The Golden Elephant

by Alex Archer

  No doubt an extensive network of ventilation shafts terminated at the tomb mound’s sides at shallow angles. They would have been built with doglegs and baffles to prevent water getting in under normal circumstances. Otherwise the old emperor and his last bier would have been a stalagmite.

  That also explained why Annja wasn’t swimming hopelessly upstream right now. One peculiarity—eccentricity was probably the word, considering the creator—of Mad Emperor Lu’s tomb was that it was entered from the top. Annja had made her way gingerly down, and was making her way a good deal less carefully back up a series of winding ramps and passages. The vent shafts were probably entirely discrete from the corridors. Perhaps Lu had contrived a way to flood his subterranean burial chamber from ground water or a buried cistern.

  Screaming with friction, spears leaped from the wall to Annja’s left. The green bronze heads crashed the far wall’s stone behind her back. The traps were timed for a party advancing at a deliberate pace. Annja was fleeing.

  Up through the tunnels Annja raced. When she dared risk a glance back over her shoulder she saw water surging after her like a monster made of froth. She was gaining, though.

  That gave her cold comfort. No way was ground water, much less water stored in a buried cistern, rising this far this fast, she thought. It took serious pressure to drive this mass of water. The valley was clearly flooding a lot quicker than she had been assured it would.

  So now she was racing the waters rising outside the mound, as well as those within.

  If the water outside got too high, the helicopter Annja had hired to bring her here and carry her away when she emerged would simply fly away. She couldn’t much blame the pilot. There’d be nothing to do for her.

  Trying hard not to think about the unthinkable, Annja ran harder. A stone trigger gave beneath her feet; another spring trap she hadn’t tripped on her way down thrust its spears from the wall. They missed, too.

  From time to time side passages joined the main corridor. In her haste she missed the one that led to the entrance she had come in by, which was not at the mound’s absolute apex. She only realized her error when she came into a hemispherical chamber at what must have been the actual top. A hole in the ceiling let in vague, milky light from an appropriately overcast sky.

  Annja stopped, panting. Though she knew it was a bad way to recover she bent over to rest hands on thighs. For the first time she realized she still clutched the imperial seal in a death grip. The expedition wasn’t a total write-off.

  Provided I live, she thought.

  Forcing herself to straighten and draw deep abdominal breaths, she looked up at the hole. It was small. She guessed she could get through. But only just. She would never pass while she wore her day pack. And she wasn’t going to risk wriggling through with the seal in a cargo pocket. The fit was tight enough it would almost certainly break.

  “Darn,” she said. She swung off her pack. Wrapping the seal in a handkerchief, she stuck it in a Ziploc bag she had brought for protecting artifacts. She stowed it carefully in her pack and set off back down the corridor to find the real way out.

  She was stopped within a few steps. The water had caught her.

  “Oh, dear,” she said faintly as it surged toward her. The valley was flooding fast.

  She ran back up to the apex chamber. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted, “Hello? Can you hear me? I need a little help here!”

  She did so without much hope. The pilot and copilot would be sitting in the cockpit with both engines running. With the waters rising so fast they had to be ready for a quick getaway. In fact, Annja had no particularly good reason to believe they hadn’t already flown away.

  To her surprise she was answered almost at once.

  “Hello down there,” a voice called back through the hole. “I’ll lend you a hand.”

  Annja stared at the hole for a moment, although she could see nothing but grey cloud. She had no idea who her rescuer was. It sure wasn’t the pilot or the copilot—they weren’t young women with what sounded for all the world like an Oxford accent.

  “Um—hello?” Annja called out.

  “I’m throwing down a rope,” the young woman said. A pale blue nylon line uncoiled from the ceiling.

  “I’ve got a pack,” Annja called up, looking nervously back over her shoulder at the chamber’s entrance. She could hear the slosh of rising water just outside. “It’s got important artifacts in it. Extremely delicate. I’ll have to ask you to pull the pack up first. I can’t fit through the hole while carrying it.”

  She expected her unseen benefactor to argue—the primary value of human life and all that. But instead she replied, “Very well. Tie it on and I’ll pull it up straightaway.”

  Annja did so. When she called out that it was secure, it rose rapidly toward the ceiling. She frowned, but the woman slowed it down when it neared the top. She extracted it without its synthetic fabric touching the sides of the hole.

  “Thanks,” Annja called. “Good job.”

  After an anxious moment the rope came through the ceiling again. Except not far enough.

  Not nearly far enough. Annja reckoned she could just barely brush it with her fingertips if she jumped as high as she could. She could never get a grip on it.

  “Uh, hey,” she called. “I’m afraid it’s not far enough. I need a little more rope here.”

  She heard a musical laugh. It made its owner sound about fourteen. “So sorry,” the unseen voice said. “No can do.”

  “What do you mean?” Annja almost screamed the words as water burst into the room to eddy around her shoes. “You aren’t going to leave me to drown?”

  “Of course not. In a matter of a very few minutes the water will rise enough to float you up to where you can grasp the rope and climb out. A bit damp, perhaps, but none the worse for wear.”

  Annja stared. The astonishing words actually distracted her from the floodwaters until they rose above the tops of her waterproofed shoes and sloshed inside them. Their touch was cold as the long-dead emperor’s.

  “At least leave me my pack!” Annja shouted, jumping up and swiping ineffectually at the dangling rope. She only succeeded in making it swing. She fell back with a considerable splash.

  “I’m afraid not,” the woman called. “You have to understand, Ms. Creed. There’re two ways to do things—the hard way and the easy way.”

  Annja stood a moment with the water streaming past her ankles. The words were so ridiculous that her mind, already considerably stressed by the moment, simply refused to process them.

  Then reality struck her. “Easy?” she screamed. “Not Easy Ngwenya?”

  “The same. Farewell, Annja Creed!”

  Annja stared. The chill water reached her knees. She stood, utterly overwhelmed by the realization that she had just been victimized by the world’s most notorious tomb robber.

  2

  Paris, France

  “You’re kidding,” Annja said. “Who doesn’t like the Eiffel Tower?”

  “It’s an excrescence,” Roux replied.

  “Right,” she said. “So you preferred it when all you had to watch for in the sky was chamber pots being emptied on your head from the upper stories?”

  “You moderns. You have lost touch with your natures. Ah, back in those days we appreciated simple pleasures.”

  “Not including hygiene.”

  Roux regarded her from beneath a critically arched white brow. “You display a most remarkably crabbed attitude for an antiquarian.”

  “I study the period,” she said. “I’m fascinated by the period. But I don’t romanticize it. I know way too much about it for that. I wouldn’t want to live in the Renaissance.”

  “Bah,” the old man said. But he spoke without heat. “There is something to this progress, I do not deny. But often I miss the old days.”

  “And you’ve plenty of old days to miss,” Annja said. Which was, if anything, an understatement. When he spoke about the Renaissance, h
e did so from actual experience.

  Roux was dressed like what he was—an extremely wealthy old man–in an elegantly tailored dove-gray suit and a white straw hat, his white hair and beard considerably more neatly barbered than his ferocious brows.

  Annja had set down her cup. She sat with her elbows on the metal mesh tabletop, fingers interlaced and chin propped on the backs of her hands. She wore a sweater with wide horizontal stripes of red, yellow and blue over her well-worn blue jeans. A pair of sunglasses was pushed up onto the front of her hair, which she wore in a ponytail.

  Autumn had begun to bite. The leaves on the trees along the Seine were turning yellow around the edges, and the air was tinged with a hint of wood smoke. But Paris café society was of sterner stuff than to be discouraged by a bit of cool in the air. Instead the sidewalks and their attendant cafés seemed additionally thronged by savvy Parisians eager to absorb all the sun’s heat they could before winter settled in.

  She found herself falling back onto her current favorite subject. “I’m still miffed at what happened in Ningxia,” she said.

  “You’re miffed? I have had to answer to certain creditors after the shortfall in our accounts. Which was caused by your incompetence, need I remind you?”

  “No. And anyway, that’s not true. I got the seal. I had it in my hands.”

  “Unfortunately it failed to stay in your hands, dear child.”

  “That wasn’t my fault! I trusted her,” Annja said.

  “You trusted a strange voice which called down to you through a hole in the ground,” Roux said. “And you style yourself a skeptic, non?”

  Annja sat back. “I was kind of up against it there. I didn’t really have a choice.”

  “Did you not? Really? But did you not eventually save yourself by following that vexatious young lady’s suggestion, and waiting until the water floated you high enough so you could climb the rest of the way out?”

  “Only to find the witch had flown off in my helicopter. My. Helicopter,” Annja said.

  “Oh, calm down,” the old man said unsympathetically. “She did send a boat for you. Which she paid for herself.”

  Annja sat back and tightly folded her arms beneath her breasts. “That just added insult to injury,” she said. The tomb robber had even left her pack. Without the seal. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “My own, of course,” Roux said. “Why be mad at me? I only point out things could have gone much worse. You might have seen Miss E. C. Ngwenya’s famous trademark pistols, for example.”

  Annja slumped. “True.”

  “And it never occurred to you,” Roux said, “simply to wait until the water lifted you high enough to climb out the hole directly, without handing over the object of your entire journey to a mysterious voice emanating from the ceiling?”

  Annja blinked at him. “No,” she said slowly. “I didn’t think of that.”

  She sighed and crumpled in her metal chair. “I pride myself in being so resourceful,” she said almost wonderingly. “How could it have deserted me like that?”

  Roux shrugged. “Well, circumstances did press urgently upon you, one is compelled to admit.”

  She shook her head. “But that’s what I rely on to survive in those situations. It’s not the sword. It’s my ability to keep my head and think of things on the spur of the moment!”

  “Well, sometimes reason deserts someone like you,” Roux said.

  For a moment Annja sat and marinated in her misery. But prolonged self-pity annoyed her. So she sought to externalize her funk. “It’s just losing such an artifact—the only trace of that tomb—to a plunderer like Easy Ngwenya. She just violates everything I stand for as an archaeologist. I’ve always considered her nothing better than a looter.”

  She frowned ferociously and jutted her chin. “Now it’s personal.”

  Roux set down his cup and leaned forward. “Enough of this. Now, listen. Your secret career is an expensive indulgence—”

  “Which I never volunteered for in the first place!” Annja said.

  “Details. The fact is, you have been burning money. As I have alluded to, certain creditors grow—insistent.”

  Annja frowned thoughtfully. She could see his point. There was no denying her recent adventures had been costly. The rise of digital records and biometric identification hadn’t made official documentation more secure—the opposite, if anything. But full-spectrum false identification was expensive. And Annja relied greatly on fake ID to avoid having her secret career exposed by official nosiness.

  She leaned back and crossed her legs. “Has Bank of America been making nasty phone calls?”

  “Think less modern in methods of collection, and more Medici.”

  “You haven’t been borrowing from Garin again?” Annya asked.

  His lips compressed behind his neat beard. “It’s…possible.”

  Garin Braden was a fabulously wealthy playboy. He was also Roux’s former protégé and he feared the miraculous reforging of the sword threatened his eternal life.

  “I bet you’ve just had a bad streak at the gaming tables,” Annja said accusatorily. “Didn’t you get busted out of that poker tournament in Australia last month?”

  “All that aside, we must improve what you Americans charmingly call cash flow.”

  She sighed. “Tell me,” she said.

  “Somewhere in the mountainous jungles of Southeast Asia there supposedly lies a vast and ancient temple complex. Within it hides a priceless artifact—a golden elephant idol with emerald eyes. I have been approached by a wealthy collector who wants it enough to pay most handsomely.”

  “Who?”

  “One who treasures anonymity,” Roux said.

  “That’s a promising start,” Annja said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “So I take it all this mystery likewise precludes your at least running a credit check?”

  “Sadly,” Roux said, “yes.”

  He spread his hands in a dismissive gesture. “However, our client—”

  “Let’s hold off on this our business until I’m actually signed on, shall we?” Annja said.

  “Our client has offered a handsome preliminary payment, as well as an advance against expenses.”

  “The preliminary, at least, needs to be no-strings-attached,” Annja said.

  Roux raised his eyebrow again.

  “What?” Annja said.

  “That would require substantial faith on the client’s part,” Roux said.

  “So? Either he-she-it has faith in me, or doesn’t. If they’re not willing to believe in my integrity, then to heck with it. And why come to me, anyway, if that’s the case? If I’m not honest, there’s ten dozen ways I could chisel, from embezzling the expense account to selling to the highest bidder whatever it is this mystery guest wants me to get. There isn’t any guarantee I could give that could protect against that. If I’m a crook, what’s my guarantee worth?”

  Roux looked as if he were bursting to respond. She glared him into silence.

  “While we’re on the subject,” she said, “there’s not going to be any accounting for expenses incurred. For reasons I really hope you won’t make me explain out loud.”

  He sipped his coffee and pulled a gloomy face. “You don’t ask for much, my dear child,” he said, “beyond the sun, the moon and perhaps the stars.”

  “Just a star or two,” she said. “Anyway, you’re the one whining the exchequer might be forced to go to bed tonight without any gruel if little Annja doesn’t hie herself off to Southeast Asia and do something certainly arduous, probably dangerous and more than likely illegal. You should be happy to ask for the best no-money-back terms available.”

  “I don’t want to scare the client off,” Roux said.

  “This strikes me as skirting pretty close to pot-hunting,” Annja said. “The jade-seal affair already came too close.”

  “But you’ve done similar things in the past,” Roux said. “And after all, who better to ensure the Gol
den Elephant is recovered in a…sensitive way rather than ripped from the earth by a tomb-robber?”

  He turned his splendid head of silver hair to profile so he could regard her sidelong with slitted eyes. “Or would you prefer to leave the field open to, say, the likes of Her Highness, E. C. Ngwenya?”

  “Quit with the psychological manipulation,” she said. But even to her ears her voice sounded less than perfectly confident.

  3

  London, England

  “Tea, Ms. Creed?” asked the bluff and jovial old Englishman with the big pink face, a brush of white hair and a red vest straining slightly over his paunch. With an exquisitely manicured hand he held up a white porcelain teapot with flowers painted on it.

  Annja smiled. “Thank you, Sir Sidney.” She started to rise from the floral-upholstered chair. She would term the small round table, the flowered sofa and chairs, the eclectic bric-a-brac in Sir Sidney Hazelton’s parlor as fussy Victorian.

  He gestured her to stay seated. He poured the tea with a firm if liver-spotted hand protruding from a stiff white cuff with brisk precision, then brought her the cup with a great air of solicitude.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting.

  Sir Sidney reseated himself in his overstuffed chair. He’d offered one like it to Annja, insisting that it was more comfortable than the one she chose. She declined, fearing if she sank into it the thing would devour her. She had to admit that despite his bulk he moved with alacrity, including in and out of the treacherously yielding chair.

  “Really, isn’t this notion of lost cities or temples more frightfully romantic than realistic?” he asked. “I mean, what with all these satellites and surveillance aircraft and such today.”