The Golden Elephant

by Alex Archer

  Easy shrugged. “It’s even possible both commanders believe the mesa will provide them a stronghold secure against the full might of the Myanmar armed forces. I think that’s a faint hope myself, but they’d not be the first to think that way.”

  Annja remembered the heat-lightning flicker and the rumble of distant rocket artillery vibrating right up through her bones into her belly. “I don’t think there’s much hope at all.”

  Easy laughed without joy.

  “What about the Protectors?” Annja asked. “What’re the invaders’ plans for them?”

  “Qiangsha is looking to enslave them, I gather, based on past performance. Basically force them to provide food and labor to his merry men. Cromwell feels that Protectors of pagan abominations—in this case, in more ways than one, ‘Pagan’is the old spelling of the kingdom now known as Bagan—are themselves abominations in the eyes of the Lord, hence worthy of extirpation.”

  Annja made a sour face. “Chalk up another moral victory for religion.”

  “Oh, yes,” Easy said sweetly. “Militant atheists like Pol Pot and Mao Tse-tung would never get up to large-scale mischief such as genocide.”

  Annja’s expression got sourer. “Do you ever get tired of being right all the time?”

  The younger woman laughed. “Oddly, my father used to say that, too.”

  “I’m beginning to empathize with him,” Annja said.

  They walked a time in silence. Monkeys scolded them from the trees. Birds called. Bugs trilled.

  As they walked Easy regarded the taller woman sidelong. “There’s not really anything keeping us here,” she said in a leading way.

  “Do you feel like abandoning these people to their fate?” Annja asked.

  “No. But then I have what might be seen as an overly sentimental fondness for tribal peoples—especially inasmuch as I come from one myself. Then, too, I have a reflex hatred of injustice. I don’t care to see these brave people crushed.”

  “Hatred of injustice?” Annja said, legitimately surprised. “But what about your disregard for the law?”

  “Do you really believe law and justice are the same thing? Do you believe there’s any necessary connection between them? And as I’ve asked before—if you really believe so strongly in hewing to the letter of the law, where’s your permission slip from the SPDC?”

  “All right, all right,” Annja said. “It’s just that your activities—”

  “My tomb robbing, as you’d call it? My pot hunting? All those other flip pejorative phrases you academic archaeologists use to reassure yourselves that you’re righteous grave robbers, while those whose methods differ are not?”

  Annja winced. That’s not fair! she wanted to protest reflexively. Yet she had to admit there was truth in what the younger woman said. At least a little.

  “We have a different conception of what’s right, perhaps,” Easy said. “But am I wrong in believing you possess a strong urge to defend what you feel is right? And are our differences really that wide, at least where human decency is concerned?”

  “No,” Annja said deliberately. “No, I guess not. But should we let ourselves lose track of why we’re both here?”

  “What do you mean?” Easy asked.

  Annja stopped and faced the shorter woman. “You came to seize the Golden Elephant, didn’t you?”

  Easy looked at her calmly. “Yes. Didn’t you?”

  It hit Annja like a sucker punch. I did. She had gotten so wrapped up in her conviction that her race with Easy to the Temple of the Elephant was a primal contest between good and evil, that she was trying to preserve an ageless archaeological treasure from the bloody claws of a soulless murderess that she forgot she was trying to grab the idol, too. For profit. To sell to the mysterious private collector who had contacted Roux.

  Of course, now that the secret seemed to have gotten out, she could say she was only trying to keep it out of the clutches of the Yangon government. But didn’t she believe national governments were the righteous protectors of their people’s heritage? And how about the near-total certainty that the State Peace and Development Council would melt the idol down, the Bamar people and their heritage be damned?

  “Are you all right, Annja?” Easy asked with what sounded like genuine concern. “You’ve gone rather ashen, and your breathing is shallow.”

  “An acute attack of conscience,” Annja said. “Never mind. We do need to know where we stand, though.”

  “Relative to—?”

  “Each other,” Annja said grimly. “And the idol.”

  Easy nodded. “Fair enough. I’m willing to bind myself to do nothing toward recovering the idol until the people of the mesa are safe—or until I’ve died trying to keep them that way. As for the idol…there’s time enough to settle that when this thing’s resolved and we both stand before it. And I am also willing, if you are, to give my word to do my best to make sure we both come to stand before the idol, of our own free will on our own two feet.”

  “Why should I believe that?” Annja said.

  Easy shrugged. “Why believe the other, then? We can do this the Easy way, or—”

  She let it trail away with a little smile. Annja frowned.

  Easy’s protestations rang true to Annja. The Zulu princess’s motivations might differ radically from her own. Yet nothing she knew or had seen of Easy’s actions indicated that she did things without reason. And once her rival had spoken to Sir Sidney or even if, despite her denials, she’d talked to Isabelle, what point would there be in killing them? Annja wasn’t sure what the point would be for anyone to do so—and that was a loose end that bothered her.

  But the fact was, having met Easy, listened to her voice, seen her body language, looked into her eyes—Annja believed her.

  Perhaps the woman was that good an actress. And then again, if she was really that sociopathically ruthless, she’d had plenty of opportunity to finish off her rival. She could then have made her own way to the Temple of the Elephant while the Protectors were distracted with the unprecedented double threat to their holy mission and very way of life. She could have made away with the idol, leaving all concerned to their fates. Surely the person who beat a harmless old man to death, and shot an innocent woman, wouldn’t hesitate to do exactly that.

  “All right,” Annja said. “I’ll swear. How do guys handle this kind of thing?”

  “Customarily with some ridiculous, unacknowledgedly homoerotic ritual,” Easy said. “While I’ve no aversion to that sort of thing, I suspect you’re much too straitlaced to be comfortable with it. So why not just shake hands? Or would you Americans cross your hearts?”

  Annja looked at her a moment. Then, solemnly, she crossed her heart.

  Easy did likewise. Then they broke out laughing and hugged each other.

  As they walked on toward the village, Easy said, “Well, now that we’ve got the awkward bits out of the way, there’s a very real question of what we can do to help the villagers except die futilely and bravely at their sides. Which, while satisfying on a certain teen-angst level, is hardly useful.”

  “Wait,” Annja said. “The Protectors seem to base their whole strategy on hit-and-run attacks, traps and ambushes.”

  “The classic resource of the weaker defender against the stronger invader,” Easy said. She shrugged. “Also, they work.”

  “And they have,” Annja said, “for almost a thousand years. But what if that’s too long?”

  “For success—” Easy began. Then she stopped and grinned and once again looked even younger than she was. “Oh. A light begins to dawn.”

  “We can let go of the comforting neocolonial illusion of being superior minds from the West come to save the savages through enlightenment,” Annja said.

  “Ouch,” Easy said. “Especially since I really do fear I resemble that remark.”

  “But what we can bring,” Annja said, “is a fresh perspective, yes?”

  “After almost a millennium,” Easy said, “a habit of thinki
ng can be tough to break.”

  “My point exactly. Never before have the Protectors faced two powerful and determined foes at the same time. And I think their long strings of successes may just be blinding them to the obvious.”

  Easy stopped and looked at her. “I have to admit I was blind to it, too,” Easy said. “But now that you rub my nose in it…”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Annja asked. “To an outsider.”

  Easy nodded decisively. “Yes,” she said. “So it is.”

  “The only problem,” Annja said, “is selling it to the Protectors.”

  Easy’s grin came back wider than before. “Oh, don’t forget the Protectors are well aware of the modern world. Some have even lived in the United States. They may disdain modernity, but on the other hand, if anything I think they overestimate its abilities and powers. A fact we can shamelessly exploit—to their advantage, of course.”

  “Isn’t that a classic Western-colonialist attitude?” Annja asked.

  “Did I ever claim to be perfect? Come on, Annja. Are you in or out?”

  Annja laughed. She couldn’t help liking the woman, despite their differences.

  “You know I’m in,” she said. “I guess I’m not perfect, either.”

  26

  Sometimes I have to admit, Annja thought, the old ways are the best ways. Which was hardly a radical thought for a professional antiquarian such as herself.

  The Lord’s Wa Army carried mostly American-made equipment, prominently M-16 automatic rifles. Annja suspected they had been funded, at least, by the CIA. The grenades that dangled like heavy metal fruit from their web gear had a made-in-America look to her, as well, although she knew much less about grenades than she did guns. However they got that way, they were frighteningly well armed.

  Given the fearful reputation the mesa enjoyed among the surrounding tribesfolk, according to Easy, the Wa patrol seemed ridiculously incautious. Maybe they believed God was keeping a special eye out for them.

  In which case He was just about to blink.

  Annja didn’t see the hidden trigger. Then again, neither did the point man. He was walking along, his long black rifle held in patrol position in front of him, when with no warning, a four-inch-thick sapling that had been bent until its top touched the ground snapped upright into his face and body.

  The trunk had eighteen-inch wood spikes jutting from it.

  The point man, massively and multiply impaled, didn’t even have time to scream. He emitted a brief squealing grunt, then hung limply from the blood-tipped spikes. His comrades dived off to both sides of the narrow game trail they’d been following.

  Some of them screamed, though, and very loudly, as hands and feet plunged into small concealed pits, themselves dug no more than a foot or two into the jungle clay, to be pierced by needle-sharp slivers of bamboo.

  The patrol’s undamaged members opened fire. The poorly trained, panicked men shot high. As Annja and her escort of four grinning Protectors slipped away through the brush, a burst clipped branches ten feet over their heads.

  No one else came close.

  THE LAST MAN IN the line stopped and slapped a tattooed hand to his neck. He looked annoyed by the forest insect that had just bitten him. The rest of the eight-man GSSA patrol moved out of sight, hardly more noisily than a herd of water buffalo, around a curve in the trail through tall grass.

  The last man blinked. A curious expression crossed his mustached face.

  He then pitched over in the grass and lay still.

  “Neat,” Easy Ngwenya said softly to her companion.

  Although it wasn’t common on the Shan Plateau, the Protectors had somehow acquired the art of the blow-pipe. For its ever-necessary complement—fast-acting poison—they used some manner of secret decoction whose effects, on the visual evidence, bore a striking resemblance to curare.

  Dr. Philip Kennedy, whose work Easy rather admired, would’ve been quite fascinated at the intersection of sociology and biochemistry. It was a pity Annja Creed had gone and mislaid him, she thought. Although from her own account, despite her best efforts to claim all responsibility, it was clear to Easy that the silly self-important sod had gone and mislaid himself. Self-importance seemed an occupational hazard among cultural anthropologists, she had noted, and ethnobotany wonks in particular.

  “Come on,” said her companion in piping, urgent English.

  Easy looked down. Short as she was she saw eye to eye with most of the Protectors. The adults, that is. Her guide was a young man who had spent two years in America. He insisted on being called Tony.

  The rest of the party, the actual blow-pipe men and their guards, were armed with spears and singe-edged bladed weapons like swords with hilts at ninety degrees to the blades, which they held along their forearms. They had already moved out toward the preselected position from which they’d pick off the next Grand Shan State Army man to be last in line. They’d keep up the game until they were discovered. Or until they ran out of intruders.

  Either outcome was satisfactory. The survivors would bear back to Marshal Qiangsha with tales of silent death from the bush; or the lot would vanish. In either case, the marshal would find his men unwilling to come this way again, no matter how he might threaten and bluster.

  And if they did, of course, the Protectors would ring in more fiendish surprises on them. They had a wonderful selection, really, Easy thought. They had been collecting them for centuries, it seemed, like avid little hobbyists.

  Impatient, her guide started off through the bush. Like his older fellows, he glided through the thick undergrowth as noiselessly as a shadow. Easy’s bush craft was good and she knew it. But she envied these people their skills.

  She concentrated keenly on what the boy was doing as she made to follow him. A true professional was always learning.

  “HOW GOES THE WAR?”

  Despite herself Annja smiled. They had rendezvoused amid especially high walls of stone, where monkeys capered and screeched as they leaped among the lianas in the velvet lengthening shadows of late afternoon. Like their Protector allies Easy was bright eyed and practically vibrating with excitement.

  Annja was, too.

  “Goes pretty well so far,” she told her ally who had so recently been her enemy. “We didn’t inflict too many casualties. But we’ve definitely got them moving in the right direction.”

  “Ah, but that’s the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it?” Easy said.

  “Best of all,” Annja said, nodding, “is that we didn’t take any ourselves.”

  “We, neither,” Easy said with an answering grin. It quickly faded.

  “But that can’t last,” she said.

  “I know,” Annja said, frowning.

  ANNJA CROUCHED BEHIND a waist-high rampart of crumbling red brick. Some freshly cut brush, arranged on top of the wall, hid her neatly from observation by the Shan patrol noisily crunching its way through the woods toward them. Thermal imaging, she knew, would show the cut foliage. But the Shans didn’t have any.

  Tony crouched at her side, ready for anything. He said nothing.

  A dozen adult warriors crouched behind the varying-height wall to either side of her, and behind stumps or in depressions in the uneven ground. They were very careful not to walk or hunker down behind Annja.

  The first members of the GSSA patrol came into view across a clearing fifty yards wide. The blue-turbaned men in their dark-green battledress, some solid colored, some jungle camouflage, were smoking and joking. Loose and easy.

  They thought they’d found a route delightfully free of booby traps, or ambushers who struck silently and fled, often before the survivors knew they had been attacked.

  Annja raised an RPG to her shoulder and peered through the low-power optical sight.

  The RPG was part of the booty scavenged by Protector scouts from their victims of the actions the day before. As were the AKMs and ancient AK-47s Annja’s companions held.

  As she sighted, instin
ct took over. Slipping her finger inside the trigger guard, she drew in a deep breath. The weapon felt lightweight and cheap, in contrast to the chunky solidity of a Kalashnikov rifle. But then, the launcher only had to shoot once.

  She snugged the weapon in, let out half the intaken breath and squeezed.

  With a great whoosh the rocket-propelled grenade streaked from the launcher, surrounding Annja with nasty, acrid, dirty-white propellant smoke. It also sent a long jet of flame out the rear end of the tube.

  The rocket motors made a loud, furious buzzing as they sent the missile spiraling toward the target. It struck with a silver-white flash and the hideous high-frequency crack of its shaped-charge warhead that was so hatefully familiar to her.

  She still didn’t care for it much. Even from the other side.

  The grenade blew a great yellow wound in the tree’s hard wood a dozen feet above the turbaned heads of the patrol. Long splinters flew in all directions. To either side of her the Protectors held their Kalashnikovs over their heads and, whooping enthusiastically, blasted away with them.

  Lowering the spent launcher, Annja took her eye from the scope. She had to fight to control the trembling of her hands and even remember to breathe.

  Three of the Shan militiamen had fallen to the ground right below the grenade’s impact point. Two of them flopped around vigorously and screamed shrilly. That pleased Annja in a grim way. The point was to sting the Shans enough to anger them, without hurting them badly enough to rout them or even send them to ground.

  At once the Shans did what most other troops in the world, trained or not, did when unexpectedly taken under fire—they dumped their whole magazines as fast as their full-auto actions would cycle in what they hoped was their enemy’s direction. As far as Annja could tell they came no closer to hitting her hidden comrades than the Protectors did to them. And the Protectors were trying to miss.