Even though they felt very confident, the murderous men were proceeding with caution. The Specialist’s instructions had been exact: They must not attract attention. They would need several hours’ head start to hide the statue in a safe place and extract the code from the lips of the king. They knew the exact number of guards still on duty and where they were located. They had already taken care of the four that patrolled the gardens, and did not expect their bodies to be discovered until the following morning. They themselves were armed with an arsenal of knives, which they had more faith in than firearms. The American was carrying a Magnum pistol with a silencer, but if everything worked out as planned, he would not have to use it.
Tex Armadillo did not take any particular pleasure in violence, though it was inevitable in his line of work. He believed that violence was for hit men, and he thought of himself as an intellectual, a man of ideas. Secretly he harbored the ambition of replacing the Specialist or of forming his own organization. He did not enjoy the company of the Blue Warriors, they were brutal and treacherous mercenaries with whom he could barely communicate, and he wasn’t sure, should the need arise, whether he could control them. He had tried to convince the Specialist that he needed no more than a couple of the best men to perform the mission, but the response he received was to stick to the plan. Armadillo knew that the least insubordination or divergence from instructions could cost him his life. The one person he feared in this world was the Specialist.
His orders were clear: He was to watch the king’s every movement through the hidden camera, wait until he arrived in the Chamber of the Golden Dragon and was consulting the statue—to be sure it was functioning—and then rush into the palace and, using the Global Positioning System, go as far as the Magnificent Door. He was to take six men inside: two to carry the treasure, two to kidnap the king, and two for protection. He would have to skirt all the traps on his way to the Sacred Chamber and, to do that, he was counting on the video he had recorded.
The idea of kidnapping the leader of a nation and stealing his most precious object would have been absurd in any country other than the Forbidden Kingdom, where crime was nearly unknown and where, therefore, there were almost no defenses. For Armadillo it was child’s play to stage an attack in a country whose citizens still used candles to light their houses and who believed that the telephone was some kind of magic. His sneer disappeared, however, as he witnessed on his laptop the ingenious ways the Golden Dragon was defended. The mission might not be as easy as he had imagined. The minds that had invented those traps eighteen centuries before were not in the least bit primitive. He owed his advantage to the Specialist’s superior mind.
When Armadillo saw that the king had reached the final room, he motioned to six Blue Warriors to guard the rear, as planned, and he headed toward the palace with the others. They went in through a service entrance on the ground floor and immediately found themselves in a room with four doors. Referring to the GPS map, the American and his followers moved with little hesitation from one room to the next, until they reached the heart of the palace. In the hall of the Magnificent Door they encountered the first obstacle: the two soldiers standing guard. When the king’s guards saw the intruders, they raised their lances, but before they could take a step forward, two lethal knives, perfectly thrown from several yards’ distance, struck each in the chest. They collapsed to the floor.
Replaying the video on his screen, Armadillo followed it step by step. He twisted the same jades the king had turned before him. The door opened heavily, and the bandits walked through into a round room with nine narrow doors, all identical. The lamps the monarch had lighted were burning, casting wavering illumination on the precious stones that decorated the doors.
At that point, the king had stepped onto an eye painted on the floor, opened his arms wide, and then had turned at a forty-five-degree angle, so that his right arm was pointing to the door he needed to open. Tex Armadillo imitated him, followed by the superstitious men of the scorpion sect, who by now each had a knife between his teeth and one in each hand. The American suspected that the camera had not recorded all the risks they would meet; some would undoubtedly be purely psychological, or tricks of illusion. He had watched the king pass unhesitatingly through certain rooms that seemed to be empty, but that didn’t mean that they were. They would have to move forward with great caution.
“Don’t touch anything,” he warned his men.
“We hear demons and witches and monsters live in this place here,” one of the men murmured in his mangled English.
“There are no such things,” Armadillo replied.
“They say, too, that the man who touch the Dragon . . . that something horrible happen him.”
“Nonsense! Those are just superstitions, pure ignorance.”
The man was insulted when the American’s comment was translated, and the entire group shuffled and muttered, ready to turn on Armadillo.
“I thought you were warriors, but I see that you’re really little babies! Cowards!” Armadillo spit out with infinite scorn.
The first bandit, outraged, raised his knife, but Armadillo already had his pistol in his hand, and there was a murderous gleam in his pale eyes. By now the Blue Warriors were very sorry they had accepted this job. Their band had always survived by committing simple crimes; this was unknown territory. They had made a deal to steal a statue, and in exchange they were to receive quantities of modern firearms and a pile of money to buy horses and anything else that occurred to them. No one had warned them, however, that the palace was bewitched. And it was too late to turn back, they had no choice but to follow the American to the end.
After overcoming the obstacles, one by one, that protected the treasure, Tex Armadillo and four of his men found themselves in the Chamber of the Golden Dragon. Even though they had the advantage of modern technology, which allowed them to see how the king had avoided falling into the traps, they had already lost two men to horrible deaths: one fell into a deep well and the other’s flesh was eaten in a matter of minutes by a rampaging acid.
Just as the American had thought, they had not been subjected merely to physical ambushes but to psychological tricks as well. To Armadillo, it was like descending into a psychedelic hell, but he maintained his self-control by telling himself over and over that most of the horrifying images that assaulted them were only in his mind. He was a professional who exercised complete control over his body and mind. For the primitive men of the Sect of the Scorpion, on the other hand, the journey toward the dragon had been much more harrowing, for they were unable to distinguish between what was real and what was imaginary. They were used to meeting danger head on but they were terrified by things that could not be explained. The mysterious palace rubbed their nerves raw.
The invaders had no idea what they would find when they went into the Chamber of the Golden Dragon; the images on the laptop screen had not been very clear. They were blinded by the brilliance of the gold-sheathed walls, which reflected light from countless oil lamps and thick beeswax candles. The scents from the lamps and from the burning incense and myrrh filled the air. They paused at the threshold, deafened by a hoarse, guttural sound impossible to describe, something that at first impression suggested the moan of a whale inside a vast metal tube. After a moment, however, they could detect a certain coherence in the song, and soon it was evident that they were hearing some sort of language. Seated in the lotus position before the statue, the king had his back to them, so immersed in the sounds and absorbed in his task that he didn’t hear them come in.
The monarch’s voice was rising and falling, chanting strange wordlike sounds, and then from the mouth of the statue would come the response, rumbling throughout the room. The intense vibration could be felt on the skin, and in the brain, and on the nerves; it was like standing inside a reverberating bell.
And there, before the eyes of Armadillo and the Blue Warriors, stood the Golden Dragon, in all its splendor: leonine body, paws with great claws, cur
led-up reptilian tail, plumed wings, a ferocious head with four horns, protruding eyes, and gaping maw filled with two rows of sharp teeth and a forked serpent’s tongue. The gold work was delicate and perfect: each scale on the body and tail was set with a precious stone, the feathers of the wings were tipped with diamonds, the tail displayed an intricate design of pearls and emeralds, the teeth were ivory, and the eyes were perfect star-rubies, each the size of a dove’s egg. The fabled animal was mounted on black stone, in the center of which was a strip of yellow quartz.
The bandits were stupefied, trying to digest the assault of the lights, the rarefied air, and the thundering sound. None of them had expected the statue to be so extraordinary; even the most ignorant man in the band realized that he was standing before an object of unimaginable value. Their eyes glinted with greed, and each of the men thought about how just one of those precious stones could change his life.
Armadillo had also succumbed to the magical fascination of the statue, though he had never thought of himself as a particularly ambitious man—he did this work because he liked adventure. He prided himself on living a simple life, completely free of sentimentality or any other kind of bond. He treasured the idea of retiring when he was older, when he grew weary of seeing the world, and of spending his last years on his ranch in the western United States, where he planned to breed race horses. In some of his missions he had held a fortune in his hands, and had not felt any temptation to appropriate it. He was satisfied with his commission, which was always very generous. However, when he saw the statue, it crossed his mind to betray the Specialist. With the statue in his power, nothing could stop him. He would be enormously rich; he could fulfill all his dreams, including that of having his own organization, one more powerful even than the Specialist’s. For a brief moment, he abandoned himself to the pleasure of that idea, but quickly returned to reality. “That must be the statue’s curse: overpowering greed,” he thought. He had to exert great self-discipline to concentrate on the next steps of the plan. Silently, he signaled his men, and they moved toward the king with knives in hand.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Cave of the Bandits
IT WAS NOT DIFFICULT FOR ALEXANDER and his new friends to find the general area of the Blue Warriors’ cave; Nadia had given them the approximate location, and Borobá took care of the rest. The little monkey was still riding Alexander’s shoulders, with his tail wrapped around the youth’s neck and his hands buried in Alexander’s hair. He did not like climbing mountains, and he liked going down them even less. Every so often, Alex would slap at the monkey to let go, because Borobá’s tail was choking him and his nervous little hands were pulling out tufts of hair.
Once the party was sure of the whereabouts of the cave, they approached with great caution, taking advantage of the cover of shrubs and the irregular terrain. They did not note any activity, or hear anything but the wind among the hills and, from time to time, the cry of a bird. In that silence, their footsteps, even their breathing, sounded deafening. Tensing picked up a few stones and tucked them into the folds his tunic formed at the waist, then telepathically ordered Borobá to go scout what lay ahead. Alexander breathed a sigh of relief when finally the monkey jumped down.
Borobá went loping off in the direction of the cave, and within ten minutes he was back. He could not voice what he had seen, but in the monkey’s mind Tensing saw confused images of several persons, and in that way verified that the cave was not empty, as they had feared. Apparently the captive girls were still there, guarded by a few Blue Warriors, though most of the men had left. That made their immediate task easier, but Tensing did not consider it good news: it meant that the others must be in Tunkhala. He had no doubt that, as the young American had suggested, the criminals had not come to the Forbidden Kingdom to kidnap a half-dozen girls but to steal the Golden Dragon.
The three men and the monkey crawled close to the cave, where a man sat on his haunches, supporting himself with his rifle. The light shone directly on him, and at that distance he made an easy target for Dil Bahadur who, however, would have to stand to use his bow. Tensing gestured to him to stay flat on the ground, and pulled out one of the stones he had gathered. Mentally, he asked forgiveness for the act he was about to commit, and then, without hesitation, he threw the stone with all his strength. To Alexander it seemed as if the lama hadn’t aimed at all, so he was dumbfounded when the guard fell forward with barely a sound, knocked unconscious by the stone that had struck him squarely between the eyes. Tensing motioned to the others to follow him.
Alexander picked up the guard’s weapon, though he had never fired a rifle and didn’t even know if it was loaded. The weight of the gun in his hands gave him confidence, and awakened an unfamiliar sense of combativeness. He felt a strong flow of energy; in an instant his doubts disappeared and he was ready to fight like a wild beast.
All three ran into the cave at the same time. Tensing and Dil Bahadur were yelling bloodthirsty yells, and without thinking about what he was doing, Alexander imitated them. Normally he was a rather shy person, and he had never made such an uproar. All his rage, fear, and strength were concentrated in those cries; thanks to them, and the charge of adrenaline surging through his veins, he felt invincible, like the jaguar.
Inside the cave they found four bandits, the woman with the scar, and the prisoners, who were in the back of the cavern with their ankles tied. Surprised by that trio bellowing like madmen, the Blue Warriors hesitated only an instant and then reached for their knives, but that instant was enough to allow Dil Bahadur’s first arrow to hit its mark, piercing the right arm of one of the men.
The arrow did not stop him. With a howl of pain, he threw his dagger with his left hand, and immediately drew another from the sash at his waist. The dagger hissed as it flew straight toward the prince’s heart. Dil Bahadur stepped to one side. The dagger brushed his armpit without wounding him, as he raised his arm to shoot a second arrow; he was calm as he stepped forward, sure that he was protected by the magic shield of the dragon dropping.
At the same time, Tensing, with incredible skill, was dodging the knives flying about him. A lifetime of training in the art of Tao-shu allowed him to predict the course and speed of each dagger. He didn’t need to think, his body reacted instinctively. He eliminated one of the men with a quick leap and a sharp kick to the jaw. With a swipe of one arm he dislodged the gun from another who was aiming to fire, but the Blue Warrior immediately pulled out his knives.
Alexander didn’t have time to aim at anything. He pulled the trigger and a shot echoed through the air, exploding against the rock walls. He felt a push from Dil Bahadur, stumbled, and escaped by a hair from being the target of one of the knives. When he saw that the bandits still standing were going for their rifles, he grabbed his by the barrel, which was hot, and charged them, yelling at the top of his lungs. Without conscious thought, he slammed the rifle butt down on the shoulder of the nearest man; the blow did not put him out of commission but stunned him enough that it gave Tensing time to get his hands on the man and press a key point on his neck. His paralyzed victim felt an electric charge travel from his neck to his heels; his knees buckled and he dropped like a rag doll, eyes bulging and a scream stuck in his throat, unable to move a finger.
In only a few minutes the four Blue Warriors were on the ground. The guard had recovered slightly from being struck with the stone, but he had no opportunity to use his knives. Alexander placed the barrel of his rifle to his temple and ordered him to join the others. He spoke in English, but the tone was so clear that the man did not hesitate to obey. While Alexander stood guard with the weapon he didn’t know how to use, trying to look as bold and cruel as possible, Tensing bound the Blue Warriors with rope he found in the cave.
As Dil Bahadur, bow at the ready, started toward the girls at the back of the cave, he was stopped short by a loud scream. About midpoint in the ten yards that separated him from them was a pit of glowing charcoal. The woman with the scar had des
erted her cooking pots; she held a whip in one hand and, in the other, an open basket that she was shaking over the heads of the five captives.
“One more step and I’ll drop the scorpions over them,” the jailer shrieked.
The prince did not dare shoot his arrow. From that distance he could fell the woman with no difficulty, but he couldn’t prevent her from spilling the lethal insects on the girls. The Blue Warriors, and surely the woman as well, were immune to the venom, but anyone else was at risk of dying from their stings.
Everyone froze. Alexander kept his eyes and his weapon trained on the prisoners, two of whom had not yet been tied up by Tensing and were waiting for an unguarded moment to jump him. The lama did not dare act, either. From where he stood, the only weapons he could use against the woman were his extraordinary parapsychological powers. He tried to project a mental image that would freeze her with fear; there was too much confusion and distance between them to try to hypnotize her. He could see enough of her aura to recognize what a primitive and cruel creature she was, and one who was frightened besides; he knew they would have to use force to subdue her.
The standoff lasted a few seconds, but that was enough to shift the balance of power. One more instant and Alexander would have had to shoot the two men who were primed to leap on Tensing. Then something totally unexpected occurred. One of the girls threw herself against the woman with the scar, and the two of them rolled across the cave floor as the basket arced through the air and hit solid ground. A hundred black scorpions scrabbled toward the back of the cave.