The Tiger Warrior (38 page)

“Your uncle?” Costas said. “The uncle whose body we found in the jungle?”

Katya nodded. “But the broadsheet probably never would have been saved had it not been for one thing Howard said in that lecture, the one thing that explains how my uncle came to be in the jungle and to die there. It’s in those pencil notes.”

“Go on,” Jack said.

She took the paper out of the plastic. “It’s at the bottom. It says,
‘Roman military-style carvings found in jungle.’
And then
‘cave temple$$
The first note was taken from what Howard said, and the second was guesswork by Wu Che. Almost all ancient carvings then being found in southern India were from cave temples or shrines, so it was a reasonable surmise.”

“Incredible,” Jack murmured. “There are no surviving drafts of the lecture and it was never published. In Howard’s papers I found an exchange of letters with the editor of the institute journal badgering Howard for a typescript. The paper had been co-authored with Robert Wauchope, who’d been posted back to the Survey of India. Howard claimed the two of them needed to collaborate to produce a polished version, but that evidently never happened. There was a new editor a few years later and the matter was dropped. It always struck me as odd for Howard not to publish. His collection of Roman coins from India was a passion of his. But what you’ve said might shed light on it. Something was holding him back.”

“Something he said in the lecture he shouldn’t have said?” Costas suggested.

“Here’s what I know,” Katya said. “At the bottom of this sheet Wu Che writes
‘Spoke privately after the lecture to Captain Howard, no more information forthcoming.’
But then I think he tried to contact Howard again.”

Jack’s mind was suddenly racing. “I knew this rang a bell. He
did
try again. It’s in another letter in Howard’s papers, in the chest in
Seaquest II
It dates from a few years later, in 1891. Someone from the Chinese embassy in London wrote to Howard about the Rampa Rebellion. That’s why I remember it. I’m certain it was the same Chinese name, Wu Che Sianghu. The letter was purportedly about opium. He knew that Howard had been one of the longest-serving British officers in Rampa. He wanted to know if Howard knew of any ritual contexts in which opium might be used by the jungle peoples, in ceremonies, in caves, temples.”

“He was fishing for more details about that shrine,” Costas suggested.

“Wu Che must have done some research after the lecture, worked out where Howard was during his time in India with the Madras Sappers, anywhere out of the ordinary. Details of officers’ deployments were published in the annual
Army List
. He would have seen Howard’s deployment to Rampa in 1879 and 1880. It was close to the area of Roman influence in southern India yet hardly explored by Europeans, with hundreds of square miles of jungle not even surveyed. It was just the kind of place where soldiers on patrol might have stumbled on an ancient shrine. The Royal Engineers officers and NCOs of the Madras Sappers were the only British army personnel with the Rampa Field Force, and it’s possible that Howard was the only veteran in England at the time of his lecture. Wu Che might have played on that too. He might have expected Howard to be eager to respond to any query about the campaign. But Wu Che’s letter has Howard’s handwritten ‘Not replied’ across the top. It was obviously Howard’s firm decision, but it was perhaps a mistake. Not replying at all might have rung alarm bells for Wu Che.”

“I thought Howard had clammed up about the rebellion anyway,” Costas said. “Something you think happened to him out there. Some trauma.”

“But Wu Che wouldn’t have known about that,” Jack said. “He would have assumed the lack of reply was because Howard refused to be forthcoming about something he’d found.”

“Howard may have regretted his slip in the lecture, mentioning the sculpture, and determined never to make the mistake again,” Katya said. “When the letter arrived he would have remembered Wu Che from after the lecture, and that may have set off his own alarm bells too. He might have remembered the pact Jack thinks he and Wauchope made after leaving the shrine. That’s maybe when he decided not to go ahead with publishing the paper.”

Costas looked puzzled. “What is it that excites a Chinese diplomat in 1888 about reports of Roman sculpture in a jungle shrine in southern India? What’s that got to do with opium?”

Katya paused. “That’s why I told you about the First Emperor. There’s a connection. A pretty astonishing one. And you are the first outsiders to hear this.” She took a deep breath. “When the First Emperor was planning his afterlife, he entrusted the sanctity of his tomb to his most trusted bodyguards, to men of his clan who had ridden down with him into China from the Qin homeland in the northern steppes. They were Mongols, fierce nomad horsemen, from the stock who would one day spawn Genghis Khan and the most terrifying army the world has ever known. The emperor’s bodyguard wore tiger skins over their armor, and wielded great swords. They called themselves tiger warriors.”

Jack stared at Katya. “Go on.”

“There were twelve of them, his closest bodyguard,” Katya continued. “Six was the First Emperor’s sacred number, and any multiples of it had special power. Even during his lifetime the warriors were secret, and they revealed themselves only to the emperor’s enemies, to those they were sent to hunt down, those who would never live to tell what they saw. In time, one of them became the killer, the emperor’s closest bodyguard, and he alone became known as the tiger warrior. On the emperor’s deathbed, the twelve were entrusted with the outer ring of defenses of his tomb. The inner sanctum was entrusted to a hereditary family of guardians, who lived within the tomb precinct. The twelve were sworn to infiltrate Xian society for generations to come, as courtiers, officials, army officers, an invisible power always ready to pounce. They were promised immortality through endless reincarnation, the eternal earthly vanguard of the terracotta warrior army who were buried around the emperor’s tomb. For more than two thousand years the tiger warriors have kept the tomb inviolate, from tomb robbers, from later emperors, from archaeologists. Inviolate, that is, with one exception.”

“Something was taken,” Jack murmured.

Katya nodded. “Of all the wondrous treasures of the tomb, only the guardian and the twelve knew what lay at the apex of the heavens, directly over the tomb itself Sima Qian, author of the
Records of the Grand Historian
, knew nothing of it.”

“A pair of precious stones,” Jack murmured. “Stones that interacted to produce a light like a star in the heavens. A double jewel. The jewel of immortality.”

Katya stared at him, then spoke quietly. “In the last act of the burial ritual, the guardian alone was in the tomb, passing from the central chamber to the entrance before sealing the vault for all eternity. Something made the warriors suspect him of stealing the greatest treasure, and their suspicions hardened when the guardian lived to a great age, well over one hundred years. That was not uncommon for steppe Mongolians, but was enough to convince them that he had taken something that prolonged life, a treasure that should rightly have been left in the tomb to release them from their servitude and allow the emperor to rise again. They never saw the guardian die. He returned to the northern steppes, handing over the custodianship to his son, a tradition that continued. But then, five generations on, the son of the guardian himself disappeared. He did not return to the steppes but went west beyond the boundary of the empire, strayed to where he should not go. The twelve decided to act. The tiger warrior was unleashed.”

“Let me guess,” Jack murmured. “That was 18 BC, maybe a little earlier?”

Katya stared at him again, and continued. “The son of the guardian disguised himself as a Sogdian trader, and joined one Silk Route caravan, then another. The tiger warrior and his henchmen chased him across the Taklamakan Desert, toward the Tien Shan Mountains, up here to Lake Issyk-Kul, into the ravines and passes beyond. They had him in their grasp, but then something got in their way.”

“A band of renegade Roman legionaries,” Jack murmured.

“In their secret oral tradition, the twelve remembered them as
kauvanas
, an ancient Chinese word for westerners,” Katya said. “But my uncle was convinced of who they were.”

“I was wondering when your uncle was going to come into this,” Costas said.

“This was the story he pieced together. It fits with your scenario, Jack. The Romans attack the caravan and seize the disguised Sogdian. They keep him alive, as a guide. The warriors realize the Romans have him, and attack, but are repulsed, by a foe stronger than any they have ever encountered before. One of their number is cut down in the ravines, and one of the Romans too. That’s the grave we found by the lake. By now there are only a dozen of the Romans left. The tiger warrior and his henchmen pursue them to this place, then see the survivors embark on the lake and row east. They find the body of Liu Jinn, the guardian’s son, but the treasure is gone. They follow the boat along the shore, until it disappears in a storm near the end of the lake. But they realize that the Romans in the boat were fewer in number than they should have been.
One is missing
. They return to the western end of the lake, to where they had found the murdered Liu Jinn. They track the missing Roman, follow the dripped blood from the weapon the man had used. They glimpse him, high in the passes of the mountains to the south. They pursue him relentlessly, for weeks, months, sometimes coming close, sometimes losing him. They follow him through the valleys of Afghanistan, through the Khyber Pass into India, down the Ganges to the Bay of Bengal. Then, in the jungles of the south, they lose him for good. They know he’s in there somewhere, but it’s as if the jungle has absorbed him. But the Chinese do not give up. They infiltrate the Roman trading colony at Arikamedu, posing as silk merchants. For generations they remain, watching, waiting. But then the Romans leave, and with the rise of the Arabs the sea trade with the west comes to an end. The Chinese return home, and with that the story of their quest moves into the realm of legend, part of the mythology of an obscure secret society who seem to disappear from living history.”

“And now we know their names, the Romans,” Jack said. “From the tomb inscription in the jungle. Fabius, leader of the group, who went off east over the lake. And his best friend Licinius, the one who escaped south. And we know that they had the treasure. Fabius had the one jewel, the peridot. Licinius had the other,
sappheiros
, lapis lazuli. They must have parted ways unaware of what they had shared out between them, of the power of the jewels together. The Chinese must have thought Licinius had taken both parts of the jewel, and fled from his comrades knowing the power of what he had stolen, something that might make him an emperor in his own world.”

“Katya’s uncle may have read that inscription too, before he was murdered,” Costas said. “And those who murdered him may have found out too.”

“So what happened to the tiger warrior, and the twelve?” Jack asked.

Katya paused. “Their pledge to protect the tomb, to recover the lost treasure, remained strong, through all the vicissitudes of Chinese history, through all the emperors and dynasties who might have plundered the monuments of their forebears. The warriors nurtured the cult of the First Emperor, the mystique that still surrounds his name today. Wu Che, the Chinese diplomat who went to Howard’s lecture, was one of them. He was a keen historian, and wrote down the story I’ve just told you, the oral tradition recounted at their secret meetings. And then it seemed that their quest might be rekindled. In the second half of the nineteenth century, European scholars were reading the newly translated
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
, and were beginning to understand the truth of Roman mercantile involvement in south India. Wu Che kept his ear to the ground, seeking anything unusual, anything in the archaeological discoveries that might suggest a maverick Roman, a legionary. When Howard mentioned the jungle shrine with Roman carvings, the light began flashing.”

“And that’s really why you’re here, by Lake Issyk-Kul,” Jack said quietly. “It wasn’t just to record petroglyphs and search for inscriptions from the Silk Route. You wanted to find that Roman. You’re on this trail too. You and your uncle are part of all this.”

Costas eyed Katya. “Well? Your uncle was one of the twelve, wasn’t he?”

Katya paused. “My uncle and my father both knew the story, passed down to them. My father inherited the family papers, but he had little interest in the mythology of the brotherhood. To him the jewels were lost forever, if they even existed. He was into the antiquities black market and easier prizes. It was my uncle who encouraged my interest in ancient languages and archaeology. Two years ago while we were on the Black Sea after my father’s death, my uncle came across those lecture notes of Wu Che, while he was hastily searching through my father’s papers in Kazakhstan before Interpol arrived. My uncle had already made the connection between the tiger warrior legend and Crassus’ lost legionaries. He took up where Wu Che left off He went to the India Office archives in London to research the
Madras Military Proceedings
and pinpoint where Howard had been during the Rampa Rebellion.”

“The same records I studied,” Jack exclaimed.

Katya nodded. “You were both on the same trail. In a district gazetteer he came across mention of a shrine, to Rama. That was the clincher. And that’s where you found him. His body.”

“Have you told Katya your theory about that name, Jack?” Costas said.

Katya replied first. “My uncle might have been there already.
Rama
seemed a very similar word to
Roman
. He mentioned it to me, but we didn’t want to voice it until we were on firmer ground. The similarity seemed too obvious.”

“Nothing’s too obvious in this game,” Jack murmured, peering at Katya. “Is there anything else you haven’t told us?”