Will Adams: The Eden Legacy

Boris nodded. The Nergadzes had made their original fortune smuggling arms for heroin. If Sandro was confident that a communications link was secure, it was secure. ‘Okay,’ he said grudgingly.

‘Good. It’ll make it much easier for us to communicate and provide the necessary… logistical support.’

‘Logistical support,’ snorted Boris. Sandro did love his euphemisms. What he meant was that they’d have to get him a gun once he arrived in Madagascar, because there was no way to take one on board a plane, not these days. ‘And what will Davit think about that?’

‘I don’t imagine we’ll be having that conversation in his presence,’ said Sandro. ‘Do you?’

‘Okay,’ said Boris. ‘But I’m not doing this for free. Not on camera, for Christ’s sake. You offered five million euros for Knox’s head. I assume that’s still good.’

‘We retracted that offer once we learned Knox was dead.’

‘But he’s not dead.’

‘We’ll pay you one hundred thousand euros for the identification, whether it’s him or not,’ said Sandro. ‘If it is him, my father has authorised another four hundred thousand for… for carrying out his wishes.’

Boris nodded. Five hundred grand was proper money, and there’d surely be opportunities for more. The Nergadzes’ reputation and business empire had been badly hit by the fallout from the Greek debacle, but Ilya was still richer than God, and he clearly craved this revenge before he croaked. And revenge was like champagne: the more it cost, the better it tasted. ‘What about Davit?’ he asked. ‘You don’t expect me to split my money with him, do you?’

‘No,’ said Sandro. ‘I’ll make a separate agreement with Davit. Your money will be yours. His will be his. Agreed?’

‘Fine,’ said Boris. ‘Agreed.’

‘Good,’ said Sandro, nodding at the van. ‘Then let’s go talk to him.’

Lucia took a microcassette recorder from her bag. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked.

‘Of course not,’ said Knox.

She nodded at the crane, the metal beginning to groan and shriek a little as it took the weight of the anchor and began lifting it from the sea-bed. ‘And maybe we could go somewhere quieter?’

He led her up a gangway and past the ship’s decompression chamber, leaned against the starboard rail. The wind had picked up; the sea was getting frisky. The ship’s dynamic positioning system had been turned on, however, and its GPS sensors, gyroscopes and thrusters were keeping them impressively steady, a vital capability for using a crane on a sea-bed sixty metres deep. A large wave swept past them to break against the reef. On its far side, he could see the white cotton sails of several fishing pirogues in the lagoon, all of them heading for shore. ‘Better?’ he asked.

‘Perfect,’ said Lucia. ‘You were about to sweep me off to thirteenth-century China.’

‘The time of the Mongol Khans,’ said Knox. ‘Genghis was a conqueror. He rampaged through Russia and China and put the fear of God into Europeans.’ Literally, as it had happened: Christians had feared he and his armies were the end-times prophecy of Gog and Magog made flesh. ‘But his successors were different, particularly his grandson Kublai.’

‘In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a sacred pleasure dome decree,’ suggested Lucia.

‘That’s the guy,’ agreed Knox. ‘He saw himself as a ruler more than a general, and China was the jewel in his crown. He established a new capital at Beijing, tried to win over his new Chinese subjects by appointing them to key positions. But it never really took. The Han and the Mongols each considered the other inferior. And these were tough times anyway. China was hit by the black death almost as badly as Europe, and there was massive flooding, hyperinflation, poverty and famine. The Han began to rebel, as did other ethnic groups. The first uprisings were quashed but each new one weakened the Mongols’ grip a little more until the empire finally collapsed in 1368. One of the rebel leaders, a Han called Zhu Yuanzhang, seized the Dragon Throne and proclaimed himself first emperor of the Great Ming.’

‘That being the start of the Ming Dynasty, presumably?’

‘Yes. Zhu Yuanzhang held power for thirty years or so, but his succession proved a problem. His eldest son, the Crown Prince, died before him, forcing him to pick between his own most capable surviving son-a man called Zhu Di-or to skip a generation and appoint his grandson Zhu Yunwen instead. He went for his grandson.’

‘Don’t tell me: Zhu Di got mad.’

‘It depends on who you believe,’ Knox told her. ‘We know that Zhu Yunwen was worried sick about rivals. After his ascension, he barred Zhu Di from even paying respects to his dead father-a major humiliation-then stripped his supporters of rank, effectively forcing him to give up or fight back. He chose to fight back. Skirmishes with the imperial army turned into a lowlevel civil war. In 1402, Zhu Di marched on Nanjing, China’s new capital, and his nephew fled. Then he declared himself the Yongle Emperor. Emperor of eternal happiness.’

Lucia smiled. ‘No worries about raising expectations, then.’

‘He didn’t do too badly, all in all. He excised his nephew from the history books and purged his supporters; but that was pretty standard. He fought off the Mongols and the Vietnamese, introduced land reclamation and other successful agricultural policies, rebuilt the Grand Canal and moved his capital back to Beijing. He also commissioned a series of magnificent armadas.’

‘Ah. Our famous treasure fleets.’

‘This was unprecedented. The Han Chinese were Confucians; only China mattered. If the barbarian world had business with China, it had to make the journey itself. But Zhu Di didn’t think that way. He wanted to show off, and maybe let it be known around the region that he wasn’t a man to mess with. His nephew was rumoured still to be alive, after all, so the last thing he’d have wanted was any lingering questions about his legitimacy. Whatever his reasons, he ordered a man called Zheng He to build a vast fleet then sail around the China Seas to establish diplomatic and trading links, suppress any unrest in China’s overseas territories, that kind of thing.’

‘Zheng He. This would be the eunuch, right?’

‘Yes. He was actually a Chinese Muslim whose family had fought with the Mongols, and he was taken captive and then castrated when still just a boy. It happened a lot back then. But he made a name for himself, become one of Zhu Di’s favourites.’ Lucia raised an eyebrow, making Knox laugh. ‘Not in that sense,’ he assured her. ‘Zhu Di liked the ladies. Koreans, for choice. But that was precisely why he trusted eunuchs: they wouldn’t cause mischief in his harem, and they had no dynastic ambitions of their own.’

‘Okay. So Mr Eternal Happiness commissions his favourite eunuch to go sailing. And there were multiple voyages, right?’

‘Seven in all, though the final one was much later, more an afterthought than anything. Mostly they visited the places you’d expect: Sumatra and Java and the other main Indonesian islands. Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaya, India. Places which were pretty well known to the Chinese. Their fourth voyage made it to Arabia and East Africa, but it’s the sixth that’s the most intriguing. Zheng He didn’t actually go very far himself, but various of his vice-admirals each led a contingent of their own, and we’re not entirely sure where they went, not least because there was a great fire in Beijing shortly after they set out, which the emperor interpreted as a divine admonishment against his treasure fleets, so all records of the voyage were destroyed.’

‘And this anchor of yours would have come from this sixth voyage, right?’