Seeker’s Curse

by Alex Archer

  “We suspect the other two dead men were the real hit team. We found them several blocks away.”

  “I thought you had a confession,” Annja said with a sinking sensation.

  Pan shrugged. “The burn victim has confessed to taking part in a terrorist attack. He claims it was merely to strike a blow for independence of all ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia. That seems unlikely. Bajraktari isn’t the sort to indulge in violence for mere political posturing. He takes his violence far too seriously for that.”

  “And the others?” Annja asked.

  “Our suspect disclaims all knowledge of them.” Pan sipped his ouzo. “He may be telling the truth. In fact, he may be telling the whole truth. As he knows it.”

  Annja knew otherwise, but she wasn’t going to tell him how.

  “But it smells like an assassination. The two dead men had Skorpion machine pistols in their hands. Nasty pieces of work. You know them?”

  She realized she was nodding. “I’ve read about them. I have to admit I’m mildly interested in firearms.”

  Comfortable as she was coming to feel in his presence, she knew she had to tread carefully. She didn’t dare play dumb with him—he knew her background too well for that. She’d already shown Pan ample evidence she knew how to react in combat simply by getting out of that Kastoria warehouse alive. So she reckoned being up-front about a familiarity with guns would make him least suspicious.

  “The two on foot would seem to have been closing in on a target,” Pan said.

  “What happened to them?”

  “They were killed by someone wielding a weapon with a long, double-edged, sharp blade. Exceedingly sharp. One of them was almost decapitated at a single blow. Although the position in which his body was found indicated he was running, which would add his own momentum to the force of his blow, that is…unusual, to say the least.”

  “Didn’t you find similar wounds in the warehouse?” It’s coming out anyway, she thought.

  He sat back from her, turning slightly sideways in his chair and crossing one long lean leg over the other. “Exactly.”

  She took a bite of her stuffed grape leaves. “I guess they went after the wrong person.”

  Pan’s chuckle had an edge like broken glass. “It would certainly appear so. The other man was stabbed clean through the torso. Our medical examiner says both entrance and exit wounds had the cleanest edges of any stab wounds he had ever encountered.”

  “Seriously,” Annja said faintly, laying down her fork. She hoped he’d think such a detailed postmortem made her feel appropriately squeamish.

  His eyes were intense as a falcon’s as they gazed at her. “The most obvious person for Bajraktari to expend such effort to target,” he said, “is you, Annja. And you were at the warehouse.”

  She laughed weakly. “Somebody else must’ve been, too,” she said. “Or do I look like Conan the Barbarian to you?”

  He laughed. “You are an exceedingly strong and fit woman,” he said after a moment. “And you clearly know how to handle yourself in dangerous situations. But no—” he shook his head “—I can’t see a woman delivering a decapitating blow. Call me a male chauvinist if you will. And there is of course the astonishing fact that the weapon, which the medical examiner judged must have been nothing less than a broadsword, is unwieldy and most inconvenient to carry. Much less conceal. Especially on a frame as spare as yours.”

  “Are you saying I’m skinny?”

  He held up his hands defensively and laughed. “I didn’t say that. I just mean you’d have to be built like an ox and dressed in a tent to have a hope to hide such a weapon.”

  “That’s not my style,” she said.

  “Of course not.” He shook his head. “It’s a mystery. It preys on my mind. Yet rationally it cannot concern you. So let’s put it aside and enjoy our meal, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have news, anyway. I found something fantastic today.”

  He turned forward and leaned closer. “And what is that?”

  “At the museum I found a remarkable story in a Medieval Latin translation of a Byzantine manuscript. It told of how Alexander faced increasing discontent from his Macedonian soldiers, worn out by marching so far and fighting so much. His treasury was getting low. Then from an informant he learned of a cave shrine high up in the mountains of Nepal that contained a vast treasure. He sent a general from his bodyguards with a small handpicked force to seize it. And guess what?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “The general’s name was Pantheras. Isn’t that strange?”

  Pan went still. Then he leaned back slowly until his face was shadowed in the darkness of the restaurant. Outside a patrol boat putted across the harbor, probing left and right with a blue-white spotlight.

  “So how did the mission turn out?” he asked after a moment of silence.

  “I don’t know. The fragment ended there.”

  She could see a smile play over his lips. “That’s too bad,” he said.

  AS THEY WALKED along the base of the brightly lit hill their arms had become interlinked. Annja felt disinclined to disengage, somehow.

  “I’ve started to have the dreams again,” Pan said. “You know, the ones from my childhood. About actually being an ancient Macedonian general.”

  “I can see why it might come out again now, with the ancient Macedonia-Nepal connection coming to the fore. Although it’s still an interesting coincidence, given what I found out about that earlier Pantheras today,” Annja said.

  “Interesting. Yes.”

  They walked a while along an old stone retaining wall. The traffic was sparse. Flute music played from somewhere.

  “I have to leave soon,” Annja said. “I hope you and your superiors are all right with that.”

  “Well, much as I might regret the fact of your going, our investigations have turned up no evidence your involvement in the case is other than you have described. Which is perhaps unwise enough in its nature that I should be rather relieved to see you go.”

  “Really? You’ll regret my going away?”

  “Well…you make life interesting, let us say.” He laughed softly.

  She laughed, too. But she felt an unexpected pang that she would soon have to say goodbye to the handsome police officer.

  Pantheras Katramados was clearly as strong in character as in body, but without the blustering machismo so common in Mediterranean cultures. Rather he had the confidence that comes from being truly competent and knowing it, overlaid with wry good humor. His interests were as broad and deep as Annja’s own, and his wit as quick. They found much to talk about. Much to laugh about. He reminded her, in many ways, of her dear friend Bart McGilley.

  “Where will you go now?” he asked.

  “Nepal. It’s where my real job begins.” She had been getting polite e-mails from the Japan Buddhist Federation hoping she would soon be able to go to Nepal. Apparently the political situation there was rapidly deteriorating. Whether full-scale civil war was in the offing Annja couldn’t tell from the news online, but lawlessness was clearly rising in the countryside.

  He stopped and turned to face her. “Don’t let your guard down.”

  “Bajraktari won’t have any reason to suspect where I’ve gone,” she said.

  “He has contacts in Nepal, quite obviously,” Pan said. “Don’t get complacent.”

  Annja grinned. “Thanks. But I think I can promise you, that’s one thing I’m not.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. Almost despite herself she responded.

  Too soon he broke away. His face looked troubled.

  “Was it that bad?” she asked shakily.

  “As an experience? Certainly not,” he said. “As a thing for a policeman on a case to do—perhaps.”

  He turned and walked quickly away. She made no move to follow. She felt a combination of sadness and relief.

  And she couldn’t help wondering how much of his interest in her was really romantic—
and how much was special-forces cop?

  7

  “Lumbini is a foremost shrine of Buddhism,” said the smiling man in the saffron robe. He walked beside Annja along a paved path next to a square pool sunk into worn gray stone. “Here Siddhartha Gautama was born to Queen Mayadeva. The fig tree you see before us closely resembles the one under which he later received enlightenment, thus becoming the Buddha.”

  His smile widened. “Or rather, the most famous Buddha. Others have come before and since.”

  “Really?” Annja said.

  “Oh, yes.”

  The morning sky was bright blue, with a wash of thin white clouds away off to the west over northern India. In south Nepal the sun shone unimpeded from the east. It was surprisingly warm. The long sleeves and pants she wore out of respect for her host weren’t optimally comfortable.

  Away to the north, blue with distance, the low wall of the Himalayas rose from the horizon. Annja felt a minor thrill at knowing she’d soon be among those legendary stratosphere-scraping peaks.

  The lama Omprakash was a stout man whose round body seemed to taper directly to the shaved crown of his head. Though his broad face was un-lined he claimed to be in his eighties.

  “I thought the Buddha was born in India,” Annja said. The sacred site lay just across the Indian border, although Annja had reached it by flying into Kathmandu in the east of the country, then taking a feeder flight on an alarming Russian-built two-prop plane to Sunauli, the town nearest Lumbini. A taxi had brought her the rest of the way. Though high up near the foothills of the Himalayas, the surroundings were a wide, well-forested river valley just greening into spring. The valley of the Upper Ganges, in fact.

  “The distinctions were not so clearly drawn in those days,” Omprakash said. His name, he told her, meant “Sacred Light.” “Certainly this land was claimed by the great Maurya king, Ashoka. Some believe it was he who brought the doctrine of Buddhism to Nepal. Great proselytizer that he was, that is not so. He did make a pilgrimage here in 249 B.C., after he had reclaimed north India from the successors of Alexander of Macedonia.”

  Ah, she thought, that name. She didn’t press. She was here to listen. It was easy enough. Omprakash was a pleasant old gentleman who spoke beautiful English, with a liquid Hindi accent and a perpetual twinkle in his anthracite eyes. The Japan Buddhist Federation had sent her specifically to speak to the rotund monk. She badly needed background. This was way off the map of her previous studies and experience. She had decided to let the old man tell her whatever he wanted, and try to soak it up as best she could.

  “King Ashoka did erect here a sandstone pillar to signify the great spiritual significance of the spot,” Omprakash said.

  “I take it it’s that one there?” Annja said, pointing across the pool past the temple.

  “The very one!” the monk exclaimed, beaming as if he had built it.

  “But my good friends in Tokyo desired that I should tell you a particular tale,” Omprakash said. “It is said that shortly after Gautama’s death one of his disciples decided to exalt the Enlightened One in the heights of the world. Obviously, we find these most conveniently nearby. Traveling alone, north from Lumbini, he climbed the Himalayas in what is now the Dhawalgiri Zone, until a dream revealed the location of a cave.

  “In accordance with his vision the lama consecrated there a shrine. He even contrived to get a gold Buddha statue weighing hundreds of kilos up to it. Some say this was by magic. I myself prefer to believe he employed the power of devotion, in himself and his disciples. And who is not to say that is not real magic?”

  He laughed again.

  “For centuries truly dedicated Buddhists made the difficult pilgrimage to the high, remote shrine to leave tributes of gold or silver or jewelry to signify their rejection of Maya, the world of illusion. Gradually a treasure trove accumulated. It was already immense when the Macedonian invaders came two centuries later.”

  Annja caught her breath. Could this be the treasure the Byzantine fragment recorded, in search of which Alexander sent one of his most trusted generals? Unless immense ancient treasure troves lay thick in the Himalayas, it seemed a pretty good bet.

  “But precisely because the unenlightened might be tempted to plunder it, binding themselves more tightly to the wheel of karma by their greed, the mountain shrine’s location was kept most secret. The shrine could only be found by a quest—something more arduous than simply a climb to a great height. The pilgrim was required to pass through a sequence of shrines and lamaseries, proving sincerity and spiritual worth at every stage to the lamas. And possibly to less earthly guardians, as well.”

  He stopped beneath a tree and turned to face her.

  “This is your path, Annja Creed,” he said, still smiling. “It is the road you must follow to find that which you seek. You, and one who is to come later. As has been foretold.”

  Annja kept her face set in a mild smile. Although she didn’t believe in destiny or prophecy, she didn’t want to antagonize a man she hoped would give her more information.

  He radiates serenity, she thought. There’s no questioning that his beliefs give him that.

  “I see you are skeptical,” Omprakash said. His smile didn’t falter. He couldn’t, in fact, have sounded more pleased if she’d explicitly accepted his every word as gospel, or converted to Buddhism on the spot.

  “I’m…sorry,” she said.

  He laughed. “Please, don’t be. All traditions are equally sublime. Even agnosticism and atheism. Your path to enlightenment can only be your own.”

  “All right.” She smiled back. “Then I’ll go ahead and confess I am skeptical of the existence of a single fantastic treasure.”

  “Yet the Japan Buddhist Federation has hired you to find it.”

  “They never actually said anything about it. I did read a Byzantine fragment that mentioned such a treasure,” she said.

  “Perhaps they had their reasons for wishing you to find out on your own. If you wish you may correspond with them. You need not take my word. I won’t be offended—I don’t claim to be immune from error.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. She was annoyed at the JBF for holding out on her. “They may not even know about it. But you’re absolutely right—if it exists, it’s part of my job to find it and see that it’s properly preserved like any other shrine. And I’ll do my level best to find it.”

  Omprakash nodded. “I believe in your integrity, Ms. Creed. You will not accept if I speak of auras, although your own best researchers years ago discovered means of tracking individuals by their unique personal electromagnetic fields. A phenomenon which I surely find difficult to tell from auras. Out of respect for your beliefs, I will point to a lifetime spent learning to read people.”

  “Thanks.” She unbuttoned one of the cargo pockets of her khaki trousers and took out a plastic bag containing the coin she had taken from the warehouse in Kastoria. To her surprise Pan had given it back to her and allowed her to keep it. She might find it useful in shutting down the artifact-smuggling operation at the source, which would serve both their ends.

  She presented the bagged coin to the lama. “This was found in Thessaloníki, in Greek Macedonia.”

  “Hardly surprising, inasmuch as it appears to bear the likeness of Alexander,” he said.

  “It was being sold by a notorious and highly dangerous antiquities-smuggling gang as part of a trove looted from here in Nepal. I saw other artifacts of clearly Buddhist origin, although I admit I don’t know enough to determine whether they were Nepalese. Archaeologists with the Hellenic police antismuggling task force authenticated them, however.”

  “You are wondering,” Omprakash said, handing the coin back, “if it came from the Highest Shrine, as tradition calls it. Or legend, if that gives you greater comfort. As to that, I cannot say. But far more likely is that it came from a lesser shrine.”

  His smile widened. “You see, no impious hands can ever defile the Highest Shrine, Ms. Creed. Some guardian
will always arise to defend it.”

  More mysticism, she thought. Since he no doubt sensed her disbelief again, she didn’t have to worry she might show lack of courage in her own convictions if she didn’t say it out loud.

  “Well, just in case,” she said, “I’ll do my best to locate this Highest Shrine and ensure its proper preservation. If, ah, my hands turn out to be pure enough.”

  “That will be determined in the course of your quest.”

  She had nothing to say to that.

  “A final bit of advice, Annja Creed, before I impart the information necessary for you to proceed,” her host said. “Your progress will depend upon your actions and the state of your soul, regardless of whether or not you believe. Please be aware that your skepticism can put barriers in your path.”

  “It’s part of me, Lama. And I choose to walk the rational path,” she said.

  He nodded. “Does that require you to form preconceptions and prejudices?”

  “Well…no. The opposite, I like to think.”

  “Just so. All I ask, and urge, is that you keep an open mind.”

  “I can do that,” she said. Can’t I?

  8

  The monk’s advice sent her north to Baglung, chief town of Baglung District in the Dhawalgiri Zone. A garishly painted bus took her from Lumbini into almost the center of the long, striplike country. It also took her up, along precipitous narrow switchbacks.

  Baglung sprawled along a wide ledge at the base of a big hill. Its blocky white multi-storied structures, roofs pitched high to shed the massive yearly snowfall, spilled out onto a couple of naturally terraced sandstone buttes thrusting out over the river valley below. The land around was scrub and stands of small trees, pitching quickly up into more hills, dusted with snow, with the stark blue-and-white mass of the real mountains looming beyond.

  To the north a gigantic white mountain, shaped vaguely like a tooth, dominated the skyline.

  When Annja got off the bus her legs were a bit unsteady with remnant adrenaline. Some of those last hairpin turns had been hair-raising. Shouldering her pack, she hiked to the police headquarters to check in.