By the time they reached the small inner sanctuary, they were all dusty, covered in sweat. The morning had rapidly warmed, and humidity weighted the air down. But they had reached their destination.
“Nothing’s here,” Nasser said sourly.
Seichan recognized his attitude, read the hard stance to his posture. She doubted his patience would last until noon. Unless there was some real progress soon, she expected he would end things in the next hour. Order Gray’s parents killed. Execute all of them here. And move on.
Ever practical.
No damn imagination.
It made him a dull lover.
Ahead, Gray circled the altar a third time. He was drawn thin, covered in dust and dirt, black hair plastered to his forehead, sticking out in damp tufts. Dried blood caked at his collar, where he’d been pistol-whipped behind the ear by one of Nasser’s men back at the hotel.
He still refused to look at her.
It made her angry, mostly because it hurt, and she hated that even more. She sought that place of cold dispassion where she once easily lived, a dispassion that allowed her to sleep with Nasser to get what she needed, as she’d been trained to do.
Seichan turned her attention to the guards, going practical, strategizing some way out of here. The guards were mostly locals, including many former Khmer Rouge soldiers, long recruited by the Guild, gathered after the fall of the genocidal dictator Pol Pot. They would be fierce fighters. They guarded the four exits to the chamber, heading off in each cardinal direction. More men had taken posts throughout the ruins, discouraging tourists from disturbing them.
“According to what I read about this place, a giant statue of Buddha once rested here,” the monsignor announced, pacing Gray around the altar. Vigor waved an arm across the two rectangular slabs, stair-stepped one atop the other. “But when the religion changed to Hinduism, the Buddha was torn down and tossed into that large well we passed coming up here.”
The only other bits of decoration in the stone room were four more shadowy faces of the bodhisattva Lokesvara. Only these were all gazing inward, toward the altar and its missing Buddha. Kowalski leaned against one face, staring upward.
The great central tower of the Bayon rose above the altar, climbing forty meters. Cored through its center like a chimney, a square shaft cut straight up to the sky above. It was the only source of light.
“This has to be the place,” Gray said, finally stopping. “There has to be a way down from here.”
“Down to where?” Nasser asked.
Gray lifted a hand toward the monsignor. “Vigor mentioned how the foundations of this tower were buried underground. Deep. We need to find some access to those lower rooms. And I wager under the altar would be a good place to look.”
Vigor stepped next to him. “Why do you think it’s important?”
Gray swiped the hair from his brow, plainly weighing how much to say.
Nasser also read the man’s hesitation. “We’re past another hour mark.” He tapped a finger on his wristwatch. “Tick tock, Commander.”
Gray sighed. “The bas-relief we saw earlier. Of the Churning of the Milk. Every piece of the story was important. The snake, the frothing seas, the poison, the world threat, the glowing survivor. But one piece stood out as odd and unexplained. It didn’t fit with the others.”
“What’s that?” Nasser asked.
Seichan saw it pained Gray to speak. Each word came out with a wincing reluctance.
“The turtle,” Gray finally admitted.
Vigor scratched at his chin. “The turtle in the relief represents the god Vishnu, an incarnation of himself. In his turtle form, he supported Mount Meru as it was churned back and forth, to keep it from sinking.”
Gray nodded. “On the bas-relief, the turtle was carved beneath the mountain. Why a turtle?” He leaned and drew in the dust on the altar. He sketched a crude doodle of a mountain with a domed shell beneath it.
He tapped the shell. “What does this look like to you?”
Vigor leaned down. “A cave. Buried beneath the roots of the mountain.”
Gray stared up the shaft of light. “And the tower here represents that mountain.”
Seichan drew closer. “You think there is a cavern beneath this tower. Beneath its buried foundations.”
He answered her, his eyes flicking to her briefly, then away. “The only way to find out is to get down into the foundations — then search for some access to that cavern.”
Nasser scowled. “But what can be so important about the cavern?”
“It could be the source of the Judas Strain,” Vigor said. “Maybe when they were excavating the temple, they broke into that cavern, released something that lay buried down there.”
Gray sighed, tired. “Many disease vectors have appeared in the world as mankind spread into regions normally unpopulated. Yellow fever, malaria, sleeping sickness. Even AIDS appeared when a road was being built through a remote region of Africa, exposing the world to a virus found only in a few monkeys. So perhaps when the Khmer cultivated and populated this region, something was released.”
Gray rubbed his neck. His eyes held a steady stare at Nasser.
Too steady.
Seichan sensed Gray was still holding something back. She studied again his stylized pictogram. The mountain and shell represented the tower and cave. So what else was here? Then she realized.
The turtle itself.
Of course…
Her eyes rose to Gray’s.
He must have felt her attention. He turned to her, casually, but the weight of his gaze was heavy. He knew she had realized what he’d left unspoken. He willed her to be quiet.
She stepped back, folded her arms.
He stared another breath — then away again.
Seichan felt a measure of satisfaction. More than she had been expecting.
Nasser breathed deeply through his nose, nodding. “We must find a way down there.”
Gray frowned. “I had hoped there would be some evidence of a secret passage.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Nasser said. “We’ll blow the entrance.”
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Vigor said, aghast. “If this is the source of the Judas Strain, it may be horribly toxic down there.”
Nasser remained unperturbed. “That’s why I’ll be sending you all down first.”
To be canaries in a coal mine.
Seichan again matched gazes with Gray. He raised no objections. Like Seichan, he knew that there was something larger than just the source of the Judas Strain down there.
The turtle’s shell might represent the cavern—but the turtle itself represented the god Vishnu—suggesting more than just a cavern rested beneath the Bayon temple. Possibly something else waited for them down there, too.
Gray stepped toward Nasser. “Does that demonstrate enough cooperation to spare my mother for this hour?” he asked, his voice tight.
Nasser shrugged, agreeing. He moved to the shaft of light, seeking better reception for his cell phone.
“I should perhaps hurry, then,” Nasser said, flipping open his phone. “It’s already after the hour. Annishen has little patience. No telling what she might do.”
Harriet remained frozen on the landing.
The slathering dog leaped at Jack’s sprawled form on the stairs. It was impossible to tell the breed in the dark stairwell, only that it was large and muscled. Pit bull. Rottweiler. Jack rolled to his back and kicked out — but the dog was faster, attack-trained. With a growling snarl, it bit deep into his ankle.