Finding North (37 page)

Alex took a yellow pencil
from her pocket and took the napkin from under her coffee cup. She
quickly and easily outlined the map of Ultima Thule.

“
All those times I went to
‘see’ the map?” Alex asked. “I think I was memorizing
it.”

She shaded in mountains
and filled in points for cities.

“
Why would you do that?”
Raz asked.

“
I have a sense that it
was a challenge for me,” Alex said. “Something to keep my mind
sharp. Dad used to have us memorize maps as kids. This one was such
an oddity that I probably liked the challenge. I’d just started
making the Fey maps for the Intelligence Center. I’m sure I was
trying to stay sharp.”

“
Stay sharp?”

“
Jesse and I were so much
younger than the guys, inexperienced,” Alex said. “I always felt
like I had to be at the top of my game. Jesse felt that way, too.
We worked hard in our off time — went to college, took skills
courses, practiced all the time, memorized maps — just to try to
catch up.”

“
To stay on the team,” Raz
said.

Alex nodded.

“
Do you think it’s a
real . . . place?” Raz asked.

“
Not that I’ve ever seen,”
Alex said. “It’s possible that the map is so old that it’s a place
that existed before the European glaciers melted.”

Alex shrugged.

“
It’s a place that doesn’t
exist in modern life,” Raz said.

“
Not based on satellite
imagery or any modern cartography,” Alex said. “But I need to
carefully compare this map to other maps. It might be a part of a
continent, like the Gobi desert in China or the northern-most
portion of Canada or Brazil, for that matter. In fact, it could be
some place really small like the Colorado plains or Jerusalem in
one of its incarnations or . . . one of the
Indonesian islands.”

“
Really big or very
small,” Raz said.

“
It could be anywhere,”
Alex said. “I have to show it to Max. I’m sure we’ll figure it out,
but . . . Right now? I think it’s
nothing.”

“
But it has the mark,” Raz
said.

“
The compass rose with the
eye?” Alex asked. “The symbol is the actual compass rose of the
map.”

“
On the front?”

“
Front right,” Alex said.
“It must be where I’d seen the mark before.”

Raz nodded.

“
I wish we were home,”
Alex said under her breath.

“
Me, too,” Raz said. “I’m
missing my Joey time. I’ve been teaching him how to throw a perfect
spiral.”

Alex laughed.

“
He’s good at it!” Raz
said. “Tiny ball. He almost has the hang of it.”

“
But not Máire?” Alex
asked.

“
I always just want to
baby her,” Raz blushed. “Pretty-baby stuff, not little-rugged-man
stuff.”

“
Kinda sexist,” Alex
said.

“
That’s me,” Raz
said.

Alex smiled. Raz leaned
his head against hers.

“
We’ll figure this out,”
Raz said. “Right?”

“
We will,” Alex
said.

“
You have no idea how much
it means to me to know that you’re on my side,” Raz said. “You’ll
help me with any situation.”

“
Always,” Alex
said.

He smiled.

“
There’s something else,”
Alex said.

He cocked his head. Alex
took the metal point out of her pocket.

“
Bestat called this a
‘key,’” Alex said. “She said that many humans had lost their lives
protecting it.”

Raz scowled and took the
point from her.

“
The cufflinks go here,”
Alex pointed to the small holes.

“
The ring?” Raz pointed to
the piece of metal on the flat end of the point.

Alex nodded.

“
Your pocket watch,” Alex
pointed to the hole in the middle.

“
That’s why you told me to
hold on to the watch,” Raz nodded. “I don’t have it with me. I must
have left it in Paris.”

“
I put the watch, Ben’s
directional compass, the cufflinks, and even the ring in the safe
in the vault,” Alex said.

“
That’s why you went down
with Trece?” Raz asked.

“
You were getting changed
and packed.” Alex nodded.

Raz nodded.

“
Bestat said there are two
more items to make the ‘key’ functional,” Alex said. “She said I
have one of the items. I have to find the other. She thought it
would be in China, in the Mogao Caves.”

“
In the caves,” Raz
repeated. “Does she know about the package you got last
year?”

“
The ugly bee?” Alex
asked. “I don’t think so, but who knows what she knows?”

Raz nodded. Alex
shrugged.

“
She said she would
explain everything,” Alex said. “We still need to get to
Egypt.”

“
With the current
turmoil . . .” Raz said.

“
It’s going to be no easy
trick,” Alex said. “We won’t be able to go in as a US military
team, that’s for sure.”

“
Let’s just focus on
what’s right in front of us,” Raz said.

“
Good idea,” Alex said.
“When I think of the larger picture, I just want to go home and
play with the babies. Let the world sort itself out. My life is
pretty good. Stuff like that.”

Raz nodded.

“
What do you expect at the
Mogao caves?” Raz asked.

“
No idea,” Alex said.
“You?”

“
Another adventure,” Raz
said.

Alex gave him a tired
smile.

“
Rest?” Raz
asked.

“
Sure,” Alex said. She
held onto his arm and put her head on his shoulder. “I’m really
glad to be doing this with you.”

“
You know what?” Raz
smiled.

Alex leaned back to look
at him.

“
I’m glad I’m here, too,”
Raz said.

“
Wherever ‘here’ is,” she
said.

They laughed.

F

Chapter
Twenty-six

Friday mid-day

May 20 — 7:22 p.m. China
Standard Time

Mogao Caves, Dunhuang,
China

“
This way,” Amam Ibn Hinna
hissed.

Alex swallowed hard and
looked to her left. Nodding, she followed him through the darkened
plaza. Unsure of the situation, Jesse lingered close. They were
taken by car from the Dunhuang Airport to the Mogao Caves compound.
She and Raz were instructed to leave the team at the Mogao Hotel, a
thousand feet across the plaza from the caves.

They hurried across the
bridge over the wide, sandy riverbed that separated the hotel from
the large Mogao complex. They moved in near darkness, as the moon
hadn’t risen yet. On the bridge, Alex could hear the flow of spring
melt-off in the riverbed below. They reached the entrance of the
park and hurried under the classic Chinese wooden archway. Raz
touched her arm.

“
They’ve made the roof,”
Raz said in her ear.

She looked back and saw
Leena, Vince, and Margaret’s headlamps as they set up on the roof
of the Mogao Hotel. While they had to leave their firearms on the
plane in Beijing, Leena, Vince, and Margaret were setting up to
videotape anything that happened.

Entering the park, they
traveled across the concrete path past groves of white birch,
cottonwood, and other deciduous trees. Many of the trees were in
full bloom, while the non-flowering trees were just beginning to
leaf out. She heard the soft whistle of Troy, Royce, and Joseph.
They were following close but using the trees and bushes as
cover.

As they passed a white
stone statue of Quan Yin, the goddess of compassion, Alex pointed
to the beautiful statue of a maiden standing on a
dragon.

“
She saved that one from
being eaten as a fish,” Alex said.

“
What?” Raz
said.

Alex shook her
head.

“
This way,” Amam Ibn Hinna
turned and smiled. “We are almost there.”

For a moment, Alex caught
an unholy gleam in his eye. She wished Zack or Bestat were there to
deal with this creature. As if he could hear her wish, he gave her
a jagged-toothed grin and continued forward.

“
He looks like the
Cheshire Cat,” Raz said in her ear.

“
He looks like he wants to
eat us,” Alex said.

Raz laughed, and Alex
smiled.

“
This way, this way,” Amam
Ibn Hinna said as they passed under another ornate gate. “This
way.”

“
Willy Wonka,” Raz
said.

Alex laughed.

“
This way,” Amam Ibn Hinna
said.

They had to jog to keep
up. In front of them lay a complex of close to a thousand caves
carved into the sandstone cliff by Buddhist monks. Each cave was a
celebration to Buddha in the manner of the time. Sealed and
abandoned in the 15
^th
century, the caves were rediscovered in the early
1900s. In modern times, the Chinese government had stabilized this
series of caves with cement, brick, and mortar. With the rise of
tourism in China, the government had created easy walkways to
discourage people from invading the unexplored caves further to the
north.

Fong Song’s life work was
opening new caves. There were still more than four hundred caves
that had yet to be explored. Alex and Raz stopped for a moment just
to look at the sheer number of caves.

“
Fong wanted to meet you
in the library cave,” Amam Ibn Hinna said. He hopped the wooden
fence in front of the structure. They followed him over the
fence.

There was a complex of
caves called the library cave. Originally stacked floor to ceiling
with rare manuscripts, the library cave had been “discovered” by
French and British explorers in the early
20
^th
century. They returned home with more than a hundred thousand
manuscripts, including original texts of the Christian Bible, the
Koran, and the I Ching.

“
Come along!” Amam Ibn
Hinna said.

He waved to his right and
picked up the pace. They jogged down a brick lined path past three
stories of individual caves devoted to the worship of
Buddha.

“
There is a really big
Buddha back there,” Amam Ibn Hinna said, as they ran past. “Carved
by hand inside the nine-story building. You’ll have to see it
sometime. Truly incredible.”

He went to a stairwell and
started climbing.

“
Come along,” Amam Ibn
Hinna said. “This is the way.”

Alex stopped
walking.

“
The library cave is on
the first level,” Alex said.

“
Yes, but Fong and Ji are
up here,” Amam Ibn Hinna said and pointed up the
stairwell.

Alex gestured for Amam Ibn
Hinna to go up the stairs first. Raz followed him, and Alex came
last. Their guide continued to the third floor. He stopped to make
sure they were following before he plunged into the dark sandstone
cave ahead. Raz stopped at the entrance to wait for Alex. They
entered the dark cave together.

“
Five people.” Alex took a
deep breath to smell the air. “At least two military. Fong’s
perfume. Fear.”

“
Suffering, blood,” Amam
Ibn Hinna hissed in a low voice. “I hope we’ve come in
time.”

Raz nodded, and they
stepped into the grotto. They saw only the inky black.

“
We are here,” Amam Ibn
Hinna said to someone they could not see.

Three freestanding
floodlights came on. Alex had to shade her eyes from the bright
light.

“
What’s the meaning of
this?” Amam Ibn Hinna’s eyes seemed to adjust immediately. His
voice was indignant. “We mean you no harm. We are here on an errand
of diplomacy. We were invited here by your government.”

Amam Ibn Hinna’s
protestations didn’t get them to dim the lights. After a few
moments, Alex saw that they were standing in the middle of a cave,
surrounded by five soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army.
There was a three-foot-high brass Buddha on an altar on the right
side of the cave. The rest of the cave was set up as meditation
space.

“
Where are Ji and Fong?”
Alex asked in Mandarin.

The Chinese soldier near
the back of the cave gave a partial bow and indicated that they go
further into the cave. Alex stayed rooted in place. She looked from
face to face. The Chinese soldiers were armed and edgy.

The Chinese were ready for
battle.

The soldiers intended to
kill them.

Alex glanced at Raz. By
the look on his face, he was thinking the same thing. They shifted
their positions to be ready.

“
Let me go first,” Amam
Ibn Hinna said.