Dane frowned. “What large sea?”
“I would assume the Pacific,” Beasley said, “given the geography of that part of the world, although for the ancient people of that time, even the Sea of China would have been considered a very large body of water.”
“If it was the Pacific,” Dane said, “then that’s saying the Khmer came from the Americas three thousand years before Christ was born?”
“Possibly much earlier than that,” Beasley said.
“But--” Dane shook his head. “But I thought the Pacific wasn't crossable given the state of navigation and ships of that time.”
Beasley shrugged. “It isn't just ships. Civilization itself didn't supposedly start anywhere on the planet until about 3,000 BC, in China and Mesopotamia. So how did this people obviously coming from a highly civilized place, cross the Pacific and settle in Cambodia at a time when historians tell us civilization didn't even exist? Quite a puzzle, eh?
“All of you gave me a strange look when I mentioned Atlantis, but there may be more to the legend if you start connecting the dots world-wide. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it with what I know right now, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of such a place really existing and the founders of Angkor Kol Ker being refugees from it.”
“Where was Angkor Kol Ker supposed to have been?” Dane asked, remembering the dying words of the CIA man and wanting to stay focused on the immediate problem.
Beasley's hand made a wide swath over the map. “No one knows exactly. Best guess is to the north and east of Angkor Thom and the later palaces built in that region. Most likely in the area where we are going, the remote Banteay Meanchey Region. The jungle can completely cover a place in a few years and there certainly has never been much detailed mapping of the area done.”
“Why was Angkor Kol Ker abandoned?” Dane asked.
Beasley leaned forward in his seat. “Whatever’s going on there now would certainly have been a reason enough to leave then, wouldn’t it? The blockhouse you describe sounds like it was set up to oversee this triangle.”
“How long was Angkor Kol Ker the capitol of the Khmer empire?” Michelet asked.
“I don't know,” Beasley said. “No one does. The only official and agreed upon history we have of the Khmer's starts with the establishment in 802 AD of Angkor Thom. As I've said, they could have been in Angkor Kol Ker for hundreds, if not thousands of years prior to that. And God knows where they were before that.”
Michelet stood up and began pacing. “This is all nonsense. You're talking about events over a thousand years ago,” Michelet said. “What could be in there for a thousand years?”
Beasley smiled, his fat lips revealing crooked teeth. “Have you ever seen old maps? Maps made when men still had to venture out into the unknown, where as far as they knew, no man had been before them?”
Beasley didn't wait for an answer. “There used to be large white spaces on those maps, areas no one knew anything about, or where those who had gone exploring never returned. For lack of anything else to put in those blank spaces, the cartographers would write: 'Here there be monsters.'“
Beasley tapped the map. “Well, I think here there be . . .” he looked at Dane, “. . . monsters. If there's any place on the face of the planet where monsters could still be hiding, it would be here, in the middle of the Cambodian jungle, a place that is practically inaccessible.”
“But you don't think there are monsters, do you?” Dane asked.
“I think things can be explained scientifically,” Beasley said. “For years people thought there was a monster in Loch Ness. They even had a photo, or so the supporters of that theory said, but it turns out the photo was a fake. There was no monster.”
“People and planes didn't disappear into Loch Ness,” Freed observed.
“Yes, that is a troubling aspect,” Michelet said.
“I think it might be worthwhile to take the analogy I made a little bit further,” Beasley said. “In ancient days they marked the blank spots on their maps as being filled with monsters and demons. As these areas were explored, what was really there was filled in.” He tapped the map. “Perhaps, all we have here is a natural phenomenon in this area that we do not yet understand.”
“You have to be able to get there to examine it,” Dane said. “So far that plan hasn't worked well for anyone.”
“But just think,” Beasley said. “If we could find Angkor Kol Ker, we might be able to prove the existence of a civilization that predates the commonly accepted start-point for civilization! And, if the Chinese legend is true, that civilization might have even crossed the Pacific and come from somewhere in the Americas or even beyond! That would throw our accepted course of the history of civilization completely in disarray. It opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities.”
Freed leaned forward, ignoring the academic's enthusiasm, and focusing on Dane. “The things you describe, how could they affect an aircraft? Interfere with navigational devices and radio?”
“I don't know,” Dane said. “That beam of light that lifted Flaherty up. That certainly had some power to it. The thing he shot was a monster or some sort of creature, maybe even,” he said glancing at Beasley, “some animal that's remained hidden deep in the jungle all these years, but the other stuff;” Dane paused. “Well, the sphere that got Castle, that was something else. I don't think that was natural but it wasn’t a machine either.”
“I just want to get my daughter out of there,” Michelet said. “All this speculation does us no good.”
“It gives us an idea of what we’re up against in an unprecedented situation,” Freed said.
“But there is perhaps a precedent,” Beasley said. “There is another place on the planet where people and planes and ships disappear and monsters have been reported. I'm sure you've all heard of the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Freed muttered, finally letting his feelings show and dropping his professional shield.
“Think about it!” Beasley said excitedly. “The Bermuda triangle encompasses water. What if there were something like it on land?”
“What exactly is the Bermuda Triangle?” Dane asked, interested in this new theory.
Beasley shrugged. “No one really knows. But a lot of weird happenings have been documented in the area. The few times in recent memory that people have tried to penetrate this area in Cambodia, weird things have also happened. Plus,” he added, “they're both shaped like triangles.”
“Gentlemen,” Paul Michelet cut in. “Let's stick to what we do know and not go off on tangents.” He looked at the clock on the wall of the cabin. “We will be in Thailand in six hours.”
“You still haven't told us about Angkor Wat,” Dane prompted Beasley, intrigued that there was a relief of one of the things that attacked his team on a temple wall there. It was the first solid proof besides the scar he had that his memory wasn't a combat induced nightmare. It was also a link to sanity in another way: perhaps these creatures of legend had once been real and some of them had survived over the course of the centuries, hidden deep in this forbidden land they were heading towards.
“Angkor Wat is the central temple in the city of Angkor Thom,” Beasley said. “Angkor Thom was the capitol of the known Khmer Empire starting in 802 AD. At that time the Khmer Empire stretched from the Dangrek Mountains in the west to the Cardomon Mountains in the east and south to coast.
“Cambodian legend has it that at one time the entire area was part of the Gulf of Siam, but that a prince fell in love with the daughter of a seven-headed serpent, the Naga King, which I’ve already mentioned. The snake drank all the water to make a place for his daughter to live and thus Cambodia came into being.”
Beasley paused, sensing the disinterest on the part of both Michelet and Freed. “Gentlemen, it is good to remember that much truth is hidden in legend.”
“A seven-headed snake?” Michelet growled. “My only concern is getting my daughter.”
“Go on,” Dane ur
ged.
“All right,” Beasley said. “Just the facts. Besides the mountains surrounding it, the two major geological features of Cambodia are Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong River. Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. It is connected to the Mekong via the Tonle Sap River. During the rainy season, when the Mekong floods, the river reverses course and flows back into the lake, doubling its size. This phenomenon is most interesting and has led to a massive amount of land, some of which is inside your triangle,” Beasley added, pointedly looking at Michelet, “being flooded for half the year. Tonle Sap, when it floods, comes within a few miles of Angkor Wat. I don't think the positioning of the temple or the city was coincidence.”
Beasley leaned forward. “Water is the key. Not just Tonle Sap and the Mekong, but in the way the Khmer built their cities and temples.” He reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out some imagery. “These are the pictures taken by the space shuttle of Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. Notice the moats. Nowhere else on earth has man put such effort in building such massive structures with water barriers as an integral part.
“The moats separate the sacred world from the outer world in Khmer mythology. Look how the temple of Angkor Wat is completely surrounded.”
Dane saw what Beasley meant. A very wide dark band surrounded the temple.
Beasley nodded. “More water. Those are Barays or reservoirs, which is rather interesting considering there’s no need for reservoirs for agriculture in that area, given that there is normally sufficient water already present. Those Barays, each over 16 square kilometers in size, can feed into the moats surrounding both Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. Keeping those moats filled must have been of tremendous importance to the Khmer.”
Beasley's thick finger centered on the square representing Angkor Wat. “The temple is considered one of the world's foremost architectural wonders. If it were any place other than in the jungles of Cambodia, it would be as well known as the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
“In fact, the amount of stone used in building Angkor Wat is estimated to be equal to that used in the Great Pyramid at Giza. The temple covers a square kilometer and the central spire or Prang as it is called, rises over 213 feet above the moats. It is the largest temple of any kind in the world, easily dwarfing the great cathedrals of Europe.
“Unlike the pyramids, though, the surfaces of the temple are not smooth stone. The Khmer covered every available surface with finely carved bas-relief and figure sculpture.”
Dane noted that even Michelet and Freed had been drawn in by Beasley's voice and were now listening carefully.
“Angkor Wat was supposedly built with a very specific idea in mind: to be a schematic interpretation of the Hindu Universe. The Prang in the center represents mythic Mount Meru, while the surrounding moats supposedly represent the ocean.”
“Why do you say supposedly?” Dane asked.
“You have to remember that Hinduism and Buddhism came to Cambodia after these temples were built so those explanations of the architecture and layout that are commonly accepted could not have been the motivating factor in the design or building, but rather added on after the fact, something many of my colleagues fail to acknowledge. What they view as the result of a myth, may in fact have given rise to the myth.
“It is that motivation, gentlemen,” Beasley said, “that I believe to be critical to solving whatever this mystery is.”
“We don't have to solve a mystery,” Michelet said. “We just have to get my daughter and the others out.”
Beasley shook his head. “I think you are mistaken, Mister Michelet. I think this mystery has ensnared your daughter, and the members of your team,” he added, nodding toward Dane. “And we won't be able to accomplish your goals unless we have a much better understanding of what we are up against.”
*****
Bangkok was known in the Orient as Sin City. From its early days catering to divisions of American soldiers on furlough from Vietnam, to the present-day battalions of Japanese businessmen who took sex junkets from their island kingdom, Bangkok had slid into a cesspool of crime, prostitution and corruption that, truth be known, the men in power in Thailand were quite glad to have. Vice brought in hard currency and since it wasn't likely that Disney was going to open a theme park on the muddy banks of the Cho Prang River that ran through the city, the sex industry would have to suffice. Human bodies were not worth much in Thailand and despite having perhaps the highest rate of HIV per capita in the world, the government was not overly concerned with stopping the trade in flesh despite occasional press releases to the contrary.
Nestled among the darkest depths of the red light district off of Patpong Road, the “street of a thousand pleasures,” among the bars, whorehouses and massage parlors, a renovated two story hotel squatted, its recent coat of white paint already dank and dirty. Men slid in and out of the ground floor side entrance, greeted by young girls and boys who would take them along dark corridors to fulfill their desires.
Upstairs was different. There was only one way to the second floor, a single staircase in the back of the building. In the shadows around the stairs several men dressed in black waited, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. They made sure that only those who were invited went up the stairs and turned away the occasional drunken fool.
The staircase opened onto an anteroom with steel walls and a large vault door at the end. Going through the heavy reinforced door, a visitor would come upon a scene that could quite as easily have been drawn up underneath the Pentagon on the other side of the world.
State of the art satellite phones lined one wall, their dishes hidden among the pigeon coops and plywood shanties on the roof. An electronic HDTV display of Southeast Asia eight feet wide by six high rested on another wall. Three rows of computers manned by earnest young men and women faced the map. At the back of the room, furthest from the door, was a raised dais, surrounded by bullet and soundproof, darkly tinted, glass. There was one chair inside, facing a computer console.
The chair was currently occupied by an old man who slowly cracked the shell of a peanut between wrinkled fingers, letting the shell fall to the floor. Taped to the glass were the three sets of imagery he'd had faxed in during his flight to Thailand.
He turned as a red light beeped on the handle of one of the phones in his booth. He picked it up.
“Foreman.”
The voice on the other end was harsh with barely restrained anger. “Foreman, this is Bancroft. I just wanted to let you know we lost Bright Eye.”
A white eyebrow arched on Foreman's face. “Lost it?”
Bancroft's voice was clipped, the tone curt. “It's gone, Foreman. Destroyed. It was imaging down, trying to do what you wanted, and something came back up and destroyed it. Some sort of energy weapon. What is going on over there?” Bancroft's voice went up several notches at the last sentence.
“I don't know,” Foreman said. “That’s why I wanted Bright Eye to give me a picture. Did it get any data?”
“I don’t have all the information yet,” Bancroft said. “I'll have NSA forward whatever they've picked up. But the big issue right now is that I've got some very powerful people on my back because we just had a rather large nuclear reactor explode in a hundred and twenty-five mile orbit. Do you know what that means? Do you have any idea what that means?”
“It means there's something in Angkor Gate that hates pictures,” Foreman replied. “It also means for the first time something has come out of one of the Gates. That we know of,” Foreman added.
“Fuck your Gates!” Bancroft yelled. “We weren't supposed to have this reactor in orbit. We weren’t supposed to have any nuclear reactor in orbit. It violates every treaty this country has ever signed regarding the exploitation of space. Never mind the fact that the reactor was tied to a down-firing laser. That little fact violates every space armament agreement we ever signed also.”
“I didn't blow up your satellite,” Foreman said in a level tone. “But I'm going
to find out who did.”
“Damn right, you'd better.”
Foreman leaned back in his chair and fought for control. “Mister Bancroft, I suggest you forget about what the press is going to say if it should discover this and consider the fact that we don't have a weapon capable of firing one hundred and twenty-five miles into orbit and destroying a satellite, but someone, or something, inside Angkor Gate does. I think that is the more pressing concern at the moment.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end. “All right, Foreman. I'll get back to you. I've got to go brief the Old Man and he's not going to be pleased.”
The phone went dead. Foreman would have smiled but for the current state of affairs; he'd tried to get to the President for the last twenty-five years but had been blocked at each turn by Bancroft and other muddle-headed bureaucrats like him, none of whom had believed the threat. Well, now it was here.
A figure silently appeared to his right. Foreman’s voice was barely above a whisper as he spoke to the woman. “Sin Fen.”
The woman was striking, both for her height and beauty. She was six feet tall with oriental features. Jet-black hair framed high cheekbones above which almond shaped dark eyes were focused on the man in the chair. “Michelet will be landing at the airport in two hours,” she said.
“Dane?” the man asked.
“He boarded the plane in America. It would be logical to assume he is still on board.”
“Can you sense him yet?” Foreman asked
“He is coming,” Sin Fen said. “I feel him getting stronger.”
“And the others?”
“The others here or the others that went there?” the woman asked cryptically but Foreman understood.
“Here.”
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