Outlaw Carson (5 page)

And now here was Kit Carson, Kautilya, as
big a mystery as any she’d read about, speaking of Chatren-Ma and
bandits. Of course, bandits.

Every archaeological site in the world was
seething with bandits these days, Kristine knew. Especially if the
site was fabled, as most were before they were “officially”
discovered by someone with an academic title. That didn’t do an
archaeologist in Tibet any good, because everything in Tibet was
too sacred to excavate. Hence Carson’s provisional inventory of
visible historical remains, a parameter he’d obviously always
intended to push to the limits and beyond. No wonder Harry had
turned tail, she mused.

“Was the monastery intact?” she couldn’t
resist asking, then felt foolish. How could a nonexistent monastery
be intact? But then maybe, just maybe, sometime in the night the
stars had aligned in a manner to sanction miracles.
Chatren-Ma!

“Will you give me a week to conduct my
business?” he asked, ignoring her question.

She ignored his, forcing her voice into
calmness. He seemed so sure. “Can you prove it?”

Thrust and parry, Kit thought, allowing a
half smile to form on his mouth. He hadn’t wanted to frighten her
and he obviously hadn’t. Why hadn’t the university sent him this
woman in the beginning? Taking Harry Fratz back to the Nepalese
border had cost him two days he could have used to stay ahead of
the Turk. Then again, if the school had known about his true
mission, they wouldn’t have sent anybody. He’d needed their nominal
inclusion to convince the Chinese of his more honorable
intentions.

Kristine watched him slip a long chain with
a key on it from around his neck. He strode over to the trunks, his
boots jingling in muted tones, his long legs powerful and sure of
their destination. Despite the necessity for skepticism, her
excitement flickered, then stirred into vigorous life.

He opened one trunk, then another, and
another, easing the lids back to expose not the treasures within,
which appeared to be nothing more than layers of ivory-colored
fabric, but the trunks themselves. The inside panels were black as
the night, and made up of wooden blocks, long, narrow rectangles
worn smooth at the edges. Into each block was carved, with
intricate delicacy, rows and rows of script. Kristine’s hand slowly
lifted to cover her mouth, and she took a step forward. Strips of
leather nested between the blocks, protecting them, and were
interspersed with tufts of the ivory fabric flecked with black.

“My God,” she whispered, moving closer. She
reached out with her hand but didn’t touch. Inches away, her
fingers curled into her palm. The cloth was more than mere fabric.
He’d packed the trunks with prayer flags, cushioning the ancient
printing blocks with layers of holy invocations to the gods.

“They’ll have to be studied,” she murmured,
“put in the labs, dated and analyzed. My God.” She eased closer yet
and peered inside one of the lids, forcing herself still not to
touch. She tilted her head far to one side, studying the printing
blocks. “It looks Mongolian, but it’s hard to tell backward, and
I’m no expert.”

“But I am, Kreestine. My partners know this
and will pay dearly for the opportunity to own what I have brought.
They will run their own tests.”

She whirled back around, the words “grave
robber” flashing across her mind. “You can’t sell them!”

“Of course, I must sell them. I cannot
protect them indefinitely. Already I have risked my life and the
lives of many others to bring Kublai’s
Kāh-gyur
out of
Asia.”

The
Kāh-gyur
of Kublai Khan, she
thought, hidden through the centuries in the monastery of
Chatren-Ma. Suddenly too many things made sense: the rumors coming
out of Asia, the way he’d shown up unannounced and unaccompanied,
the university’s slapdash coercion, Dr. Chambers’s final warning,
Harry’s reclusiveness. Everything made sense except her stupidity
in buying it all at face value. She’d always considered herself
heavy on the intelligent side of the brains or beauty equation,
until this morning.

“I cannot condone the theft of a priceless
historical relic, the heritage of the Tibetan people,” she said
staunchly. It took more courage than she’d thought she had to
confront him, this strange barbarian from the frozen wastelands of
“the roof of the world.” Historians didn’t take a Hippocratic oath
when they received their degrees, but there were some lines she
couldn’t cross. He stood on the other side of them. “I should call
the police.”

“I have been outrunning the authorities for
a month, Kreestine,” he said softly. “Now would be an inopportune
moment for them to catch up with me.”

His statement caused her pulse to race and
her face to flush. What had she gotten herself into? “You should
have thought of that before you stole the
Kāh-gyur
.”

“I did not steal anything. Your university
is not the only institution concerned about the survival of Tibetan
history and archaeological sites. The Tibetans themselves have a
much greater stake in salvaging their heritage. They contacted me,
and I promised to do what I could.”

“The Tibetan government?” she asked, only
slightly reassured.

“The exiled Tibetan government. Do you
understand?”

Yes, she understood. She knew the Chinese,
who had invaded Tibet in 1950 and forced the Dalai Lama, the
spiritual and political leader of Tibet, into exile in 1959, were
tearing up sacred ground as quickly as they found something they
considered of value—like uranium, or gold, or a religious rallying
point for an oppressed people.

The outlaw Carson, she mused. He’d been well
named. Where else would an outlawed government go for help except
to another outlaw? Who else but an outlaw would have dared such an
expedition? And who else but Kit Carson would have apparently
succeeded?

She didn’t buy his “things of power”
routine, at least not completely. She’d done enough investigative
research of her own, though, to know that when people wanted
something badly enough, they usually found it. Luggage that had
traveled halfway around the world, especially trunks as notably
unique as his, would leave a paper trail a mile long, and it was
her signature scrawled across Bob’s clipboard three days in a row.
Carson had certainly found her.

She had two choices, she figured. She could
sue the university for negligent, reckless endangerment of her
bodily person; or she could drop down on her knees and thank the
Lord and Harry Fratz for giving her such a golden opportunity. If
Carson was lying, she was smart enough to distance herself from the
hoax before it reached damaging proportions. That was a chance the
university and Harry obviously had been unwilling to take,
especially considering Carson’s means of acquiring the
Kāh-gyur
. If he spoke the truth, and if she could pull it
off, she’d have Dean Chambers eating out of her hand. For the
barest instant she imagined herself in a circle of glory, turning
down offers from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, holding out for Cambridge
or Oxford.

Calm down, Kristine, she told herself. Think
this thing through. But excitement and rampant curiosity were
clouding her judgment. She recognized the double-whammy from
lifelong experience, and from having given in to them both more
times than she cared to admit. She’d agreed to marry Dr. John
Garraty, her mentor at the University of Colorado, in a buzz of
excitement, and that decision had turned into an unmitigated
disaster that continued to haunt her life like a proverbial bad
penny.

But Chatren-Ma . . . Now there was a prize
worth bending the rules for. She had the world to gain and nothing
to lose but her common sense and a little sleep while Carson stayed
in her home.

Kit felt her wavering, and he felt the
surprising strength of her ambition pushing her in his favor. It
was all he needed to dare a slight trespass. Yet even as he reached
out to caress her brow, he wondered about this new depth to the
woman he’d mistaken for a concubine and a housekeeper. Courage was
admirable in both, but intelligence and ambition were dangerous in
the former. He’d have to watch her carefully, not only to save her
from the Turk if he managed to find them, but to save her from
herself if the need arose.

He touched her in silence, letting go of his
troubled thoughts for the moment necessary to insure the invitation
she was allowing and he had to insist upon.

Say yes, Kreestine. You will have no
regrets, and I am too tired to argue endlessly over what has
already been decided
.

Kristine stepped back, wondering what in the
world had compelled him to touch her again, and wondering why in
the world she’d enjoyed the brief contact. She covered her
embarrassment by saying the first thing that popped into her head.
“You must be tired.”

“Yes, Kreestine.” He laughed softly. “I am
tired.”

For better or worse, she knew what she had
to do. Ten minutes ago she’d been racking her brain, trying to
figure out a way to get rid of him. Now she wasn’t going to let him
out of her sight until she’d gotten what she wanted, a future in
which she called all the shots.

“Well, you can’t stay here,” she said. “In
the house, I mean. But there’s a room above the garage, and you’re
welcome to use it until you . . . until you dispose of what you’ve
brought.” She hesitated again. Hardball negotiations weren’t her
forte, but she was determined to make something out of her damnable
luck. “I want—”

He silenced her with the slight tracing of
his finger along her chin. “For your safety and my pleasure, I will
meet your condition. My only wish is to place the
Kāh-gyur
.
I will give you my knowledge of Chatren-ma.” He touched his palms
together and bowed his head in a gesture of compliance. “You may
seek your destiny as you will with the gift.”

Either the man was damned intuitive,
Kristine thought, or he’d read her mind, which was, of course,
ridiculous. She slanted a cautious glance in his direction.
Ridiculous, she assured herself. No one could read a mind she’d
obviously lost.

* * *

“Well, you just march right back out there
and tell him to leave!” Jenny exclaimed over the phone. “Goodness
sakes, Kristine, I can’t believe you invited the man to stay up
there in the woods with you!”

“It’s not the woods, Jenny,” Kristine said,
tucking the portable phone between her shoulder and her ear as she
dug through her sock drawer in search of a matched pair. “And I
already have a mother. What I need is a friend who can—”

“And I should call her right now and tell
her what her crazy daughter has done. Muriel won’t like this, young
lady. She won’t like this at all.”

“Well, I’m not about to tell her, and if you
don’t, she’ll never know.” Many times over the past year Kristine
had doubted her decision to take on as her assistant the oldest
graduate student in the history of the history department. None of
the other professors had to put up with being called “young lady”
by their assistants, or have their nutritional knowledge challenged
at every turn. But Jenny had proven her worth more than once,
especially when it came to the minutiae of research and office
politics. “Besides, Jenny, you were behind this project one hundred
percent.”

“I thought it would be a good career move
for you to work with the man. I didn’t expect you to take up with
him!”

“I haven’t taken up with him.” Pink, white,
blue, striped, hearts, argyles, cotton, nylon, wool. How could a
person have so many socks without two of them even remotely
resembling each other? Kristine wondered, digging deeper. “I need
you, Jenny, bustling around the office for a week, looking busy.
I’m giving you free rein. Organize whatever you want, throw out the
rest.” She picked up a purple sock and, miracle of miracles, found
another.

“You’re up to something, Kristine Richards,
and I want to know what it is. Every time I get near that trash can
you pitch a fit.”

“So take advantage of my temporary
insanity.”

“Tell me, Kristy,” the older woman
insisted.

Kristine sat down on the edge of the bed to
pull her socks on, then immediately jumped back up.

Searching in the pile of sheets and blankets
she found her long-lost hairbrush and stuffed it into the pocket of
her robe. “I’m just doing what you told me to do, Jenny. I’m making
a career move, working my way up the ladder.”

“Kristine.” Jenny spoke her name slowly,
with the voice of authority granted her by her years. “I know the
man has an international reputation, but it’s not all that good,
and there is absolutely no way for you to sleep your way to the top
in this business.”

“You’ve shocked me, Jenny, really shocked
me.” She tugged one sock on and reached for the other. “You know I
don’t sleep with anybody for any reason.” The instant the words
were out of her mouth, she knew she shouldn’t have opened the
discussion.

“And you’re not getting any younger,” Jenny
shot back. “It’s time for you to get back into circulation. Muriel
and I still don’t understand why you stopped seeing Grant
Thorp.”

“I wasn’t seeing him. We had three dates,
three long, boring dates, and I wish you and my mother wouldn’t
talk about me behind my back. Can we get back to business.”

“We could if I knew what business we were
talking about.”

“Suffice to say, Carson doesn’t want the
trunks moved, and he doesn’t want to leave them. Therefore, he
stays here with the trunks. Simple logic.” She refrained from using
the word protection, knowing it would only unnerve her assistant.
“All I’m asking you to do is field any questions that might come up
for the next week. Nobody seems to want anything to do with him, so
you shouldn’t have too much trouble.”