“But he didn’t come back?”
She pointed at the satchel. “I just told you he did.”
The slightest glint of greed crossed his eyes. Then, his face more masklike, he took down the satchel and put its strap over his shoulder. “By the fact that Hood was on a government-sanctioned mission, this satchel is the rightful property of the U.S. government.”
“An heir might dispute that.”
“So sue me.”
“Not me.”
“That kid of yours?”
“I have to get back to Sadie.”
“Your child should be downriver, enrolled in a proper school. She’s going to grow up like an animal out here.”
“I think I’ll take your advice.” Beth pointed to the mine entrance. “Lead on, Agent Hale.”
“This is it? We’re done?”
“Yeah. We’re done.”
He looked down the long, dark length of the mine and shook his head. “Ladies first.”
It was an ambush all right, Hale thought, but not hers. Regrettable, but if Hood was dead it wasn’t smart to leave Calloway alive either. Too much loose antigovernment crap about confiscatory federal agents. And she could still sell stories to the Commies. So as she started walking for the mine entrance, silhouetted against the circle of light, his hand felt for the little pistol to plug her. Loose end. First this pilot, then the little girl. He’d had to do much worse in the war.
But at a spot she’d picked, where just enough light came from the entrance to give her aim without being blinded, she suddenly stopped, unslung her knapsack, and knelt on one knee. “I need a drink of water,” she said, reaching inside.
He watched her like a predator.
Her hand closed around the. 45.
The bitch was trying something. He yanked out his pistol.
As he did so, she shot him through her knapsack, the bark of the report opening a neat little hole in the fabric. An instant later his own gun went off.
The reports boomed and echoed in the mine as one.
They both hit each other’s stomachs.
Slow wounds, a terrible way to die.
Beth’s caliber was heavier and Hale was kicked backward, grunting in surprise that the woman had beaten him. He fell on his back, his pistol flying wide before he could think to hold on to it. Damn.
She simply sat back, stunned that it had finally happened, and clenched her muscles against the pain. She hadn’t expected it would hurt so much. It was hard to breathe. She imagined she could feel the bullet in there, eating, and a wash of nausea almost made her faint.
Steady, Beth. Not until you’ve taken care of Sadie.
Because it hasn’t ended yet.
Wincing, she stood up, her gun out of the pack now and steady. Hale was lying on his back, his arms and legs making swimming motions as he tried to move. He was looking at her in fear.
She walked past him and scooped up his gun, pocketing it, and then quickly patted him down for another. He groaned as she pressed his sides. Then she stepped back.
“You don’t deserve a finishing shot.”
“Don’t leave me,” he begged.
She walked back to her pack. “You weren’t going to let me live, were you, Hale? Because if there was anything really valuable in that satchel, anything really top secret, you couldn’t risk having me run around with it in my head. You didn’t even ask if I was a patriot, or if I’d help. Because you didn’t want help. You wanted possession.” She started to work, pulling sticks of dynamite out of her pack.
His mouth bubbled. “Hood?”
“The funny thing is that you got what you came for. Ben is in that bag, and all the strange and wondrous things you hoped for are in there, too. I’ve no doubt you’d find someone smart enough to figure them out. Maybe some of those Nazi scientists you boys have been capturing. So now we’re both dying, and that’s the best outcome of all. Because you know what, Mr. Hale? You don’t really want to find Shambhala. You don’t want to find what Ben found.”
“Hood?” It was a gasp.
She unreeled fuse toward the mine entrance. “Good-bye, Duncan.”
The explosion sent an arc of rock flying out toward Eldorado. As the fragments bounced and ricocheted off the talus slope below, there was a roar of collapse and a cloud of smoke and dust rolled out of the mine. Beth waited for the air to clear and then checked to make sure the cave was completely plugged. Yep. A solid wall of rock entombed Hale. Then she ripped off the bottom half of her shirt, bandaged herself as best she could, using the pain to keep her focus, and painfully climbed to the top of the cliff where the mine’s vertical airshaft was. She’d prepared this cover long before. Wincing as she felt her gut leak into itself, she dragged the logs and brush over the hole and kicked on some dirt. Erosion and growth would seal the shaft for decades to come.
Agent Duncan Hale would bleed to death in the dark.
Then a stagger down to the cabin, forced smiles to a confused Sadie, and quick delivery to a frightened Margaret. The effort had just about killed her, but not quite.
Too bad, because what was coming up the road next would kill her. She’d die all right, but in the most horrible way possible, and not before she told them everything she knew.
One side would bring the other like flies to rot, she’d long figured.
So she lay on the bed, unarmed, dizzy, and resigned, curious about this other man to come. She prepared by putting on male boots and jacket, the latter with the fake credentials for Ben she’d had made in China and then used at the bank. It might help confuse things until the right descendant came along. The calendar pages were taped shut by the Tibetan stamp. She didn’t think the county coroner would look too hard at a hermit’s leavings. And after that? Would any of it ever matter?
She just had to hope the right blood lock heir would survive.
When dusk fell, headlights swung up the old access road: two or three vehicles, at least. Doors slammed and she heard the heavy tread of big men getting out.
She pulled off the rest of her bandage and peered at the puckered and swollen bullet hole, her stomach a mottle of purple and yellow bruising. Pain came in pulses. She didn’t know you could hurt so much!
They were gathering outside. She could hear the muttered German.
So she plunged her forefinger into the bullet hole, screaming as she did so.
They froze, uncertain. Then there was a command, and they broke through the door.
Beth yanked her finger out. It was like taking a finger out of a dike. Blood spurted in a rush, a fountain of mortality, and her vision blurred.
As she faded into unconsciousness and death, she got a last glimpse of the man who’d first burst inside.
Oh, my God! He looked wild with disappointment.
And far, far worse than she did.
46
The Nunnery of the Closed Door, Tibet
September 20, Present Day
S ince Sam wasn’t critically hurt, the nuns didn’t have to lug him. Wheezing and constantly cursing (until he remembered the company he was with, but then the soreness would make him forget again), he staggered step by step under his own power. He was bleeding, but the wound was a surface cut where the shattered iPhone had bruised and scraped his chest. Once at the iron door, Jake Barrow’s theft of the keys delayed the party only fifteen minutes. After pounding, Amrita shouted directions to a spare set she kept hidden in her cell, and more nuns scurried to fetch them.
“It helps that Mr. Barrow has to think everyone else a fool,” she told them. “If he didn’t think that, his philosophy would collapse against commonsense reason.”
When the Americans were released into the yellow glow of the nunnery temple, Rominy felt a rush of relief. Escape was like being raised from the dead. She knelt and touched her forehead to the base of the Buddha as the nuns looked on in sympathy. She could swear electricity coursed through her when she touched the relic, restoring her spirit and strength. Did God have many faces?