The Tiger Warrior Part 16

"So what happened to the tiger warrior, and the twelve?" Jack asked.

Katya paused. "Their pledge to protect the tomb, to recover the lost treasure, remained strong, through all the vicissitudes of Chinese history, through all the emperors and dynasties who might have plundered the monuments of their forebears. The warriors nurtured the cult of the First Emperor, the mystique that still surrounds his name today. Wu Che, the Chinese diplomat who went to Howard's lecture, was one of them. He was a keen historian, and wrote down the story I've just told you, the oral tradition recounted at their secret meetings. And then it seemed that their quest might be rekindled. In the second half of the nineteenth century, European scholars were reading the newly translated Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and were beginning to understand the truth of Roman mercantile involvement in south India. Wu Che kept his ear to the ground, seeking anything unusual, anything in the archaeological discoveries that might suggest a maverick Roman, a legionary. When Howard mentioned the jungle shrine with Roman carvings, the light began flashing."

"And that's really why you're here, by Lake Issyk-Kul," Jack said quietly. "It wasn't just to record petroglyphs and search for inscriptions from the Silk Route. You wanted to find that Roman. You're on this trail too. You and your uncle are part of all this."

Costas eyed Katya. "Well? Your uncle was one of the twelve, wasn't he?"

Katya paused. "My uncle and my father both knew the story, pa.s.sed down to them. My father inherited the family papers, but he had little interest in the mythology of the brotherhood. To him the jewels were lost forever, if they even existed. He was into the antiquities black market and easier prizes. It was my uncle who encouraged my interest in ancient languages and archaeology. Two years ago while we were on the Black Sea after my father's death, my uncle came across those lecture notes of Wu Che, while he was hastily searching through my father's papers in Kazakhstan before Interpol arrived. My uncle had already made the connection between the tiger warrior legend and Cra.s.sus' lost legionaries. He took up where Wu Che left off He went to the India Office archives in London to research the Madras Military Proceedings and pinpoint where Howard had been during the Rampa Rebellion."

"The same records I studied," Jack exclaimed.

Katya nodded. "You were both on the same trail. In a district gazetteer he came across mention of a shrine, to Rama. That was the clincher. And that's where you found him. His body."

"Have you told Katya your theory about that name, Jack?" Costas said.

Katya replied first. "My uncle might have been there already. Rama seemed a very similar word to Roman. He mentioned it to me, but we didn't want to voice it until we were on firmer ground. The similarity seemed too obvious."

"Nothing's too obvious in this game," Jack murmured, peering at Katya. "Is there anything else you haven't told us?"

"My uncle was being secretive, but for good reason. He knew that once he'd been targeted, so would all his immediate family. It has always been the way. If one of the twelve deviated, his entire clan would pay the price. That was the way the First Emperor had meted out his version of justice. And since there's n.o.body else left in my uncle's family, that means me."

"Okay, Katya," Costas said. "I take it you're on about those tattooed guys whose bodies we found near the shrine."

"Jack told me," Katya said quietly. "How many of them were there?"

"We counted six bodies. Apparently, seven had gone into the jungle, arriving by helicopter. They were all Chinese, wearing shirts with the logo of a mining corporation, INTACON. Bids have been put in to strip-mine the Rampa hills for bauxite, and the local Koya people are used to seeing prospectors. All it does is drive them further into the hands of the Maoist terrorists who use the jungle as their hideaway. The Maoists occasionally attack the mining parties because it solidifies their support among the tribals, and as a result the police turn a blind eye when the mining groups go in armed to the teeth. What we saw at the shrine suggests that the Chinese got inside the cave, found and murdered your uncle, then were ambushed on the way out. Their bodies had been partly stripped and mutilated by the Maoists, and we could see the skin. They all had the same black tattoo on the upper left arm."

Katya scribbled on her notepad. "Like this?"

Costas nodded. "Exactly like that. Like a tiger head."

"Tiger warriors?" Jack said.

Katya shook her head. "Only one of the twelve is called that. He goes out to do the dirty work, the newest of them, as a rite of initiation. The others call themselves the Brotherhood. And the Chinese you saw were mere foot soldiers, lesser clan members bound by birth to serve the Brotherhood."

"We encountered three Maoists, and one of them wasn't quite dead." Costas pointed at his bandaged shoulder. "I'm supposed to be on holiday, not nursing a gunshot wound. You need to come clean on this whole thing, Katya."

"Only six bodies," she said. "So one escaped?"

"Apparently, he made his way back through the jungle to the riverbank where the helicopter had landed. The Koya we spoke to couldn't distinguish him from the other Chinese. But they did say the man was carrying a scoped bolt-action rifle in an old leather wrapping, an odd weapon for the jungle."

"Not odd at all," Katya murmured. "Not for him."

"You know this guy?"

Katya looked hard at Jack. "Do you think he saw what you saw? What was in the shrine? The carvings, the inscription?"

"It's possible," Jack replied quietly. "And your uncle could have told them. It's possible he was tortured."

"It's certain, you mean," Katya said.

"When Licinius carved that inscription on his own tomb, he was probably living in a twilight world of his own. In his mind, the jewel may have become part of the imagery of his devotion to Fabius, the comrade he had virtually deified on that battle scene carving. Whether or not he was consciously leaving clues for some future treasure hunter, he chose to use that word sappheiros, for lapis lazuli. For anyone already on the trail, that would have had instant meaning."

"Is this guy somewhere here now?" Costas peered at the shadowy ridge to the west, where the sun had nearly set. "The seventh one, who survived the Maoists? Are we in someone's crosshairs?"

Katya pursed her lips. "INTACON has mining concessions in Kyrgyzstan, in the Tien Shan Mountains." She pointed at the snowy peaks in the distance. "Those men whose bodies you found were employees of the company, but all of them have clan connections with the Brotherhood. They have helicopters, and tough horses they use for prospecting expeditions, a famous breed originating in Mongolia. If he's here, he's watching us now. They need to see what I've found, and where we're going next. The killing comes later."

"Great," Costas said. "That's just great. So we're dealing with a mining company? Is that the modern-day face of these warriors?"

"INTACON's their most profitable operation." She turned to Jack. "How much time do we have?"

"A U.S. Marine Apache helicopter is due here in thirty minutes." He checked his watch. "The Embraer should be fueled up and waiting on the runway at Bishkek. The supplies we need are already stowed."

"Okay." Katya looked at Costas. "Those horses I just mentioned. They're the blood-sweating heavenly horses of Chinese mythology. According to legend, whoever rode them could never fail in battle. The horses were highly prized by the First Emperor, and helped to convince his subjects of his invincibility."

"Blood-sweating?" Costas said dubiously.

"They're called the akhal-teke, and they're incredibly rare, one of the purest breeds to survive from antiquity. They're renowned for their speed and stamina. It's thought the appearance of sweating blood is caused by a parasitic disease endemic to the breed, but n.o.body knows for sure."

"You ever seen one?" Costas asked.

Katya gave him a scornful look. "I'm the daughter of a Kazakh warlord, remember? My father made me learn to ride them when I was a girl. The akhal-teke lived in a few isolated valleys, in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, bred in secrecy by families who maintained the purity of the breed. My father's horse-breeder said his lineage went back to the time of the First Emperor, who sent out emissaries to the valleys to swear the breeders to eternal vigilance, to ensure that the heavenly horses were waiting for his bodyguard when he once again entered the mortal world. In China today there's excitement about the breed, a symbol of national unity and strength from before the communist era."

"So did your riding master pa.s.s on any other wisdom?" Costas asked.

"He said that those with the blood of the tiger in their veins can sense the akhal-teke, and that the horses sense them too. He said that when the warriors prepared for battle they came up here, past the Tien Shan Mountains to Issyk-Kul, and summoned them with their war drums. The akhal-teke came galloping through the mountain pa.s.ses and along the sh.o.r.es of the lake, foaming and sweating and spraying the air with a mist of blood."

"This gets better every second," Costas said. "Is this in your genes too?"

Katya looked pensively at the lake. "I feel things up here. Maybe it's the thin air. I never sleep well, and that's when dreamworld and reality intertwine. I've woken thinking my heartbeat was the ground shaking with the pounding of hooves and thudding drums. As if the warriors were coming for me too."

"Don't go all Genghis Khan on us, Katya."

She gave him a tired smile, then looked out over the lake again. "Lying half-awake at night, I've been seeing images of my father again, of him when I was a girl, when he was still an art history professor in Bishkek. I'd hardly thought of him since I left the Black Sea almost two years ago. My mind had shut him out."

Jack glanced at Katya, wondering at the complex emotions she had felt since her father's death: grief, release, anger with her father, with herself, with him. The best thing for him to do was to say nothing, to let the process take its course. Costas saw Jack's reticence, and looked at Katya as he spoke. "Your father, what he'd become, was sitting on a sunken Russian submarine full of ICBMs," he said. "He'd have sold a few to al-Qaeda, and that's just for starters. A lot of innocent people are alive today because of what we did." He got up, stretched, wiped the dust off the back of his shorts and turned toward a hollow in the hill behind them. "Time for me to disappear behind some rocks." He gave Jack a ghoulish look. "Must be all that sheep grease."

"Be careful." Katya waved him off, and turned back. Jack saw that Altamaty had stopped the tractor beside the yurt, and the smoke from his cooking fire had gone out. Two rucksacks were stacked outside the tent. "It seems a long time since we sat together by the sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea," he said quietly. Katya nodded, but said nothing. Jack was silent for a moment, then pointed at the yurt. "Are you still sure about coming along with us?"

She nodded. "Altamaty too. He respects your military experience, but he said Afghanistan's a different story. He was in the valley we're going to, as a marine conscript during the Soviet war in the 1980s. His helicopter was shot down and he was the only survivor. He fought off repeated attacks but ran out of ammunition. The mujahideen spared him because he was Kyrgyz. He lived with them in the mountains for more than a year."

Jack nodded. "Good. Someone else is coming with us, a guy called Pradesh. He's in charge of the underwater excavations at Arikamedu, and flew with us to Bishkek. He's a captain in the Indian Army Engineers, with combat experience in Kashmir. He's also an expert on ancient mining technology. He was with us in the jungle. I really want IMU activities to expand out here. If Altamaty's serious about taking on the underwater survey at the eastern end of the lake, then he and Pradesh might be just the people we need to get things moving here. Pradesh speaks Russian. I'd like to see how they get on."

There was a commotion from the rocks behind them. "Hey, guys," Costas shouted. "Come and check this out."

Jack stood up and turned around. "Do we really want to?"

"Just avoid the gully on your left. I'm a bit farther down."

Katya got up, and the two of them picked their way over the rocks toward Costas. Jack had his compact diving flashlight with him, and played it into the gloom. He saw Costas hunched over a cleft in the rock, and they slid down a small scree slope toward him. They were in a hollow in the side of the hill, with the lake just visible to the north, the ridges of the ravine behind them to the west and the snowcapped peaks of the mountains to the south.

"Well?" Jack said, squatting cautiously beside Costas.

"I was walking back from washing my hands in the stream, and I saw this," Costas said. He pointed at two jagged rocks embedded in the side of the ridge, a crack between them. "There's something metal stuck in there. It's probably modern, but I've got ancient swords on the brain after seeing that Chinese halberd."

Katya knelt down beside him, and Jack shone the flashlight. It was a length of metal, embedded in the crack, just like a snapped-off blade. Katya put her finger out and touched it. She grasped and pulled it, but it would not budge. "Look at that silvery stuff on my fingers. That's chromium," she said excitedly. "The metal beneath is oxidized, but it was once high-grade steel, hand-forged. The Chinese plated their best blades with chromium to stop them rusting. This is an ancient Chinese sword blade. A fantastic find, Costas."

"Just give me a bowl of sheep grease, then send me out into the hills," Costas murmured. He peered closely. "It looks like someone jammed it into the rock, to break it off Maybe they needed a shorter blade."

Jack was thinking hard. "Any idea what kind of sword?"

Katya felt along the blade. "I know exactly what kind," she replied quietly. "A long, straight cavalry sword, a type favored by the Mongols. A type that was only really practicable on horseback, so if you were on foot and desperate for a weapon you might want to break it to make a more useful thrusting sword."

Jack gasped. He remembered the tomb from the jungle. The warrior in the carving, the adversary of the Romans in the battle scene. The warrior with the tiger headdress. He turned to Katya. "You don't mean a gauntlet sword, do you? A pata?"

She nodded. "I grew up with images of these swords all around me. The gauntlet was always gleaming golden, in the shape of a tiger. That's what's missing here. That's why I was so stunned when you told me you had one. I knew your pata must be the sword of a tiger warrior, but I couldn't be sure of the connection. Well, here it is in front of us. I'm certain of it. The gauntlet from this blade is the one John Howard found inside that shrine in the jungle."

"Well I'll be d.a.m.ned," Jack said.

Katya touched the blade again, and breathed out slowly. "So the legend is true," she whispered.

"What is?" Costas said.

"Another part of the legend." She looked up and around. Jack sensed her apprehension. "We should move away from here." She picked up a flat stone and put it over the crack between the rocks, concealing the blade. She led them back up the hill to the ledge where they had been sitting, where she had left the book. "The legend of those who were dispatched to destroy the guardian of the tomb, the one who had transgressed," she said. "The one who followed his prey relentlessly over mountain and through jungle, whose successors maintained the watch over the centuries, seeking that which had been taken from the tomb of their emperor. The tiger warrior."

"And the sword?" Jack asked.

"The pata sword of the first tiger warrior was taken in battle by the raumanas, the Romans. The legend tells that when it is recovered, the tiger warrior will once again surge forward and defeat all, and find what he has been seeking."

"Before you ask, it's secure, locked in my cabin on Seaquest II," Jack said.

"I can feel it again now," Katya murmured. "What you once said to me, Jack, about walking into the past, seeing it in your mind's eye. I felt it when I was searching among those boulders with Altamaty, looking at those rock carvings made by my ancestors. But touching that blade has done something else for me. It feels exhilarating."

"That's when I get frightened," Costas murmured.

Jack turned toward the lake. Starlight speckled across its surface, like phosph.o.r.escence left by a boat's wake, a ghostly trail from the past. He felt the tingle on his skin again. Once, an Innu hunter in the Arctic had told him that the tingle you feel in these places is the divine wind, a wind of stupendous speed that you hardly feel because the air is so thin. Another Innu had laughed, and said it was just the cold. Jack had often thought about that when he had been in high mountains. Maybe it was just dizziness, oxygen deprivation. And this time it was an uneasy feeling, something that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He looked toward the mountains to the south, a forbidding wall of rock and snow. That was where Licinius must have gone. He sensed the Roman stumbling away from this ravine, glancing at his companions as they disappeared across the lake to the east, then turning to the mountain pa.s.ses, running hard, every sinew in his body straining to a breaking point. Jack turned back toward the dark ridge behind them, and looked hard. A distant throbbing became a roar, and the landing lights of a helicopter swept over the ridge as it headed down to the sh.o.r.eline.

Katya got up. She turned to Costas, and gave him a steely look. "Time to go. And to find out about the Brotherhood of the Tiger. The modern version."

Jack grinned at Costas. "You ever been to Afghanistan?"

This is the pilot speaking. We're entering afghan airs.p.a.ce now."

Jack shifted and stretched, then pressed the control to raise his seat to the upright position. He was in the forward cabin of the IMU Embraer jet, and he had spent the last three hours fitfully sleeping, two and a half of them on the tarmac at Bishkek airport in Kyrgyzstan while they waited for the optimum time for departure. The flight to Feyzabad in northeast Afghanistan was only an hour and a half, and the captain had wanted to arrive at dawn and return to Bishkek as soon as they had off-loaded. An airport in Afghanistan was no place to linger, even an airport under nominal ISAF control, and the Embraer would be fueled up to return from Bishkek to pick them up as soon as the call went in.

Jack had a sketch of the inscription in the jungle tomb clutched in his hand. He looked down and saw the Latin word. Sappheiros. In antiquity, that meant lapis lazuli, and that could only mean the lapis mined in the forbidding Koran Valley, high in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. One strand of the ancient treasure trail had pointed across the lake of Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan toward the eastern sh.o.r.e, to the place where Jack had begun to think a boat might have gone down in a storm two thousand years ago. The other strand led deep into the heart of Afghanistan, their route now.

Jack looked at the words of the inscription again. Hic iacet Licinius optio XV Apollinaris Sacra iulium sacularia, in sappheiros nielo minium. Alta Fabia frater ad Pontus ad aelia acundus. Here lies Licinius, optio of the 15th Apollinaris legion. Guardian of the celestial jewel, in the dark sappheiros mines. The other is with Fabius, brother, across the lake toward the rising sun. So Licinius had not taken his jewel south with him into the jungle. The velpu, the sacred bamboo tube of the Koya, the safeguard taken by Howard and Wauchope from the muttadar, may have been sanctified by its a.s.sociation with the raumana, the one who had come to the jungle and died in the shrine. But the bamboo tube had contained only a phantom treasure. The real treasure had been hidden somewhere out here, in the wilds of Afghanistan, during Licinius' escape south from the lake. It was somewhere in the lapis lazuli mines, where the precious veins of blue had been worked since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs.

Jack remembered what he had been thinking when he had dozed off. The valley with the mines was on a route south from Lake Issyk-Kul to India, toward the community of Roman traders half a world away that had been Licinius' destination. Licinius might have guessed that the warriors pursuing him were after what he had taken off the Sogdian. He might have seen the odds stacked against him and decided to stash the jewel. He might have known the value of what he had taken. Perhaps the Sogdian had spoken to him of it, told him of its power if it were to be reunited with the other jewel, the one taken by Fabius across the lake. Maybe the Sogdian had spoken in desperation, hoping his life would be spared. Or maybe he had warned Licinius, told him something that made him want to be rid of his treasure. Maybe he had been told that he would be pursued relentlessly, and that the mines were the only place the jewel could be safely concealed, where the power of the crystal would be absorbed into the rock of its source. Only there, perhaps, it would no longer attract those who would come after him, who would hunt him like the tiger, as if they had some sixth sense for it.

Jack slid out into the aisle, slipped on his boots and made his way aft into the main cabin, where several window blinds were open on the port side. The pilot had taken a counterclockwise route over Tajikistan to approach Feyzabad from the west, and Jack could see the faint glimmerings of dawn over the Pamir Mountains and the bleak wasteland of the Taklamakan Desert beyond. He leaned over the seats and stared at the awesome mountain landscape below. It was a place where the obstacles to human existence appeared insurmountable, yet for those who endured it the reward was to live halfway to heaven. He stood back and made his way down the aisle to the others. Altamaty and Pradesh were sitting beside each other, talking in Russian. Jack sat opposite and poured himself a coffee from the trolley. Costas had been with them when Jack had gone to lie down, describing in detail the layout of his beloved engineering wing at the IMU campus in Cornwall. Costas had gone away to sleep as well, and Jack saw that the other two men had been poring over diving equipment catalogs from the onboard library.

Jack was itching to be underwater again. He thought of Rebecca. She had spent half an hour with him on the tarmac at Bishkek, running through notes she had made on Wood's Source of the River Oxus. She had given Jack the book and hugged him before being whisked off toward the lake in the U.S. Marine Apache helicopter. Jack smiled at his last image of her, in a flight helmet surrounded by four burly U.S. Navy SEALs. She had been loving every second of it. If all went according to plan, they would be back together on the eastern sh.o.r.e of Lake Issyk-Kul in less than twenty-four hours, and by then the IMU equipment ordered by Costas would have been air-freighted in. The ruins submerged in the lake were tantalizing, and might be one of the greatest Silk Road finds ever. The lake had also been traversed by boats carrying traders, and there was always the possibility of a wreck. Jack thought of Fabius and the fate of the Romans who had rowed for their lives toward the east. He glanced at Katya, who was sitting by herself a few rows ahead, staring out of the window. They might also find petroglyphs underwater, if the boulders extended into the lake. There was a major collaborative project in the offing. He could see himself spending more time out here. He looked out of the window, and remembered where they were heading. If they made it through the next twenty-four hours.

Costas came stumbling down the aisle and slumped into the seat beside Jack. He looked out of the window, and Jack followed his gaze. They could clearly make out the ripple of hills and valleys and stretches of snowcapped peaks. Costas flipped open the monitor from his armrest and activated the map. "That's it," he said. "We've pa.s.sed over the border into Afghanistan. Can't be much more than half an hour to go."

"You can just make out the Panjshir Valley," Jack said. "It's shrouded in mist with peaks on either side, stretching off to the east. It's the valley of the fabled river Oxus, the river that marked the eastern edge of Alexander the Great's expedition. Five hundred miles west from here it flows into the Aral Sea, a lake. On the way it pa.s.ses Merv, where Cra.s.sus' legionaries were imprisoned. The escaped Romans may have come this way, but faced with the wall of mountains to the east they may have veered north on the spur of the Silk Road that led through Kyrgyzstan past Lake Issyk-Kul."

"And Howard and Wauchope?" Costas said. "Is this where they ended up, after they disappeared into Afghanistan in 1908?"

Jack pursed his lips. "They were experienced enough to make it this far. Both men knew the Afghan border region well from their army postings. Wauchope had actually been into Afghanistan before, during the second Afghan war."

"The medal Pradesh had, with the elephant?" Costas said.

Jack nodded. "That was in 1879, just before he joined Howard in the jungle. It was the time of the Great Game, the standoff between Britain and Russia. It was a decade of heroic defeats. Custer's Last Stand against the Sioux, 1876. The British defeat by the Zulus, at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, 1879. Then the battle of Mai-wand in Afghanistan, in 1880. Almost a thousand British and Indian troops died on the plain outside Kandahar, fighting to the last. The Afghans desecrated the bodies just as the Sioux and the Zulu did. Thirty years before, during the first Afghan War, the British Army of the Indus had been ma.s.sacred as they retreated toward the Khyber Pa.s.s, with only one British survivor making it out. These were painted as heroic failures, boosted in popular imagination to extol the virtues of the warrior. Many of the British officers had been steeped in chivalry. I have a complete set of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels, signed by John Howard. He'd lived in that world as a boy, and subscribed to a new edition in the 1880s, as if he were trying to recapture the romance that was knocked out of him after he experienced the brutal reality. And the British should have known better with Afghanistan. They'd had men there from early on, explorers like John Wood. They knew the problems of the terrain, and they knew the people."

"What was the situation in 1908?"

"Uneasy peace. Afghanistan was still a no-go zone. The trek up here from Quetta would have taken Howard and Wauchope weeks, even months. For provisions they would have been reliant on the goodwill of the people they came across. Wauchope had much experience with the border tribesmen, but there would have been lengthy negotiations, social niceties to be observed, diversions as their guides took them around the territories of feuding warlords. Once they got to the Panjshir Valley, if they did, they would have been on their own. Winter was probably setting in, and it would have been an arduous trek into the mountains to get to where I think they were going."

Pradesh had been listening intently, and leaned forward. "What makes you so sure this was the place?"

"Because the Panjshir Valley is the route to the lapis lazuli mines," Jack said.

"Of course," Pradesh murmured. "Sappheiros, lapis lazuli. They'd seen that in the inscription in the jungle years before, and were looking for the place where you think Licinius hid the jewel."

Jack angled the map screen from Costas' armrest so they could all see it. He pointed at a series of ridges leading south from the main valley. "Here, deep in the Hindu Kush range. The mines are located in a narrow mountain valley. There are about twenty shafts, some of them open for thousands of years. The lapis lazuli decorating King Tut's coffin in Egypt came from here, traded west over a thousand years before the Romans came this way."

"Romans?" Costas said. "I thought it was just one, Licinius."

"He was alone when he came to hide the jewel, after he'd fled south from Issyk-Kul," Jack said. "But for him to know how to reach the mines, I think the band of escaped legionaries must have come in this direction during their trek from Merv into central Asia. The Panjshir Valley may have been where they were forced north, toward Kyrgyzstan. If you read Wood's Source of the River Oxus, you realize why. The mountains he describes at the eastern end of the valley sound like the end of the world, utterly impa.s.sable. But before turning away and going north, the Romans could have got far enough up the valley to hear of the fabled mines, maybe even to see them. If Licinius had been told by the Sogdian to take the jewel there, he would have known where to go."

Katya slipped into the seat in front of Pradesh. "And when he reached the jungle, he didn't need to leave a treasure map," she said. "All he had to inscribe on his tomb was the word for lapis lazuli. Everyone in India knows that lapis comes from Afghanistan. Everyone in Afghanistan knows it comes from the Panjshir Valley. And someone in the valley can always point you in the direction of the mines, where a miner might even show you the shaft that produces the darkest blue, the nielo. But it's like telling people about Shangri-la, because in truth hardly anyone would dream of going there, and anyone who did might stand little chance of survival. It was a prize that was only ever going to tempt the desperate, or fools. Or romantic old soldiers like Howard and Wauchope, with a yen for adventure."

"How sure are you that Howard and Wauchope were on this trail?" Costas asked.

Jack pointed at the book. "Lieutenant John Wood, Bengal Navy. A Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. This was Howard's own copy, pored over by him, full of annotations. I found it in the lower drawer of that chest of family papers you saw in my cabin in Seaquest II, bundled up as if it were something he treasured but didn't want anyone else to see. The section on the Panjshir Valley and the lapis mines is so densely covered with notes that it's virtually indecipherable."

"And there are notes in another hand too," Costas said, peering at the book.

"Robert Wauchope," Jack said. "I saw some of his ma.n.u.script papers in the India Office Library in London, and confirmed the handwriting."

"Odd that they didn't take the book with them, on their final journey," Costas said.

"They probably knew it by heart. And they would only have taken the bare minimum with them. n.o.body wants to lug books around the Hindu Kush."

"But you say it contains clues for us."