The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (10 page)

Alex pointed. “There he is—Er Shi Huangdi himself.”

“They say,” O’Connell said, “that he was one evil son of a bitch.”

Evy said, “Rick!” But she didn’t disagree.

The three O’Connells strolled along the cortege wagon and chariot, taking it all in, and settled in front of the bronze steeds. Evy’s eyes were wide in a mixture of parental pride and historian’s interest. O’Connell, however, had an odd tingling feeling at the back of his neck, probably due to their proximity to a mummy, even if it was Chinese and not Egyptian.

“Very impressive,” Evy said. She turned to her son, but she seemed like the youthful one, asking, “When do you get to open the sarcophagus?”

Alex grinned. “After the official red tape has been cut. I can hardly wait.”

O’Connell smirked. “The phrase
rest in peace
never really took with you two, did it?”

They ignored him, Alex asking his mother, “So why don’t you stick around for the next few days? We can open the Emperor’s box up together . . . unless you have to get back to your new book.”

She smiled wryly. “I would grasp at
any
excuse not to get back to my new book . . . but even without the benefit of avoiding work, I would like that very much. Very much indeed.”

That obviously pleased Alex.

O’Connell said, “Son, would you mind tracking down Professor Wilson? And tell him we’re here.”

“Sure,” Alex said. “No problem.” Then he lifted an eyebrow and a forefinger at the bronze statue of the Emperor, then brought it over to the coffin. “Just don’t wake the old fella up while I’m gone. I know what you two are
capable
of . . .”

Alex headed out, and Evy gave her husband a sharp look that meant
Say something!

So he did: “Hey, uh, Alex?”

Alex turned. “Yes, Dad?”

O’Connell patted the bronze rear end of the steed nearest him; he nodded toward the sarcophagus and the rest of the magnificent find. “This sure is something.”

Alex just stared at him.

“Big stuff,” O’Connell said awkwardly.

“Right, Dad. Whatever you say.”

And the boy went off.

Alex was moving through the darkened hallway of the closed museum when he sensed something, and turned quickly, but saw nothing. Something familiar tickled his nostrils. A scent . . . what was that? Perfume? Where might he have smelled it before?

He shrugged and moved on.

He had not seen the shadowy form duck back into an alcove as he walked by, unaware he had passed the catlike female adversary with whom he’d tangled at the tomb of Er Shi Huangdi.

Back in the rotunda, O’Connell had removed the Eye of Shambhala from its box and was presently idly bouncing the precious chunk of blue diamond in its oversized gold-snake setting in his palm as if the priceless artifact were a baseball. He was studying Evy as she studied the monument admiringly. Again, her pride in her son was evident; but so was her interest as an archaeologist and curator.

Something else was evident: his wife was ravishingly beautiful tonight, in the slinky backless satin gown and the white furs. Funny how a guy could lose track of things like that . . .

He said, “You know, you have a special glow tonight. I haven’t seen you light up like this for a long time.”

She blushed—actually blushed! He felt good that he still could have that kind of effect on her.

She said, “I guess maybe mummies bring out the young girl in me.”

Their eyes met and their hands did, too, but the moment was interrupted by a voice from behind them: “Did you two take a wrong turn at Cairo?”

They spun to see their old friend Roger Wilson, looking distinguished in a dark suit and bow tie; what little was left of his white hair was brushed back. To O’Connell, seeing his old friend all gussied up seemed quite at odds with his memory of the dusty, disheveled figure who had worked at his side on numerous digs.

“Roger,” Evelyn said warmly.

“Wilson,” O’Connell said, with a little edge, since this was after all the bad influence who had wooed Alex away from Harvard.

“Sorry to interrupt, Richard, Evelyn,” Wilson said with a smile.

“When Alex told me you’d gone legit,” O’Connell said, “I could hardly believe it. What’s this ‘Professor’ stuff, anyway?”

Wilson shrugged. “Eminently respectable, that’s me—still pillaging tombs, only now in the name of preservation. I’m curator here, and a visiting lecturer at any number of colleges and universities.”

O’Connell smirked. “Don’t remind me.”

Evy gestured to the sarcophagus on the chariot and said, “Congratulations on your latest discovery.”

Wilson waved a hand. “Alex deserves the lion’s share of credit. Hell of a lad you have there, Richard. He’s like the son I never had.”

“Well,” O’Connell said, hands on hips, “he’s also the only son we
ever
had, so the next time you want to go globe-trotting with him, give us a heads-up first, okay?”

“Of course.” Wilson folded his hands before a fairly ample middle mound. “Now, I believe you have something that belongs to the museum.”

O’Connell hefted the Eye playfully, then handed it over to the curator. Wilson did not bounce the Eye of Shangri-la in his palm, rather held it there like the priceless treasure it was.

“I knew I could count on you two,” he said.

O’Connell frowned. Now it was Wilson who had an edge in his voice, and that odd tingling was back . . .

From the shadows emerged two figures in gray military garb, both with blouses bearing odd three-headed-dragon insignias: a tall woman, lovely but with one cheek scarred, and a slender, dead-eyed, slightly shorter individual who carried himself with cold confidence.

With the hand that did not bear the Eye, Wilson gestured presentationally. “Rick, Evelyn—I’d like you to meet my good friends—General Yang and Colonel Choi.”

“A pleasure to meet such celebrated adventurers,” Yang said, with the tiniest of bows. “But I’m afraid your work, Mr. O’Connell, Mrs. O’Connell . . . is not quite done.”

Both O’Connells wheeled toward their old friend, who produced a Colt 1911 as magically as Bugs Bunny does a carrot.

Evelyn, shocked and disappointed, said, “Roger! What on earth is the meaning of this?”

O’Connell said nothing, way ahead of his wife, for once.

Wilson, with a smile that was almost as dead as General Yang’s eyes, pointed the weapon their way and said, “You have General Yang to thank for your son’s success. He’s the one who financed Alex’s dig. We’re all in this together, cheek by jowl.”

Wilson edged over to Yang and handed him the Eye.

“So you set us up, huh, Roger?” O’Connell said. “With friends like you, who needs betraying bastards?”

“Now, Richard,” Wilson said. “We’re neither one of us angels.”

“You
may be soon,” O’Connell said, “but I wouldn’t count on it. You’ll likely be going in the opposite direction.”

With a nod at O’Connell, Yang instructed Wilson, “Search him. He’s not the kind of man who goes anywhere unarmed.”

Yang and the lovely, scarred colonel held their own sidearms on O’Connell as Wilson gave his old comrade a frisk. The result of the search was two .38 Smith & Wessons, from under either armpit, the curator tossing the guns across the marble floor, sending them skittering. But O’Connell noted where they’d gone . . .

“The Eye of Shambhala,” Evelyn said, “belongs to the people of China. You can’t do this, Roger. You’ll die in disgrace.”

Wilson said nothing, continuing his frisking of his former friend, finding a set of brass knuckles in O’Connell’s right-hand pocket, and plucking a butterfly knife from his waistband.

Wilson said drily, “When you dress formally, Richard, you really go all out.”

“Enjoy yourself, Roger. This won’t last long. So how much are Yin and Yang here paying you? What are the services of a snake running these days?”

Wilson had just discovered a snub-nosed pistol strapped to O’Connell’s ankle. “Enough for me to pull some strings at the Foreign Office, and make sure you and your lovely wife were the ones chosen to deliver the Eye.”

“Why us, Roger?”

But it was Yang who answered: “For one thing, Mr. O’Connell, we trusted your wife’s expertise in handling such a precious artifact, and yours in protecting it. The Eye of Shangri-la, as some call it, contains the Elixir of Eternal Life. Mrs. O’Connell, I must impose upon you to open it.”

Evy turned as white as her fur. Her eyes went to the sarcophagus and then back to the general in horrified realization. Taking a step back, she said, “My God, no. You . . . you mean to use it to awaken the
Emperor,
don’t you?”

This time Wilson answered for the general: “Yes, indeed. But not just Er Shi Huangdi—his entire terra-cotta army.” Wilson shrugged as if they were discussing the weather. “That’s the general idea, at least.”

O’Connell’s stomach was churning. “You people don’t know what you’re dealing with—
we
do. You do not want to unleash this kind of thing on the world. We, all of us, narrowly escaped when Imhotep returned,
twice
—and now you want to raise the most evil Emperor of them all from the dead?”

“In a word,” Yang said, “yes.”

“Raising one mummy is crazy—raising an army of them is bloody insane.”

O’Connell lurched toward Yang and got the barrel of Wilson’s pistol across the back of his head for the trouble. While this was going on, Evy used the moment to go for the knife in the sheath on her thigh—no one had bothered to frisk her—but the big scar-faced beauty in the gray uniform was suddenly behind her, wresting the blade from Evy’s grasp.

Yang shoved the groggy O’Connell toward the steps of the scaffolding.

Wilson said, “Easy there, Richard. Time to open up the sarcophagus and wake our sleeping friend.”

Yang had moved close to Evy and now held the precious gem with its golden-snakes setting out to her; on the golden oval base from which the snakes arose were etched letters in ancient Mandarin.

“Read
it,” the general demanded. “Read the inscription—
now.”

Elsewhere in the Shanghai Museum, Alex came up behind the lithe figure in black, who was moving along the arcade windows, looking down through them at the rotunda below.

He said, “You never called. I thought our first date went really well.”

She spun to him, eyes flashing. “There’s no time for games, Alex.”

He grinned at her. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours. That’s not fair.”

“It’s Lin.”

“Short but sweet. So, Lin, care to explain why you tried to kill me?”

“I could,” she said, gesturing to the windows with a view on the room below. “Or we could save your parents. I’ll leave it up to you.”

He smirked at her, hands on his hips. “Right. Nice try. I go over and take a look, and you kick my ass through the window.”

She gazed at him as blank as a Buddha. “See for yourself.”

Something about her tone convinced him, and he cautiously moved to where he could see through the second-story window . . .

. . . and looked down at Professor Wilson using a handgun to move Alex’s father toward the scaffolding while two military types, a man and a woman, trained guns on Alex’s mother.

Wilson’s bitter betrayal was immediately evident, and Alex muttered, “The son of a bitch . . .”

“You can whine,” she said. “Or we can do something about it. Your choice.”

Up on the monument’s platform, Wilson was prodding O’Connell toward the sarcophagus, while on the marble floor below, General Yang faced Evy, who held the Eye in her palms as she studied the inscription etched in the gold oval from which the golden snakes rose to grip the precious stone.

“I’m afraid,” she said, “ancient Chinese is not my strong suit . . .”

“Perhaps you need some encouragement. Wilson!”

Wilson looked at Yang, who nodded, and the curator thumbed back the hammer on the pistol and aimed the weapon at O’Connell’s heart. “Sorry, Richard.”

O’Connell said, “No you aren’t.”

“Stop!”
Evy cried. “I’ll
do
it. I
can
read it. Just leave my husband alone.”

O’Connell was shaking his head. “Evy, don’t be a fool—they’re going to kill me anyway. Don’t do it!”

Her glance up at him held many things—anguish, love, regret, but perhaps most of all knowledge of what turning loose another reanimated madman would mean to the world . . .

But O’Connell could see that the world was something his wife was willing to trade for her husband’s life; and wouldn’t he have done the same for her?

She said, “The inscription says that only a drop of blood from a person pure of heart can open the Eye. I’m afraid you need a virgin for that, and looking around the room, I would say we are in rather short supply of those.”

General Yang’s small smile was enormously vile. “Your husband was right, Mrs. O’Connell. I
do
intend to kill him anyway.”

And the general trained the weapon on O’Connell, up on the monument.

Evy thrust herself between the general’s weapon and her husband, putting herself at point-blank range. “No! I did as you said, I read you the bloody thing, don’t
do
it!”

Yang lowered the gun and smiled. “The inscription, as I interpret it, Mrs. O’Connell, does not require a virgin. But it does require someone pure of heart. And only the pure of heart would sacrifice himself . . . or
her
self . . . for the one she loves.”

Colonel Choi, summoned by Yang’s sideways glance, came over and, with sensual grace, removed the glove from Evy’s right hand; then Choi unsheathed a knife and extended its blade over Evy’s pink upturned palm.

Yang snapped to Wilson,
“Open
it!”

Up on the platform, Wilson cautiously lifted a crowbar that leaned against the scaffolding rail and handed the tool to O’Connell, who went quickly to work prying the lid from the sarcophagus, creating a nails-on-blackboard grinding that filled the rotunda.

The grinding masked any sound from above—though that sound was nearly nonexistent already—as Lin, followed by Alex, climbed down onto the scaffolding, hidden from view by piles of brick and other building materials, block and tackles swagged from the corners of the chamber.