The Kingdom

by Clive Cussler

  Neither Sam nor Remi spoke of any of this. They didn’t need to. Their years together, and the adventures they’d shared, had put them on the same wavelength. Facial expressions were usually enough to convey what each was thinking.

  “I’m still holding you to that hot bubble bath promise,” Remi said.

  “Forgot to tell you: I’ve added a relaxing massage to the pot.”

  “My hero. Shall we?”

  Sam nodded. “Let’s give it another hour. If a red carpet exit doesn’t materialize, we’ll turn back, have a rest, then tackle the pit.”

  “Deal.”

  Accustomed to hardship, of both the mental and the physical variety, Sam and Remi fell into a rhythm: walk for twenty minutes, pause for two minutes to rest, take a compass bearing and update the map, then onward again. The remaining time of their journey passed quickly. Left foot, right foot, repeat. To conserve light, Remi had long ago turned off her headlamp, and Sam had set his to its lowest setting, so they found themselves moving in the faintest of twilights. The cold air gushing through the floor seemed colder, their footing harder to maintain, the tinkle of falling icicles jarring to their numbed brains.

  Suddenly Sam stopped. Her reactions at half speed, Remi bumped into him. Sam whispered. “Do you feel that?”

  “What?”

  “Cold air.”

  “Sam, it’s—”

  “No, in our faces. Ahead. Will you dig the lighter out of my pack?”

  Remi did so and handed it to him. Sam took a few steps forward, looking for a solid section of floor between plumes. He found a suitable spot, stopped, and clicked on the lighter. Remi squeezed herself in next to Sam and peered around his arm. Flickering yellow light danced off the icy walls. The flame wavered, then steadied and stood straight up.

  “Wait.” Sam murmured, eyes on the flame.

  Five seconds passed.

  The flame wobbled, then shot sideways, back toward Sam’s face.

  “There!”

  “Are you sure?” Remi asked.

  “The air feels warmer now too.”

  “Wishful thinking?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  They walked for ten feet, stopped, checked the lighter’s flame. Again it angled backward, this time more strongly. They proceeded twenty more feet and repeated the process, with the same result.

  From Remi: “I hear whistling. Wind.”

  “Me too.”

  Another fifty feet brought them to a fork in the tunnel. Lighter held before him, Sam proceeded down the left tunnel, without luck, then down the right. The flame quavered, then a sudden gust nearly blew it out.

  Sam shed his pack. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a flash.”

  He switched his headlamp to its brightest setting and disappeared into the tunnel. Remi could hear his feet scuffing along the floor, the sound growing fainter by the second.

  Remi checked her watch, waited ten seconds, checked it again.

  “Sam?” she called.

  Silence.

  “Sam, answer—”

  Ahead in the darkness his headlamp reappeared.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Remi let her head drop.

  “No red carpet,” Sam continued. “But would daylight do?”

  Remi raised her head, took in Sam’s wide smile. She narrowed her eyes at him and gave him a punch in the shoulder. “Not funny, Fargo.”

  As Sam had promised, there was no red carpet, but after twenty feet of walking he brought her to something even better: a set of natural steps winding up a shaft at whose top, some fifty feet away, was a fuzzy patch of sunlight.

  Two minutes later Sam pushed himself off the top step and found himself peering down a short sideways tunnel. Instead of rock, the sides and floor were earth. At the far end, through a tangle of grass, was sunlight. Sam crawled toward it, shoved his arms through the opening, then dragged himself out. Remi appeared a few moments later, and together they lay back in the grass, smiling and staring up at the sky.

  “Almost noon,” Sam remarked.

  They’d been underground all morning.

  Suddenly, Sam sat up, his head turning this way and that. He leaned over to Remi and whispered. “Radio static. A portable radio.”

  Sam rolled over, crawled to a berm a few feet away, and peeked his head over the side. He ducked down and crawled back. “Police.”

  “A rescue party?” Remi asked. “Who would’ve called them?”

  “Just a guess, but I’d say our erstwhile exploratory escorts, the King twins.”

  “How—”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. Let’s play it safe.”

  They stripped themselves of anything that would indicate where they’d been and what they’d been doing—helmets, headlamps, backpacks, climbing gear, Sam’s map, Remi’s digital camera, the box they’d retrieved from the tomb—and shoved it all back into the tunnel, then packed grass over the entrance.

  With Sam in the lead, they headed east, following a ravine and ducking between trees, until they’d put a quarter mile between themselves and the tunnel. They stopped and listened for radio static. Sam tapped his ear and pointed north. A hundred yards away they could see several figures moving through the trees.

  Sam whispered, “Put on your best forlorn face.”

  “Not much of stretch at this point,” replied Remi.

  Sam cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hey! Over here!”

  10

  CHOBAR GORGE, NEPAL

  The cell door creaked open. A guard peeked inside, scrutinized Sam for a moment as though he were about to make a dash for freedom, then stood aside. Clothed in a baggy light blue jumpsuit, auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail, Remi stepped into the room. Her face was pink, freshly washed.

  The guard said in broken English, “Please sit. Wait,” then slammed shut the door.

  Clothed in a similar jumpsuit, Sam stood up from the table, walked over to Remi, and gave her a big hug. He pulled back and looked her up and down and smiled. “Ravishing, simply ravishing.”

  She smiled. “Idiot.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Better. Amazing what a few minutes with a washcloth and hot water can do. Not quite a warm shower or a hot bath, mind you, but a close second.”

  Together, they sat down at the table. The space in which the Kathmandu police were keeping them wasn’t so much a cell as it was a holding room. The cinder-block walls and the floor were painted a light gray, and the table and chairs (all bolted to the floor) were made of heavy aluminum. Before them, across the table, was a four-foot-wide mesh-embedded window through which they could see the squad room. Half a dozen uniformed officers were going about their business, answering phones, writing reports, and chatting. So far, except for a few polite but firm commands in rough English, no one had spoken to them in the two hours since they’d been “rescued.”

  Riding in the back of the police van in the rapidly fading dusk light, Sam and Remi had watched the passing scenery, looking for the slightest clue as to where they had emerged from the cave system. Their answer had come almost immediately as they crossed over the Chobar Gorge bridge and turned northeast toward Kathmandu proper.

  Their underground march to freedom had brought them to the surface a mere two miles from where they’d entered. This realization brought first a smile to Sam’s and Remi’s lips and then, to the bewilderment of the two police officers in the front seat, a gale of laughter that lasted a full minute.

  “Any clue as to who raised the alarm?” Remi now asked Sam.

  “None. As far as I can tell, we’re not under arrest.”

  “We have to assume they’re going to question us. What’s our story going to be?”

  Sam thought for a moment. “As close to the truth as possible. We came out here a little before sunrise for a day hike. We got lost and wandered around until they found us. If they push, just stick with ‘I’m not sure.’ Unless they found our equipment, they can’t prove
otherwise.”

  “Got it. And providing we don’t get thrown into a Nepali prison for some obscure crime?”

  “We’ll need to retrieve the—”

  Sam stopped talking, his eyes narrowed. Remi followed his gaze through the window to the far left side of the squad room near the door. Standing at the threshold were Russell and Marjorie King.

  “I wish I could say I was surprised,” Remi muttered.

  “Just as we suspected.”

  Across the squad room, the sergeant in charge spotted the King twins and hurried over to where they were standing. The trio began talking back and forth. Though neither Sam nor Remi could hear the conversation, the sergeant’s mannerisms and posture told the tale: he was subservient, if not a little frightened. Finally the sergeant nodded and hurried back into the squad room. Russell and Marjorie stepped back into the hallway.

  A few moments later Sam and Remi’s door opened, and the sergeant and one of his underlings stepped inside. They took the seats opposite the Fargos. The sergeant spoke Nepali for a few seconds, then nodded to his underling, who said in heavily accented but decent English, “My sergeant has asked that I translate our conversation. Is this acceptable?”

  Sam and Remi nodded.

  The sergeant spoke, and a few seconds later the translation came: “If you would, please confirm your identities.”

  Sam replied, “Have we been arrested?”

  “No,” the officer replied. “You are being temporarily detained.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Under Nepali law, we are not required to disclose the answer to that question at the present time. Please confirm your identities.”

  Sam and Remi did so, and for the next few minutes they were taken through a series of routine questions—Why are you in Nepal? Where are you staying? What prompted your visit?—before getting down to substance.

  “Where were you going when you got lost?”

  “Nowhere in particular,” Remi responded. “It seemed like a lovely day for a hike.”

  “You parked your car at Chobar Gorge. Why?”

  “We heard it was a beautiful area,” said Sam.

  “What time did you arrive?”

  “Before dawn.”

  “Why so early?”

  “We’re restless souls,” Sam replied with a smile.

  “What does that mean?”

  “We like to stay busy,” said Remi.

  “Please tell us where your hike took you.”

  “If we knew that,” Sam said, “we probably wouldn’t have gotten lost.”

  “You had a compass with you. How did you lose your way?”

  “I flunked out of Boy Scouts,” said Sam.

  Remi chimed in. “I only sold cookies in the Girl Scouts.”

  “This is not a laughing matter, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo. Do you find this funny?”

  Sam put on his best chastised expression. “Apologies. We’re exhausted and a little embarrassed. We’re grateful you found us. Who alerted you we might be in trouble?”

  The officer translated the question. His sergeant grunted something, then spoke again. “My sergeant asks that you restrict yourselves to answering his questions. You said you planned to go on a daylong hike. Where were your backpacks?”

  “We didn’t expect to be gone that long,” Remi said. “We’re not the best planners, either.”

  Sam nodded sadly to emphasize his wife’s point.

  The officer asked, “You expect us to believe you went on a hike with no equipment whatsoever?”

  “I had my Swiss Army knife,” Sam said drily.

  At this translation, the sergeant glanced up and glared at Sam, then Remi, then stood up and stalked from the room. “Please wait here,” the officer said, and left the room.

  Not surprisingly, the sergeant walked straight through the squad-room door to the hallway. Sam and Remi could see only his back; Russell and Marjorie were out of view. Sam stood up, walked to the far-right side of the window, and pressed his face against it.

  “Can you see them?” Remi asked.

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “The twins look unhappy. Not a smarmy smile in sight. Russell’s gesturing . . . Well, this is interesting.”

  “What?”

  “He’s mimicking the shape of a box—a box that looks remarkably like the same size as the chest.”

  “That’s good. I imagine they’ve searched the area in which they found us. Russell wouldn’t be asking for what’s already been found.”

  Sam stepped back from the window and hurried back to his seat.

  The sergeant and his officer stepped back into the room and sat down. The questioning resumed, this time with a bit more intensity, and in a roundabout fashion designed to trip up Sam and Remi. The gist of the queries remained the same, however: we know you had to have had belongings, where are they? Sam and Remi took their time and stuck to their story, watching as the sergeant’s frustration grew.

  At last the sergeant resorted to threats: “We know who you are and what you do for a living. We suspect you have come to Nepal in search of black market antiquities.”

  “On what do you base your suspicions?” Sam asked.

  “Sources.”

  “You’ve been misinformed,” said Remi.

  “There are several statutes under which you can be charged, all of which carry serious penalties.”

  Sam leaned forward in his chair and fixed the sergeant’s gaze. “Charge away. Right after we’re booked we’ll want to talk to the legal attaché at the U.S. embassy.”

  The sergeant held Sam’s eyes for a long ten seconds, then leaned back and sighed. He said something to his underling, then stood up and left the room, banging the open door against the wall as he left.

  The underling translated, “You are free to go.”

  Ten minutes later, back in their own clothes, Sam and Remi were out the front door of the police station and walking down the steps. Dusk was falling. The sky was clear, and a scattering of diamond-speck stars began to shine. Streetlights illuminated the cobblestoned street below.

  “Sam! Remi!”

  Expecting this, neither of them were surprised when they turned to see Russell and Marjorie hurrying down the sidewalk toward them.

  “We just heard,” Russell said, trotting up. “Are you okay?”

  “Tired, a little embarrassed, but no worse for wear,” Sam replied.

  They’d already decided to stick to their got-lost-on-a-hike story with the King twins. It was a precarious dance; everyone knew Sam and Remi were lying. What would Russell and Marjorie do about it? Better question: as it now seemed clear that Charlie King had a wholly different agenda than the one he’d shared with Sam and Remi, how would they proceed? What was King after, and what was the true story behind Frank Alton’s disappearance?

  “We’ll take you to your car,” Marjorie said.

  “We’ll collect it in the morning,” replied Remi. “We’re going back to the hotel.”

  “Better we get it now,” Russell said. “If you’ve got gear inside—”

  Sam couldn’t help but smile at this. “We don’t. Good night.”

  Sam took Remi’s arm, and together they turned and started walking in the opposite direction. Russell called, “We’ll call you in the morning!”

  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” Sam replied without turning.

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  “Hell, yes, I’d say they’re off the reservation,” Charles King barked, reclining in his plush office chair. Behind him, the cityscape filled his floor-to-ceiling window.

  Half a world away, Russell and Marjorie King said nothing over the speakerphone. They knew better than to interrupt their father. When he wanted to know something, he would ask a question.

  “Where the hell were they all day?”

  “We don’t know,” Russell replied. “The man we hired to follow them lost them southwest of the—”

  “Hired? What d’ya mean, hired?”r />
  “He’s one of our . . . security men at the dig site,” Marjorie said. “He’s trustworthy—”

  “But incompetent! How about gettin’ somebody with both those glowin’ attributes? Ever consider that? Why’d you hire someone? What were you two doin’?”

  “We were at the site,” said Russell. “We’re getting ready to ship the—”

  “Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Could the Fargos have been in that cave system?”

  “It’s possible,” replied Marjorie, “but we’ve been through it. There’s nothing to find.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The question is, if they were, how’d they find out about it? You gotta make sure they’re gettin’ only the info we want them to get, understand?”

  “Yes, Dad,” replied Marjorie and Russell in unison.

  “What about their belongin’s?”

  “We went through them,” said Russell. “And their car. Our man in the police department questioned them for an hour, but no luck.”

  “Did he twist their arms, for God’s sake?”

  “As far as he could.”

  “The Fargos were unfazed, he said.”

  “What’d they say they’d been doin’?”

  “They claimed they got lost on a hike.”

  “Bull crap! This is Sam and Remi Fargo we’re talkin’ about. I’ll tell you what happened: you two screwed up somehow, and the Fargos got suspicious. They’re runnin’ circles around you two. Put a bunch of people on ’em. I want to know where they’re goin’ and what they’re doin’. You got that?”

  “You can count on us, Dad,” said Marjorie.

  “That’d be a nice change,” grumbled King. “In the meantime, I’m not takin’ any more chances. I’m sendin’ reinforcements.”

  King leaned forward and stabbed the speakerphone’s Disconnect button. Standing on the other side of the desk, her hands folded before her, stood Zhilan Hsu.

  “You are hard on them, Charles,” she said quietly.

  “And you coddle ’em!” King shot back.