Masters was careful to keep in the shadow of a rock, because the last thing he wanted was a ray of the afternoon sun to reflect off the glass of his binoculars and alert Bronson to his presence. He kept as low and as motionless as he could, just the way he’d been trained.
He’d already identified the position of their jeep, and now he focused on the two targets themselves. Judging by their gestures, they appeared to be talking about the ruined building in front of them, and for a fleeting moment Masters wondered if this could be the end of the operation, if this old ruin was the resting place of the relic Donovan was so desperate to recover. But then he saw the woman shake her head firmly and point further up the hill. A few moments later they’d both turned and started walking up the slope.
‘I didn’t expect this,’ Bronson muttered as they passed through the cleft in the rocks. In front lay an expanse of rocks and tufty grass. ‘It could take us days to search this area properly. Is there any other information that could help narrow down the position?’
Angela shook her head helplessly, then pulled out her notebook and read the lines of the text again. ‘It says “between the pillars and beyond their shadows / into the silence and the darkness formed of man”. We’ve passed between the pillars.’ She pointed at the jagged-edged gap in the rocks a few yards behind them. ‘The next phrase means either that they walked north, so their shadows were in front of them, or maybe that they had to go some distance beyond the shadows cast by the rocks that form those pillars. Either meaning would work, I suppose.’
‘Yeah,’ Bronson agreed, ‘but neither really helps us. It’s needle-in-a-haystack time.’
‘Don’t be so negative, Chris.’
‘I’m being realistic.’ He waved his arm at the widening valley in front of them. ‘This must cover two or three square miles, and over the last two millennia hundreds, maybe thousands, of people must have walked all over it. If there was still anything here to find, surely somebody else would have found it by now?’
Angela nodded. ‘But nobody has. When this relic was hidden, the people involved obviously concealed it really well.’
‘OK.’ Bronson straightened up. ‘Let’s look at this logically. We’re standing on a sloping rocky hillside. The only two possibilities, as far as I can see, are that the treasure is either in some kind of building or hidden inside a cave.’ He turned to Angela. ‘Let’s split up. That way we can cover more ground.’
* * *
Masters watched the two people in the valley below him separate and start to move in different directions. He watched them for a few moments longer, then eased back away from the cliff edge and walked across to where his men were waiting.
‘They’re moving further up the valley, so you can move parallel to them.’ He pointed at an outcropping of rocks about a quarter of a mile north-east of where they were standing. ‘Go there, quietly, and make sure you keep out of sight. Keep the sat-phone switched on, but on silent, and wait till I give the word. You stay with me, JJ.’
As his men picked up their weapons and moved off, Masters crawled back to his vantage point and resumed his scrutiny of the valley below.
‘Chris!’ Angela called out, waving her arm. ‘Come here.’
With the constant howling of the wind, Bronson was too far away to hear her distant yell, but he saw her wave and ran across the valley floor towards her.
‘Remember the text?’ she asked, as he stopped beside her.
‘Most of it, yes,’ he replied.
‘Notice anything?’
Bronson glanced around. ‘No.’
‘Actually, it’s not something I saw — it’s something I heard. Listen.’
For a few seconds Bronson listened intently. Then he shook his head.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ Angela said. ‘In this area there’s no wind noise, and I don’t know why. I guess it must be something to do with the shape of the valley.’
Bronson realized she was right. He’d got so used to the constant moaning of the wind that his subconscious mind had tuned it out. But here his brain wasn’t having to do any filtering — they were standing there in virtual silence.
‘The text says, “between the pillars and beyond their shadows / into the silence.” We’ve come through the pillars and headed north, walking beyond their shadows, and I think we’ve just stepped “into the silence”.’
Bronson stepped towards her and hugged her. ‘Did I ever tell you how amazing you are?’ he said.
Angela grinned. ‘We’re not there yet,’ she said, pushing him back. ‘And this “silent” area is pretty large. It could cover quite a big part of this side of the valley.’ She pointed towards the valley wall to the west. ‘It’s most likely that cliff which diverts the wind. It’s probably just blowing right over our heads.’
‘But we must be close,’ Bronson said. ‘Come on — let’s keep searching.’
They moved on, further up the valley floor, checking all around them as they went, looking for anything that could possibly match the last half of the penultimate line of the text that had brought them halfway around the world — “the darkness formed of man” — anything, in short, fabricated by human beings rather than a product of nature.
Bronson saw it first. In a small plateau just off to their left he caught a glimpse of a small square structure. He stopped dead.
59
‘That can’t be it,’ Angela said firmly. To their left was a small, cubical building. The stones that made up its structure were the same texture and colour as the surrounding rocks, which was why neither of them had noticed it before. But now they could see it, they also saw the single oblong opening in its front wall — a doorway without a door.
‘What?’
‘I need to explain something about Lamaist monasteries,’ she said, sitting down in front of it. ‘Most of them, and certainly all the larger ones, actually consist of two buildings or groups of buildings, in two different places. There’s the main structure, like Diskit Gompa that we saw down below, where the two rivers meet, and a second, much smaller building. This is usually quite some distance — maybe three or four miles — from the monastery proper, and usually at a higher altitude. It’s like a simple cell, with almost no facilities, and it just provides shelter and a place to sleep.
‘Before a monk can become a lama, he is required to spend quite a long period of time in a building like this. He’s supposed to meditate in the solitude, completely undisturbed. The monastery provides him with basic food and drink, which is delivered once a day, so that the monk doesn’t have to disturb his meditations by preparing meals. It’s a bit like the forty days and nights of solitude Christ is supposed to have spent in the desert in Judea after being baptized. And I’m pretty certain that what we’re looking at here is the separate house of meditation that belonged to the Namdis Gompa monastery.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Bronson muttered. ‘But it fits the text so well. It’s in this weird area of silence, and it’s clearly man-made, not to mention dark inside.’
‘I agree. It was probably built here precisely because this particular spot is inside this sort of cone of silence, so the constant noise of the wind also wouldn’t disturb the meditation of the monks. But you’ve got exactly the same problem with the dates, Chris — they just don’t work. We can take a look inside it, by all means, but it was definitely constructed far too late to be what we’re looking for.’
They walked across to the small building and peered into it, but it was empty, just four bare stone walls. There was a tiny cubicle in one corner that had possibly functioned as an earth closet, and a flat stone bench that was presumably intended to be a bed. But apart from that, there was nothing else.
‘So what now?’ Bronson asked, sitting down beside Angela on the bench.
Angela sighed. ‘I still don’t think we should be looking for a building, because it just wouldn’t be still standing now, not after all this time. I was hoping we’d find a cave, something like that.’