Clive Cussler: The Kingdom

“If you replace the clearly fictional bits of the story with De Terzi’s alleged testament, you get what reads like a factual account: the crash, the number of survivors, the discovery of a mysterious treasure, the trek home . . . It’s all there.”

“And the time line fits,” Remi said. “Between the secondhand accounts of De Terzi’s comings and goings, he could easily have been traveling to and from China.”

“I am flabbergasted,” said Karna.

Pete, who was paging through the story on Sam’s iPad, said, “What’s this map on the frontispiece?”

“That’s the hero’s journey to return the treasure,” replied Remi. “Jack, do you have that?”

“Looking at it right now. It appears De Terzi arrives from the west and first stops at what is labeled here as a castle. This, we can assume, is Shekar Gompa.”

“The launch base for the airship,” Sam said.

“And possibly the burial site for Giuseppe,” added Remi.

Karna continued: “From Shekar Gompa, De Terzi travels east to the Great City. Based on the position of Shekar, the city could be Lhasa.”

“Why would he go there?” asked Wendy. “The crash site is forty miles south of Shekar Gompa. Wasn’t he trying to return the treasure?”

“Yes,” Sam replied, “but in the story when he reaches the castle a local wise man tells him he must return the treasure to ‘its rightful home.’ He is told to seek out another wise man in the Great City to the west.”

Karna picked up Sam’s line of thought: “From the Great City, De Terzi continues eastward, eventually arrives at . . . I don’t know. There’s only an X here.”

“Shangri-La,” Remi suggested.

There were a few moments of silence from Karna, then: “You’re going to have to excuse me. Apologies. I’ll get back to you.”

The iChat screen went dark.

Karna was back thirty minutes later. “There are some rough grid lines and other landmarks on this map I’ll have to cross-reference, but using the distance from Shekar Gompa to Lhasa as a benchmark, the final leg of De Terzi’s journey ended in an area that’s know today as the Tsangpo Gorge.”

“Your front-runner for the location of Shangri-La,” said Sam.

“Yes indeed. Sam, Remi, you may have just solved a riddle six hundred years in the making.”

Sam said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. How long will it take you to nail down the locations on the map?”

“I’ll start right now. Give me a day.”

ARUNACHAL PRADESH REGION

NORTHERN INDIA

“Jack!” Remi called. “I didn’t really believe you’d show up.”

Karna’s SUV rolled to a stop, and he climbed out. Remi gave him a hug, Sam shook his hand. “Glad you’re on board, Jack.”

“As am I.”

Standing behind Karna, Ajay nodded and smiled at them.

Karna said, “You two look better than when I last saw your faces. Remi, how’s the foot? And the ribs?”

“Healed enough that I can get around without gritting my teeth. I’ve got ACE bandages, a good pair of hiking boots, and a bottle of ibuprofen.”

“Outstanding.”

“She’ll outmarch all of us,” Sam said.

“Any trouble getting here? Any tails? Suspicious people?”

Remi answered. “None of the above.”

Since their last conversation with Charles King, they had neither seen nor heard from him, his children, or Zhilan Hsu. It was a development they found at once pleasing and unnerving.

“Jack, how did you conquer your fear of flying?” said Sam.

“I didn’t, actually,” Karna replied. “I was utterly terrified from the moment we lifted off from Kathmandu to the moment I stepped off the plane in Bangladesh. My excitement for our expedition temporarily overpowered my fear, and, voila, here I am.”

“Here” was the end of a five-hundred-mile overland journey Sam and Remi had finished just a few hours earlier. Situated on the banks of the Siang River, the quiet town of Yingkiong, population nine hundred, was the last outpost of any significant population in northern India. From there, the next city, Nyingchi, Tibet, was a hundred miles northeast, through some of the world’s most forbidding jungles.

Ten days had passed since their iChat conversation. It had taken that long to make all the necessary travel arrangements. True to his word, Karna had contacted them the next day, having worked nonstop in hopes of deciphering the map from “The Great Dragon.”

De Terzi’s land navigation skills must have rivaled those of the Sentinels, Karna had explained. Both the bearings and distances on De Terzi’s map were remarkably accurate, missing the real-world measurements by less than a mile and one compass degree. Once finished with his calculations, Karna was certain he had triangulated the location of Shangri-La down to a two-mile diameter. As he had suspected all along, the coordinates were in the heart of the Tsangpo River Gorge.

Sam and Remi had studied the area on Google Earth but had seen nothing but towering peaks, raging rivers, and thick forests. Nothing that looked like a mushroom.

Karna said, “What say we retire to a bar for a drink and a bit of chalk talk? It’s best you understand the nastiness we’re in for before we set out in the morning.”

The tavern was a two-story building with a corrugated tin lean-to roof and clapboard walls. Inside, the lower level was devoted to a reception area and a restaurant that looked as if it had been stolen from a 1950s Hollywood western: wooden floors, a long J-shaped bar, and vertical posts supporting exposed ceiling joists. Their rooms for the night, Karna told them, were on the second floor.

The tavern was surprisingly crowded. They found a trestle table against the wall beneath a flickering neon Schlitz sign and ordered four beers. They were ice-cold.

“Most of what I’m going to tell you I got from Ajay, but since he’s not the loquacious type you’ll have to rely on my memory. As I told you, these are Ajay’s old stomping grounds, so we’re in good hands. By the way, Ajay, what’s the status of our transportation?”

“All arranged, Mr. Karna.”

“Fantastic. Correct me if I get offtrack while I’m talking, Ajay.”

“Yes, Mr. Karna.”

Karna sighed. “Can’t get him to call me Jack. Been trying for years.”

“He and Selma play by the same handbook,” Sam replied.

“Right. Here’s the quick and dirty about Arunachal Pradesh: depending on who you ask, we’re in China right now.”

“Whoa! Say that again,” Sam said.

“China officially claims most of this region as part of southern Tibet. Of course, to the people and the government here, Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state. The northern border between Arunachal Pradesh and China is called the McMahon Line, drawn up as part of a treaty between Tibet and the United Kingdom. The Chinese never bought into it, and India never enforced the border until 1950. Bottom line, China and India both claim it but neither does much about it.”

“What does that mean for a military presence?” asked Sam.

“Nothing. There are some Indian troops in the region, but the Chinese stay north of the McMahon Line. It’s all fairly amicable, really.”

“That’s good for our team,” Remi said.

“Yes, well . . . What isn’t so wonderful is the ANLF-the Arunachal Naga Liberation Force. They’re the latest and greatest terrorist group in the area. They’ve been keen on kidnapping as of late. That said, Ajay says we probably won’t have any trouble with them; the Army has been cracking down.”

Sam said, “According to the maps, our destination is twenty-five miles into China. Based on the landscape, I’m assuming there aren’t any border checkpoints.”