The Tiger Warrior Part 20

"You have to put yourself in his mind," Jack said. "Let's a.s.sume he arrived here with plenty of time to choose his position. He wants to have a view of all the mineshaft entrances, right? He doesn't know which one's going to be his target. The shafts up here, close to the ridge, are the farthest from the opposite slope. Rahid said they're just visible from the path running above the valley floor, the continuation of the one we came in on. That gives him a minimum distance to the most distant possible target, where we are now. He's going to want to position himself equidistant between the farthest possible targets on either side. That puts him in a cone of probability focusing on that large cleft you can see above the path opposite us."

"Remember what Katya said about how good this guy is. You're thinking of seven hundred yards, but maybe he can do nine hundred, eleven hundred, more."

Jack nodded. "He's also going to take counter-sniping into account. He's seen our rifles, but he's going to a.s.sume that none of us are trained. Remember what Rahid said about the Taliban recruits, their dismal marksmans.h.i.+p. That's what this guy's going to be used to, wherever he's worked in war zones around the world. Boy soldiers, terrorists spraying Kalashnikovs. Never much threat to him. In counter-sniper work, you always have to try to find a weakness in your opponent, and that's his. He thinks he's master of this valley, but he's not."

"You have to believe it, Jack."

"It's the psychology of the sniper. You need complete confidence in yourself That's the sniper's ultimate strength, but also a weakness. Confidence breeds over-confidence."

Costas slid back down the mine tailings into the gully. "I just hope you don't get the shakes. My teeth are beginning to chatter, and I'm not sure if it's just the cold. I'm going to take a look in that shaft above us. But I'm going to drop down and see Pradesh first. He needs to know about that cone of probability."

"Good. The more movement our opponent sees, the longer we have."

"How much time?"

"Not much. He's going to want to strike before the light goes. And he'll have seen we're not equipped to spend a night up here. He'll be looking for any sign that we've found what we're seeking."

"You think he knows we're onto him?"

"He'll have seen Katya. He knows she'll have told us about him. He's seen us split up. He could guess why."

"If I'm sticking my head up, I want you to be covering me."

"Roger that."

Costas shuddered with the cold, beating his arms around him, then clambered over the tailings and made his way down the slope to where Pradesh was visible in the sangar below. Costas slid awkwardly on the scree, completely exposed. Jack was far more worried than he had let on. If the sniper was half as good as Katya said he was, his first target would be himself or Pradesh. He would want to get rid of the two rifles first, the only threat to him, then pick off the rest at leisure. Jack shut his eyes, and tried to put himself into the mind of the other man, somewhere on the opposite side of the valley, staring at them, his eye darting from Katya and Altamaty, to Pradesh, to him, seeing Costas moving down the slope. Jack opened his eyes and peered out, searching the opposite slope, still seeing nothing. The noise of Costas stumbling down the rock reverberated across the valley. Jack prayed that he had been right, that the rifle was trained on him first, not Pradesh. He took a deep breath and forced himself to stand up, holding the rifle, making himself a clear target for a few moments, then lay back down behind the rocks. His rifle had the scope, Pradesh's rifle did not. He took off his sheepskin mitts, remembering what Rahid had said. The cold would numb his fingers and make his shooting ineffective. By that simple act he was committing himself mentally to the task ahead. He had to believe that his opponent was also poised for action. He unwrapped the Lee-Enfield from the turban cloth. He tried to shut his mind from everything except his rifle and the target. He began breathing slowly, deeply, stopping every few breaths before inhaling again, trying to slow his pounding heart. He felt the forestock of the rifle, dried linseed oil on walnut, tested the grip. He held the rifle with his left hand and used his right hand to arrange the cloth where his elbows would be, cus.h.i.+oning them against the jagged chips of rock. He wrapped his right arm around the sling, but not too tight, remembering that the throb of arteries might be enough to throw his aim off completely at this distance.

Jack removed the lens covers and the elevation and windage turret caps from the scope, but kept a strip of turban cloth over the front lens to minimize the chance of glare. The slightest reflection, the slightest movement, could give the game away. As soon as his opponent knew that Jack was taking up position the waiting was over, and the others were suddenly targets. The slightest flinch could put all their lives in danger. He flipped off the safety on the rifle, then pulled the bolt handle back. He saw the gleam of the cartridge in the magazine, pushed the bolt forward, saw the cartridge jump up and nose into the chamber, and then felt the resistance as he pushed the bolt home and let the handle drop. He raised the rifle, careful not to let the muzzle show above the rocks. He edged up the slope, bringing the rifle level and then down, wedging the forestock into a rocky cleft, aiming at the path across the opposite slope of the valley. He looked along the side of the scope, trying to gauge the distance with his naked eye. He chose the rock he had spied with Costas. Eight hundred yards. It was downslope, but the air was thin, dry, and the decreased resistance would compensate for the extra gravity. He reached up and dialed in the elevation. There was no vegetation to gauge wind speed, but it was virtually nonexistent, only a tingle on his face from the north. He touched the dial on the windage turret, turning it one notch. He let his right hand fall to the trigger guard, then pulled the b.u.t.t hard into his shoulder, bringing his cheek to bear against the raised wooden piece on the comb of the stock. Keeping both eyes open, he looked with his right eye down the scope, s.h.i.+fting back slightly to get the best eye relief It was a simple crosshair reticule, and despite the three and a half times magnification the rock still seemed impossibly far away. He remembered what he had been taught. He projected his mind forward until he imagined the dark silhouette of a body in the rocks, then the bullet racing in, becoming smaller as the silhouette became larger. Without moving his head he looked around. The target could still be outside his point of aim visible through the scope. He curled his forefinger around the trigger, pulling it through its first stage, feeling the resistance. He took a deep breath, taking in the sharp, metallic smell of the rock, and exhaled halfway. He stopped breathing. He went still.

He stared through the scope. Show yourself.

Suddenly out of his left eye Jack saw movement on the valley floor. His heart began to pound. He willed it to slow down. Where the pall of dust had floated above the far end of the valley a shape had emerged. It was a horse, riderless, cantering along beside the dry riverbed that ran through the middle of the defile. The horse pa.s.sed the tent they had seen among the boulders and came to a halt about a hundred yards beyond, tossing its head and pawing the ground. Jack kept stock-still. He saw another figure, walking from the edge of the slope below him toward the horse. Jack took his eye off the sights, and stared in disbelief. It was Katya. He remembered her fascination with the akhal-teke, the heavenly steeds. She walked toward the horse, hands outstretched, completely exposed. It was as if she were in a trance. Then Jack saw something else, a flash, a glint from the opposite slope. That was it. He instantly reacquired his target. The flash had been about twenty yards higher than his point of aim. He s.h.i.+fted the rifle up a fraction. The sniper had been thrown by the horse, by Katya, just as Jack had. He would have instantly known his mistake, and now would make up for it.

And Jack was the first target.

There was a vicious snap overhead, a smack on a rock behind and a ricochet that snarled off into the distance. The report and the echo seemed to come together, rebounding off the valley sides. Then it was gone, leaving Jack stunned. Concentrate. He had seen the muzzle flash in the rocks. He tightened his finger on the trigger again. He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

Then there was something else. Katya was not the only figure on the valley floor. Another had emerged, running, stumbling from the direction of the tent. It was the Afghan boy. Katya had reached the horse and was stroking its neck. The boy was closing in on her, out of her view on the other side of the horse, a hundred yards, eighty. Jack had a sudden sick feeling. Something was terribly wrong. The boy had both arms out in front of him, and was wearing something bulky around his chest. He was shouting, screaming hoa.r.s.ely, in a voice that had not yet fully broken, words that echoed up the valley, words of terrible defiance, of aggression. Allah akbar. Allah akbar Jack's mind reeled.

The cry of a suicide bomber.

Jack stared with sudden cold certainty. He had to make a decision. Now. He might be the only chance Katya had.

Another bullet cracked overhead, smiting the rock behind him and spraying him with rock splinters. This time Katya noticed the report, and looked up. She was holding the horse close now, stopping it from bolting. She must have heard the boy, but she had still not seen him. Jack's mouth was dry, his heart pounding. It was just another target. He angled the rifle down. The sniper knew where he was already. Jack had no choice. He brought the scope to bear. It was a moving target, almost impossible at this range. Suddenly the boy stumbled and fell, then struggled to his knees. It was a chance. Jack aimed at the torso. Katya leapt on the horse, and it reared upward. There was a sharp crack of a rifle shot from below. Jack remembered. Pradesh. Jack could see him out of his left eye, lying p.r.o.ne beside Costas in the sangar below, rifle aimed at the boy. Then Jack heard another snap, a ricochet that whined past him, and a report from the other side of the valley. He saw Pradesh thrown back in the sangar like a rag doll, his rifle clattering down the slope. Jack looked back at the valley floor. The boy was crumpled on the ground. Katya had begun to ride hard, and Jack saw Altamaty run out from the slope alongside, leaping up behind her. Suddenly there was a flash of dust and fire from where the boy had been, and a second later a dull boom. The dust cloud from the explosion seemed to chase the horse as it thundered down the valley. And then Jack saw the muzzle flash again from the opposite slope. The sniper had exposed his head, and was shooting at the horse. Jack's rifle was still on target. He was rock-steady. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked hard, and there was a sucking sensation, as if the vortex of the bullet were taking all the sound with it, bringing all possible energy to bear on the target. Eight hundred meters. One and a half seconds. Jack's ears were ringing. He could hear nothing. And then there was another flash across the valley, and movement. Something went up in the air. Jack whipped out his binoculars. The movement had been a rifle, falling against the rocks. He looked hard into the shadows, and then he saw it. A human figure, sprawled back, motionless, a spatter of darkness on the rock behind the head. Jack closed his eyes, and forced the air out of his lungs. He began to shake uncontrollably. All he felt was cold, icy cold. He pulled on the mitts again, and crossed his arms tight against his chest, his hands stuffed under his armpits, lying on the scree, shaking.

"Man down!"

Costas was yelling from the sangar below. Jack leapt over the rocks and stumbled down the slope, reaching them in seconds. Costas had opened Pradesh's bag and was ripping a large sh.e.l.l dressing out of its package. Pradesh was conscious, and looked at Jack, grinning weakly. Jack saw blood seeping out under his back, and knelt over him, panting. "How is it?"

"Not too bad." Pradesh's teeth were chattering, and he grimaced as Costas used a pair of scissors from the pack to cut away the fabric from his coat, revealing a neat hole the size of a quarter just below his right shoulder. Costas patted out coagulant powder from a plastic bottle and pressed on the dressing, then carefully eased Pradesh over and repeated the process on his back. "It's a clean exit wound," he exclaimed. "You were lucky. I think it was 7.62 millimeters, if he was using the Mosin-Nagant, ball rather than explosive. At this range, there's less cavitation and tissue damage. It doesn't look as if any major blood vessels were hit. What you've got is a nasty flesh wound. A few inches lower, and it'd have been a different story."

Pradesh looked at Jack. "The sniper?"

"A head shot."

Pradesh shut his eyes. "Congratulations." He opened them again and looked down at his wound, suddenly convulsed with pain. "And the boy," he said, grimacing. "That was my shot."

"The explosion came a few seconds after your bullet hit. He may have panicked and detonated the bomb himself when he saw Katya beginning to ride away."

"I was responsible," Pradesh said. "Either I shot him, or my round spooked him into killing himself."

"My rifle was trained on him too. It was just chance that you pulled the trigger first. He was going down either way. And you saved Katya's life."

"It meant you could take out the sniper."

"We did the job."

Pradesh gave Jack a fathomless look, then winced. "There's a radio in my pack. You can call in a chopper for a medevac. I think this counts as a Taliban incident. ISAF are going to want to send a recce team up here now. I expect they'll already be monitoring Rahid's attack on the Taliban at that village, so there will probably be a couple of helicopters on standby at Feyzabad."

Costas stared down the valley, his face whitened with dust. "What drives a child to do that," he murmured. Through the pall of dust they could see the man from the tent wandering about aimlessly, arms gesticulating, as if he were looking for something, where the boy had gone.

"It's not what drives the child," Jack said, s.h.i.+vering, holding his arms tight to his chest. "It's what drives the father. That man down there strapped those bombs to his son and sent him to his death."

"He looks distraught."

"That's what the jihadists don't prepare you for."

"I just hope ISAF sends what's needed to take out all the Taliban in this area, those who led that poor man down the road to h.e.l.l."

"I think Rahid can probably manage," Pradesh said weakly. "They've had enough outside interference here already. Where are Katya and Altamaty?"

"They rode off down the valley, the way we came in," Costas said. "We'll get the chopper to pick them up after you're safely out of here."

"Roger that," Pradesh said. "It'll take at least half an hour, which gives you time to see if there's anything to find up here."

"Anything more we can do for you?" Jack said.

"I could use a little morphine."

Costas took an ampoule out of the bag, tapped it, then slapped it on Pradesh's thigh. "That should do it." He pulled out an emergency blanket and tucked it around Pradesh, and Jack slipped off his coat and put it on top.

"Better. Much better." Pradesh closed his eyes, then waved his hand. "You can go now. I think it's time you had a look in that mine shaft."

Twenty minutes later Jack and Costas stood in front of the central shaft entrance, looking into the dark hole above a large pile of mine tailing that partly blocked the way in. Costas had Jack's copy of Wood's Source of the River Oxus in his hands, and quickly read out the pa.s.sage on the lapis lazuli mines: "The shaft by which you descend to the gallery is about ten feet square, and is not so perpendicular as to prevent your walking down. The gallery is eighty paces long, with a gentle descent; but it terminates abruptly in a hole twenty feet in diameter and as many deep. The width and height of the gallery, though irregular, may be estimated at about twelve feet; but at some places where the roof has fallen in, its section is so contracted that the visitor is forced to advance upon his hands and knees. Accidents would appear to have been frequent and one place in the mine is named after some unhappy sufferers who were crushed by the falling roof No precaution has been taken to support by means of pillars the top of the mine, which, formed of detached blocks wedged together, requires only a little more lateral expansion to drop into the cavity. Any further operations can only be carried out at the most imminent risk to the miners"

He shut the book carefully and handed it to Jack, who slipped it into his khaki bag. Costas began to trudge up the pile of rock chippings, slipping back down with each step. "Well, it doesn't sound less safe than anything else we've done today," he muttered. "You say no one else comes up here?"

"That's what Rahid told me. They think it's haunted." Jack followed Costas. He felt heavy, suddenly tired. Each step seemed a monumental effort, as if he were walking in deep snow. His feet slipped back on the rock chippings, and halfway up the mound it seemed as if he was going nowhere. He felt as if he were constantly striving for an objective that was just beyond his grasp, like in a dream. Finally he stood at the top of the mound of tailings, the roof of the cavern entrance within arm's reach above him. Costas was ten meters or so ahead, inside the shaft below Jack, crouching down. Jack watched him take out a Mini Maglite and pan the light over the walls. The rock was dark, almost black. Jack remembered the description, the thick layer of carbon from the fires used over thousands of years by miners to crack open the veins of lazurite. He looked back at the entrance. He was not sure, but the light seemed to reflect a haze of blue off the walls, a blue like the azure of the sky. He turned back. Costas had advanced a few more steps down and was stooped over, close to the base of the mound where it sloped down into the cavern. He was motionless, staring hard at the chips of rock, s.h.i.+ning the torch on one spot directly in front of him. He straightened, then looked back up. "Jack," he said quietly.

"I'm here."

There was silence for a moment. Costas cleared his throat. "That old Colt revolver of John Howard's. The other one of the pair, the one you said his father had used in the Indian Mutiny."

"Yes?" Jack's voice felt disembodied, as if he were hearing himself speak from a long distance away.

"Do you know where it was made?"

Jack's mind was a blank. He struggled to think. "It would have been Colt's London factory. The address would have been stamped on the barrel."

Costas got up, switched off the Maglite and made his way back to where Jack was standing. He looked him full in the face. "I know what Rahid found. I know why they never let anyone near this place."

Jack put his hand on Costas' shoulder. Costas offered him the Maglite, but Jack shook his head and reached deep into his bag, holding something tight. He left Costas, stumbling down, sliding on the rock chips, feeling where it was frozen underneath. He reached the spot where Costas had been, and dropped down on his knees. He let his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom. Then he saw what Costas had seen. It was half-buried in the tailings, but unmistakable. The revolver had been well-oiled so was not rusted, but had turned a deep plum color. He could see the address on the barrel. Col. Colt, London. The grip and the trigger guard were surrounded by rags, a coa.r.s.e cloth, tightly wound. The fabric extended back under the rock chippings, then rose again in a mound, and then extended up again, a few feet away. The shape was symmetrical. Jack felt himself swaying. Two arms, outstretched. He looked at the other side. There was no pistol there, but a hollow where something had been, something that had once been grasped.

Jack peered again. The hollow could have been anything. It could have been the shape of a clenched hand, retracted in death. It could have held another weapon, a sword perhaps. But it could have been something else. The shape of a bamboo tube, the sacred velpu, once held in that hand, now gone.

Jack swallowed hard. He was crying, and he did not know why. He took a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled slowly, blinking hard. He thought about what he knew of the man, of his love for his children, his family. He hoped they had been there at the end. He hoped that whatever had tormented him, the anguish, the loss, had lifted from him here, in those final moments. He hoped he had found what he had been seeking all those years since the jungle, the greatest treasure imaginable.

Jack wiped his eyes, and looked up. There was a noise outside, pulsing into the cavern, the clatter of a helicopter coming up the valley. He heard a crunching of feet on the rock behind. Costas had left him alone with the body for a few minutes, but Jack had vaguely been aware of him skirting around and exploring the recess beyond. "I checked it out," Costas said, his breath crystallizing in the shaft of sunlight coming from the entrance. "The mine extends about twenty meters farther on, then drops into a well about five meters deep. If this was where Licinius hid that stone, my guess is that's where it would have been. There are ledges in the rock created by the ancient pick work, but I looked and there's nothing loose. It's as if someone has been in here and methodically worked through the entire place. If that jewel was here, it's gone now."

Jack cleared his throat, and pointed. His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e. "Look at his hand, the empty one. It's exactly as if he were holding a Koya bamboo velpu. I think they brought that with them, the one they had taken from the jungle all those years before, and now that's gone too. And so is Robert Wauchope. There's no sign of another body here. Maybe when they came here the velpu was empty, but when it was taken away it was heavy with a new weight. Maybe Wauchope took it from Howard's grasp, and escaped from here. Maybe they really did find the jewel."

Costas looked at Jack. "We've found what we came for, haven't we?"

Jack said nothing. He reached into his bag, grasping what he had been tightly holding as he entered the chamber. "I know we have to go. Just give me a moment."

"You want to be alone?"

"No. Stay." Jack took out his hand and opened it. He was holding the little lapis lazuli elephant, John Howard's childhood toy, worn smooth by years of little hands, played with by Jack himself when he was a boy. It had a sparkling ribbon tied around its neck, something Rebecca had put on it when she had taken it to her cabin on Seaquest II Jack squeezed the elephant tight. Lapis lazuli, born in this mountainside, now returned. He put it down, and pushed it toward the twist of rags, the empty outstretched hand, carefully, gently. It touched, and he left it there, pulling his hand away.

The helicopter thundered past again. Jack got up, and straightened his bag. He took a deep breath, exhaling one last time into the depths of the cavern, watching his breath crystallize and tumble into the darkness. He put his hand on Costas' shoulder. He remembered Pradesh. It was time to go.

Two days later Jack sat in the stern of the U.S. Navy patrol boat as it sped across the still waters of Issyk-Kul, its wake cutting a great V across the surface of the lake. The view was stupendous. Issyk-Kul was the deepest mountain lake on earth, three thousand square kilometers in area, five times the size of Lake Geneva. To Jack the wake seemed like a giant arrow pointing east, a final thrust of the central Asian ma.s.sif toward the deserts of China. To the south, the mountains that cradled the lake loomed fantastically out of the haze, a strip of snowy peaks that seemed detached from the earth, floating in midair like a mirage. To the west lay the boulder-strewn sh.o.r.eline where he and Costas had met Katya and Altamaty three days before. They had left her there again that morning, recording the Roman burial site, before a helicopter would fly her out to meet them. There was one place Jack insisted they visit, beyond the lake, beyond the Taklamakan Desert near the end of the Silk Road. The visit would take a few days to set up, and meanwhile Jack was excited by the prospect of diving again for the first time since Seaquest II had left the Red Sea over a week earlier.

Jack thought again of Pradesh, of his gunshot wound in Afghanistan two days before. He would be in intensive care for weeks, but the prognosis was good. He was in the best possible hands at the U.S. medical facility at Bishkek, and would soon be sent to Landstuhl in Germany. After flying back with him from Afghanistan, Jack and the others had gone by helicopter to the lake to meet the patrol boat that had come out to join them from the old Soviet naval base on the eastern sh.o.r.e. Jack had wanted to travel the route the Romans under Fabius might have taken, east across the lake after Licinius had parted from them and fled south into the mountains. The patrol boat was now approaching the end of its journey, almost ten hours at maximum speed. It would have been an awesome endeavor two thousand years before for a few men in an open boat, already drained by the trek they had undergone since escaping from the Parthians at Merv. There was no way of knowing how far they had got, whether they had reached the eastern sh.o.r.e. Jack guessed they would have fought to the end, against the elements, against exhaustion, against the enemy who may have been awaiting their landfall. These were men who had been trained to confront every challenge head-on, who would fight to the last to uphold the honor of their legion, to earn the right to join the hallowed ranks of their brothers-in-arms who had gone before. And Fabius might not even have known he had the jewel, one of the pair, wrapped up in a bag of loot he had shared with Licinius. Jack peered into the steely waters, seeing only reflection, sky-colored, peppered with tiny clouds. Perhaps it really was here, lost in the wreck of their boat, just as he had seen it in his dream. The celestial jewel.

The engine revved down, and the warm water of the wake slopped up over the stern transom of the boat. The wind died away, and the air felt thin, cool. Looking back over the lake, Jack could see the sh.o.r.eline disappearing off to the west, far enough to sense the curvature of the earth. He felt as if they had tipped the balance between east and west, and had reached a point where the Silk Road would channel travelers down the far slope of the mountainous plateau, into China. It was an illusion, with the death trap of the Taklamakan Desert beyond, but for travelers from the west the great mountain pa.s.s ahead might have been a sign of hope. Jack turned around, looking forward. Costas was still in the deckhouse where he had been since the morning, talking and peering at the navigation screens. Ahead of them, the sh.o.r.elines of the lake were finally converging. Earlier, the lakesh.o.r.e had seemed desiccated, eroded by the wind, but here the westerly wind that blew evaporation eastward had carpeted the ridges and valleys in olive-green. Nestled against the sh.o.r.eline were buildings, drab concrete structures, the dilapidated remains of quays and jetties. As Jack watched, the surface of the lake s.h.i.+mmered and seemed to blur, and then was still again. He wondered if it was a seismic tremor. He looked at the sh.o.r.e again. Somewhere over there was Rebecca, with the IMU and U.S. Navy team. They had made a discovery already, the possible outlines of walls revealed by sub-bottom profiling. It was enough to give them a foothold on the archaeology of this place. Their job today was to check it out, before Katya joined them for the trip they had planned farther east over the mountain pa.s.s into China.

Costas swung back from the deckhouse and clambered over the diving gear stacked behind. He pulled two E-suits off the twenty-millimeter cannon behind the stern house and dropped one in front of Jack. "May as well suit-up now. We're heading straight to the site. Rebecca and a couple of the team are coming out to us in the Zodiac. We're going to be the first ones down."

"Rebecca won't be too happy about that."

"This is no place for her first-ever dive. No way. I don't trust lakes at the best of times, and this one should have a big red sticker on it."

Jack sloshed some water from the scuppers over his hands. "It's slightly saline. That helps to cleanse it. And the lake bed's two thousand feet deep in the center. Under a huge layer of silt. Anything toxic dumped out here's likely to be well buried."

Costas stopped pulling on his suit and looked incredulous. "You kidding? A Soviet submersibles testing site? We monitored these places when I was in the navy. You could almost warm your hands over the satellite images. And it didn't have to be weapons or reactors. In the early days, the Soviets would happily have used chunks of uranium to power toothbrushes."

"Altamaty told Katya that it was mainly torpedo testing out here, and whenever they lost one they went to huge efforts to find it. That's where the first report came from of these walls underwater, the ones Rebecca thinks our team may have found again. Altamaty liberated some of the files in 1991 when he was on reserve duty at the base, when the Soviet Union was in meltdown. He said any lost torpedoes they couldn't find were deemed unsalvageable and are probably best left where they are."

"Well, that's rea.s.suring," Costas grumbled, poking his head through the rubber neck in the suit. "Any more words of wisdom before we go radioactive?"

"Katya says the Kyrgyz see the lake as a sacred place, full of treasures. Some of them think Genghis Khan is buried here. Their sagas talk of a golden coffin set on a silvery sea. And they think there's a sunken Nestorian monastery off the north sh.o.r.e. They think this place holds all the riches their ancestors saw pa.s.s along the Silk Road. But the waters are also sacred from before then. Some of the older Kyrgyz won't even swim in it."

"Sounds sensible to me." Costas grunted, straining his hands through the rubber wrist seals. "In this case, I'll go with the folk wisdom any day."

"Some of the stories may be true. If you study the sh.o.r.eline, you can see where the level of the lake has fluctuated. It's a strange place. Hundreds of mountain streams empty into it, but hardly anything flows out. So the level of the lake goes up, or goes down when there are periods of high evaporation, like now. And on top of that, it's in a major earthquake zone."

Costas finished pulling on his suit and sat down, picking up a clipboard he had brought with him from the deckhouse. "I've got it here. The navy guys were briefed on it. At least three major quakes in recorded history, one about 250 BC, the Grigorevka, another 500 AD, the Toru-Aigir, and another 1475, the Balasogun, all probably eight to nine on the Richter scale, pretty hot stuff" He turned his back to Jack, arching his arms out to tense the shoulder zipper of the suit.

"Right." Jack yanked the zipper shut and slapped Costas' back. "The second of those, AD 500, might coincide with the sunken Christian monastery story. But the legend of Genghis Khan doesn't fit. Genghis died in the thirteenth century AD. His successors were notoriously secretive about his tomb, murdering everyone they encountered during the funerary procession. According to Mongol ritual, horses would have trampled over the site to conceal it. But I think the tomb was where history says it was, at a place called Burqan Qaldun in Mongolia, hundreds of miles to the east of here."

"What about decoys?" Costas said. "I mean, deliberately misleading stories. If they were so secretive, maybe they spread stories of the tomb being in different places. Hence the legend here."

Jack nodded. "It's possible. And not just for concealed tombs, but also for very visible tombs, extravagant ones. For those tombs, it's the exterior appearance that matters for posterity, for how later generations will see the dead. But the contents usually matter most for the deceased, their private insurance policy for the afterlife. So they can be concealed elsewhere, with the actual body. After all, even the Egyptian pyramids were robbed."

"And the First Emperor's tomb at Xian was robbed," Costas murmured. "By the caretaker, if the jewel story is true."

Jack stood up, peering at the sh.o.r.eline. He looked for the Zodiac, for Rebecca, but there was still no sign. He sat down and began to pull the legs of his suit on. "So where exactly are we going in?"

Costas flipped over to another piece of paper on the clipboard. "I printed this off the navigational computer. About two o'clock from us now, half a kilometer out from sh.o.r.e. There's a creek with a few buildings at the edge."

Jack s.h.i.+elded his eyes. "I see it."

"It's where the profiler came up with that image of walls."

"It fits with the old Soviet report?"

"It fits exactly with the story from Altamaty, recounted to me by Katya. And I can't imagine Katya has anything to hide."

Jack raised his eyebrows, and was silent for a moment. "Well, to rea.s.sure you, Altamaty also spoke with Rebecca, in Russian. He said the first reports of underwater finds at this spot came from the Russian explorers who reached this place in the nineteenth century. You remember Sir Aurel Stein, the Silk Route explorer? Well, there were Russians who jumped on that bandwagon too, sent out by the Moscow Geographical Society. It was like an archaeological version of the Great Game, Russians against British. n.o.body knows for sure what the Russians found. Such a lot disappeared after the Russian Revolution. But we know that two Russian explorers came down here, Nikolai Przhevalsky and Piotr Semyonov Tianshansky. They'd both heard stories of sunken ruins, cities under the lake. When they came here, the place seemed possessed by it. Tianshansky had been to Venice and found a fourteenth-century map showing an Armenian monastery by the lake. The legend of the tomb of Genghis seems to have been local. Undoubtedly the Russians were fed what they wanted to hear, but they were also shown genuine artifacts that had been found by fishermen."

"Then fast-forward through the Soviet period."

Jack nodded, pus.h.i.+ng his head through the rubber seal on his suit. "The explorers left, but the legends grew. n.a.z.i fantasists thought this was the Aryan homeland, drawing on local legends that this was a place of purity, a kind of heaven on earth. Then in the 1950s the Soviets established their torpedo testing base here, and divers went into the lake for the first time. As we know, they found something while searching for a lost torpedo, and the Ministry of Interior Security became involved. That ended under Khrushchev in the early 60s as the Cold War heated up and attention was focused elsewhere. Then more years pa.s.sed, more rumor, more legend. A professor in Bishkek started to talk about Atlantis. That's when Katya's father got interested."

"The family connection. I knew it."

"The professor was wrong, of course. And Katya's father never made it here. This place was next on his wish list when we drew a line under his plans two years ago."

"So what else does Altamaty know about what the Soviets found?"

"The records only give chart coordinates. There's a huge amount of silt down there, and no record of whether they found the torpedo. But rumors began circulating in Karakol, the local town, where the Soviet personnel lived. They told of ancient walls under the silt, like the converging walls of a great entrance pa.s.sageway, with Chinese-style carvings. In Karakol there's a wooden mosque built about a hundred years ago by the Dungan Chinese, Muslims driven west by persecution in China. The mosque looks like a Chinese temple, with dragons on the cornice. The Dungans seem to have fueled the legend of Genghis' tomb. Katya thinks it's only a matter of time before the tourist department seizes on the idea and makes it into an embarra.s.sing spectacle, with giant Soviet-style statues of Genghis Khan in the town square. She wants them to invest in the petroglyphs, the real archaeology out here, not some myth, and make that an international attraction."

Costas folded the sheet over on his clipboard and showed Jack a printout. "Well, whatever it was the divers saw, it seems to fit with the sub-bottom profiler data. To begin with, the profiler just showed linear striations coming down from sh.o.r.e, river runoff eroded into the bedrock. It was Rebecca who first saw how regular one of the channels looked. Almost an upside-down V shape, converging into sh.o.r.e."

"So it was Rebecca who actually spotted this? She didn't tell me that."

"She's modest. Like you."