Fearful Symmetry: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  I was reminded of a story he told us prior to our arrival in Gangtok about his father, the famous huntsman. The elder König had been on safari in North Rhodesia when he heard tell of a man-eating lion responsible for dragging villagers from their homes and missionaries from their tents. König’s father hired a cadre of locals, who flocked to him when they heard how much he had offered for brave men willing to guide him into the heart of the lion’s range so he could end its bloody rampage. He selected only the largest and the strongest among them, those who cared more for the promise of financial gain than for their own lives.

  They traveled on foot in the most haphazard manner possible, their lack of caution and fearlessness drawing attention to them wherever they went. They hung fresh kills from the trees surrounding their campsite at night and invited death into their midst. It went on like this for weeks, until the men grew cocky in their invincibility and began to doubt the very existence of the man-eater. Not Walther König, though. Unbeknownst to his men, König spent his nights with his rifle in the trees overlooking their tents, waiting for the beast to show itself. The night it finally did, Walther watched it creep into the tents and listened to the screams of his men as it slaughtered them. The following morning, he followed the trail of carnage to the den of the lion, where he killed it while it slept.

  König had then laughed himself nearly to tears when he said his father had only carried a fraction of the amount he had offered the men who led him into the hunting grounds and had never expected to pay so much as a single pfennig. The men had been convinced to serve as bait by the promise of money. As we walked through the silent forest behind König and his rifle, I could not help but wonder if he were using us in much the same way.

  There was no doubt he suspected something was out there, but he uttered no words of warning. In fact, quite the opposite. Whenever he met my stare, he attempted a smile that I could tell was for my benefit alone.

  The cave was smaller than I’d envisioned, but it was dry inside and situated beneath a rocky crag that sheltered our fire, which, thanks to the damp wood, produced more smoke than flame. The warmth was a godsend, though, if the moving shadows it cast were not. And finding storage space for our supplies out of the elements was an additional blessing, especially for Brandt, who obsessed about his plaster powder and the prospect of it getting wet and hardening. He claimed it was more valuable than gold and irreplaceable, and despite its weight carried it personally with his most prized possessions. I felt the same way about my reels, and yet I somehow managed not to burden the others with my incessant whining.

  As I sit here now, chronicling the events of the day so as to refresh my memory when it comes time to edit these cans of film into a single coherent feature, I feel increasingly anxious. The air is electric with a sensation I cannot quite describe in my mind, let alone in words. There is no birdsong, no chirruping of insects or frogs. Only the violent sounds of the storm lashing the canopy and the raindrops assailing the shrubbery and puddles. Metzger and Eberhardt breathe softly as they sleep, while Brandt studies his anatomical drawings by the wan light, occasionally grunting to himself as though reaching some internal conclusion that launches a riffling search through the preceding pages. All the while König remains vigilant. He sits at the farthest reaches of the fire’s warmth, on top of a stone formation nearly as tall as he, his knees drawn to his chest. His rifle rests in his lap as his eyes dissect the shadows, moving from left to right and back again, occasionally darting toward the origin of a sound nearly indistinguishable from the storm.

  I draw no comfort from his protection, only a growing sense of unease, for I fear whatever demons plague him are contagious. I find myself dwelling upon the footprint we discovered prior to crossing the bridge into Motuo, the obsessive nature of our resident zoologist’s secretive daily forays into the unknown territory, and the horrific wounds inflicted upon the British soldier. Perhaps it is merely König’s paranoia that is catching, for even as I write this, I am certain I hear the subtle noises of some unseen predator moving through the jungle and feel the weight of its eyes upon me.

  Whatever creature stalks us is becoming increasingly brazen and, I fear, will soon reveal itself to us in a flurry of teeth and claws.

  Twenty

  Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin

  Motuo County

  Tibet Autonomous Region

  People’s Republic of China

  October 16th

  Yesterday

  “His name is—was—Kaspar Andreessen,” Warren said, pointing at the small video monitor. He’d located the point on the digital recording where Brooks had isolated the man’s face and chest, captured the frame, and enhanced it to the best of the equipment’s limited capability. They all stood in a half-circle around it, staring in silence at the corpse of a man whose death had surely been as terrifying as it had been painful. “I met him at the Max Plank Institute in Leipzig back in 2002. Or maybe it was 2003. It doesn’t matter. He was chair of the research group on Great Ape Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation. I interviewed him for the Discovery Channel about the impact of toxic chemicals on the environment and the alarming rise in oncogenesis among native ape populations following the death of Snowflake, the albino gorilla, from skin cancer.”

  Adrianne asked the question they were all thinking.

  “So how did he get here?”

  “He was German?” Brooks said.

  “If I remember correctly, he was actually Swedish. Or maybe Dutch.”

  “He had a Sacagawea dollar in his pocket. That’s not the kind of coin you can pick up—let alone spend—just anywhere. He had to have been in America prior to coming here.”

  “A lot of people carry talismans,” Adrianne said. “Maybe it was his lucky coin.”

  “It certainly doesn’t look like it was very lucky from where I’m standing,” Julian said.

  “Even if he was dispatched from America,” Warren said, “there’s no telling where he was or if there’s any connection to how he ended up here.”

  “Do you know if he was ever on staff at the Brandt Institute?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You’ve been affiliated with the institution for the longest.”

  “And you’re the bloody director. If anyone should know, it’s you. And don’t you think Johann would have told you if he commissioned another expedition before ours?”

  Brooks didn’t reply. He was starting to think Brandt had only told him what he wanted to hear. And the truth was he probably should have known if Andreessen had ties to the institute, but, with the exception of files related to current staff and interns, all personnel files were stored off-site. Most weren’t even computerized yet. When Brooks was promoted to director, he inherited a daunting organizational system defined by its disorganization. His only choice had been to blame it on his predecessors, wipe the slate clean, and implement his own system. When it came to matters prior to the start of his administration, he wouldn’t even know where to begin.

  “You said he specialized in great apes, right?” Adrianne said. “There definitely aren’t any of those around here. The last known great ape in Tibet was Gigantopithecus blacki, and it’s been extinct for three hundred thousand years. I did my master’s thesis on radical environmental changes and their effects on both migration and extinction. Gigantopithecus is a classic example of extinction as a consequence of a species’ failure to adapt. When a climactic event killed off the bamboo forests, it was unable to convert to a frugivorous diet.”

  “Technically, Gigantopithecus has been reclassified so that it falls into the subfamily Ponginae,” Warren said. “It’s more closely related to orangutans than gorillas.”

  “Regardless, there wouldn’t be any professional reason for him to be here, would there?”

  Brooks looked at the dead man, and for the briefest of moments saw his own face. Gigantopithecus had initially been classified as a hominin, more closely related to primitive man than his simian forebears. Bas
ed on the size of its molars, experts believe it stood somewhere between six and nine feet tall and moved bipedally, although that conclusion was largely speculative considering no pelvic or lower extremity bones had ever been found.

  Again, he recalled the plaster cast and realized just how easy it would have been to use it to manipulate a primatologist.

  “I thought that Giganto-whatever was just a myth,” Julian said.

  “You’re thinking of the yeti,” Warren said with a sigh.

  “Yeti no myth,” Zhang said. They were the first words he’d spoken since Brooks returned. “I know people who see it.”

  “I’m sure,” Warren said.

  “They say they see it attack animals. Even kill yak and mule and drag them off.”

  “We need to focus on what we’re supposed to do with this knowledge,” Brooks said. “This man’s been dead for a long time. I find it hard to believe no one would come looking for him when he didn’t return.”

  “Maybe they did and just couldn’t find him,” Adrianne said. “I mean, what are the odds that anyone would find those tombs all the way up there unless they knew exactly what they were looking for.”

  Brooks felt the weight of her stare upon him and shifted uneasily. He had to tell them everything, especially now that he had reason to question all Brandt had told him.

  “You’re assuming anyone knew he was here in the first place,” Julian said. “For all we know, whoever sent him made him sign a non-disclosure agreement like we did. I guess when you think about it like that, who all even knows that we’re here?”

  “What about the others?” Adrianne said. “How in the world did a Nazi end up here?”

  “I find the nature of their wounds more disconcerting,” Warren said. “Is it possible the victims were buried in such a manner to protect the identity of the animal that killed them? To hide the evidence?”

  “I can see it,” Adrianne said. “If anyone found out, this place would be crawling with people trying to either capture or kill it, and we’ve all seen how little the natives like outsiders.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Julian said. “We’re talking about different people killed in the exact same manner over the span of three-quarters of a century. How many animals live that long? I’m not the expert on population dynamics, but surely that means whatever it is has been breeding and if it’s managed to stay hidden for so many years, then what are the odds that it’s still out there right now? Remember what I told you about the tigers in the Sunderbans? People are just another type of meat on the freaking menu. Who’s to say we aren’t dealing with the same thing here?”

  “Then why weren’t they eaten?” Brooks said. They all stood in silence. That was the question, wasn’t it? The only predator in the natural world that killed without consuming its prey was man, and it was obvious the victims had been killed by something entirely unrelated to human beings. “We need to examine the other bodies.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell us what’s really going on,” Adrianne said. “And this time none of that ‘you’ll find out soon enough’ crap. We walked straight through the middle of the jungle to the foot of a cliff filled with tombs we would never have seen if we didn’t already know they were there. They’re the reason we traveled halfway around the world. The bodies inside the coffins. And yet you seem as surprised as the rest of us about what’s inside. So I ask you again, what aren’t you telling us?”

  The others stared at him expectantly.

  “You’re right. I knew the coffins were here. I was given detailed directions and knew what I would find inside of them. Only I wasn’t prepared to find human remains.”

  “What else would you expect to find in a coffin?” Warren asked.

  “An unclassified hominin,” Adrianne said. “He expected to find intact remains preserved by some primitive burial rite. That’s why we have an evolutionary anthropologist, an expert on population models, a botanist who can climb like a monkey, and a glory hound who’d do anything to get his face on TV. No offense, Dr. Murray.”

  “None taken.”

  “So how did you know, Jordan? How did you know this place would be here?”

  “Brandt told me.”

  “How did Brandt know?”

  “He was the one who found it.”

  “So if such a discovery really exists, then why didn’t he take credit for it himself?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  “This would have been so much easier if I’d been able to show you.”

  “Show us what?” Warren asked.

  “Trust me, I didn’t believe him at first either. Even after seeing it with my own eyes.” He paused and furrowed his brow. “Wait a minute.”

  He looked around until he found his backpack buried under all of the others and set about extricating it. The first raindrops pattered the ground and slapped the leaves in the upper reaches.

  Zhang tilted his face to the sky and shielded his eyes from raindrops that fell like marbles.

  “Big storm coming.”

  And just like that, the sky opened and they were seemingly immersed in water.

  Brooks helped the others frantically pack the sensitive electronic equipment into padded, hard-shell cases and load them into their packs. They were all drenched by the time they shrugged them on and made a break for the cover of the trees. The rain seemed to pour unabated through the canopy, making it difficult to see. Even the largest of trees provided little shelter from the storm, forcing them to continue on their current course toward where they occasionally glimpsed sheer granite cliffs rising above the foliage. The ground grew steeper and channels of water raced past them, eroding through the slick mud.

  “Over there!” Julian shouted.

  Brooks looked up just long enough to see the grad student pointing through the dense forest toward a towering escarpment, then hurriedly looked back down to keep the rain out of his eyes.

  They ran for everything they were worth and ducked under the shelter of an outcropping from which the rain poured like a waterfall.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Julian gasped. He stripped off his shirt and wrung it out. His skin prickled with goosebumps and he wrapped his arms around his chest to stifle a shiver.

  “I tell you big storm come,” Zhang said with a shrug.

  “A little more than a second’s warning would have been nice.”

  Brooks took off his own shirt and draped it over a boulder. He was just about to peel off his pants when he looked up to find the others staring at him expectantly.

  “Fine. Let me change out of these wet clothes and I’ll tell you everything I know. Better yet, I’ll show you.”

  He grabbed his backpack and ducked behind a stone formation that must have fallen from the cliff eons ago and toppled backward into the recess. There was what appeared to be the mouth of a cave set into the wall behind it, one completely hidden from the forest by the massive rock. He took off his backpack and carried it into the darkness. Water dripped from somewhere ahead of him with a metronomic plip…plip… and he smelled a combination of mildew and something that reminded him of the time his basement flooded.

  He changed into a dry pair of boxers and pants that had been spared the rain by the waterproof fabric and silently thanked the heavens for the small favor. He wrung the water from his others and was just about to head back out when he caught something from the corner of his eye. A reflection from metal, possibly. Maybe just quartz embedded in the granite wall.

  He removed his mini LED Maglite from his backpack and shined it toward the rear of the cave. The flashlight fell from his hand and clattered to the ground. The beam highlighted the rocks to his left, barely illuminating the deeper reaches.

  Brooks stared at the scene before him in the dim light for several moments before he finally found his voice.

  “Hey.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey!
”

  “What is it?” Warren asked.

  “You guys need to see this.”

  Part V:

  Condemned

  Twenty-one

  Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin

  Motuo County

  Tibet Autonomous Region

  People’s Republic of China

  October 16th

  Yesterday

  Brooks retrieved his flashlight and shined it deeper into the cave once more. He heard the clamor of footsteps on the stone behind him.

  “What is—?” Adrianne started, but silenced herself with a sharp intake of breath. “What in the name of God happened in here?”

  “Is that all blood?” Julian asked.

  Brooks advanced cautiously. The cave widened to either side of the narrow stone corridor that served as an entryway, making it hard to determine how large it truly was and impossible to see anything hiding directly beside the outlet. He swept the beam slowly from one side to the other, the column of light shrinking against the earthen wall and the old tarp draped over the objects stacked against it. He made a conscious effort not to focus on what had obviously been stored in here for an incredibly long time. At least not yet. Not until he made sure that nothing else was in there with them.

  He thought of his ice axes inside his backpack, the serrated picks folded down and useless to him now. They were the only items in his possession that even remotely resembled weapons. If he were walking into a tiger’s den as he suspected, then he had no conceivable means of defending himself. He knew he should turn around and get the hell out of there. His curiosity had always been his Achilles’ heel, though, and right now it was beyond piqued.

  He stopped near the end of the tunnel and listened.

  “What do you—?”

  Brooks shushed Warren and concentrated on hearing any sound that might betray the presence of something lurking just outside of his range of sight. The whisper of soft breathing, the wet, slathering noises of a predator licking blood from its fur, anything at all other than the plip…plip…of the rain slowly working its way through the fissures in the mountain, the faint buzzing of insects, and the nervous shuffling from behind him that made it increasingly difficult to hear the subtle sounds that could prove to be the difference between life and death.