The Cradle of Life

by Dave Stern

“Right.”

  “Right. Tell Hillary I’ll call back later.” Lara hung up the phone, just in time to catch the tail end of the conversation between Shumei and Terry.

  “It’s not like Lara to take a partner,” she was saying.

  “Oh, we’ve worked together before.”

  “So I understand. So where are you two going?” she asked, helping Terry on with a jacket.

  “Maybe a nice walk, fresh mountain air.” He shrugged. “Stop by and see my friends.”

  “You have friends here?”

  “The Shay Ling.”

  “The Shay Ling?” Shumei looked past Terry to Lara, and shook her head. “You need more weapons.” She walked over to a table piled high with ordnance, and began sorting out clips for Lara’s .45s.

  Five minutes later, the pack was full, and digging into the small of Lara’s back. She and Terry were perched on motorcycles, the farm and Shumei to their rear, the dirt road and the mountains in the distance before them. A sliver of orange and red off in the distance caught her eye. It ran up one side of the nearest mountain and down the other.

  She squinted, and saw that, in fact, the sliver continued as far off into the distance as she could see.

  “The Shay Ling watch all the roads,” Terry said. “We’ll have to go around the back—”

  Lara was still looking at the sliver. “We’ll go straight.”

  Terry looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “Ah—maybe you didn’t hear me, Croft. They’ll have men on every road from here to Luoyang.”

  Lara smiled and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Not every road,” she said.

  If only Alexander had kept going, Lara thought. If he hadn’t stopped at the Hesperus, who knows what might have happened. Perhaps the Bay of Bengal wouldn’t have seemed like the end of the world to him. He might have reached Cambodia. And from there, China. And maybe, just, maybe…

  He might have made it far enough to see this.

  She brought her bike to a stop, and looked ahead and behind her, down the length and breadth of the Great Wall. Almost twenty-five-hundred kilometers long, supposedly the only manmade object on earth visible from the moon. Finished sometime in the third century B.C., if she was remembering right, although sections of it certainly would have been complete in Alexander’s time. Probably this section, in fact—running as it did right along the old China–Mongolia border, it would have been one of the first to be built.

  They’d been traveling on this part of the wall for about two hours, heading west. So far they’d only come across a single group of elderly tourists, standing outside a tour bus parked near the base of the wall. The look on their faces when Lara and Terry had driven by high above, on their motorcycles—

  Priceless.

  “Hey!”

  She looked down. Terry, traveling for the last few miles on the road running alongside the wall, had stopped, as well.

  “We need to think about heading south!” he called up.

  She nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. Terry was right, they needed to turn for Luoyang soon. Which meant coming down from the wall.

  Five minutes farther on, she found a long, sloping stairway that led to the ground. A minute later she was back on terra firma and searching the road ahead of her for Terry.

  Ah. There he was—looking up at the wall, hoping to catch sight of her.

  Suddenly, she felt like a bit of fun. Terry was always fun to play with, she remembered. Mainly because unlike ninety-nine point nine percent of the population, he could keep up with her.

  Lara smiled, and gunned the motor. Came up behind him on a curve, shortcut through the brush, and—

  Shot past him, close enough that he struggled to maintain control of the bike.

  “Bit rusty, are we?” she called back.

  Terry’s only answer was a smile.

  A second later, he’d blown by her, gotten twenty feet ahead.

  At which point, he started slaloming across the road, weaving from left to right in front of her to block her way.

  “I think it’s coming back!” he shouted.

  Lara shot straight down the center line.

  “I expected better from a Scot!” she yelled as she flew past.

  “I don’t expect anything from an Englishwoman!” he replied—and just as she was almost past him, he accelerated, and their wheels locked.

  Lara needed every bit of her strength to keep the bike from flying out from underneath her. She wrestled the bike upright, slammed on the brakes, and came to a dead halt.

  Terry was right next to her when she stopped.

  “Another thing that’s coming back to me,” he said. “What it feels like to get tangled up with you—Lady Croft.”

  “Don’t, Terry. That’s over and done with.”

  “Is it?” He smiled. “You sure you don’t want to knock me on my ass? Now—or later?”

  Lara glared.

  Then she gunned her motor, and shot off down the road.

  Three hours on, the sun just reaching its high point in the sky, Terry pulled off the road and stopped his bike.

  “From here it’s by foot.”

  Lara looked around. There was nothing in sight, just scrub and a few isolated trees. And off in the distance, mountains.

  Terry saw where she was looking.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Those hills—that’s our destination. A good few hours of walking.”

  “Let’s get started then.” Lara dragged her bike over behind a bush, hiding it from any passersby. She checked her Colts, then slipped on her pack.

  When she turned around, Terry was standing right in front of her.

  “Best to reconsider that no gun rule,” he said. “Anything that happens is going to happen very fast.”

  Lara shook her head.

  “No.”

  “Come on, Croft. Do you really think I’m going to turn on you?”

  “It has happened before,” she said.

  “That was then.”

  “And this is now?” She shook her head. “One thing about archaeology, Terry—it forces you to learn from the past. Which I have done.”

  “Fine. Have it your way then.” He threw up his arms in defeat and started walking.

  Lara was soon on automatic—one foot in front of the other, hand up to push aside the occasional brush, eyes focused on the mountains ahead, Terry walking right at her side.

  She turned around at one point and saw that the road they’d been on had vanished from sight. As had all signs of civilization. No sounds around them either, save the occasional birdsong. She and Terry could have been the last man and woman left on earth.

  As isolated as they’d been in Chasong.

  She looked up just in time to avoid walking into Terry.

  “Keep moving,” she said.

  “Sure. But tell me something Croft—where do I fit in?”

  “You’re my guide. Keep moving.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He sounded serious. “When you think back on the vast scheme of your life—where do I fit in? Was I a bump in the road? The love of your life? Was I time well spent? Four months, Lara—was it more good than bad?”

  “I know what you meant, Terry. I’m just not going to answer that question.”

  She pointed ahead. The mountains loomed over them like silent, disapproving guardians.

  They moved on.

  Eight

  What a fascinating woman, Reiss thought, setting down the dossier on his desk.

  Lara Croft. Lady Croft, sole surviving member of one of England’s most revered and influential families. A prize-winning photographer, an avid outdoorswoman, and—most important from Reiss’s perspective—one of the most controversial figures in archaeology today. A “tomb raider,” the papers called her.

  Reiss wondered why he had never heard of her before. Especially given her connections with MI6, which his sources had been able to outline in some detail. Croft had done a considerable amount o
f work for Her Majesty’s government—though only, he noted, when her interests and theirs meshed. Unfortunately, none of that work had involved cooperating with the MI6 agents Reiss had in his pocket, which made it harder to assess the potential threat she did represent.

  Nonetheless, Reiss decided, her abilities were formidable. He would treat her with a considerable degree of respect—especially now that she’d added the Sheridan fellow to her team.

  He wondered if he could persuade the two of them to change sides—to come work for him. They were exemplary specimens, both prime examples of what the human species was capable of achieving. Sheridan was a lethal weapon, and Croft—

  Well. In addition to being very well trained herself, she was a superbly attractive woman.

  Reiss flipped through a few more pictures.

  Yes, he decided finally. If circumstances developed to the point where he could reach out to either of them, he would endeavor to do so. In the meantime…he had work to do.

  The doctor sat down and logged on to his computer. Ah. Here was a message from Madame Gillespie—the last of the five he’d offered Pandora to respond. She, like the others, had agreed to his terms, had promised the doctor would see the money deposited in his account before the close of business.

  He was in the middle of composing a reply to her when the soft shushing of the entrance doors caused him to look up.

  Sean, Reiss’s chief of operations, walked into the lab, followed by one of his operatives, and a stranger. This third man carried a crate.

  “From Chen Lo,” Sean announced.

  Reiss took a closer look at the man, and the crate he carried, and frowned. Wrong size, wrong shape.

  Chen Lo had gotten greedy—broken their deal. The ingratitude. The duplicity. The cheek. The doctor had paid him millions, in American dollars.

  “That’s not the Orb,” Reiss said, rising.

  Two frowns—one from the messenger, the other from Sean.

  “What?” Sean asked.

  Reiss waved dismissively at the crate.

  “The Orb. It’s not in there.”

  The doctor rose and walked to a plain white filing cabinet at the back of the lab. He punched in the proper combination and a drawer popped open. A moment later Reiss had found the file he was looking for.

  He turned around, folder in hand, to see that the crate was now open and the messenger’s hands cuffed behind his back.

  Sean held out a satellite phone to him.

  “You were right. This was all that was inside,” he told Reiss.

  The doctor took the phone, noting the number displayed on the screen. Chen Lo’s, if his memory served. All he had to do was punch send to speak to the man.

  Reiss composed himself and turned to the messenger. The unfortunate fellow looked confused—nervous. His eyes darted hurriedly from Reiss to Sean to the crate and then back to Reiss.

  “Is there anything you can tell me about this?”

  The messenger shook his head.

  Reiss nodded to Sean, then hit the send button.

  The tones sounded at exactly the same instant as Sean’s gun. A second later, the messenger’s body crumpled to the floor.

  Chen Lo answered on the first ring.

  “Doctor.”

  “I hope you didn’t like your messenger,” Reiss said.

  “I didn’t. But I did like the men I lost in the temple.”

  “You underestimated Lady Croft.”

  “I underestimated how much this Orb is worth.”

  Reiss opened the folder in his hand. It was a dossier he’d assembled on Chen Lo over the last several months. It contained not information on the Shay Ling or any of their operations, but rather more personal details. Information about Chen Lo’s schooling, his parents, his years at university, his family…

  Reiss turned to a picture of Chen Lo and his wife—sweet thing, didn’t look a day older than twenty-one. She and Chen Lo had two children already—a boy and a girl, featured in the next photo in the folder. Precious, precocious-looking children. And—as the file made clear—very important to Chen Lo.

  Reiss had their medical records in front of him, as well. They’d been to the United States for all their vaccinations—TB, influenza, hepatitis, even smallpox. Drat. That would have been his first choice—he had so many choice strains, and the virus was so easy to transmit. Still…

  “There are so many horrible diseases,” he said to Chen Lo. “Things we are susceptible to as children. You never know when you could find yourself holding little Shiho and Tai’s hands as a mysterious ailment begins to ravage their bodies.”

  Chen Lo cut him off.

  “You kill them, and I’ll just give your Orb to Lady Croft. My scouts tell me she’s a few miles from here as we speak. I wonder how much she’d pay—”

  “I’ll transfer an additional twelve million dollars to the twelve currently awaiting release,” Reiss said curtly, cutting him off. He didn’t have time to quibble over money, not with Croft so close. A few miles away? This was not good news at all. He no longer had the luxury of trying to turn her anymore. She was moving fast—best to kill her quickly, and proceed with his plans.

  “I will release it all once you’ve delivered to me the Orb. And Lady Croft’s body.”

  “That will be a pleasure,” Chen Lo said. “The Orb will come by truck to the flower pagoda in Shanghai. Nine P.M. You’ll find Croft’s body with it.”

  Reiss was about to hang up when he realized he’d forgotten something.

  “Croft has company,” the doctor said. “A former British commando—a Royal Marine, by the name of—”

  Chen Lo laughed out loud.

  “What?”

  “It’s Sheridan, isn’t it?”

  “In fact, yes. Terry Sheridan. You know him?”

  Chen Lo’s voice hardened. “Terry and I go way back. It’ll be a pleasure to see him again.”

  From the way Chen Lo talked, the pleasure would be one-sided.

  “Enjoy yourself,” Reiss told him. “I’ll expect the Orb in Shanghai tonight.”

  He hung up, and shook his head. It was a shame about Croft, really. He was sure she would appreciate what he was trying to do, or failing that, would at least have appreciated the opportunity to see Pandora. Too bad.

  For her.

  The scrub was long behind them. There was no sign of civilization, or life of any kind. No trace of the Shay Ling, either. Lara would have thought they were lost, except that over the last few moments Terry had actually picked up the pace, as if they were close to their destination. But all she could see, stretching out before them like an impassable obstacle, was a sheer, rock mountain face. Were they going to try and find a way up? Go around? Was there a trail somewhere that she hadn’t spotted?

  She watched Terry’s eyes as he surveyed the route ahead. He hadn’t spoken in quite some time, had stopped trying to quiz her about their shared past, or what they were hoping to take from Chen Lo and the Shay Ling. He was concentrating on the task at hand—and while part of her welcomed that focus, part of her was worried.

  She wouldn’t put it past Terry to be leading her into a trap. A place where he could surprise her, get the gun away, and make his escape. Leaving her with egg on her face, leaving Reiss with the map to Pandora, leaving the Petrakis un-avenged. Not that he cared about any of that.

  As Terry had proven to her several years back, he didn’t care about anyone, or anything, except himself.

  They came around a bend in the cliff and found themselves in a cul-de-sac, with an old mining tunnel directly ahead of them.

  Terry stopped walking.

  “Straight through?” she asked, coming up alongside him. “Or go up, and around?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Excuse me?” Lara frowned.

  Terry smiled. “Doesn’t matter, I said.”

  Lara stared at him. “You don’t have any idea where they are—do you?”

  “They’re close.”

  “W
hich means what?” She was furious. “Tell me you haven’t been pretending to know where they are all along, just so I’d get you out—”

  “Croft, this isn’t some tomb, and the Shay Ling aren’t mummies. They’re killers. If you don’t trust me—”

  “I don’t. And I don’t have any time to waste.”

  She had to get back to Shumei, she had to get in touch with Calloway, she had to find the Orb, yes, but even more importantly, she had to find Chen Lo.

  She drew her gun and pointed it at Terry.

  He glared at her. “Normally you hand it to someone butt first.”

  Lara motioned with the gun. “We’re turning back.”

  Terry didn’t move a muscle. Lara was about to speak again when something changed in his eyes.

  “Go ahead, pull the trigger. I’d rather you than them.”

  She froze where she stood.

  All around them, the rocks were coming to life.

  The Shay Ling weren’t ninjas—they were dressed like street punks, Lara thought, as they stepped forward, weapons at the ready—but they were nonetheless experts in the art of camouflage. Three had hidden themselves in the cliff formations near the tunnel, another handful had been right behind them, but somehow Lara had missed them altogether—

  Another came up and ripped the gun from her grasp and Lara’s eyes widened in surprise.

  It was Nicholas’s killer.

  Lara knew there were guns trained on her all around and yet she couldn’t stop herself from charging forward.

  Not that it did any good.

  She was shoved to the ground, kicked once in the side. She tasted dirt and spit it out. She rolled over onto her back—

  And found herself staring straight down the barrel of not one, not two, but three machine pistols.

  She looked to her left, and saw Terry facedown on the ground, getting the same treatment. Worse, actually. They were still kicking him.

  “So, Terry.” Nicholas’s killer was standing over Sheridan, shaking his head. “What part of ‘never come back here’ didn’t you understand?”

  “Xien. Always a pleasure.” One of the Shay Ling had a boot on Terry’s neck—somehow he still managed to turn his head toward Lara. “Lara, this is Chen Lo’s brother, Xien. Xien, this is Lara Croft. Lady Croft—treat her nice, or Her Majesty’s Secret Service will want a word with you.”