, which measured perhaps five meters square, one wall collapsed onto itself, exposing the weather and what lay behind the building. Plows dotted the blackened earth floor, everything dusted with a wet layer of rust and soil. A mass of clay pots and jars, piled in pieces, rose against one wall. Cobwebs consumed the corners.
He eased himself through the break in the outer wall, back out into the rain. For what he sought lay outside.
He heard the voice on the phone, from earlier.
“I employed spies to monitor what Pau Wen did at the mound site,” the premier said. “He came to think that no one watched, and that may have been true of Mao and Deng, but not of me. I watched closely.”
“And what did you learn?” Ni asked.
“Pau found a way into the tomb mound. Which surprised me. Qin’s tomb was reported to contain large amounts of mercury. Yet he personally entered, staying inside for several hours one day, reappearing out of a hole in the earth near what would later become Pit 3. Strange occurrences likewise happened during the night for the next week, though no one officially reported anything.”
He wanted to know more.
“Men and equipment working in the dark. Workers present who were not part of the site’s labor force. One of the disadvantages of our form of government was that no one would have ever reported what they may have seen or heard. Pau was in charge and no one challenged him.”
“Except you.”
“I conducted a probe, but it was weeks later. We could not locate where Pau had disappeared into the ground. So much digging was occurring, the area ridden with deep gashes carved from the earth, it was impossible to know. But I did discover something else, years later. I was ordered back to the tomb mound by Beijing. This was after Pau had fled China. I was told to find a way inside the mound,
and I did.”
“Why has no one ever spoken of this?”
“There is a good reason for the secrecy.”
He stared into the shadows that engulfed the dilapidated shanties. Trees blocked the sky allowing only thin fingers of light to poke through the canopy. Water, though, found a path and tapped the ground in a steady beat. The tomb mound started its rise less than fifty meters away. He was perhaps as close to the base as one could get. The fencing that had protected the front also ran behind the buildings, blocking any route upward.
He spotted the well exactly where the premier had said. A circular pile of masonry, two meters high, more wet vegetation clinging to its stones.
He hadn’t walked around the buildings to the well because he wanted to slow down his adversary. This way, Tang would see him enter the building but not exit.
He stepped to the well and gazed inside. Less than a meter down, a rusted iron plate blocked the opening. Two makeshift handles had been welded to its surface. For all intents and purposes the plug was there to prevent anyone, or anything, from falling down the shaft.
But he knew better.
He gripped the handles, the wet rust staining his skin, making it difficult to keep a firm hold.
And lifted the plate away.
Malone was puzzled. “Where are we going?”
Pau knelt down and began to brush away a layer of dust and debris from the floor. “When I originally entered this chamber, the room was intact except that I noticed sunken areas in two places.”
He understood. “Given these three stone tables, that meant there was solid ground everywhere—”
“Correct. I told you outside about the symbolism of the chariot and the ramp pointing left. The reason that is obvious to me now is because of what I found inside this room.”
“It’s getting quiet out there,” Cassiopeia said.
Malone had noticed that, too. “Keep an eye out.”
She assumed a position near the exit.
Pau completed his clearing and Malone spotted faintly etched symbols, one on each brick face.
“What are they?” he asked.
“The one that looks like a house is the symbol for 6. The X with a line above and below is 5. The T-looking one is 7.”
He noticed that the lines clumped together, which obviously was 4, appeared more often than the other numerals, except for the spoon with a line through its handle. “What’s that?”
“9.”
“There’s a pattern,” Pau said. “But I confess I was able to decipher it only because the floor itself had depressed.”
Malone followed where Pau had pointed.
“The numbers 4 and 9 are important to the Chinese. 9 is pronounced jiu, which is the same for ‘long’ and ‘forever.’ 9 has always correlated to long life and good fortune. It came to be associated with emperors. 4, on the other hand, is pronounced si, which is the same as ‘death.’ 4 has always been regarded as unlucky.”
He inventoried the symbols 4 and 9 and saw that there were two concentrations.
“When I entered the chamber, I saw that these bricks”—Pau pointed to a cluster of 9s—“were depressed. So was that cluster of 4s. I discovered that there were openings beneath the floor that led down to two separate passages.”
“So you chose the lucky one,” Malone said.
“It seemed the right selection.”
Malone still held a shovel. He wedged the blade between two of the floor bricks with a 9 and pounded the sole of his shoe against the top edge. The ground was hard but gave way, and he angled the handle, forcing the brick upward.
“How we doing out there?” he asked Cassiopeia.
“Too quiet.”
“Minister Tang is on the way,” Pau said.
Malone stared down at Pau, who was helping free each brick. An idea of what to do came to him in an instant. Pau glanced up and the look on the older man’s face confirmed that he’d determined their next move as well.
“That’s scary,” Malone said. “I’m actually starting to think like you.”
Pau grinned. “I can’t see where that is a bad thing.”
Tang followed a red carpet that formed a path up a short set of stone risers into the brick-and-glass building that encased Pit 3. He’d been informed that the hall had been cleared and all exits were manned with guards. He’d brought two men with him, both brothers of the Ba, whom he’d ordered to be stationed nearby.
“No one leaves this building,” he barked out as he stepped past three of the museum guards at the main doors.
Viktor Tomas waited inside.
“You did well,” he said to Viktor.
“Delivered, as promised.”
The excavated pit spread out before him. He approached the catwalk railing, pointed down, then turned to the two brothers, “Assume a position just outside that gash.”
He watched as they hustled down a ladder, drew their weapons, and hugged the earthen wall on either side of the portal into Qin Shi’s imperial library.
He handed Viktor his gun. “Finish the task. Now.”
Viktor gripped the pistol and climbed down the ladder, approaching the two men, who stood ready to attack.
“Pau Wen,” Tang called out. “The building is sealed.”
No one replied.
“You are under arrest.” His voice echoed through the interior, masked by the rat-tat-tat of rain off the metal roof.
Still no reply.
He motioned for Viktor to advance inside.
The two brothers moved with caution, glancing around the portal’s edge, testing the situation, then rushed into the blackness, followed by Viktor.
He waited for the soft pop of sound-suppressed gunfire, but nothing came.
Viktor reappeared. “You should come down.”
He did not like the quizzical tone in the man’s voice.
He descended the ladder and entered the chamber. Just as he suspected, a charred smell of ash filled the musty air. Not a single silk or bamboo strip remained, only the three stone tables, the room not all that different from two days ago—except for two things.
In the floor, two sets of bricks had been removed, exposing openings about a meter square each, on opposite sides of the room.
He stared into them.
They dropped about two meters into the earth.
But which one had they taken?
FIFTY-FIVE
Malone realized that their trick, in exposing both openings, would only momentarily slow down any pursuers. But every second they could gain counted.
Another problem was more immediate.
He wasn’t fond of tight, underground spaces, though he seemed to find himself inside them more often than he wished. He knew Cassiopeia did not suffer from the same discomfort, so she led the way, plunging through the coal-black darkness, the beam of her flashlight illuminating only a few feet ahead.
They walked without a sound, their entrance point now a hundred yards behind them, negotiating sharp turns that had gone first left then right. The floor, which carried a slight upward slope, was brick-paved, similar to Pit 3, the walls and roof cut stone.
“This was part of the drainage that protected the tomb from groundwater,” Pau whispered. “The turns are meant to slow any water that might accumulate, the rise making it difficult for the water to encroach. Behind these walls is poured bronze to add another layer of protection. They were quite ingenious.”
“And where does this lead?” Malone asked.
“Straight to the tomb, and the secret entrance used by the builders.”
Malone recalled the distance from the museum to the tomb mound—about half a mile, he’d estimated from the air. But that was in a straight line, which this tunnel wasn’t.
His anxiety amplified.
Cassiopeia stopped and glanced back toward him. Her eyes asked if he was okay, and he motioned for them to head on.
They passed offshoots, dark doorways to the left and the right. Eight so far. He also n
oticed characters etched beside the portals, more Chinese numbers. Pau explained that the tunnels accommodated runoff, taking as much water as possible away from the tomb, allowing seepage back into the ground. Similar to a drain field for a septic tank, Malone thought.
“The numbers beside each portal, they’re significant?” he asked.
“Critical,” Pau said. “Take the wrong one and you may never get out of here.”
Tang was not in the mood for tricks.
He stared at the holes in the floor and ordered, “Both of you stand guard. Don’t leave this room unattended. If any foreigner emerges from those holes, shoot them.”
They nodded their assent.
He motioned for Viktor to come with him.
Time to deal with Ni Yong.
Ni saw that he was standing in the entranceway to the tomb of Qin Shi, exactly as the premier had described. Nearly twenty-five years ago, a select team of five individuals, headed by the deputy minister for internal affairs, who would later rise to become premier of the nation, had used ground-penetrating radar to find a way inside. Beijing had, by then, discovered the value of the terra-cotta warriors in promulgating a new world image of China. Adding the actual tomb of Qin Shi to that repertoire could only enhance the effect. But after Mao’s many failures, the Party gambled only on sure things.
So a secret exploration was ordered.
Luckily a tunnel had been discovered almost immediately, and they’d dug down, entering from above. When they finished, a well had been built over the entrance and capped with an iron plate, the entire area fenced and declared off limits.
His flashlight revealed a towering, arched passage, perhaps ten meters high. The floor was paved with veined stone. Archways appeared at regular intervals, holding the roof aloft. A cable lay against one wall, placed there by the first exploration team.
Follow it, had been his instruction.
If what he’d been told was right, no one had followed this path in more than thirty years. Before that, two millennia had passed between visits.
He walked for what he estimated as a hundred meters. The beam from his light revealed a stone gate, but two doors blocked the way. He approached.