‘Control it?’ said Nina. ‘Not just take it?’
‘This is not simply a place that contains gold. It makes gold. Talonor found it, thousands of years ago, and it has been used to create riches ever since.’
Eddie shook his head sceptically. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘Where do you think we get the gold to make our statues and jewellery? The monks of Detsen hold the secret, and we have used it. Carefully, a little at a time, to avoid attention. But we can create gold by the gram, by the kilo . . . or by the ton.’
‘How?’ Nina demanded. ‘How is that possible?’
‘I will show you.’ The elderly monk moved towards the chasm – and Nina gasped as his light suddenly illuminated a figure hidden in the darkness.
‘Who’s that?’ said Eddie, instinctively interposing himself between his wife and the lurker.
Amaanat replied quietly, almost reverently: ‘That is the daughter of Midas.’
Her initial shock now past, Nina saw that the person was unmoving. A statue. No, not even that, more an abstract representation of the human form, all features smoothed to the nothingness of a sea-worn pebble. It was half crouched, twisted at the waist, both arms raised to shield its empty face.
She realised that Amaanat’s words were literal, not merely naming a piece of sculpture. ‘There’s somebody inside it?’
‘She died here,’ he said, almost sadly. ‘By radiation, by steam, being choked by gold – we do not know. But Talonor named the cave in honour of his friend’s loss. She was Midas’s only daughter. A woman of importance, a princess. She thought this place was exactly the same as another in Atlantis. She was wrong. The time between each breath of the dragon is shorter here, and she was caught inside when one took place.’
Nina nodded thoughtfully. ‘And was turned into gold. Or coated in it, but it must have looked like the same thing. So that’s where the myth of Midas came from. Atlantean history, passed down to become a Greek legend.’
‘That’ll be a good chapter for your next book,’ said Eddie.
‘Except we can’t tell anyone about it, can we?’ She looked at Amaanat. ‘I gave my word.’ The abbot smiled.
The tramp of feet signalled the arrival of Rudra and the other monks. The lantern-bearer was in the lead, a length of rope over one shoulder. The man carrying the shrouded object was behind him. The others bore the metal canisters. ‘This is the true secret,’ said Amaanat as the mysterious item was carefully unwrapped. ‘Without it, there would be no gold; the cave would create nothing but radiation. This is the Crucible.’
The artefact mentioned in both her mother’s notes and the Secret Codex. Nina watched as the last layer of cloth was removed, eager to see what was revealed . . .
It matched none of her expectations.
The name suggested a man-made vessel, but what Rudra lifted out resembled some sort of geode: a natural, roughly spherical reddish crystal. An opening at the top gave her a glimpse of the hollow interior. It was faceted, reflective, like an agglomeration of gemstones. Jagged rib-like ridges ran up the outer shell. From the great care the monk was taking, she guessed they were as sharp as they looked. The whole thing was contained inside a man-made cage of thick wire with a tall handle looping over its top.
Amaanat anticipated her next question. ‘We do not know where it came from. That secret was kept by Talonor. But we know what it does.’
‘Makes gold, at a guess,’ said Eddie.
‘How does it make gold, though?’ Nina asked. ‘It can’t just magic the stuff up out of nothing.’
‘We shall show you.’ Amaanat stepped back as Rudra placed the Crucible on the floor near the tripod. ‘But first you will need protection.’
The Englishman smirked. ‘Too late for that, we’ve already got a kid.’
One of the other monks opened a bag and took out several breathing masks, which he distributed. His brethren donned them. ‘The Crucible turns mercury into gold,’ explained the abbot, voice muffled by the filter. ‘But the mercury gives off vapour. In a confined space, it is poisonous.’
‘You’ve got mercury in those cans?’ said Eddie. ‘Nasty stuff.’
‘We take great care with it. We do not want to pollute the mountain – the water from this cave flows down into the rivers, and on into the sea.’
Nina remembered the drips from the ceiling. ‘There isn’t much of it, though.’
Amaanat stepped to the edge of the chasm. ‘Not that water. This water.’ He tilted his lantern to illuminate what lay below.
Nina joined him, looking down, and saw that the rift was flooded. The surface some thirty feet below shimmered gently, suggesting that it was being gradually filled by meltwater flowing through faults in the surrounding rock. The coating of gold stopped abruptly around five feet above the rippling pool.
‘Okay,’ she said, admitting defeat at any attempt to understand what she was seeing. ‘What is this place? You say the Midas Cave turns mercury into gold, but how? How is that possible? You’ve got a pool of water, and some sort of weird crystal from Atlantis – how can that possibly have made all . . . all this?’ She waved her hands to encompass the golden walls.
‘The answer is simple, Dr Wilde,’ said the old man. ‘You are standing inside a nuclear reactor.’
At first Nina did not respond, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Eddie, on the other hand, jumped as if he had received an electric shock, clapping both hands protectively over his groin. ‘A nuclear fucking what?’ he yelped.
‘Okay, that was definitely swearing,’ said his wife.
‘Yeah, and it was fucking justified!’
‘It is a natural reactor,’ Amaanat went on. ‘There are uranium deposits in the rocks below.’ He pointed. Veins of grey metal ran through the stone beneath the golden line. ‘Now, they are safe. But as the water rises, it acts as a . . . neutron moderator.’ His hesitation suggested he was familiar with the process, but had never explained it in English before. ‘This brings the uranium to critical mass and starts a nuclear reaction. It becomes so hot, the water boils away – very quickly.’
‘So you get that big blast of steam,’ said Eddie.
‘Yes. Once the water is gone, the reaction stops. Until the pool fills again, and another begins. The cycle takes fifty-eight minutes.’
Nina searched her memory. ‘There was a natural reactor somewhere in Africa. I remember reading about it . . .’
‘At Oklo, in Gabon,’ the monk told her. ‘It was discovered when the atomic authorities thought fissile uranium had been stolen from a mine, because there was less of it than there should have been. But the natural reactor had burned it up more quickly. That one died a long time ago when the fissile uranium decayed, millions of years. But this,’ he gestured into the pit, ‘is still alive. And it is used with the Crucible to make gold.’
‘So there must have been another reactor in Atlantis!’ The disparate fragments of information she had discovered suddenly came together. ‘The furnace! That’s what Talonor was searching for, the reason the Atlanteans sent him out to explore the world. They had their own literal gold factory, but it was running out of juice.’ Excitement filled her voice at the realisation. ‘Gold was at the heart of their civilisation – it was a symbol of their power, a way for them to show how rich they were compared to their rivals. But they didn’t mine it, or plunder it. They made it. And when they realised they wouldn’t be able to keep doing that, they needed to find a new reactor.’
‘And they came all the way out here to find it?’ Eddie said. ‘They must have been pretty determined. Or desperate.’
‘Everything Talonor learned came in useful when the empire’s last survivors settled in the Himalayas, though.’ The sound of a monk unscrewing the lid of a container in response to a command from the impatient Rudra caught her attention. ‘Oh. Hint taken!??
?
She and Eddie donned masks as the monk removed the top. Lantern light glinted off a new kind of elemental metal: liquid mercury. Two other men held the Crucible firmly in place as he carried the heavy can to it.
Rudra placed a funnel inside the crystalline sphere. The quicksilver was carefully poured in, filling about a fifth of the Crucible. The empty canister was removed and the next brought. ‘Does all of that turn to gold?’ Nina asked, scepticism rising again. If it did, that meant the monks could produce pounds of the metal at a time, worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mercury was not cheap in such quantities, but even a few ounces of gold would more than cover the cost.
‘No,’ said Amaanat. ‘There is a certain isotope of mercury found naturally in the whole. It is only a small part, but this is what is transformed.’
‘How?’ Eddie asked. ‘This all sounds like magic – or, you know, legend. Midas touching stuff and it turns into gold.’
‘A process called nuclear transmutation,’ explained the abbot. ‘One atom can be changed to another, and mercury is next to gold on the periodic table. Scientists discovered this could be done in a nuclear reactor in the 1940s, but the Atlanteans knew the secret of creating gold in a natural reactor many centuries before.’
‘I bet when you became a monk you didn’t think you’d end up studying nuclear physics, did you?’ said the Englishman wryly.
Amaanat smiled. ‘No. I became a monk to atone for a violent life.’ He turned his head, the lamplight picking out the ragged scar down his face. ‘I have learned much since then – but not everything. I am still a mere monk, not a scientist. My studies of the intangible are on a spiritual plane, not the subatomic.’
The strange geode was now over half full, the last canister of mercury being brought to it. ‘How does it work?’ said Nina. ‘It looks like you’re going to lower the thing into the water, then pull it out filled with gold. It can’t be that simple.’
Rudra laughed. ‘But it is!’
‘We do lower it into the water,’ said Amaanat. ‘But that would not transform mercury into gold without the Crucible. It somehow traps and reflects the neutrons created by the chain reaction, and increases the chance that they will transform an atom of mercury.’
She shook her head. ‘I still have trouble believing it.’
The last can was emptied. ‘You soon will not have to believe,’ Amaanat told her as he gazed into the chasm once more. ‘You will know. Look.’
Something had changed below. The light in the cave was different, gradually brightening. It was not the stark white of the lanterns’ LEDs, but a deep cyan. Nina peered over the edge – and was startled to see a glow coming from beneath the water’s surface. The walls themselves seemed to be alight.
Eddie joined her, only to hurriedly retreat, shielding his crotch again. ‘That’s bloody radiation!’
‘It cannot hurt you,’ Amaanat said calmly, watching as the strange luminescence slowly intensified. ‘Not yet. It is Cherenkov radiation, coming from the uranium as it reaches critical mass, but it is not strong enough to get through the water.’
‘So when will it hurt us?’ the Yorkshireman demanded.
‘We still have time to leave the cave, do not worry.’ The monks slung the rope through the pulley on the tripod, then tied one end to the Crucible’s handle. With one man steadying the vessel, the others hauled on the line. The stand creaked as it took the weight of the mercury-filled sphere, but held. The Crucible was lowered slowly to just beneath the cut-off line of the gold on the walls, and the rope secured to hold it in place.
The water level was now not far below it, the eerie light strong enough to illuminate the whole cave. Nina saw for the first time that there was another passage to one side. ‘Now we must leave,’ said Amaanat.
‘See you at the top,’ Eddie told him, taking his wife’s hand and leading her briskly towards the exit.
‘Why the rush?’ she asked. ‘The monks aren’t worried about it.’
‘Maybe, but they’re monks.’
‘And?’
‘They’re not generally known for wanting kids!’
‘You want another kid?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Not right now, but it’d be nice to have the option. If we don’t get out of here, our bits’ll end up glowing green!’
‘I’m fairly sure our second kid won’t be the Hulk,’ she said, teasing, as they rounded the twist in the passage and saw daylight ahead.
A figure stood at the entrance: Jayesh. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.
‘On their way,’ Nina told him. ‘You might want to move back, though. That big steam blast? There’ll be another one in a few minutes.’ The taciturn Nepali’s eyebrows twitched, and he followed them clear.
The monks emerged soon afterwards. ‘Four minutes,’ warned Amaanat as he joined the visitors. ‘When it is safe to go back inside, you will see that I have spoken the truth.’
Time passed with infuriating slowness. Eventually the low rumbling began again. The hissing of subterranean steam grew steadily louder – until another vaporous eruption burst from the cave mouth, a second, smaller jet again gushing from the opening on the lower ledge. The rising plumes were quickly swept away by the wind.
Rudra retrieved the hazmat suit and Geiger counter from the hut. His safety check was soon completed, and he waved the onlookers back to the cave. ‘Now you shall see what Talonor saw,’ said Amaanat. The group put their masks on again as he led the way inside.
Far down the valley, a man watched through a powerful telescope as they disappeared into the darkness. He panned it on its tripod mount to find Jayesh, still standing watch. ‘So, one bodyguard,’ he whispered in Greek. Another look back at the now empty opening, then he withdrew and turned around.
Two helicopters stood before him, having landed on a higher plateau over four miles from the target zone. One was an elderly Polish-built Mil Mi-2 eight-seater in bright red civilian paintwork, the other a slightly larger but much newer AgustaWestland AW169 outfitted with an external winch. Swathes of black plastic had been taped over parts of their hulls to cover tail numbers and identifying logos. He went to the second aircraft, ignoring the bored Nepalese men inside, and collected a satellite phone before returning to the telescope. Resuming his observation, he made a call.
It was soon answered. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Axelos.’
‘Ah, Petros!’ said the deep-voiced man at the other end of the line. He spoke briefly to someone in English, then returned to his native language. ‘Where are you, and what have you found?’
‘I paid a customs officer at Kathmandu airport to hide a tracker in Wilde and her husband’s baggage. We followed them into the mountains. They’ve gone into a cave with the monks.’ He frowned, still watching the ledge. ‘I don’t know what’s going on inside, but it’s weird. A lot of smoke or steam blew out of it.’
‘You don’t need to worry about that. Just secure the Crucible. How long will it take you to get into position?’
‘Thirty, forty minutes – we’ll need to fly behind the other mountains so they don’t hear us coming, and rope down higher up so we can attack from above.’
‘And will the men be up to the job?’
Axelos glanced at his companions: a collection of local mercenaries, hurriedly hired through his boss’s global network of contacts. All claimed to have military experience, but the black-haired Greek had many years of his own, and could tell that none were top-tier. But they were all he had. ‘It would have been better if I’d been able to use people I already knew – people I can rely on.’
‘I know. But when you need to act fast, you use what you have, not what you want, yes? Okay, do it.’
‘Moving out now,’ Axelos said.
He was about to end the call when the other man spoke again, so
unding almost saddened. ‘And Petros?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d prefer there to be no violence. The Crucible is what matters. But . . .’ His voice became harder, filled with meaning. ‘I must have it. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ Axelos replied. ‘I’ll call you again when it’s done.’
He disconnected and returned to the helicopters, calling out their passengers and getting one of the Nepalis to translate as he addressed them in perfect English. ‘All right! We’re moving out. You all know what to do, so follow my lead.’ He waited for the non-English-speakers to respond to the translation, then continued: ‘There’s a guard outside the cave, so we deal with him first. He looks Nepalese, but he’s not a monk, so you shouldn’t have any trouble picking him out. Then we round up everyone else.’
A mercenary, one of twin brothers whom Axelos could only tell apart by their scarves, spoke in clumsy English. ‘What we do if they do trouble?’
‘Use the minimum force necessary,’ he replied, ‘but if anyone poses a threat . . . take them out.’
Nods of agreement, with some leering smiles. The Greek concealed his disdain, instead signalling to the helicopter pilots. The Mil’s was a local Nepali, the AW169’s an American named Collins, another employee of Axelos’s paymaster. ‘Let’s do this.’
The eerie cyan glow had disappeared, only lamplight reflecting off the cavern’s golden walls. Wisps of steam coiled from the chasm. Nina looked down into it as the monks prepared to raise the Crucible back to floor level. The strange sphere was now suspended some distance above the surface, where the meltwater had boiled away in a furious burst.
What she could see of the mercury within the Crucible looked no different, though. Was the whole thing just some bizarre lie?
The monks strained to lift the red crystal up the shaft, gingerly pulling it on to solid ground. Rudra brought one of the empty canisters and placed the funnel into it, inserting a fine wire mesh to act as a filter. A pair of men gently tipped the Crucible, pouring out its contents.