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Tang pressed his own chest against the bucket’s end to secure it in place and brought the ropes lying on the floor up, securing the pail to Sokolov’s body.
Tang allowed a moment for things to calm, but Sokolov continued to struggle.
“I would suggest lying still,” Tang said. “You’ll agitate them less.”
The Russian seemed to gain some measure of control and stopped thrashing, though the three men retained a firm hold.
Tang stepped to the table and retrieved one of the last two items he’d brought with him from the oil platform. A small, handheld instant-ignition torch fueled with acetylene. The kind of tool utilized for quick fixes on the rigs. He opened its brass valve. Gas hissed from the tip. He stood the torch upright on the table, gripped the final item, a striker, and sparked the end to life.
He adjusted the flame to blue hot.
He crouched down and allowed the heat to lick the bucket’s bottom, then painted the sides of the pail with the flame. “As it warms, the rats instinctively shun the metal. They’ll quickly sense a desperate need to leave their prison. But there’s no way out. Everything is resistant to their claws, except your flesh.”
He heard the rats popping against the inside of the bucket, squealing at their predicament.
Sokolov screamed behind the tape, but only a murmur could be heard. The Russian’s restrained body was knotted in tension and wet with perspiration. Tang kept heating the bucket, careful not to make it too hot, just enough to entice the rats to attack the flesh.
Sokolov’s face squeezed with anguish. Tears welled in the Russian’s eyes and rained from the edges.
“The rats will claw down to your stomach,” he said. “They will burrow through your flesh, trying to escape the heat.” He kept stroking the metal with the flame. “They can’t be blamed. Any creature would do the same.”
Sokolov screamed again—a long, deep murmur muted by the tape. Tang imagined what was happening. The rats scratching furiously, aided by their teeth, softening the flesh that might allow them to escape faster.
The trick, as Tang had been taught, was knowing when to stop. Too long and the victim would receive severe, perhaps even fatal wounds from the infections the rats left behind. Too short and the point would not be made, and repeating the process was problematic, unless it didn’t matter if the subject survived.
Here, it did.
He withdrew the torch.
“Of course,” he said, keeping his eyes as gentle as his voice, “there is an alternative to this, if you’re willing to listen.”
FORTY
BELGIUM
MALONE CAUGHT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WHAT PAU WEN HAD said. “How is that possible?”
“When the terra-cotta army was discovered in 1974, I was dispatched by Chairman Mao to investigate and determine the extent of the find. I immediately realized that what had been discovered could prove immensely important. No one had any idea that the underground army existed.” He pointed at the silks before him. “Shiji is silent on the matter. No written record mentions its existence. It seems to have been conceived, produced, buried, then forgotten.”
Malone recalled reading about the find. Pau was right—it had proven significant for China. Millions flocked to the site every year. No visiting head of state left without a peek. Even the pope came during an unprecedented visit to China last year.
“While at the site,” Pau said, “on a fortuitous day, I happened onto something even more remarkable.”
The digging had been ongoing night and day for three months. Already, several hundred clay warriors had been unearthed, most in pieces, piled one atop the other like trees fallen in the forest. Luckily, the pieces were all near one another, so Pau ordered that a restoration workshop be constructed and the figures reassembled. His archaeologists and engineers had assured him that it could be done. In fact, they were confident that the entire army could be resurrected and stood up again, one warrior at a time. There could be thousands of them, he’d been told. Along with chariots and horses.
What a site that would be.
And he agreed.
But the nearby mound interested him more. It stood a kilometer away, south of the Wei River, beside the slopes of Black Horse Mountain. A vast, shallow-sided, earth pyramid with a wide base, veiled in fir trees towering over the grassy plain, seemingly part of the landscape.
But that had been the whole idea.
Men of Qin Shi’s day believed that the dead lived on, only in a different world, and they should be treated as the living. So the First Emperor fashioned for himself a massive imperial necropolis, a subterranean empire, to continue his rule in the netherworld. Once created, everything had been hidden with dirt, creating a mound that once rose more than a hundred meters.
Had it ever been breached?
Literary references penned hundreds of years after Qin’s time reported that the tomb had twice been entered. First by rebels in search of weapons three years after the First Emperor’s death, then 700 years later for plunder. Scattered ashes, fired earth, and the broken warriors themselves suggested that the first violation may well have occurred. Few of the weapons the warriors once carried had so far been found. But the mound itself was not part of that first violation, and no one knew for sure if the second invasion ever occurred. He’d read Shiji and knew that there well could be rivers and oceans of mercury inside, part of an elaborate representation of Qin’s empire, and this could pose a problem. Though thought of as medicine in ancient times, mercury was anything but and most likely contributed to the First Emperor’s death. The fool would ingest an elixir each day of quicksilver, thinking that it would grant him immortality. Then again, looking at the mound that had stood for over two thousand years, Pau thought that perhaps Qin had been right after all.
Here was his immortality.
Mao himself had taken a keen interest in what was happening here. The Cultural Revolution was seven years past. Gangs waving their little red books of Mao’s thoughts were long gone, thank goodness. Schools and universities had reopened. The army was stable. Commerce had returned. China was again engaging the world. Warriors from the First Emperor’s time—a massive, silent, heretofore unknown underground army—might be helpful in steering Mao’s master blueprint for nation building. So the government had assumed control of the site, sealed off by the military, and workers were searched on both arriving and leaving. Some looting had occurred, mostly brass arrowheads sold for scrap. Several had been arrested and examples would have to be made, for nothing could jeopardize the area’s potential. The Chairman had told him to do whatever was necessary to preserve the find.
Mao trusted him and he could not disappoint.
So he’d ordered more exploratory digs.
Shiji made clear that there were countless aspects to the tomb complex. Already the digs had proven fruitful. Areas of interest had been identified. In one, horses and a chariot were discovered. Not representations, but the bones of horses and an actual chariot. What else lay in the earth around him? He could only imagine. It would take years to discover it all.
“Minister.”
He turned to face one of several supervisors he’d entrusted with the local workers, men he could depend on to keep order.
“We have something.”
He followed a group across the main excavation site—what they had started calling Pit 1—to an area twenty-five meters northwest.
A ladder protruded from a black yaw dug into the reddish earth.
“I found Qin Shi’s imperial library below that ground,” Pau said. “Several hundred manuscripts. Each one precious beyond measure.”
“I’ve never heard of any such find,” Malone said.
“That’s because I resealed the repository. Mao was not interested in manuscripts. The past was unimportant to him, except as it could be used to further his Revolution. Mao was a Legalist, not a Confucian—if you understand the difference.”
“Benevolence versus oppression,” Cassiopeia said.
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Pau nodded. “It is a debate China has engaged in for a long time.”
“And which are you?” Malone asked.
“I have served many a Legalist.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I am for what is best for China. That has always been my concern.”
Still not an answer, so he tried, “Why did you reseal the library?”
“To prevent Mao from destroying what was inside.”
“And what was that?”
“Thoughts that contradicted Mao’s.”
“You’re good at not answering questions.”
Pau smiled. “I intended to return and explore the repository further, but circumstances changed and I was never able. What’s important is what else I found in that repository.”
Malone waited.
“A path into Qin Shi’s tomb.”
TANG WATCHED AS LEV SOKOLOV CONSIDERED WHAT HE’D JUST said. The Russian remained bound to the chair, but the bucket had been removed. The rodents had viciously clawed his skin and blood oozed from nasty-looking wounds.
“You will do as I say?” he asked Sokolov.
Tape remained across the scientist’s mouth, so all he could do was nod.
He pointed to the chest. “You’re going to need antibiotics, and quickly. No way to tell how many diseases you have been exposed to. I suggest you not disappoint me.”
A furious nod of the head signaled that would not happen.
His satellite phone vibrated in his pocket. Any interruption had to be vital, so he checked the display.
Viktor Tomas.
He fled to the hallway outside and answered.
“I have some things to tell you,” Viktor said.
He listened to what was happening in Belgium, then said, “You were right about Cotton Malone. I should have listened.”
“He’s uncontrollable.”
“You don’t like him much, do you?”
“He’s trouble.”
“Are Malone and Vitt with Pau right now?”
“They are.”
