The Kingdom fa-3 Page 11

  “We’re sorry it took so much of your time,” Remi replied.

  “Nonsense. It was better than spending the evening watching television. I enjoyed the brain exercise. I have a written translation for you.” She slid a typewritten sheet of paper across the table to them. “I can confirm the essence of the document. It is a military decree ordering the evacuation of the ‘Theurang’ from the capital city of Lo Monthang, in the Kingdom of Mustang.”

  “When?” asked Sam.

  “The decree does not say,” said Professor Kaalrami. “The man we are going to meet after this-my colleague-may be better equipped to answer that. There may be some clue in the text that I missed.”

  “This Theurang . . .” Remi prompted.

  “Aside from it also being referred to as the ‘Golden Man,’ I’m afraid I found no explanation. But as I said, my colleague may know. I can tell you the reason the decree was issued: an invasion. An army was approaching Lo Monthang. On behalf of the Royal House, the leader of the Mustang Army-I gather the position is similar to that of a marshal or chief of staff-ordered that the Theurang be carried from the city by a special group of soldiers known as Sentinels. There is no description beyond that. Just their name.”

  “Evacuated to where?” asked Sam.

  “The decree does not say. The phrase ‘as ordered’ is used several times, which suggests the Sentinels may have received a separate, more specific briefing.”

  “Anything else?” Remi asked.

  “One item that caught my attention,” Professor Kaalrami replied. “The decree praises the Sentinels’ willingness to die in order to protect the Golden Man.”

  “Fairly standard military language,” Sam said. “A pep talk by the general before-”

  “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Fargo. I used the wrong word. The praise was not for their willingness to give their lives in the line of duty. The language used was one of certitude. Whoever wrote this document fully expected the Sentinels to die. None of them were expected to return to Lo Monthang alive.”

  Shortly before two o’clock, the time Professor Kaalrami had arranged for them to meet with her colleague Sushant Dharel, they left her office and walked across campus to another building. They found Dharel-a pencil-thin man in his mid-thirties, wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeved white shirt-finishing a class in a wood-paneled classroom. They waited until all the students had filed out, and then Professor Kaalrami made the introductions. Upon hearing Kaalrami’s description of Sam and Remi’s interest, Dharel’s eyes lit up.

  “You have this document with you?”

  “And the translation,” Professor Kaalrami replied, and handed them over.

  Dharel scanned both, his lips moving wordlessly as he absorbed the contents. He looked up at Sam and Remi. “Where did you find this? In whose possession was-” He stopped suddenly. “Forgive my excitement and my bad manners. Please, sit down.”

  Sam, Remi, and Professor Kaalrami took chairs in the first row. Dharel pulled a chair from around his desk and sat before them. “If you would . . . Where did you find this?”

  “It was among the belongings of a man named Lewis King.”

  “A friend of mine from long ago,” Professor Kaalrami added. “It was long before your time, Sushant. I believe my translation is fairly accurate, but I could not give Mr. and Mrs. Fargo much context. As our resident expert on Nepalese history, I thought you might help.”

  “Of course, of course,” Dharel said, eyes again scanning the parchment. After a full minute he looked up again. “Do not be offended, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo, but for the purposes of clarity, I will assume you have no knowledge of our history.”

  “A safe assumption,” Sam replied.

  “I should also admit that much of what I am about to tell you is considered by many as more legend than history.”

  “We understand,” Remi said. “Please go on.”

  “What you have here is known as the Himanshu Decree. It was issued in the year 1421 by a military commander named Dolma. Here at the bottom you can see his official stamp. It was common practice then. Stamps and seals were meticulously crafted and closely guarded tools. Often, high-ranking personnel-both military and governmental-were accompanied by soldiers whose sole purpose was to guard official seals. Given time, I can confirm or refute the provenance of this stamp, but at first glance I believe it to be genuine.”

  “Professor Kaalrami’s translation suggests the decree was ordering the evacuation of an artifact of some kind,” Sam prompted. “The Theurang.”

  “Yes, quite right. It is also known as the Golden Man. This is where history becomes muddled with myth, I’m afraid. The Theurang is said to have been a life-sized statue of a man-like creature or, depending on whom you ask, the skeleton of the creature itself. The story behind the Theurang is similar to that of Genesis from the Christian Bible in that the Theurang is said to be the remains of the earth’s . . .” Dharel’s voice trailed off as he searched for the correct phrase. “Life giver. The Mother of Mankind, if you will.”

  “That’s quite a job title,” Sam said.

  Dharel’s brows furrowed for a moment, then he smiled. “Oh, yes, I see. Yes, a heavy burden to carry, that of the Theurang. At any rate, whether real or mythological, the Golden Man became a symbol of reverence for the people of Mustang-and for much of Nepal, for that matter. But the legendary home of the Theurang is said to have been Lo Monthang.”

  “This ‘birth giver’ moniker,” Remi said. “Is it believed to be metaphorical or literal?”

  Dharel smiled, shrugged. “As with any religious story, the interpretation is in the mind of the believer. I think it is safe to say that at the time this decree was issued, there were more literal believers.”

  “What can you tell us about these Sentinels?” asked Sam.

  “They were elite soldiers, the equivalent of today’s Special Forces. According to some texts, they were trained from youth for one purpose: to protect the Theurang.”

  “Professor Kaalrami mentioned a phrase in the decree-‘as ordered’-in relation to the evacuation plan the Sentinels were supposed to carry out. What are your thoughts?”

  “I have no knowledge of the specific plan,” Dharel replied, “but as I understand it, there were only a few dozen Sentinels. Upon evacuation, each of them was to leave the city carrying a chest, a chest designed to confuse invaders. In one of the chests was to be the disassembled remains of the Theurang.”

  Sam and Remi exchanged sideways smiles.

  Dharel added, “Only a select few in the military and government knew which Sentinel carried the genuine remains.”

  Sam asked, “And inside the other chests?”

  Dharel shook his head. “I do not know. Perhaps nothing, perhaps a replica of the Theurang. At any rate, the plot was designed to overwhelm any pursuers. Equipped with the best weapons and the fastest horses, the Sentinels would race from the city and separate in hopes of dividing the pursuers. With luck and skill, the Sentinel carrying the Theurang would escape and hide it in a predetermined location.”

  “Can you describe the weapons?”

  “Only generally: a sword, several daggers, a bow, and a spear.”

  “There’s no account of whether the plan succeeded?” asked Remi.

  “None.”

  “What did the chest look like?” said Remi.

  Dharel retrieved a pad of paper and pencil from his desk and sketched a wooden cube that looked remarkably similar to the chest they recovered from the cave. Dharel said, “As far as I have found, there is no description beyond this. The chest was said to have been of an ingenious design, the hope being that each time an enemy recovered one of them he would spend days or weeks trying to open it.”

  “And in the process, buy more time for the other Sentinels,” said Sam.

  “Exactly so. Similarly, the Sentinels had no family, no friends an enemy could use against them. They were also trained since youth to withstand the worst kinds of torture.”

  “Amazing d
edication,” Remi remarked.

  “Indeed.”

  “Can you describe the Theurang?” asked Sam.

  Dharel nodded. “As I mentioned, it is said to have man-like features but an overall . . . beastly appearance. His bones were made of the purest gold, his eyes made of some kind of gem-rubies or emeralds, or the like.”

  “The Golden Man,” Remi said.

  “Yes. Here . . . I have an artist’s rendering.” Dharel stood up, walked around to his desk, and rummaged through the drawers for half a minute before returning to them with a leather-bound book. He flipped through pages before stopping. He turned the book around and handed it to Sam and Remi.

  After a few seconds, Remi murmured, “Hello, handsome.”

  Though highly stylized, the book’s rendering of the Theurang was nearly identical to the etching on the shield they had found in the cave.

  An hour later, back at the hotel, Sam and Remi called Selma. Sam recounted their visit to the university.

  “Amazing,” Selma said. “This is the find of a lifetime.”

  “We can’t take credit for it,” Remi replied. “I suspect Lewis King beat us to it, and rightly so. If he had, in fact, spent decades hunting for this, it’s all his-posthumously, of course.”

  “You’re assuming he’s dead, then?”

  “A hunch,” Sam replied. “If anyone else had found that tomb before us, it would have been announced. An archaeological site would have been set up and the contents removed.”

  Remi continued: “King must have explored the cave system, set those railroad spikes, discovered the tomb, then fell while trying to recross the pit. If that’s what happened, Lewis King’s bones are scattered along some underground tributary of the Bagmati River. It’s a shame. He was so close.”

  “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Sam said. “For all we know, the chest we found was one of the decoys. It would still be a significant find, but not the grand prize.”

  Selma said, “We’ll know if-when-we get it open.”

  They chatted with Selma for a few more minutes, then disconnected.

  “What now?” asked Remi.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the creepy King twins.”

  “You even have to ask?”

  “They’ve been nipping at our heels since we got here. I say it’s time we turn the tables on them-and on King Senior himself.”

  “Covert surveillance?” Remi said with a gleam in her eye.

  Sam stared at her a moment, then smiled thinly. “Sometimes, your eagerness scares me.”

  “I love covert surveillance.”

  “I know you do, dear. We may or may not have what King is after. Let’s see if we can convince him we do. We’ll shake the tree a little bit and see what falls out.”

  12

  KATHMANDU, NEPAL

  Knowing the King twins were in Nepal minding one of their father’s mining concerns, Selma took but a few hours to ferret out the details. Working under the banner of one of King’s many subsidiaries, the exploratory dig camp was located north of Kathmandu in the Langtang Valley.

  After another trip to the surplus store, Sam and Remi packed their gear into the back of their newly rented Range Rover and set out. Though it was nearly five o’clock and nightfall less than two hours away, they wanted to get far away from the King twins, who Sam and Remi felt certain weren’t about to leave them alone.

  As the crow flies, the mining camp was not quite thirty miles north of the city. By road, it was over three times that distance-a short drive in any Western country but a daylong odyssey in Nepal.

  “Judging by this map,” Remi said in the passenger’s seat, “what they call a highway is actually a dirt road that’s a bit wider and slightly better maintained than a cow path. Once we pass Trisuli Bazar, we’ll be on secondary roads. God knows what that means, though.”

  “How far to Trisuli?”

  “With luck, we’ll be there before nightfall. Sam . . . goat!”

  Sam looked up to see a teenage girl escorting a goat across the road seemingly oblivious to the vehicle bearing down on them. The Range Rover skidded to a stop in a cloud of brown dust. The girl looked up and smiled, unfazed. She waved. Sam and Remi waved back.

  “Lesson relearned,” Sam said. “No crosswalks in Nepal.”

  “And goats have the right-of-way,” Remi added.

  Once clear of the city limits and into the foothills, they found the road bracketed by terraced farm fields, lush and green against the otherwise barren and brown slopes. To their immediate left, the Trisuli River, swollen with spring runoff, churned over boulders, the water a leaden gray color from scree and silt. Here and there, they could see clusters of shacks nestled against the distant tree line. Far to the north and west stood the higher Himalayan peaks, jagged black towers against the sky.

  Two hours later, just as the sun was dipping behind the mountains, they pulled into Trisuli Bazar. Tempted as they were to stay in one of the hostels, Sam and Remi had decided to err on the side of slight paranoia and rough it. However unlikely it was that the Kings would think to look for them here, Sam and Remi decided to assume the worst.

  Following Remi’s directions, Sam followed the Range Rover’s headlights out of the village, then turned left down a narrow service road to what the map described as a “trekker’s waypoint.” They pulled into a roughly oval clearing lined with yurt-like huts and rolled to a stop. He doused the headlights and turned off the ignition.

  “See anyone?” Sam said, looking around.

  “No. It looks like we have the run of the place.”

  “Hut or tent?”

  “Seems a shame to waste the ugly patchwork pup tent we paid so much money for,” Remi said.

  “That’s my girl.”

  Fifteen minutes later, under the glow of their headlamps, they had their camp set up a few hundred yards behind the huts in a copse of pine. As Remi finished rolling out their sleeping bags, Sam got a fire going.

  Sorting through their food supply, Sam asked, “Dehydrated chicken teriyaki or . . . dehydrated chicken teriyaki?”

  “Whichever one I can eat the fastest,” Remi replied. “I’m ready for bed. Got a terrible headache.”

  “It’s the thin air. We’re around nine thousand feet. It’ll be better tomorrow.”

  Sam had both food packets ready in minutes. Once they finished eating, Sam brewed a couple cups of oolong tea. They sat before the fire and watched the flames dance. Somewhere in the trees an owl hooted.

  “If the Theurang is what King is after, I wonder about his motivation,” Remi said.

  “There’s no telling,” Sam replied. “Why all the subterfuge? Why the heavy-handedness with his children?”

  “He’s a powerful man, with an ego the size of Alaska-”

  “And a domineering control freak.”

  “That too. Maybe this is how he operates. Trust no one and keep an iron thumb on everything.”

  “You may be right,” Sam replied. “But whatever is driving him, I’m not inclined to hand over something as historically significant as the Theurang.”

  Remi nodded. “And, unless we’ve misjudged his character, I think Lewis King would agree-alive or dead. He’d want it handed over to Nepal’s National Museum or a university.”

  “Just as important,” Sam added, “if for whatever twisted reason King had Frank kidnapped, I say we do our level best to make sure he pays for it.”

  “He won’t go down without a fight, Sam.”

  “And neither will we.”

  “Spoken like the man I love,” Remi replied.

  She held up her mug, and Sam put his arm around her waist and drew her close.

  They were up before dawn the next day, fed and packed and back on the road by seven. As they gained altitude and passed through hamlet after hamlet with names like Betrawati, Manigaun, Ramche, and Thare, the landscape changed from green stair-step fields and monochromatic hills to triple-canopied forest and narrow gorges. Af
ter a brief lunch at a scenic overlook, they continued on and reached their turnoff, an unmarked road just north of Boka Jhunda, an hour later. Sam stopped the Rover at the intersection, and they eyeballed the dirt road before them. Barely wider than the Rover itself and hemmed in by thick foliage, it looked more like a tunnel than a road.

  “I’m having a bit of deja vu,” Sam said. “Weren’t we on this road a few months ago, but in Madagascar?”

  “It bears an eerie resemblance,” Remi agreed. “Double-checking.”

  She traced her index finger along the map, occasionally checking her notes as she went. “This is the place. According to Selma, the mining camp is twelve miles to the east. There’s a larger road a few miles north of here, but it’s used for camp traffic.”

  “Best to sneak in the back window, then. Do you have a signal?”

  Remi grabbed the satellite phone from between her feet and checked for voice messages. After a moment she nodded, held up a finger, and listened. She hung up. “Professor Dharel from the university. He made some calls. Evidently there’s a local historian in Lo Monthang who is considered the national expert on Mustang history. He’s agreed to see us.”

  “How soon?”

  “Whenever we get there.”

  Sam considered this and shrugged. “No problem. Providing we don’t get caught invading King’s mining camp, we should make Lo Monthang in three or four weeks.”

  He shifted the Rover into drive and pressed the accelerator.

  Almost immediately the grade steepened and the road began zigzagging, and soon, despite an average speed of ten miles per hour, they felt like they were on a roller-coaster ride. Occasionally through the passing foliage they caught glimpses of gorges, surging rivers, and jagged rock outcroppings, soon gone, absorbed by the forest.

  After nearly ninety minutes of driving, Sam came around a particularly tight bend. Remi shouted. “Big trees!”

  “I see them,” Sam replied, already slamming on the brakes.

  Looming before the windshield was a wall of green.

  “Tell me it isn’t so,” Sam said. “Selma made a mistake?”