The Tiger Warrior

22

Gansu Province, China

Forty-eight hours later, Jack stood in front of a low wall, the remains of a rampart that had once been several meters thick inside a complex of ancient ruins. He knelt down and touched the surface, feeling it crumble in his fingers. It was loam, compacted clay with fragments of pink and gray granite. This place desperately needed rain, but the wall was so desiccated that rain would only hasten its destruction, washing it away rather than strengthening it. The loam looked like ancient concrete, like mortar, but was not. This wall was not Roman. He turned and waved to Costas, who was trudging up the path behind him, a slightly disconsolate figure in the dust. Farther back he could see Katya and Rebecca, picking their way together among the stones, and beyond them a dust cloud where the rotor of the Lynx helicopter was powering down. The helicopter had flown them here in stages from Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, east over the mountain pass of the Tien Shan, skirting the northern fringes of the Taklamakan Desert, then down the narrowing funnel of the Gansu Corridor into the heart of the ancient Chinese empire. It had been a marvelous journey, following the Silk Road from the air, and they had camped on the site of a long-abandoned caravanserai. That morning they had swept in low over the Great Wall of China, over a section constructed during the Han dynasty two thousand years ago. They were within a few hours of Xian, the eastern anchor of the Silk Road and the site of the First Emperor’s tomb. But for Jack the end of their quest was this place, the last hint of an extraordinary ancient journey they had been following from another world unimaginably far to the west.

A waft of breeze brought a hint of something exotic, heady even, some crop in the valley perhaps, but then the air was still, and all Jack could sense was the dusty smell of decay and dereliction, the familiar lifeblood of the archaeologist. He breathed it in, relishing it. He wished Maurice Hiebermeyer was with him now. He would have helped Jack to make sense of the walls, the jumble of ruins. Or perhaps it was too far gone to unravel, and there was nothing more to glean than what he could see in front of him.

Jack looked around. The place had a desolate beauty. They had passed ruinous houses, mud-brick walls bleached white by the sun, surrounded by patches of corn and barley that seemed doomed to lose the battle against the scorching sun. Rutted tracks led across stony fields, the scars of plowing and long-dry irrigation channels baked hard by the sun. In the distance the odd goat and sheep picked at the ground, finding something in the gravel and dust. The sky itself seemed scorched, colorless, and most of the time he could see nothing beyond the low plateau he stood upon, but then some upper wind would push apart the dust and the sky would streak with red. In those moments he saw the foothills of the Xaipan Mountains, great folds and spurs that rose up to a jagged skyline. To the north was another line of mountains, more distant, and between the two chains of mountains lay the Gansu Corridor, the eastern Silk Road. Here the pounding progress of the camel caravans had once stirred up a continuous storm of dust, a storm whose residue seemed to remain above the valley floor like the exhaust of history, a great exhalation from the past that was still unable to settle.

Jack realized that he had been to places like this before, on the edge of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, in the north Syrian desert, in Andalusia in Spain. Places where ancient communities had once thrived on the periphery, but where exhaustion of the land and the spirit had overwhelmed all attempts to carve an existence out of the precious pockets of soil, so easily swept away by the whims of climate and erosion. He was told that it rained less and less here now, and the agriculture that had once sustained the village was being blown away in the wind. Soon, even the ancient walls would become part of the dust cloud that eddied and flowed along the Silk Road, caught between the endless chain of mountains that defined the corridor that had once linked the great empires of east and west.

Jack sat down on a stone revetment. Costas came up and sat beside him, wiping the dust from his face. He stared glumly at the wall. “This is when you know you’re in the presence of a real archaeologist,” he said. “One of the greatest wonders of history lies just over the horizon, the fabled tomb of the First Emperor, the terracotta army. But no, we come to sit in front of a crumbled wall in a wasteland in the choking dust and the burning heat. Hungry, thirsty, tired and needing a holiday very badly.”

Jack passed him his water bottle. “But I can never make sense of it without you. Archaeology, I mean. You keep my feet on the ground.”

“Right.” Costas swigged from the bottle, then passed it back. “So what’s the truth about this place, Jack? Is this what you brought us all the way to see?”

Jack passed Costas a piece of paper. “I printed this out from the helicopter’s computer this morning. I knew you’d need an antidote to a ruined wall. Headline news, CNN. Your elephant ship off Egypt. Remember? I think that stands up to the terracotta warriors, don’t you? And we found it.”

Costas peered at the photo and his eyes lit up. “Look, they got my new submersible in the picture, the ROV-6. I asked the IMU film team to get that into the publicity shots. You can even see the new strobe array. Perfect.”

“The elephants, Costas, the elephants.”

“Yeah, that too.” They stared for a moment at the extraordinary image they had first seen ten days before, the coral-encrusted shape of an elephant sitting on the bottom of the Red Sea. Costas read out the caption. “Egyptologist Dr. Maurice Hiebermeyer announces sensational shipwreck find.” He slapped the paper. “I don’t believe it. No mention of us anywhere. Just Hiebermeyer.”

“We’ve got to allow the dirt archaeologist a moment of glory,” Jack said. “After all, he was the one who got us out to Egypt in the first place.”

“This happened when we found Atlantis,” Costas grumbled. “I’d set up a special demonstration of the Advanced Deep Sea Anthropod. The press were all over Hiebermeyer and his wretched mummies.”

“That’s Egyptology for you.”

“Anyway, it should be you doing the interviews.”

“Maurice is better at it than me. He’s got all that bubbly energy. And he’s less threatening.”

“Threatening?” Costas peered at him. “Let me guess. You don’t want the world to know there’s a real Indiana Jones around, do you? It might put the bad guys on their guard. You like to keep a low profile.”

“Exactly.”

“You didn’t answer my question. The truth about this place.”

Jack gestured at the crumbling wall. “It’s what you see in front of you. A few years ago, Chinese archaeologists identified these walls as Han dynasty, contemporary with the Roman Empire. They thought this might be the site of Lijian, a settlement in the Gansu Corridor mentioned in Han records. Lijian might derive from a Han Chinese word for westerner, for those who lived beyond the Persians. Later this place might have been renamed Jielu, possibly meaning ‘captives from the storming of a town.’ It was common for the Han to settle their prisoners of war in places that were then named after their origin. The big leap of imagination was to connect this place with the theory that the Chinese employed Roman mercenaries, survivors of Crassus’ legions who had escaped from Persian imprisonment.”

“So that’s it,” Costas murmured. “That’s why we’re here.”

“It’s not clear-cut,” Jack said. “The story of Fabius and the others in the boat might have ended on Lake Issyk-Kul. But it might not. There’s another possibility. A really fascinating one.”

“Go on.”

“The Roman survivors of Carrhae were imprisoned in Merv in 53 BC. Licinius and Fabius and their comrades made their break about thirty years later. Over the years others must have tried to escape. Perhaps one group was successful, and word filtered back to Merv of the opportunities for mercenaries in the east, the great riches to be had. Perhaps that was what inspired Licinius and Fabius. And the hints about this place would seem to refer to an earlier group. The History of the Former Han Dynasty records soldiers fighting in 36 BC for a renegade Hun warlord, deploying in a formation reminiscent of the Roman testudo maneuver with interlocked shields above their heads. That’s the one shred of evidence on which the whole theory hangs. A few who had been persuaded by the argument began to identify Lijian with the Roman settlement. And here we are.”

“Any Roman artifacts?” Costas said, kicking the dust. They looked up as the two women joined them. Rebecca carried on, walking around the ruins in front of them, examining the walls. Costas shifted to make space for Katya on the wall.

Jack shook his head. “It’s like Katya said at the Roman burial beside Lake Issyk-Kul. You wouldn’t expect to find any. If Romans were here, they would have had nothing of their former life with them. It would have been stripped away from them on the battlefield, and then at Merv. But there’s one fascinating feature of this place. Not artifacts or ruins, but people. There’s a striking incidence of fair features, green eyes, flaxen hair, big noses. Some Chinese scholars who came here saw these features as western Asiatic, then someone remembered the Roman connection, and the idea caught on.”

“What do they know about it?” Costas asked. “The local people, I mean?”

“It’s impossible to tell. There might be some residual memory of their ancestry. But they’re desperately poor, and buying into the Roman theory might be a ticket to tourist dollars.”

Katya spoke. “Anywhere along the Silk Route you could have genetic input from the west-Persian, Sogdian, Bactrian, Indian and yes, Greek and Roman-but with input going as far back as the early Neolithic, even to Indo-Europeans who came this far. You just couldn’t be certain.”

Jack nodded. “DNA studies have been carried out and are pretty inconclusive. And the whole idea’s based on a Chinese misapprehension about the Romans, that they were blue-eyed, blond-haired giants. Ironically, Roman legionaries from the heartland of Italy would have had more in common with the physiognomy of Han Chinese warriors-short, stocky, dark-haired, brown-eyed. What the Chinese were imagining is much closer to the Celtic or Nordic type. Of course, by the time of Julius Caesar and Crassus, there were plenty of men like that in the legions, Celts from northern Italy, Gauls, even Britons. The Huns weren’t the only ones to employ mercenaries in their armies.”

“What’s your gut instinct?” Costas said.

Jack pursed his lips. In the distance he could see a farmer hacking at the ground, his implement bouncing off the rock-hard surface. Beyond him the mountains rose like crumpled paper, the folds and valleys in dark shadow. “My gut instinct,” he replied. “This place would have been more fertile in antiquity, a more viable agricultural settlement, but always demanding, not a place of choice. My gut instinct is that prisoners of war could have been settled here.”

Rebecca came over and stood in front of them. She had stripped off her fleece to reveal a gray T-shirt with the letters USMC stenciled across the front.

“You seem to have made some new friends,” Jack said.

Costas inspected the shirt, nodding his approval. “Hoo-ah,” he said.

“Hoo-ah,” Rebecca replied, high-fiving him. Jack rolled his eyes. She flopped down on the low wall beside him and took off her cap, wiping her forehead. “It’s deuced hot,” she said.

Jack turned to her in astonishment. “What did you just say?”

“I said it’s deuced hot.” She looked at him sheepishly. “That’s what John Howard would have said. I read it in a letter you have he wrote to his wife, from the jungle. When their little boy was ill. It was one of his favorite expressions. I’ve been thinking about him a lot. He so much wanted to be with them, but couldn’t. I hope he found them in the end.”

Jack put his arm around her and smiled. He remembered the lapis lazuli mine, the body. For a moment he saw them, Howard and Wauchope, standing together, not old men in ragged sheepskins but young officers, in white helmets and khaki tunics with telescopes and maps, staring off toward the horizon. He held Rebecca tight and then took his arm away. “You’ve just been on the cellphone to Bishkek, haven’t you? How’s Pradesh?”

“He’s good.” Rebecca suddenly looked downcast. “Altamaty and I went to see him at the U.S. medical complex at Bishkek just before we flew out here. The bullet missed everything vital. But without the first aid he would have bled to death. He’s grateful to you for saving his life.”

“Costas did the triage. And I hardly saved him. I was the one who put him in danger.”

“The army doctor said that if it had been an explosive bullet or a fifty-caliber Browning round, he’d have been dead on impact. He said that when the bullet hit Pradesh it was subsonic and must have been fired from an incredible distance, apparently from an old rifle. It was only one inch from the heart. He’d never seen anything like it.”

“And he’ll never see it again,” Costas murmured.

“How’s his archaeology reading getting on?” Jack said.

“He’s lapping it up. He wants more. He said he was already seeing the Roman finds from Arikamedu in a new way, as evidence of trade, society, beliefs, Roman, Egyptian, Indian, his own history. He’s itching to get back there.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Jack murmured.

“And Altamaty?” Jack glanced at Katya.

“He’s staying with Pradesh until they fly him out. Pradesh is trying to teach him English. They get on like a house on fire. Altamaty even brought him a doggie bag of mutton stew. He says it’ll cure anything.”

Costas cleared his throat. “Well, Jack. Maybe you’d like to join them. Maybe you’d like to eat some more sheep’s lip.”

Rebecca looked incredulous. “What?”

“It’s true,” Costas said. “In Kyrgyzstan, when we first met Altamaty. He ate sheep’s lip. Your dad ate sheep’s lip.”

“Oh my God.”

“I had to,” Jack protested. “If I hadn’t, it would have been deeply offensive. Altamaty would never have spoken to me again.”

“I thought you hated mutton.”

“It’s the only food I can’t eat.”

“Couldn’t you have chosen some other bit? Did it have to be, like, lip?”

“I had no choice.” He eyed Katya despairingly. “It had to be lip.”

“I have got,” Rebecca said quietly, “the grossest dad. Ever.”

Jack grinned. “We need to show Pradesh and Altamaty the ropes. A crash course at the IMU campus, and some onboard experience with our research vessels. I need to talk to the commandant of the Madras Engineering Group to arrange a secondment. Pradesh’ll need recuperation leave anyway and the campus in Cornwall is perfect. As for Altamaty, his training can be part of our funding for the underwater work at Issyk-Kul and the petroglyph research project. We can put temporary staff there while he’s away.”

“That would be wonderful,” Katya murmured. “The funding.”

“It’s what I promised,” Jack replied. “You may well find me back up there again soon.”

“If Altamaty’s away, Katya will definitely need company,” Rebecca said. Costas coughed, and Rebecca continued. “When Costas finally teaches me to dive, in Hawaii, which he’s promised to, I’m going to teach Altamaty all the English words for the equipment so he can order everything he needs from the IMU technical people without having to go through Costas. I told him Costas is a great guy, but usually he’s obsessed with some new submersible or whatever, and if Altamaty wants stuff he should come to me.” She leaned over and gave Costas a doe-eyed look.

“Good to see you’re on top of things, Rebecca,” Jack replied, raising his eyes at Costas.

“And the trouble with you, Dad, is that you hop from one adventure to the next. That’s what Hiemy told me. You know, back in Egypt. He says that when he finds something, he sticks with it, teases out every possible scrap of information from the site. Obsessively.”

“Tell me about it,” Costas muttered.

“He says that he, Professor Hiebermeyer, is the true archaeologist. He said that when he found those fragments of pottery with the Periplus on them, he deliberately put them aside, didn’t allow himself to get ex cited.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “He was on the phone to me in about ten seconds. You remember, Costas? He even came to visit us when we were digging up Istanbul harbor looking for the Jewish menorah. I was the one who was too busy. Sticking with my project.”

“He said that if he hadn’t spent months painstakingly excavating that Roman house by the Red Sea, this whole adventure would never have taken off He said he always did the real work while you were off searching for the Holy Grail or something. He said it was like Star Trek, you’d gone over to the dark side. I said it was Star Wars, not Star Trek. I don’t think he’d ever seen either of them. He said you’d become a treasure hunter, and he was only saying this because you still have potential, and it’s for your own good.”

“I think,” Jack murmured, suppressing a smile, “I might need to have a word with old Hiemy.”

“Don’t worry,” Rebecca replied. “Aysha’s on the case. She says what he needs is a family. Kids, you know. She says she’s working on it.”

Costas nearly choked. “Working on it.”

“Day and night,” Rebecca said.

“Lucky old Hiemy,” Jack said.

“And my next project is going to be south India,” Rebecca said assertively.

“Your next project is school,” Jack said.

“Ever since seeing all that stuff in the old chest, all our family history, I’ve become fascinated by it,” Rebecca said, looking at Jack. “Pradesh has offered to take me to that jungle shrine, to see the carvings for myself He thinks the next step is to get inside that tomb. See what’s in there. He says that now the Indian government is sending in the sappers to build more roads, actually finishing several of the traces that were made by Howard and his men all those years ago.”

“What about INTACON?” Costas asked. “And Shang Yong? Has terminating the sniper in Afghanistan finished him, Katya?”

She spoke quietly. “Without his henchman, the Brotherhood will disown him. But they will cling to their belief that they protect the legacy of Shihuangdi, and his tomb.”

“And how long will that last?” Costas asked.

“The legacy of the First Emperor is safe, for now.”

Jack looked hard at Katya, then turned again to Costas. “INTACON was owned by Shang Yong himself, and has been shut down. Pradesh reported back to his headquarters at Bangalore as soon as we got out of the jungle. He got a rap on the knuckles for going into bandit country without authority and taking those two sappers with him, but the colonel immediately dispatched an air assault company. The firefight with the Maoists was the excuse they needed to go in with an iron fist.”

“Pradesh says the Indian government has withdrawn all mining contracts from the jungle districts,” Rebecca said. “What we’ve set in motion could be the first big break for the jungle people, but Pradesh is worried that the withdrawal is only temporary and there’s still a battle to be fought. We need to show them there’s more revenue to be made from adventure tourism than allowing foreign companies to strip-mine the jungle. Pradesh says it depends on how deep the corruption is. Government officials can get bigger payoffs from mining multinationals than they can from start-up eco-tourism companies.”

“You should work for an NGO, Rebecca,” Katya said, smiling.

“I was going to talk to Dad about that. You know, giving IMU another face. It isn’t the first time your discoveries have opened a can of worms. And we can’t just walk away and pass on the problems to someone else.”

“When you do go to the jungle,” Jack said, “I’ve got something for you to return.”

“The tiger gauntlet?”

Jack nodded. “We can’t return the sacred velpu, as we don’t have it,” he said. “But the gauntlet had been in that shrine for two thousand years, and was venerated by the Koya too, as the weapon brought to them by Rama, the god who had once lived among them. It may not be the jewel of immortality, but it might just give them an edge. You can do it for your great-great-grandfather.”

“Maybe it’ll mean closure for him, at last,” she murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“Katya was talking to me about it just now, while we were walking up here,” she said. “About my mother. About how we can never second-guess grief, how we should never let anyone tell us how it will pan out. Howard lived with grief for much of his life, and it was somehow wrapped up with what happened to him in the jungle. It’s strange, it’s as if I can feel it. Maybe you do inherit these things from your ancestors, unresolved things. He couldn’t find closure in his lifetime, but maybe now we can do it.”

Jack looked across at Katya. Their eyes met for a moment, and he looked away. She had said things to Rebecca that he himself did not know how to say. He knew there was still anger in Katya about her own father, still a yawning emptiness in Rebecca, but for a moment he felt as if there were a transcending bond that might protect them both. Rebecca had seen him looking at Katya. “After going to the shrine, Pradesh wants me to study the pottery they’ve been finding underwater off Arikamedu. Aysha might be able to come and help with the Egyptian and Roman stuff and get me going.”

Costas cleared his throat. “If Hiemy can spare her.”

“He might need a rest,” Rebecca said, looking at him deadpan. Jack grinned. She swept her hair back. “Anyway, I think it’s going to be my doctorate.”

“Hang on,” Jack said. “You haven’t even finished high school yet.”

“High school? After this? You must be joking. These last few days have been the biggest adventure of my life. Now I know what you mean about expeditions, about how close you get to people. I feel as if I’ve known all of you all my life.”

Jack suddenly felt overwhelmed, and turned away, swallowing hard. He thought of what they had found in the lake, and his feeling of elation as he had looked up from underwater and seen Rebecca’s face, gazing down on him. Costas put a hand on his shoulder, then stood up, stretching and scratching his bristles, squinting out over the ruins. He kicked a stone, then reached down and picked it up, turning it over and over in his hand, rubbing it clean. Jack realized that the ground was strewn with fragments-pottery, broken brick, all of it crumbling and decaying into the shroud of dust that seemed so close to removing this place from history. Costas turned to him, a quizzical look in his eyes. “I wonder if they did make it?”

“The Romans? Fabius and the others?”

“We’re fifteen hundred kilometers east of Issyk-Kul. If any of them survived the wreck on the lake, that is. Let’s say one survived, unknown to his pursuers, washed ashore somewhere, melded invisibly among the caravans of traders heading toward Xian, just as Liu Jian the trader may have melded among the Sogdians heading west.”

“Maybe one did make it,” Jack said, nodding slowly.

“This place isn’t exactly a fabled eastern paradise, is it?”

Jack looked at the ruins again. In his mind’s eye he saw those other places he had visited, in north Africa, in Germany, in the mountain valleys of Wales, placed at the periphery of the Roman Empire where the ground revealed a few clues to the discerning eye, the humps of buried walls, fragments of pottery, a clump of rusted chain mail, places where veterans had made their mark, had eked out their days. “It’s what they were trained for,” he murmured. “At a certain point, a soldier becomes an old soldier. He no longer yearns to die gloriously in battle. The legion of ghosts who have marched alongside him, his fallen comrades, march away to Elysium, where they will await him. He no longer needs to prove himself He knows he will get there, and will join them. He has done enough.”

“And old soldiers, veterans, gave the empire its true strength, settling the frontiers,” Katya said.

Jack nodded. “It was the Roman way. A place with women, the chance to raise a family, building materials, a little plot of land. It was enough.”

“Yet they would have been told the First Emperor’s tomb was just over the horizon,” Costas said. “Fabled riches, beyond their imagination.”

“Maybe, for the old soldier, the adventurer, the fabled treasure is always just over the horizon, like Elysium,” Katya murmured. “When you have spent all your life searching, it becomes the only way to live.”

“And if it was Fabius, he may have had treasure already, remember?” Rebecca said. “The legionaries had what they could carry, the stuff they’d looted from the Parthians at Merv, from traders along the Silk Road. And maybe they did have the jewel, the peridot.”

A little boy suddenly appeared in the ruins in front of them. “Look,” Costas said. “There’s some of that fair hair you were talking about.” The small head bobbed up and down, coming toward them. He stopped, cocking his head, hearing but not understanding them. He darted into the dust again, then emerged above the loam wall, cautiously peering out. His hair was flaxen, more red than blond. They waved and smiled at him. Jack shaded his eyes, staring into the face. The boy’s eyes were a striking green color, almost olive. And there was something strange about the features, something fleetingly familiar. The boy scrambled over the wall and dropped down in front of them, still standing a few meters back, cautiously. His clothes were rags, and he was barefoot. He seemed suddenly assured, with the confidence of a child. He grinned at them, and held out his hand.

“What do you give a child like that?” Katya murmured.

Costas was still fingering the stone he had picked up earlier. He stopped turning it in his hands, then held it up so the boy could see. A light flashed across Jack’s eyes, and he realized that the stone was reflecting the hazy sunlight that was now breaking through. He glanced at it, and saw that it was a rich orange hue, translucent, like amber. He stared again. Amber. He could see an insect preserved inside, a mosquito. He saw that the stone had a hole in the center. It had evidently once had a cord through it, perhaps been worn as jewelry. It was old, worn. He saw marks on it. It looked like incised decoration, swirling. An animal, a swirling creature. Jack’s heart began to pound. He reached out for it.

It was too late. Costas had not seen him, and tossed it to the boy. He caught it, and held it up, his face rapt with delight. The light shone through the stone. It was amber, there was no doubt about it. It could have come from thousands of miles away. Amber from the Baltic. Jack’s mind was racing. The belongings of a Roman legionary? A legionary who hailed from the Celtic north, from Gaul or Germany, even Britain? He remembered Fabius, tall, ponytailed Fabius, from the tomb carving in the jungle. Could it be? An heirloom, somehow concealed over all those years of captivity? But then this was the Silk Road. All the riches of the world had once come this way. The boy smiled impishly, and held the stone tightly in his fist. He had seen Jack’s hand. He was not giving it up. He stared at Jack with fathomless eyes. Then he was off, scampering away across the ruins. His flaxen hair suddenly seemed perfectly in place here, the color of the mountains, of the dust that rolled through the valley. The color of the Silk Road. But there was something else, something Jack knew with dead certainty. Someone had been here. He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. Ave atque salve, frater. He turned to the others. “I wonder whether we’ve just stared into the eyes of a Roman legionary.”

Rebecca held his arm. “Do you think the jewel was here?”

Jack rubbed his chin. “We may just have found it. That boy. The legacy.”

“She means the real jewel, Jack,” Costas said.

“Maybe that’s best left just beyond the horizon,” Jack murmured.

“Yeah, right. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to find it. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to put those two jewels together, and see what would happen.”

“I don’t know.” Jack narrowed his eyes. “I really don’t know.”

“It would have been fun to try though, wouldn’t it?” Costas said. “Just once, I mean. To see what it was like. Immortality. Then we could have put the jewels in the IMU museum at Carthage, on opposite sides of the room. Close enough for a warm fuzzy feeling. People would come out of the museum feeling extra good. And make donations.”

Jack looked at Rebecca, and jerked his head toward Costas. “That’s what I mean. He brings things down to earth. With a crash.”

Costas grinned. “I have got a lab though, and I can check out the properties of peridot and lapis lazuli. Pradesh talked about trying it. There may be something in it. Not immortality, you know, but something more than a trick of the light, a prismatic effect. Some channeling of energy. Some refractive quality.”

Some refractive quality. Jack looked up toward the sun, shutting his eyes against it. The last few days had been a series of refractions, between past and present, between the world of a century ago and two millennia before that, between lives that seemed to run on parallel trajectories. For a moment he felt as if they were the same, Licinius the Roman legionary, John Howard his ancestor, himself, that they were fueled by the same yearning. Maybe the jewel did that, the idea of immortality, allowed those drawn by it to tap into a trackway far above the ephemeral. He took a deep breath, and put his arm around Rebecca. “I think mortality will do me for a while.”

Costas looked down at his crumpled shirt, and picked at it despondently. He eyed Jack. “Immortality might give us time to get to Hawaii.”

Jack got to his feet. “Point taken.”

“Now I know what Costas means,” Rebecca said.

“About what?”

“About diversions. He said your expeditions always end up being diversions. You never know where they’re going to take you. He says that’s what keeps him on his toes. This was one, wasn’t it?”

Jack took a deep breath, and stared into the ruins. He reached into his bag, then remembered he no longer had the little lapis lazuli elephant. He remembered where they had been, and wondered how he had changed. He gave Rebecca a tired smile. “A bit more than a diversion, I fancy.”

Costas looked at Jack expectantly. “So where do we go from here?”

“Got any ideas?”

“I thought we might go in search of the Isles of the Immortals. You know, that place Katya told us about. The First Emperor sent out expeditions to find them. Somewhere in the eastern ocean. In the center of the Pacific, to be exact. A small but delightful chain of volcanic islands.”

“Aloha,” Rebecca said.

“Aloha,” Costas replied. He made a whirling motion with his fingers, and pointed at the helicopter. Jack scratched his chin, looking at Costas’ sun-beaten face. “You know, you look as if you could do with a few days on a beach.”

“Damn right I could.”

“But Rebecca wants to go to the jungle. To the shrine.”

Costas got up and stretched. “It can wait. Anyway, there’s probably not much more to see. When we were there, I felt a hole in the base of the tomb. I remembered you showing me stone coffins in Rome, with the drainage hole to let the decomposition products flow out. If Licinius was in that tomb, there’s probably not much left there now.”

Jack stared at Costas. “A hole, you say.”

Costas put up his hand, and curled his fingers around. “About this big.”

Jack’s mind was racing. “Big enough to shove a bamboo tube through?”

“I guess so. A small one.”

Jack had remembered something. A possibility that Rebecca had mentioned. She looked at him now, reading his mind. “Robert Wauchope,” she murmured. “The velpu?”

Could it be? Could he have made it back there? Jack’s heart was suddenly pounding. He felt the familiar thrill of excitement. He slung his old khaki bag on his shoulder.

“Oh no.” Costas shook his head defiantly. “No way. I know that look.”

“We’ve got to get back to Seaquest II anyway. She’s in the Bay of Bengal. It would just be a diversion.”

Costas looked despairingly at Rebecca. “See what I mean?”

Rebecca put her arm around Jack. “Don’t worry, Dad. He’ll follow you anywhere.”

Jack looked questioningly at Costas. “Well?”

“You really think we might find it?”

“No promises.”

Costas sighed. He glanced again at his Hawaiian shirt, then looked dolefully at Jack. They stared each other in the eye. Jack’s face broke into a broad smile, and Costas looked down, shaking his head. “What can I say.”

“Good to go?”

“Good to go.”