Scarlet opened her mouth to reply but Hawke hushed her with his hand.
“I’m sure you have a witty retort on the tip of your tongue, Cairo, but let’s just see what Ryan’s up to, shall we?”
“If you say so,” Scarlet said. “But if you’re going to light it then do it on the balcony or you’ll set the bloody smoke alarms off.”
Ryan walked on the balcony and lit the cigarette. Far below, the streets of Shanghai buzzed as the day wore on into dusk. Boats cruised up the Huangpu and slowly the neon city began to offer its nightlife to anyone who cared.
“What Pliny discovered was that if you wrote on parchment with milk of tithymalus, it dried until it was totally invisible.” He flicked the ash over the side of the balcony with casual proficiency.
“And you said you never smoked before,” Scarlet said, smirking.
“I never said that,” he said. “I said I wouldn’t smoke these. Now, Pliny the Elder — real name Gaius Plinius Secundus, for those taking notes — was a Roman naturalist, and he worked out that after you had written with the milk, all you had to do was…” he paused for dramatic effect. “Soph — could you grab the portrait?”
Sophie emerged a few seconds later with the Xi Shi portrait.
“Hey!” Hawke said. “Be careful with that! One gust of wind and it’s gone forever.”
“I had grasped that fact, Joe,” Sophie said. She handed the picture to Ryan. He placed it on the table and pinned it down with a coffee cup and Scarlet’s Zippo lighter.
“Such respect for ancient art,” Lea said.
“Needs must when the devil drives,” he said. “So, what our man Pliny worked out was that all you had to do to reveal the hidden message was simply apply a little post-combustion residue powder of some description.”
Lexi looked confused.
“He means ash,” Lea said. “That’s how Ryan says ash.”
“Ah — ash!” Lexi said.
“So drop hot ash all over an ancient parchment?” Scarlet said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Let him finish,” Hart said firmly. “I for one am intrigued.”
Hawke stepped forward. “I agree — do your best, mate.”
Ryan flicked some of the ash in his hands and handed Scarlet the cigarette. He rubbed his hands gently together and then smeared them slowly over the back of the portrait.
And there it was, slowly emerging from the past into the present.
“It’s a message!” Lea said.
Hawke laughed loudly. “You clever, smug bastard!”
“What does it say?” asked Hart.
They all peered in and looked at the message, barely legible, the milk weak after so many centuries. They were looking at a series of Chinese characters.
“Lexi?” Hawke asked.
Lexi Zhang looked hard at the characters. “It says…” she said, almost in a whisper, “it says, The Great Khan’s Secret is in His Thirteenth Chapter.
“That’s good to know,” Scarlet said, turning to face the city and taking a long, deep drag on the cigarette Ryan had handed her. She shook her head in disappointment and leaned over the balcony to look at the street below.
“What does it mean?” Hawke asked Ryan, who for once looked lost for words.
“Not entirely certain. As hard as this might be for you all to understand I do not actually know everything.” He went back to his laptop and typed a few words into Google. “But my best guess at this point is that our next stop is going to be Ulan Bator.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Later that night Hawke was cruising in a private jet arranged by Sir Richard Eden’s London office. He watched the lights of China gradually fade away as the plane ascended to forty thousand feet and crossed over into the empty plains which stretched into Mongolia to the north. It hadn’t taken Ryan long to work out that anything involving Genghis Khan meant going to Ulan Bator, and they were packed and on the plane within three hours.
But now, his mind raced with problems, worries and deceits. What was Sheng Fang really up to? Yes, he was a dangerous criminal, and his status as one of the richest men in the world made that danger positively lethal. Could he really be diverting millions of dollars into the search for a map that might not even exist?
He was struggling to keep things together. He’d asked Ryan and Sophie to stay at the hotel with Commodore Hart with a view to maintaining the safe HQ they’d established — somewhere they could work on the research undisturbed. It was Lea’s idea, and Sophie in particular had objected at first, keen to get in on the action in Mongolia, but the team decided it was the right thing to do.
That at least was progress, but Hawke’s mind still buzzed with confusion. He still didn’t know who he could trust. Lea Donovan had tried to tell him something about the elusive Sir Richard Eden when she thought they were about to die back in the Greek cave system, but she had backed away from it when she realized Cairo Sloane could hear what she was saying. He thought about that and what Eden himself had told him back on the phone in London. He wondered how close he was to learning the truth.
To make matters worse, he thought he was falling in love with Lea, but she would have to be honest with him if she wanted him to take her seriously and make any kind of commitment. After Hanoi, it hadn’t been easy for Hawke to get close to anyone else, and this was as far as he had gone. And yet… what she was keeping from him was on his mind all the time and he resented the control Eden seemed to have over her.
Then there was the fact that both Cairo and Sophie were lying about their involvement in MI5 and the DGSE. That was another little wrinkle he had to iron out before he could really trust either of them. He wondered once again if Sophie had spoken to Ryan about her true story, and decided he would ask him about it next time there was a moment when they could speak privately. If Ryan could ever pry himself off of his new French lover, that is.
His mind snapped back to the mission. The last thing Ryan had told them was to start at the Genghis Khan Statue Complex just east of the capital. It was a long shot, but there was so little left of the ancient Mongolian Empire it was all he could think of. They kept a small collection of materials relating to the Khanate and it was the best shot they had to get to the bottom of anything to do with the Great Khan.
Now, Cairo was sleeping and Lexi was up front talking with the pilots, no doubt regaling them with tales from her colorful and sordid past. He watched her drape an arm over the first officer. Beside him, Lea’s eyes were closed but he knew she was awake.
He poured a shot of vodka and sank it down in one. He wished it were whisky, but it was all he could find in the on-board drinks cabinet. He looked at Lea again and decided now was as good a time as any to ask her what was really going on.
“What were you going to tell me about Richard Eden, Lea?”
She didn’t flinch and kept her eyes closed.
“When was that?”
“Don’t play games,” he said. “Back in Kefalonia, in the cave system — we were watching the now dearly departed Hugo Zaugg pumping water from the defensive tunnel leading into the vault of Poseidon. You said there was something important you had to tell me about Eden, but then you glanced at Cairo and something made you stop. I’m sure you remember.”
“Of course, but…”
She opened her eyes and faced him for a second before turning away and studying the digital readout that gave the passengers flight information: forty thousand feet, one thousand kilometers per hour.
“What is it you wanted to tell me. Lea? Don’t tell me it’s nothing because Eden’s confirmed to me that something’s up. He says he’ll tell me when all this is over.”