The Temple Mount Code

8

At twenty-thousand plus feet, the world was bitterly cold and so bright that it hurt Lourds’s eyes, even through his protective filtering lenses. He slapped his gloved hands together to get some feeling as he stared up at the mountain.

Only a few miles to the east, the 8,000-meter Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world, stretched for the heavens. Clad in white snow, it looked beautiful.

The native Tibetans and Sherpas of Khumbu often made their way through these mountains regularly to trade. Less than a mile ahead of Lourds and his group, a few of the hardy mountain folk were coming toward them.

‘Well, I guess we’ll soon have a look at the neighbors.’ Lourds smiled under his ski mask. Despite the protective layers, his face still felt frozen.

‘We’ve traveled a long way, Thomas. Are you sure about this?’ Professor Hu hunched over, resting his hands on his knees for additional support as he gasped for air.

‘I’m as sure as I can be. You saw the map.’ Lourds waved at the mountains. ‘Cho Oyu translates literally into Turquoise Goddess, and there was a drawing of a suspiciously blue-green mountain on it.’ He turned slightly. ‘And there’s Mount Everest, called Zhumulangma Feng, or “Holy Mother” by Chinese historians. The Tibetan name for it is Chomolungma, which means Saint Mother.’ He felt the excitement of the expected discovery thrum through him again, always thrill him each time it happened. ‘I think that’s close enough to the drawing of the woman on the mountain to fit our map, don’t you?’

‘You know, while we were back at Jiahu, I felt mostly certain that you knew what you were talking about.’

‘Of course I do.’

Hu shot Lourds an indignant grimace. ‘So you say. Thomas, if I die up here, I am ordering you to drag my body after you and make sure I get partial credit for whatever you find.’

‘What if it turns out there’s nothing to find?’

‘Drop my body into the first crevice you come across. I’ll never be able to show my face at the university again.’

‘Nonsense. Everybody has a setback once in a while.’

‘Says the man who found Atlantis.’

Lourds laughed.

‘You know, once you’ve uncovered a mythical land, you end up with a lot of street cred, my friend.’ Hu took a water bottle from his pack and drank. ‘The only reason I agreed to come along is because you have the devil’s own luck at finding things that have been misplaced for thousands of years.’

A slight chill that came from more than the frozen landscape around him shivered through Lourds. All he had to do was think back to Elliott Webster and what the man — or whatever he was — had almost accomplished in the Middle East to realize how his ‘good fortune’ cut both ways. Maybe Lourds had found a lot of things, but he’d also risked his life on a lot of those occasions to muddle through.

A lot of people had died, both during his trip to find Atlantis, and his more recent adventure in the Middle East.

‘And at Jiahu, you managed to find a BBC film crew that would follow you up to this godforsaken piece of real estate. Want to tell me how that happened?’

Lourds shook his head. ‘I got a call from Leslie Crane yesterday morning saying her company was willing to bankroll the expedition for an exclusive on the find.’ Leslie Crane was a friend and a sometime lover. She’d managed to survive the Atlantis chase with him and had produced a nice documentary on the search. ‘We needed transport and supplies, and if we’d had to beg it from Peking or Harvard, we’d still be trying to explain what we’d found to them.’

‘I’d like you to take us through the discovery one more time, Professor Lourds.’

Lourds looked askance at the young man heading up the BBC crew. ‘Ronald?’

‘It’s Rory, sir, actually.’ He was a tall, well-built young man with carrot-colored hair and a freckled face.

‘Of course.’ Lourds stood with his back to a rocky outcrop where the group sheltered from the howling winds during lunch.

No one really felt like eating, but they did like sitting down instead of slogging through the snow.

Gloria Chen had gotten Professor Hu to allow her to come along. Lourds didn’t know why she’d bothered. Since they’d taken up the expedition, she’d kept her distance, although she seemed to watch him constantly. She was doing that now, and the effect was somewhat unnerving.

‘Rory, I’ve already told this story for the camera before.’

‘I know, but my producer likes to have separate shots of some of the same material in different areas. When they edit the piece, I don’t know which one they will choose. So I have to shoot a lot and wait to see how the story turns out.’

Reaching into his backpack, Lourds took out a rolled-up twelve-by-fifteen picture of the inside of the small tortoiseshell he’d found in the Jiahu grave. He tapped it with a forefinger. ‘This is Jiahu. Professor Hu and I placed this location easily because of the proximity of the Yellow River.’

‘How do you know that’s the Yellow River if there’s no real language attached to the people who drew that map?’ Rory asked.

‘We don’t know for certain. That’s why this is what’s called an educated guess. Logic dictates that if you were going to draw a map and leave it for someone to find, you would use local landmarks as a reference.’

‘But the tortoiseshell wasn’t left for someone to find.’

Lourds grinned. ‘Really? Someone found it.’

The group huddled around the rock laughed at the young reporter’s embarrassment.

‘Honestly, Rory, I don’t know how that tortoiseshell ended up in the grave if it was meant to be left behind. Or why it was encased in pottery, though it’s possible the covering was there to protect it. Or maybe to disguise the shell from enemies. From that point, the shell might have been deposited in the grave by mistake. Thankfully, it was there for me, or I’d still be swilling the local brew in Jiahu.’ Lourds looked around thoughtfully. ‘Given the local weather conditions, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.’

Even the reporter laughed at that.

‘After we figured out the tortoiseshell was a map, Professor Hu and I had to figure out what it was a map of. As you can see up here’ — Lourds tapped the jagged lines near the top of the tortoiseshell — ‘these look like mountains. This is a tortoise.’ He indicated the drawing of a circle with six extremities. ‘Four legs, a head, and a tail. Although that was a source of debate for a time. And this is a woman. You can tell that because she’s — rather well endowed.’

The breasts were definitely enhanced on the stick figure.

‘Assuming these were mountains, which — after a very spirited discussion — is what Professor Hu and I did, we had to figure out what mountains they were.’ Lourds waved at their surroundings. ‘Lots of mountains in China.’ He paused. ‘But not many that featured a tortoise and a woman.’ He quickly explained about the origins of the mountain names.

‘Now that we’ve found the mountains, what are we looking for?’ Rory asked.

Lourds pointed to a small symbol on the map. ‘This. A structure located somewhere off this pass.’

‘What is it?’

‘I have no idea. That’s just part of the adventure.’

Less than an hour later, the Sherpas reached them. The group was friendly and used to outsiders coming to the mountains to climb. Most of them spoke rudimentary English.

Lourds explained the map to Gelu, the oldest member of the group. He was a short, stocky man with weathered, dark features, iron gray hair, and a scar along his left cheek. He liked to laugh and joke a lot, and was a consummate storyteller. For a time, in the lee of the stone and out of the wind, they swapped tales because business was something to be approached slowly.

He studied Lourds’s map for a moment. ‘I know this place. Very old place.’

‘How old?’ Excitement filled Lourds.

Gelu shook his gray head. ‘Long, long time ago. This place has seen many people live and die. It is home to Tibetan monks who renounce the world.’

‘Monks that renounce the world?’ One of the BBC guys, Thompson, looked totally lost. ‘For generations? Dude, monks don’t reproduce. How are they going to keep people in some nearly forgotten temple? They’d die out from attrition.’

Lourds chuckled, and Gelu barked laughter. ‘Many monks renounce world. Some say to study better. Others say so they not have to work.’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes we bring them food. Monks not grow much up here.’

‘I’d say not.’ Lourds glanced at the white landscape.

‘Snow not fill belly.’

‘What’s the name of the place?’

Gelu shook his head. ‘Monk’s temple. That’s all I know. If you like, we can guide. Keep you safe during journey. We know way.’

Lourds knew from personal experience that the Sherpas didn’t make much from their guide work. He also knew the group would be safer in the Sherpas’ hands this far up in the mountains.

‘If you have the time, Gelu, I would like that.’ Lourds would pay them himself.

Gelu nodded and smiled. ‘Sure, sure. Make time. Keep you safe. Maybe take more food to monks?’

‘We’re going to resupply only a little farther on. We can get food for them then.’

Gelu clapped Lourds on the shoulder. ‘The gods will surely favor you.’