Peter May - The Fourth Sacrifice

*

Margaret’s face was streaked with tears. ‘All those lies,’ she said. ‘All those lines you fed me. And I swallowed them all. What a fool I’ve been!’ She heard her own voice echoing back at her through the mist, like a voice of reprimand. And she began to feel her control dissolving.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her. She was beyond resistance. Almost beyond caring any more what happened to her. ‘It’s not true,’ he said. ‘I meant every word. Margaret, you must believe me. I love you. I want you to marry me.’

She broke free and looked at him with disgust. ‘Don’t insult me, Michael. Don’t make me a bigger fool than I already am.’

His despair was patent. ‘Margaret, none of this has to end badly. It really doesn’t. Nearly half the warriors are already on their way out of the country. We could be rich, you and I. Beyond our wildest dreams.’

She almost spat in his face. ‘You make me sick, you know that? You proved to me that I didn’t know you at all. And you really don’t know me any better, do you?’ He stepped towards her and she backed off. ‘I told you, stay away from me!’

‘What do you think I’m going to do, kill you?’

‘No. No doubt it’ll be one of your friends who’ll do that.’ Her tone was acid and filled with contempt.

He shook his head in despair. ‘I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Come with me now. We’ll get on a plane and just go. I don’t care about the rest of these.’ He waved his hand towards the warriors. ‘Only about you.’

‘Is that right?’ she said, and she retreated further, backing into the ranks of Qin’s underground warriors. She reached out and pushed with all her strength at the heavily armoured figure of a general. The ancient warrior tipped forward on his base, overbalancing and crashing to the ground at Michael’s feet.

Michael winced, almost as if in pain. ‘Jesus, Margaret! What are you doing? These things are priceless!’

‘I thought you didn’t care.’ And she pushed again with all her might, and a standing archer followed the fate of his general, great shards of splintering pottery scattering across the floor.

Michael tried to grab her, but she retreated further among the silent figures. ‘Don’t, Margaret. Please. These things have survived more than two thousand years. They are part of an historical record of the achievements of mankind. Don’t harm them.’

And in his sincerity, she saw again that part of him which had first drawn her to him. But she knew it had been corrupted by greed and murder, by that human passion and frailty and darkness that he had talked about the night they had met. His sin had been weakness. And the flaw ran too deep. Redemption was impossible.

‘I’ll abandon the filming. We’ll go to America. When we get there I’ll tell the world about what happened here, about the warriors of the fourth chamber. It doesn’t matter if they’re in a museum or some rich man’s study. But we must preserve them. At all costs.’ He looked in abject dismay at the shattered pieces of the two warriors lying all around him.

‘Very touching.’ The voice came out of the mist and startled them both. Michael spun around as Sophie emerged from the shadows of the tunnel holding a gun. Her face was pale and grim.

‘How long have you been there?’ Michael asked quickly.

‘Long enough,’ said Sophie. ‘Wang called me right after he called you. So I’ve been treated to the greater part of your little performance.’ She turned towards Margaret with a superior smile that carried with it more than a hint of bitterness. ‘Good, isn’t he?’ Margaret stared back at her filled with conflicting emotions of fear and dismay. ‘Only, he’s not good at all,’ Sophie said. ‘He got me involved in this. It was he who came running to me for help. I’d have done anything for him, and he knew it.’ She laughed at her own stupidity.

‘ You killed Yuan,’ Margaret realised.

Sophie flashed her a look. ‘Not bad for someone who looks like they ought to be in the second grade.’ Her smile was sour. ‘Ironic really. I even took part in the same Tameshi Giri competition as him in California one time. He didn’t remember me, of course. I wasn’t in the same class as him. But I still managed to cut his head off. I did all Michael’s dirty work. Even planted the sword for him.’ She paused. ‘You think you’re the fool? Well, I’m the biggest fool of all. Because I thought I could make him love me the way I’ve always loved him. I even introduced him to you, so that when I suggested to Dakers that you do the autopsy, we could still keep track of things.’ She swung her gun in Michael’s direction and raised it at arm’s length. ‘Only the stupid bastard went and fell in love with you. And now he wants you to take his hand and skip the country, leaving me to face all the shit.’ Tears filled her eyes. ‘Well, no fucking way!’ And she fired a single shot that struck him in the throat.

The sound of it crashed deafeningly around Hu Bo’s secret fourth chamber as Michael toppled backwards, sending several of his beloved warriors tumbling to the ground with him. Margaret screamed, and her hand shot to her mouth in horror as she saw the blood bubble around Michael’s lips, gurgling from his throat where the bullet had severed one of his carotid arteries and smashed through his windpipe. His eyes flickered in panic as the life ebbed from him, his hand clutching hopelessly at his shattered throat. His mouth opened, as if he would speak, but no sound came out of it.

Margaret saw Sophie’s shooting arm swing towards her, and caught the light glinting on the tears in her eyes. It was almost certainly those tears, blurring vision, that caused Sophie’s first shot to miss. The head of the warrior next to Margaret shattered, and razor-sharp needles of it slashed her cheek. She turned and fled towards the dark interior of the chamber, toppling pottery figures as she went. Another shot sounded, and Margaret heard a warrior explode into the ceramic dust of two millennia somewhere off to her left. Then she slipped on the slimy surface of the floor and crashed down heavily on her elbow. She gasped in pain, and turned to see Sophie looming over her.

Then suddenly, bizarrely, there came the electronic trill of a telephone ringing. There was a moment of confusion in Sophie’s face as she turned. Li was about ten feet away. In his right hand he held the sword that Professor Chang had been restoring. His left hand was fumbling to switch off the mobile phone on his belt. But it was all too late. Sophie’s face lit up in a savage smile. She fired, and Li spun away to his left, tumbling among the debris of the warriors.

Margaret screamed and staggered to her feet, clutching her arm, almost blinded now by her tears, and numb with terror. She stumbled towards the tunnel entrance at the rear. But she knew it was hopeless. She knew the gate there was locked. And even if it hadn’t been, how far would she have got before Sophie caught up with her? She waited for the bullet in her back, almost praying for it to release her from this hell. But it didn’t come. She reached the gate and shook it, as if perhaps she rattled it hard enough she could somehow make it open. Then she turned, her back to the bars, and saw Sophie walking slowly towards her. There was a strange, mad, fixed smile on Sophie’s face, like the face of a deranged child. She reached Margaret and looked into her eyes for a very long time before hitting her hard across the face with the barrel of her gun.

Margaret was almost blinded by the pain, and the light that seemed to fill her eyes. She felt her legs buckle, and she slid to the floor. She sensed the shadow of Sophie’s gun crossing her face, and she looked up to see the barrel of it staring back at her. ‘Bitch!’ Sophie said, and then her eyes and mouth opened wide, as if in great surprise. And she and Margaret both looked to see the long blade of a bronze sword projecting from her chest. She hung, as if suspended on it, for several moments, before the blade suddenly withdrew and she collapsed like a house of cards to reveal Li on his knees behind her, supporting himself on the sword, his white shirt soaked red with his own blood.