The Midas Legacy

7

‘That should be it,’ Nina muttered, comparing the satellite image on her laptop’s screen with her mother’s annotated map. ‘That has to be it. So… why isn’t it?’

‘Why isn’t what?’ said an irritable voice behind her.

She turned to see Eddie, carrying a yawning Macy, enter the lounge. ‘Why isn’t the Midas Cave where it ought to be?’ she replied, frustrated. ‘I located mountain peaks that match the bearings Tobias took, as well as my mom’s work and the records of Talonor’s journey from the Secret Codex. And I also factored in shifts in magnetic north over time, the Atlantean measurement and numerical system, even the video you got of that map in the temple, and everything I know about the region’s history. It all points to the cave being here.’ She jabbed at a point on the map. ‘But it can’t be!’

‘What’s Mommy talking about?’ Macy asked, concerned.

‘Before you were born, this is what she used to do,’ Eddie told her. ‘All the time. She’d get so involved in some archaeological bol— thing that she’d forget to do other stuff. Like sleeping.’

‘I know it’s late, but I needed to—’ Nina checked the laptop’s on-screen clock and gasped. ‘Wait, it’s morning?’

‘Yeah, it’s morning!’ said her husband sarcastically. ‘You didn’t come to bed!’

‘No, that can’t be right. I don’t feel tired.’

Eddie regarded an empty mug beside the computer. ‘How many coffees did you have?’

‘I dunno, three, four? Oh. Yeah, that might explain it. Oh my God, I can’t believe I worked through the whole night!’

‘Is Mommy okay?’ Macy whispered to Eddie. ‘She’s talking weird.’

‘She does that,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get you some brekkie. Hopefully she’ll have sorted herself out by then.’ He headed for the kitchen with his daughter.

Nina followed. ‘But I should have found it, that’s the thing. In the Secret Codex, Talonor says the Midas Cave is on what the locals called Dragon Mountain. There’s a place in Nepal that’s sometimes called that even today, and it’s exactly where the cave should be. But it can’t be, because the only possible route up the mountain has a monastery on it — the same one my mother wrote to. Tobias couldn’t have missed it… therefore he couldn’t have gone that way. Which means I’m back at square one.’

‘What’s a monstery?’ Macy asked as she took her seat.

‘Where monsters live,’ said Eddie.

‘Ignore Daddy; it’s where monks live,’ Nina corrected.

He chuckled, then started gathering Macy’s breakfast. ‘So this Midas Cave is definitely a real thing?’

‘Yes. Talonor named it to honour his friend Midas — the prince. Midas made some sort of sacrifice to find it, but the Codex doesn’t say what. It wasn’t his life, though; he travelled on with Talonor afterwards.’ She glanced back at the map. ‘It was the farthest point of that expedition, actually. They returned to Atlantis after finding the cave.’

‘So they were specifically after whatever was inside it?’

‘Looks that way. Talonor left a contingent to guard it and prepare for the arrival of something called “the Crucible”, but he doesn’t say what that is. The people he was writing the Codex for would already have known, so he didn’t need to explain it. It was mentioned in Mom’s notes too, but she didn’t explain it either.’

Eddie sat with Macy and gave her a bowl of cereal. ‘That’s the end of that, then.’

Nina eyed him. ‘You sound almost relieved.’

‘It’ll mean you’ll come to bed at a non-ridiculous time. Or actually come to bed.’

‘I don’t see how I could have been wrong, though. Everything fits, until it all falls apart at the end.’

‘Maybe your mum was wrong,’ he suggested.

‘I doubt that,’ she snapped.

‘Blimey, no need to get defensive. Everybody makes mistakes. Even me.’

‘Yeah, I can think of one or seventeen.’

Macy was following the conversation with an ever-furrowing brow. ‘Why do monkeys live on a mountain? I thought they lived in trees.’

Nina laughed. ‘Not monkeys, honey — monks. They’re men who believe in a god so much that they live in a special house called a monastery, where they can spend all their time thinking about it.’

‘That’s silly. Why would you build a house on a mountain? It might fall off.’

‘Maybe they didn’t want visitors,’ suggested Eddie. He started on his own breakfast, pausing when he realised his wife had fallen unnaturally silent. ‘Ay up. What?’

‘I was just thinking,’ Nina said.

‘Yeah, that’s never a good sign.’

‘Oh Daddy’s so funny, isn’t he?’ she snarked to Macy, who giggled. ‘But why would they build a monastery on a mountain?’

Eddie shrugged. ‘Monks do weird stuff. We went to a monastery way up a mountain in India.’

‘Yeah, but when Tobias came back to look for the cave, the monastery he’d originally set out from had been destroyed. What if the monks hadn’t been killed — but had moved?’ She hurried back into the lounge, finding the letter her mother had received from Nepal.

‘Why would they move?’ Eddie called after her. ‘Council tax went up?’

‘Shush!’ She quickly reread the letter. ‘Every answer the monks gave Mom is a non-answer — like saying that parts of the monastery pre-date the 1840s. That could mean anything. They could have transferred statues or altars from the original site.’

‘So you’re telling me a bunch of Buddhist monks lied to your mum?’

‘They’re not technically lying, just being economical with the truth.’ She came back into the kitchen with the letter and map. ‘What if the monks who showed Tobias the cave and the monks who wrote to my mom are the same ones?’

‘They’d be pretty old.’

‘I don’t mean literally the same ones. But they’ve been protecting the cave’s secret all this time. To the point that when they realised Tobias might be able to find it again, they upped sticks and rebuilt their monastery on the only path up the mountain to make sure nobody could get past!’

‘Bit of a long shot,’ said Eddie dubiously.

‘You said my mom might have been wrong. She was — but only in the sense that she’d been given bad data. The monastery was blocking her from seeing the right answer because, well, who’s going to think that a Buddhist monk’s lying to them?’ She put the map on the table and tapped the spot she had indicated earlier. ‘That’s it. That’s the cave. Talonor’s journey meets Tobias’s right there.’

‘Okay, so you think you found it. Now what’re you going to do?’

Nina stared at the map. After a long, thoughtful pause, she said: ‘I’ll need to make a couple of phone calls.’

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

Nina’s first call had been to Lola at the IHA to obtain contact details for the remote monastery from the UN’s databases, learning that it had a satellite phone for emergencies. After explaining herself to the surprised monk who answered her second call, she had been put through to the man she hoped could help her. The connection was poor, the speaker’s voice echoing as if coming through a long metal pipe, but she could make him out well enough.

Would the answers she received be as clear?

‘Yes, hello,’ she replied, carefully enunciating each word. She could tell that his first language was not English. ‘Is that Abbot Amaanat?’

‘Yes, it is. Are you Dr Wilde?’

‘I am. Thank you for talking to me.’

‘We do not often get telephone calls, especially from famous archaeologists. It is my honour to speak to you.’

‘Again, thank you. You’ve heard of me, then?’

‘Oh yes.’ Amaanat sounded quite elderly, giving her a mental picture of a hunched, bald old man in red and orange robes. ‘We are not out of touch with the world, even here. What may we do for you?’

Nina composed herself before replying. ‘It’s a personal matter, actually,’ she began. ‘I recently received some old letters belonging to my mother, and found one that had been sent from your monastery. I believe you were the person who wrote it.’ She glanced at the letter. The signature was incomprehensible to her, the curlicued Nepalese alphabet being related to Hindi, but beneath it had been written AMAANAT in tiny, careful capitals.

‘I may have, yes. It can take some time, but we try to reply to every letter we receive. It is only polite. What do you wish to ask?’

‘I want to finish her work. She had some questions about the monastery’s history. Do you remember what you said?’

Even with the satellite link’s time delay, it seemed that he hesitated before replying; not because he was searching his memory, but because her question had caught him off guard. ‘I… do not remember anything like that recently.’

‘Well, this letter was sent quite a long time ago. 1975 — March, to be exact.’

‘That is a long time ago,’ Amaanat agreed. ‘Too long to remember one letter.’

‘But you were at the monastery in 1975, yes?’

‘Yes, I have been here for more than fifty years.’

Nina was caught between caution and her urge to push for the truth; there was nothing stopping Amaanat from hanging up if he resented being interrogated. ‘I can remind you what she asked. The first question was simple: when was the monastery built?’

‘Ah, that I can answer,’ he said, with no hesitation this time. ‘Parts of it date to the seventeenth century, the period of the Three Kingdoms.’

‘And it’s been in the same place the whole time?’

‘It has been rebuilt several times. There have been avalanches, fires and earthquakes.’

‘But you’ve never been at another location.’

‘No. Since I became a monk, I have always been here.’

You should have been a lawyer, with answers that pedantic, Nina stopped herself from saying. ‘I meant the monks, the order in general. Have they ever lived somewhere else?’

‘In the past, we have sometimes moved when necessary, such as when the monastery was being rebuilt. But we are here now.’

Now she had to contain her exasperation at his becoming outright evasive — yet still without actually saying anything that could be proven as a lie. Maybe politics, not law, should have been his calling. ‘My mother also asked about past visitors to the monastery. Do you know when the first Westerners reached you?’

‘I am afraid I do not,’ said Amaanat. ‘Many have visited our monastery, but we do not keep records of all of them.’

‘But would you know if some had come to you in, say, 1846?’

The very specific date prompted another pause. ‘That was a year of great turmoil in Nepal,’ the abbot said. ‘It is very possible visitors came to us after the war with the British. But again, we do not have records.’

‘I see,’ said Nina, her patience finally running out. ‘Tell me: have you ever heard of an Atlantean explorer called Talonor?’

A startled silence, though the constant hollow moan of the satellite link told her he was still on the line. ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ she went on. ‘Now, I’m following up my mother’s work from over forty years ago. She was trying to find an Atlantean outpost established by Talonor, which the monks — your monks, the same order — showed to an ancestor of ours, Tobias Garde.’

‘Nepal is a very long way from Atlantis,’ said Amaanat. The strain behind his voice implied that politeness was now the only thing keeping him from disconnecting.

‘Yeah, but it’s not far from Tibet, and I found an outpost of Atlantis there, so it’s not really a stretch. You might know the one on Dragon Mountain — that is one of the local names for the mountain on which your monastery’s built, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ he admitted.

‘You could know it by another name. The Midas Cave.’

When Amaanat spoke again, courteous vagueness had been replaced by wary suspicion. ‘What do you wish of us, Dr Wilde?’

‘I told you, I want to complete my mother’s work and find the Midas Cave.’

‘Is that all?’

She wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘Yes. What else could there be?’

‘If you believe that finding the Midas Cave will bring you riches, I am afraid you are mistaken.’ It sounded almost like a threat.

‘I don’t care about riches,’ Nina insisted. ‘You said you know who I am, so you should know I’m not interested in money. I just want to see if my mother was right.’

‘I cannot help you, Dr Wilde,’ said the monk. ‘I am sorry to have wasted your time. May you be well and happy.’

The conversation was clearly over. Unless…

‘Wait,’ Nina barked. ‘If you don’t want to help, that’s fine. But it means I’ll have to take everything I’ve learned about the Midas Cave to the International Heritage Agency and the Nepalese government, and mount an official archaeological expedition to find it.’

‘You cannot do that!’ said Amaanat, alarmed.

‘Your monastery might be on the mountain, but you don’t own it, do you? I can get permission to explore it easily enough.’

‘There is only one route up the mountain, and you cannot reach it without going through our monastery. We will not let you do that.’

‘Then we’ll climb around you. Or even fly over you. I checked, and you’re well below a helicopter’s maximum altitude.’ She let him think about the situation for a moment. ‘You want to keep the Midas Cave a secret, don’t you?’ she asked, more conciliatory. ‘I can give you my personal assurance of that.’

‘You will not tell anything that you learn to others?’

‘I told you, all I want to do is finish my mother’s work. I give you my word.’

Another long silence from the other side of the world, then: ‘We will not tell you more about the Midas Cave over the telephone. Only in person.’

‘Wait, that’s not what—’

Amaanat seemed to anticipate her objection, interrupting even with the time lag of the satellite transmission. ‘If you come to the monastery — and keep your promise that you will not tell others of the Midas Cave — then your questions will be answered. And your mother’s.’

‘You want me to come to you? In Nepal?’

‘If you decide to come, telephone and tell us when you will arrive. We will be waiting.’ The line’s hollow echo ceased abruptly.

Nina blinked in surprise. ‘What the hell just happened?’ she said.

But the more important question was unspoken: what was she going to do about it?

‘You want to do what?’ Eddie demanded.

‘I want to go to Nepal,’ repeated Nina. ‘The monks at Detsen monastery know about the Midas Cave. The abbot said he’ll tell me the secret — but only if I go in person.’

‘Are you fu— frickin’ kidding?’ She had sent Macy to play in her room before starting a discussion that she knew would become heated. Even so, Eddie only barely managed to hold back an obscenity. ‘You can’t go to Nepal!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s fu— sod— really stupid! How do you know they’re not having you on?’

‘Eddie, they’re Buddhist monks,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’d ask me to fly to the other side of the world for a joke.’

‘I don’t mean they’re joking. I mean they might be lying.’

‘Seriously?’

‘They lied to your mum.’

‘Yes, but to protect the cave’s secret. Now that I know it’s there, they’re willing to tell me about it, in return for my keeping quiet.’

‘And what if they decide to make sure you’ll keep quiet by pushing you off the mountain?’

‘Yeah, I’d thought of that. But I’ll let the IHA know where I’m going, even if I don’t say why, in case anything does happen to me. And you’ll know too, of course,’ she added.

‘Of course,’ he echoed sarcastically. ‘So you’re going to jet off to Nepal for a week on your own?’

‘I won’t be gone a week! Three, four days, tops. Fly out, travel to the monastery, see whatever’s in the cave, leave.’

‘Nepal isn’t exactly known for its network of motorways and bullet trains.’

‘I already checked,’ she said. ‘I can fly into Kathmandu and charter an internal flight to Bajura or Jumla. There’s a road to within about ten miles of the monastery, and I can ride or hike from there.’

‘Oh, just like that?’

‘Eddie, I have done this before,’ she protested.

He shook his head. ‘It’s still a stupid idea.’

Nina knew she wouldn’t convince him with logistics alone. ‘This is really important to me, hon,’ she said, her voice softening. ‘It’s… it’s a connection to my mom, one I didn’t know I had until now.’ She glanced across to the photograph on the wall of herself with her parents. The image brought back thoughts of the day it had been taken, the strands of which she tried to follow to other memories of her mother. But time had blurred and fragmented them, turning their life together into a dissociated collage…

‘I’m losing her, Eddie,’ she admitted. ‘As I get older, and further away, she’s fading in my mind. I don’t want that to happen. I want to do something that’ll bring us close again — something that’ll honour her memory.’ She gestured at the stacked notes. ‘She worked on this for years, and was so close to finding the truth. If I go to Nepal, I can finish what she started. There’s something else, too,’ she added, sensing that he was about to raise another objection. ‘You remember at the movie premiere, when Marvin asked “What have you done for us lately?” That really hit home.’

He frowned, perplexed. ‘It was just a joke.’

‘Maybe, but it felt true. What have I done lately? I wrote my books, and I did the interview circuit and some lectures, but… that’s all. I’m an archaeologist, and I’ve said it before: it’s not just what I do, it’s who I am. And for the past few years, I haven’t done any new archaeological work. I haven’t been able to be who I am.’

‘That’s ’cause you’re something else an’ all,’ he reminded her. ‘You’re a mum. A good one, too — a bit weird, mind—’

‘Thanks.’

‘—but you’ve always been there for Macy. Isn’t that more important?’

She gave him an icy look. ‘Sounds like you’re saying I should give up everything to stay home and look after my baby.’

Eddie was wrong-footed by the accusation. ‘That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.’

‘No? I never stopped you from doing what you felt you had to do after Macy was born. Well this is what I do, Eddie. It’s a part of me, something I can’t deny. And I can’t fight it for ever. I’ve got the itch.’

He gave her a half-smile. ‘There’s a cream for that.’

Nina returned it. ‘I knew the moment I said it that you’d come back with something like that.’ But the joke had cut through the rising tension. ‘Look, I know you probably think I’m crazy. But I need to do it. I need to know. You understand that, don’t you?’

Eddie nodded reluctantly. ‘Yeah, I understand. And I do think you’re crazy… but I knew that when I married you.’ He sighed. ‘You’re definitely, absolutely going to go, aren’t you?’

‘How can I not? But you and Macy’ll be able to do whatever you want without me fussing around. I’m sure that’ll be great fun—’

‘If you’re going, I’m going.’

Nina was startled. ‘You want to come?’

‘I don’t want to come,’ insisted Eddie. ‘But I know what you’re like. If I don’t keep an eye on you, you’ll get distracted by some ancient relic and start chasing around the world on a massive treasure hunt.’

‘No I won’t. I told you, as soon as I’ve seen the Midas Cave, I’ll come straight back. But if you come, what about Macy?’

‘We’ll have to ask Holly to look after her.’

‘What if she can’t?’

‘Then maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea for you to wait a while before doing this,’ he said pointedly. ‘For that matter, maybe you should see what Macy thinks. She might not want her mum and dad to go away for three or four days.’

‘Are you going away?’ came a small voice. They both turned to see Macy peeking around the doorway.

‘We might be, love,’ said Eddie. ‘We haven’t decided yet.’

‘Can I come with you?’ Macy asked.

‘I’m sorry, but no,’ Nina told her. ‘We’ll have to go a long way, and it’ll be very cold when we get there. And it might even be dangerous.’

Her expression became one of alarm. ‘But what if you don’t come back?’

‘We’ll come back,’ Eddie assured her. ‘That’s why I’m going too, to keep Mummy safe.’

‘But if you go away with Mommy to keep her safe, you won’t be here to keep me safe!’

He gave her a loving smile. ‘Glad you think that way about me, love. But nothing’ll happen to you.’

Macy was not mollified. ‘Hey, it’s okay, honey,’ said Nina, picking her up. ‘We’re not going to go away for ever! We’d never do that, we love you too much. It’s just something Mommy needs to do.’

‘And Daddy needs to do to keep her out of trouble,’ added her husband.

‘Why do you need to go?’ asked Macy.

Nina carried her to the desk, showing her the notes and map. ‘Before I was born, my mommy looked for something special hidden in a country called Nepal. She never found it, but now I’ve got the chance to find it and finish off her work. Nepal’s a long way away, though, so if I go, it’ll be for a few days.’ She gave Eddie a look. ‘But if you don’t want us to go, then… then we won’t.’

Macy regarded the map for a moment. ‘Did you love your mommy as much as I love you?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Nina replied, her voice catching unexpectedly. ‘I still do, even though she’s not here any more.’

‘Will it make you happy if you find what your mommy was looking for?’

‘I hope it will, yes.’

The little girl’s face crinkled in deep thought. ‘I don’t want you to go, but… I want you to be happy. So you can go if you want to.’ She managed an uncertain smile.

Nina kissed her. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I love you so much.’

‘Are you absolutely sure about that, Macy?’ Eddie asked.

She hesitated before answering. ‘Yes…?’

‘If we go, we’ll ask Holly to look after you—’

The smile became wider. ‘Oh yay! I love Holly! She’s got nice hair, and she talks like you, Daddy! Only better.’

‘Ha!’ said Nina.

‘She’s a southerner, she can’t even pronounce simple words like “bath” right,’ he complained. ‘But you’d be happy if she looked after you?’ Macy nodded vigorously. ‘That’s that question answered, then. We still need to ask Holly if she’s actually up for babysitting for a few days,’ he reminded Nina. ‘If she isn’t, your whole plan’s down the toilet, because there’s no one else I’d trust to look after her.’

‘I know,’ Nina replied ruefully. ‘We’ll have to offer her more than fifty bucks this time, I guess! And as for you… are you sure you want to come with me?’

‘You’ve got to do what you do,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got to do what I do. Which is watch out for you!’

‘Hey, not for a while,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s been more than three years since anything bad happened to us.’

He snorted. ‘Great, you just jinxed it.’

‘Oh come on. What could happen? The monastery’s remote, but it’s not like we haven’t been to isolated places before — we went to frickin’ Antarctica once! As long as we’re prepped, we’ll be fine. It’s not as if there’ll be any bad guys.’

‘I’ll remind you of that when half a dozen helicopter gunships start shooting at us,’ he said, with a wry grin. ‘But I actually know someone in Nepal, an old Gurkha mate. I’ll see if I can get hold of him. He’ll be able to sort things out for us. Although the first person I need to call is Holly.’

Nina saw Olivia’s card still amongst the papers on the desk. ‘I’d better make some calls of my own.’

‘So you’ve found the Midas Cave?’ said Olivia over the phone half an hour later. ‘That’s wonderful! Where is it?’

‘I think I’ve found it,’ Nina corrected. ‘If I’m right, it’s more or less where Mom thought it was all along. She just didn’t consider that a key piece of data was flawed. If she’d known that, she might have found the cave forty years ago.’

‘I’m so happy to know that. Oh, poor Laura. If only…’ Olivia sighed, then her voice became more measured. ‘So where exactly is it?’

‘That’s what I’ll hopefully find out in Nepal. I’m going in a few days to see for myself.’

Her grandmother had clearly not expected that. ‘What? You’re going yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Surely that’s not necessary. It’s a lot of time and effort, and expense. And what about Macy?’

‘Her cousin’s agreed to look after her for a few days. And Macy actually seems quite excited at the prospect of our going away. I’m not sure if that’s a relief or a worry!’ She laughed a little, then went on: ‘You know, I thought you of all people would want me to find out if the cave really exists.’

‘I don’t want you to take any risks on my account,’ Olivia replied. ‘I’ve only just met my granddaughter; I’d rather not lose her to an avalanche!’

‘I know what I’m doing. I have done this before. And actually, the other reason I’m going — the reason I want to go — is something I should thank you for.’

‘Me? What would that be?’

‘Because you gave me a way to reconnect with Mom — a way to honour her memory. And it’s also giving me a chance to get back to doing what I do best — being an archaeologist. So thank you.’

‘My pleasure,’ the elderly woman replied, though she sounded troubled. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Set everything up. We’ve got to book flights, arrange transport, deal with the Nepalese government — although I can call in some favours at the IHA to take care of that, so I’m not expecting any problems. There are some advantages to being famous.’

‘Well, if you feel you must head off on a trek through the Himalayas, I doubt I’m going to talk you out of it. You certainly have your mother’s… resolve.’

‘I’m sure Eddie would use a different word.’

‘Your grandfather felt just the same about me. It runs in the family.’

‘Glad to find that out. Okay, I’ll talk to you when I get back.’

‘Good luck, Nina,’ Olivia replied. ‘And… take care.’

‘Thanks.’ Nina rang off. She briefly wondered why her grandmother had been so unsettled by the thought of her going to Nepal, but dismissed it; she imagined she herself would have much the same response if Macy declared she was heading off on a whim to some remote corner of the world. Something to look forward to once her daughter turned eighteen, she told herself, before directing her thoughts to her own impending journey.