The Thieves of Darkness (49 page)

I am not eloquent, my education has come through life, not books, but there is one thing I am certain of and thankful for. I finally know what it means to be loved, to have someone care for me without question; I know what it is like to allow my soul to be held in your warm hand. I know what it is like to become lost in an embrace, to feel the utter calm and security of love. To say that you opened my heart would be an understatement
.

I love you, Michael, simply and purely. You have been the first thought in my mind when I wake and the final thought as I fall asleep. In the short time we have been together, I have found a lifetime of love. You live in my dreams and in my heart. I’m sorry for my words of anger and doubt, I’m sorry for rejecting you at my doorway when I should have invited you in. Please know the passion I felt when we made love filled my soul—they were the most complete, the most perfect moments in my life
.

If you are reading this letter it means I’m on my way up the mountain. I ask, no, I implore you not to follow me. We are heading for certain death and I could not bear the thought of your dying as a result of me
.

I love you forever and for always,
Katherine Colleen

PS: I ask that you take this. It was the first gift of love I ever received and it was from you. I have worn it these past weeks, clutching it tightly for strength when I thought I couldn’t go on. I ask now that you keep it and think of me and when you hold it in your hand know that I will always be with you
.

Michael picked up the leather tube. He tilted it over his hand … and the silver Tiffany necklace spilled into his palm.

Three hours into their trek, the sun well past its noonday high, Venue’s party crossed the thirteen-thousand-foot mark. They had hiked through the mountain pass and up along a wide-open field of snow, winding their way along rocky terrain into a thirty-foot-wide trail bordered on either side with sheer granite, which gave the impression of being at the bottom of a chimney. The winds picked up, whipping about, making the thirty-degree air feel like it was fifteen. They had all thrown on their Arc’teryx jackets and Turtle Fur scarves, while their breathing sounded like straining locomotives.

Venue’s movements were no longer spry, his cheeks red and moist with sweat, his age showing. But his words remained optimistic as he led and urged the team onward.

Cindy had fallen behind. No one waited as she continually slipped on the hard-packed snow. Unaccustomed to the rigors of outdoor life, she looked as if she had run two marathons without training.

KC had said nothing to her sister since they’d arrived in India, her anger helping to keep her climb aggressive. But seeing her sister’s exhausted condition, she turned and walked back the fifty yards to where she was struggling.

“Are you all right?” KC asked.

“Fine,” Cindy said defiantly.

“Good,” KC shot back, what little sympathy she had drifting away. “’Cause if you weren’t, make no mistake, he’d leave you behind. And when the storm comes … well.”

Cindy looked up at the cloudless blue sky and shook her head. “Those primitive fools and their ‘feel-it-in-the-bones’ forecasts, they have no idea what they are talking about.”

“Don’t be a child. This isn’t a balance sheet, Cindy. This isn’t some financial model that you control with mathematical certainty. In case you don’t realize it, you are way out of your element here and you would do well to lose the arrogance and pick up the pace. No one’s carrying you up this mountain.”

“You think I still need your safety net, KC. I haven’t needed you in years. I’ve achieved so much more than you could ever hope for, all of it without your help. My life is my own; I do what I choose.”

“And you choose to go up this mountain with that man?” KC pointed at Venue leading the pack that was pulling away from them.

“Yeah.” Cindy began walking. “I do.”

“He only wanted the chart; that is the only reason Iblis revealed who he is to you. He doesn’t give a shit about you.”

“Are you upset because I want to work with him, or because he likes me?”

“My God, Cindy, do you hear yourself? If he cared, why didn’t he contact us all these years? He always knew where we were, who we were. This man is everything we fought not to be. He is a criminal.”

“Oddly enough”—Cindy looked right at KC—“you seem to emulate him pretty well.”

KC tried to ignore the dig, though she was growing frustrated with her naïveté.

“You know where we’re going?” KC asked rhetorically, walking at her side. “You know how many people have died up here?”

“I thought you were all about taking risks, Miss
Extreme Sport
, Miss
I Love the Outdoors
.”

“Yeah, I love risk, I love the feel of adrenaline. I’ve chosen to ride dangerous lines but I’ve never chosen suicide.”

“Suicide?” Cindy looked at the team of men that were now one hundred yards ahead, rounding a mountain bend. “I think we’re pretty well-protected.”

“Protected from what?” KC blasted. “The weather? No one can stop that from coming. And if we make it to our destination, I have a feeling what’s waiting for us will laugh at our protection.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Cindy abruptly stopped.

KC smiled in irony. “Why do you think Simon, Michael, and I fought so hard to keep this map out of their hands? We couldn’t give a shit about some gold or jewels. There’s more to life than money, Cindy. There’s something else up there.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Cindy laughed despite her exhaustion. “Now who’s the child?”

The flurries began, soft and airy, drifting about, caught in the updrafts. And suddenly the blue sky above was gone, replaced with thick, dark, foreboding clouds, casting the world into premature twilight.

A clap of thunder rumbled, echoing about the rock face, and the flurries became snow, falling steadily, cutting visibility by half.

“He’s marching us to our death, whether you choose to believe it or not.”

“I don’t think our father—”

“Father? You’re calling him Daddy now? I’m surprised you waited this long,” KC mocked her. “It’s amazing how close you’ve become.”

“Go to hell.”

“Funny.” KC laughed as she began walking double-time up the hill, leaving her sister behind. “I think that’s exactly where we’re going.”

The air tasted of metal—aluminum, to be exact. The thinning atmosphere at fourteen thousand feet was dryer than any desert Busch had ever been in. He and Michael were enveloped in a blizzard of blinding proportions, their legs on fire from their four-hour trek while their bodies grew frigid from the dropping temperature and windchill.

They were both dressed in full mountain gear: down Gore-Tex jackets, gloves, face masks, yellow-tinted goggles, not a stitch of skin exposed to the suddenly harsh elements. The snow swirled about them, the silence intermittently broken by howling gusts and the sound of pouring sand as the snow was whipped against the rock face.

They had lashed themselves together with a hundred-foot strand of kernmantle rope. With visibility down to nothing, it was possible to lose each other while standing only a few feet apart. The roar of the wind drowned out and absorbed any noise that Michael and Busch made, forcing them to press lips to ears to communicate.

They had both pulled out their axes, using them to steady themselves against the wind and to better grip the icy surfaces.

“What would possess someone to do this on purpose?” Busch shouted into Michael’s ear.

Michael shook his head, not knowing what to say. He had sent
Achyuta and Max back down the mountain over an hour ago. With Busch possessing the GPS, the two young brothers were there only in the event of a failure of electronics, but for once, things seemed to keep working. While initially resistant, hoping to continue their first adventure, they both relented as the winds kicked up over fifty miles per hour.

Busch leaned against the rock face, and pulled out the GPS, shielding it with his body, and took a quick glance: The red dot was only a mile away, and it hadn’t moved in over two hours. They both hoped that KC had made their destination, as the alternative would be nothing short of being buried forever in this abysmal weather. Michael banished the thought from his mind; he wasn’t about to lose her.

Michael couldn’t imagine what it was like at the peak of the mountain, twenty-eight thousand feet at the top of the world. They were at fourteen thousand feet, both in good shape, and yet they were heaving like pack mules as they struggled up the mountain.

They hiked up another wide-open field through deep powder, their legs burning with fatigue at every awkward step. With the low visibility, they might as well have been in a crater. All sense of direction was lost, forcing them to look at a compass to keep their bearings or risk being lost, traveling in circles in the snowy mass around them.

They came upon a wide-open mouth, a separation in the rock face that looked like a four-lane highway; it was well marked on the chart and in the direction of the red signal on the GPS tracker. They stepped through the mouth to find an icy path covered in fresh snow. It was like a miniglacier, one of many frozen tributaries that channeled any water that melted off the mountain. Michael was more than surprised, as much of the ice seemed fresh and clear, as if it had been constantly added to, like a slow icemaker that made clear freezer ice.

They hiked up the walled path, which narrowed to a thirty-foot-wide crevasse that bisected the mountain granite. They fought against the wind, their feet slipping on the ever-icy ground, digging their axes in, forcing themselves onward. It took them almost an hour to go one mile, their bodies pushed beyond exhaustion.

They arrived at a dead end, a sheer rock wall that climbed into oblivion. The wind and snow was an icy hurricane around them. Busch looked at the GPS and feared it was broken; the red dot was on the other side of the wall. They looked about, feeling for an opening, a cave, a narrow passage that would allow them through, but there was nothing there.

Michael hoped they hadn’t been on a wild-goose chase, following ancient maps, drawn before the times of precision instruments. He hoped that Venue had not somehow found the GPS tracker in the leather tube and led them astray.

But the fact that KC, Venue, and their party were nowhere to be found led Michael to believe they had missed something: a door, a passage, an opening. Somewhere along the way there was a breach that would allow them through to whatever sat on the other side of the granite wall.

Michael thought of erecting one of their tents for a brief respite but opted to seek a more solid shelter to allow them to rest and regain their strength. He and Busch began to backtrack, searching, hoping to find something they had missed.

One hundred and fifty yards back they found an overhang, a snowdrift over eight feet high obstructing it. A large natural window had formed in the snowy barrier, as if a warm wind had conspired to act like a beacon cutting through the icy wall. Michael and Busch dug fast, wiping the snow away to find a large boulder behind which was a small cave.

They scrambled in, kicking the snow from their boots, shaking it from their wool-covered heads. They pulled the Turtle Fur masks away from their mouths and collapsed to the rocky ground, gulping air as if they had just surfaced from a tankless deep-sea dive. They were surrounded by darkness but for the soft white glow of the snow that covered the entrance.

It was two minutes before Busch finally spoke. “People do this for fun? They climb these things for sport? What the hell happens at twenty-five thousand feet? This is stupider than golf.”

“Easy there, peaches,” Michael said.

“No, no easy. I’m going to wring this fucker’s neck for dragging KC up here.”

They both lay against the wall catching their breath, resting their legs. Busch pulled out the GPS, but they had no signal in the cave.

Michael reached into his bag and pulled out a water bottle and a flashlight. He opened the bottle and sucked it dry, the altitude having done the same to his body. He flipped on the light to find that they were in a surprisingly dry cavern. It wasn’t large, no more than four feet high, but it left them plenty of room to move about. The back of the cave ran deep, its path lost in darkness.

Michael felt the walls. “They’re warm.”

Busch removed his gloves and ran his cold fingers against the rock. “Banyo said the Himalayas were dotted with hot springs and vents.”

Michael felt the ground, removed his hat, and smiled.

Busch laughed. “I’ll tell you this. If there’s a hot spring in here, I’m in.”

Michael shone his light deeper into the cave.

“What do you see?” Busch asked.

Michael pointed the flashlight into the tunnel: a scramble of boot tracks marred the ground.

“I’ll be damned.” Busch shook his head as he dug into his pack. He pulled out two pistols, unzipped his jacket, and tucked them into shoulder holsters.

Michael followed suit, holstering two Sig Sauers and strapping a knife to his inner left calf, and headed deeper into the cavern.

“Banyo said they’ve got eleven toughs, Iblis’s guys—we can pretty much count on their knowing how to fight—plus Iblis, and that fucker would chew your face off if he had the chance.”

As Michael and Busch moved through the earthen passage, the air began to warm. A gentle breeze began flowing. They kept walking through darkness and finally saw it up ahead: a faint light.

The tunnel narrowed before Michael finally emerged from the rocky passage.

He stood on a ledge and looked down.

Of everything Michael had ever seen in life, of everywhere he had ever been, of every place he had ever read about, nothing came close to the image before his eyes.

He stood there a moment, absorbing what he saw, his mind fighting the irrationality of it all, but his heart overruled his mind and he smiled.

“What are you doing?” Busch said as he climbed out behind Michael. He was checking his gun, unaware of what Michael was looking at, but then finally he looked past Michael and out at the world before them, marveling at the sight, at the impossibility of what he saw. He actually did a double-take as he whispered, “Oh, my God.”