The Emperor's Tomb

Time to fade into the background.

As all agents do.

    Malone had read about a sky burial. Dicing a corpse into pieces, beating it to a paste with flour, tea, and milk, then allowing carrion to feast on the mixture represented a return to fire, water, earth, and wind, the basic elements of man. A great honor.

He and Cassiopeia stood and watched the ancient ceremony. A couple of hours ago Viktor’s body had been brought outside the walls, to a nearby valley, and prepared.

“Our brothers are trained in the jhator,” Pau said. “It is a ritual we have performed many times.”

“Are you really going to help Ni Yong?” Malone asked.

“Legalism? Confucianism? Communism? Democracy? An emperor? Or an elected president? Our problem for the past sixty years is that no single concept or philosophy has dominated. Instead we have languished in an uncertain middle, bits of each vying for control. Chinese fear chaos. We despise uncertainty. We have many times accepted the wrong system in the name of certainty.” Pau hesitated a moment. “At a minimum, Tang and Ni offered a clear choice. Now it has been made. So the Ba shall be Ni’s ally.”

“Where I was raised,” Malone said, “there’s a saying. Don’t go through your asshole to get to your appetite. Maybe the Chinese can learn from that.”

Pau smiled. “Is that wisdom from one of your great American philosophers?”

“A group of them, yes. They’re called rednecks.”

“What’s to prevent someone else from simply taking Tang’s place?” Cassiopeia asked. “Surely he has followers ready to take up the cause.”

“No doubt,” Pau said. “But this is not America or Europe. Those followers have no access to media, nor to the Party hierarchy. Those privileges have to be earned, over many years of loyal service. Politics here is a personal journey, one that takes an excruciatingly long time. Tang’s own rise required nearly twenty years.” Pau shook his head. “No. Minister Ni is now the only one poised for ultimate power.”

Which Ni well knew, Malone thought. He was disappointed that he would not be around when Pau Wen received a dose of his own medicine.

“You sound confident,” Cassiopeia said.

“Fate has intervened on China’s behalf.”

“You don’t really believe that?” he asked. “Fate? You determined most of this.”

Pau smiled. “How else could all of our involvement be explained? Isn’t it odd that we were each in the precise location, at the precise time, to precisely affect the outcome? If that is not fate, then what is?”

Ni’s assessment of Pau seemed correct. He did overestimate his worth. And you didn’t have to be a genius to understand the ramifications of that mistake. But that wasn’t Malone’s problem. His job was done.

Half a dozen brothers encircled Viktor’s prepared remains, chanting, incense wafting from copper vessels.

Overhead the vultures had arrived. “Can we go?” Cassiopeia asked.

They left before the birds arrived and walked back toward the monastery across rocks and cobbles littered with ribbons of pale green grass. Neither one of them turned to see what happened.

“I was wrong about Viktor,” he quietly said.

“That was an easy mistake to make. He was tough to read.”

“Not in the end.”

“He took himself out with Tang, counting on me to land the kill shot,” she said.

He’d thought the same thing.

“I heard what he said as he turned,” she said.

You take care of her.

He stopped.

So did she.

He said, “We’ve played a lot of games.”

“Too many.”

“What do we do now?”

Her eyes were pools of water. “Strange. You and I having this conversation while Viktor is dead.”

“He made his choice.”

She shook her head. “I’m not so sure I didn’t make it for him. When I tossed that knife down. That’s what really gets me. He played many parts to many different audiences. You have to wonder, were those final words just more of the act?”

Malone knew the answer. He’d seen something she could not have witnessed. At the moment of his death, Viktor Tomas finally conveyed the truth.

You take care of her.

Yes, indeed.

She stared at him, seemingly summoning the courage to reveal something. He sympathized with her. His thoughts were likewise muddled. When he’d believed she was dead, a future without her had seemed unimaginable.

“No more games,” she said.

He nodded.

He cupped her hand in his. “Cotton—”

He silenced her lips with two fingers. “Me, too.” And he kissed her.

WRITER’S NOTE

This book took Elizabeth and me to Copenhagen and Antwerp but, unfortunately, not to China. That excursion would have taken far more time than was available. A book a year demands a tight schedule. So, with Antarctica from The Charlemagne Pursuit, China remains at the top of our must-see list.