Ancient Echoes (17 page)

“Fine, then.” Devlin turned his back to Rempart and
addressed the others. “Let's go!”

“You’ve never told us why those pillars are so important,”
Melisse said.

“They are a key to history”—Rempart’s voice rose with
passion and eloquence in a way the students had never heard before—“a history
only rumored and scoffed at until this discovery. Now, before our very eyes, we
see that it exists. The man...or group...acclaimed as its discoverer will be
right up there with Alfred Kidder. Just as he garnered fame and wealth after
finding the ancient, unique Navajo civilization he named the Anasazi, so will
the discoverer of this. I will not walk away from it because of you slackers!”

At the mention of fame and wealth, the students looked from
Rempart to each other, and several dropped their gazes to the ground.

“I don't care!” Ted fought back tears. “Don't listen to him.
I want to go home.”

“We need to keep in mind,” Rachel said to Devlin, Melisse
and Vince, “that we've already come this far. It won't take much longer to get
to the pillars. Once we do”—she addressed Rempart now—“this should count for
our futures, right? I mean, if we're the first, we're the discoverers. All of
us.”

“Well,” Rempart demurred, “yes, I would say so.”

“I guess we could even spend a little time here figuring out
what they mean,” Devlin added. “I mean, we can't discover something and then,
when asked what it signifies, say we were too chicken shit to stick around and
find out.”

“But what if someone else gets hurt?” Brandi stamped her
foot, her face, eyes and nose blubbery. “I'm with Ted. I want to leave this
horrible place!”

“Do we split up?” Vince asked.

“No,” Devlin stated. “We've got to stick together.”

“Vote?”
Rachel suggested.

“I say we make camp now, and tomorrow morning we go with the
Professor,” Melisse said, raising her hand.

Devlin joined her, then Rachel, Vince, and finally,
reluctantly, Ted and Brandi.

o0o

Jake’s fury built, took hold and twisted inside him as he
pulled torn human remains from a creek. The boy’s body had caught in some
brambles near the bank. Given its condition, Jake doubted he’d been killed
nearby, but most likely floated some distance before reaching the ranch of a
local resident, Polly Higgins.

The water had washed away the blood, and before him lay
a bloated body with gashing bite
marks on its head and
shoulders, and a gaping hole where the stomach should have been. His shirt was
gone, but wet jeans clung to his body, wedging a wallet in a back pocket. Jake
pulled it out. A laminated Idaho driver’s license with the name Brian Cutter
confirmed his worst fears.

The possibility that Lionel Rempart and all his young,
bright students had met a similar fate was all too real. Ugly memories of Los
Angeles rushed at him as well, and the combination consumed him with anger and
frustration.

He wanted to look for the college kids himself. Forget these
nicey-nice search teams, high-tech equipment, and hourly reports in triplicate.
He wanted to put his own boots on the ground.
To hunt.

Could he have done more? Acted more quickly? Better? He
tried to shake off the doubts, both past and present, but knew from experience
that they'd return again and again, especially at night when he lay in bed
alone.
And then the nightmares when he slept.
He had
hoped Lemhi County, Idaho would be different. He’d been wrong.

He backed away when the county’s on-call forensics team, a
pair of retired San Francisco Crime Scene Unit investigators, arrived.

“Any thoughts on what happened to him?” Michael asked
,
breaking the silence that had surrounded the body from the
time Jake placed it on dry land. He and Quade stood by the sheriff’s side
through all this, but Charlotte remained many feet away, a silent, worried, and
upset observer.

“The evil spirits got him,” Polly said. She stood with a
shotgun in hand, a small, seventy-five year old woman in loose Levi’s, a bulky insulated
jacket, and Gortex boots. Three large shepherd mix dogs stood at her side. She
ran the ranch alone since her husband died and her only son left home for a
less lonely existence. Ownership of her ranch had been grandfathered into the
Federal wilderness area. “When I was a girl, my best friend Clara, a Shoshone,
said her grandmother called it Nininbe. She warned us never to go west of
Devil’s Gulch. This here creek flows down from that area. Clara’s granny used
to tell us that Nininbe created thunder and attacked strangers, tearing their
bodies apart. Those not eaten disappeared. That’s
why no one,
no Indian, no whites, not even the Feds
spend any time up in that area.
They won’t admit it, but they know.”

“No spirit did this,” Jake said. As a boy he had heard the
kind of stories Polly talked about, but they were just stories.

“Have there been deaths like this before, Sheriff?” Quade
asked. Being careful not to touch the body, he inspected the wounds.

“Not that I’ve ever heard.”

“In the old days there were lots of stories.” Polly gave the
odd-looking Quade
a
once-over as if trying to decide
exactly what he was. “Since the Feds took over and the gold prospectors are
gone, nothing happens out here anymore. Except…let me see, when was that?” She
tapped a bony finger against her lips as the others waited. “Ten years? I’m not
sure. Six men, not your usual hunters and fishermen, came out this way. People
talked about them up at the Telichpah Flat General Store. They wanted to know
about some pillars, two pillars, that made thunder and lightning. Most folks
didn’t know. But the old ones, the ones who remembered the Indian legends, they
knew and said nothing. The men, we heard, headed west. They never came back.
They disappeared, just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

“They could have gone straight through the forest, or got on
the river and came out somewhere downstream,” Jake said. “It’d be known if six
men disappeared around here, and I’ve never heard about it. Excuse me.” He went
to check on
Charlotte,
to be sure she was all right
after seeing the grisly discovery.

 “Why do you say those men weren’t hunters or
fishermen, Mrs. Higgins?” Michael asked.

She shrugged. “Simple. They had no fishing gear, and the
rifles and handguns they carried were a lot more firepower than anyone needed
to take down an elk. Those who saw them said they looked like ex-military
guys.”

Washington D.C.

JIANJUN STOOD IN the night darkness
outside Lionel Rempart’s Georgetown townhouse and worried that breaking into it
would be a challenge. Sophisticated electronic locks and security systems came
to mind. A street lamp illuminated the front of the home, casting light on the
doorway.

Jianjun didn’t like the lay out, but he had no choice. He
hurried to the front door. Once there, his worries vanished.

In three seconds, he picked the simple lock in the door knob
with a tension wrench. The deadbolt would be more time-consuming, but to
Jianjun’s surprise, when he turned the knob, the door opened. The deadbolt had
been left off.

It made no sense, unless someone was home. Cautiously, he
slipped inside, quietly shutting the door behind him.

The security alarm system had been disarmed. He quickly
inspected the 1500 square foot home and found it empty.

Something was very wrong here. He couldn’t believe Lionel
would go away for months and not check and double-check his security system and
locks. Someone must have beaten him here. Apparently, Michael wasn’t the only
one curious about what Lionel Rempart was up to. He locked the deadbolt.

In the den, Jianjun found a number of books and papers on
alchemy stacked on a desk. He understood why Lionel would not leave such things
in his university office for other professors to see. He would have been a
laughing stock.

Included were notes and reference books suggested by Mustafa
Al-Dajani. Jianjun tried reading them, but they made his head hurt. He found
equally obtuse notes about
The Book of Abraham the Jew
and a medieval
alchemist, Nicholas Flamel.

Jianjun knew all this alchemy business would interest
Michael. He had been enthralled by the subject ever since finding Lady Hsieh’s
tomb. Jianjun still got cold chills when he remembered how the mummy’s eyes had
opened. Man, but they looked alive. They scared him so badly he nearly flew out
of the tomb without using the ladder. He shivered at the memory,
then
went back to reading Lionel’s dull stash of materials.

A folder labeled Idaho was empty except for two items, a
hand-drawn map and a letter from the widow of someone named Professor Thurmon Teasdale.
The widow wrote that she was willing to give Lionel a copy of Professor
Teasdale’s Idaho map, although to do so
troubled
her.
Jianjun wondered what that was all about.

The map named no cities or towns and gave no longitude or
latitude, not even a scale.

Jianjun wondered if it could be a map of the Idaho
wilderness area Lionel had gone to. If Michael followed it, would he be able to
find his missing brother and the students?

Jianjun used Lionel’s printer-scanner-fax to scan the map
and send it to Michael with a short text about where he found it.

To his surprise, he received a text reply almost
immediately.

One student found dead. No word on Lionel. Map might
help.
Pls ck into Charlotte Reed, ICE, and Simon Quade, CIA
consultant.
Background?
Why here? Also rumor 6
paramilitary disappeared here 10+ yrs ago. True?

“No, no, no,” Jianjun muttered to himself as he plugged a
thumb drive into Lionel’s computer to copy his files. “I’m just finding answers
to the first questions he
asked,
now he asks a whole bunch
more!
ICE agents, CIA informants, and paramilitary men.
What the hell is going on out there? At this rate, I’ll be stuck in Washington
a month!”

As the information downloaded, he went through Lionel’s desk
to see if anything interesting jumped out at him.

He heard a car door slam shut.
Probably
just some neighbor.
He looked at the computer.

A key rattled in the door lock.

His hand hovered over the thumb drive to remove it as soon
as the download finished when he heard the brush of the door against the carpet
as it opened.

MICHAEL PRINTED OUT the map that
Jianjun sent him using the computer equipment the Forest Service had made
available to Simon Quade. Michael, Charlotte and Quade had returned to the
forest service cabin, while Sheriff Sullivan went to Telichpah Flat and then to
Salmon City to report the news of the dead student.

Michael placed the map on the table and Quade and Charlotte
joined him in perusing it. “Very interesting,” Quade murmured.

“Look!” Charlotte pointed to the center of the map. “Two
pillars. Polly Higgins talked about two pillars.”

Michael nodded.
“Exactly.
But this
map gives no indication of where they are. There’s not another landmark shown,
just pillars, streams, and mountain ranges. For all we know, it’s not even
real.”

“You said it came from Professor Thurmon Teasdale,” Quade
said. “He was a historian, an expert on the Lewis and Clark expedition and the
American Northwest. If he drew it, it’s got a high probability of being
accurate.”

“If so, we need someone who knows the landscape well, who
would recognize the mountain range and where the river bends and curves that
particular way.” Michael wasn’t ready to trust Simon Quade, but he accepted his
expertise.

“Give me some time online with the map and the CIA’s field
charts,” Quade said. “We’re a bit better than Google Earth.”

Michael nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll go into Salmon City
and buy some gear for backpacking. I’m going out there, wherever there is.”

“I’ll join you,” Charlotte said. “I’m going, too.”

“Buy enough for three,” Quade called, tossing his car keys
to Michael.

Michael and Charlotte got into the Trailblazer. “Are you
sure you want to do this?” he asked. “It could be dangerous. Besides, the law
won’t like it. The sheriff didn't exactly greet us with open arms.”

She gave him a stern, fleeting look. “I suspect he’s not as
bad as he pretends to be. Also, I don't blame him. I’m sure the higher ups
don’t want anything to do with the disappearance, and he's the one stuck with
it. He'll be the scapegoat in the end, no matter how it turns out. In any case,
no one is leaving me behind.”

Her cynicism surprised him. “I've never heard of Customs
sending someone out to investigate a missing scholar,” he said after a while,
taking a quick glance at her.

She didn't look at him. “Oh?”

“What's the real story?” He watched her struggle with
whether to trust him or not. “The search for Lionel and the students is
personal for you. I’d like to know why. Is it something about Lionel? Were you
seeing him?”

“Please.” Disdain dripped.

He realized she wouldn’t be open with him unless he confided
in her, at least a little. “I'm here in part,” he began slowly, cautiously,
“because of a strange thing that happened to me in Mongolia. I'm not sure how
or why, but I believe it’s connected to my brother's disappearance. Last year,
he asked me to contact the family of a Chinese geneticist who died some years
earlier—”

Her head snapped toward him, eyes wide. “Go on,” she
whispered.

He told her about his excavation, finding the tomb, and that
its contents were stolen. He didn't give any details about Lady Hsieh or the
murders of his field experts. “This history interested Lionel for some reason.
I contacted him to ask why, and learned he was missing.”