The Tombs (A Fargo Adventure) (28 page)

They bought food in a modern supermarket in Almaty, concentrating on foods that their driver, Nurin, probably would eat too—fruits, nuts, bread, hard cheese, bottled water and tea—all things that wouldn’t have to be refrigerated on a two-day trip.

The next morning, Nurin drove up to their hotel with a smile on his face and, with gestures and a constant monologue in Kazakh, got them into his car with their backpacks and their food. His car, a Toyota sedan of an odd gold color, was about ten years old. Sam listened to the engine for about ten seconds, then assured Remi that it had been maintained and would last a couple of days. While Nurin put the bags in the trunk, Sam popped the hood just in case, looked in, and reassured himself that the belts and hoses were all still all right.

Nurin drove out of the crowded city and headed west, and, to Sam and Remi’s relief, he kept the car at a sensible but efficient speed, kept its wheels on the pavement and in its own lane. He paid attention to the traffic coming the other way into Almaty, which was still the largest and busiest city in the country despite the fact that it was no longer the capital.

Nurin stopped every three hours in small towns, bought gas when he could, and walked around the central market for a few minutes. He liked to keep the tank full, give his passengers a chance to use the public restrooms, and buy small dishes of food. He was black-haired and handsome, with the thin, strong body of a man who had done physical work, but his expression and manner were prematurely serious, like a man about twice his age.

When people saw Sam and Remi with Nurin, they would speak to them in Russian, but that was of no use. For the next two days Sam and Remi lived with whatever characterization Nurin might be giving them in the Kazakh language.

At one stop, Sam showed Nurin his international driver’s license and his California license. Nurin was curious to look at them, but, no, he wanted to continue to do all the driving himself.

On the first night away from Almaty, Nurin stopped at a small Western-style inn, but he refused to go inside with Sam and Remi. Instead he slept in his car.

“Why do you suppose he wants to do that?” Remi asked.

“I think he’s afraid somebody will steal his tires or something,” Sam said.

They slept well in their room upstairs, and Nurin appeared rested and ready when they awoke the next morning and came outside. During the second day, Nurin took advantage of the flatness of the country to increase his speed. He drove hard until late afternoon, when the sun was low in the west and driving became difficult. And then they were passing larger rows of houses than they had in the little towns along the way, and soon there were streets with curbs and sidewalks. Finally there was a sign that said “Tapa3” and they knew they were in the city.

Nurin drove them up to the Zhambyl Hotel on Tole Bi Street. It was a four-story building that looked a bit like an American high school, but when they went inside they found it was very pretty and well decorated, with patterned marble floors and blue-and-gold Kazakh rugs. There was a clerk at the desk who spoke French and told them there was a pool, a restaurant, a bar, a beauty salon, and a laundry.

Sam rented a room for Nurin as well as one of their own. He asked the clerk to explain to Nurin, in Kazakh, that he was allowed to sign for his meals and any services he needed while the Fargos finished their business. He also asked if there was a secure parking place for Nurin’s car.

The transaction made Nurin happy. He hugged Sam and bowed deeply to Remi, then went outside to drive his car around to the gated lot in back of the building. The clerk announced that Sam and Remi’s equipment had arrived and was being moved to their room.

It was five, still early enough to be sure of three hours of light, so Sam and Remi asked the clerk if he could direct them to the green market, or
kolkhoz
. The clerk marked it on a map of the city and the Fargos thanked him and set off on foot so they could get a glimpse of the place before darkness came. Sam wore a hat and sunglasses and Remi wore sunglasses and tied a scarf over her head. When they reached the market, they wandered among tables and bins of vegetables and fruits, baked goods and wine, pretending to evaluate the merchandise while all the time studying the people and the layout of the place.

Remi said, “Sam, do you believe this is the site of the old fort?”

“I doubt it. The ground is too low. If you build a fort, you want to use everything that gives you an advantage—altitude, steep approaches, water. I believe the archaeologists in the thirties found something here, but not a fort.”

“That’s what I think,” Remi said. “We’d better call Albrecht and Selma.”

They kept walking at the same pace, gradually making their way around the market to where they’d started. They kept scanning from behind their sunglasses, and then Remi said, “Bad news at two o’clock.”

Sam looked in that direction and saw four men, wearing khaki pants, work shirts, boots, and baseball caps, sitting at an outdoor table, nursing tall drinks. They looked like oil riggers or heavy-equipment operators. “Who are they?”

“Some of Poliakoff’s security guys. The short one with the blond hair is one of the four people who took me to Nizhny in a barrel. He and another man helped the two women. The really tall one I saw the night we escaped from the place.”

“I suppose it was inevitable that they’d get here first,” said Sam. “Did they see us?”

“I doubt it. They didn’t show any sign, and none of them struck me as the type who would pretend not to see us. They’d be more likely to chase us.”

They took a roundabout route to their hotel, stopping now and then to see if they were followed. When they reached their room, they opened the package with Remi’s new cell phone, plugged it in to charge, waited, then called La Jolla.

A voice they hadn’t been expecting said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Albrecht. It’s us.”

“Are you at your hotel in Taraz?”

“Yes. We hired a driver who got us here, but he speaks no English.”

“What does he speak?”

“Kazakh, and a little Russian.”

“Sounds adequate. Tell me what’s happening.”

“We just came from the green market that historians think is the site of ancient Taraz. We spotted four of Poliakoff’s thugs at a café. We don’t think they saw us. We also don’t think the market looks right. It’s too low to be a fort. It’s also not on the river. Maybe there are springs or wells in town, but we haven’t seen them.”

They heard Albrecht typing on a computer keyboard. “Give me a moment to get a better perspective on this computer map. There. No, I think you’re right. The old Chinese sources say that five hundred men worked two years to build the fort. They were in the middle of the Sino-Xiongnu War. Xiongnu was the Chinese name for the Huns. Zhizhi, leader of the Huns, was expecting a Han army of up to three hundred thousand men to arrive at some point, so the fort would have had to be strong. It would be built in the heights, and it would need a water supply. We know it was high-walled because when the Chinese did come, the only way they could storm it was by piling dirt up beside it until it was even with the wall. The fight was furious, and even Zhizhi’s wives shot arrows from the battlements. The Chinese overwhelmed them and won. I don’t think the fort was at the modern marketplace. The ruins under the market are more likely to be either a habitation or a cemetery.”

“What will Mundzuk’s grave consist of?” asked Remi. “What do we look for?”

“I’m sending you pictures of the known burials of the earliest Huns in Mongolia. They were buried under mounds. There’s a burial chamber made of stone, and then over it are layers of stone, soil, and logs of Siberian larch.”

“That’s close to the sort of thing we found in France. It had been made of logs plastered with mortar.”

“Look for any natural feature that could have been a mound. Most likely, it was leveled intentionally or by time, the wind, and the river. But Mundzuk would never have been in the fort, which was destroyed three hundred years earlier with Zhizhi’s defeat. It was a ruin long before Mundzuk’s time. Remember, we’re looking for a king who died just during the migration to Europe. If the market is over a burial complex, Mundzuk’s grave would be one of the last.”

Remi said, “Is there any way to know how his father’s death affected Attila?”

“We know quite a few facts,” said Albrecht. “Mundzuk was buried in 418. Attila was born in 406, so he was twelve when his father died and his uncle Ruga became King. I’ve sometimes thought that even in that generation there might have been dual kings—that Mundzuk and Ruga might have shared the throne the way Bleda and Attila did later. At the time of Mundzuk’s death, the Huns were making a big leap historically. The great migration, their conquest of much of Asia and Europe, was already well under way. We know that they were in contact with the Romans near the Danube around the year 370, so it’s almost certain Mundzuk’s body was brought back to the eastern homeland for burial only. Attila would have stayed for it and then returned west. In those days, young princes from all over the Roman Empire and beyond were kept in Rome for a few years at a time to encourage their families to keep their treaties with Rome, and Romans were sent as hostages to neighboring kingdoms. Once Attila’s father was dead, Attila became a convenient choice as a hostage. He was sent to Rome.”

“That must have been quite an experience for a twelve-year-old,” Remi said.

“Yes, I’m sure it was. Either before or during the trip, he learned Latin, which the Huns and others considered a soldier’s language, something likely to be useful to members of a ruling family. Later, Latin would help him communicate with allies and subjects from hundreds of tribes and with emissaries of the Empire. Attila met lots of aristocratic Romans, saw how the Romans governed, and certainly came away with lots of information about the Roman armies.” Albrecht paused. “But I’m going on, aren’t I? What we need to do is find the tomb of Mundzuk. Do you have any ideas yet on how you’ll proceed?”

“Cautiously,” said Sam. “We’re in a town where we don’t speak the language and just a few speak ours. We know there are anti-American groups operating here. We’ve just been to the supposed site, which is a central market in a big city, so there’s barely space to stand on, let alone to perform an excavation. The problem is that by the time we get it done, the treasure will be gone, split among Poliakoff and his friends, and the gold melted down and converted to cash. This is like salvage archaeology. Either we do it now or we’ll never get another chance. And this is the final treasure, the one Attila’s message said we had to find to get to his tomb.”

“I know,” said Albrecht. “But treasure is never something worth getting killed for.”

“Agreed,” said Sam. “We’ve already pushed our luck to the limit. But we may have a way to push the limit.”

T
ARAZ
, K
AZAKHSTAN

T
HAT EVENING,
S
AM WENT TO
N
URIN’S ROOM AND INVITED
him to join him and Remi for dinner. He communicated this by a mixture of pantomime and gesture, finally walking to the elevator and beckoning Nurin to follow. When Sam had ushered him to the room, he and Remi presented him with a room service menu.

They asked him to use the telephone to order what each of them wanted for dinner. They had drawn pictures of farm animals and vegetables on a piece of paper. He got the idea, and performed the task. While they waited for their dinner, Remi picked up a magazine from the coffee table and showed him pictures of a fashionable Kazakh woman wearing flat shoes, a flowing dress, and a
hijab
that covered her hair. She pointed to what must be the address of a store in Taraz. She also showed him an ad for baby furnishings, clothing, and equipment and pointed to that address. Later in the evening, after they’d eaten, she took a notepad and showed him a set of pictures that Sam had drawn. Sam was an engineer, so the drawings were clear and neat, with numbers to show the dimensions.

Sam’s first pictures were of a machinist with a tapping-and-threading machine taking a series of tubes and tapping and threading them on both ends so they could be screwed together. He took out the metal tubes and showed them to Nurin. Next there was a diagram of a large wooden box with dimensions written on it and a man painting it black. Nurin studied the pictures and diagram. Then Remi pointed to both and handed him several thousand tenge. Nurin, who was already eager to do something to stave off the boredom of sitting in a hotel for a week waiting to drive them back, accepted his assignment with pleasure. They could only hope Nurin would buy what they wanted and find a machinist to do the modifications.

Two days later, in the morning, a fashionable woman and her husband in a Kazakh-made business suit walked along the streets of the city pushing a large old-fashioned baby carriage. As it was a bright summer day, the carriage had a silk shawl draped over the carriage’s awning and secured at the foot so the baby inside would be shaded and protected from the dust of the streets. The couple pushed the carriage through the green market, passing by every table or bin in a very systematic way. They went all the way to the end of one aisle, turned, and came back up the next, not skipping any part of the market.

The baby in the carriage was remarkably quiet. Just once, when the mother reached in under the silk shawl to adjust his blanket, did he cry. She reached in again and patted him, and after a minute or so he stopped crying and, a few fretful gurgles after that, went back to sleep.

The couple, when they spoke to each other, did so quietly in French or German. After they had explored the whole market, they moved on. They walked a few blocks surrounding the market and then walked back to the Zhambyl Hotel. A few minutes later, their driver, Nurin, came out to the enclosed lot, folded their carriage, and put it in the trunk of his car. At the same time, had anyone been interested, they could have seen the wife carrying a laptop computer and the husband a lesser-known piece of equipment called a magnetometer up to their room wrapped in the baby’s blanket.

Once they were in their room, Sam and Remi used the laptop computer to convert all of the magnetometer data to a magnetic map of the central market of Taraz. They sent it to Selma and Albrecht at their house in La Jolla. Then they went down to the hotel restaurant for lunch.

The Kazakhstan diet was very dependent upon meat. Sam and Remi managed to avoid horse meat and horse sausage, sheep’s brains, and
kuyrdak
, a dish made of the mixed innards of several animals. Instead they ordered kebabs, which had pieces of meat that they believed they recognized as fowl, and
tandyr nan
, a kind of bread, and they were very happy.

When they were back in their room, Remi’s new phone buzzed. “Hello?” she said.

“Hi, Remi, it’s Selma. Are you both there?”

“Hi, Selma. Yes. Sam’s with me.”

“I loved the baby crying. Where did you get that?”

“I found it on YouTube and recorded it on a disk. I just reached into the carriage and played it once and then turned it off.”

“I’ve got Albrecht on now. He’s getting impatient.”

“Okay,” said Remi. “Hi, Albrecht.”

“Hello, Remi. Hello, Sam. You two have succeeded admirably. You’ve mapped the entire central market, or what’s under it.” He laughed. “I didn’t tell you this before, but I was afraid Attila might have been referring to some burial ground outside the city. The early Huns in Asia used to pick a remote valley and bury people under mounds there. If that was the case, we might never find it. But, fortunately, this is different.”

“Do you think the big rectangle near the center is the tomb?”

“I see several notable subterranian features—a long wall, which was at some point reduced to a line of rocks a man could have stepped over, a few outlines of early buildings, and a solid rectangular stone box. I compared its magnetic signature with the one on the Po River in Italy and the one we found in the vineyard at Kiskunhalas in Hungary. I also checked the dimensions of the tombs along the Danube and compared them. We don’t have readings for the chamber in France or the one in Transylvania. But this one is the same shape and presents the same magnetic anomaly, the same disturbance to the earth’s magnetic field, as the ones we have. Like the others, it’s apparently a hollow room or it would have a much stronger signature.”

“Did you happen to measure the exact spot?”

“We did. It’s in the area that you surveyed. On your third pass, you went left to right. At four hundred seventeen meters on that aisle, you passed over the first wall of the crypt. It’s around seven feet below the present surface. At four hundred twenty-two meters, you reached the end of the chamber.”

Remi said, “Do you know if it was a buried chamber to begin with?”

“We can’t know from this data. But it’s below the features around it, as though it were already underground before they were built. And it’s the only structure in the area that fits our experience of a Hun burial of the fifth century.”

“Do you have any questions for us?” Remi asked.

“When you were walking the area, did you see any indication that the ground near this area had been disturbed? Any signs of digging?”

“We didn’t see any,” Sam said. “We don’t even know if Poliakoff’s men are here looking for Mundzuk’s tomb or just hunting for us.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?”

“We’re working on it,” Sam said. “We’ll call you if we accomplish anything. Good night.”

Sam and Remi went to Nurin’s room and examined the large wooden box he had made. It was about five feet on a side and had a hinged lower section. It was held together with dowels fitted into holes and could be taken apart and moved.

Sam explained, with gestures and the clock, that he wanted Nurin to drive Sam and Remi to the market and help them set up the box for one-thirty a.m. He plugged in their electronic equipment to recharge and then they went to sleep.

They awoke at one, dressed, packed up their fully charged equipment—computer, battery-operated drill, steel drill bits, lights, fiber-optic unit and tubes—into their backpacks and went to Nurin’s room. He was awake and ready, with the five-piece box already lying flat in the car trunk. He drove them to the green market and helped them carry the pieces to the deserted spot.

The awnings of the stalls were still up, but the tables and bins were now empty. Stores along the edges of the market were all locked up, with sliding gates across their fronts to prevent burglaries. There were lights on in some of the streets beyond the shops, but the contrast kept the marketplace in deeper darkness beneath its awnings and roofs.

Nurin helped Sam and Remi assemble the black box, and then Sam patted Nurin’s arm and pointed in the direction of his car and Nurin walked away.

As soon as Nurin was gone, Sam took the magnetometer out and Remi connected the laptop to it. They walked a few yards up the aisle and back to recheck the exact spot where the variance in the magnetic field began and ended. They repositioned their black box in a space directly above the anomaly. It looked exactly like one of the market’s stalls. Then Sam lifted the hinged section of the box to let Remi crawl in while he packed the magnetometer into his pack and removed other equipment and then joined her inside the box.

The space was cramped, but he had designed the box to give himself just enough space for the moves he would need to make. He attached a drill bit with a four-foot shaft that had been designed for drilling through thick logs and beams. Then he positioned the bit in the ground and began to drill. The market was mostly fine, sandy dirt that had been packed down by the weight of many shoes. It took him little time to get down to a depth of four feet. When his drill was almost to the ground, he loosened the chocks to eject the shaft, then took the next shaft, which Nurin had paid a machinist to attach a screw to, and attached it to the first shaft. Then he attached this extended shaft to the drill and kept drilling. About six feet down, he reached a hard surface.

Sam pulled back on the drill and carefully removed the extension and the original bit. Sam inserted the rigid fiber-optic borehole viewer into the hole and extended it downward. The image of what the viewer was seeing was visible on Remi’s laptop screen. The end of the viewer was a color video camera and a bright light, so the image was very clear and natural. After Remi had turned the viewer on and gotten the picture, she moved it up and down a little. “I think we’re in luck,” she said. “You’re all the way to the top of the rectangle and either you cracked the upper stone surface with the drill or just pushed between two stones. The next layer looks like wood. It has a grainy texture.”

She turned the screen toward him. He said, “It looks like wood to me too. There’s no bark on it, so it may be thick planks instead of tree trunks.”

“Then get back to work.”

Sam reinserted the bit and attached its threaded extension and began to drill. The wood was hard and had a dense grain, but he definitely could tell he was drilling through wood and not stone. He was cautious because if he broke the drill, he didn’t have another. At the end of about ten minutes, it abruptly sank a few inches. “We’re through the wood,” Sam said. “We’re there.”

He removed the drill and its extension and set them aside. He and Remi fed the fiber-optic rig down into the new shaft while Remi watched the image on the screen. When the tip light and camera reached the place where the drill had sunk suddenly, the space opened up and the computer image changed.

As they lowered and turned the rig, they could see the inside of the rectangular space clearly. “It’s the tomb,” said Remi. “I’m recording it.” With difficulty, Sam turned his body in the narrow space of the box to join her in front of the computer screen. They could see a body, now a skeleton, lying on a mat at the rear of the tomb. He was dressed in a rich red costume, with a cape, a pair of high boots, and a piece of headgear unlike anything they’d ever seen. This hat, or helmet, was at least two feet in length, shaped like a narrow cone, with a complicated design of gold that protruded an inch or two from the front above the forehead. He wore a belt with a long straight sword in a scabbard and a dagger that was about half as long. His coat was held in place by gold buttons, and then more gold buttons studded his outfit. The chamber was well supplied with weapons, including a round shield with a silvery plated surface, bows, and quivers full of arrows. They could see jade and gold jewelry, carved ivory boxes, saddles and bridles decorated with more gold.

They manipulated the fiber optics, the size and brightness of the computer image, and searched for the most important part of the treasure, the message from Attila. After twenty minutes or so of recording every item in the tomb, Remi whispered, “I haven’t seen anything that could be it, have you?”

“No. I’m going to try something else.” Sam pulled the rigid rig up, then went to work on it. He removed the metal tubes that housed the cable and then he removed the extension. What he had left was a long, black, insulated optical fiber. On the far end was the rounded tip with the light and the tiny camera. Slowly, carefully, he inserted the flexible cable into the drill hole. Many times he had to pull it back an inch or two to straighten it or twist it to get around a snag. At last, after many minutes of feeding it in, it cleared the drill shaft, then curled a bit so they could see the sides of the stone chamber. “Wait. I see something.”