David Sakmyster - The Mongol Objective

“Xanadu.” Montross shook his head, his eyes blinking quickly. “All this time, everyone who looked for the Khan’s grave… right under their noses.”

“They tricked you good,” Alexander said quietly.

“Tricked everybody good.” He glanced past Alexander, to Nina. “Now that we have time, let’s be sure about this-and see exactly where it is we need to excavate. I don’t want to waste any time when we get there. Go ahead, Nina. Touch him.”

“What-?” Alexander bolted upright, but Nina had already reached down, grasped his right wrist and took it in an iron-fisted grip.

“One of her special talents,” Montross said, his words drowning in the gunning of the motor, lost in the moans coming from Alexander’s own throat. Unbidden sounds released from the primal source of his most recent visions, rising up again.

Replayed, this time for the sole enjoyment of the woman clenching his wrist. Nina, her eyes gone white, head back, in almost ecstatic pose.

Taking.

Seeing.

She released him, flexed and rubbed her fingers as if singed, and took a deep breath. “Got it.” She rubbed her hands together, then gently touched Alexander’s head. “I saw the spot over the river, the entrance. There were early Darkhad members staring down at it from a gilded bridge in Xanadu.”

“It’ll look a lot different now,” Montross said. “I considered visiting Shangdu years ago on a trip to Beijing to see the Wall.” He grinned. “To see the Wall actually defended and rebuilt, first-hand. But I thought better of wasting the time to go all that way, since there’s nothing at old Xanadu anymore, and no other sites of interest in the vicinity. Just some perimeter stones and an archway. Almost no tourism.”

Alexander perked up, trying to get over what had just been ripped from him. “The whole city’s gone?”

Montross nodded. “After Kublai Khan’s death in 1294, later generations couldn’t sustain the Mongol empire. Xanadu fell out of use, despite its splendor, and the Chinese emperors chose the more strategically located Beijing as their capital.”

“So,” Colonel Hiltmeyer said, glancing in the rearview mirror, “we’re going to a field of old rocks?”

“Exactly. The perfect hiding spot. They sent us scurrying up distant mountainsides, even sacrificed themselves to make it look like we were close, and all the while, they knew it was far away, in the middle of nowhere.” He leaned forward and started talking to Hiltmeyer, discussing strategy and deployment of the men once they got there.

Nina took that as her chance to go back-back to the well for more.

“Alexander,” she whispered, leaning in close even as the boy shrank away. She again took his wrist, hissing, “Play along. This will be over in a moment.”

“What are you doing?” he whispered back.

“You’ve been keeping secrets,” she said. “I saw a glimpse. Something else, something you’ve been seeing. A lot.”

“No.”

“Oh yes, boy. The Sphinx. And the door. Show it to me.”

“No, please, it scares me. I don’t like to-”

“ Now! ”

A rush of something like electricity tingled through Nina’s fingertips and up her arm, jolting the synapses in her brain, firing the spaces between them, lighting up a holographic screen in her vision.

Maybe, she thought, it was the proximity of the Emerald Tablet, in a sturdy plastic case at Xavier’s feet. Or maybe it was just being so close to the boy and to Montross, their power seeping into her, augmenting what talents she had.

Dimly, she heard Montross and Hiltmeyer talking, someone asking about the whereabouts of Caleb Crowe, and the fact that they had lost him after Turkey, assuming he was on his way either to Mongolia, or else he was already ahead of them, nearing Xanadu.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Montross said, “which is why I took his son. Had a feeling it would charge Caleb up, get him to the church on time, as the old song goes.”

Nina tuned him out and tuned in to the presentation she had tapped into: the boy’s vision, his suppressed dream. Just as Caleb’s childhood had been plagued by recurring dreams of his father in an Iraqi torture cell, and images of an eagle and a star-implicit answers to his life’s most desperate questions provided by his hyper-aware subconscious-so too did Alexander’s psyche conjure visions that he might someday need to see…

… the Giza plateau, on a torch-lit walkway leading to the forepaws of the Great Sphinx. Only, its head is different, that of a lion instead of the ill-proportioned pharaoh countenance that sits on its body today. Behind the Sphinx looms a triangular leviathan, an enormous pyramid blotting out the stars, its shape only visible by the absence of light.

Approaching the stairwell between the paws, descending the marble stairs. Down a flight of large steps, into a room of solid gold walls bereft of writing, and two emerald pillars flanking a great door-a huge imposing slab of onyx, black as the blackest starless night.

Before that doorway stands a man dressed in regal attire, a pharaoh’s headdress, a gilded snake crown on his head, the flail and staff held in his hands.

“ Welcome, Djeda. Thank you for obeying my summons.”

“ I had little choice, Lord Khufu.” The voice was sad and resigned.

“ You are a magician.”

“ Some call me that.”

“ And you have certain access to knowledge, lost wisdom concerning what may lie behind this door.” He motions over his shoulder. “This door that cannot be forced, bent, dislodged or even scratched. My workers uncovered it while excavating this area, but have found no record of its purpose, much less how to proceed beyond it. But I believe you may know.”

“ I do, My Lord.”

“ You can open it?”

“ I did not say that.”

“ Do not try my patience.”

“ I said I know how it can be opened, but I do not have the power to do so.”

“ Who does?”

“ There is a tale, recorded on building texts at the Temple of the Great Horus in Edfu, that refers to sacred books and objects of power that our Lord Thoth deemed too dangerous for mankind. And so he gathered them all and hid them away in a great underground temple, protected by power staffs and pillars, and he then sealed the entrance, leaving only its guardians to know of its whereabouts.”

“ Until I discovered it,” Khufu says. “Perhaps I am destined to collect those objects, those sacred writings, and become like the gods themselves. Who are these guardians? Are you one?”

“ I am not worthy. But I gained some knowledge, scraps of the truth, so that I know what this is. I know this is the place, the door to the sacred temple which lies below this plain, through passages remote and twisting, further guarded by magic and cruel invention. I know this only, but no more.”

The Pharaoh makes an impatient, wolfish snarl. “Who can open this door?”

“ A prophecy tells of three keys.”

“ Keys?” The Pharaoh turns. “I see no place for keys.”

“ Three keys,” Djeda continues. “For three brothers.”

“ What brothers?”

“ I do not know. It is said they were, or will be, born on the fifteenth day of Tybi, to the wife of the high priest of Ra.”

“ And you do not know if they have already been born? If they walk among us?”

“ No.”

“ Then I will send for this priest. And every priest of Ra.”

“ You may have a long wait.”

Pharaoh Khufu turns and faces the door. He bows his head. Places a hand on the smooth door. “I found this for a reason. I will not be denied.”

“ It is not for me to say, Lord, if your destiny lies behind that door.”

“ I heard you, magician.”

Nina blasted out of the vision, rocked with a jarring bump on the rocky terrain as the jeep banked around a bend in the Kherlen River, speeding toward the Chinese border.