The Midas Legacy

11

The secret was not revealed immediately. To Nina’s rising frustration, Amaanat insisted that they wait before entering; because of the heat, he said, but she couldn’t help thinking there was more to it.

Her suspicion was confirmed several minutes later. Rudra went into the hut beside the steaming cave entrance, re-emerging clad in something that made her give Eddie a worried look. ‘That’s reassuring.’

The monk wore a bright yellow hazmat suit, the thick plastic overall covering him from head to foot. More alarming still, he carried a boxy device that when turned on emitted an ominous crackling noise. ‘Is that a Geiger counter?’ said Eddie, taking an involuntary step backwards.

Nina was equally horrified. ‘The cave’s radioactive?’

Amaanat raised his hands to placate them. ‘The steam is radioactive, not the cave. It will be safe, but we must wait for the readings to fall before we can go inside.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘Not long. Please, be patient.’

Rudra disappeared inside the tunnel. Minutes passed, then he returned, pulling back the hazmat suit’s hood. ‘It is clear,’ he announced. The Geiger counter was still growling, but at a much lower level.

Amaanat spoke to the other monks, and all but one took metal containers the size of large paint tins from their backpacks. Their contents were much heavier than paint, though. One monk’s fingers slipped, his canister dropping the few inches to the ground with a thud that sounded as if someone had pounded the earth with a sledgehammer.

Meanwhile, the man who had carried the ropes produced something about the size of a basketball, wrapped in thick layers of cloth. From the reverent way he handled it, it was clearly of great value. Nina was about to ask what it was, but the abbot spoke first. ‘Please, follow me.’

Jayesh lit another cigarette. ‘I’ll stay here,’ he told Eddie. ‘Keep my eyes open.’

‘See you soon,’ Eddie replied. A nod was the only reply he needed for reassurance.

Rudra had by now removed the protective suit and returned it and the Geiger counter to the hut. He emerged carrying a pair of lanterns. They were clockwork; he gave a charged one to Amaanat, then began winding the handle to power up the other. ‘He will follow us inside,’ said Amaanat as he switched on his light and entered the cave. ‘This way.’

‘You absolutely sure it’s safe?’ Eddie asked. ‘I don’t want to end up with an extra head growing out of my stomach like Kuato.’ Nina looked askance at him. ‘From Total Recall,’ he added.

‘I know.’

‘The original, not the crappy remake.’

‘I know.’

He flapped his hands before his chest and put on a croaky voice. ‘“Start the reactor!”’

‘Will you be quiet?’

‘There is nothing to fear,’ the monk told them as he made his way deeper. ‘But we must leave before the next burst of steam. Which will be in…’ he consulted his watch, ‘forty-six minutes.’

Nina examined the walls, and the wooden beams supporting them. The condition of neither made her feel safer. But there was something odd about the rock, she realised. As they moved away from the entrance, she caught faint glints of reflected lamplight from all around, as if tiny flecks of metal were embedded in the walls.

Not just the walls. The wood, too. Whatever it was, it covered everything.

The tunnel sloped downwards into the heart of the mountain, the air becoming hotter and more humid. As they rounded a bend, the light from behind was cut off. ‘It is not much further,’ said Amaanat.

Eddie spotted drips coming from a hairline crack in the ceiling. ‘Water’s getting in.’

‘It is from the snow as it melts. But without it, what you are about to see could not happen.’

‘So what are we about to see?’ asked Nina.

The passage narrowed as they rounded another turn. ‘This,’ said Amaanat.

Nina and Eddie both stopped, stunned by the sight.

The cave was made of gold.

Every surface was covered in the precious metal, as if it had been slathered thickly over walls, floor and ceiling. Even the pit props had been absorbed into the shimmering coating. At the far side of the space, a six-foot-wide chasm dropped vertically downwards, the ragged rock also caked in gold. A tall, heavy-duty tripod spanned the gap, a pulley hanging from its top. The arrangement was the only thing in the chamber that had not been completely gilded, but even this had a distinct sheen to it.

‘Whoa,’ Nina said finally. ‘Okay, now I understand why Midas’s name is associated with gold.’ She took in the whole of her incredible surroundings. ‘But this isn’t a natural seam. This has been… deposited. How?’

Eddie took a closer look at one wall, examining where a prop met the rock. The gleaming covering had softened any sharp edges as if it had oozed to fill every corner. ‘It must be an inch thick! I don’t even want to think how much this lot’s worth.’

‘And that is why we have kept this place a secret,’ said Amaanat. ‘The violence as greedy men sought to control it would be terrible.’

‘Control it?’ said Nina. ‘Not just take it?’

‘This is not simply a place that contains gold. It makes gold. Talonor found it, thousands of years ago, and it has been used to create riches ever since.’

Eddie shook his head sceptically. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Where do you think we get the gold to make our statues and jewellery? The monks of Detsen hold the secret, and we have used it. Carefully, a little at a time, to avoid attention. But we can create gold by the gram, by the kilo… or by the ton.’

‘How?’ Nina demanded. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I will show you.’ The elderly monk moved towards the chasm — and Nina gasped as his light suddenly illuminated a figure hidden in the darkness.

‘Who’s that?’ said Eddie, instinctively interposing himself between his wife and the lurker.

Amaanat replied quietly, almost reverently: ‘That is the daughter of Midas.’

Her initial shock now past, Nina saw that the person was unmoving. A statue. No, not even that, more an abstract representation of the human form, all features smoothed to the nothingness of a sea-worn pebble. It was half crouched, twisted at the waist, both arms raised to shield its empty face.

She realised that Amaanat’s words were literal, not merely naming a piece of sculpture. ‘There’s somebody inside it?’

‘She died here,’ he said, almost sadly. ‘By radiation, by steam, being choked by gold — we do not know. But Talonor named the cave in honour of his friend’s loss. She was Midas’s only daughter. A woman of importance, a princess. She thought this place was exactly the same as another in Atlantis. She was wrong. The time between each breath of the dragon is shorter here, and she was caught inside when one took place.’

Nina nodded thoughtfully. ‘And was turned into gold. Or coated in it, but it must have looked like the same thing. So that’s where the myth of Midas came from. Atlantean history, passed down to become a Greek legend.’

‘That’ll be a good chapter for your next book,’ said Eddie.

‘Except we can’t tell anyone about it, can we?’ She looked at Amaanat. ‘I gave my word.’ The abbot smiled.

The tramp of feet signalled the arrival of Rudra and the other monks. The lantern-bearer was in the lead, a length of rope over one shoulder. The man carrying the shrouded object was behind him. The others bore the metal canisters. ‘This is the true secret,’ said Amaanat as the mysterious item was carefully unwrapped. ‘Without it, there would be no gold; the cave would create nothing but radiation. This is the Crucible.’

The artefact mentioned in both her mother’s notes and the Secret Codex. Nina watched as the last layer of cloth was removed, eager to see what was revealed…

It matched none of her expectations.

The name suggested a man-made vessel, but what Rudra lifted out resembled some sort of geode: a natural, roughly spherical reddish crystal. An opening at the top gave her a glimpse of the hollow interior. It was faceted, reflective, like an agglomeration of gemstones. Jagged rib-like ridges ran up the outer shell. From the great care the monk was taking, she guessed they were as sharp as they looked. The whole thing was contained inside a man-made cage of thick wire with a tall handle looping over its top.

Amaanat anticipated her next question. ‘We do not know where it came from. That secret was kept by Talonor. But we know what it does.’

‘Makes gold, at a guess,’ said Eddie.

‘How does it make gold, though?’ Nina asked. ‘It can’t just magic the stuff up out of nothing.’

‘We shall show you.’ Amaanat stepped back as Rudra placed the Crucible on the floor near the tripod. ‘But first you will need protection.’

The Englishman smirked. ‘Too late for that, we’ve already got a kid.’

One of the other monks opened a bag and took out several breathing masks, which he distributed. His brethren donned them. ‘The Crucible turns mercury into gold,’ explained the abbot, voice muffled by the filter. ‘But the mercury gives off vapour. In a confined space, it is poisonous.’

‘You’ve got mercury in those cans?’ said Eddie. ‘Nasty stuff.’

‘We take great care with it. We do not want to pollute the mountain — the water from this cave flows down into the rivers, and on into the sea.’

Nina remembered the drips from the ceiling. ‘There isn’t much of it, though.’

Amaanat stepped to the edge of the chasm. ‘Not that water. This water.’ He tilted his lantern to illuminate what lay below.

Nina joined him, looking down, and saw that the rift was flooded. The surface some thirty feet below shimmered gently, suggesting that it was being gradually filled by meltwater flowing through faults in the surrounding rock. The coating of gold stopped abruptly around five feet above the rippling pool.

‘Okay,’ she said, admitting defeat at any attempt to understand what she was seeing. ‘What is this place? You say the Midas Cave turns mercury into gold, but how? How is that possible? You’ve got a pool of water, and some sort of weird crystal from Atlantis — how can that possibly have made all… all this?’ She waved her hands to encompass the golden walls.

‘The answer is simple, Dr Wilde,’ said the old man. ‘You are standing inside a nuclear reactor.’

At first Nina did not respond, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Eddie, on the other hand, jumped as if he had received an electric shock, clapping both hands protectively over his groin. ‘A nuclear fucking what?’ he yelped.

‘Okay, that was definitely swearing,’ said his wife.

‘Yeah, and it was fucking justified!’

‘It is a natural reactor,’ Amaanat went on. ‘There are uranium deposits in the rocks below.’ He pointed. Veins of grey metal ran through the stone beneath the golden line. ‘Now, they are safe. But as the water rises, it acts as a… neutron moderator.’ His hesitation suggested he was familiar with the process, but had never explained it in English before. ‘This brings the uranium to critical mass and starts a nuclear reaction. It becomes so hot, the water boils away — very quickly.’

‘So you get that big blast of steam,’ said Eddie.

‘Yes. Once the water is gone, the reaction stops. Until the pool fills again, and another begins. The cycle takes fifty-eight minutes.’

Nina searched her memory. ‘There was a natural reactor somewhere in Africa. I remember reading about it…’

‘At Oklo, in Gabon,’ the monk told her. ‘It was discovered when the atomic authorities thought fissile uranium had been stolen from a mine, because there was less of it than there should have been. But the natural reactor had burned it up more quickly. That one died a long time ago when the fissile uranium decayed, millions of years. But this,’ he gestured into the pit, ‘is still alive. And it is used with the Crucible to make gold.’

‘So there must have been another reactor in Atlantis!’ The disparate fragments of information she had discovered suddenly came together. ‘The furnace! That’s what Talonor was searching for, the reason the Atlanteans sent him out to explore the world. They had their own literal gold factory, but it was running out of juice.’ Excitement filled her voice at the realisation. ‘Gold was at the heart of their civilisation — it was a symbol of their power, a way for them to show how rich they were compared to their rivals. But they didn’t mine it, or plunder it. They made it. And when they realised they wouldn’t be able to keep doing that, they needed to find a new reactor.’

‘And they came all the way out here to find it?’ Eddie said. ‘They must have been pretty determined. Or desperate.’

‘Everything Talonor learned came in useful when the empire’s last survivors settled in the Himalayas, though.’ The sound of a monk unscrewing the lid of a container in response to a command from the impatient Rudra caught her attention. ‘Oh. Hint taken!’

She and Eddie donned masks as the monk removed the top. Lantern light glinted off a new kind of elemental metal: liquid mercury. Two other men held the Crucible firmly in place as he carried the heavy can to it.

Rudra placed a funnel inside the crystalline sphere. The quicksilver was carefully poured in, filling about a fifth of the Crucible. The empty canister was removed and the next brought. ‘Does all of that turn to gold?’ Nina asked, scepticism rising again. If it did, that meant the monks could produce pounds of the metal at a time, worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mercury was not cheap in such quantities, but even a few ounces of gold would more than cover the cost.

‘No,’ said Amaanat. ‘There is a certain isotope of mercury found naturally in the whole. It is only a small part, but this is what is transformed.’

‘How?’ Eddie asked. ‘This all sounds like magic — or, you know, legend. Midas touching stuff and it turns into gold.’

‘A process called nuclear transmutation,’ explained the abbot. ‘One atom can be changed to another, and mercury is next to gold on the periodic table. Scientists discovered this could be done in a nuclear reactor in the 1940s, but the Atlanteans knew the secret of creating gold in a natural reactor many centuries before.’

‘I bet when you became a monk you didn’t think you’d end up studying nuclear physics, did you?’ said the Englishman wryly.

Amaanat smiled. ‘No. I became a monk to atone for a violent life.’ He turned his head, the lamplight picking out the ragged scar down his face. ‘I have learned much since then — but not everything. I am still a mere monk, not a scientist. My studies of the intangible are on a spiritual plane, not the subatomic.’

The strange geode was now over half full, the last canister of mercury being brought to it. ‘How does it work?’ said Nina. ‘It looks like you’re going to lower the thing into the water, then pull it out filled with gold. It can’t be that simple.’

Rudra laughed. ‘But it is!’

‘We do lower it into the water,’ said Amaanat. ‘But that would not transform mercury into gold without the Crucible. It somehow traps and reflects the neutrons created by the chain reaction, and increases the chance that they will transform an atom of mercury.’

She shook her head. ‘I still have trouble believing it.’

The last can was emptied. ‘You soon will not have to believe,’ Amaanat told her as he gazed into the chasm once more. ‘You will know. Look.’

Something had changed below. The light in the cave was different, gradually brightening. It was not the stark white of the lanterns’ LEDs, but a deep cyan. Nina peered over the edge — and was startled to see a glow coming from beneath the water’s surface. The walls themselves seemed to be alight.

Eddie joined her, only to hurriedly retreat, shielding his crotch again. ‘That’s bloody radiation!’

‘It cannot hurt you,’ Amaanat said calmly, watching as the strange luminescence slowly intensified. ‘Not yet. It is Cherenkov radiation, coming from the uranium as it reaches critical mass, but it is not strong enough to get through the water.’

‘So when will it hurt us?’ the Yorkshireman demanded.

‘We still have time to leave the cave, do not worry.’ The monks slung the rope through the pulley on the tripod, then tied one end to the Crucible’s handle. With one man steadying the vessel, the others hauled on the line. The stand creaked as it took the weight of the mercury-filled sphere, but held. The Crucible was lowered slowly to just beneath the cut-off line of the gold on the walls, and the rope secured to hold it in place.

The water level was now not far below it, the eerie light strong enough to illuminate the whole cave. Nina saw for the first time that there was another passage to one side. ‘Now we must leave,’ said Amaanat.

‘See you at the top,’ Eddie told him, taking his wife’s hand and leading her briskly towards the exit.

‘Why the rush?’ she asked. ‘The monks aren’t worried about it.’

‘Maybe, but they’re monks.’

‘And?’

‘They’re not generally known for wanting kids!’

‘You want another kid?’ she asked, surprised.

‘Not right now, but it’d be nice to have the option. If we don’t get out of here, our bits’ll end up glowing green!’

‘I’m fairly sure our second kid won’t be the Hulk,’ she said, teasing, as they rounded the twist in the passage and saw daylight ahead.

A figure stood at the entrance: Jayesh. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.

‘On their way,’ Nina told him. ‘You might want to move back, though. That big steam blast? There’ll be another one in a few minutes.’ The taciturn Nepali’s eyebrows twitched, and he followed them clear.

The monks emerged soon afterwards. ‘Four minutes,’ warned Amaanat as he joined the visitors. ‘When it is safe to go back inside, you will see that I have spoken the truth.’

Time passed with infuriating slowness. Eventually the low rumbling began again. The hissing of subterranean steam grew steadily louder — until another vaporous eruption burst from the cave mouth, a second, smaller jet again gushing from the opening on the lower ledge. The rising plumes were quickly swept away by the wind.

Rudra retrieved the hazmat suit and Geiger counter from the hut. His safety check was soon completed, and he waved the onlookers back to the cave. ‘Now you shall see what Talonor saw,’ said Amaanat. The group put their masks on again as he led the way inside.

Far down the valley, a man watched through a powerful telescope as they disappeared into the darkness. He panned it on its tripod mount to find Jayesh, still standing watch. ‘So, one bodyguard,’ he whispered in Greek. Another look back at the now empty opening, then he withdrew and turned around.

Two helicopters stood before him, having landed on a higher plateau over four miles from the target zone. One was an elderly Polish-built Mil Mi-2 eight-seater in bright red civilian paintwork, the other a slightly larger but much newer AgustaWestland AW169 outfitted with an external winch. Swathes of black plastic had been taped over parts of their hulls to cover tail numbers and identifying logos. He went to the second aircraft, ignoring the bored Nepalese men inside, and collected a satellite phone before returning to the telescope. Resuming his observation, he made a call.

It was soon answered. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Axelos.’

‘Ah, Petros!’ said the deep-voiced man at the other end of the line. He spoke briefly to someone in English, then returned to his native language. ‘Where are you, and what have you found?’

‘I paid a customs officer at Kathmandu airport to hide a tracker in Wilde and her husband’s baggage. We followed them into the mountains. They’ve gone into a cave with the monks.’ He frowned, still watching the ledge. ‘I don’t know what’s going on inside, but it’s weird. A lot of smoke or steam blew out of it.’

‘You don’t need to worry about that. Just secure the Crucible. How long will it take you to get into position?’

‘Thirty, forty minutes — we’ll need to fly behind the other mountains so they don’t hear us coming, and rope down higher up so we can attack from above.’

‘And will the men be up to the job?’

Axelos glanced at his companions: a collection of local mercenaries, hurriedly hired through his boss’s global network of contacts. All claimed to have military experience, but the black-haired Greek had many years of his own, and could tell that none were top-tier. But they were all he had. ‘It would have been better if I’d been able to use people I already knew — people I can rely on.’

‘I know. But when you need to act fast, you use what you have, not what you want, yes? Okay, do it.’

‘Moving out now,’ Axelos said.

He was about to end the call when the other man spoke again, sounding almost saddened. ‘And Petros?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’d prefer there to be no violence. The Crucible is what matters. But…’ His voice became harder, filled with meaning. ‘I must have it. Understood?’

‘Understood,’ Axelos replied. ‘I’ll call you again when it’s done.’

He disconnected and returned to the helicopters, calling out their passengers and getting one of the Nepalis to translate as he addressed them in perfect English. ‘All right! We’re moving out. You all know what to do, so follow my lead.’ He waited for the non-English-speakers to respond to the translation, then continued: ‘There’s a guard outside the cave, so we deal with him first. He looks Nepalese, but he’s not a monk, so you shouldn’t have any trouble picking him out. Then we round up everyone else.’

A mercenary, one of twin brothers whom Axelos could only tell apart by their scarves, spoke in clumsy English. ‘What we do if they do trouble?’

‘Use the minimum force necessary,’ he replied, ‘but if anyone poses a threat… take them out.’

Nods of agreement, with some leering smiles. The Greek concealed his disdain, instead signalling to the helicopter pilots. The Mil’s was a local Nepali, the AW169’s an American named Collins, another employee of Axelos’s paymaster. ‘Let’s do this.’

The eerie cyan glow had disappeared, only lamplight reflecting off the cavern’s golden walls. Wisps of steam coiled from the chasm. Nina looked down into it as the monks prepared to raise the Crucible back to floor level. The strange sphere was now suspended some distance above the surface, where the meltwater had boiled away in a furious burst.

What she could see of the mercury within the Crucible looked no different, though. Was the whole thing just some bizarre lie?

The monks strained to lift the red crystal up the shaft, gingerly pulling it on to solid ground. Rudra brought one of the empty canisters and placed the funnel into it, inserting a fine wire mesh to act as a filter. A pair of men gently tipped the Crucible, pouring out its contents.

The mercury containers had remained in the cave, and Nina noticed that their dull metal had acquired a faintly lustrous sheen. ‘Is that gold?’ she asked, pointing it out to Amaanat.

‘Yes.’

‘How? They weren’t in the Crucible.’

‘The mercury vapour in the air touches everything. The neutrons inside the Crucible reach such an intensity that they escape in a burst — and some of the atoms of vapour are hit and transformed into gold. It is how the walls have become like this,’ he said, touching one of the subsumed wooden beams. ‘Layers of gold have built up over years, over centuries.’

The first container was now filled with mercury. Rudra carefully lifted the filter from the funnel. Another monk positioned a shallow bowl beneath it as he shook the little sieve, a few tiny flecks falling through the mesh, then tipped out the larger pieces that had been caught.

Amaanat brought his lantern closer. ‘You see? Gold.’

Nina leaned in. The misshapen lumps were all small, resembling loose dental fillings, but they had the undeniable yellow gleam of the precious metal. Combined, she estimated they might weigh about half an ounce, so the entire contents of the Crucible could yield perhaps four times that in total. At current prices that was still worth a few thousand dollars, but it was not the overwhelming quantities she had expected. ‘There isn’t much there.’

‘And it could’ve been in the mercury when you brought it up here, for all we know,’ said Eddie.

Rudra gave him an irate look, but Amaanat simply shrugged. ‘Why would we lie to you? We have asked you to tell no one about this, and you have agreed. We have nothing to gain.’

‘He’s got a good point,’ Nina was forced to admit.

‘There is more in the bottom,’ the abbot went on. ‘Steel will float on mercury, but gold will sink. From this Crucible, we will get perhaps ten troy ounces.’

‘Ten ounces is quite a lot…’ Belatedly she registered his phrasing. ‘Wait, you said this Crucible. There are more?’

‘There is one other,’ he replied. ‘Talonor had this one with him when he first found this place. The second was brought when he returned.’

‘Two Crucibles, double the gold,’ said Eddie. ‘Not bad.’

The old monk smiled at some highly amusing secret. ‘What is it?’ Nina asked.

‘Come, see for yourself,’ Amaanat told her.

As the other monks continued to pour out the mercury, he led Nina and Eddie to the side passage. The walls were still caked in gold, but once they had rounded a corner, the coating vanished, leaving nothing but bare, damp rock.

‘Here,’ said the monk, holding up his lamp. ‘Here is the second Crucible.’

The couple’s eyes widened simultaneously. ‘Okay,’ said Eddie, ‘double the gold was a bit of an understatement.’

‘You’re not kidding!’ Nina replied, amazed. ‘This thing could fill up Fort Knox!’

The second Crucible was much like the first in form, a rough spheroid of dark red crystal with an opening carved into its top. But it was very different in size. Where the first had been the size of a basketball, this one was almost as tall as Nina, a great bulbous cauldron inside a heavy metal cage. As for how much mercury it might hold, she guessed it would measure in the hundreds of gallons.

It would not produce ounces of gold. It would produce pounds.

‘It has not been used for many years,’ said Amaanat. ‘To fill it would need so much mercury that people might become suspicious. It would also need many trips up the mountain to bring the mercury here, and you have seen how dangerous that can be. But we know it has been used in the past.’

‘By Talonor and the people he left here,’ said Nina, nodding. She peered inside the artefact, the monk lifting his lantern to illuminate the interior. The light reflected back in a dazzling display from countless gem-like facets.

‘Where do you even get all the mercury?’ Eddie asked. ‘It’s not like you can just order it from Amazon.’

Nina answered the question for him. ‘Mercury’s extracted from cinnabar, which isn’t that hard to find. It’s been mined since the Neolithic era. There are major deposits in China and other parts of Asia — Spain, too,’ she added in realisation. ‘Spain would have been under Atlantis’s control when the empire was at its height. That’s where they got the raw mercury, and they took it back to Atlantis to turn into gold. At least, until their natural reactor decayed and ran out of power.’

‘You now see why we have kept this place a secret,’ said Amaanat. ‘To make gold in such great quantities — some men would start wars for that. We have saved lives, kept the peace.’

‘While using it for yourselves,’ she observed.

‘We are in a remote place, and everything we need to survive must be brought to us. It is expensive. We use the small Crucible to create enough gold to support the monastery, no more. It has allowed us to protect the Midas Cave for hundreds of years.’

‘But now we know about it,’ said Eddie. Nina knew why he had made the pointed statement: if the monks were going to do anything extreme to keep their secret, it would be now, after their visitors had learned the truth…

But Amaanat merely bowed his head. ‘You could tell the whole world, if you wished,’ he said. ‘But I do not believe you will. You have both seen the violence that can come from greed.’ He looked up again, regarding them with a gaze that went deeper than their eyes alone. ‘I trust you to keep our silence.’

‘We will,’ Nina assured him. Eddie nodded in agreement.

The abbot smiled, then led them back into the golden cavern. The other monks were still carefully draining the smaller Crucible, filtering out more nuggets of gold. ‘We should wait outside,’ he said, continuing towards the exit. ‘It is cold, but the air is clean.’

The couple followed him up the tunnel. Jayesh was still standing watch. ‘Finished, Chase?’ he asked, drawing on another cigarette.

‘Yeah,’ Eddie replied as he took off his mask. ‘We saw what we came to see.’

Jayesh shrugged. ‘Not my business. Only here to keep you out of trouble.’ He gave Nina the tiniest hint of a smile. ‘Hard work with him, eh?’

‘Tell me about it,’ she replied.

‘Me?’ hooted the Yorkshireman. ‘She’s the disaster magnet, mate. Anywhere you take her, something’s bound to blow up.’

‘Not for a long time now,’ she reminded him. ‘And hopefully never again.’

He made a sarcastic noise. ‘You remember how jinxing works, right?’

‘No problems here,’ said Jayesh. ‘Heard a chopper, but a long way off. Nothing else out there.’

‘We get few visitors,’ Amaanat said. ‘None go further than the monastery. Nobody comes to this place.’

‘If someone wanted to climb up here, they could,’ Eddie pointed out.

‘But they have not.’ The abbot gestured towards the more distant peaks. ‘There are far higher mountains for tourists to climb.’

‘The steam vents could attract attention, though,’ said Nina. ‘And the whole place is called Dragon Mountain, which is kind of a draw.’

‘The steam cannot be seen from the valley; it is hidden by the cliffs. If you are high enough on another mountain to see it, it looks only like a cloud or blowing snow, because you are so far away. Trust me, Dr Wilde,’ he said, ‘people do not come here by chance. Would you have come without good reason?’

‘I guess not,’ she admitted.

Eddie checked the sky. It was still daylight, but the mountains to the east were becoming shadowed by higher peaks as the sun lowered. ‘We’ll need to start back pretty soon.’

‘We will be at the monastery before it is dark,’ Amaanat assured him.

Eddie nodded, then looked back at Nina. ‘So. You’ve seen the Midas Cave — now what?’

‘Now?’ she replied, pondering the question before giving a reluctant reply. ‘Amaanat’s right: it should stay hidden. Which is frustrating, because it’s an incredible find! And seeing for myself that there’s truth behind the Midas myth was also amazing — maybe not just Midas,’ she added. ‘There are other legends along the same lines. There was an Indian called… Nagarjuna, I think, an ancient alchemist who supposedly found a way to produce gold from mercury. And actually, isn’t there a Buddhist myth about someone who turned other metals into gold?’

‘Yes, there is,’ replied Amaanat. ‘He was also called Nagarjuna. They are not the same man, though. They lived many centuries apart.’

‘So if you want your son to grow up to be an alchemist, that’s a good name for him,’ said Eddie.

Nina glanced back at the cave as the masked Rudra emerged, carrying the small Crucible. The other monks, bearing their own cargoes, filed out behind him. ‘You know, a lot of the stories about alchemy involve mercury. And the Philosopher’s Stone was used to create gold.’

‘The one Harry Potter was after?’

‘Not quite. But in mythology, it’s often described as being reddish in colour, like the Crucibles. I suppose in a way they are the Philosopher’s Stones — they literally do transform another element into gold. It’s just that it’s mercury, not lead. But you know something?’ she proclaimed. ‘It doesn’t matter that I can’t tell anyone what we found. Because that’s not why I came here. I came to complete my mom’s work, to see if she was right. And she was.’

‘Yeah, she was,’ said Eddie, putting his arms around her. ‘But so were you. You were the one who actually put all the pieces together.’ He kissed her, drawing disapproving looks from some of the monks, though their leader smiled. ‘So how do you feel?’

‘I feel… happy,’ she told him. ‘Sad in a way, because Mom couldn’t be here. But… I finished what she started. I saw something incredible — I found that another ancient legend is actually true! I didn’t just do what I came here to do, I did more than that. So, yeah. Happy.’

‘If you’re happy, I’m happy,’ he said, with a broad grin. ‘So we’re done here?’

‘We’re done.’

‘And we can go back home to our little girl?’

She grinned. ‘Yeah, we can. God, I hope she hasn’t missed us too much.’

‘She’ll probably have had such a good time with Holly that she’ll have forgotten who we are.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about!’ Nina addressed Amaanat. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much for letting me see this.’

‘It was my honour,’ replied the elderly monk. ‘And I know that our secret will be safe with you. We all do. Is that not true, Rudra?’ The younger man, who was re-wrapping the Crucible, still appeared dubious but agreed reluctantly. ‘Good. Then we shall…’

He trailed off, seeing the other monks looking around in confusion. A noise became audible, a thudding chop echoing from the surrounding mountains.

Growing louder.

Jayesh threw away his cigarette and snatched out his gun. ‘Helicopter!’ he warned—

Another sound, a flat clatter of boots on rock — and a man leapt down from above the cave mouth to slam the Gurkha to the cold ground.

An automatic weapon crackled, a three-round burst of bullets smacking into the snow at Eddie and Nina’s feet. They looked up — to see that the gun was now locked on to them.