The Tiger Warrior Part 15

"Well, it says ancient coins of the Greeks are still to be found in Barygaza, just as you suggest," Katya said. "Then there are those new lines of the Periplus from Hiebermeyer's excavation in Egypt, describing Cra.s.sus' legionaries. Jack filled me in about that on the phone. They specifically mention an altar of Alexander, pa.s.sed as they went east. That would have been in Uzbekistan, close to the cave with that Fifteenth Legion inscription. The Roman soldiers would have heard legends of Alexander's lost treasure. Once they'd reached that windswept altar in the desert, the mountains of central Asia looming ahead, they'd probably shaken off any pursuers from Merv and could relax a little. So what do they do? They dig around, searching. If Alexander was going to bother building an altar, he would have included offerings, and what better than mint coins with perfect images of himself. The Romans could have found this coin there, and brought it with them."

Jack took the coin from Costas, turning it over. "And then they place it on an eye of the body as an offering to Charon, the boatman across the river Styx."

"And the other coin?" Costas said. "On the other eye? That coin looks Chinese to me. Talk me through that one, Katya."

She picked up the second coin, with the square hole in the center. "There are three Chinese symbols on it, one to the right of the square hole, two to the left. This is a coin of the Han dynasty, a wushu, which means five grains, equaling four grams, the same weight as a Greek drachma or Roman denarius. Millions of these were produced, and they're quite common finds in Chinese central Asia."

"Can you pin down the date?" Costas asked.

"The symbols to the left are those of the reigning emperor, as distinctive to the Chinese as the change of portrait was to a Roman. And just as in Rome, a new emperor would attempt to replace existing coins with his own new ones. Token coins such as these, with no bullion value like silver or gold, would have been worthless with the name of a former emperor, and may even have been dangerous to be seen with. So this coin is unlikely to have been in circulation beyond the reign of that emperor. And he was the Han emperor Cheng, who ruled from about 32 to 5 BC."

Jack exhaled slowly. "Perfect," he said softly. "That fits with my own best-guess date for the escape of Cra.s.sus' legionaries, 19 or 18 BC. That's about a decade into the reign of Augustus, about the time he negotiated peace with the Parthians and saw the return of the lost legions' eagles."

"So how do our escaped Romans get hold of a Chinese coin?" Costas asked.

Jack pursed his lips. "They would have been desperate men, trained killers with nothing to lose. Any morality would have been stripped away with the loss of the eagles at Carrhae, and they would have been brutalized by years of torture and hardship under the Parthians. They may have stolen Parthian gold when they escaped, but they still had to eat. Silk Route traders packed everything they needed for the journey. The Romans would have preyed on any caravan they came across, probably killing everyone, maybe taking the odd captive as a guide, gorging themselves on food and drink, looting anything of value they could carry. This coin may have been in the saddlebag of some ill-fated Sogdian trader. But it was of no bullion value, and was something they could afford to leave here to satisfy Charon and ease their comrade's journey into the afterlife."

"And the halberd?" Costas said. "That would have been a much bigger sacrifice."

"A warrior was always buried with his weapon," Jack murmured. "With their eagles gone, the legionaries only had each other, and they probably cherished a dream that they would once again march alongside their dead comrades, heads held high in the fields of Elysium. Even if it meant reducing their own defenses, they would never have buried a comrade without a weapon for the afterlife. Even a weapon so much at odds with the normal equipment of a legionary."

"You think they looted that from a trader too?" Costas asked.

"The Romans would have armed themselves with whatever they could find," Jack replied. "Thrusting swords and spears would have been their favored weapons as legionaries, but anything would do."

Costas touched his finger on the curved blade. "This seems an unlikely sidearm for a trader."

"There were others on the Silk Route besides traders," Katya said quietly. "Mercenaries, employed as caravan guards. Marauding bands of robbers, preying on the caravans like highwaymen. It was like the Wild West out here. Up on the steppes, in the mountains, is the toughest place for an outsider to live, and only the most murderous gangs survived. No mercy was given. And there were others."

"Warriors from the east." Jack looked carefully at Katya. "Warriors who bore the tattoo of a tiger."

Katya shot a glance at Jack, and looked down at the halberd again. "There were murder gangs out here, but there were also raiding parties from China, from the warrior empire itself They were the most feared of all, superbly armed and equipped, on horseback, always accompanied by a drumbeat, rising in a crescendo as they swooped down on their prey. They would have seemed invincible. For the nomads who live out here, for my mother's people, the sound of a distant drumbeat still sends a shiver through the soul. Even I can sense it, when I let my imagination run free."

"So the Chinese raided their own traders?" Costas said incredulously.

"To understand why, you have to understand the nature of Chinese society. The empire was a totalitarian state, inward-looking, a universe unto itself Control freaks always need a boundary, between the world they can dominate and the world outside, which is feared, rejected. There's no hazy middle ground. When you look at the Great Wall of China, remember that psychology. In extreme cases, the boundary acts like a prison wall, and the controller sends out tentacles to draw back anyone who steps beyond. At some periods, that's what happened with China."

"So how could Chinese traders operate on the Silk Route?" Costas asked.

"They didn't. Officially, at least. But the people of central Asia and western China are similar in physiognomy, and an intrepid Chinese trader could pa.s.s through unnoticed. There were probably plenty of them, disguised among parties of Sogdians. There were rich pickings to be had in the silk trade, and the temptations for a Chinese trader would have been great."

"So you're saying they were hunted down?"

Katya nodded. "But there was another side to that coin. The Chinese elite enjoyed their luxuries. Like all megalomaniacs, the emperors were prey to human temptation. Prized raw materials could only be got abroad, such as precious stone: lapis lazuli, peridot. The emperors turned a blind eye to the trade, as long as the traders were invisible. But if anyone was known to stray, they were ruthlessly sought. The Records of the Grand Historian, the Chinese imperial annals, are full of stories of aberrant younger sons or nephews seeking fortunes elsewhere, forming pacts with outsiders. In that sense the Chinese royal dynasties were like any other, but they were unique in their relentless quest to bring back and punish anyone who tried to leave." Katya gestured at the weapon in the box. "That halberd's an imperial Chinese weapon, a prized item like an officer's sword. You'd never have found a weapon like that in the hands of a mere caravan guard. That weapon was brought out here by a Chinese warrior."

"So how on earth does a Roman get hold of it?" Costas asked.

Katya eyed him. "Speculation built on speculation, right? We've got a party of Romans, desperate men, escaped prisoners, tough ex-legionaries going east. Their numbers are dwindling. They've been attacked again, maybe in that pa.s.s behind us. Their attackers are not just another robber band, but fearsome warriors, worthy opponents. The Romans have fought well, and have captured some weapons. But they are hard-pressed. One of their comrades has fallen, and they quickly lay him to rest. They set off again east."

"If their attackers were Chinese, why are they coming after the Romans?"

"Backtrack in time a day or two," Katya said. "Imagine a party of Sogdian traders, laden with silk. They've come across the lake, heading west. They leave their boats here, and transfer to the camels awaiting them. They make their way through the pa.s.s. Soon after that they're attacked, by a band of desperadoes far worse than any they've seen before, by the Romans. The traders are all ma.s.sacred, except for one, kept alive to guide the Romans back through the pa.s.s. Only the trader they've got is not a Sogdian. He's Chinese. And he's being followed. He is one who had strayed."

"With something that he shouldn't have," Jack murmured. "With what we found out from the inscription in the shrine. A jewel."

Katya shot him a piercing glance, and Jack held her eyes for a moment. Costas pointed at the crate. "Anything else to show us?"

Katya lifted out another tray. "We did find something pretty fantastic. I was saving it until the end." She drew back the cloth. Beneath it was a blackened lump, like a shriveled rind of fruit that had been peeled open in strips and left to dry. "It's camel leather, local Bactrian camel," she said. "It's uncured, skin taken from a freshly dead animal. Altamaty says that when the nomads do this, they soak the leather in urine to keep it supple." She sniffed the lump. "You can still smell the uric acid. That's probably why this survived, under the rocks where the feet of the body would have been." She picked up a clipboard and showed them a design that looked as if it had been cut from folded paper, full of triangles and rhomboids. "I downloaded this from an excavation report of a legionary fortress on the German frontier," she said. "A Roman soldier who'd been trained to make something one way would always replicate it, especially such a tried and tested design."

Costas stared. "Okay, Katya. I give up."

"The indispensable camel," Jack said, smiling broadly. "To a Roman legionary in need of kit, the first thought when he sees a camel is not something to ride or carry gear, but leather for making boots."

"Boots," Costas exclaimed. "Of course. The bits sticking out are where it laces up."

"These are caligae," Jack said. "Every legionary wore them, wherever he was. The pattern was fixed about the time of Julius Caesar, when these guys were doing their basic training." He leaned down and sniffed. Katya was right. He could smell them. It was an extraordinary feeling, a heady rush from the past, and for a split second he could sense it all, the sweat, the adrenaline, the fear, the sickly-sweet odor of decay at this spot, the reek of men with the heightened animal intensity that comes with the proximity of death.

He looked away. He realized that Altamaty had disappeared. Another smell came wafting over them, from the direction of the yurt. Jack steeled himself It might be time to break his taboo in the field and drink something fortifying. Very fortifying. He could toast the Kyrgyz people. Katya was looking at him, the hint of a smile on her lips. "Are you ready to do Altamaty a great honor and feast on some mutton, prepared in the traditional way as a great mark of esteem to our guests?" Jack swallowed hard, and nodded. She knew. She dropped her smile and looked at him seriously. "And then we'll go up that hill behind us. There's something else I need to show you. You were right about that Sogdian, Jack. He had something he never should have had. Something of incalculable value. We might just be on the most extraordinary treasure hunt you could ever imagine."

Two hours later, Jack and Costas followed Katya up a rocky hillside at the western end of the lake, above the pa.s.s that dropped through a fractured landscape of ravines and gullies toward the central plain of Kyrgyzstan. It was early evening and the sun had nearly set, but it was due to be a full moon and the lake was bathed in an eerie glow. Katya found a ledge and sat down, and Jack and Costas sat on either side, looking back over the shimmering surface of the lake. A few hundred meters to the north there was a roar of diesel and a puff of smoke as Altamaty fired up the tractor and drove it back toward the yurt, his form lurching and bobbing over the uneven track that led from the site where they had excavated the Roman burial. Huge boulders lay embedded in the slope as far as they could see, like a vast inchoate army struggling to free itself from the earth.

Jack's mind returned to one small group who had pa.s.sed this place over two thousand years before, men who bore fierce allegiance to their greatest symbol, the eagle of the legion, who had paused to carve it on the tombstone of a companion in this place where none but they would recognize it. He remembered something Pradesh had told him about Kashmir, where his unit had fought Pakistani troops for possession of a bleak mountain plateau. It was the age-old wisdom of the soldier, that when you fight you do it not for any higher cause but for your comrades, for your unit. Jack narrowed his eyes, and wondered whether those legionaries had looked up and sensed the proximity of the heavens, felt the tingle of the wind. For a moment he saw not just a ragged band of survivors but a fully formed legion on the march, shadow-warriors who had been with them since the battlefield at Carrhae, but were here closer than ever, in a place where the living might seem but one short step away from the fields of Elysium.

Costas pa.s.sed a cup he had carried up from the yurt toward Jack, who shook his head firmly. "No thanks." He could smell the fermented milk. He had avoided disgrace at the feast by accepting the choicest morsels to chew on, tasteless rubbery lumps from the sheep's head that were reserved for the most honored guest. Then Rebecca had saved the day by calling on the satellite phone just as Altamaty was serving up the mutton stew, and Jack had taken his plate outside with the receiver, apparently eager not to lose a moment before tucking in. He had returned with a convincing pile of gristle on the side of the plate, and had even tossed it back into the cauldron to be softened up further, scrupulously following the custom Katya had explained to him. Costas had looked at him innocently from the other side of the low table, reaching for Jack's plate and the ladle, but Jack's eyes had bored into him. It had been a close-run thing, but it was only a temporary fix. As he had clearly pa.s.sed the test, endless feasts were in the offing. He had an image of the eyes of the Kyrgyz people glued on him as swimming stews of mutton and grease were poured onto his plate. He glanced at his watch. The helicopter was due to whisk them away in less than an hour's time. He turned to Katya. "You had something more to tell us."

Katya looked at the cover of the book she had been carrying and cleared her throat. "Okay. The period in history when these legionaries were making their way through this place was the time of the greatest empire the west had ever known. When the legionaries left Italy for the east, Rome was still a republic, just before the civil wars. But by the time they escaped from the Parthians over three decades later, Rome was ruled by her first and greatest emperor, Augustus. Those legionaries were not emissaries of Rome. They may not even have known that Rome was ruled by an emperor. But unwittingly, they were a bridge between Rome and the greatest empire of the east, one that had begun in China two centuries before. That was the time of King Zheng of the Qin dynasty, the warlord who unified China and ruled from 221 to 210 BC. He was the one history knows as Shihuangdi, the First Emperor."

"The guy with the terracotta warriors," Costas said.

Katya nodded. "The warriors were buried with him, surrounding the greatest unexcavated tomb in history. For the legionaries the fantasized image of that tomb may even have been the light at the end of their tunnel, a legend of unplundered riches that may have persuaded them to go east when they had escaped the Parthians. I'll get to that in a moment. Jack, what do you know about the Res Gestae?"

"It means things I have done" Jack said. "It was Augustus' record of achievements, inscribed on bronze plaques and set up all around the empire. Lists of conquests, buildings projects, benefactions, laws, that sort of thing. The record of a man who saw himself as primus inter pares, a citizen who had taken temporary charge to restore the republic. Above all it was a celebration of peace, the pax Romana, the inspiration for the pax Britannica that led men like my great-great-grandfather to believe their purpose was a n.o.ble one, that a benign empire was truly possible."

"And now for Shihuangdi, the First Emperor," Katya said. "He also left a record of achievements, inscribed on bronze and stone and set up high in the mountains, in places he visited to carry out sacrifices to the cosmic powers. But it's frighteningly different. Instead of listing vanquished enemies, the First Emperor celebrates internal order. He's proud of establishing a totalitarian police state. The empire of Augustus, like the British Empire, was cosmopolitan, with a tolerance for cultural diversity that was a linchpin of the Imperial system. China was different. The empire of the First Emperor was an empire of the Chinese people, full stop. The outside world was barely acknowledged. Augustus was a man of the people, a Roman through and through. The First Emperor was an outsider, a warlord who swept down into the Chinese heartland just as Genghis Khan was to do centuries later. But whereas Genghis Khan expended his energy in endless conquests in the world beyond, the First Emperor stopped at the geographical limits of China while he was still bursting with warrior fury. He found his outlet in a mania for control. He didn't really rule an empire at all. He himself said it. He unified China. He created China. Before him, China was a chaotic land of warring states. He subsumed all that. He turned back the clock to zero."

"Plus ca change," Jack murmured.

Katya opened the book. "Virtually everything we know of him comes from the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, written about a century after the First Emperor's death. It records admonitions, edicts, laws, tirelessly issued by the Great One. He adjusts rules, sets standards for everything, 'the ten thousand things.' He regulates the seasons and the months, rectifies the days, makes uniform the sounds and measures. All under heaven are of one mind, one will. Listen to this. 'His great rule purifies the folkways, the whole empire acknowledges its sway; it blankets the world in splendid regulation. Posterity will obey his laws, his constant governance knowing not end. The bright virtue of the Great Emperor aligns and orders the whole universe.' He even erased the concept of doubt."

Costas whistled. "Sounds like the mother of all control freaks."

Katya nodded. "Augustus' creed was feel-good, the creed of a golden age. The creed of the First Emperor was one of order, certainty. And with that came denial of anything that couldn't be controlled, denial of the outside world. Listen to this: 'In the twenty-sixth year of his rule he first united the world; there were none who did not come to him in submission.' And again: 'Wherever human tracks may reach, there are none who are not his subjects.' These are patent lies, as anyone who had been beyond the borders would know. But he tried to solve that by preventing anyone from leaving."

"So what about the G.o.ds?" Costas asked. "Or was this guy divine too?"

Katya put down the book and took out a ziplock bag with an object inside. It was the Chinese coin they had found in the burial, with the square hole in the center. "This coin represents two of the most powerful Chinese symbols of cosmological power, in which the earth is square and the heavens are circular. The coin shows the heavens as a delimited concept, as something finite." She slipped the bag back in her pocket. "To the steppe-dweller, surrounded by vast open s.p.a.ces and sky, either you're overawed by it or you see it as the definition of your world. The ancient Chinese attempted to rationalize the heavens, to bring them within their grasp. Take a look at Altamaty's yurt. The dome shape is a representation of the heavens, like a planetarium. Sitting inside it, surrounded by the vastness of the steppe, you can feel that you've drawn the heavens toward you, that you control them. That's how to understand the First Emperor. His cities, his palaces, were a.n.a.logues of the heavens, and so was the underground world he created for his eternal existence."

"Tell us about that," Costas said.

"That was another difference from the Romans. Augustus may have been deified later, but he lived his life as a mortal. The First Emperor had no need for the afterlife. He'd created his own heaven on earth. When he went to the mountains and sacrificed to the cosmic powers, he was really sacrificing to himself He couldn't bear to acknowledge his own mortality."

"You're talking about the concept of wu di, non-death," Jack said.

Katya nodded. "For many ancient Chinese, there was no spiritual world beyond the present. The dead formed a community on earth, an a.n.a.logue of the world of the living. They could even intermingle, in places where the earth and the cosmos are close, where illusion and reality were interchangeable. Places like this, high in the mountains. And for an emperor, wu di was a control concept. Everyone retained their roles-soldiers, courtesans, the emperor himself For him, it meant eternal power."

"Didn't the First Emperor try to prolong his actual life?" Costas asked.

Katya nodded wryly. "He sent expeditions to a place called Penglai, the Isles of the Immortals, the mythical dwelling place of the Blessed. He ate from utensils of gold and jade, thought to dispel bodily decay. He employed spells and charms to battle the demons he thought caused aging. And according to Sima Qian, he took mercury, another supposed panacea. That was probably what killed him."

"And that gets us to his tomb," Jack said.

Katya flipped the book to a marked page. "The most famous pa.s.sage of the Records of the Grand Historian" She read it out: "In the ninth month the First Emperor was interred at Mount Li When the emperor first came to the throne he began digging and shaping Mount Li. Later, when he unified the empire, he had over seven hundred thousand men from all over the empire transported to the spot. They dug down to the third layer of underground springs and poured in bronze to make the outer coffin. Replicas of palaces, scenic towers and the hundred officials, as well as rare utensils and wonderful objects, were brought to fill up the tomb. Craftsmen were ordered to set up crossbows and arrows, rigged so they would immediately shoot down anyone attempting to break in. Mercury was used to fashion imitations of the hundred rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangtse, and the seas, constructed in such a way that they seemed to flow. Above were representations of all the heavenly bodies, below, the features of the earth"

"Incredible," Costas murmured. "And all that stuff's still there?"

Katya pa.s.sed him a photograph. It showed a vast mound, surmounted by trees. "There's no reason to doubt Sima Qian's description, even though the tomb had been filled and sealed before he was born," she said. "The discovery of the terracotta warriors in pits outside suggests that his account of the burial chamber may not be exaggerated. Chinese scientists using remote-sensing equipment have even detected high concentrations of mercury under the mound."

"So you're saying he wasn't preparing for the afterlife, but for a kind of parallel existence."

"The First Emperor had already paved the way in real life, planning his palaces and temples in his capital Xian as imitations of the heavens, with the river Wei as the Milky Way. He aligned political and cosmological order, just as he'd proclaimed in his edicts. He was also mapping his palaces on the stars, imposing the dwellings of a supreme being on the cosmos."

"And for supreme being, read First Emperor," Costas said.

"Right. And now for the reason we're here." Katya picked up the book and read the next pa.s.sage: "After the interment had been completed, someone pointed out that the artisans and craftsmen who had built the tomb knew what was buried there, and if they should leak word of the treasures, it would be a serious affair Therefore, after the articles had been placed in the tomb, the inner gate was closed off and the outer gate lowered, so that all the artisans and craftsmen were shut in the tomb and were unable to get out. Trees and bushes were planted to give the appearance of a mountain."

She closed the book and spoke quietly. "What I've told you so far is all doc.u.mented. What I'm about to tell you no other westerners have ever heard, and no one in China outside a small and secret fold that includes my own family."

"Here we go," Costas murmured, eyeing Katya.

"There's an ancient myth," she said. She paused, and Jack could see the burden on her, the decision to reveal something kept secret by generations of her forbears. She looked at him, and he nodded. She took a deep breath and carried on. "A myth about a pair of precious stones, set together in the First Emperor's tomb at the apex of the heavens. A pair of stones that shone with dazzling light, a light the emperor believed would a.s.sure his immortal power. And a myth that the guardian of the tomb secretly took those stones before the burial chamber was sealed. That those who swore to protect the tomb, to a.s.sure the emperor's eternal reign, pursued the guardian and his descendents relentlessly, through the ages, but never found the stolen jewels."

"Good G.o.d," Jack murmured. "The inscription in the jungle shrine."

"Fast-forward two thousand years," Katya said. "To a foggy night in Victorian London, at the Royal United Service Inst.i.tution. It was the usual Thursday night venue, sherry and sandwiches followed by a lecture." She took out a clear plastic sleeve containing a faded brown broadsheet, and pa.s.sed it to Jack. He looked at it for a moment, stunned. "Well I'll be d.a.m.ned," he murmured. He read it out: An ill.u.s.trated lecture at the Royal United Services Inst.i.tute, 6.30 to 7.30 pm, Thursday, 26 November 1888. "Roman Antiquities of Southern India." Accompanied by lantern slides and artifacts on display. By Captain J. L. Howard, R.E., of the School of Military Engineering, formerly of the Queen's Own Madras Sappers and Miners"

Jack looked at Katya incredulously. "How on earth did you get this? I knew about Howard's lecture, but I've never seen an original broadsheet."

"It's covered in scribbled notes, in Chinese characters," Costas said, peering closely. "In pencil, so faded you can barely read it. As if someone were taking notes."

"It was a Chinese diplomat called Wu Che Sianghu, a Kazakh Mongolian," Katya said. "He'd been posted the year before to the Chinese emba.s.sy in London, and frequently attended public lectures. He had a special interest in India because he'd been sent by the Chinese government to investigate the opium trade, which was still flourishing despite Victorian moral opprobrium. He was particularly concerned about the spread of opium use among the hill tribes of the upper G.o.davari River, following the end of the Rampa Rebellion and the departure of the troops in early 1881. I know about this because Wu Che's papers came into my uncle's possession."

"Your uncle?" Costas said. "The uncle whose body we found in the jungle?"

Katya nodded. "But the broadsheet probably never would have been saved had it not been for one thing Howard said in that lecture, the one thing that explains how my uncle came to be in the jungle and to die there. It's in those pencil notes."

"Go on," Jack said.

She took the paper out of the plastic. "It's at the bottom. It says, 'Roman military-style carvings found in jungle.' And then 'cave temple$$ The first note was taken from what Howard said, and the second was guesswork by Wu Che. Almost all ancient carvings then being found in southern India were from cave temples or shrines, so it was a reasonable surmise."

"Incredible," Jack murmured. "There are no surviving drafts of the lecture and it was never published. In Howard's papers I found an exchange of letters with the editor of the inst.i.tute journal badgering Howard for a typescript. The paper had been co-auth.o.r.ed with Robert Wauchope, who'd been posted back to the Survey of India. Howard claimed the two of them needed to collaborate to produce a polished version, but that evidently never happened. There was a new editor a few years later and the matter was dropped. It always struck me as odd for Howard not to publish. His collection of Roman coins from India was a pa.s.sion of his. But what you've said might shed light on it. Something was holding him back."

"Something he said in the lecture he shouldn't have said?" Costas suggested.

"Here's what I know," Katya said. "At the bottom of this sheet Wu Che writes 'Spoke privately after the lecture to Captain Howard, no more information forthcoming.' But then I think he tried to contact Howard again."

Jack's mind was suddenly racing. "I knew this rang a bell. He did try again. It's in another letter in Howard's papers, in the chest in Seaquest II It dates from a few years later, in 1891. Someone from the Chinese emba.s.sy in London wrote to Howard about the Rampa Rebellion. That's why I remember it. I'm certain it was the same Chinese name, Wu Che Sianghu. The letter was purportedly about opium. He knew that Howard had been one of the longest-serving British officers in Rampa. He wanted to know if Howard knew of any ritual contexts in which opium might be used by the jungle peoples, in ceremonies, in caves, temples."

"He was fishing for more details about that shrine," Costas suggested.

"Wu Che must have done some research after the lecture, worked out where Howard was during his time in India with the Madras Sappers, anywhere out of the ordinary. Details of officers' deployments were published in the annual Army List. He would have seen Howard's deployment to Rampa in 1879 and 1880. It was close to the area of Roman influence in southern India yet hardly explored by Europeans, with hundreds of square miles of jungle not even surveyed. It was just the kind of place where soldiers on patrol might have stumbled on an ancient shrine. The Royal Engineers officers and NCOs of the Madras Sappers were the only British army personnel with the Rampa Field Force, and it's possible that Howard was the only veteran in England at the time of his lecture. Wu Che might have played on that too. He might have expected Howard to be eager to respond to any query about the campaign. But Wu Che's letter has Howard's handwritten 'Not replied' across the top. It was obviously Howard's firm decision, but it was perhaps a mistake. Not replying at all might have rung alarm bells for Wu Che."

"I thought Howard had clammed up about the rebellion anyway," Costas said. "Something you think happened to him out there. Some trauma."

"But Wu Che wouldn't have known about that," Jack said. "He would have a.s.sumed the lack of reply was because Howard refused to be forthcoming about something he'd found."

"Howard may have regretted his slip in the lecture, mentioning the sculpture, and determined never to make the mistake again," Katya said. "When the letter arrived he would have remembered Wu Che from after the lecture, and that may have set off his own alarm bells too. He might have remembered the pact Jack thinks he and Wauchope made after leaving the shrine. That's maybe when he decided not to go ahead with publishing the paper."

Costas looked puzzled. "What is it that excites a Chinese diplomat in 1888 about reports of Roman sculpture in a jungle shrine in southern India? What's that got to do with opium?"

Katya paused. "That's why I told you about the First Emperor. There's a connection. A pretty astonishing one. And you are the first outsiders to hear this." She took a deep breath. "When the First Emperor was planning his afterlife, he entrusted the sanct.i.ty of his tomb to his most trusted bodyguards, to men of his clan who had ridden down with him into China from the Qin homeland in the northern steppes. They were Mongols, fierce nomad hors.e.m.e.n, from the stock who would one day sp.a.w.n Genghis Khan and the most terrifying army the world has ever known. The emperor's bodyguard wore tiger skins over their armor, and wielded great swords. They called themselves tiger warriors."

Jack stared at Katya. "Go on."

"There were twelve of them, his closest bodyguard," Katya continued. "Six was the First Emperor's sacred number, and any multiples of it had special power. Even during his lifetime the warriors were secret, and they revealed themselves only to the emperor's enemies, to those they were sent to hunt down, those who would never live to tell what they saw. In time, one of them became the killer, the emperor's closest bodyguard, and he alone became known as the tiger warrior. On the emperor's deathbed, the twelve were entrusted with the outer ring of defenses of his tomb. The inner sanctum was entrusted to a hereditary family of guardians, who lived within the tomb precinct. The twelve were sworn to infiltrate Xian society for generations to come, as courtiers, officials, army officers, an invisible power always ready to pounce. They were promised immortality through endless reincarnation, the eternal earthly vanguard of the terracotta warrior army who were buried around the emperor's tomb. For more than two thousand years the tiger warriors have kept the tomb inviolate, from tomb robbers, from later emperors, from archaeologists. Inviolate, that is, with one exception."

"Something was taken," Jack murmured.

Katya nodded. "Of all the wondrous treasures of the tomb, only the guardian and the twelve knew what lay at the apex of the heavens, directly over the tomb itself Sima Qian, author of the Records of the Grand Historian, knew nothing of it."

"A pair of precious stones," Jack murmured. "Stones that interacted to produce a light like a star in the heavens. A double jewel. The jewel of immortality."

Katya stared at him, then spoke quietly. "In the last act of the burial ritual, the guardian alone was in the tomb, pa.s.sing from the central chamber to the entrance before sealing the vault for all eternity. Something made the warriors suspect him of stealing the greatest treasure, and their suspicions hardened when the guardian lived to a great age, well over one hundred years. That was not uncommon for steppe Mongolians, but was enough to convince them that he had taken something that prolonged life, a treasure that should rightly have been left in the tomb to release them from their servitude and allow the emperor to rise again. They never saw the guardian die. He returned to the northern steppes, handing over the custodianship to his son, a tradition that continued. But then, five generations on, the son of the guardian himself disappeared. He did not return to the steppes but went west beyond the boundary of the empire, strayed to where he should not go. The twelve decided to act. The tiger warrior was unleashed."

"Let me guess," Jack murmured. "That was 18 BC, maybe a little earlier?"

Katya stared at him again, and continued. "The son of the guardian disguised himself as a Sogdian trader, and joined one Silk Route caravan, then another. The tiger warrior and his henchmen chased him across the Taklamakan Desert, toward the Tien Shan Mountains, up here to Lake Issyk-Kul, into the ravines and pa.s.ses beyond. They had him in their grasp, but then something got in their way."

"A band of renegade Roman legionaries," Jack murmured.

"In their secret oral tradition, the twelve remembered them as kauvanas, an ancient Chinese word for westerners," Katya said. "But my uncle was convinced of who they were."

"I was wondering when your uncle was going to come into this," Costas said.

"This was the story he pieced together. It fits with your scenario, Jack. The Romans attack the caravan and seize the disguised Sogdian. They keep him alive, as a guide. The warriors realize the Romans have him, and attack, but are repulsed, by a foe stronger than any they have ever encountered before. One of their number is cut down in the ravines, and one of the Romans too. That's the grave we found by the lake. By now there are only a dozen of the Romans left. The tiger warrior and his henchmen pursue them to this place, then see the survivors embark on the lake and row east. They find the body of Liu Jinn, the guardian's son, but the treasure is gone. They follow the boat along the sh.o.r.e, until it disappears in a storm near the end of the lake. But they realize that the Romans in the boat were fewer in number than they should have been. One is missing. They return to the western end of the lake, to where they had found the murdered Liu Jinn. They track the missing Roman, follow the dripped blood from the weapon the man had used. They glimpse him, high in the pa.s.ses of the mountains to the south. They pursue him relentlessly, for weeks, months, sometimes coming close, sometimes losing him. They follow him through the valleys of Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pa.s.s into India, down the Ganges to the Bay of Bengal. Then, in the jungles of the south, they lose him for good. They know he's in there somewhere, but it's as if the jungle has absorbed him. But the Chinese do not give up. They infiltrate the Roman trading colony at Arikamedu, posing as silk merchants. For generations they remain, watching, waiting. But then the Romans leave, and with the rise of the Arabs the sea trade with the west comes to an end. The Chinese return home, and with that the story of their quest moves into the realm of legend, part of the mythology of an obscure secret society who seem to disappear from living history."

"And now we know their names, the Romans," Jack said. "From the tomb inscription in the jungle. Fabius, leader of the group, who went off east over the lake. And his best friend Licinius, the one who escaped south. And we know that they had the treasure. Fabius had the one jewel, the peridot. Licinius had the other, sappheiros, lapis lazuli. They must have parted ways unaware of what they had shared out between them, of the power of the jewels together. The Chinese must have thought Licinius had taken both parts of the jewel, and fled from his comrades knowing the power of what he had stolen, something that might make him an emperor in his own world."

"Katya's uncle may have read that inscription too, before he was murdered," Costas said. "And those who murdered him may have found out too."