James Becker - The Messiah Secret

The structure in front of them was very obviously ancient, but at the same time had a strangely modern look, with straight grey-brown stone walls unadorned with decoration. It rose from a level area of ground perhaps fifty yards square, and had two storeys topped by a flat roof, most of which appeared to have fallen down inside the building. All the windows and the two doorways they could see were simply openings in the walls, nothing more. They could see into the building through one of the doorways, where rubble and unidentified rubbish lay scattered across the stone floor.

‘I know what it looks like,’ Angela said, pulling out her map.

‘A deserted monastery?’ Bronson suggested. ‘A small one?’

‘Spot on. Yes, it is — or rather it was — a monastery. In fact, it’s even marked on this map.’

She folded the map so that Bronson could see where she was pointing.

‘Just there. That symbol and the note right beside it.’

Bronson read the words aloud. ‘There’s a sort of castle symbol with the words “Namdis Gompa” beside it,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit surprised it’s deserted. You’d have thought some wandering goatherd might have appropriated a place like this for his own use.’

‘The locals are very superstitious. This was once a monastery, a holy place, and they’d respect that. They’d never dream of squatting here.’

‘Could this be it, do you think?’ Bronson said, looking up at the old building. ‘The text said something about man-made darkness, which could mean there’s a hidden room inside.’

‘I wish it was that easy, Chris,’ Angela said. ‘But we haven’t passed through that cleft in the rock up there, the one the text described as the “pillars”.’

‘Maybe the writer was referring to the rocks on either side of the gully, down by the road.’

‘But the dates don’t work. I don’t know exactly when this monastery was built, but most of them seem to have been constructed anything from three to five hundred years ago. Even if we’re generous with the dating, and assume this was built half a millennium ago, what we’re searching for was hidden here fifteen hundred years earlier than that. There’s no point in even looking in here.’

‘Right,’ Bronson said, staring back up the slope, ‘onwards and upwards.’

The gully that Bronson and Angela were exploring began as little more than a break in the rock wall. Just to the north of this was an area of sloping ground, at one side of which, and behind a rocky outcropping, the monastery of Namdis Gompa had been built. Beyond that was the cleft in the rocks which Angela had spotted. On the north and north-east side of the valley was a steeper and wider area, dotted with small plateaus where stunted bushes and other scrubby vegetation had gained a precarious foothold.

All this was obvious to Nick Masters as he lay on his belly near the crest of one of the hills that bordered it. He was looking through a pair of binoculars at the scene below him, while about fifty yards back the rest of the men who’d accompanied him sat or lay on the ground, weapons cradled in their hands, bored and waiting for his orders. The exception was Donovan, who was pacing up and down, clearly excited — and irritated.

Masters was careful to keep in the shadow of a rock, because the last thing he wanted was a ray of the afternoon sun to reflect off the glass of his binoculars and alert Bronson to his presence. He kept as low and as motionless as he could, just the way he’d been trained.

He’d already identified the position of their jeep, and now he focused on the two targets themselves. Judging by their gestures, they appeared to be talking about the ruined building in front of them, and for a fleeting moment Masters wondered if this could be the end of the operation, if this old ruin was the resting place of the relic Donovan was so desperate to recover. But then he saw the woman shake her head firmly and point further up the hill. A few moments later they’d both turned and started walking up the slope.

‘I didn’t expect this,’ Bronson muttered as they passed through the cleft in the rocks. In front lay an expanse of rocks and tufty grass. ‘It could take us days to search this area properly. Is there any other information that could help narrow down the position?’

Angela shook her head helplessly, then pulled out her notebook and read the lines of the text again. ‘It says “between the pillars and beyond their shadows / into the silence and the darkness formed of man”. We’ve passed between the pillars.’ She pointed at the jagged-edged gap in the rocks a few yards behind them. ‘The next phrase means either that they walked north, so their shadows were in front of them, or maybe that they had to go some distance beyond the shadows cast by the rocks that form those pillars. Either meaning would work, I suppose.’

‘Yeah,’ Bronson agreed, ‘but neither really helps us. It’s needle-in-a-haystack time.’

‘Don’t be so negative, Chris.’

‘I’m being realistic.’ He waved his arm at the widening valley in front of them. ‘This must cover two or three square miles, and over the last two millennia hundreds, maybe thousands, of people must have walked all over it. If there was still anything here to find, surely somebody else would have found it by now?’

Angela nodded. ‘But nobody has. When this relic was hidden, the people involved obviously concealed it really well.’

‘OK.’ Bronson straightened up. ‘Let’s look at this logically. We’re standing on a sloping rocky hillside. The only two possibilities, as far as I can see, are that the treasure is either in some kind of building or hidden inside a cave.’ He turned to Angela. ‘Let’s split up. That way we can cover more ground.’

* * *

Masters watched the two people in the valley below him separate and start to move in different directions. He watched them for a few moments longer, then eased back away from the cliff edge and walked across to where his men were waiting.

‘They’re moving further up the valley, so you can move parallel to them.’ He pointed at an outcropping of rocks about a quarter of a mile north-east of where they were standing. ‘Go there, quietly, and make sure you keep out of sight. Keep the sat-phone switched on, but on silent, and wait till I give the word. You stay with me, JJ.’

As his men picked up their weapons and moved off, Masters crawled back to his vantage point and resumed his scrutiny of the valley below.

‘Chris!’ Angela called out, waving her arm. ‘Come here.’

With the constant howling of the wind, Bronson was too far away to hear her distant yell, but he saw her wave and ran across the valley floor towards her.

‘Remember the text?’ she asked, as he stopped beside her.

‘Most of it, yes,’ he replied.

‘Notice anything?’

Bronson glanced around. ‘No.’

‘Actually, it’s not something I saw — it’s something I heard. Listen.’

For a few seconds Bronson listened intently. Then he shook his head.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Angela said. ‘In this area there’s no wind noise, and I don’t know why. I guess it must be something to do with the shape of the valley.’

Bronson realized she was right. He’d got so used to the constant moaning of the wind that his subconscious mind had tuned it out. But here his brain wasn’t having to do any filtering — they were standing there in virtual silence.

‘The text says, “between the pillars and beyond their shadows / into the silence.” We’ve come through the pillars and headed north, walking beyond their shadows, and I think we’ve just stepped “into the silence”.’