Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear gh-2

by Gabriel Hunt

  “Sheba McCoy,” Gabriel said, “have I ever told you how impressive you are?”

  “Why don’t you hold that thought,” she said. “Just till we’re safely in the air.”

  Chapter 21

  “You really are,” Gabriel said, “impressive, I mean,” and this time Sheba just nodded. They were sprawled in the cargo hold of a huge FedEx plane, surrounded by cardboard boxes, bulging sacks, and the occasional wooden crate, all secured in a web of plastic netting. Sheba leaned back against a stack of padded envelopes, her shoes and socks beside her, a blanket wrapped around her against the unheated cabin’s chill. Gabriel had his boots off as well and was winding an Ace bandage around his left ankle. The copilot had found it in the first aid kit mounted above the emergency exit hatchway.

  The first hour of the flight had been consumed by the crew filing back, one by one, to ask Gabriel about some of his more notorious exploits, like the expulsion from Libya in 2004 and the time he’d fled Peru on horseback with half the army chasing after him. That incident had made the Times and each of them in turn wanted to know about it. But after a while the questions petered out and eventually the crew returned to the flight deck and left them alone. There was a pair of empty jumpseats they could have used but as long as there was no turbulence it was actually more comfortable sitting on the floor, and so far the flight had been smooth. They might as well have been sailing a ship over a calm ocean.

  “Most people,” Gabriel said, “facing half the things you have in the past forty-eight hours, would’ve fallen apart. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen it, too,” Sheba said. “You met my sisters. Growing up, not a one of them was worth a damn in a scrape.”

  “How’d you escape turning out like that?” Gabriel asked.

  “It was my dad’s decision,” Sheba said. She opened the blanket and spread it to cover both of them. “He wanted a son so badly, and he kept trying, and what’d he end up with but a house full of women? It was him, my mother and my three sisters. Finally I came along and he decided he’d had enough. So from the time I was six or seven, he’d take me out with him when he went shooting and driving and fishing and living off the land.” Sheba shrugged. “I enjoyed it. My sisters thought I was mental, and maybe they were right, but…”

  “But you enjoyed it.”

  “And now I know how to reload a rifle or hook up a climbing harness or change a flat tire—”

  “Oh, that, too?”

  “I’m a whiz with flat tires.” She snapped her fingers. “On and off like that.”

  “Is there anything you can’t do?”

  “Wait tables,” she said. “I’m a real bad waitress. Did it for a summer, and my god, I was awful. Made no tips.”

  “All right,” Gabriel said. “Anything else?”

  She bent over him, brought her lips close to his. “Taking no for an answer. Not getting what I want. I’m terrible at that.”

  Gabriel smiled. “I’m not too good at it myself,” he said.

  They landed in Kurunegala, on a private airstrip near the train depot. The town was centrally located at the intersection of the A6 and A10 motorways, within reach of all parts of the country. Dambulla was just thirty miles away to the northeast, and the spot marked on the map, Gabriel estimated, would be another ten miles or so past that.

  On the way out of the plane, he rummaged through the emergency supplies cabinet by the door. Flares, life jackets, a long-handled flashlight—plenty of things that might be useful in a pinch. No ammunition for a Colt Peacemaker, though. That would have been too much to hope for.

  Gabriel asked the pilot if he could grab a few things, and the pilot nodded. “Whatever you need. We’ll restock at the hangar.”

  Gabriel took a couple of items, handed some to Sheba. Then he handed a cardboard box to the pilot. There’d been a rack of shipping supplies against one wall of the plane and he’d prepared the package while they were in flight. The account number he’d filled in was the Hunt Foundation’s and the address the package was going to was the Discoverers League building in New York. No point lugging two guns around when one of them was empty. And Andras had been right. The Colt was an antique, one that (the story went) had once belonged to either Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson. Who knew if it was true—but if he wasn’t going to be able to use the thing, he might as well keep it safe.

  The pilot smiled as he accepted the package. “It’ll be there tomorrow,” he said. “Guaranteed.”

  They stepped out into ninety-degree heat and humidity so powerful that a layer of moisture formed on their skin in seconds. It was late afternoon, so they were at least spared the glare of the sun directly overhead, but walking through the damp, warm air felt uncomfortable enough. In the distance, beneath the thrumming of airplane and truck engines, they heard a raucous chorus of chirps and caws mixed with the periodic screech of a monkey.

  Kurunegala was shaped roughly like a flat-bottomed bowl, the plain the town was built on being surrounded by tall rock outcroppings the locals had named after the animals they resembled. The town’s name itself meant “Tusker Rock,” since the tallest of the outcroppings, a grim thousand-foot cliff, was said to resemble a kurune, a tusked elephant. Gabriel squinted, but he couldn’t see it. There was also a Tortoise Rock, a Goat Rock, a Beetle Rock, an Eel Rock, and a Monkey Rock, all of which looked to Gabriel like rocks. There was even (the railroad stationmaster told Gabriel in a fit of garrulousness) a Yakdessa Rock, at which point Sheba needed to translate for him since the stationmaster was at a loss to explain what sort of animal a Yakdessa might be.

  “It’s not an animal,” Sheba said. “It’s a man. Like a shaman—he would help afflicted people who were possessed by Yak.”

  “Possessed by yak,” Gabriel said.

  “It’s the name of the Devil in Sinhala,” Sheba said.

  “That certainly makes more sense,” Gabriel muttered.

  He wasn’t used to not being able to speak the local language well enough to get by. Over the years he’d picked up at least a few words and phrases in most languages and was passably fluent in more than a dozen. But he’d never had the need or the opportunity to pick up Sinhala or Tamil, the languages of Sri Lanka. The one time he’d been here he’d managed to get by with a mixture of English, Urdu, and hand gestures. And pistol gestures, when he’d finally tracked down the statue. Those were understood everywhere.

  He snuck a glance at the tracking device Lucy had given him, then returned it to his pocket. DeGroet was just 141 miles northwest. And closing.

  “Can we use your phone?” Gabriel asked the stationmaster, a younger man no more than five feet tall who squinted up at him myopically any time he didn’t understand what he was hearing, almost as though it were his eyes that were at fault. He was squinting now. “Your telephone. We need to make a telephone call, to Dambulla.”

  “Dambulla?”

  “Yes, Dambulla.”

  “Train does not go.”

  “No, I know that,” Gabriel said. “We want to use—”

  “Highway,” the stationmaster said. “You must drive.” And he made steering wheel motions with his hands.

  “You want to try?” Gabriel asked Sheba.

  “If they’d had telephones back when they had yakdessas,” she said, “I’d know the word for it.”

  Gabriel mimed picking up a phone receiver and dialing a number, then realized that gesture might not mean anything anymore, not to someone raised on cell phones. He mimed unfolding a cell phone and talking into it. The stationmaster’s eyes unclenched happily. He reached under his counter and pulled out a phone with a scratched and faded plastic case. He opened it, pressed a button, and handed it over.

  Gabriel punched in a number he remembered well from his last time here and was relieved to hear a woman’s voice answer on the third ring. “’Allo,” she said, a hint of a French accent surviving the transit through the cheap loudspeaker.

  “Dayani, this is Gabriel Hunt,” Gabriel
said.

  “Gabriel! My goodness. How are you? Are you thinking of coming back to our island for a visit sometime?”

  “Actually, I’m in Kurunegala,” he said, “right now. How would you feel about dropping everything you’re doing and driving out here to pick me up?”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “I’m not sure my coworkers will like it so much, but I would feel just fine about it. Want to wait for me by the clock tower? I can be there in forty minutes.”

  “I wish we could,” he said, thinking about his ankle. Taped up, it did hurt less, but it still hurt, and waiting would feel better than walking. “But we can’t. We’re going to start walking along the A6; just look for us on the side of the road.”

  “Are you in some sort of trouble, Gabriel?”

  “Some sort,” he said.

  “Naturellement,” she said. “I’m leaving now.” And the connection broke.

  Gabriel handed the phone back to the stationmaster.

  “You…go to Dambulla?” the young man said. Gabriel nodded. “You go quick. Quick? Understand? Before rains come.”

  “Rains,” Gabriel said.

  The man squinted, searching for a word. “Later, big rains,” he said. Then his face relaxed. He knew the word he wanted.

  “Monsoon,” he said.

  Chapter 22

  “This woman who’s picking us up,” Sheba said, and Gabriel said, “Dayani.”

  “Who is she?”

  They were walking along the side of the highway separating Kurunegala from Dambulla, a long, straight stretch of asphalt that cut like a knife blade through the heavy jungle cover that began in earnest just outside the town. Less than a mile from the train station, you couldn’t see anything in any direction but leaves and vines and trunks and undergrowth. That, and the occasional animal passing in your peripheral vision, the occasional car zooming past on the road.

  “She’s a translator,” Gabriel said. “Spent ten years working for UNESCO out of Paris—that’s where I met her. She transferred back here a year or so ago to work on a set of documents discovered at the Golden Temple.”

  “And you came for a visit to…assist her with the translation.”

  “She called me to see if I’d help out when one of the Temple’s statues was stolen.”

  “I see.”

  “I got the statue back.”

  Sheba nodded.

  “What?” Gabriel said.

  “Nothing,” Sheba said. “I was just thinking how strangely specific a man’s tastes can be. Some men have a thing for feet. You seem to have a thing for linguists.”

  Gabriel smiled. “What can I say? I like smart women.”

  She patted him on the shoulder. “And apparently we like you.”

  The jungle thinned and was replaced by farmland, tidily cultivated fields stretching for miles on either side of the road. With the sky visible again Gabriel saw clouds massing heavily overhead, moving swiftly as the wind picked up. The sun was dropping and the undersides of the clouds were stained with shadow, dark russet streaks that made them look lower than they were.

  When the first drops fell, it was almost a relief, cutting the heat and releasing some of the humidity. But drops were soon replaced by sheets of water pounding into the ground, a torrent that would have resembled a flash flood if Gabriel hadn’t known it was likely to continue unabated for the next five hours. He was soaked through in an instant; Sheba, too, though her jacket at least had a hood that she was able to put up. Of all the supplies they’d taken off the plane, some of which he was carrying strapped to his belt, some worn over his shoulders like a backpack under his leather jacket, some in a satchel slung over Sheba’s shoulder, none was an umbrella. And there had been one, too. He kicked himself for not taking it.

  Instead, he took out a safety blinker from Sheba’s bag, activated it, and clipped it to one of the bag’s straps. It was a square plastic box that flashed a bright red light every three seconds. Even with visibility cut by the downpour, Gabriel figured it should be enough to keep strange cars from hitting them—and Dayani from missing them.

  It also attracted notice from other drivers. One car pulled up alongside them and cracked the window, the driver asking in a shout whether they needed help, first in Sinhala and then in halting English.

  The temptation to accept his offer was great—but they couldn’t get any wetter at this point, and since they’d been walking almost half an hour now, Dayani should be driving by any minute.

  “Thanks, no,” Gabriel shouted back. “Someone’s picking us up.” He had to shout it again to make himself heard. The driver shrugged, rolled his window up and drove off.

  “You’re sure your friend’s coming?” Sheba asked, leaning close to his ear.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “I hope so,” she said, pulling her jacket tightly around her, for what little good that did.

  A moment later Gabriel pointed at a shape looming out of the gray wall of water before them. “Here she is.” He pulled a road flare from his belt and activated it, waving it overhead till Dayani’s white Indica pulled to a halt. They piled into the backseat and slammed the door shut behind them. Water ran off them, soaking the mats on the floor. They were both breathing heavily, as if they’d just come from running a footrace.

  The woman in the driver’s seat turned to face them, a towel in one hand. “Here, you can use this.” She looked from Gabriel to Sheba and back again. “I only brought one.”

  “That’s okay,” Gabriel said. And to Sheba: “You use it.”

  “And this is…?” Dayani said.

  “A friend of mine,” Gabriel said. “Sheba McCoy. She’s a linguist.”

  Dayani’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, is she?”

  Sheba snatched the towel out of Dayani’s hand and began drying her face and hair, which had gotten drenched in spite of the hood.

  “Thank you for picking us up,” Gabriel said. He took one of Dayani’s hands, squeezed it and, leaning forward, kissed her on the cheek.

  “Pas de problème,” Dayani said. “Want to tell me what’s got you in such a hurry that you’d walk through a monsoon to get there?”

  “I found a map,” Gabriel said, sitting back as Dayani made a U-turn and got underway again. “Partly in Egypt and partly in Greece. It pointed here.”

  “Here to Sri Lanka? Here to Kurunegala? To Dambulla?”

  “To a spot maybe ten miles northeast of Dambulla,” Gabriel said. “Give or take. Do you have any idea what might be there?”

  “Of course,” Dayani said. In the rearview mirror, Gabriel saw her dark brown eyes narrow. “Ten miles northeast, that’s where Sigiriya is.”

  The name rang only the faintest of bells. “Sigiriya?”

  “It’s an ancient rock fortress in the middle of the jungle,” Dayani said. “The locals sometimes call it Lion Rock.”

  “A man named John Still discovered it in 1907,” Dayani said, speaking slowly, her attention focused on the road. “Not the rock itself, of course—that’s never been a secret. A 370-meter volcanic rock towering over the surrounding tree line, you’re not going to lose track of that. What Still discovered were the ruins on top of the rock, and the remains of some artwork on the way up—paintings, mostly.”

  “Do any of these paintings depict monsters? Animals with human heads?”

  “No. You mean like a sphinx?”

  “Exactly like a sphinx,” Gabriel said.

  “Well, most of them have been lost—the paintings were done directly on the side of the rock more than fifteen hundred years ago, and there are only twenty-two remaining out of what we think were something like five hundred originally. The ones that are left are mostly images of women—bare-breasted concubines, that sort of thing. But who knows what the ones that were lost depicted.”

  “Are there any sculptures, by any chance?”

  “One,” Dayani said. “Halfway up, there’s a shelf with two monumental stone paws—lion’s paws, each one taller than a man. And there’s a flight
of stone steps between them, leading further up the rock. But that’s all that’s left—the rest of the figure is missing. Clearly there used to be a head there, probably made of fired clay or brick; to get to the top you’d have had to climb up into the lion’s mouth. But it’s all long gone. There’s no record of what it looked like.”

  Or whether it was a lion’s mouth at all, Gabriel thought. As frightening as it might have been to ask visitors to allow themselves to be swallowed by a giant stone lion, how much more so would it have been to ask them to climb into the mouth of a man with a lion’s body?

  Just the thing to set the proper tone for foreign emissaries coming to the Cradle of Fear.

  “Has the site been thoroughly explored?” Gabriel said.

  “Depends what you mean by thoroughly,” Dayani said. “It’s rather enormous. The upper surface has been mapped and the grounds around it, but the rock itself is riddled with caves—monks were using it as a shelter for nine hundred years before King Kasyapa ever built the palace on the top, and after his death they used it for nine hundred more.”

  “Only monks?” Gabriel said.

  “Why? What else did you have in mind?”

  “Breeders,” Gabriel said. “Animal breeders.”

  “Well, monks in Sri Lanka often did raise animals,” Dayani said.

  “Not the kind I’m thinking of,” Gabriel said.

  “And what kind’s that?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dayani. The less you know, the better. There are men coming here who have already killed at least nine people in pursuit of a relic of some sort that’s connected to Sigiriya. I don’t want them to have a reason to come after you.”

  “Gabriel,” Dayani said patiently, “if they find out I drove you, they’ll have all the reason they need. You may think you’re protecting me, but you’re not. At worst you’re endangering me and at best you’re annoying me.” She swerved onto the shoulder to give a wide berth to a truck that had loomed up out of nowhere. Honking, she swerved back on once it was past. “So for the sake of all that is holy, mon âme, would you please just tell me what the hell is going on?”