They followed Han down a long corridor where he opened a narrow door and stepped outside into the moonlight. The walked through an ornamental garden, across a low bridge and finally made their way over a series of shiny stepping stones on a smooth gravel bed before arriving at small clearing.
Thirteen tall acer trees encircled a small area of smooth grass and in the dead center was a large boulder.
“This is all very wonderful,” Scarlet said, “but we don’t have much time.”
“She’s right, for once…” Lexi said. “Where is the missing chapter?”
“Is it in Khan’s grave?” Hawke asked. “If so, we need to go there right now.”
Han smiled. “You are already at Khan’s grave — is it not obvious?”
Hawke looked at the pleasant clearing. “This is Genghis Khan’s grave?”
Han nodded. “Yes. Buried beneath here is one of the greatest treasure hordes in all of human history.”
Scarlet’s eyes widened as the monk lit a candle and lifted the boulder to reveal a hole in the ground. As they descended into the tomb, Hawke saw the boulder was artificial and fixed on a hinge system to act as a kind of trap door.
It didn’t take them long to reach an underground chamber, much smaller than any of them had expected, and as Han slowly moved around the tomb, slowly lighting more candles, the vast array of treasure gradually began to glow before their very eyes.
“There must be fifty million dollars’ worth of gold in here…” Scarlet said, reaching out to touch an enormous gold plate.
Karlsson whistled loud and long. “Oh my.”
Lexi pointed in one of the corners. “And look at that heap of diamonds! That has to be impossible. Imagine how good they would look on my fingers.”
“It’s not impossible,” Han said. “This is one of the largest collections in the world. You are looking at some of the finest stolen gold and precious stones ever collected by man, and over there is the great man himself.”
He raised a candle to point at the far end where a small unmarked grave had rested silently for hundreds of years.
“That’s it?” Hawke said.
Han nodded. “A modest final end for a man with so much, but he wasn't happy. He dedicated much of his life to trying to cheat death, and in the end died trying, the irony is obvious.”
Hawke took a deep breath. “We’re not interested in Khan’s treasure, Han. We just need the missing chapter so we can locate the map and stop Sheng.”
Han was silent for a long time, nodding his head gently and smiling to himself. He seemed to like what Hawke had just said.
Hawke repeated hs plea. “Han? We just need the map!”
“But you already have it,” the monk said, smiling. “It is now time for us to fly to Beijing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Eden’s private jet continued its climb until it hit thirty-five thousand feet and leveled out for the duration of the flight. Joe Hawke stretched his arms and yawned loudly, and then glanced at Han who was sleeping peacefully on the other side of the aircraft, holding a small box he had insisted on bringing with him. Han had said they already had the missing chapter, but like all the others, Hawke had no idea what that meant.
Since Poseidon he had learned to put his trust in others, but to Hawke, none of it made any sense at all. The murdered man in Paris, the stolen Tesla machine in the Pacific, the cryptic Shaolin monk beside him. Sometimes he thought all of this might be just one long dream that could turn into his worst nightmare at any moment.
He thought about Zaugg and now Sheng, desperately seeking the chance to cheat death and live forever. It was in defiance of everything nature stood for, yet the idea of it had intoxicated great men like Khan and many others through history like a lethal poison, warping their minds and driving them insane.
Nothing would ever change man’s capacity for evil, he thought, and it was up to the good people of the world to keep that evil at bay. How he had wound up at the center of it he didn’t really know, but maybe it had something to do with his feelings for Lea Donovan. He knew they were the real thing when Eden’s phone call woke him in the night and the old man had told him about her disappearance. He knew they were the real thing when he saw her again at Chan’s villa.
He watched the darkness below the small jet as they skirted the eastern borders of the Gobi Desert and made their way across the plains of Inner Mongolia. If he knew one thing for certain, it was that there had to be many more people than just Sheng Fang searching for such an awesome power, and the arrival of Bradley Karlsson proved it.
Beside him, Scarlet sighed. “Just what the hell did that monk mean when he said we already have the missing chapter, Joe?”
“I know everything you know,” he said and smiled. “I thought all you wanted to do was blast bollocks off? Don’t tell me you’re starting to actually care about other people?”
Scarlet ignored him. “Maybe it’s in Beijing with this Jenny Tsao woman?” She was referring to the person Han had told them about on their way to the plane.
“Han says we have what we need, and I for one trust him.”
She sighed again, long and deep. “When all this is over I think I want to retire.”
“Retirement’s for pussies.”
They turned to see Karlsson walking toward them from the rear of the plane. He was gripping a can of beer which looked comically small in his bear-like paw of a hand. Hawke’s instinct was to trust the man because he knew Eden had checked both him and his boss Kosinski out and given them the green light, but Karlsson’s personality made trust very hard, and liking him almost impossible.
“Who asked you?” Scarlet said.
“Waiting to be asked is for…”
“We know,” Lea said, rolling her eyes. “it’s for pussies, right?”
Karlsson laughed. “Yeah, maybe I was going to say that, maybe not. Listen, I know you guys are suspicious of me, but there’s no need.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Hawke said.
Lexi interrupted them. “You guys really think it’s possible to live forever?”
Scarlet shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t ask me, Bumblebee, I’m just a hired gun.”
“It’s Dragonfly, but gee, thanks for your considered response.”
“You’re more than welcome, darling.”
Lexi turned to Lea. “What about you?”
“Sure, I don’t see why not. Some conversations with Ryan can last forever so I don’t see why a person couldn’t.”
Hawke laughed and joined Karlsson by grabbing a cold beer from the fridge.
Lexi sidled up next him, causing Lea to raise an eyebrow. “And what about you, Joe? Do you really believe in all this or do you think something else is going on?”
“Like what?”
“Like we’re just being used and all of this is just a distraction.”
Hawke had considered that, but dismissed the thought. “No, I don’t think anything else is going on here. It can’t get any darker or crazier than the search for immortality, after all. When I started out on all this, back in London at the British Museum, my answer to your question would have been laughter and ridicule and a straight-forward no. But now, after all we’ve been through, I just can’t believe men like Zaugg and now Sheng would go to so much effort and expense for no reason.”
“Maybe they’re just deluded nuts, ever considered that?” Karlsson cupped a handful of peanuts into his large mouth and began loudly crunching them up with his mouth half-open.