The Emperor's Tomb

FIFTY-FOUR

NI WADED THROUGH A TANGLED MESS OF WET GRASS AND APPROACHED the second of the three low-slung structures. Rain continued to fall. Vegetation had long ago consumed the outer walls, leafy vines thick from ground to roof. Most of the windows remained intact, the panes smeared with a layer of wet grime. He spotted beetles and mosquitoes smashed thick into torn screens.

He approached the wooden door. No lock prevented access, as he’d been told, so he shoved it open. Rusted hinges fought back, then gave way. The door jogged enough for him to slip inside.

He forced it closed once more.

Light from the filthy windows was filtered a gray-brown. Shadows consumed the room, which measured perhaps five meters square, one wall collapsed onto itself, exposing the weather and what lay behind the building. Plows dotted the blackened earth floor, everything dusted with a wet layer of rust and soil. A mass of clay pots and jars, piled in pieces, rose against one wall. Cobwebs consumed the corners.

He eased himself through the break in the outer wall, back out into the rain. For what he sought lay outside.

He heard the voice on the phone, from earlier.

“I employed spies to monitor what Pau Wen did at the mound site,” the premier said. “He came to think that no one watched, and that may have been true of Mao and Deng, but not of me. I watched closely.”

“And what did you learn?” Ni asked.

“Pau found a way into the tomb mound. Which surprised me. Qin’s tomb was reported to contain large amounts of mercury. Yet he personally entered, staying inside for several hours one day, reappearing out of a hole in the earth near what would later become Pit 3. Strange occurrences likewise happened during the night for the next week, though no one officially reported anything.”

He wanted to know more.

“Men and equipment working in the dark. Workers present who were not part of the site’s labor force. One of the disadvantages of our form of government was that no one would have ever reported what they may have seen or heard. Pau was in charge and no one challenged him.”

“Except you.”

“I conducted a probe, but it was weeks later. We could not locate where Pau had disappeared into the ground. So much digging was occurring, the area ridden with deep gashes carved from the earth, it was impossible to know. But I did discover something else, years later. I was ordered back to the tomb mound by Beijing. This was after Pau had fled China. I was told to find a way inside the mound, and I did.”

“Why has no one ever spoken of this?”

“There is a good reason for the secrecy.”

He stared into the shadows that engulfed the dilapidated shanties. Trees blocked the sky allowing only thin fingers of light to poke through the canopy. Water, though, found a path and tapped the ground in a steady beat. The tomb mound started its rise less than fifty meters away. He was perhaps as close to the base as one could get. The fencing that had protected the front also ran behind the buildings, blocking any route upward.

He spotted the well exactly where the premier had said. A circular pile of masonry, two meters high, more wet vegetation clinging to its stones.

He hadn’t walked around the buildings to the well because he wanted to slow down his adversary. This way, Tang would see him enter the building but not exit.

He stepped to the well and gazed inside. Less than a meter down, a rusted iron plate blocked the opening. Two makeshift handles had been welded to its surface. For all intents and purposes the plug was there to prevent anyone, or anything, from falling down the shaft.

But he knew better.

He gripped the handles, the wet rust staining his skin, making it difficult to keep a firm hold.

And lifted the plate away.

MALONE WAS PUZZLED. “WHERE ARE WE GOING?”

Pau knelt down and began to brush away a layer of dust and debris from the floor. “When I originally entered this chamber, the room was intact except that I noticed sunken areas in two places.”

He understood. “Given these three stone tables, that meant there was solid ground everywhere—”

“Correct. I told you outside about the symbolism of the chariot and the ramp pointing left. The reason that is obvious to me now is because of what I found inside this room.”

“It’s getting quiet out there,” Cassiopeia said.

Malone had noticed that, too. “Keep an eye out.”

She assumed a position near the exit.

Pau completed his clearing and Malone spotted faintly etched symbols, one on each brick face.

“What are they?” he asked.

“The one that looks like a house is the symbol for 6. The X with a line above and below is 5. The T-looking one is 7.”

He noticed that the lines clumped together, which obviously was 4, appeared more often than the other numerals, except for the spoon with a line through its handle. “What’s that?”

“9.”

“There’s a pattern,” Pau said. “But I confess I was able to decipher it only because the floor itself had depressed.”

Malone followed where Pau had pointed.

“The numbers 4 and 9 are important to the Chinese. 9 is pronounced jiu, which is the same for ‘long’ and ‘forever.’ 9 has always correlated to long life and good fortune. It came to be associated with emperors. 4, on the other hand, is pronounced si, which is the same as ‘death.’ 4 has always been regarded as unlucky.”

He inventoried the symbols 4 and 9 and saw that there were two concentrations.

“When I entered the chamber, I saw that these bricks”—Pau pointed to a cluster of 9s—“were depressed. So was that cluster of 4s. I discovered that there were openings beneath the floor that led down to two separate passages.”

“So you chose the lucky one,” Malone said.

“It seemed the right selection.”

Malone still held a shovel. He wedged the blade between two of the floor bricks with a 9 and pounded the sole of his shoe against the top edge. The ground was hard but gave way, and he angled the handle, forcing the brick upward.

“How we doing out there?” he asked Cassiopeia.

“Too quiet.”

“Minister Tang is on the way,” Pau said.

Malone stared down at Pau, who was helping free each brick. An idea of what to do came to him in an instant. Pau glanced up and the look on the older man’s face confirmed that he’d determined their next move as well.

“That’s scary,” Malone said. “I’m actually starting to think like you.”

Pau grinned. “I can’t see where that is a bad thing.”

TANG FOLLOWED A RED CARPET THAT FORMED A PATH UP A short set of stone risers into the brick-and-glass building that encased Pit 3. He’d been informed that the hall had been cleared and all exits were manned with guards. He’d brought two men with him, both brothers of the Ba, whom he’d ordered to be stationed nearby.

“No one leaves this building,” he barked out as he stepped past three of the museum guards at the main doors.

Viktor Tomas waited inside.

“You did well,” he said to Viktor.

“Delivered, as promised.”

The excavated pit spread out before him. He approached the catwalk railing, pointed down, then turned to the two brothers, “Assume a position just outside that gash.”

He watched as they hustled down a ladder, drew their weapons, and hugged the earthen wall on either side of the portal into Qin Shi’s imperial library.

He handed Viktor his gun. “Finish the task. Now.”

Viktor gripped the pistol and climbed down the ladder, approaching the two men, who stood ready to attack.

“Pau Wen,” Tang called out. “The building is sealed.”

No one replied.

“You are under arrest.” His voice echoed through the interior, masked by the rat-tat-tat of rain off the metal roof.

Still no reply.

He motioned for Viktor to advance inside.

The two brothers moved with caution, glancing around the portal’s edge, testing the situation, then rushed into the blackness, followed by Viktor.

He waited for the soft pop of sound-suppressed gunfire, but nothing came.

Viktor reappeared. “You should come down.”

He did not like the quizzical tone in the man’s voice.

He descended the ladder and entered the chamber. Just as he suspected, a charred smell of ash filled the musty air. Not a single silk or bamboo strip remained, only the three stone tables, the room not all that different from two days ago—except for two things.

In the floor, two sets of bricks had been removed, exposing openings about a meter square each, on opposite sides of the room.

He stared into them.

They dropped about two meters into the earth.

But which one had they taken?