Rogue Angel 51: The Pretender's Gambit (26 page)

“I know. There’s something else that’s bothering me, though.”

Rao looked at her inquisitively. “Yes?”

“The monks that hid the temple went to a lot of trouble to move it here. They wouldn’t have left it here without defenses.”

“No, I don’t think they did either.” Rao fed a few more sticks to the fire. “We will be careful when we find it.”

Chapter 39

By midmorning, Annja was covered in sweat despite the chill that clung to the mountain. The grade had increased and the going was more difficult. Even the monks, seemingly as nimble as mountain goats, struggled with the climb. What Klykov lacked in finesse and youthful vigor, he made up for in determination and managed to keep pace. From the brightness in his eyes, Annja knew the thrill of discovery was pushing him on, as well.

Even though she’d been looking, Annja hadn’t noticed the stone that potentially marked the temple’s hiding spot until she’d climbed above it. Standing on a small ridge to sip water and rest for just a moment, she’d gazed down over the jungle hundreds of feet below and spotted the marker.

Catching it in that moment, in the right light, from the right angle, and looking for
something
, anything really, she saw it.

“Annja?” Klykov’s voice held a note of concern. “Are you all right?”

“I am.” Annja smiled as the adrenaline surged through her with the promise of secrets yet to be revealed. “We found it.”

“We did?” Klykov looked around.

Annja pointed down at the outcrop. “There. What do you see?”

Hesitantly, not liking the sharp edges of the mountain so much, Klykov peered over the edge. “Rocks. Trees. Brush.”

“Exactly. The rocks.” Annja fished in her backpack and took out her camera. She snapped a picture, certain that the magnified digitized image would better reveal what was so cleverly hidden from the human eye—yet was there once a person saw it.

She showed the captured image to Klykov, then to Rao, who had come over to join them.

“What do you see now?”

Klykov’s face lost some of the tiredness that framed it when he realized what he was looking at. “It looks like the top of an elephant’s head.” He shook his own head. “But surely that is just a trick of the light. Or our imaginations.”

Annja put the camera away and took out a metal stake. She looked for a good, stable place to hammer the stake into the rock. “That’s not a trick of the light. That’s the back of an elephant’s head. Look at how the ears are flared out. And it’s an Indian elephant, not African. The ears are small. This is it.”

She hammered the stake into the rock as the word spread to the rest of the monks, who immediately ringed the cliff’s edge. Rao helped her tie a rope onto the stake, then helped her rig her harness for the climb down the mountain.

Excitement swept through Annja as she positioned herself at the edge of the drop. She kept her body perpendicular to the steep rock face as she walked backwards down the mountainside, paying out the rope as she needed to. The elephant’s head, not neatly carved at all but showing tool marks now that she was almost to it, was only slightly larger than she was. The tool marks were revealed in sharper relief on the underside of the rock where hundreds of years of rain and direct exposure to the elements hadn’t worn them away.

Pausing beside the elephant, which she now saw was fully eight feet tall, Annja took pictures with her camera, then tucked it back into her backpack and began inspecting the elephant head. She was certain of the carving, and feeling the edges beneath her fingertips, she grew even more convinced of her find.

However, there was no immediate clue about what she was supposed to do next.

She looked up at the monks, Klykov and Rao clustered together, all anxiously awaiting whatever news she had to give. “Rao, can you lower the tool bag?”

Rao secured the bag fast to a rope and lowered it to her, tying it on at the appropriate length so it would hang beside her.

She reached inside the bag and took out brushes and cleaning tools to work on the elephant, hoping there would be further clues about how to proceed on the carving.

“I am coming down,” Rao called out.

“Come ahead.”

Rao dropped a line on the other side of the elephant head and made the descent quickly and carefully. In a couple minutes, he hung beside her in his harness.

“May I help?” Rao offered.

Annja handed over another tool and brush. They worked together, hanging on the side of the mountain as the wind pried at them with chill fingers and the sun made them sweat inside their jackets.

Her efforts revealed the eye and the tusk that lay alongside the trunk, which was curled under the massive head. As the details became cleaner, she couldn’t help but think of the sculptor who had worked with the existing rock. Whoever that had been had clung to the rock much as she was doing. Now that the head was more revealed, she saw that it had been cut out of what had been a much wider outcrop.

“Whoever did this spent a lot of time getting this right.” Annja brushed at the eye, getting more dirt out of the recessed area.

“Do you know what the Damrei Mountains are known colloquially as?”

Annja answered without hesitation. “The Elephant Mountains.”

Rao smiled and nodded. “At first I thought that the elephant statue was a random choice, or one dedicated to Shiva.”

“Or Ganesha,” Annja said.

“Perhaps. Then, finding this, I wonder if the elephant was made for the mountains or the mountains were named for the legend about the elephant.”

“Maybe we’ll find out once we locate the temple.”

They worked in silence for a few more minutes. Only the scraping of the tools and the brushes interrupted the near-silence of the wind. Small debris continued to fall down the mountain and the wind carried the dust away.

“Annja,” Rao called. “Look at this.”

Carefully, Annja paid out more line so that she could scramble under the elephant head and join Rao. Clinging to the line and to the elephant’s chin, she peered up at four small holes along the elephant’s jaw behind its ear. The holes were so small that even her pinky would not fit. None of the holes was equidistant, and she knew what Rao was going to ask for next.

“You have the elephant?”

Annja dug the statue out of her backpack and held on to it tightly, knowing that if she lost it they might look for days before they found it in the jungle below.

If the fall didn’t destroy it.

“I tested these holes.” Rao inserted a narrow scraping tool that barely fit. “I detected movement in all of them. Something is in there.”

Gingerly, Annja grasped the elephant and turned it so that its feet pointed out from her hand. For the first time she realized the elephant was shaped so that none of the legs were the same length. The rounded stomach threw off the lengths.

“There is an old saying about the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul,” Rao said in a quiet voice. “The legend goes that you must whisper into the elephant’s ear to find the temple.”

“Elephant whisperer, then.” Slowly, Annja eased the elephant’s legs into the holes. She leaned in closely and listened as thin scrapes echoed from within the rock. The tone of the scraping led her to believe that somewhere within the massive rock carving there was a hollow spot, and that made her excitement grow.

She moved the elephant several times, and was beginning to think that whatever was supposed to happen within the rock had gotten too old to ever work again. She hated to think about resorting to explosives, and hadn’t even thought about finding any, still she was betting that Klykov could have worked out something.

A series of clicks suddenly came in rapid syncopation. The elephant head no longer simply resonated with the clicks, now it vibrated.

“Watch out.” Annja readied herself to kick away, thinking the elephant head might fall away from the side of the cliff.

Instead, a section of the cliff below the elephant head recessed and revealed an opening nearly six feet square.

“The gateway to the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul can be found in the shadow of the Elephant of Ishana,” Rao said.

Annja grinned at him. “Might have helped if you had mentioned that earlier.”

Still astonished, Rao shook his head. “The shadow could have been anywhere, or meant anything.”

“Evidently it meant exactly what it said.” Annja let out more line and dropped down to the opening. Sunlight penetrated the darkness for only a few feet, but enough illumination got inside to show a long tunnel lay on the other side of the entrance.

* * *

C
APTIVATED
BY
WHAT
was taking place on the computer screen, Sequeira stared as Annja Creed clambered inside the opening beneath the rock outcrop where she had been dangling. Within minutes, she had made her line fast and the people with her started climbing down after her, bringing with them packs of equipment.

Sequeira called his second-in-command. “Nicolau.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get the men ready to move out. Annja Creed has found what we are looking for.”

“Yes, sir.”

It would not take them long to fly to the mountainside, and they could easily be lowered to the cliff by the helicopters. However, Sequeira resented the fact that Annja Creed was the first person to enter the lost temple after he had been looking for it for so long.

Whatever was there, though, he would have. He told himself that was all that mattered.

* * *

H
OLDING
THE
M
AGLITE
LED flashlight in front of her, Annja followed the severe incline leading into the heart of the mountain. The bright light pushed back the darkness, but the remaining shadows made the steep steps cut into the stone difficult to judge. They walked in single file, Rao after her and Klykov after the monk. The others followed the Russian.

The cold air held a thick, dusty musk and came up from whatever lay ahead. The opening acted as a chimney flue, drawing out the stale air. Annja just hoped there weren’t any surprises lying in wait. In the narrow tunnel, the small space would be a problem.

Nearly a hundred and fifty feet into the mountain, the tunnel ended, opening into a large cavern. Six feet from the tunnel’s mouth, a sudden drop-off offered a long fall, the bottom invisible in the darkness.

“Here,” Rao called. He tracked his flashlight beam to the right to reveal steps cut into the wall. He flicked his light over the wall to illuminate the figures carved into the stone.

The mythic figures celebrated stories from the Hindu tales of the gods. Annja recognized Palden Lhamo, the goddess, and the only female of the Eight Guardians of the Law. The carving had been tinted to replicate her more fully. Her skin was deep blue and her hair was as red as freshly spilled blood. She rode a white mule and carried a scepter that drew down lightning from the sky above. In her other hand, she carried a human skull as a drinking cup filled with blood. Her three eyes were fierce and uncompromising.

“These people worshipped demons?” Klykov asked.

“Palden Lhamo isn’t a demon,” Annja said. “She is one of the Eight Guardians, or wrathful deities. They’re the flip side of the
bodhisattva
, the enlightened version of the same being. They look demonic because they’re supposed to influence mankind to make proper decisions.”

“And nightmares,” Klykov commented.

Annja took a picture with her camera. The flash eliminated the darkness for a moment and they all paused till their vision recovered.

She headed down the steps and noted the figures on the wall-carved-in bas-relief.

Annja kept walking, spotting more of the Tibetan influence on the images as well as nagas and other creatures.

Senses spinning, listening to the shuffling of their feet and their voices echoing within the vast chamber, Annja tried to take in all the art but found it too overwhelming. She only remembered bits and pieces of it as she reached the cavern floor.

On solid ground now, she took a glow stick from her backpack and placed it at the foot of the steps leading back to the opening at least a hundred feet above them. They were still somewhere in the heart of the mountain.

The monks started speaking quickly, alerting Annja to the fact they had seen something she had not. When she turned around, she saw that their flashlights had focused on a path created by cut stone and laid together to form a walkway.

Annja stepped forward, drawn by the mystery of what lay ahead. The cavern was huge and the walkway seemed to go on forever. But it stopped when her flashlight beam revealed the outer wall of the hidden temple.

Chapter 40

Excitement thrummed through Annja as she surveyed the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul. She knew at once the structure could be no other. It stood at least forty feet tall at its center, but the outer walls stood over twenty feet high.

The center dome structure reflected the beehive appearance most observers thought it was most like, but it was really meant to resemble a mountaintop. The walkway became a bridge a short distance from the temple, and the bridge spanned a moat twenty feet across. Judging from the cut edges that showed along the moat, the waterway was a manmade construction.

Annja couldn’t fathom the years or the number of people it had taken to build this shrine.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Klykov said beside her, “but I didn’t expect this. I thought the people who moved the temple here were in a hurry. I guessed that they had merely found a place to dump everything they wanted to hide from invaders.”

“It might have started out like that,” Annja said, “but they didn’t leave it as such.” She shined her light down into the dark water and saw darting forms. “There are fish, so the water’s probably coming from an artesian well, something that will support life. There’s a passage into and out of the mountain. At least underwater.”

Annja crossed the bridge, listening to the hollow click of her boot heels as she went.

Statues decorated the ground in front of the temple on the other side of the moat. There were even stone palm trees. The monks who had built the temple hadn’t been able to import the vegetation that grew outside, but they’d replicated it instead.

“How did so many people lose a place like this?” Klykov asked.

“The legend says that even though the Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul was hidden away, jealous kings searched for it,” Rao said as he walked with them. “The armies came too close to finding it. In order to protect their secret, they chose to die.”

“They killed themselves?”

“You must remember that the men who built this place and lived here were ordained monks who had achieved Nirvana. They did not fear death because for them death only represented a metamorphosis, a transition from one thing to another. They themselves were protected in death, but they could not protect this place. So, as the legend says, they starved themselves.”

On the other side of the bridge, Annja caught a shimmer of something in the water. She redirected her flashlight and shined it down into the depths. She didn’t know how deep the moat was, but the ivory reflection of a skull shone from four or five feet down.

“My god,” Klykov said softly. He added his light to Annja’s and Rao did the same.

Some of the monks joined them and continued the underwater exploration.

Annja removed another glow stick from her backpack, taped a stone to it with duct tape, cracked the stick to life and eased it into the water. The blue light stood out against the darkness as the stick and stone dropped into the depths. As it went down, it illuminated the skeletons that lay piled on top of each other.

The monks commented excitedly as others made the same discovery.

“They drowned themselves?” Klykov asked.

“No,” Annja said quietly, “this is where those who survived the longest brought the bodies of those who died first.”

* * *

A
FTER
THE
DISCOVERY
of the dead lying in the moat, the expedition’s mood turned somber. Walking through the presence of death had that tendency. Annja had seen the reaction set in many times, and the more death that was present, the more somber the people became.

Still, she felt the thrill of excitement course through her as she helped open one of the huge gates at the entrance to the temple. The iron hinges squealed in protest, and one of them shattered after centuries of disuse.

She paused at the entrance, taking in the layout. Even though the central dome was ahead of her, there was an inner wall set back thirty feet. One of the young monks strode forward, drawn by the need to see more, faster. Annja recognized the same feelings inside herself, but she was able to rein them in.

The young monk stepped on a section of the flooring a few feet from her and the stone quivered just long enough to warn Annja about what was going to happen.

“Get back!” she yelled even as she hurled herself forward toward the monk.

Klykov, Rao and the others stepped back at once, aware of the shifting floor only a short distance away.

When the stones gave way beneath the monk, he dropped with a cry of surprise.

Annja threw herself flat on the stone floor at the edge of the gaping hole that had opened up and managed to grab the monk’s pack in her left hand. She hoped that the pack harness was on tight and would hold.

The pack proved to be too loose. As the monk fell and she pulled on the pack, he slid out of the straps. Thankfully he was quick enough to grab one of them as he dropped. Annja shimmied to the edge of the hole before she was able to properly brace herself and keep from being pulled in after him. Her shoulder screamed in agony and burned like fire, but she held on stubbornly, refusing to let the monk fall.

Then Rao was beside her, throwing himself on the ground and reaching down after the monk. The man caught Rao’s hand, and together, Annja and Rao pulled him back to solid ground.

After the man was safe, Annja picked up her dropped flashlight and shined it down into the hole. At the bottom twenty feet down, sharpened stakes set in rows awaited the unwary.

The monk thanked Annja fervently.

“Okay,” Annja said as she got to her feet, “we pay attention to that warning. From now on, we go slowly and in single file. Understood?”

Everyone acknowledged her.

“I can take point,” she said with a small smile, “but if any of you would rather lead, let me know.”

There were no takers.

* * *

A
NNJA
USED
A
wooden staff she’d found just inside the gates to probe suspicious areas and set off traps. The temple builders had been inventive, and they hadn’t intended for uninformed interlopers to survive. In addition to the pit area at the entrance, they’d found two other places where the floor broke away, and six areas that had an assortment of sharp blades that would have pierced or slashed those who weren’t careful.

Shoving the staff against the third stone in the narrow walkway where she felt certain another trap lay in wait, Annja hopped away sharply as a section of the wall spun around to reveal sharp disk-shaped blades protruding from the stone. If she’d made the mistake of walking there herself, she would have been disemboweled. As it was, displaced air danced over her.

Finally, though, they found the entrance to the inner courtyard. The huge doors showed scenes of a veritable paradise lying in wait, a mountaintop overlooking a peaceful jungle where birds flew in a cloudless sky.

Annja tapped all around the gates, on the floor and on the walls. Nothing seemed amiss. She used the staff to press against the door, then dodged back out of the way as sharpened sticks thrust through the door, narrowly avoiding them.

Gently, she pushed on the door and had to put her weight behind it to get it to open. She shined her flashlight inside and found the main building towered only a few feet away. Given the distance and the darkness, it was hard to see how big the structure was.

She took glow sticks from her backpack and tossed them into the courtyard, watching as the blue pools of light did the trick. The front of the temple was nearly a hundred feet across. Judging from the structure of the dome that capped the building, the temple was a square.

Before the main temple, walkways covered the area between smaller buildings along the inner wall that flanked the courtyard. Small pebble gardens broke up the flat, lifeless landscape that had been created from the natural cavern.

Cautiously, Annja ventured inside the courtyard, testing the ground with the staff as the glow sticks provided a pool of light around her. Her footsteps echoed inside the immediate vicinity, making the temple sound hollow and empty.

The feeling that had overtaken her was unmistakable. The thrill of discovery was a drug that never got old even though she’d been through this so many times before.

The temple and this cavern were a point in history that had been frozen and forgotten except for legend and myth. Now, since it had been found, it was once more part of the world, and all the secrets it contained, all of the history, would be ready for generations to come.

She looked back over her shoulder. “Ready to go inside the temple?”

“I am. If you think it’s safe.”

Annja grinned at the monk. “We’re not going to know that until we get there.” She stepped forward and Rao followed her. Klykov matched the young monk step for step.

* * *

A
LTHOUGH
THE
WINDS
from the hovering helicopter buffeted him as he dangled from the rappelling rope, Sequeira didn’t like the heights or the fact that the landing area was so small. Still, he reminded himself to focus instead on the prize that lay waiting for him.

Annja Creed and the monks had been inside the mountain for almost an hour. They were far ahead of him, but Sequeira knew that whatever was inside also remained within, and he would soon have it.

Nicolau de Figueiredo and his handpicked team were finishing up checking the climbing ropes left by Annja Creed and her party.

Two men steadied Sequeira as he touched down. He tried not to show how fearful he was of falling and looked at de Figueiredo as the mercenary approached.

De Figueiredo was lean and swarthy, and known for his cruelty, yet he always behaved in a taciturn, professional manner.

Sequeira had approved of him immediately.

He even wore sunglasses and a helmet that was a duplicate of the one Sequeira wore.

“The ropes are all in good shape, Mr. Sequeira. We will be able to use them to get access to the tunnel as soon as we have everyone gathered. I’ll leave a team here to safeguard our back.”

Sequeira nodded, totally preoccupied with getting inside the mountain, imagining what riches lay buried there. He glanced up and saw that Brisa’s helo was descending. His heart hammered inside his chest, but he knew it was eagerness, not fear, that drove him now.

* * *

A
FTER
PASSING
THROUGH
two antechambers without encountering any more traps, Annja started to hope that no more deadly devices awaited them. Either they’d found them all or the temple builders had felt that anyone who had made it this far meant no harm.

Or they’ve got one extremely nasty surprise still left for us.
Annja told herself not to dwell on that.

She tossed the last of her glow sticks onto the floor of the central chamber. Reflected in the soft light of the room’s interior were pots containing diamonds and gold. Others held silver, coins and gems. Still more contained jewelry and bars of precious metals. Statues constructed of gold and ivory, all of them of the Buddha and the various Hindu gods, stood mixed in.

Rao spoke in his native tongue, as did Klykov, and though Annja didn’t understand the words, she knew she had the gist of it. What lay before them was unbelievable.

“I thought these people took vows of poverty,” Klykov said.

“We do,” Rao said, “but it takes money to build a temple, to feed and clothe monks, and to help those who need assistance. The Temple of the Dreaming Rumdul was highly successful in its day. The monks left this treasure here so that the work they had started could be continued.” He paused. “You have to remember, the monks who lived here gave their lives so this—their legacy—would be protected from the invading Vietnamese.”

“This isn’t all they left.” Annja strode across the chamber to a wall of scrolls. She shined her light over them, not daring to touch them till she was certain they would survive the handling. “These are texts, probably of the temple’s history, the life stories of the monks who live here, and some of them might even be discourses made by the Buddha himself.” Annja smiled at the thought. Her excitement disappeared when she heard gunshots punctuate the near silence that filled the cavern.

Klykov drew his sidearm only a second or two before Annja did the same. Rao, armed now himself with a machine pistol and looking fairly adept with it, ran back through the other chambers to reach the main temple’s entrance.

At the doorway, barely revealed by the flashlights in the hands of the monks that held them, Annja spotted muzzle flashes of fully automatic weapons sparking in the darkness.

A nearby monk jerked sideways and his flashlight shattered, the light extinguishing immediately as bullets ripped through it. The monk went down, then scrabbled on all fours for another position as more bullets tracked him.

“Turn off the flashlights!” Even as she yelled the order, Annja flicked off her own flashlight, followed almost immediately by Rao and Klykov.

Bullets hammered into the temple door frame beside Annja’s head. Stone splinters stung her face as she took cover.

“The shooters have night-vision capability,” Klykov warned. On the other side of the doorway, he rummaged in his chest pack and took out a flare pistol. He loaded the pistol and fired it into the open space above the temple.

The flare streaked upward like a shooting star, then exploded into a bright nimbus of light. The effort showed the mercenaries poring through the outer gate. All of them started stripping the NVGs they were wearing.

Klykov passed Annja the flare gun and a bag of extra flares. “Keep the flares over them. Do not allow them to use their night vision again.”

Annja holstered her pistol, then reloaded the flare gun.

Klykov slid the Dragunov from his shoulder and readied the weapon. As Annja fired the flare gun into the open space again, Klykov fired his massive rifle three times, shifting the sniper weapon slightly each time.

A hundred feet away, three of the mercenaries went down as the large-caliber bullets found their targets.