Ancient Echoes (10 page)

“Lean left,” Big Kyle shouted. “Left, left, left!” The raft
buckled and swerved uncontrollably, then plunged through a clear chute of
water, zipping unscathed by the tentacle-like brush. Nervous laughter rippled
through the raft as everyone took deep breaths once more.

The creek widened and a beam of sunlight found its way
through the pines to brighten a stretch of lavender covered banks. In the
distance, craggy mountaintops touched a clear blue sky.

Melisse turned to look back. The other raft followed
peacefully behind them.

Only after they drifted awhile did she begin to relax. She
didn't trust these men, but so far, they hadn't lied. Ninety minutes, Big Kyle
had said. She checked her watch. Only twenty minutes had passed.

The sheltered creek forked, and the raft floated onto a much
wider body of water. She looked around, and then sat bolt upright. The banks
were far apart, and the water cold, deep, and fast. “We’re on the Salmon!” she
shouted, her voice tight, harsh.

“Just for a little while, lovely lady.”
Big Kyle gave her a broad smile and wink. “Then we turn off and paddle upstream
to your pillars. Don't you worry none, sweetie. I won't let anything happen to
you.”

Melisse ignored him.

They entered a gorge. Sheer rock rose steeply above the
river on both sides. Far overhead whitish gray lichen and eddy moss marked how
high the water rose in spring when snow run-off reached its peak. Even though
it was fall, the frigid water remained deep and treacherous. They could do
nothing but hold on and hope they weren’t tossed overboard.

The black granite walls of the gorge continued to narrow as
the river carved its lonely course. The sun no longer reached them. No one
spoke and Big Kyle's eyes took on a strange glint.

Melisse searched the banks for a safe landing point, but
found none. The air had something different about it.
Something
that chilled her to the bone.

A strong current caught hold of the raft and carried it
forward ever faster. The sound of thunder rumbled up ahead, but instead of
stopping, the oddly familiar sound continued. Melisse looked downstream and saw
nothing. Then she realized what she heard.

They were heading straight toward a waterfall.

“Beach this raft!” Melisse ordered.

Big Kyle glanced fiercely at her.
“Where?”

The raft sped up. As the students realized what was
happening, their screams mixed with Big Kyle’s laughter as the raft plowed over
the edge.

Half its length froze in mid-air before it tilted and
nose-dived several feet into a hollow curve of water. A sheet of freezing water
broke over them.

The raft didn’t flip, but shot straight ahead. The river
turned, but the raft headed toward the rocky canyon walls. The terrified
rafters tried to paddle away from the deadly rock. Even Big Kyle’s laughter
ceased as his arms and shoulders bunched and strained to maneuver the raft
sideways. They missed the granite by mere inches.

The river angled steeply downward. Its path cut one sharp
curve after the other through the empty wilderness, causing the raft to buck,
shimmy, and pick up more speed. Waves violently rocked them and showered them
with spray. Kyle shouted orders, but the students were too petrified to do
anything but hold on as the raft
careened
forward like
a thing possessed.

Vertical granite faces lined the river banks. No safe
landing existed.

Melisse peered over her shoulder. She no longer saw the
other raft.

Around a bend, the river formed an eddy shaped like a huge,
spinning bowl. Unable to avoid it, they pitched headlong into the abyss. The
raft shot straight across to the wall of water on the far side. Its bow rose
vertically up the side of the bowl, and then flipped upside down.

Melisse sank deep. Despite the life jacket, the ice cold
water seemed determined to hold her under. She somersaulted, helpless in the
strong, swirling current. Fury filled her for not acting on her instincts, for
doing nothing to save
herself
and the others from this
disaster. Her lungs burned, but she wouldn't give in to the urge to breathe.

Darkness overtook her, her lungs about to burst, when the
water churned her up and spat her into the air. Coughing and sputtering,
gasping gratefully for air, a frenzied froth surrounded her. She turned in a
circle, searching for the others. She saw Rachel, flaying wildly. Melisse
grabbed her and held her head up as Rachel coughed and spewed water from her
nose and mouth. Melisse gave Rachel's lifejacket a strong push in the direction
of a small rock-filled bank. Rachel swam toward it. Melisse saw Devlin and
Brian's heads bobbing as well as Big Kyle's. He held the tow rope for the raft.

Melisse’s limbs throbbed from the icy water. She swam
through her pain to the bank, crawled onto the gritty rocks, then struggled to
sit up and look out onto the river.

Skinny Buck Jewell must have seen what had transpired
because he amazingly avoided the eddy and steered toward the bank. He let
Rempart and the rest of the students off to help their companions, and then
headed for Big Kyle to assist him in righting the raft. Devlin and Brian left
the two experts and swam toward the bank.

The students and teacher huddled together, shaken, wet, and
freezing cold, all the while congratulating each other that they made it out
alive and were on dry land. Then they looked out at the water.

The two guides, alone in the rafts, paddled rapidly
downstream.

Mongolia

MICHAEL AND JIANJUN fled the
nightmare of murder and destruction at Bayan Ölgiy, and made a frenzied
cross-country drive to Ulaanbaatar in Batbaatar's jeep, stopping only for gas.
Once there, Jianjun went off to find a way for them to leave the country
without attracting unwanted attention.

Michael hadn’t slept since Bayan Ölgiy. When he shut his
eyes, he saw the corpses of the men who had worked for him, who had trusted
him. He’d failed those he should have protected.
Again.

He was a child the first time it happened. Only ten years
old. People around him, and later psychiatrists and psychologists, told him a
child couldn’t be expected to take care of his mother, couldn’t stop an adult
from doing as she pleased.
Couldn’t stop her from taking her
own life.
But he had been there, and no one else was.

His father never forgave him. And he never forgave himself.

His older brother ignored him more than ever.

Only one person ever looked at him with understanding,
forgiveness, and love. And then she, too, walked out of his life. He’d gotten
over it eventually. But now, memories of the past rushed back.

He might not have slept on the trip across Mongolia, but he
had thought a great deal.

He believed some secret arm of the government or shadow
government had taken Lady Hsieh's coffin, and suspected that may have been why,
after months of being told ‘no,’ he had suddenly been granted access to the dig
site.

A team of soldiers or mercenaries would have been needed to
remove the sand from the dig site and then steal the coffins. And clearly they
had been ordered to not only remove the site’s contents, but to eliminate
everyone who knew of its existence. If Michael and Jianjun hadn't left the
ger
,
they would be dead as well. Lady Hsieh, he was sure, had saved them. Somehow,
he must save her.

He hurried across Ulaanbaatar.

The city reflected its tenure under the Soviet Union's bleak
rule. Old city walls had been pulled down so only fragments remained. Large
open streets for trucks and soldiers ran where bazaars once stood. Colorful
homes, shops, and temples had been replaced with grim quadrilateral Communist
buildings. Now, with the Soviets gone, a gloomy dust hung over everything.

Gandan, short for the Gandanlegchinlen Monastery, was the
only place in Ulaanbaatar he genuinely liked. It had Tibetan style gold and
crimson pagodas with pavilion roofs, a cloistered Buddhist university, and the
Migjid Janraisig Süm temple, which held a one-hundred-foot, gold leaf-covered
Buddha. Under communist rule, many of the Buddhist monks had been slaughtered,
and religion prohibited, including ''ongoing reincarnations.” All were back
now.

 Just beyond the monastery grounds, he saw the Natural
History Museum. Four stories high and lining several blocks, it housed
Mongolia's enormous collection of dinosaur fossils and more dinosaur eggs than
any other place in the world.

Bitterly, he realized his find would have changed all that.
How could dinosaur eggs compare to a perfectly preserved human?

It was the only place in Mongolia with a climate-controlled
environment and instrumentation. If the government was involved, they should
have taken her there. In a half hour it would close for the night.

As he made his way through the building, he became surer
than ever that she had been brought here. She deserved better than to be shut
up like some bizarre feat of early science to be studied, bits of her carved
and diced and placed under a microscope. He wandered the halls and displays
along with the few other tourists, but spent more time checking the museum's
security than its dinosaur eggs. He found a stairwell and when no one watched,
ran down it to the basement where the laboratories were. He looked around until
he found an exit, knowing that at some point he might need to make a quick escape.

Nearby he found a large, unlocked closet, and snuck inside.
There, in total darkness, he waited for the buzzer to sound indicating the
museum had closed for the day. He continued to wait for thirty minutes after
that.

Paris

WHEN THE GUNMAN fired into the
crowd at the Cluny, complete pandemonium broke out.

Charlotte half-crawled, half-ran, her arm bleeding, to a
side street. From there she found the Boulevard Saint Germain, hailed a taxi,
opened the door, and jumped in.

The driver looked startled by her appearance. He began to
say something about it, but she slid her hand into her purse, staring hard at
him, letting him worry about what might be hidden in there as she gave him an
address. He paled. His expression stark, he nodded, turned his back to her, and
headed straight for the location she named.

 She sank back against the seat as her thoughts
swirled.

The Agency had done everything it could to comfort and take
care of her after Dennis died. Dazed and grief-stricken, she hadn’t questioned
anything they told her or paid attention to areas he investigated when he died.
Over the years, whenever questions niggled at her subconscious about his death,
she pushed them aside. It hurt too much to do otherwise.

Al-Dajani had gone back to look at what Dennis had been
investigating. Now, he and Bonnetieu were dead. And their killers traveled
internationally with ease, brutally shot bystanders, and organized cold-blooded
murders in two secure facilities.

She knew of only one person who might help her. Years ago,
Dennis introduced her to Laurence Esterbridge as an old friend and owner of an
art gallery. Before long, she realized their true association.

Dennis’s position was originally to work with Israeli
intelligence, but it soon became apparent to her that he was receiving orders
and assignments from Esterbridge. She had the impression Dennis told him
everything he was doing.

She went with Dennis to Paris a few times. He met with
Esterbridge alone while she toured museums and other attractions. On a couple
of occasions, they dined together in an expensive restaurant, and once at his
beautiful apartment on the top floor of a stately building on the rue
Clement Marot
.

She went to that apartment now and rang the bell. There was
no answer. She waited, and as someone walked out the main door to the building,
she slipped inside before the door shut and locked again.

She took the elevator to the top floor, and there, knocked
on Esterbridge’s door. When no one answered, she tried the doorknob. The door
was unlocked.

 She went on alert and pushed the door open without
stepping inside. The living room was directly in front of her and on the sofa
she saw Esterbridge. He wore a stylish brocade smoking jacket. His impeccable
hair was white now, with a carefully constructed wave over his brow held in
place by a good amount of hairspray. An apparently forgotten pair of reading
glasses perched low on his nose.

And a bullet hole marred his high forehead. Blood had soaked
through the back of the sofa.

She spun around, leaning against the wall in the hallway as
she tried to catch her breath.

She wanted to tell herself his murder had nothing to do with
her or Dennis…but she couldn’t.

She looked at the elevator,
then
opted for the stairs, her head spinning and feeling faint from shock and pain
from the gash the bullet had torn in her arm.

She went down to the parking area in the basement and
waited, hiding, until she saw a woman drive in alone. She stepped in front of
her and when the driver stopped, she pointed her gun and told the woman to get
out of the car.

Charlotte took her coat,
then
hit
the back of her head with the butt of the gun. The woman fell, unconscious.

Charlotte put on the coat and drove out of the garage. She
soon abandoned the car after wiping her fingerprints from the door handle and
steering wheel.

She went to a pharmacy and bought bandages, alcohol and
antibiotic ointment. In a department store, she stopped in a women’s room to
clean and bandage her wound, then bought and changed into a non-descript
outfit. She tossed the coat into an outdoor dumpster, and then took the Thalys
train from Paris to Amsterdam where she caught a flight to Washington D.C.
People would be watching the Paris airport; people looking for her. She did all
she could to be sure no one followed her; all she could to stay alive.