Day of the Djinn Warriors (20 page)

They stared some more at the picture. Nimrod walked back to the painting of Cardinal Marrone. The others followed.

“That bookmark in the cardinal’s Bible,” said Finlay. He stood as close to the painting as the museum’s security
devices permitted and scrutinized the bookmark more carefully. “There’s something written on it.”

“Can you read what it says, boy?” asked Nimrod.

Finlay screwed up his eyes and poked his head even farther forward so that his nose was almost touching the canvas. “It says,
‘Aurum — dii — tango.’
”

“Aurumdii tango,”
said Nimrod. “It’s Latin. It means ‘I touch the gold of the gods.’”

“I guess that’s the point of learning Latin,” said Finlay.

John nodded. “I guess that clinches it. Old Dan Marrone had the golden tablet, all right. And he wanted someone to know that he had it.”

Leaving Sister Cristina, they took a water taxi back to the hotel. Nimrod found another room for Marco Polo and then joined the children back in their top-floor suite, where they had just finished telling Groanin all that they had discovered.

“It’s vitally important that we solve the mystery in that picture and find that golden tablet of command,” said Nimrod. “Clearly, there’s no time to delay. But it seems equally important that we get to China as quickly as possible and find this place that Faustina described.”

“I don’t get it,” said Finlay. “Why is any of this important?”

“I agree with Finlay,” said John. “All I want to do now is go back to New York and wait for Mom to turn up.”

Nimrod told the boys about what he and Philippa had discovered in the
Book of Jade
, and how this tied in with what Marco Polo had told them. “Warnings from the past should never be ignored,” he said. “There’s something grave that’s happening in the spirit world. These warrior devils are behind it, all right. We have to find out why.”

“But if it’s the spirit world, why is that important to us?” persisted Finlay. “I mean, spirits are dead, right? How much worse can it get for them than that?”

“A lot worse,” said Nimrod. “And for us, too. The spirit world can affect the physical world in ways you can’t possibly comprehend. It’s not called the ‘other side’ for nothing. Think of it being like a coin. You can’t have heads without also having tails. That’s why we have to go to China.”

“China?” Groanin did not sound pleased.

“China,” repeated Nimrod. “But we shall have to divide our forces. Groanin, Finlay, John, and I will go to China. It’s my belief that someone has unlocked the ancient secret of the terra-cotta warriors and is using them to his or her own advantage,” said Nimrod.

“What about me?” asked Philippa.

“Philippa? I want you to stay here in Venice with Marco Polo and see if you can’t solve the mystery in that painting. It’s vital that you find that golden tablet of command. I had better provide Marco with a passport in case you have to travel anywhere to find it.”

“Isn’t that a little risky?” asked Philippa. “I mean, you going to China
without
the golden tablet of command.”

“Perhaps,” admitted Nimrod. “But necessary, I think. We shall scout it out, so to speak. Gather intelligence.”

“I hate China,” said Groanin darkly. “They eat dogs in China.”

“Groanin,” sighed Nimrod. “You’ve never even been to China.”

Groanin looked imploringly at Nimrod. “Couldn’t I stay here with Miss Philippa, sir?” he asked. “I don’t think the
idea
of China agrees with my stomach. Bad enough that we’re here in Italy. All that olive oil and garlic. They even put garlic on their bread and butter, for goodness sake. I could help Philippa solve the puzzle in the painting. I’m good at puzzles, I am. You know I am. Nobody does the
Daily Telegraph
crossword puzzle quicker than me, and that’s a fact.”

“I’m sorry, Groanin, but no,” said Nimrod. “After your wrestling bout with that angel, it’s clear you’ll be more useful to us as a bodyguard. We may have need of the strength in that special arm of yours if it comes to a fight with these warrior devils.”

Groanin groaned loudly. “I were afraid of that. We won’t be there five minutes before there’s mutt on the menu. I can see it coming. You mark my words.”

“Oh, Mr. Groanin, they don’t eat dogs in China,” said Philippa. “That’s just an old wives’ tale.”

“They don’t?” said Groanin. “It is?” He was silent for a moment and then nodded. “Well, then I suppose it’ll be all right. Only I’m fond of dogs. I had a dog. When I were a lad.”

“Small world,” said John.

A
s soon as Layla Gaunt had left Fallingwater in Iravotum, Faustina set about preparing for her own departure. She didn’t want her spirit to spend one minute more in that weird place than was absolutely necessary for fear of something unpleasant happening to her, as had clearly already happened to Layla.

Faustina’s plan was to find a nice comfortable bed, lie down on it, and then leave her body to absorb the atmosphere of Iravotum that was necessary to becoming the Blue Djinn while taking her spirit off somewhere else for thirty days. But where was she to go? There was no question that she would have to occupy another living creature for that length of time, otherwise she might never be able to pull herself together again. And what shape was she to adopt?

Experience had taught Faustina to be wary about
borrowing human bodies. Being inside the British prime minister had had catastrophic results she never wanted to see repeated. But if not a human being, then what kind of creature’s shape was she to take? Since arriving in Iraq she’d seen evidence that the country appeared to be hazardous to all forms of life, not just human beings. Just about the only animals Faustina had seen that seemed to be thriving were scorpions, but Faustina had an instinctive loathing of these creatures, which are more poisonous to djinn than they are to humans. So that was out as, for the same reason, were all spiders. She didn’t like snakes. Which left what? It was all very worrying and she decided that it was probably best if she let serendipity make the choice for her. This is just another way of saying that she would let fortune decide, which was, of course, a very djinnlike choice.

She lay down on Layla’s big bed and closed her eyes. After a minute or two of concentration, she lifted her spirit clear of her body and rose high into the air through the concrete roof of Fallingwater until she reached the near invisible ceiling of the huge underground world that is Iravotum. Then straight up for thousands of feet through dense rock strata and shifting layers of hot shale and sand, until she found herself floating free again in the cool early morning light of Babylon.

For a while, Faustina floated around, enjoying the breezy liberty of the air after the darkly claustrophobic grip of the ground. But all the time she was searching for a suitable living host. In quick succession she rejected a kitten, a goat, a
reed warbler, and a man with a black turban. Finally, she elected to become a honeybee. Bees were hardworking, inoffensive creatures. Besides, Faustina was very fond of honey. But it was a choice that would have an unforeseen and long-lasting effect that was the result of her taking a bee’s shape while a residual amount of bee venom still remained in Faustina’s earlobes.

Forever after, Faustina would buzz when she was happy.

Around this time, Layla Gaunt was looking forward to seeing her family and enjoying her whirlwind flight home. As usual, she had furnished her breezy conveyance atmospherically, which is to say the interior of the whirlwind had all the leather-lined comforts and fitted-carpet elegance of a small and extremely expensive private jet. But as she was a powerful, experienced djinn, there was little need for her to pay more than a minimal amount of attention to the actual flying of the whirlwind. The idea of an autopilot in which a computer flies a conventional aircraft is also known to the djinn, except that they call such a device an
“idée fixe,”
from the French. Inside the mind of a djinn piloting a whirlwind, this
“idée fixe”
exists as an independent thought or “fixed idea,” and its operation is more easily explained when it is understood that because of the way a djinn’s brain is constructed, a mature djinn can think of at least two things at the same time. When weather conditions are favorable, a djinn can simultaneously fly a whirlwind and watch an in-flight movie, read a newspaper, or even sleep.

Before leaving Baghdad, Layla had taken the trouble to check the weather and found that flying conditions over the Pacific Ocean were near perfect. Cloud cover was minimal, winds were light, and, even at lower altitudes, visibility was excellent. Cocooned in the comfort of her own private whirlwind, Layla sped through the sky like some modern-day Nut, who, as anyone knows, was the ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky and the heavens. (She is also the improbable but true origin of the old djinn motto about not flying a whirlwind in bad weather, which says that “you’d have to be Nut to fly in this.”)

Layla had one eye on the in-flight movie, one eye on her glossy magazine, and an
“idée fixe”
somewhere at the back of her mind. It wouldn’t have occurred to her, or anyone else for that matter, to have avoided the air space around the island of Kilauea. There had been no reports of any recent volcanic activity, which meant that the vulcanologists working on the lip of the crater of the world’s largest volcano were about to receive the surprise of their lives.

Indeed, it would prove to be the last surprise of their lives.

Inside the huge Kilauea crater, the pressure-cooker effect relieved itself. Which is to say that explosive pressures were reached, and then breached with spectacular effect. The first explosion fired about one whole cubic mile of ash and rock thousands of feet into the air, followed by a burning cloud of superheated gas that vulcanologists know as the pyroclastic flow.

Now djinn are made of fire and super-resistant to heat. But there is heat and then there is the heat from a pyroclastic flow, which can exceed eight hundred degrees Celsius. What is more, words like “cloud” and “flow” hardly describe the speed with which the hot gas of a pyroclastic flow travels. A speed of more than 150 miles per hour is not uncommon. It was this pyroclastic flow that incinerated Layla Gaunt’s body. Burnt it to a crisp. Or a potato chip. Completely.

Anyone but a djinn would have been killed. Like those poor vulcanologists. And in a way Layla Gaunt
was
killed, for the body her children and husband were used to was now completely gone, reduced to an airborne cinder in less than a second. But somehow her spirit survived. The second that the volcano erupted, Layla’s
“idée fixe”
took control like the ejector seat in a military jet, firing her spirit high into the comparative safety of the stratosphere. A moment later and her spirit would have been atomized, just like her body. A pyroclastic flow will do that.

It was several minutes before the disembodied Layla figured out what had happened and gathered herself — what was left of herself — together in a sort of ghostly mist. At that kind of altitude, Layla might have drifted off into space and been lost forever — quite quickly. And it was fortunate that less than an hour after the eruption, a bird flew into the small cloud that was Layla, enabling her to take possession of its twenty-six-pound body — for this was no ordinary bird, it was an albatross and, among birds, the albatross — a bird for
whom the breeze seemed to have been created — is considered to be a bit of a star.

Layla counted her blessings and tried to look on the positive side of things. Returning to New York to see her family in the shape of an albatross wasn’t exactly what she had had in mind, but at least she wasn’t dead. She still had a living spirit and, while the
Baghdad Rules
are strict about occupying the bodies of humans without their permission, taking on the shape of a cat or a dog back in New York remained a strong possibility. All she had to do was get there. Which made it all the more fortunate that she was in the body of an albatross. These are the greatest long-distance travelers on the planet. If albatrosses had a frequent flier plan, they’d bankrupt an airline.

Nothing could have been easier for an albatross than a flight across half of the Pacific Ocean and the whole North American continent. Layla climbed higher and, using a combination of gravity and solar power, she calculated her position.

Her latitude was 21.18 degrees north; her longitude was 157.51 degrees west. She set a course for New York: latitude 40.45 degrees north and longitude 73.59 degrees west. Instinctively, she calculated the distance she would have to fly as 4,956.41857 miles. Her ground speed was just over seventy miles an hour. She would be home in just 2.9502 days.

The albatross is nothing if not a bird that is very precise in its navigation.

S
ome 7,777 miles to the west of the sky above Hawaii, which contained the albatross that was now Mrs. Gaunt, her brother, Nimrod, was flying out of Venice cocooned in a whirlwind with John/Finlay and Groanin.

Over Eastern Europe the sky was warm and clear of anything but the color blue. And they made good progress for several hours until, a few miles short of the Chinese border, they saw something on the crimsoning horizon that looked like the black mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, with one major difference: This cloud appeared to be moving not vertically but horizontally.

“What is that?” said Finlay.

“If I were Moses,” said Mr. Groanin, “I might say it were a pillar of cloud to lead us along the right way. But I’m not. And it isn’t.”

“Relax,” said Nimrod. “It’s only a typhoon. A tropical cyclone. It won’t bother us.”

“I thought you said the weather ahead of us was all clear,” remarked Groanin. “I say, I thought you said weather was grand for flying these whirlwind thingies.”

“I did,” said Nimrod. “And it was. But typhoons can blow up out of nowhere at this time of year. Especially in this part of the world. Northeast of the Ganges basin has always been a major area for tropical cyclones. We’ll just have to fly around it, that’s all.”

Nimrod adjusted their course accordingly; he was surprised when, a few minutes later, it was pointed out to him by the keen-eyed Finlay/John that the typhoon still appeared to be coming their way.

“That’s odd,” said Nimrod. “Typhoons generally don’t change course as abruptly as that. They’re cyclonic, which is to say that the winds rotate around an area of low atmospheric pressure.”

“Er, what would happen if it managed to intercept us?” asked Finlay.

“Tish, tosh,” said Nimrod, and chuckled loudly at the obvious discomfort of his two/three traveling companions. “It won’t intercept us. That would imply that it’s being controlled by some kind of intelligence. There’s nothing to worry about, I tell you.”

At the same time, however, he took the precaution of steering the whirlwind they were flying into a higher altitude, so that they could not only go around the typhoon but climb over it, too. But the typhoon was bigger than he had thought. Much bigger. And it was quickly clear they
would not be able to fly over it. Nor around it. Nimrod’s face started to take on an expression of quiet concern.

“How high can we go?” asked John.

“It would seem, not as high as the typhoon,” said Nimrod. “Perhaps we had better turn back. Just for the moment. Just to be on the safe side. I confess, I really can’t understand it. In all my years of piloting whirlwinds, this has never happened to me before.” He bit his lip uncertainly as the enormous column of cloud appeared to thicken and then darken, until it looked like a huge black cobra. “Normally, typhoons are quite predictable. I mean, after all, it is just a lot of hot air rotating in a circle.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Groanin. “Tell the typhoon.”

“Mr. Groanin’s right,” said John. “It appears to be pursuing us now.”

“I wish I’d taken a plane,” said Groanin. “I hate these things. Unnatural, so it is. If man had been meant to fly in a whirlwind, God would have made us prophets like Elijah, or gods like Apollo, and then he’d have been out of a job.”

By now, the typhoon appeared to be a mile or two away, which would have been a lot if it hadn’t also been three or four miles tall. And Nimrod was forced to admit that John was right: The typhoon appeared to be chasing them. Except that he knew typhoons just didn’t behave like that. Not unless …

“There is another possibility,” he yelled, increasing speed of the whirlwind to the maximum in an effort to outrun the malevolent black column. And he was shouting because
the typhoon was now closing in fast, so close that they could hear the sound of the five-hundred-mile-an-hour winds that were being generated by the typhoon. “There remains a distinct possibility that someone is flying that thing. Someone who doesn’t want us to get to China.”

“You mean another djinn?” shouted Finlay.

“Well, it’s not Charles Lindbergh,” Groanin bellowed crossly. “I say, it’s not Charles Lindbergh. Of course, he means another djinn.” He looked at Nimrod. “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” yelled Nimrod. “There’s not enough air in here to go any faster.” Sweat was pouring off his forehead as he concentrated every fiber of his djinn being into flying the whirlwind, zigzagging one way and then the other in the hope that he could bring about their escape.

John looked around and found Finlay’s heart was in his mouth. By now, the typhoon was almost close enough to touch. He felt it sucking at the edge of the whirlwind like a giant vacuum cleaner. They were inches away from being vacuumed up. And was he mistaken, or did he see the vaguely sinister shape of someone sitting inside the dark depths of the cloud?

“Do something, Nimrod!” he yelled. “It’ll overtake us in a minute.”

Nimrod didn’t answer. Just the thought-power needed to answer his nephew would have required that he direct a crucial amount of energy away from flying the whirlwind.

“Next time I go to China — if there is a next time,” shouted Groanin, staring back into the column, “I’m going to make sure I do like the song says and take a slow boat to China.”

“Groanin,” said Nimrod. “You’re a genius. Why didn’t I think of that? Of course! That’s how we can generate more hot air inside this whirlwind and go faster.
We can sing.”

“Me? Sing?” yelled an incredulous Groanin. “I can’t sing. I say, I can’t sing. Sing what exactly?”

“It doesn’t matter,” shouted Nimrod. “Sing anything. But sing as if your life depended on it. Which it rather does, I’m afraid.”

He himself started to sing the British national anthem as loud as he could and, uncertain of what to sing himself, Groanin started to sing that, too.

John would have sung the American national anthem but, of course, it was not his physical body and so he felt obliged to leave the choice of national anthem to Finlay, who was, of course, British. Generating as much hot air as possible seemed to demand some consistency in their singing and so, putting aside his political feelings about kings and queens, Finlay thought it best to join in with Nimrod and Mr. Groanin.

Soon all three of them were bellowing “God Save the Queen” at the top of their voices and with such enthusiasm that it left poor John feeling quite left out of things.

“Light my lamp, I can feel it working,” cried Nimrod. “Keep singing.”

Twenty minutes passed. Then half an hour. And maintaining a distance of just a few feet in front of the huge typhoon that threatened to annihilate them, they still continued to sing the British national anthem. All
six
verses. Again and again and again.

Hot air swelled the whirlwind, slowly adding to its power. Half an hour became an hour. Which turned into ninety minutes. The typhoon made a last deafening, terrifying attempt to suck them into its cold, black maw, before the whirlwind gradually began to inch away. Inches became feet. Feet turned into yards. Yards added up to furlongs. Until, certain that the malevolent typhoon was far behind them, Nimrod said they could stop singing at last.

For several minutes, no one said anything. They just caught their breath and rested their vocal cords and wiped the sweat from their brows. It was Finlay who spoke first. “If I ever hear that song again,” he said, “I think I’ll kill someone. Myself probably.”

“Me, too,” puffed Groanin.

“Talking of killing someone,” said John. “Back there just now, someone was trying to kill
us
. I’m pretty sure I saw a human shape inside that typhoon.”

“Someone who doesn’t want us to get to China, perhaps,” said Finlay.

“It would certainly appear that way,” observed Nimrod.

“But who?” asked John.

“I don’t know,” said Nimrod. “But they’ve certainly wasted their time.” He pointed down. “Look.”

Several hundred feet below them was what looked like the exposed bony spine of some elongated green dragon.

“Wow!” said John. “It’s the Great Wall of China.”

“Now that’s what I call a wall,” said Finlay.

“If you ask me, there are too many walls in this world,” said Groanin. “Keeping this lot of people in and that lot of people out. I don’t care how old it is. Best thing you can do with a wall like that is what they did with the one in Berlin. Knock it down.”

“You surprise me, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “I never guessed you had such an appetite for democracy.”

“I don’t know about an appetite for democracy,” observed Groanin. “But I do have an appetite. All that singing has made me so ravenously hungry I could eat a horse. I say, I could eat a horse.”

“I thought you didn’t like foreign food, Mr. Groanin,” said Finlay, helping himself to another bowl of steaming-hot boiled rice.

They were having dinner at the Shikua Urchi Restaurant in Snack Street, in Xian, the capital city of ancient China. The picturesque street was well-named, as there were almost a hundred eating establishments from one end to the other, all of them full of Chinese people stuffing themselves with a wide variety of exotic dishes. The restaurant was just around the corner from the Most Wonderful Hotel in Xian, which was the name of the hotel where they were staying.

“Ordinarily that’s very true,” said Groanin, tucking into a bowl of what looked like fried chicken legs. “But these are extenuating circumstances. First, I don’t happen to have brought my own supply of baby food. Second, the guidebook says this is the best restaurant in this part of China. And third, after what happened to us this afternoon, I could eat a horse. I say, I could eat a horse.”

“You’ve been saying that since we landed,” said Finlay.

“For once, the guidebook is right,” said Nimrod. “Xian is the capital of Chinese delicacies such as the chow chow you’re eating now, Groanin. Not to mention popular Szechuan cuisine like the hot pot Finlay ordered. And without question this is the best restaurant in Xian.”

“So there,” Groanin told Finlay, with an air of triumph.

“Xian is also where Faustina found herself when there was that disturbance in the world of spirit,” continued Nimrod. “And the home of the famous terra-cotta warriors. Which is why we’re here. As soon as we’ve finished dinner, we shall go and take a look at them. They’ve been on show in
the local exhibition hall since they were unearthed by accident in 1974 by some peasant farmers. Eighty thousand Chinese soldiers, chariots, and their horses.”

“What, no China dogs?” said Groanin. He chuckled. “You’d think they’d have included a couple of China dogs, wouldn’t you? My auntie Florence used to have a pair of ornamental China dogs on her mantelpiece. Everyone did where I come from.”

“Those dogs were not made in China, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “But in Staffordshire, England. For the dog-loving English market. The Chinese themselves look on dogs as something wholly unfavorable. Which is why you won’t see many pet dogs in China. Mostly they’re just kept for meat.”

“Meat?” Groanin stopped eating for a moment. “Did you say that dogs are kept for meat?”

“That’s right.”

“But Miss Philippa said that was just an old wives’ tale.”

“What on earth does she know about it?” demanded Nimrod. “I don’t think she’s ever been to China. Has she, John?”

“She doesn’t even like Chinese food,” said John.

Groanin looked unhappily at the plate of chicken legs he had been eating. Except that they weren’t chicken legs. If they had been, those chickens would have been several feet tall. With tails. And personalities. And collars. “You don’t mean — ?”

Nimrod nodded.

Groanin spat a large piece of meat out of his mouth, which flew across the restaurant and stuck to a glass tank full of nervous-looking goldfish. He swallowed biliously. “But you said this was chow chow.”

“Chow chow
is Chinese for ‘dog,’” said Nimrod. “Look here, Groanin, I’m really sorry but I thought you wouldn’t mind. In India, you ate all kinds of things you don’t normally eat.”

“Yes, but I were an Indian back then,” said Groanin. “With an Indian stomach. I’m back to being English now.”

“Besides, you said you were so hungry you could eat a horse,” said Nimrod. “You’ve already eaten horse. You ordered it as a starter. I therefore assumed you would have no ethical objection to eating dog.”

“That were a figure of speech,” said Groanin, putting his hand to his mouth and looking generally nauseous. “I say, that were a figure of speech. Besides, there’s a heck of a difference between eating a horse and eating a dog.”

“Nonsense,” said Nimrod. “Basically if it moves, it’s on the menu here at Shikua Urchi’s. That’s what ‘Shikua Urchi’ means. Four legs, two wings. Dog, horse, cow, sheep, and pigs. People come from hundreds of miles around to eat here. We’re very lucky to get a table at all. Snakes, rabbits, pigeons, foxes, cats. And rats, of course.”

“But rats are filthy animals,” objected Groanin.

“So’s a pig,” said Nimrod. “But I notice it doesn’t stop you cooking yourself bacon and eggs in the morning when we’re back in London. In China, a pound of rat meat costs
twice as much as pork or chicken. Which might indicate how prized a delicacy the meat is.”

“A pig’s different,” said Groanin, who was looking very pale.

“The rat here is excellent. Better than any pig.”

Suddenly, Groanin sprang up from the table and, holding his hand to his mouth, ran out of the restaurant.

John/Finlay had stopped eating, too. “Tell me you’re kidding,” said Finlay.

“Not at all,” said Nimrod. “That spicy bean hot pot you’re eating is called
ping shu guo
, and its principal ingredient is a fat juicy rat. They burn the hair off them with a blowtorch, wash them, chop ’em up, season them, and then fry ’em up. Delicious.”