His gaze twitched towards her laptop. ‘I suppose you’ll be starting work right away, then?’
‘No,’ she assured him. ‘It can wait.’
‘Good. ’Cause Macy wants to draw you all the animals she saw today. Don’t you, love?’
Macy had already produced a box of crayons. ‘You should have come, Mommy! We saw a snow leopard! It was very beautiful.’
Nina got some paper and sat with her family. ‘I wish I’d seen it. But you can draw it for me, that’s just as good.’
Macy started to scribble, her parents offering encouragement as her interpretation of the animal took on form. But before long, Nina couldn’t help but glance towards the laptop – only to catch Eddie’s silently accusing stare. With more than a twinge of shame, she looked back at her daughter’s drawing.
‘Night-night, Mommy,’ said Macy, kissing Nina.
‘Night, honey,’ Nina replied. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, okay?’
‘Okay, Mommy. But I wish you’d come to the zoo with us.’
‘I had something else to do, hon. I’m sorry. I’ll come next time.’ She and her husband went to the door. Eddie blew Macy a kiss, then quietly shut the door behind them. ‘Did she really miss me?’
‘When I told her we were going without you, yeah,’ he replied. ‘Once she saw the animals, though, she was so excited she hardly even remembered I was there. But you should have come.’
‘That sounded a bit accusatory,’ she noted as they entered the lounge.
He shrugged. ‘Just saying.’
‘Because, you know, she’s three years old now. She’s already very independent, and it’s a good time for her to start doing things without both of us there.’
Eddie dropped on to the couch. ‘Or a good time for one of us to start doing things without her?’
She eyed him. ‘That was definitely accusatory.’
‘What can I say? Yeah, it was nice to get out last night and do summat different, but that’s not the same as you going back to work for the IHA. That place never brought us anything but trouble.’
‘I’m not going back to the IHA,’ she said, sitting facing him across the coffee table. ‘I want to follow up on my mom’s research, that’s all. Being able to check the IHA’s database just makes it a hell of a lot easier. Besides, that,’ she indicated her mother’s notes, ‘isn’t work. It’s personal, it’s my family’s history. How could I not look into it?’
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ he said, with reluctance. ‘Well . . . go on then.’
‘Go on then, what?’
He jerked a thumb at the desk. ‘Go and do what you want to do. I can tell you’re absolutely desperate to get started.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘If I don’t let you, you’ll probably explode, and then I’ll have to clean up the mess.’
She scurried past him towards the desk, pausing to kiss the top of his shaved head. ‘Have I mentioned lately that you’re the best husband ever?’
‘I’ll remind you of that next time I want something,’ Eddie told her, smirking.
She opened her laptop and went straight to her email. Lola’s message contained the promised login instructions. Quickly clicking through, she soon had access to what she sought.
The Secret Codex.
The IHA had already done most of the translation work, amongst other things producing a list of the places where Talonor’s forces had established outposts. This was the reason for the agency’s secrecy; were the translations freely available, some locations – ports, peaks, passes – would be readily identifiable today, allowing anyone to set them as landmarks that could be used to find, and raid, potentially priceless archaeological sites.
Right now, though, Nina was only interested in identifying one of them: the Midas Cave. Atlantis, the greatest, richest, most powerful empire of pre-history, had not sent Talonor on his missions of discovery simply out of imperial greed, the endless need for more. He had been tasked with searching for something specific.
And now she was going to find out what it was – and where.
7
‘That should be it,’ Nina muttered, comparing the satellite image on her laptop’s screen with her mother’s annotated map. ‘That has to be it. So . . . why isn’t it?’
‘Why isn’t what?’ said an irritable voice behind her.
She turned to see Eddie, carrying a yawning Macy, enter the lounge. ‘Why isn’t the Midas Cave where it ought to be?’ she replied, frustrated. ‘I located mountain peaks that match the bearings Tobias took, as well as my mom’s work and the records of Talonor’s journey from the Secret Codex. And I also factored in shifts in magnetic north over time, the Atlantean measurement and numerical system, even the video you got of that map in the temple, and everything I know about the region’s history. It all points to the cave being here.’ She jabbed at a point on the map. ‘But it can’t be!’
‘What’s Mommy talking about?’ Macy asked, concerned.
‘Before you were born, this is what she used to do,’ Eddie told her. ‘All the time. She’d get so involved in some archaeological bol— thing that she’d forget to do other stuff. Like sleeping.’
‘I know it’s late, but I needed to—’ Nina checked the laptop’s on-screen clock and gasped. ‘Wait, it’s morning?’
‘Yeah, it’s morning!’ said her husband sarcastically. ‘You didn’t come to bed!’
‘No, that can’t be right. I don’t feel tired.’
Eddie regarded an empty mug beside the computer. ‘How many coffees did you have?’
‘I dunno, three, four? Oh. Yeah, that might explain it. Oh my God, I can’t believe I worked through the whole night!’
‘Is Mommy okay?’ Macy whispered to Eddie. ‘She’s talking weird.’
‘She does that,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get you some brekkie. Hopefully she’ll have sorted herself out by then.’ He headed for the kitchen with his daughter.
Nina followed. ‘But I should have found it, that’s the thing. In the Secret Codex, Talonor says the Midas Cave is on what the locals called Dragon Mountain. There’s a place in Nepal that’s sometimes called that even today, and it’s exactly where the cave should be. But it can’t be, because the only possible route up the mountain has a monastery on it – the same one my mother wrote to. Tobias couldn’t have missed it . . . therefore he couldn’t have gone that way. Which means I’m back at square one.’
‘What’s a monstery?’ Macy asked as she took her seat.
‘Where monsters live,’ said Eddie.
‘Ignore Daddy; it’s where monks live,’ Nina corrected.
He chuckled, then started gathering Macy’s breakfast. ‘So this Midas Cave is definitely a real thing?’
‘Yes. Talonor named it to honour his friend Midas – the prince. Midas made some sort of sacrifice to find it, but the Codex doesn’t say what. It wasn’t his life, though; he travelled on with Talonor afterwards.’ She glanced back at the map. ‘It was the farthest point of that expedition, actually. They returned to Atlantis after finding the cave.’
‘So they were specifically after whatever was inside it?’
‘Looks that way. Talonor left a contingent to guard it and prepare for the arrival of something called “the Crucible”, but he doesn’t say what that is. The people he was writing the Codex for would already have known, so he didn’t need to explain it. It was mentioned in Mom’s notes too, but she didn’t explain it either.’
Eddie sat with Macy and gave her a bowl of cereal. ‘That’s the end of that, then.’
Nina eyed him. ‘You sound almost relieved.’
‘It’ll mean you’ll come to bed at a non-ridiculous time. Or actually come to bed.’
‘I don’t see how I could have been wrong, though. Everything fits, until it all falls apart at t
he end.’
‘Maybe your mum was wrong,’ he suggested.
‘I doubt that,’ she snapped.
‘Blimey, no need to get defensive. Everybody makes mistakes. Even me.’
‘Yeah, I can think of one or seventeen.’
Macy was following the conversation with an ever-furrowing brow. ‘Why do monkeys live on a mountain? I thought they lived in trees.’
Nina laughed. ‘Not monkeys, honey – monks. They’re men who believe in a god so much that they live in a special house called a monastery, where they can spend all their time thinking about it.’
‘That’s silly. Why would you build a house on a mountain? It might fall off.’
‘Maybe they didn’t want visitors,’ suggested Eddie. He started on his own breakfast, pausing when he realised his wife had fallen unnaturally silent. ‘Ay up. What?’
‘I was just thinking,’ Nina said.
‘Yeah, that’s never a good sign.’
‘Oh Daddy’s so funny, isn’t he?’ she snarked to Macy, who giggled. ‘But why would they build a monastery on a mountain?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘Monks do weird stuff. We went to a monastery way up a mountain in India.’
‘Yeah, but when Tobias came back to look for the cave, the monastery he’d originally set out from had been destroyed. What if the monks hadn’t been killed – but had moved?’ She hurried back into the lounge, finding the letter her mother had received from Nepal.
‘Why would they move?’ Eddie called after her. ‘Council tax went up?’
‘Shush!’ She quickly reread the letter. ‘Every answer the monks gave Mom is a non-answer – like saying that parts of the monastery pre-date the 1840s. That could mean anything. They could have transferred statues or altars from the original site.’
‘So you’re telling me a bunch of Buddhist monks lied to your mum?’
‘They’re not technically lying, just being economical with the truth.’ She came back into the kitchen with the letter and map. ‘What if the monks who showed Tobias the cave and the monks who wrote to my mom are the same ones?’
‘They’d be pretty old.’
‘I don’t mean literally the same ones. But they’ve been protecting the cave’s secret all this time. To the point that when they realised Tobias might be able to find it again, they upped sticks and rebuilt their monastery on the only path up the mountain to make sure nobody could get past!’
‘Bit of a long shot,’ said Eddie dubiously.
‘You said my mom might have been wrong. She was – but only in the sense that she’d been given bad data. The monastery was blocking her from seeing the right answer because, well, who’s going to think that a Buddhist monk’s lying to them?’ She put the map on the table and tapped the spot she had indicated earlier. ‘That’s it. That’s the cave. Talonor’s journey meets Tobias’s right there.’
‘Okay, so you think you found it. Now what’re you going to do?’
Nina stared at the map. After a long, thoughtful pause, she said: ‘I’ll need to make a couple of phone calls.’
‘Hello? Can you hear me?’
Nina’s first call had been to Lola at the IHA to obtain contact details for the remote monastery from the UN’s databases, learning that it had a satellite phone for emergencies. After explaining herself to the surprised monk who answered her second call, she had been put through to the man she hoped could help her. The connection was poor, the speaker’s voice echoing as if coming through a long metal pipe, but she could make him out well enough.
Would the answers she received be as clear?
‘Yes, hello,’ she replied, carefully enunciating each word. She could tell that his first language was not English. ‘Is that Abbot Amaanat?’
‘Yes, it is. Are you Dr Wilde?’
‘I am. Thank you for talking to me.’
‘We do not often get telephone calls, especially from famous archaeologists. It is my honour to speak to you.’
‘Again, thank you. You’ve heard of me, then?’
‘Oh yes.’ Amaanat sounded quite elderly, giving her a mental picture of a hunched, bald old man in red and orange robes. ‘We are not out of touch with the world, even here. What may we do for you?’
Nina composed herself before replying. ‘It’s a personal matter, actually,’ she began. ‘I recently received some old letters belonging to my mother, and found one that had been sent from your monastery. I believe you were the person who wrote it.’ She glanced at the letter. The signature was incomprehensible to her, the curlicued Nepalese alphabet being related to Hindi, but beneath it had been written AMAANAT in tiny, careful capitals.
‘I may have, yes. It can take some time, but we try to reply to every letter we receive. It is only polite. What do you wish to ask?’
‘I want to finish her work. She had some questions about the monastery’s history. Do you remember what you said?’
Even with the satellite link’s time delay, it seemed that he hesitated before replying; not because he was searching his memory, but because her question had caught him off guard. ‘I . . . do not remember anything like that recently.’
‘Well, this letter was sent quite a long time ago. 1975 – March, to be exact.’
‘That is a long time ago,’ Amaanat agreed. ‘Too long to remember one letter.’
‘But you were at the monastery in 1975, yes?’
‘Yes, I have been here for more than fifty years.’
Nina was caught between caution and her urge to push for the truth; there was nothing stopping Amaanat from hanging up if he resented being interrogated. ‘I can remind you what she asked. The first question was simple: when was the monastery built?’
‘Ah, that I can answer,’ he said, with no hesitation this time. ‘Parts of it date to the seventeenth century, the period of the Three Kingdoms.’
‘And it’s been in the same place the whole time?’
‘It has been rebuilt several times. There have been avalanches, fires and earthquakes.’
‘But you’ve never been at another location.’
‘No. Since I became a monk, I have always been here.’
You should have been a lawyer, with answers that pedantic, Nina stopped herself from saying. ‘I meant the monks, the order in general. Have they ever lived somewhere else?’
‘In the past, we have sometimes moved when necessary, such as when the monastery was being rebuilt. But we are here now.’
Now she had to contain her exasperation at his becoming outright evasive – yet still without actually saying anything that could be proven as a lie. Maybe politics, not law, should have been his calling. ‘My mother also asked about past visitors to the monastery. Do you know when the first Westerners reached you?’
‘I am afraid I do not,’ said Amaanat. ‘Many have visited our monastery, but we do not keep records of all of them.’
‘But would you know if some had come to you in, say, 1846?’
The very specific date prompted another pause. ‘That was a year of great turmoil in Nepal,’ the abbot said. ‘It is very possible visitors came to us after the war with the British. But again, we do not have records.’
‘I see,’ said Nina, her patience finally running out. ‘Tell me: have you ever heard of an Atlantean explorer called Talonor?’
A startled silence, though the constant hollow moan of the satellite link told her he was still on the line. ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ she went on. ‘Now, I’m following up my mother’s work from over forty years ago. She was trying to find an Atlantean outpost established by Talonor, which the monks – your monks, the same order – showed to an ancestor of ours, Tobias Garde.’
‘Nepal is a very long way from Atlantis,’ said Amaanat. The strain behind his voice implied that politeness was now the only thing k
eeping him from disconnecting.
‘Yeah, but it’s not far from Tibet, and I found an outpost of Atlantis there, so it’s not really a stretch. You might know the one on Dragon Mountain – that is one of the local names for the mountain on which your monastery’s built, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ he admitted.
‘You could know it by another name. The Midas Cave.’
When Amaanat spoke again, courteous vagueness had been replaced by wary suspicion. ‘What do you wish of us, Dr Wilde?’
‘I told you, I want to complete my mother’s work and find the Midas Cave.’
‘Is that all?’
She wasn’t sure what he meant. ‘Yes. What else could there be?’
‘If you believe that finding the Midas Cave will bring you riches, I am afraid you are mistaken.’ It sounded almost like a threat.
‘I don’t care about riches,’ Nina insisted. ‘You said you know who I am, so you should know I’m not interested in money. I just want to see if my mother was right.’
‘I cannot help you, Dr Wilde,’ said the monk. ‘I am sorry to have wasted your time. May you be well and happy.’
The conversation was clearly over. Unless . . .
‘Wait,’ Nina barked. ‘If you don’t want to help, that’s fine. But it means I’ll have to take everything I’ve learned about the Midas Cave to the International Heritage Agency and the Nepalese government, and mount an official archaeological expedition to find it.’
‘You cannot do that!’ said Amaanat, alarmed.
‘Your monastery might be on the mountain, but you don’t own it, do you? I can get permission to explore it easily enough.’
‘There is only one route up the mountain, and you cannot reach it without going through our monastery. We will not let you do that.’
‘Then we’ll climb around you. Or even fly over you. I checked, and you’re well below a helicopter’s maximum altitude.’ She let him think about the situation for a moment. ‘You want to keep the Midas Cave a secret, don’t you?’ she asked, more conciliatory. ‘I can give you my personal assurance of that.’
‘You will not tell anything that you learn to others?’
The Midas Legacy (Wilde/Chase 12) Page 9
