“No, I meant you were actually speechless for the first time in your life.”
“Oh, that’s very droll, Donovan…”
Han spoke up. “What you are looking at is the thirteenth chapter. It is the only place it exists in the entire world. Only Dr Tsao, the current Reader of the Truth can understand its code. I decided you were worthy to see it back in Khan’s tomb. Surrounded by some of the greatest treasure in the world, you told me you were not interested in the gold and gems, but only stopping Sheng. That is when I knew I could show you the tattoo.”
Jenny Tsao smiled and a tear came to her eye. “I have spent my life studying the ancient code, but never before have I seen the missing chapter. This is priceless.”
Lea moved into the light of the candle on her desk. “It’s beyond priceless.”
“You’re quite right, of course,” she muttered. “What we are looking at could lead the way to the secret of eternal life.”
Hawke noticed Tsao’s hands were shaking. “So you really believe in immortality?”
“Of course, young man,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I am old… I think about immortality much more than you do. Do you not believe in it?”
Hawke rubbed his face and sighed. This again. “If you’d asked me that a few weeks ago I would have laughed in your face and called you an idiot — no disrespect — but after what we’ve been through recently I just don’t know any more. I never got a chance to find out if Poseidon’s trident could live up to its reputation or not — not yet, anyway, and we never got close to the map back in Europe, so for me it’s all still just myths and legends, and yet being so close to it all like this is turning me into a convert.”
Tsao smiled. “As Lao Tzu once said, to the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
Hawke raised an eyebrow and was on the verge of offering a skeptical reply when Lea stopped him. Tsao walked forward and began to read the encoded characters on Han’s back. She ran her leathery fingers respectfully across the symbols tattooed on the young monk’s muscles. She stopped to take off her glasses and rub her tired eyes and then returned to her analysis.
“It’s written by a different writer than the person who wrote the other twelve chapters. That’s obvious at once. It’s absolutely beautiful prose… look here at the description of the sunset on the last night of Khan’s life.” She ran her fingers over the monk’s back once again as she gazed at the characters.
“I’m sorry, Dr Tsao,” Lea said, “but we have so little time…”
Jenny Tsao didn’t even hear Lea’s words. She was too engrossed in the process of decoding the final chapter of the Secret History. “This part here describes Khan’s search for the Philosopher’s Stone — his desperation for its discovery before he died, but of course death took him before he could find it.”
“Where was he searching for it?” Hawke asked.
“The court poet describes something here about a traveler from the west — a man with fiery hair who traded information for gold. He told Khan about an ancient map which led its bearer to the source of eternal life.”
They both leaned in closer to Jenny Tsao and said in unison: “Yes?”
“Apparently, there was a tomb in the west — the tomb of the Sea God, which contained the map, but it was raided by a party of foreigners and the map was stolen. He notes that they must have known the map was in the tomb because they left the rest of the treasure untouched.”
“I can vouch for that…” mumbled Hawke.
“But who were these foreigners?” Lea asked.
Tsao looked up at her, amazed. “They were the Chinese, of course.”
“What?” Lea said, amazed. “You mean to say that old bastard Zaugg was on a wild goose chase from the very beginning?”
Jenny Tsao tutted when she heard the bad language, but nodded in agreement all the same. “The map was stolen by the Chinese when they raided the tomb thousands of years ago.”
“Who raided the tomb?” Hawke asked. “Does it give a name?”
Dr Tsao nodded again, and squinted through her thick glasses as she re-read the tattooed text to make sure of what she was translating. “It does! The map was stolen by a party of tomb raiders working for the Emperor Qin Shi Huang.”
“Ying Zheng?” Lea asked.
Jenny looked up at her and smiled with unfeigned admiration. “You know Chinese history? I’m impressed.”
“It’s more like I know someone who knows Chinese history. Who was Ying Zheng?” she asked.
“He was the king of the Qin State, a territory in China over two thousand years ago,” said Han, speaking up again. “He was eventually the first ruler in China to use the title emperor instead of king and he was responsible for a massive expansion of Chinese power, especially to the south. You might know him as the man who unified the Great Wall of China.”
“Ah, I know that one,” Lea said.
“Anyway, Emperor Qin spent a large amount of his reign — and therefore his life — in a fruitless quest for the secret of immortality.”
“I just love it when all this shit comes together,” Lea said, beaming. “It’s like the A-Team.”
“The what?” said Han.
“Never mind. You had to be there.”
“Han is right,” Tsao said quietly. She seemed suddenly anxious. “Qin was so obsessed with the elixir that he even started calling himself “The Immortal”. Many charlatans came to his court to sell him various potions which they claimed would make him live forever and in his desperation he tried them all.”
“He’d have got along like a house on fire with Hugo Zaugg,” Lea said.
“Qin travelled to Zhifu Island many times in search of the elixir because of a simple legend about a mountain there.”
“He left inscriptions…” Han said.
“Yes, he did!” said Tsao nodding and peering over the top of her glasses at the inked symbols. “Tourists can still see them today.”
“But he never found his elixir?” Hawke said.
Han shook his head. “No. He died eating mercury in the belief it would help him live forever, and anyone who knows about mercury knows that’s pretty much the last thing you want to do if you want to live forever. Or even for a few hours.”
“He ate mercury?” Lea said, horrified.
“He did,” Han replied. “It wasn’t so crazy in those days. Even today in fact, some people think eating gold leaf will extend their life. There’s no accounting for crazy, as you Westerners say…”
“But how does all this fit into today?” Hawke asked.
Tsao whispered the reply, still enthralled by the chapter. “Genghis Khan found out that Qin’s men had stolen the map from the vault of Poseidon and had it brought back to their emperor. But this is where the story takes a turn for the worse — at least if you’re Qin Shi Huang. Apparently he…ah!”
“What is it?” Hawke asked.
Han turned his head. “Yes, what is it? What have you read?”
“We have found the most precious hidden gem of all! It is all true… there was a map from the West, brought into China by Qin’s tomb raiders and… he buried it with him in his tomb at Xian!”
“His tomb?”
“Yes, Khan knew this to be the truth and that is why he tried to invade China so many times… the Map of Immortality is in the Emperor Qin’s tomb.”
“Then we have what we need!” Lea said.
“Not so fast,” Tsao said. “It says the map is located in the real tomb, deep beneath the one we all know…and it says he who wishes to hold the map must complete the five trials…”
“The five trials?” Hawke asked, his mind instantly going back to the cave system in Kefalonia where they nearly all died. “What are they?”
Over the next half an hour or so, Jenny Tsao told them everything she could about Khan and Qin and their quest for immortality, both from her own research and from the new text on the monk’s back.