Everything Under the Sky (49 page)

The fifth and final compartment, the smallest of them all, contained nothing but an enormous, stunning chariot made of equal parts bronze, silver, and gold. It had a huge round canopy, like a gigantic parasol, underneath which sat a clay charioteer holding tightly to the reins from six massive horses made entirely of silver, with blankets on their backs and long black plumes on their foreheads, ready to take the First Emperor's soul to any part of his private estate, known as Everything Under the Sky. The charioteer, who wasn't as impressive as the terrifying horses, was elegantly dressed and wore one of those lacquered cloth hats that slope back.

Shi Huang Ti had everything he needed to confront death. It was hard to believe he'd worried so much about his wealth in the great beyond when he'd spent his life in search of immortality. As we walked toward the main room, Lao Jiang told us that during the many years of his long reign, hundreds of alchemists had tried to find a magic pill or elixir that would tear him from the jaws of death. He even sent marine expeditions in search of an island called Penglai, where the immortals lived, to find the secret to eternal life. It was also said that those expeditions, in which the emperor sent hundreds of young men and women as gifts, were what populated Japan, since none ever returned.

Nothing more than a small opening now separated us from the funeral chamber where the First Emperor's real coffin was to be found. The children were nervous. We were all nervous. We'd done it! It was hard to believe after everything we'd been through. My bag was so full I couldn't have squeezed another thing into it, and I hoped I wouldn't come across any more of those treasures you just can't leave behind without crying bitter tears. The important thing was that we were in front of that entrance, only a few feet away from Shi Huang Ti, the First Emperor.

It was pitch black inside. Lao Jiang slowly reached in with the torch, and we could see that it was a big room, seemingly empty, with stone walls and an incredibly high ceiling.

“Where is it?” the antiquarian asked nervously.

We all walked in and looked disconcertedly around us. There was nothing here, not a single visible crack or joint anywhere in the solid gray stone floor and walls.

“Could I have the torch for a moment?” Master Red asked.

Lao Jiang turned furiously around. “What do you want it for?” he snapped.

“I thought I saw something…. I don't know. I'm not sure.”

The antiquarian held out his arm to pass him the torch, but Master Red gestured for Biao to take it.

“Get up on my shoulders,” he said to the boy.

We hadn't taken more than ten steps into the room, but there was only emptiness as far as we could see in that poor light. I couldn't imagine what Master Red must have spied.

With everyone's help, Master Red stood with the boy on his shoulders.

“Lift your arm as high as you can and illuminate the ceiling.”

When Biao did and the vault became visible, I couldn't believe my eyes: A great iron coffin some ten feet long, six feet wide, and one foot high hung motionless in the air without, at first glance, any chains or scaffolding holding it there.

“What's the sarcophagus doing there?” Lao Jiang bellowed, incredulous. “How can it stay in the air like that?”

We had no answer. How would we know what sort of ancient magic kept that iron coffin floating as if it were a zeppelin? Biao jumped off Master Red's shoulders and stood still, holding the torch.

The antiquarian roared and began pacing.

“We don't need to reach the sarcophagus, Lao Jiang,” I said, knowing full well he would just snap at me. “We got what we wanted. Let's get out of here.”

He stopped cold and looked at me with wild eyes.

“Go! Get out of here!” he yelled. “I'm staying! I've got things to do!”

What was he talking about? What was wrong with him? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Master Red, who was looking for something in his bag, lift his head in astonishment and stare at Lao Jiang.

“Didn't you hear me?” the antiquarian continued to shout. “Go, get up to the surface!”

I was tired of his bad manners and the unbearable attitude he'd adopted over the last few days. I wasn't about to let him shout at us like that, as if he'd gone crazy and wanted to kill us.

“Stop!” I screamed with every ounce of air in my lungs. “Be quiet! I've had enough of you!”

He stood, surprised, looking at me for a moment.

“Listen,” I said, glaring at him. “There's no need to behave like that. Why do you want to stay behind on your own? Haven't we been a team since we left Shanghai? If you have something to do in here, as you say, why don't you just do it, and then we'll all go? You wouldn't have been able to get here on your own, Lao Jiang. Calm down and tell us how we can help you.”

A strange smile was playing on his pursed lips.

“Three humble shoemakers make a wise Zhuge Liang,” he replied.

“I have no idea what you're trying to say,” I spit out in frustration.

“It's a Chinese proverb, madame,” Master Red murmured from the floor where he was still crouching with his hands frozen inside his bag. “It means the more people there are, the greater your chance of success.”

“ ‘Four eyes see better than two,’ isn't that what you say?” the antiquarian clarified, his face serious once again. “That's why I brought you with me. That and because you provided a good cover.”

I didn't understand him. I was upset and confused. It seemed absurd to have this conversation in this situation, in this place. I'd often been moved over the course of our journey when I thought about how those people I hadn't known at all a few months earlier (including my niece) had become so important to me. Everything we'd been through had brought us closer, and I'd come to place a great deal of trust in Fernanda, Biao, Lao Jiang, Master Red, even Paddy Tichborne. I would even have included old Ming T'ien, who was still very much in my thoughts. That's why the change Lao Jiang had undergone distressed me so.

“Do you remember what I told you in Shanghai about how important this place is for my country?” the antiquarian asked me darkly. “This,” he said, throwing his arms wide to encompass the entire room, coffin included, “is as important for the future as it was for the past. China is a country colonized by foreign imperialist governments that are bleeding us dry and subjugating us with their thievery and demands. Anywhere that imperialism doesn't reach, only because it doesn't want to go there, you'll find the feudal remains of a dying country dominated by warlords. Do you know that the Soviet Union is the only power ever to give back the concessions and privileges that were stolen from us by its former czarist regime, without asking for anything in return? No other power has done that. The Soviets have also promised to support our fight to regain our freedom. Last summer twelve of us met at a secret location in Shanghai to hold the second Chinese Communist Party Conference.”

Lao Jiang was in the Communist Party? Wasn't he Kuomintang?

“At that meeting we resolved to bring an end to foreign imperialist oppression, to expel you
yang-kwei,
your countries, your missionaries, your merchants and companies. But above all to create a united front against those who want to restore the old monarchy, against those who want China to go back to its feudal system. And do you know why we Communists have had to gather strength, accept help from the Soviet Union, and take up the flag of freedom? Because Dr. Sun Yat-sen has failed: In the twelve years since his revolution, he hasn't given the Chinese people back their dignity, he hasn't reunified this fragmented country. He hasn't gotten rid of the feudal warlords with their private armies paid for by the Dwarf Invaders, nor has he made your kind leave or done away with the abusive, humiliating economic agreements. Dr. Sun Yat-sen is weak, and out of fear he continues to allow the Chinese people to die of hunger and you, with your democracies and your colonial paternalism, to keep burying us ever deeper in ignorance and desperation.”

Without my realizing it, Lao Jiang's impassioned speech had transported me out of the First Emperor's mausoleum and back to Paddy Tichborne's rooms in the Shanghai Club. His words hadn't actually changed; his contempt for Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his Communist affiliation were all that was new in this unexpected situation.

“Keeping my ties to the party a secret over the last two years allowed me to advise Moscow of the Kuomintang's movements as well as foreign commercial and political activity in Shanghai. When the imperial eunuchs and later the Green Gang and the Japanese diplomats came to my store on Nanking Road, I guessed at the importance of that hundred-treasure chest I'd sold to Rémy, and I alerted the party. However, after your late husband and my old friend refused to return the chest, after his death at the hands of the Green Gang, we were as anxious for your arrival and what you might find in the house as the imperialists were. We used my old friendship with Rémy to unearth what was shaking the foundations of the imperial court in Peking. When you sent me the chest and I was finally able to examine it, I was shocked to discover that it contained the original version of the legend of the Prince of Gui and the clues needed to find the
jiance
that could lead us to this, Shi Huang Ti's mausoleum. I immediately advised the Central Committee, and while they decided what type of action we were going to take, they ordered me to tell Sun Yat-sen. You know what happened then. Dr. Sun considers me a close friend and a loyal partisan, and therefore I always have access to a great deal of information. No one in the Kuomintang knows I'm a member of the Communist Party, because, as I explained to you one day, the two currently work together, if only on the surface, but sooner or later we'll wind up in conflict. Dr. Sun, as you know, offered to finance our journey for the purpose I already told you: to fund the Kuomintang and prevent an imperial restoration. The Central Committee of my party, on the other hand, gave me a clear and categorical order: Under cover of Dr. Sun's mission, my real task is to destroy this mausoleum.”

“Destroy the mausoleum?” I exclaimed, horrified.

“Don't look so surprised,” he said to me, and then looked at the others. “You either, Master Red Jade. After its being lost for two thousand years, too many people now know that this place exists. Not only the Manchus from the last dynasty and the Japanese Mikado's people but the Green Gang and the Kuomintang. How long do you think it'll take any one of them to make use of what's here, especially that strange, floating coffin above our heads? Do you know what this would mean to the people of China? We Communists don't care about the riches in here. They don't interest us. However, the others, apart from profiting from all of these treasures, will use this discovery to take over a China that's tired of power struggles, hungry, and sick. Hundreds of millions of impoverished peasants will be manipulated into going back to their former situation as slaves, instead of fighting for freedom and equality. That despicable Puyi isn't the only one who wants to become emperor. What do you think Dr. Sun Yat-sen would do? And what would the foreign powers do if it fell into Sun Yat-sen's hands? How much blood would be spilled if the warlords decided to come here and take these treasures? How many of them would want to be emperor of a new, truly Chinese, not Manchu, dynasty? Whoever gains possession of this,” he said, pointing up, “will be blessed by the founder of this nation to take control of Everything Under the Sky in his name, and believe me, we will not allow that to happen. China isn't prepared to assimilate this place without dire consequences.”

“But do you really have to destroy the mausoleum?” I asked skeptically.

“Most certainly. Without a doubt. That's what I was ordered to do. I'm going to allow you to leave with everything you've taken. It's my way of thanking you for what you've done. I had to use you to get here and to deceive both the Kuomintang and the Green Gang.”

“And what about Paddy Tichborne?” I asked. “Is he a Communist like you? Did he know all this?”

“Not in the least, Elvira. Paddy is simply a good friend who was very useful for gathering information in Shanghai in order to get to you.”

“What will he say when he hears of this?”

The antiquarian roared with laughter. “As I've said, I hope one day he'll write a good adventure novel about it! That would go a long way to making this whole thing just a fantastic legend. I, of course, will deny ever having been here. If anyone wants to come and prove that there's any truth to whatever any of you might say after today, they won't be able to, because I'm going to destroy this place.”

He bent over to pick up his bag and slung it over his shoulder.

“Don't even think about trying to stop me, Master Red Jade, or I'll blow this place up with the lot of you inside. Help Elvira and the children get out of here quickly.”

“Are you going to die, Lao Jiang?” a frightened Biao asked, on the verge of tears.

“No, I'm not going to die,” the antiquarian coldly assured him, seemingly offended by the question, “but I don't want you here while I prepare the explosives. I don't have all the material I need to blow the entire place, so I'm going to have to set charges such that the structure will come down and destroy the whole complex. That line we used on the second level, Elvira, is one of the fuses I brought for this mission. I'm sure you can appreciate that I need every inch of it so I can get out of here as well. They're slow-burning, but even so, the complexity of the mausoleum is going to make it very hard for me to reach the surface in time. I expect that it will take an hour or an hour and a half to prepare the detonation, and I'll have approximately one more hour to get out of here. That's why I'm begging you to leave now. You have two and a half hours to reach the top, climb out of the shaft, and get away, so go! Now!”

“Two and a half hours!” I exclaimed frantically. “Don't do this to us, Lao Jiang! We won't make it! What's your hurry? Give us more time!”

He smiled sadly. “I can't, Elvira. You've been convinced that we escaped the Green Gang once and for all when we left Shang-hsien, but they have assassins and resources everywhere. Think about it: The day after we left the village, when our doubles stopped and turned back, the Gang knew we'd tricked them. They either abandoned the search, which is highly unlikely, or went back to Shang-hsien and interrogated everyone until they found out what happened and where we went. By then we may still have had a two-day lead, but they undoubtedly got the information they needed from the guide who led us out of the village and into the pine forest or the boatmen who helped us cross the rivers between Shang-hsien and T'ieh-lu. Even though we cleaned everything up before riding again each day, it's not hard to imagine they'd find some indication of our nightly fires or our refuse. In any event, even that wasn't necessary. There's a straight line from Shang-hsien to T'ieh-lu that's very easy to follow. Our horses up top will be the last clue they need to find the mouth of the shaft. If we still had a two-day advantage, or even if we add one more day for the time they spent interrogating people in Shang-hsien and following our trail, the Green Gang assassins are already here, inside the mausoleum.”