hand, and put his own hand around it. Howard was crying, tears streaming from sightless eyes, crying for the first time. “I can see him,” he whispered. “Darling Edward.” He watched them coming down the tunnel toward him, coming from the light, the woman and the boy. The boy ran ahead, stumbled into his arms, and he held him high, laughing, crying with joy. Wauchope leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, then pushed himself to his knees, staggering up on his feet, the Webley dangling from one hand and the bamboo tube from the other. The silhouette was gone, and all Howard could see was a blinding light, as the rising sun obliterated everything else in its beam. The blue on the walls lit up and channeled the light back out again, a beam of energy that seemed to lift him to his feet and carry him forward. Then he heard the drums again, closer now, reverberating through the cave, and he felt the wind from outside, sharp jabs of cold that seemed to pierce him like arrows, and he was gone.
19
Jack felt himself free-falling through the water, his limbs spread-eagled as he let the weight of his body take him down. At first he had kicked hard to descend to a depth where he was no longer buoyant, and then he had forced the remaining air in his lungs into his mouth and used it to equalize the pressure in his ears. He could taste the water now, fresh, sharp, a hint of salt. He could see the bottom of the lake below him, gray and flat, not rippled as it would have been in the sea. He saw the shape that had drawn him down, the outline of an ancient boat half- buried in the sediment. Inside it was a pulsing green glow, as if someone had dropped a strobe light into the sediment. He fell toward it, hit the bottom then reached his arm deep into the mud and grasped the object. He drew it out, and held it up. It was a brilliant jewel, green olivine, peridot from the island off Egypt. He felt a warmth from it, the glow suffusing his body. He was suddenly drowsy, weighted down by it, as if he had found what he had been searching for all his life and there was nowhere else to go, and all he wanted was to let the sediment envelop him and to sleep forever. But he jerked back to life, his heart pounding. He had to return to the surface. There was something more precious there. He pushed off, the jewel in his hand, and kicked hard, finning toward the sunlight that streamed down from the sparkling surface above. I am calm. I am strong. He repeated the mantra, but he did not need to. There was no craving for oxygen, no urge to breathe. But then, as he saw the outline of the dive boat above, the wavering figures leaning over the side, watching him, he again felt a heaviness, a tingling that moved up his limbs toward his core. The jewel, weighty on the lake bed, had become too heavy, an impossible burden. He saw Rebecca’s face peering down, her long hair floating on the surface of the water. He tried to reach up to her, but the jewel was dragging him back down. He opened his mouth and breathed in, taking the lake into his lungs, falling back, feeling only a terrible emptiness, not knowing if he was crying, his hands outstretched toward a form which receded into the sparkle of the sunlight until it was no more.
“Jack. Wake up. Katya and Altamaty are returning.” Jack felt a hand shaking him, and awoke with a start. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of the jeep, and Costas was beside him. He heard a crinkling sound, and saw that he was covered by a survival blanket. Costas must have found one in the jeep’s medical kit. He felt a tingling in his hands, the circulation returning. He remembered how cold they had been when they had arrived at this place soon after dawn, the dew still heavy on the ground. He pulled his left hand out from under the blanket, and looked at his watch. It was almost noon. They had been here about three hours, and he must have been asleep for two of them. They had been poring over Lieutenant Wood’s account of his final trek up to the lapis lazuli mines, somewhere in the valley ahead of them now. Jack remembered closing his eyes when Pradesh had gone to boil water for tea. He glanced at Costas. He was wearing a faded green army coat over a dark fleece, a Soviet tank driver’s sheepskin hat pulled down tight over his head. They had not been prepared for the chill, and had supplemented their own gear with what they had found in the bin at the back of the jeep. Jack pushed the blanket down, and cleared his throat. “Sorry. I dozed off.”
“I noticed. It sounded like the engine was still running.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Of course not.”
Pradesh appeared beside the jeep door. “You needed sleep.” He was also wearing a sheepskin hat, and an Indian Army green sweater. He squatted down over a small Primus stove, and passed a steaming cup up to Jack. “Fresh brew. Finest Darjeeling. I always carry some with me. It’s one military tradition we inherited from you British and just can’t shake off.”
“Thanks.” Jack took the metal cup and cradled it. He peered at the valley ahead. The mountains of the Hindu Kush rose beyond, huge folds of stark rock and scree, dusted white on the nearer ridges and carpeted with snow on the peaks beyond. Jack lifted the compact binoculars that were hanging around his neck and peered through them. He could make out Katya and Altamaty, coming down a path that skirted the side of the valley. There was another figure with them, in Afghan gear. Jack lowered the binoculars and glanced at Pradesh, who nodded. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. They had arrived at Feyzabad airport in northern Afghanistan just after dawn, and had walked out of the plane straight into the jeep. Jack had an old friend who ran an aid agency in Feyzabad, and he had arranged the vehicle, complete with the freshly painted letters TV on the roof and sides. They had wanted to keep a low profile, and avoid any kind of military reception from NATO. There was an ISAF reconstruction team in the region, but after a phone conversation with the Danish colonel they had decided against an escort. The colonel had warned them of the risk. Taliban attack was possible anywhere, even up here in the north of the country. But the local warlord was known to be an independent, a stalwart of the old Northern Alliance, and he was someone they needed to nurture, not provoke. The colonel had given them an assurance of a helicopter medevac if they needed it, but beyond that they were on their own.
Jack raised the binoculars again, scanning the opposite slope of the valley, looking for flashes of reflection, for hints of movement among the rocks, but knowing he would see nothing. Somewhere out there, somewhere ahead of them, was the sniper Katya was sure had watched them by the lake in Kyrgyzstan, and who would now be here. They would be safe until their destination was clear, until they had found what the Brotherhood wanted, but with every step closer they would become more vulnerable, until there was no reason left for the sniper not to strike. Jack felt powerless and exposed, but knew they now had no choice but to play the game out and hope they would find a way to even the odds. The others knew the score. Everything depended on whether Katya and Altamaty had succeeded in their objective in the two hours since they had left the jeep to reconnoiter up the valley.
Pradesh folded up the stove and stowed it in his rucksack. “Time to saddle up, boys.”
Costas swung his legs out of the jeep. “I don’t know where you get these expressions from, Pradesh.”
“U.S. Army Engineer School, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Six month secondment last year.”
Costas stopped and peered at him. “Really? Did you come across Jim Praeder?”
“Submersibles technology, seconded from the Naval Academy? I did his course.”
Costas looked at Jack, and jerked his thumb toward Pradesh. “We really need this guy. Big-time. Permanent IMU staff.”
Jack flashed a smile at Pradesh, then got out of the jeep and stood up, stretching. He was wearing his own kit brought in the plane, his beaten-up leather hiking boots, a fleece with a green Gore-Tex outer shell, a cherished blue woolen cap he had been given as a boy by one of Captain Cousteau’s team. He pushed his old khaki sidebag until it was comfortable, feeling the shape of the holster inside. It was reassuring, but they needed more than handguns. He squinted up the path, and saw the Afghan figure with Katya and Altamaty leave them, bounding up another path and disappearing out of sight. He took a deep breath and said a silent prayer. Altamaty had been up here before, twenty years earlier, and he had known where to go. He and Katya both spoke the main Dari language of Afghanistan, and they both knew the Pashtun code. It was better for them to make the first contact. Too many westerners had come here promising help and peace, but bringing only betrayal and death. Jack knew they already had one sniper to contend with, and if they antagonized the local warlord as well they stood no chance of making it out of the valley alive.
He reached back into the jeep and picked up Wood’s Source of the River Oxus. He opened the old volume where he had bookmarked it, and saw the faded notes made by John Howard, his great-great-grandfather, and then the neat notes on an interleaved sheet by Rebecca, his own daughter. There seemed to be a flow between them, a continuity, and the book seemed to bridge the generations. He glanced at the text, at the sentence that had been in his head when he had nodded off After a long and toilsome march we reached the foot of the Ladjword Mountains . Ladjword he knew was the old Persian name for the place where the lapis lazuli was mined. They were there now,
