“Don’t worry,” Montross said. “She’s left on a little personal errand for me.”
Caleb eyed him carefully.
Montross turned and headed for the walkway. “Let’s go. I’m sure we’ll be seeing her again. Very soon. Meanwhile, there’s a long trip back to the surface ahead of us.”
Nina circled the mausoleum dome twice, walking along a six-inch-wide ledge before finding the most appropriate place from which to drop to a walkway. This was after avoiding the gold-plated boat moored on the side, on a platform with a gear system and a lever-release.
Obviously, Montross and the others would need that. This transport would have been intended for Genghis Khan’s use, ceremonial perhaps, but those early Mongolians at least had the foresight to make it practical as well. Their leader could have simply awakened, travelled along the walkway out of the mausoleum, turned right and entered his waiting barge, which had been on the opposite side of the dome, hidden from the walkway entrance. The lever would lower the boat down to the sea.
It was carved beautifully, a masterwork of art and design. Exquisite carvings of mountains and lakes, scenes of warfare and conquest. Two metal-plated oars on the inside, it looked like it could hold eight comfortably. More than sufficient for the old conqueror to travel about his necropolis.
Leaving the boat, Nina instead took the hard way, hanging from the ledge and then dropping almost twenty feet. She bent her knees and rolled back, but still felt a painful jarring up her legs and back. Then she was up, securing her backpack. Inside it she carried a grappling hook, extra flashlights, spare magazines for the AK-47 slung over her shoulder and two fragmentation grenades.
She only hoped it would be enough. Where she was going — over the wall behind the looming monastery ahead — she had no visions to guide her. No roadmap of the future and no intuition of the time or place of her own death.
As she approached the western-most wall of the city, she leapt to the monastery steps, scaled a wall, jumping from alcove to ledge to windowsill back to another ledge. And then she was on the roof.
Close enough to jump, she thought, eyeing the distance between the western point of the rooftop and the thick wall. Foregoing the grappling hook, she got a running start, a huge push-off as she leapt into the open air forty feet above the seawater and the gleaming spikes below.
She caught the edge and the rock wall slammed into her chest on her way down. Wincing, but clinging to the ramparts, she kicked, found a toehold, and pushed up. Taking only a short pause, she retrieved her flashlight and directed it ahead, over the wall and down onto the field. Swept it across the ranks of the terra cotta multitude. All of them were facing the other direction, but Nina had no illusions about their vigilance — or deadliness.
Montross had told her where the case was, not far from the shore, but to reach it she would have to go through the very teeth of Temujin’s eternal defenders.
Through, she thought. Or around.
She started walking to her left, aiming the light down over the wall, watching for a gap in the warriors. None appeared, not until she nearly reached the edge. The northern barrier, the sheer cavern wall. Up about fifty feet, a flare sputtered, losing its vitality but still flickering enough to cast wicked shadows over the backs of the army’s rear guard.
Nina took out her grappling hook, attached it to the rampart section, then without a second thought, rappelled down the side of the wall. At the bottom, cloaked in darkness, she flicked the rope hard, freed the hook and got out of the way as it landed beside her. After rolling it up and putting it back in her pack, she turned on the flashlight, examining the path along the cavern wall. There was a gap of at least ten feet as far as she could see. She hoped that the architects of subterranean Xanadu had expected only a frontal assault to the gate, and so didn’t bother to fortify the roundabout approach.
She was wrong.
The boat cut through the water easily as Xavier Montross took the first turn with the oar. Phoebe continued bandaging up Orlando, who shied away from the edge and flinched every time something broke the surface. Caleb sat in the front with Alexander, shining their lights at every building, marveling at the magnificence of the silent marble halls, their first glimpses of massive columns that had endured centuries in darkness. They steered alongside walkways and under majestic bridges, around silent gilded fountains, amphitheaters, and in one case, right through a temple whose center aisle had been submerged. Over their heads, the flashlight beams illuminated a painted daytime sky, complete with clouds and flocks of geese amidst an infinity of blue.
Past all these silent wonders, beyond immense statues of Temujin, some on horseback, others standing in silent repose, some as colossal as the pharaohs at Abu Simbel, they finally approached the western gate.
“Can’t we stop?” Alexander urged, looking back the way they had come, seeing the somber monoliths returning to their shrouds, consumed again by the ancient shadows.
“No.” Montross paddled harder, gasping for breath now.
Orlando coughed, craning his neck to look around. “But the treasure. We didn’t even find one ounce of gold that wasn’t nailed down. Come on, we can’t go back empty-handed.”
Montross grumbled. “I’m no longer in the mood for rusty spikes, poisoned arrows or any other diabolical madness. Not to mention customs agents and military police.”
“Just talking about a few trinkets,” Orlando muttered. Then he looked at Phoebe and smiled. “Maybe a nice ring?”
Alexander shook his head sadly, watching another golden-tipped minaret sail by. “I am so coming back here.”
Caleb opened his mouth, about to discourage any more chatter, when the boat bumped against something under water. “What was that?”
Montross kept paddling. “Just as I figured. We’ve triggered the main gate.” Their lights stabbed ahead, highlighting the forty-foot doors in front of them, doors that pushed outward around the walkway. The seawater streamed out in a rush between the doors, pulling their boat along. It flooded the rocky beach outside, crashing into the mercury-tainted river, diluting it with thousands of gallons of downward-flowing fresh water.
The boat bumped against the bottom, and was then lifted and sent on ahead as if they were in a white water raft ride. Montross set down the paddle, reached into his pack and handed out three gas masks, one each to Alexander, Phoebe and Orlando.
Caleb looked at him with something approaching respect.
Montross smiled back. “I know I’m not fated to die from mercury poisoning, so I can spare the masks for those who might need them most. And besides,” he said, breathing into his collar, “the water from the necropolis seems to be taking the bite out of the toxicity out here.”
Caleb nodded, coughing a little as he fit the mask over Alexander’s head. “When we get out of this, we have to talk about what I saw.”
“I know,” said Montross. “But don’t celebrate yet.” He tossed Caleb the paddle. “Your turn for some exercise.”
As Caleb took up his position and Montross took a seat at the front, Alexander took something from his back pocket. The folded piece of sketch paper. “What about this?” he asked Montross quietly when his dad’s back was turned. “You gave it to me back in the mausoleum.”
“Put it away. Show it to the others, but only when the time is right.”
Alexander stared at the folded paper, then frowned as he slipped it back into his pocket. “How will I know when the time is right?”
Montross turned away, watching the silver-coated water. “You’ll know,” he said, “because everyone will have lost hope.”