The Kingdom Read online

  Sam’s vision was filled with sky, granite walls, a churning river far below—

  He slammed to a stop. The impact knocked the wind out of him. He sucked in a couple lungfuls of air. All he saw was a black steel cylinder.

  Gun, he thought numbly. He was still clutching his pistol.

  He was lying, belly first, in the crook of a moss-covered tree. He looked around and pieced together what he was seeing. They’d fallen from a temple window. The tree, having grown half embedded in the temple’s exterior wall, was rooted in a tiny patch of earth at the edge of the plateau. Over the edge was a thousand-foot drop into the Tsangpo Gorge.

  Sam heard a groan below him. He craned his neck down and spotted Russell lying on his back next to the tree. His eyes were open and staring directly into Sam’s.

  His face twisted in pain, Russell sat up. His right hand slid down his pant leg and jerked it up his calf. Strapped to his boot was a holster. Russell grabbed the butt of the revolver.

  “Don’t, Russell,” Sam said.

  “Go to hell.”

  Sam extended his arm and laid the .38’s front sight over Russell’s chest. “Don’t,” he warned again.

  Russell unbuckled the holster and slid out the revolver.

  “Last chance,” Sam said.

  Russell’s hand began to rise.

  Sam shot him in the chest. He let out a gasp, then fell backward, lifeless eyes staring at the sky.

  Led by her wildly dancing headlamp, Remi charged through the archway. Bullets thunked into the stone around her. Remi spun, blindly fired two shots back the way she had come, then turned and kept running.

  She stumbled back into the corridor. The pit was up the slope to her left. Remi turned right and continued on, half limping, half sprinting. Ahead, her headlamp flicked over a dark circle in the floor. It was another shaft. In pain, and with her injured ankle quickly failing her, Remi tried to swerve around the shaft but slipped and tumbled through the opening.

  The fall was mercifully short, perhaps half the depth of the first pit. Remi landed hard on her butt. This time, the pain was too intense to contain. She screamed. She rolled over, looking for her gun. It was gone. She needed something . . . anything. Marjorie was coming.

  Remi’s headlamp came to rest next to a wooden object. Even before her conscious mind had told her what the object was, her senses were processing it: dark wood, thick black lacquer, no visible seams . . .

  She reached out, snagged the edge of the box with her fingertips, and rolled it toward her. In the bright cone of light from her headlamp, Remi saw four symbols, four Lowa characters, in a grid pattern.

  “Gotcha!”

  Marjorie dropped from the opening above and landed like a cat at Remi’s feet. Marjorie, having slung the machine gun across her back for the jump, now reached back and grabbed the stock. She brought it around toward Remi.

  “Not today!” Remi shouted.

  She grabbed the Theurang box with both hands, raised it over her head, then bolted upright and slammed it into Marjorie’s forehead.

  Pinned by Remi’s headlamp beam, Marjorie’s face went slack. With blood streaming down her forehead, her eyes rolled upward. She fell backward and went still.

  Stunned, Remi scooted backward until she was pressed against solid stone. She closed her eyes.

  Some time later, a sound penetrated her half-conscious mind.

  “Remi? Remi?”

  Sam. ”I’m here!” she shouted. “Down here!”

  Thirty seconds later Sam’s face appeared at the top of the shaft. “Are you okay?”

  “I may need a little checkup, but I’m alive.”

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  Remi patted the Theurang box beside her. “I just happened upon it. Pure dumb luck.”

  “Is Marjorie dead?”

  “I don’t think so, but I hit her pretty hard. She may never be the same again.”

  “An improvement, then. Are you ready to come up?”

  Sam, now armed with Russell’s machine gun, had made his way back to the main tunnel. Unsure of Zhilan’s location, he simply grabbed his backpack and found his way to the second pit and Remi.

  Thirty minutes later they were both back in the Great Room. Together, they reeled Marjorie’s limp body up the shaft. Sam handed Remi the machine gun, then scooped up Marjorie and folded her across his shoulder.

  “Keep an eye out for the Dragon Lady,” he told Remi. “If you see her, shoot first and forget the questions.”

  As they neared the tunnel exit, Remi stopped. “Do you hear that?”

  “Yes . . . Someone’s whistling.” A smile spread across Sam’s face. “It’s ‘Rule, Britannia!’”

  Cautiously, Sam and Remi stepped out of the tunnel.

  Sitting twenty feet away, his back against a boulder, was Jack Karna. He spotted them and stopped whistling. He gave them a cheery wave.

  “Tallyho, Fargos. Oh, wait, that rhymes. How clever of me.”

  Dumbfounded, Sam and Remi walked toward him. As they drew nearer they could see tufts of white emergency dressing jutting from a scarf tied around Karna’s neck. He was cradling Ajay’s Beretta in his lap.

  A few feet away, Zhilan Hsu lay flat on her back, her head propped up by Ajay’s balled-up parka. Wrapped around the midpoint of each of her thighs was a bloody field dressing. Zhilan was awake. She glared at them but said nothing.

  Remi said, “Jack, I think an explanation is in order.”

  “Quite. As it turns out, Russell is a good shot but not an expert marksman. I believe he was trying to shoot through me and get Ajay in the process. His damned bullet punched through that muscle . . . What it’s called, between the shoulder and the neck?”

  “Trapezius?” Sam offered.

  “Yes, that’s it. Two inches to the right and I’d be a goner.”

  “Are you in pain?” Remi asked.

  “Of course, a monumental amount. Say, what’s that you’re carrying, lovely Remi?”

  “A little something we found lying around.”

  Remi set it down beside Karna. He smiled and gave the lid a pat.

  “What about her?” Sam asked.

  “Ah, the Dragon Lady. Very simple, really. She thought I was dead; she let her guard down. As she approached, I grabbed Ajay’s gun—this one here—and shot her in the right leg. Then again in the left leg for good measure. I think it took the wind out of her sails, don’t you?”

  “I’d say so.”

  Sam turned to Zhilan. He crouched down and dumped Marjorie on the ground beside her. Zhilan reached out and touched her daughter’s face. Sam and Remi watched, stunned, as Zhilan’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  “She’s alive,” Sam told her.

  “And Russell?”

  “No.”

  “You killed him? You killed my son?”

  “Only because he gave me no choice,” said Sam.

  “Then I will kill you, Sam Fargo.”

  “You can try. But think about this first: we could have left Marjorie in there to die. We didn’t. Jack could have killed you. He didn’t. You’re here because of your husband. He sent you and your children to do his dirty work, and now one of them is dead.

  “We’re getting off this mountain and we’re taking you with us. As soon as we get to a phone, we’re going to call the FBI and tell them everything we know. You’ve got a choice to make: do you want to be a witness or a defendant alongside your husband? No matter what, you’re going to jail, but depending on how you play your cards Marjorie might have a chance.”

  Remi said, “How old is she?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “She’s got a long life ahead of her. It’s largely up to you how she spends it: free, and out from under her father’s thumb, or in prison.”

  Zhilan’s hateful stare suddenly gave out. Her face went slack, as though she had just let down a heavy burden. She said, “What would I need to do?”

  “Tell the FBI everything you know about Charles King’s i
llegal dealings—every nasty thing he’s ever done or ordered you to do on his behalf.”

  Remi said, “A smart lady like you, I’ll bet you’re a big believer in insurance. You have a very thick file on King stashed away somewhere, don’t you?”

  “What’s it going to be?” Sam asked.

  Zhilan hesitated, then nodded.

  “Good choice. Jack, we seem to have misplaced our radios.”

  “I have mine right here.”

  “Get on the line and try to raise Gupta. It’s time to get out of here.”

  EPILOGUE

  KATHMANDU, NEPAL

  WEEKS LATER

  Sam and Remi’s rescue from the Shangri-La temple mountain had unfolded without any dilemma. As he had promised, Gupta had orbited the area, listening and waiting for their call. He returned and picked them up. Four hours after they left Chinese airspace, Gupta landed the Chetak at Itanagar Airport.

  Since they were the only witnesses to what had occurred on the mountain, aside from the deceased Z-9 crew, no one in the Chinese government was aware of the incursion. As far as anyone knew, Gupta and his passengers had simply been on a sightseeing tour.

  After a brief checkup at an Itanagar hospital, Sam and Remi were dismissed. Marjorie was kept overnight for observation. Like her father, she was hardheaded, suffering only a mild concussion from Remi’s blow.

  Karna refused medical attention until he was across the border in Nepal but had his entry and exit bullet wounds cleaned and dressed by Gupta.

  After lengthy conversations with Rube Haywood, Sam arranged for Zhilan Hsu and Marjorie to be discreetly and securely transported to Washington, D.C., where special agents of the FBI were waiting for them. During interrogation, Zhilan Hsu held nothing back about Charles King. According to Rube, the FBI and the Justice Department had formed a task force devoted to unraveling King’s many illicit operations. It was predicted that King would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

  The Nepalese government and their scientific community kept the chest under close security while their chief anthropologist, Ramos Shadar, and his associates had time to study its contents. It was decided the discovery of the Golden Man and the Shangri-La temple’s location should be kept secret until they were ready to be revealed to the world.

  Now the time had come.

  “Cheers!” Remi announced, holding up her glass of champagne.

  The rest of the assemblage—Sam, Jack Karna, Adala Kaalrami, Sushant Dharel, and Ramos Shadar—echoed the toast and clinked glasses.

  “Now it’s time for the unveiling,” said Shadar, smiling. “I’m sure you’ve all been anxious for this moment.”

  “To the Theurang,” Remi said softly.

  They climbed the stairs to the stage in Kathmandu University’s marble-tiled exhibition hall. The official unveiling and media conference would not happen until the following evening, but Sam, Remi, and the others were being honored with a private viewing.

  “Who’s going to be the first of you to lift the lid and see the Golden Man?” asked Shadar, knowing well what lay inside and already amused at how the others would react. “Who would like the privilege of lifting the lid?”

  “No question about it,” Sam replied, “Jack deserves to be first.”

  “Mr. Karna,” said Shadar, motioning toward the chest, “If you please.”

  Tears brimming in his eyes, Karna nodded his thanks to the group, then walked to a low velvet-draped object. Slowly, with great reverence, he grasped the draw cord and pulled.

  The chest of the Theurang lay open with the lid lying alongside. They all stared in awe, except Shadar.

  Lying inside, curled in a fetal position, was a nearly complete, fossilized skeleton completely gilded in gold. Under the overhead lights of the stage, the sight was awe-inspiring. Everyone went silent for several seconds.

  Finally Jack Karna muttered, “Why is he so small?”

  “It looks like a little boy,” said Remi softly. “No more than three years old.”

  “Can’t be much over three feet tall,” guessed Sam.

  Shadar grinned, “Three feet two inches, to be exact. The weight we estimated at about fifty pounds. Its brain was about the size of a soft baseball.”

  “It must be fake,” Adala Kaalrami spoke for the first time.

  Shadar shook his head. “You may not believe it, but you’re looking at a thirty-year-old human being. We can arrive at a reasonably close age by the wear on the teeth and bone structure.”

  “A dwarf?” Sam offered.

  “Not a dwarf,” answered Shadar, “but a separate species of human who lived between eighty-five thousand and fifteen thousand years ago. When it was found by my ancestors in a mountain cave, they gilded the bones and considered them sacred.”

  “And worshipped him for over a thousand years,” added Sam.

  Shadar’s eyes took a sly gleam. “Not him,” he said slowly, “but her.”

  There was a long moment for the revelation to sink in.

  “Of course!” Remi snapped. “Life giver. The Mother of Mankind. The Theurang was a woman. No wonder they glorified her.”

  Sam shook his head, but with a twinkle in his eye. “Why is it,” he asked, “that women always have to have the last word?”

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