by A D Davies
“Why don’t you just tell me?”
A curious smile was etched on Valerio’s face as he glanced from Horse to Jules. “You didn’t send them the whole manuscript?”
Jules didn’t appreciate the man’s amused demeanor but saw no reason to lie at this point. “Final quarter. Didn’t have time for the rest.”
Valerio nodded sagely. “Perhaps that’s why you don’t fully comprehend why I’m here.” He turned back to the view. “A passage from the very beginning of Thomas’s journal. ‘What the tomb holds will change everything we know about everything. And everything about the future too.’ Let’s find out what he meant.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Pakistani Air Base
In Toby’s life, he had strived to become proficient in languages, both ancient and modern, and in the skills of uncovering lost lands and tombs, but the dark arts of working with governments and appeasing the aristocracy came to him easily, probably due to growing up in those circles. It was Bridget, though, who could truly master multiple disciplines, so it was no surprise to find her continuing to study the pictograms and hieroglyphs on the tablet screen. Jules’s photographed pages kept her brain occupied while Dan and Harpal made nice with the Pakistani officers in charge.
They’d been given an office and access to showers, but no one opted for the latter. They accepted the fruit and bread offered as well as the tea and soft drinks. Bridget and Charlie had to cover their heads and arms while outside the room, but it was too damn hot to wander.
Toby tried not to watch her too closely, but conversation had dried up. He and Charlie still disagreed on Jules Sibeko’s usefulness; she felt that relying on him in this instance was foolhardy.
Would Jules have activated his beacon if he wasn’t sending them a message?
Charlie stated that she worried it might be a trap.
They went back and forth until a stalemate silenced them, and they returned to nibbling the food.
“Oh my,” Bridget said, sitting up from her screen. When Toby and Charlie gave her their attention she said, “This explains a lot.”
“What is it?” Toby approached, tilted his head to read the copious notes she’d made.
“Anyone up for another flood legend?”
Before anyone could say “yes, please,” the door opened. Harpal entered. “We’re leaving. Now.”
“What? Why?” Charlie asked.
“Colin’s friends in Interpol are putting pressure on the Pakistani government to detain us.”
“So I have to ask again...” Charlie placed her hands on her hips. Mom pose. “Why? Colin is the one telling us to stop Valerio because he can’t.”
“Not him specifically. But he was operating under the authority of Interpol. They sent him to arrest us and Valerio, and that’s still their job. I’ve convinced the Pakistanis that a comms malfunction might be beneficial, but it means we’ll have to pay ten grand for ‘repairs.’ If you get my meaning. In cash.”
All found their feet and followed Harpal down a corridor and out into the searing heat. The two women pulled the scarves up over their heads, and all sped up to a jog as a mute soldier escorted them past troops drilling in the yard and out toward an area far from the runway.
“That payday is dwindling every hour,” Toby said, keeping pace with Harpal. “Let’s hope we don’t need to bribe anyone else before we deliver to Alfonse.”
“We might not be delivering anything,” Bridget said as they rounded an outbuilding.
“No time for this,” Harpal insisted.
Around a corrugated fence, the tarmac became a field in which a helicopter stood, its rotors turning at medium speed, engine whining.
Harpal waved them on. “All our gear’s on board. We can inventory when we land.”
“I hate these things.” Charlie ducked under the rotors’ wash as she hurried to the sliding door.
The helicopter wasn’t armed as far as Toby could see, but it was sufficient for ten passengers and two pilots—a decommissioned combat vehicle.
He gave it no more thought as he joined Bridget and Charlie and strapped himself in. Harpal took the spare seat up front beside Dan, and all donned headphones and mics.
“You know,” Dan said, “we might have to leave the Lear behind. Depends how much pull Colin has here.”
“I’m sure we can supplement any additional administrative costs.” Toby wasn’t usually one for mincing his words, but he still enjoyed coming up with synonyms for “bribe” whenever the chance arose.
“Fair enough.” Dan glanced back to check on the belts as the rotor screamed at full volume, takeoff speed achieved. “Hold on to your hats.”
Dan wasn’t used to this machine, so it was a rough ascent as he was waved off by the ground crew. His contact, a general, who had been an ally back in Dan’s Afghanistan days, stayed away out of view.
“They stripped this bird of all transponders.” Harpal had to shout even with the mic and headphones. “All markings are burned off with acid. All its serial numbers and manufacturing codes. If we crash or get caught crossing illegally into India, they have plausible deniability, and we’re on our own. If it is traced back, we stole a chopper due to be decommissioned and scrapped.”
“Scrapped?” Charlie sat forward. “Did you say scrapped?”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “This is one last hurrah for the old bird.”
As the nose dipped and they accelerated hard away from the base, Dan explained that they’d fly in under radar as well as avoid the Indian army’s manual lookouts, which entailed skimming the treetops and cutting through a valley populated by small villages and farms. “We’ll be fine as long as none of ’em recognize this as Pakistani.”
“Bridget,” Toby said as if noticing her for the first time. “We could do with a little something to take our minds off the certain death awaiting us. You have more intel?”
Bridget stared a moment but appeared to get what he was doing. “I also said we might not be delivering anything to Alfonse. Now I’ve decoded a lot of the Indus script.”
“Thought you needed an expert for that,” Harpal said.
“An expert or time. I’ve had time to work through it. The original author tells the story of a worldwide flood, but not one that covered everything. Just a lot of it. Temperatures plummeting. Snow. Here in the foothills.”
Toby recalled her earlier assertions. “You said you thought the Indus language was translating hieroglyphs from an earlier civilization.”
“Right. It looks like the message from the olden days was describing the Ice Age. And yes, I know India wouldn’t have been covered in ice, but it would have been much cooler.”
“Don’t forget the megaliths off the coast,” Toby added.
“Oh no, don’t forget those,” Dan said.
“There are massive structures, possibly whole cities, submerged off the coasts of many great civilizations,” Toby said, trying not to sound too indignant. “Those examined on the Asian sea shelf, not far west of Jules’s position, suggest architecture that should not have existed until 3000 BC. Yet, if they were submerged at the thawing of the last Ice Age, twelve thousand years ago, these builders must have existed far earlier. It’s largely cod-science, without a single paper surviving peer review, but... there’s more evidence these days. And if they did exist, as the Ruby Rock and Aradia bangles appear to suggest... surely they were somehow capable of building much more. And writing about their fate.”
“A massive flood as the Ice Age thawed,” Bridget said. “The source of the majority of flood myths, religious ones and a whole host of legends like Atlantis. If they built a temple or a tomb on higher ground, that’s probably where they retreated to. Where they documented exactly what happened. And why we shouldn’t let anyone—Valerio, Alfonse, Colin, or even us—remain in possession of those darn things. They’re trouble.”
“If the floods concealed a thirty-thousand-year-old temple,” Toby said, “this could be the most significant find in an age. It c
ould mean—”
“Don’t get ahead of yourselves,” Dan interrupted. “We’re about to cross the border. They’ll shoot us down and ask questions later. So eyes down, stories paused. You see anything on the ground that looks military, you shout. You see anything that looks like a rocket shooting toward us... shout louder.”
“Reassuring.” Bridget stared out her window, scouring the trees below.
“Okay. Here we go.” Dan tensed up, then released his breath. “We’re back in India.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ladoh Border Region
Valerio’s advance scouting party crossed the valley a mile from the village, and the seven-strong rearguard of Jules, Horse, Valerio, and four militiamen followed at a slower pace. Trekking down that side, they would be visible from the village, but it was still early, and the morning mist obscured most of their activity.
Jules’s childhood featured a lot of movies where natives turned murderous when outsiders trampled on their holy monuments, and even though it was frequently his own ancestors portrayed in those stereotypical scenes, he couldn’t help but expect a blowdart in his neck at any moment or a pack of ochre-painted fighters descending from trees with a war cry on their lips and battle axes in hand.
Then he focused. Remembered his discipline. The notions soon faded.
“Not worried about the residents over there?” he asked Valerio.
“No.”
“Peace loving, huh? Won’t attack? Maybe don’t know what you got up here?”
“Nah, nothing like that,” Horse said. “We mined the trails and sent a message to the elders to leave us alone.”
“Huh, diplomacy ain’t dead after all.”
They plodded on, ascending irrigated paths at the lower level, allowing Valerio to set the pace, and all rested whenever he stopped. No one objected.
From the opposite side, this hill looked lush all the way up, green and leafy, but the grass he spotted at the top took over around halfway up, with only sparse trees and shrubs littering the way.
After two hours, they descended a rocky section of path around the blind side and arrived at a cave where the advance party gathered. They had unpacked the rucksacks and arranged ordinance by type: guns, explosives, detonators, cooking gear. A meal awaited them, but Jules was drawn to the explosives.
“Thought we had the key,” he said.
Valerio accepted a bowl of spicy meat and rice and tucked in. Between mouthfuls, he said, “After two thousand years, none of us know exactly what we’ll find in there. Landslides, rockfalls, sinkholes. I want to be prepared.”
“Don’t you think the ancient people might’ve failed to predict the effects of C-4 on their door? You really need more than that?”
“I think, after all the magnificent things I’ve seen you do—things mere mortals can only dream of—that the people who designed these items especially for you to use might have installed a couple of fail-safes. So excuse me if I don’t want to put all my faith in a block of C-4.”
The village now lay far below, tiny people milling around. Jules wondered whether the elders had explained why the residents couldn’t leave or investigate the strange men on their hill. He wondered whether they even knew something special might lie within, or if they simply lived and prayed, grew food and hunted, while their ancient stories faded into myth and legend.
“Thirty thousand years.” Valerio produced the bangles from the only bag he carried and held both up to the light. He offered them to Jules. “Make them glow for me.”
“No.” Jules stuffed his hands in his pockets.
One of Valerio’s troops cocked his gun and aimed at Jules’s head, shouting something.
Jules sighed, not even bothering to look that way. “Really?”
Valerio waved the man down. “Horse.”
The huge bodyguard planted a hand on Jules’s shoulder, another at his elbow, and attempted to lever him down.
Jules had no idea why he chose this moment to become difficult. It wasn’t a big ask from Valerio, after all.
He slipped Horse’s grip, dodged one way then another, taking one of Horse’s hands with him, then a swift jerk threw him off balance. A kick to the ass tipped him over.
Muted laughter rippled from the militiamen but cut out as Horse regained his feet half a second later, coming at Jules in a sparring bounce. He went at it hard. Jules spun, ducked, weaved, his familiar grin pasted on, still unable to shake the swagger, the cockiness, as he aggravated a seemingly superior opponent. Whenever Horse got close, Jules eased out of position. The other men chuckled, which caused Horse to growl and add extra snap to his attempted blows. Cornered under a fierce combination, Jules leaped up one of the sheer walls and somersaulted over Horse—which proved to be a show-off move too far.
Horse predicted Jules’s grandstanding and swung a fist while the younger man was still airborne.
It was as if a tree had swung into Jules’s gut. The air flew out of his body. As he landed, he dropped into a ball, gasping for breath.
“I look like I enjoy dancing?” Horse said, standing over him. He wasn’t even breathing heavily.
This guy’s a machine.
Jules readjusted his breathing, short and sharp, trying to recover before worse befell him. But all that happened was Valerio placed the Aradia bangle on Jules’s face.
It lit up, the glow made dull through centuries of handling. Then the red one balanced next to it, sparking and shimmering on his skin.
“Thirty thousand years,” Valerio said again. “Impressive.”
“You think... they...” Jules hadn’t regained his capacity to talk properly but struggled to a finish. “They didn’t know bad people would get hold of them? You think that’s why they made ’em? Why they hid this so well?” Another pause. He heaved in more air. It was getting easier. “Why did Thomas try to... hide it? Why get rid... of the bangles?”
“I don’t care for ‘why.’” Valerio tapped the Aradia bangle, letting it seesaw minutely in Jules’s vision. “I only care about ‘what’ as in, ‘What can it do for me?’ And, ‘What will you do for me?’”
“You’re gonna shaft me anyway.” Jules shook his head so the bangles fell, their light dying. “I’m dead.”
“No, no, not at all.” Valerio sounded sympathetic as he picked up the Aradia bangle and swung it in front of Jules’s face. “When I get what I want, this is yours. I told you, I don’t kill unless I have to. Sometimes it presents a tactical advantage. In this case, everything goes back in its place.”
Jules sat upright, wishing he trusted this man. If he did, it would all be so much simpler.
“Have you accepted it yet?” Valerio asked.
“Accepted what?”
“Your fate. Your destiny.”
“Ain’t no fate,” Jules said. “But yeah, I gotta accept these things are designed for folks like me. I dunno. I’m tuned to it. Genetically. Or some quantum entanglement. But that’s a quirk of nature. Not some celestial hand pointing at me and saying, ‘You’re the one, Jules, you’re special.’ This is biology. Chemistry. Nothin’ else.”
“Good. Acceptance is the first stage. Next... we act.” Valerio stood and addressed the men. “Time to go in. Let’s earn that cash.”
At that exact moment, a roar shuddered overhead. The hills must have insulated its approach, but once everyone, including Jules, scurried under the cave’s cover, a helicopter swept around and banked sharply toward the village.
Someone had found them.
Valerio snatched Jules’s collar in two hands and pulled him close, face contorted in anger. “Is this your doing?”
“I got no clue who that is.” Jules wasn’t lying. If Toby was smart, he’d sent Colin the coordinates and let the authorities deal with it, and since that was a military transport, Jules was hopeful. “Let’s just see what’s down there. Whoever it is, I’ll leave with them.”
“No.” Valerio released him and faced Horse. “Make sure no one follows us. Lethal force.
Even if it isn’t strictly necessary.”
Chapter Forty
The village below the helicopter appeared to be heavily populated for such a small area, about a hundred souls streaming into the open to observe LORI’s arrival. Uniform land surrounded the dwellings, lines of a crop that Charlie could not identify from this angle, more arranged on terraced steps around the village on two sides. Toby was their resident expert in isolated peoples and insisted they not damage anything; they needed cooperation. In fact, the only clear landing spot was the very top of the highest hill, and that would require a precise maneuver. There was only one space at ground level large enough to accommodate them: the square in front of what must have been a church or temple.
Dan took them down as slowly as he could, which caused the helicopter to shake and sway. Too many people watching, not getting out of the way.
Charlie’s satellite phone trilled again, her husband for the third time. She patched him into her earpiece and inserted it in her ear canal beneath the mufflers. “Yeah.”
“I’m not liking what I’m seeing on your beacon, Charlie,” Phil said.
“It’s okay, we’re landing.”
“In the middle of the damn jungle. Charlie, what’s going on? You’re supposed to be in Singapore running computer models.”
Charlie swallowed. The others would hear her half of the conversation but not Phil’s, so she kept it vague without sounding as if she were pleading with him. “We tracked a possible location of a significant tomb. I needed to be on the scene. It’s not dangerous.”
“You’re lying, Charlie. I told you never to do that. Even if I don’t like it.”
“What time is it there?”
“Don’t change the subject.”