“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 nobody 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 pass 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 passes and along the shores 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 shore 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,
