Kingdom (12 page)

But what is it really that is driving me to do this? she thought again. She really couldn’t understand this yearning she had to get on the flight, to get over the Himalayas to the magical realm beyond. She shrugged it off. All of a sudden, reality took hold of her again and the fantasy deflated. It was a crazy idea. She had only just got to Delhi. Both Dan and the police had ordered her to stay put. Time to consider it later, she thought.

‘Let me see what funds I can come up with,’ she said curtly to Adams. Then, in a more conversational tone, she added, ‘There’s one more thing you might be able to advise me on, if you don’t mind. I want to know the origins of an old bone that a friend of mine gave me. Could you take a look at it?’

Adams nodded briskly.

‘Sure.’

Krishna seemed heartily relieved that the talk of a journey had abated. Nancy took the cloth bundle out of her bag and laid it on the rug. She had already removed Herzog’s
Trib
ID and stashed it in her bag. Adams knelt forward, his attitude expectant, perhaps even eager. She fiddled with the string and then slowly unrolled the dirty cloth, until she had revealed the strange bone with its metal mouthpiece.

‘May I?’ Jack Adams’s salesman’s swagger had gone altogether. A new guise, thought Nancy: the professional archaeologist. She nodded at him. As if it were a priceless vase, or other valuable antique, he reached down. He held it in his hands and examined it from all angles, slowly turning it this way and that. Then he paused and examined the mouthpiece more closely. He called over to Kim in Hindi and the boy trotted over with a small magnifying glass. Adams popped this into his right eye socket and proceeded to further scrutinize the metal mouthpiece. Finally, he let the eyepiece drop into the palm of his hand and with an expression of great earnestness, he gave the bone back to Nancy.

‘Do you know what this is?’ There was deep suspicion in his voice.

‘I think it’s called a bone trumpet . . .’ she replied with little conviction.

‘Put it to your lips and blow gently through the mouthpiece.’

Very tentatively she placed the mouthpiece in her mouth and blew. An eerie, haunting cry emanated from the old bone. Adams nodded slowly.

‘It’s used in Tibetan Tantric ceremonies. But bone trumpets are older than that. They were used in the Bronze Age and probably before then as well. Judging by the state of the bone, I’d say this one is very, very old.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Taphonomy. The study of the dating and decay of old bones. It’s my field of expertise. I would have to check of course, but just looking at it I can tell it is at least twenty thousand years old, possibly much, much older.’

Then, almost absentmindedly, he added, ‘It is made from the femur of a dead man.’

Nancy shivered with disgust.

‘Euugh! What next!’

Hurriedly she placed the bone back onto the cloth and wiped her hands on the carpet. Adams seemed genuinely surprised by her squeamishness.

‘Don’t worry. I doubt the previous owner misses it. Do you know what a sky burial is?’

She shook her head.

‘In many parts of the Himalayas, they don’t bury their dead and there isn’t enough wood on the barren mountain slopes to cremate them, so instead they leave them on the mountain tops. In Tibet the priests cut up the corpses and the vultures devour them so that the soul can pass quickly through the Bardo – the world between life and death. When the birds have done their work, the priests come and break up the remaining bones and scatter them like dust. Sometimes bones are left over.’

He gestured at the bone, lying on the carpet.

‘Ancient sky burial sites, high in the mountains, are where we find most bones in the Himalayas. But this one might have come from a chieftain’s burial mound in central Asia, or somewhere further west, in Europe perhaps.’

He looked up at her suspiciously.

‘Can you tell me precisely where you got it? It’s not from the region is it?’

Nancy paused. For a moment she gazed at the bone, then she decided:

‘Why do you ask? Do you recognize the symbols?’

He paused for a second, long enough for her to be absolutely certain that he was not telling her the whole truth.

‘Yes and no. The dagger and the swastika are Aryan I would guess. The Aryans were the original conquerors of India. They swept down from the plains of central Asia four or five millennia ago, and at about the same time they also migrated westwards into Europe. They brought their own religion to the subcontinent, a sort of proto-Hinduism. The swastika which you see everywhere in this part of the world is an archetypal Aryan symbol.’

His voice trailed off as he studied the mouthpiece again.

‘And the letters?’ asked Nancy.

Adams deliberately ignored her question and instead, fixing her with his penetrating gaze, he said:

‘Where did you get this?’

‘From Anton Herzog. He sent it to my office.’

Her answer produced a complex reaction in Jack Adams. He bridled visibly. Krishna had said that Anton didn’t much like Adams, and she felt from his immediate response that the feeling was mutual. Yet there was something else: he was looking more carefully at the bone, as if it was weighted with further significance. Seeing his eager eyes upon it, his gaze somehow incontinent, almost ravenous, Nancy felt nervous again. So she began to rewrap the bone in the cloth, watching Adams closely. And, under her scrutiny, Adams forced a smile, though his eyes were still glued to the bone.

‘Listen. I know Herzog. I can help,’ he said. ‘I can identify it for you – if you just let me have it . . .’

Nancy paused.

‘But what about the letters? Do they mean anything? Do you know where they’re from?’

‘No.’

He was lying, of that she was certain. He continued urgently, desperate now to persuade her.

‘Listen, let me take it to the Delhi museum.’ He gestured to the back of the room, towards the doorway. ‘They have all the equipment. We can date it by measuring the state of decay of its radioactive isotopes . . . It’s not perfect and this bone will have been polluted a lot but it’s worth trying . . . and I can check the letters – find out where they’re from. And I can compare the design on the mouthpiece to others in my collection – and at the museum. I know everyone there.’

‘First, tell me why you think Anton might have had this bone.’

She could see he was confused – perhaps he was wondering why on earth she would be asking such a question if she really knew Herzog, or indeed, if Herzog really had given it to her.

Cautiously he said, ‘Herzog has certain ideas, about Tibet, and the history of mankind . . .’

She waited for him to continue.

‘For our own different reasons, we are both looking for evidence . . .’

She glanced at Krishna and then back at Adams and said, ‘Evidence that proves that Charles Darwin was wrong?’

Adams was being cagey. ‘In my case, something like that.’

‘And Anton? He’s not an archaeologist or a palaeontologist.’

Adams paused then said, ‘No. Our interests coincide, that’s all. We discuss our research from time to time.’

Nancy’s brow furrowed.

‘What research?’

Again he paused; he seemed reluctant to be more forthcoming. She needed something more, some small thread she might follow, some clue as to what Herzog had really been up to all these years.

‘Listen, Mr Adams,’ she said urgently, ‘I need your help. I’ve just arrived and Anton’s out of town at the moment. Tell me what Anton was researching and maybe I will let you test the bone.’

His eyes scanned her suspiciously, as if it was she who was the renegade, and then he slowly nodded his head.

‘OK. I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much.’ He paused, clearly working out where to begin, how to make sense of Anton Herzog to someone who knew nothing of Tibet.

‘Anton has some strange ideas.’ He glanced down at the bone trumpet. ‘He’s a sort of treasure hunter.’

‘I thought you said he wasn’t an archaeologist.’

‘He’s not. The treasure he’s looking for is quite different from all this stuff.’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘He’s after ancient carriers of secret knowledge. The lamas call them “Terma”.’

‘What are they?’

‘Listen, I don’t really know. Temples, sacred texts, beautiful valleys, gates to other worlds – who knows? The lamas have written whole books about the “termas”, but you can never be sure if you are understanding them on the right level or if you are taking them too literally. It’s all always so vague. That’s the way with esoteric traditions. I certainly don’t understand any of it, and to be frank it doesn’t interest me. Apparently there are still lamas alive today who know the locations of these things, know how to find them and bring them back into this world.’

She was staring at him in disbelief. Now it was Herzog who sounded like the crank and the mystery surrounding him seemed to deepen by the hour.

Clearly wanting to distance himself from Herzog’s strange interests, Jack Adams continued. ‘Listen, Anton had some kooky ideas that I don’t go in for. We didn’t really discuss them . . . Sometimes, the way he talks, he sounds more like a lama than the lamas themselves. He brought bones to me and asked me to date them or he brought ancient prayer wheels or other sacred objects. I’m always glad for the evidence and he wanted me to check to see if he was looking in the right parts of the Himalayas. He wanted to know if he was on the right track, archaeologically speaking. In order to find what he was looking for he needed to be near the areas of oldest human habitation. The termas that he was looking for dated from many millennia ago; they were vastly old.’

Nancy was thinking out loud. ‘It’s all extraordinary. It just sounds so crazy and I don’t understand it. Everyone says that he was such an intelligent man.’ Her brow was knitted in incomprehension. Adams answered curtly.

‘He is. Listening to him speak is a pleasure in itself. No one knows as much as he does about Tibet, but he’s equally knowledgeable about dozens of other subjects. He’s an old guy; he’s read a lot and thought a lot. He’s a polymath – it’s really pretty incredible.’

‘But he really believed he would find these “termas” in Tibet?’

‘Sure in Tibet. He’s not the first intelligent man to go hunting for secret paradises or lost founts of knowledge up there, and I’m sure he won’t be the last . . . Tibet’s got a great tradition of explorers who’ve had esoteric interests: Sven Hedin, Aurel Stein, even the Nazis sent expeditions to Tibet, looking for God knows what.’

‘I see. And that’s all you know?’

He answered without looking her in the eye:

‘I told you: we hardly ever spoke about the details. I hunt for old bones and worked flints and the locations of ancient settlements, things like that. That’s quite different from Anton. He’s not interested in proving anyone wrong – in looking for evidence that ancient man existed. He takes that as read. He needs to locate the lost kingdoms because he believes they will lead him to his ultimate goal. And he doesn’t give a damn what other people think.’

Suddenly Adams laughed. ‘And you wouldn’t bet against him, he’s the cleverest person I’ve ever met.’

Nancy sighed unhappily.

‘Thanks for your help.’

She stood up. Adams scrambled to his feet.

‘And the bone? May I borrow it?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

A change had come over Jack Adams. He was beginning to look desperate. He didn’t want the conversation to end. How the tables had turned, she thought, from when she first walked in to his strange office, overflowing with antiques and pieces of human and animal skeletons.

In what was clearly a bid to sound relaxed he said, ‘So where is Anton anyway? Gone off with Maya to a hill station for a few days’ R and R?’

Out of the corner of her eye Nancy saw Krishna blanch guiltily. She tried to stay composed and not to let on that she had no idea who Maya was. She looked at Adams and replied as flatly as she could, ‘No – he’s just out of town. Doing a story.’

She walked over to the doorway.

Adams was shadowing her every move, and now he even put his arm on her shoulder, too heavily for her liking, and made a last attempt: ‘Listen, I’ll do the trip to Pemako for $10,000, all in, if you let me examine the bone and tell me where Anton got it.’

‘I’ll think about it and call you later,’ Nancy stuttered, pulling herself away from his heavy grasp and slipping through the doorway into the sweltering Delhi night.

‘The Cave of the Magicians.’

With a glint of triumph in his eyes, Colonel Jen prodded the Chinese military map with his finger. The Captain craned his neck – they were alone in the old library. On the map, the Himalayas ran from left to right. In between the majestic mountains flowed the river Tsangpo, rising near the Holy Mountain of Kailash in the west and then winding its way eastwards through the high valleys, filling with glacial meltwater as it went. Halfway along the Himalayan chain, the river turned abruptly south and crashed down through the cliffs of the Tsangpo gorge, gushing out into the valleys of Pemako. It fell from 17,000 feet to 5,000 feet in eleven miles. In Pemako, it continued at a more sedate pace through the forest until it disappeared again down into another impenetrable gorge. Twenty miles further south, and 3,000 feet further down, it transformed itself into the sacred Indian river, the Brahmaputra.

Colonel Jen acknowledged that the route would be arduous. Mountains, a river and a green patch that marked Pemako jungle. The rest of China, even the rest of Tibet, was well mapped by comparison. There were roads, villages, possible landing sites for helicopters and so on. But this map of Pemako was hopeless – it might as well have come from a children’s fairytale book. Colonel Jen shook his head.

‘The monk tells me that they are heading with the stranger for the Cave of the Magicians – the entrance to the cave system is supposed to be here.’

He prodded at an area on the map close to where he had marked the location of Litang gompa.

‘If we do not get there before they do then we’ve lost our chance of catching them. I cannot tell you how frustrating this is. We only missed them by a few hours.’