The Tiger Warrior

19

Jack felt himself free-falling through the water, his limbs spread-eagled as he let the weight of his body take him down. At first he had kicked hard to descend to a depth where he was no longer buoyant, and then he had forced the remaining air in his lungs into his mouth and used it to equalize the pressure in his ears. He could taste the water now, fresh, sharp, a hint of salt. He could see the bottom of the lake below him, gray and flat, not rippled as it would have been in the sea. He saw the shape that had drawn him down, the outline of an ancient boat half-buried in the sediment. Inside it was a pulsing green glow, as if someone had dropped a strobe light into the sediment. He fell toward it, hit the bottom then reached his arm deep into the mud and grasped the object. He drew it out, and held it up. It was a brilliant jewel, green olivine, peridot from the island off Egypt. He felt a warmth from it, the glow suffusing his body. He was suddenly drowsy, weighted down by it, as if he had found what he had been searching for all his life and there was nowhere else to go, and all he wanted was to let the sediment envelop him and to sleep forever. But he jerked back to life, his heart pounding. He had to return to the surface. There was something more precious there. He pushed off, the jewel in his hand, and kicked hard, finning toward the sunlight that streamed down from the sparkling surface above. I am calm. I am strong. He repeated the mantra, but he did not need to. There was no craving for oxygen, no urge to breathe. But then, as he saw the outline of the dive boat above, the wavering figures leaning over the side, watching him, he again felt a heaviness, a tingling that moved up his limbs toward his core. The jewel, weighty on the lake bed, had become too heavy, an impossible burden. He saw Rebecca’s face peering down, her long hair floating on the surface of the water. He tried to reach up to her, but the jewel was dragging him back down. He opened his mouth and breathed in, taking the lake into his lungs, falling back, feeling only a terrible emptiness, not knowing if he was crying, his hands outstretched toward a form which receded into the sparkle of the sunlight until it was no more.

“Jack. Wake up. Katya and Altamaty are returning.” Jack felt a hand shaking him, and awoke with a start. He was sitting in the front passenger seat of the jeep, and Costas was beside him. He heard a crinkling sound, and saw that he was covered by a survival blanket. Costas must have found one in the jeep’s medical kit. He felt a tingling in his hands, the circulation returning. He remembered how cold they had been when they had arrived at this place soon after dawn, the dew still heavy on the ground. He pulled his left hand out from under the blanket, and looked at his watch. It was almost noon. They had been here about three hours, and he must have been asleep for two of them. They had been poring over Lieutenant Wood’s account of his final trek up to the lapis lazuli mines, somewhere in the valley ahead of them now. Jack remembered closing his eyes when Pradesh had gone to boil water for tea. He glanced at Costas. He was wearing a faded green army coat over a dark fleece, a Soviet tank driver’s sheepskin hat pulled down tight over his head. They had not been prepared for the chill, and had supplemented their own gear with what they had found in the bin at the back of the jeep. Jack pushed the blanket down, and cleared his throat. “Sorry. I dozed off.”

“I noticed. It sounded like the engine was still running.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Of course not.”

Pradesh appeared beside the jeep door. “You needed sleep.” He was also wearing a sheepskin hat, and an Indian Army green sweater. He squatted down over a small Primus stove, and passed a steaming cup up to Jack. “Fresh brew. Finest Darjeeling. I always carry some with me. It’s one military tradition we inherited from you British and just can’t shake off.”

“Thanks.” Jack took the metal cup and cradled it. He peered at the valley ahead. The mountains of the Hindu Kush rose beyond, huge folds of stark rock and scree, dusted white on the nearer ridges and carpeted with snow on the peaks beyond. Jack lifted the compact binoculars that were hanging around his neck and peered through them. He could make out Katya and Altamaty, coming down a path that skirted the side of the valley. There was another figure with them, in Afghan gear. Jack lowered the binoculars and glanced at Pradesh, who nodded. Everything seemed to be going according to plan. They had arrived at Feyzabad airport in northern Afghanistan just after dawn, and had walked out of the plane straight into the jeep. Jack had an old friend who ran an aid agency in Feyzabad, and he had arranged the vehicle, complete with the freshly painted letters TV on the roof and sides. They had wanted to keep a low profile, and avoid any kind of military reception from NATO. There was an ISAF reconstruction team in the region, but after a phone conversation with the Danish colonel they had decided against an escort. The colonel had warned them of the risk. Taliban attack was possible anywhere, even up here in the north of the country. But the local warlord was known to be an independent, a stalwart of the old Northern Alliance, and he was someone they needed to nurture, not provoke. The colonel had given them an assurance of a helicopter medevac if they needed it, but beyond that they were on their own.

Jack raised the binoculars again, scanning the opposite slope of the valley, looking for flashes of reflection, for hints of movement among the rocks, but knowing he would see nothing. Somewhere out there, somewhere ahead of them, was the sniper Katya was sure had watched them by the lake in Kyrgyzstan, and who would now be here. They would be safe until their destination was clear, until they had found what the Brotherhood wanted, but with every step closer they would become more vulnerable, until there was no reason left for the sniper not to strike. Jack felt powerless and exposed, but knew they now had no choice but to play the game out and hope they would find a way to even the odds. The others knew the score. Everything depended on whether Katya and Altamaty had succeeded in their objective in the two hours since they had left the jeep to reconnoiter up the valley.

Pradesh folded up the stove and stowed it in his rucksack. “Time to saddle up, boys.”

Costas swung his legs out of the jeep. “I don’t know where you get these expressions from, Pradesh.”

“U.S. Army Engineer School, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Six month secondment last year.”

Costas stopped and peered at him. “Really? Did you come across Jim Praeder?”

“Submersibles technology, seconded from the Naval Academy? I did his course.”

Costas looked at Jack, and jerked his thumb toward Pradesh. “We really need this guy. Big-time. Permanent IMU staff.”

Jack flashed a smile at Pradesh, then got out of the jeep and stood up, stretching. He was wearing his own kit brought in the plane, his beaten-up leather hiking boots, a fleece with a green Gore-Tex outer shell, a cherished blue woolen cap he had been given as a boy by one of Captain Cousteau’s team. He pushed his old khaki sidebag until it was comfortable, feeling the shape of the holster inside. It was reassuring, but they needed more than handguns. He squinted up the path, and saw the Afghan figure with Katya and Altamaty leave them, bounding up another path and disappearing out of sight. He took a deep breath and said a silent prayer. Altamaty had been up here before, twenty years earlier, and he had known where to go. He and Katya both spoke the main Dari language of Afghanistan, and they both knew the Pashtun code. It was better for them to make the first contact. Too many westerners had come here promising help and peace, but bringing only betrayal and death. Jack knew they already had one sniper to contend with, and if they antagonized the local warlord as well they stood no chance of making it out of the valley alive.

He reached back into the jeep and picked up Wood’s Source of the River Oxus. He opened the old volume where he had bookmarked it, and saw the faded notes made by John Howard, his great-great-grandfather, and then the neat notes on an interleaved sheet by Rebecca, his own daughter. There seemed to be a flow between them, a continuity, and the book seemed to bridge the generations. He glanced at the text, at the sentence that had been in his head when he had nodded off After a long and toilsome march we reached the foot of the Ladjword Mountains . Ladjword he knew was the old Persian name for the place where the lapis lazuli was mined. They were there now, where Wood had been, at the end of the road, at the farthest point they could reach by jeep. From here on in they would have to go by foot, just as Howard and Wauchope must have done if they really did make it this far. Jack closed the book and pushed it into his bag. He thought of Rebecca with the dive team on Lake Issyk-Kul. His dream of her a few moments ago was still visceral, sharp in his mind. He remembered what Katya had said about dreaming up here, on top of the world. Dreams were harder to distinguish from reality, as if you were always halfway in a dreamworld. She had said it was the thin air, the restless slumber. Jack shook himself, and concentrated on Katya and Altamaty as they came down to the jeep. It was time to focus on hard reality.

Katya was bundled in a thick down climber’s coat but seemed in her element. “Okay. Here’s the score. The good news is that we made contact with Altamaty’s old friend.”

“The mujahideen guy who captured him during the Soviet war?” Costas said.

Katya nodded. “His name’s Rahid, Mohamed Rahid Khan. Word had already passed up here that we were on our way, a film crew. He knew your name, Jack. He knows who you are. He even knew there were Kyrgyz among us. Amazing how information travels here, in a place almost barren of people.”

“Has he seen anyone else?” Pradesh said.

“I didn’t ask. He’s got other things on his mind. Earlier this morning the Taliban attacked a village in the next valley to the north. It was some act of vengeance dating back to the time when the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, before 9/11. Vengeance against Rahid’s cousin, a schoolteacher. You don’t want to know the details. Rahid’s sent all of his men with most of his weapons, and he’s leaving himself in less than an hour.”

“So no backup for us after all,” Costas said.

“There might be. I told him what Jack wanted. I didn’t tell him our real reason for being here, but he’s no fool. Jack Howard doesn’t come to a war zone to make a documentary film. But these people know when not to ask questions. With the Pashtun, you talk around intentions, guess at them, size each other up first. He said there are a few people living in the valley, and it’s always possible there might be Taliban sympathizers. Where there’s one attack, like this morning, there’s a general simmering, and the sight of any foreigners might be provocation. He said we should keep to the high path, avoid the valley floor. When I told him what you requested, Jack, he asked whether there was anyone among us who could handle a Lee-Enfield rifle. I told him about you, the Canadian rangers. You told me once.”

“Jack?” Pradesh said.

“When I was a teenager,” Jack replied. “My father was a painter, and we spent a couple of summers in the Canadian Arctic. The Canadian rangers are militia, mainly Innu and Inuit. They’re armed with the Lee-Enfield rifle. They use it to hunt. They taught me to shoot.”

“They taught you to be a sniper, Jack,” Costas said. “I’ve seen it.”

“I’d never claim that in front of an Afghan warlord,” Jack murmured. “The Pashtun can shoot before they walk. Anyway, Pradesh will be familiar with the Lee-Enfield too. It’s still used in India. He’s probably a better shot than me.”

“You’re our leader, Jack, and he knows it,” Pradesh said. “A Pashtun chieftain is only going to respect a leader who can do the killing himself.”

Katya looked at Jack. “He’s in a cave complex about twenty minutes away, up the slope where you saw him disappear. We don’t want to miss him. Let’s move.” She turned and led them back up the path. They rounded a corner, with the rocky valley spread out below them. Almost immediately they were among wreckage, large twisted fragments of metal, sections of fuselage, a rotor collapsed like a giant wilted flower. The fragments bore flaky paint that had once been a khaki camouflage, and in two places a dull red star could be seen. “Altamaty’s Hind helicopter,” Katya said quietly. “The one he was shot down in when he was eighteen, during the Soviet war. He was the only one who walked away. Two others were still alive, but were shot by Rahid.”

“You mean the friendly guy we’re about to meet?” Costas said.

“That’s what it’s like up here,” Pradesh said. “No quarter expected, none given.”

Jack watched Altamaty make his way through the wreckage, saw his eyes unswerving, looking beyond the shattered fragments to the rocky path ahead. Somewhere far away there was a rumble, the sound of low-flying jets roaring through a distant valley. Then the noise was gone, and they had left the wreckage behind, and all they could see was the steep, narrow trail ahead of them, nothing but bare rock and scree. The war being waged now could have been any war of living memory, the wars fought by the British, the war with the Soviets, wars that trawled and smashed their way through the lowlands but left the mountains unscarred, barely changed since the day John Wood came searching for the mines in 1836. Up here, humans seemed tiny, inconsequential, and even the cultivation and settlements of the valleys looked ephemeral, as if they could be washed away in the blink of an eye. Pradesh had said the same thing about the jungle, about the Godavari River. The jungle and the mountains were both places that gave no quarter, places that humans could never master.

Jack scrambled up the slope ahead of the others. The path became less obvious as the slope steepened, but the route was clear from the shiny patches of rock, handholds, footholds, where many had made their way up here before. The rock was schist and dolomite, hard like the rock of north Wales where Jack had learned to climb. He relished it now, moving with speed over outcrops where he needed to use his hands, enjoying the cold, biting air in his lungs, feeling cleansed, revitalized. Mountains were places where he felt comfortable, at ease, as he did underwater. After about twenty minutes he came to a ledge that stuck out above him, close to the summit of the ridge. He paused to catch his breath, and looked up. A man was standing there, a few meters away. He was wearing a turban and an Afghan robe, and over it a thick sheepskin jacket. He stared at Jack with piercing green eyes. His face was dark and craggy, and his beard was streaked with gray. Jack guessed the man was about his own age, but his face had a timeless look about it, like the mountains that framed him. Jack scrambled up and reached out his hand. “Mohamed Rahid Khan. Salaam”

“Salaam. Dr. Howard.”

“You’ve heard of me.”

“We get the History Channel too, you know,” Rahid said, with a wry smile. “I was at boarding school in England, before the Soviet war brought me back here. My father was a minister in the old Afghan government. Since his murder, I have ruled here.”

“I know you don’t have much time.” Jack pulled the copy of Wood’s Source of the River Oxus out of his bag, and handed it over.

“I have read this book.” Rahid opened it with care, and perused it silently for a moment. “But I have never seen it annotated like this. I think you are not only following Lieutenant Wood, Dr. Howard. I think you are following in the footsteps of someone else.”

“Two British officers, in 1908. Retired officers, on a quest. One of them was my great-great-grandfather. We think they came here, up this valley.”

“Then our paths have crossed before. Your ancestors and mine.”

“I know.”

“There is an ancient proverb about this valley.”

“This one?” Jack paused, then spoke:

“Agur janub doshukh na-kham buroZinaar Murrow ba janub tungee Koran If you wish not to go to destruction, Avoid the narrow valley of Koran.”

Rahid raised his eyes at Jack. “How do you know this?”

Jack jerked his head back. “A friend from Kyrgyzstan.”

Rahid watched Altamaty coming up the slope. “He remembers well.”

“You gave him the ring?”

“Did he tell you why we’ve come?”

Rahid narrowed his eyes. “My grandfather remembered the day, a century ago. Our tribesmen knew they had come, and saw those who pursued the two travelers up the valley to the mines. Afterward my grand father went up there. He said he had seen something terrible, that the upper shafts were haunted, that no one should ever go. Only I was brave enough, as a boy.”

“We think there’s someone else now. Following us. Watching us. Already up there, waiting.”

Rahid pursed his lips, then looked out across the valley. “This land is like my skin. I feel when vermin are crawling on it. Your enemy is my enemy. Inshallah. But today, my men are at war. We will have vengeance.”

“Your enemy is my enemy.”

Rahid peered at Jack, holding his gaze for a moment, then nodded. He reached into his coat and pulled out a photograph. “Do you have children?”

Jack nodded. “A daughter.”

“This is my daughter.” Jack looked at the picture of a smiling Afghan girl, unveiled, her black hair falling to her shoulders. “If I do not fight them, one day they will do to my daughter what they have just done to my cousin. They will whip her for going unveiled. They will mutilate her for reading books. And they will rape her because they are animals.”

“These are not men. They have nothing to do with Allah.”

Rahid curled his lip. “The Taliban? Al-Qaeda? The Wahabists have been here since the time of the British, trying to stir us up. They have nothing to do with Afghanistan. And now their recruits come from the west. They go to so-called training camps, young Muslims who think they have learned to shoot by playing video games, and spraying rounds at a hillside while chanting holy verse. Stupid boys, fat boys, with eyes too close together. They even make poor target practice. They die too easily.”

Katya and Altamaty came onto the ledge, and Costas jumped up behind. He took off his mitt and shook Rahid’s hand, his voice breathless. “Costas Kazantzakis.”

“Ah.” Rahid bowed slightly. “The submersibles expert with the Navy Cross.”

“Jack has been telling you?”

“I read the newspapers.”

Jack shot Costas a look. “Rahid and I have been discussing the Taliban. Our enemy.”

“We’re on the same side, I take it.”

Rahid’s eyes bore down on Costas. “When a Pashtun is being shot at, he kills the person who is shooting at him. When the British came, we killed them. When the Soviets came, we killed them. And now the Taliban have come, and we are killing them.”

“And yet, twenty years ago, you spared Altamaty,” Costas said.

“We occasionally took hostages. And he was Kyrgyz, not Russian. But perhaps I should have killed him.”

“Well, now’s your chance,” Costas said.

Rahid curled his lip. “I can’t. He brought me a sheep’s head.”

“What?”

“That bag, over there. When he came up here with the woman, Katya.” Rahid pointed. Jack suddenly realized. That explained it. He had suffered the smell throughout the flight, then in the jeep. Thank God they had no time to boil it now. “When we captured him during the Soviet war, this is what I gave him to eat. And coming here again now, he remembered.”

“That’s why you spared him, back then,” Costas said. “When you captured him, you sized him up. You knew he’d bring this, if he ever came here again.”

Rahid looked at Jack, then gestured at Costas. “I like this man.”

“It’s the same in Greece,” Costas said. “Where men are men.”

“Men,” Katya murmured, “are fools.”

Rahid put away the photograph of his daughter. “Enough of this. I have to go soon. Come with me.” He led them behind the ledge to a cave in the hillside, concealed behind a jumble of rock made to look like natural scree. They passed through a door into a corridor carved out of the rock. “This was a natural cave, then my ancestors chiseled it out as a refuge at the time of the first British war in the 1840s. The men who made it worked in the lapis lazuli mines, so they knew what they were doing. We lived here during the Soviet war. We’ve got our own generator, solar-powered. The Soviets tried to destroy the cave from the air, but they didn’t have bunker-busting bombs. They tried ground assault, over and over again. That’s what Altamaty was doing here. But the whole hillside is booby-trapped. Even now, you only made it alive up that path because I knew you were coming.” He pushed open a sliding steel door at the end of the corridor, switched on a light and unplugged a dehumidifier that had been throbbing in the corner. “This room is our arsenal. My men have taken our modern weapons, but there’s enough left here for what you need.”

They filed in behind Rahid. The walls were lined with wooden gun racks, most of them empty but several dozen weapons still there. There was a whiff of gun oil in the air, and everything was spotless. Jack walked over to the nearest rack. At the top was a long, ornate gun, an antique muzzle-loader with an extravagantly curved stock and rings of decorative metalwork up the barrel. “A jezail,” he said. “Matchlock, smoothbore, early nineteenth century.”

Rahid looked at him appreciatively. “You know guns.”

“A family tradition.”

“My ancestors killed with these. They are all kept ready to shoot.”

“So I see.” Below the jezail were several percussion muskets, East India Company smoothbores similar to the one in Jack’s cabin on Seaquest II Below that were half a dozen Martini-Henry rifles, with the cipher of Queen Victoria on the receivers. In the middle was a Snider-Enfield breech-loader, with the date 1860 visible on the lock plate. Pradesh pointed at the buttstock. “Look at that,” he said. “The stamped roundel of the Queen’s Own Madras Sappers and Miners. My regiment, and John Howard’s. He could have touched this, Jack.”

“All of these rifles were taken from the British,” Rahid said. “The Snider-Enfield was recovered from the battlefield at Maiwand, in October 1880. It was used by a British sergeant who fought to the last round, after all his Indian sappers had been killed. His name was O’Connell. That’s what those Persian letters on the stock mean. They were carved by our tribesmen, who found his name on his medals. We respect our enemies when they are brave. We are honored to take and use their weapons.”

Pradesh glanced at Jack. “Some of the sappers were redeployed up here from the Rampa jungle, a few months after the incident with the river steamer. This chap could even have been one of Howard’s NCOs.”

Jack touched the rifle stock, seeing where there was a careful repair near the breech, a darker piece of Indian wood inserted into the English walnut. He thought for a moment of the sappers that day in 1879 on the Godavari River, a thousand miles from this place. He stood back. The rest of the rifles were Lee-Enfields: snub-nosed Mark 3 rifles, made by the Ishapore arms factory in India, as well as later Mark 4 rifles from the Canadian Long Branch factory, many of them refurbished in Indian mahogany.

“We still use these,” Rahid said. “The. 303 packs a bigger punch than modern standard-issue military rounds and the Lee-Enfield is highly accurate, with a remarkable rate of fire for a bolt-action. From the time of the jezail, we have been brought up to kill with a single round. One of my men with a Lee-Enfield can take out an entire party of Taliban, carrying automatic weapons they do not know how to use. They are not like the sapper sergeant. They are an enemy we despise. We desecrate their bodies and disdain their weapons.”

Jack eyed the rifles, stopping at one with a scope. “Long Branch, Number 4 Mark 1, 1943,” he murmured. “This was the rifle I learned to shoot.” He lifted it off the rack, checked the buttstock length, then took the leather covers off the eyepieces. “Scope pattern 1918, Number 32 Mark 1,” he murmured. “Three point five times magnification.” He pushed the safety forward, disengaged the bolthead and drew the bolt out, then held the rifle up to the light and peered down the barrel. “Perfect bore.”

“We look after our weapons,” Rahid said.

Jack replaced the bolt, drew the handle up and back, pushed it forward and down to cock it, pulled the trigger, repeated the process but let the bolt snap back, then pushed it forward while pulling the trigger. He clicked out the magazine and pressed down the feed platform, feeling the tension of the spring. Rahid handed him a khaki bandolier with five pouches. Jack slung it over his left shoulder, feeling the weight of the ammunition. He opened one and took out a five round clip. “Three-oh-three British, Mark 7,” he said. He drew back the bolt of the rifle, slotted the clip into the receiver and stripped the rounds into the magazine with his right thumb, then repeated the process with another clip. He closed the bolt over them, then flipped on the safety with his thumb. “I take it I won’t need to sight this in.”

“The scope is zeroed for three hundred yards. I did it myself.”

“Not a very powerful scope,” Costas murmured.

“We didn’t have scopes when we destroyed the British Army of the Indus with our jezails in 1841,” Rahid retorted sharply.

“Point taken.”

Pradesh reached up and took down one of the Ishapore rifles from the rack above, giving it a quick inspection. “I’ll borrow one of these, if you don’t mind.”

Jack passed two clips from the bandolier to Pradesh, who stripped them into his rifle. Rahid’s radio receiver lit up, and he spoke into it quickly. He snapped it shut, then gave Jack a length of old gray turban cloth and a pair of thick sheepskin mitts. “Use the cloth to camouflage the rifle. Watch the sunlight off the scope. Keep those mitts on until you have to pull the trigger. We must part now.” He led them back to the cave entrance, then turned and spoke to Jack, quietly. “I will tell you what you need to know. As boys we played in the lapis lazuli mines. I know them all, every last passage, every nook and cranny. Just below the upper ridge are three shafts, not visible from the valley floor. They are in a line above the main workings, away from the shafts where the lapis has been mined most recently. The upper workings are old shafts, very old, where there is no good lapis to be found anymore. We were told as boys that they were the shafts worked at the time of the ancient Egyptians, of Alexander the Great. That was where my grandfather told us never to go, or a guardian demon would devour us. But I told you, I went, once. What you seek lies in the central shaft, the one just visible from the path you will be taking above the valley floor.”

“Nobody else ever goes there?”

“For generations we controlled the mines. During the Soviet war we sold lapis lazuli to buy guns. The mines were under my sway and that of my forefathers. Our word was law. We banned anyone from going to the old workings on pain of death. It was what my grandfather wanted. It is only since the rise of the Taliban that our control has slackened, as we have had to look elsewhere, to defend our villages like the one being attacked now across the valley. Even so I am certain they are undisturbed. It is only the lower shafts now that produce the high-grade lapis. And nobody who lives in these mountains climbs higher than they absolutely need to. Up there you will find only death.”

While he was talking the others filed out behind. There was a whinnying from somewhere below, then a strange bellow and a stomping of hooves. Katya caught her breath. “You have the akhal-teke!”

Rahid stared at her. “You know,” he said quietly. “Of course. You told me. Your Kazakh family.”

“No other horse makes a sound like that,” she said, her voice halting. “The war-cry of the akhal-teke. ”

“They run wild in the valley. This is one of the last places where they are kept pure. That’s one reason why we keep outsiders away.”

“You breed them?” Costas said.

Rahid paused, then looked at him. “I am the direct male heir of Qais Abdul Rashid, progenitor of all the Pashtun tribes,” he said. “He in turn was descended from the clan who lived in this valley from before the time of Alexander the Great. My ancestors bred the akhal-teke for the First Emperor of China, Shihuangdi, after his warriors came here looking for them.”

Katya stared at him, stunned. “Your clan are imperial horse-breeders,” she said. “We thought they had all passed into history.”

“We are the last. Ours are the final remaining purebreds.”

“Do you still heed the call?” Katya said quietly. “Do the warriors still come?”

“A Pashtun’s word is his oath. My ancestor gave it sixty-six generations ago.”

“When was the last time they came? Has Jack told you I think we are being followed?”

“The oath was one of secrecy.”

“I sensed the akhal-teke near the lake at Issyk-Kul,” Katya murmured. “I heard that noise, and smelled something. There was a presence nearby.”

“Our oath was to Shihuangdi, and to those who can prove to us that they are his eternal guardians.”

“The Brotherhood of the Tiger,” Costas said.

Katya pulled out a photograph from her front pocket. “You mean those who can show you this. The tattoo.”

Rahid remained silent, staring at the valley. There was a sudden tension in the atmosphere. Jack shot Costas a warning look, and Katya saw it. She put away the photo and confronted Rahid. “You know the Brotherhood is corrupted. He who controls it now has been tempted, and rules as if he is the reincarnation of Shihuangdi himself In doing so he has broken his oath to the emperor. The oath of your clan is no longer binding.”

Rahid looked at her silently, and then spoke. “Two weeks ago, a group came to the valley from a mining company, claiming I owed them allegiance. Eight men, prospectors. They wanted me to take them to the lapis lazuli mines.”

“A mining company,” Jack murmured. “Chinese?”

“INTACON.”

Jack drew in his breath. “What did you do?”

“I told you what we do.” Rahid gestured at the rifle in Jack’s hands. “My ancestor swore an oath to the emperor, to the true Brotherhood, not to these animals. I killed them all.”

“And the other one?” Jack said quietly. “The one who followed them, who is there now? Waiting for us?”

Rahid touched the rifle, and stared at Jack. “Your enemy is my enemy. God be with you. Inshallah.”

Jack looked him hard in the eyes, and understood. Through the entrance passageway they heard the staccato noise of distant gunfire, and then the bellow of the horse, a strange, unnerving sound. Katya still seemed distracted by it, disturbed. “Can I touch it?” she said. “I haven’t touched one since I was a child.”

Rahid shook his head. “Not now. When you return. When you bring that rifle back, with one round missing.” He looked at Jack, then pointed at the path toward the mountains. “That’s your route.”

Jack held out his hand. “Tashakkurr. I owe you.”

Rahid shook it. “It’s our code. Pashtunwali. Hospitality to travelers.”

“But not all of them,” Costas said.

“No, not all of them. You’ve been lucky.” Rahid slapped Costas on the back. “Salaam. Go now.” He turned and disappeared over the ledge. A few moments later there was the sound of whinnying, then the clatter of hooves on shingle, receding down the slope. Then the noise was gone, and all Jack heard was a whispering of wind across the rock, a sharp, dry wind brought down from the peaks of the Hindu Kush. He slung the rifle over his left shoulder and squinted up the valley. He took the Beretta out of his bag and handed it to Costas. Pradesh slung his rifle and passed his revolver to Altamaty. They knew that Katya had her own sidearm. Costas snapped back the slider on the Beretta, cocking it, then eased the hammer to the safe position and tucked the pistol in the breast pocket of his coat. “I’m ready,” he said.

“I’ll take point,” Jack said, walking forward.

“No.” Pradesh niftily sidestepped Jack and took the lead, heading off up the path. Jack relented, and looked at his watch. “It’ll take two hours to get there, according to Rahid. That puts us at mid-afternoon. And that’s probably two hours Afghan time, for people who live in these mountains. The air’s pretty thin and we’re not acclimatized. We’d better get moving. We don’t want to be stuck up there after dark.”

Costas pulled on a pair of fleece gloves. “Roger that.”