“So where is this original?” Hart said. She set her coffee cup on the desk and ran her fingers though her hair. It was late and she hadn’t slept since London.
“Not worked that out yet, but we know it’s in Mongolia, of course.”
“We need more than that.”
“Thanks to our mysterious monk and his hidden message on the back of the Xi Shi portrait we know they’re linked. Although the reference to the ‘Great Khan’ could mean either Kublai or Genghis, but I don't think it matters. Either way, this is getting very interesting!” Ryan rubbed his hands together. Outside far below in the streets of Shanghai a cacophony of car horns drifted up to their open balcony.
“So what do we know about Khan, honey?” Sophie said. He’d never told her, but he liked it when she called him that. It sounded pretty damned great in her French accent. He knew that much.
“Okay — let’s start at the beginning. We all know that Genghis Khan was obsessed with immortality, right?”
Sophie and Hart looked at each other for a second with vacant expressions.
“I don’t know the first thing about Genghis Khan,” Hart said first.
“He had red hair and green eyes!” said Sophie proudly. “I know that!”
Ryan sighed. “Maybe I should start before the beginning… Anyway, Genghis Khan was obsessed with immortality, as I just said, and…”
“And you think that’s where all this nightmare begins,” Sophie said. “With Khan?”
“No, I don’t think so at all. Poseidon predates Genghis Khan by a long way — thousands of years. I think Genghis Khan was really just like us — he was on the trail of something far more ancient and mysterious, and that Hoffman and this Reichardt guy were trying to work out what that was.”
“Okay,” Hart said, sipping her coffee. “I’m listening.”
“You sound just like a senior naval officer sometimes,” Ryan said.
Hart replied: “Funny… but we have to move faster than this. We can’t let Sheng get ahead now we’ve got the advantage. If Genghis Khan or his grandson knew something about this missing manuscript — and I guess we’re all thinking it’s something along the lines of where this bloody map is — then we’ve got to do everything we can to stop Sheng Fang getting hold of it. We have some phone calls to make.”
Under Hart’s direction, Sophie Durand ordered some coffee from room service and the three of them set about the almost impossible task of organizing what had quickly become a mission now totally out of control.
Hours later, after Hart had taken a shower and Sophie had grabbed some sleep, Ryan was still hammering away at the keyboard.
“So what have you got now?” Hart asked him, drying her hair.
Ryan scratched his head and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “The hidden message on the back of the Xi Shi portrait was clear enough — it’s a simple whisper from the ancient past about Genghis Khan knowing a secret — some kind of ancient truth, and we’ve already worked out this somehow involved a previously unknown chapter of the Secret History. The real question is, what’s that manuscript hiding? We’ll need to work this out.”
“That’s supposing we find it.”
Hart laughed. “If there’s anyone in this world who can find it, his name is Joe Hawke. That man could rescue an astronaut stranded on Mars if he had to, believe me.”
“We’ll leave the heroics to Hawke then,” Ryan said. “But we’ve got a job to do as well. We need a lot more knowledge on this subject if we’re going to beat this Sheng Fang. I just hope Joe knows what he’s getting himself into up there.”
“Don't worry about the Major, he’ll be all right.”
Ryan looked over his shoulder at Hart. “The Major? Who the hell’s that?”
“Hawke, who’d you think I was talking about?”
“No one, just that Lea told me Hawke was a sergeant before he left the Special Boat Service.”
“He was,” Hart said. “Hawke was busted down from Major a long time ago but I can’t break the habit of referring to his old title.”
“Hawke was busted down to a non-commissioned officer?” Ryan leaned forward in his chair, enthralled. “I had no idea.”
“I thought everyone knew,” Hart said. “It's one of the reasons he hates officers so much.”
“What was he demoted to sergeant for?”
Hart sighed. “If you don't know that then I’m certainly not going to tell you. That’s Joe Hawke’s business and no one else’s. Let's move on, please.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They landed at Chinggis Khaan International Airport and immediately hired a Nissan Qashqai. Moments later they were driving into the city on their way to the Genghis Khan Statue Complex.
The highway from the airport to Ulan Bator was dusty and bleak and the sky overhead was an enormous harsh blue canvas the likes of which Hawke hadn’t seen since the time he had trained in Australia.
The journey wasn’t long, but halfway into the city as they were passing through an ugly industrial zone full of smoking chimneys and pretty ancient-looking cooling towers they realized they were being followed.
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking?” Scarlet said.
“Pretty much,” replied Hawke, checking his mirror. “If you’re talking about the Rav 4 then it's been trying to pretend it’s not tailing us since the airport. Damn!” Hawke banged the dash. “But who the hell knew we were here?”
“No one,” said Scarlet. “Except Lexi Zhang of course.”
Hawke checked the back seat, where Lexi was dozing, her head lolled against the headrest. Lea was also asleep. He was glad she was safe now. “I don't think so. I wouldn’t trust Lexi as far as I could throw her with both hands tied behind my back, but not this level of deceit. Not her. She would stab you in the back if it meant her own survival, but I can't believe she would tip-off Sheng so he could follow us to the map.”
“You’re too trusting, Joe. Face it — she could easily have killed Felix Hoffmann and now we’re being followed out of an airport no one in the world knew we were even at. It’s not looking good for Madam Mao, is all I’m saying.”
Hawke checked Lexi once again in the mirror and shook his head gently. “No, it's not her, Cairo. If that’s one of Sheng’s men behind us then they found out some other way. It’s just an instinct.”
“Oh God — not the famous Hawke instinct that nearly got us killed in Afghanistan?”
“No, a better one than that. A new and improved one, so just relax about Lexi.”
Lea had begun to stir and leaned over the front seats. “Well whoever the fuck it is, shouldn’t we doing more about it that just waffling?”
Hawke smiled — she had been listening. “Yes, we should,” he said. “So hang on.”
And with that Hawke spun the Qashqai around in a one-eighty on the highway and in a hail of grit and stone chips he floored the throttle and began racing towards the vehicle pursuing them.
“What are you doing?” Lea screamed. “Please don't tell me your medication has run out yet again.”
“We’re going to find out who’s been following us from the airport and I think the best way to do that is to be up-front about it, don't you agree?”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “At last, he grows a pair.”
Lexi woke up and mumbled something about what was going on.
The way Hawke saw things, the Rav 4 had only three options. Either carry on driving and lose the vehicle they had been told to follow, wait until they passed them and then turn around to follow them in the other direction, or spin around and flee back to their base in the knowledge they had been rumbled.
The pursuers went for option three.