He stared into the shadows that engulfed the dilapidated shanties. Trees blocked the sky allowing only thin fingers of light to poke through the canopy. Water, though, found a path and tapped the ground in a steady beat. The tomb mound started its rise less than fifty meters away. He was perhaps as close to the base as one could get. The fencing that had protected the front also ran behind the buildings, blocking any route upward.

He spotted the well exactly where the premier had said. A circular pile of masonry, two meters high, more wet vegetation clinging to its stones.

He hadn't walked around the buildings to the well because he wanted to slow down his adversary. This way, Tang would see him enter the building but not exit.

He stepped to the well and gazed inside. Less than a meter down, a rusted iron plate blocked the opening. Two makeshift handles had been welded to its surface. For all intents and purposes the plug was there to prevent anyone, or anything, from falling down the shaft.

But he knew better.

He gripped the handles, the wet rust staining his skin, making it difficult to keep a firm hold.

And lifted the plate away.

Malone was puzzled. "Where are we going?"

Pau knelt down and began to brush away a layer of dust and debris from the floor. "When I originally entered this chamber, the room was intact except that I noticed sunken areas in two places."

He understood. "Given these three stone tables, that meant there was solid ground everywhere-"

"Correct. I told you outside about the symbolism of the chariot and the ramp pointing left. The reason that is obvious to me now is because of what I found inside this room."

"It's getting quiet out there," Ca.s.siopeia said.

Malone had noticed that, too. "Keep an eye out."

She a.s.sumed a position near the exit.

Pau completed his clearing and Malone spotted faintly etched symbols, one on each brick face.

"What are they?" he asked.

"The one that looks like a house is the symbol for 6. The X with a line above and below is 5. The T-looking one is 7."

He noticed that the lines clumped together, which obviously was 4, appeared more often than the other numerals, except for the spoon with a line through its handle. "What's that?"

"9."

"There's a pattern," Pau said. "But I confess I was able to decipher it only because the floor itself had depressed."

Malone followed where Pau had pointed.

"The numbers 4 and 9 are important to the Chinese. 9 is p.r.o.nounced jiu, which is the same for 'long' and 'forever.' 9 has always correlated to long life and good fortune. It came to be a.s.sociated with emperors. 4, on the other hand, is p.r.o.nounced si, which is the same as 'death.' 4 has always been regarded as unlucky."

He inventoried the symbols 4 and 9 and saw that there were two concentrations.

"When I entered the chamber, I saw that these bricks"-Pau pointed to a cl.u.s.ter of 9s-"were depressed. So was that cl.u.s.ter of 4s. I discovered that there were openings beneath the floor that led down to two separate pa.s.sages."

"So you chose the lucky one," Malone said.

"It seemed the right selection."

Malone still held a shovel. He wedged the blade between two of the floor bricks with a 9 and pounded the sole of his shoe against the top edge. The ground was hard but gave way, and he angled the handle, forcing the brick upward.

"How we doing out there?" he asked Ca.s.siopeia.

"Too quiet."

"Minister Tang is on the way," Pau said.

Malone stared down at Pau, who was helping free each brick. An idea of what to do came to him in an instant. Pau glanced up and the look on the older man's face confirmed that he'd determined their next move as well.

"That's scary," Malone said. "I'm actually starting to think like you."

Pau grinned. "I can't see where that is a bad thing."

Tang followed a red carpet that formed a path up a short set of stone risers into the brick-and-gla.s.s building that encased Pit 3. He'd been informed that the hall had been cleared and all exits were manned with guards. He'd brought two men with him, both brothers of the Ba, whom he'd ordered to be stationed nearby.

"No one leaves this building," he barked out as he stepped past three of the museum guards at the main doors.

Viktor Tomas waited inside.

"You did well," he said to Viktor.

"Delivered, as promised."

The excavated pit spread out before him. He approached the catwalk railing, pointed down, then turned to the two brothers, "a.s.sume a position just outside that gash."

He watched as they hustled down a ladder, drew their weapons, and hugged the earthen wall on either side of the portal into Qin Shi's imperial library.

He handed Viktor his gun. "Finish the task. Now."

Viktor gripped the pistol and climbed down the ladder, approaching the two men, who stood ready to attack.

"Pau Wen," Tang called out. "The building is sealed."

No one replied.

"You are under arrest." His voice echoed through the interior, masked by the rat-tat-tat of rain off the metal roof.

Still no reply.

He motioned for Viktor to advance inside.

The two brothers moved with caution, glancing around the portal's edge, testing the situation, then rushed into the blackness, followed by Viktor.

He waited for the soft pop of sound-suppressed gunfire, but nothing came.

Viktor reappeared. "You should come down."

He did not like the quizzical tone in the man's voice.

He descended the ladder and entered the chamber. Just as he suspected, a charred smell of ash filled the musty air. Not a single silk or bamboo strip remained, only the three stone tables, the room not all that different from two days ago-except for two things.

In the floor, two sets of bricks had been removed, exposing openings about a meter square each, on opposite sides of the room.

He stared into them.

They dropped about two meters into the earth.

But which one had they taken?

FIFTY-FIVE.

Malone realized that their trick, in exposing both openings, would only momentarily slow down any pursuers. But every second they could gain counted.

Another problem was more immediate.

He wasn't fond of tight, underground s.p.a.ces, though he seemed to find himself inside them more often than he wished. He knew Ca.s.siopeia did not suffer from the same discomfort, so she led the way, plunging through the coal-black darkness, the beam of her flashlight illuminating only a few feet ahead.

They walked without a sound, their entrance point now a hundred yards behind them, negotiating sharp turns that had gone first left then right. The floor, which carried a slight upward slope, was brick-paved, similar to Pit 3, the walls and roof cut stone.

"This was part of the drainage that protected the tomb from groundwater," Pau whispered. "The turns are meant to slow any water that might acc.u.mulate, the rise making it difficult for the water to encroach. Behind these walls is poured bronze to add another layer of protection. They were quite ingenious."

"And where does this lead?" Malone asked.

"Straight to the tomb, and the secret entrance used by the builders."

Malone recalled the distance from the museum to the tomb mound-about half a mile, he'd estimated from the air. But that was in a straight line, which this tunnel wasn't.

His anxiety amplified.

Ca.s.siopeia stopped and glanced back toward him. Her eyes asked if he was okay, and he motioned for them to head on.

They pa.s.sed offshoots, dark doorways to the left and the right. Eight so far. He also noticed characters etched beside the portals, more Chinese numbers. Pau explained that the tunnels accommodated runoff, taking as much water as possible away from the tomb, allowing seepage back into the ground. Similar to a drain field for a septic tank, Malone thought.

"The numbers beside each portal, they're significant?" he asked.

"Critical," Pau said. "Take the wrong one and you may never get out of here."

Tang was not in the mood for tricks.

He stared at the holes in the floor and ordered, "Both of you stand guard. Don't leave this room unattended. If any foreigner emerges from those holes, shoot them."

They nodded their a.s.sent.

He motioned for Viktor to come with him.

Time to deal with Ni Yong.

Ni saw that he was standing in the entranceway to the tomb of Qin Shi, exactly as the premier had described. Nearly twenty-five years ago, a select team of five individuals, headed by the deputy minister for internal affairs, who would later rise to become premier of the nation, had used ground-penetrating radar to find a way inside. Beijing had, by then, discovered the value of the terra-cotta warriors in promulgating a new world image of China. Adding the actual tomb of Qin Shi to that repertoire could only enhance the effect. But after Mao's many failures, the Party gambled only on sure things.

So a secret exploration was ordered.

Luckily a tunnel had been discovered almost immediately, and they'd dug down, entering from above. When they finished, a well had been built over the entrance and capped with an iron plate, the entire area fenced and declared off limits.

His flashlight revealed a towering, arched pa.s.sage, perhaps ten meters high. The floor was paved with veined stone. Archways appeared at regular intervals, holding the roof aloft. A cable lay against one wall, placed there by the first exploration team.

Follow it, had been his instruction.

If what he'd been told was right, no one had followed this path in more than thirty years. Before that, two millennia had pa.s.sed between visits.

He walked for what he estimated as a hundred meters. The beam from his light revealed a stone gate, but two doors blocked the way. He approached.

The glistening stone portal stood three meters high, dark green and black veins glistening in his light. Each door was carved from a single slab of marble, the surfaces littered with symbols and a bronze clamp. The right door was c.o.c.ked open, which allowed a pa.s.sage through the center.

He hesitated and shone his light left and right. Slits in the pa.s.sage walls, high, near the roofline, indicated where crossbows had once been placed to fire on any interloper. The premier had told him that the reports of b.o.o.by traps in some of the historical accounts had proven true, though 2,200 years of aging had rendered them useless. The doors themselves had been barred from the outside, and he spotted a heavy timber that had once rested inside the bronze clamps.

Every schoolchild was taught of Qin Shi. He was the embodiment of China, the founder of the longest-enduring political system on earth. A conqueror, unifier, centralizer, standardizer, builder-the first in a long line of 210 men and one woman to occupy the Dragon Throne.

And this was his tomb.

He negotiated the opening between the doors and stepped into more blackness on the other side. He'd been told to look to his right. His light found the cable on the floor, which had also pa.s.sed through the open doors, ending at a metal box.

He bent down and examined the exterior. Still in good condition. He grasped a lever, prepared himself, and rotated it downward.

Ca.s.siopeia led the way as they turned another corner and negotiated a third set of right angles. She realized that there would be another twist coming to swing them back on a line toward the tomb mound. She estimated they'd traveled maybe two hundred meters, so they should be getting close to whatever lay at the end.

She couldn't help but marvel at the engineering. Her own stonemasons, hired to reconstruct the castle that she'd been laboring to build for nearly a decade, had early on explained the difficulties. To build today exactly as they had in the 14th century, using 700-year-old tools and methods, was daunting. But the builders of this tunnel had not been nearly as fortunate. Their tools and technology didn't even approximate the sophistication of the 14th century. Yet they'd managed to accomplish the task, and their resounding success made her even more committed to finishing her own restoration.

"We are near the end," she heard Pau Wen say.

Surprisingly, the air was stale but not fetid. Apparently, ventilation had likewise been part of the builders' plan.

She knew that being enclosed underground was not Malone's idea of fun. But flying through the air, looping around in a plane or helicopter, was not her favorite, either. Nothing about their situation was good. They were relying on a man who was utterly untrustworthy, but they had little choice. She had to admit that she was excited about the possibility of entering the tomb. Never had she imagined such an opportunity would present itself. She felt better with the gun nestled at her waist and Cotton at her back, but remained apprehensive about what lay just beyond the beam of her flashlight.

They pa.s.sed two more exits, both labeled with Chinese symbols. The pa.s.sage right-angled ahead, just as she knew it would.

She stopped and turned.

Malone was a couple of meters behind her. She lowered her light, pointing the beam to the ground.