Ten days from now…

 

 

 

Seaport of Tianjin, China

0517 hrs.

 

 

 

The metallic stench in the forty-foot, transportation container churned Calla Cress’s stomach, making her insides queasy. Its claustrophobic sensation filled her empty lungs as she focused on a glass-encased box.

She examined the case with the lifelike Tarim mummy, a defunct, male body with his intricate clothing and faint eyelashes covering his sunken eye holes. Her flashlight dazzled into the four thousand-year-old face. With distinct, non-Asian features, there in the morbidity of the Chinese transportation container, he was perfectly preserved. Even after the passing of thousands of years, the red-haired mummy with Caucasian features rested in serenity. With recessed eyes, shut like a Buddha in meditation, he wore a black, felt, conical hat with a level brim. The mummy next to him glared back at her, his gape descending into the depths of her being.

“Give me a clue, my friend,” she whispered.

“Is it here?” Jack said, her faithful friend and government colleague.

“That’s what we need to figure out. I don’t know why my mother chose these mummies. We’ve got to examine them carefully. They are our only lead,” Calla said, her upper English, London accent echoing off the iron walls.

“What if there’s nothing here?” Jack said.

“Then, we go to where they were found in the Tarim Basin.”

Honghui Zhou, the Ürümqi Museum curator, observed Calla from a few meters away, with his back against the uneven façade. “Do you have what you need?” He checked his watch. “Your time’s up.”

Calla moved with caution and turned to Jack as he handled a high-speed, satellite tracker.

“Is the emergency communications pod running now?”

“Give me a second,” he said. “How can we fight a worm on global networks when our gadgets are the first targets?”

“We have to, Jack. If there’s nothing here with these mummies, we must go to the heart of the Tarim Basin and we can’t do that without satellite linkup.”

Jack shifted from his uncomfortable position between two stacks of freight, shipping boxes. “I can’t guarantee that. The geo-spatial positioning in this fly zone is messed up.”

“How many hours have we got on the current battery?” Calla said.

“Less than one.”

“Not good. We’ll need more than that to get to the exact spot in Xinjiang, where these mummies were found.”

Aching with fatigue, he shot her a long glare. “I’m trying, Cal. She’s not responding.”

Honghui’s eyes were on Calla’s pinched face. A glacier of anxiety settled over her. She ignored him and set a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We’re headed out to a deserted area, Northern Tibet on the eastern side of the Himalayas. The desert is extremely dry like the bones on this mummy.”

Jack smirked. “I wouldn’t expect anything different on a trip with you. I gave up comfort when I met you.”

Nash Shields, tall and strapping, stepped into the already crowded container and proceeded to the mummy case where Calla stood. “Not much to look at. I take it this one is not hiding clues.”

Calla shrunk from the fervent gray of his scrutinizing eyes. Her search was linked to these mummies. She cast him a half-smile. “They’re incredibly well-preserved, but I doubt anything could fit between his decomposed skin and desiccated hunting gear.”

Nash maneuvered to the next displayed corpse, dodging custom-designed cases of exhibition treasures. He slid his hand across the adjoining glass case. “The Beauty of Xiaohe.”

Calla glanced at the intricate, wooden pins, fixed on the female mummy Nash was referring to, and sidled over to the pristine case. “I don’t understand why my mother picked these mummies? They’re quite controversial and have mystified the curator world for years. The fact that some of them were blond with blue eyes says they could’ve been Westerners that had settled in what is now Xinjiang.”

Honghui raised an eyebrow. “Their origins are debatable.”

Calla peered at him for all of two seconds, attempting to avoid a dispute in the massive metal-tank. “The Tarim mummies were, at least in part, Caucasians. We’ll just leave it at that.”

For the first time in ten minutes, Jack tore his eyes off his electronic device and sailed to where Nash stood. “Let me see that.”

“Hey, not so close. The private tour is over. Time’s up!” Honghui said. “Listen, Calla, I’m doing your boss at the British Museum a favor by letting you in here. Have you found what you need? I have to box up these mummies for departure. The boat leaves in an hour.”

“Where are they going?” she said.

“If you must know, to California, for an exhibition in which I’ve invested many hours.”

Calla couldn't tell if she liked the man. “Of course. We’re done here.”

“My obligation is now paid. No more favors.”

“Favors?” Nash said.

“Calla authenticated some of our most valuable collections at the Ürümqi Museum with Veda Westall, her superior. I’m just returning a favor. It was my job, not theirs. Now if what you’re looking for is not here, you must leave.”

Jack set a hand on Nash’s shoulder and they gravitated toward the entrance. They lunged off the container onto the shipping park, and took in the expansive space of the busy dock that assembled an array of shipping vessels. Their ears caught the hiss of prepped steamers queuing for departure from the largest seaport in China. A few popular cruise vessels docked as crews and passengers made final departure preparations in the early hours of the October day.

“She okay in there?” Jack said.

Nash caught Calla’s eye. “Yeah, she is.”

Calla switched off the flashlight and handed it back to Honghui. “I take it you’ve got my map?”

Honghui smirked. “This way.”

They progressed to the door. Honghui pulled out his phone and paced to the edge of the container. He disappeared for several minutes before returning with a piece of paper in his grubby hands. “Our sources say that this is the exact spot. I’ve sent the digital file to Jack’s phone as you requested. Now I’ve never been there myself but . . . ” He eyed Nash and Jack with a smirk. “You have two solid guys here and I’ve asked our best archeologists and two military men to go with you.”

“We don’t need company,” Calla said.

Honghui stroked his chin and leaned forward as if to touch her shoulder. “You’re in China. We have our regulations.” His accented English was impeccable, British, mélanged with Eastern pronunciation, and to the point. “The area stays as it was found. Nothing should disappear. You get the drift.”

Calla didn’t care for the spiteful comments. For now, she would agree to his terms. “We’re not treasure seekers.”

“Are the Tarim mummies all you have to go on? Your mother must’ve left more information,” Honghui said.

She gave him an alert gaze. “And their place of origin.”

“Not much is it?”

Calla itched to escape Honghui’s perturbing glare and proceeded to the exit. She leapt off the container onto the concrete where her companions waited.

Honghui followed. “It’s a long journey back to Ürümqi and quite a strenuous hike through the desert.”

She shot Nash and Jack a knowing look. “We’ll manage.”

 

Several minutes later, the trio jumped into a Toyota Tacoma truck and zipped to the airport where they boarded a Gulfstream G150 jet that flew them to Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang in northern China. In accordance with Honghui’s arrangements, two frontier defense men, clad in infra-red camouflage uniforms and a couple of resident archeologists met them outside the Ürümqi Museum. The men guided them to a military truck.

Hours later, on the back of the armored vehicle, Calla awoke, her head thumping the side of the off-road vehicle. They bore down the southern route of the Silk Road, the historic, international trade-route between China and the Mediterranean, whose arid nature had formed a vast wasteland in the autonomous region in northwest China.

She tugged at her thermal parka and adjusted her winter hat as they crossed into the Taklamakan Desert. Combative winds made their way through the back of the vehicle with fierce resolve. Calla glanced back along the road they had taken, observing the vast desert. No other vehicles lumbered the deserted climb. The transparent canopy above them flapped in the trail wind, their only shelter against Arctic gusts. Soon, the truck revved up a steep dune, on the southern route to Tarim that ran from Kashgar to Dunhuang.

Crossing the ‘Sea of Death’, as the locals called it, the place barely produced enough water for vegetation amid its harsh wastelands. She’d taken this risk without much thought. This place is a death trap. What was my mother doing here?

This wasn’t how Calla had imagined the trip. Certainly not venturing deeper into nothingness. And for what? A mother who had abandoned her at birth without a second thought.

When the Toyota ground its tires up the dunes to Hotan, nearing the citadel at Mazar Tagh, doubts began to creep into Calla’s head. She leaned into Nash’s shoulder, who sat on her left and studied the Hotan cross-desert highway, west across the Hotan River. Off a ruined hill fort, the site dated from the time of the Tibetan Empire. It meandered deeper into the nucleus of the Taklamakan desert, the world’s second largest shifting-sand wilderness. The Toyota turned in to the interior of the desert basin where more mobile sand dunes dusted the plains, largely devoid of vegetation.

Nash whispered in her ear, unease lining his features. “Don’t like this. We’ve been on the road longer than planned.”

She moistened her dry lips. “We can’t stop now. My mother’s life depends on it.”

Nash’s head backed up against the truck’s edge, his eyes firmly on the two military men. “Your call, Cal. Stay close.”

Calla questioned the distrust in his eyes, in particular, as they fell on the two Tai Chi swords the men carried. Was this typical of the frontier-defense army Honghui had organized to chaperon them? Nash was pondering the same thing. Had she dismissed the weapons altogether in their haste? Though reserved in demeanor, Calla wondered about their escort, especially the taller one with his angular build and slanted brown eyes that blazed at her like two amber gems.

The second man, short and stocky, gave her the impression he was physically capable of slicing any attacker in two, from the way he transported his weapon. He too gawked at her in silence, caressing the brass-handle in his hands, as he chewed a disdainful brand of tobacco. The two archeologists had taken front passenger seats. One dozed with his head bouncing on the other’s shoulder as the truck jolted, maneuvering the rutted roads.

Calla’s face grimaced. Her eyes wandered over to Jack whose satellite tracker had failed to pick up a secure British government satellite the whole trip. Their expedition depended on reliable communications systems. Calla owned up to the truth. They had no network signal. At the foot of their climb, Calla had detected the mixture of stone and sand along the highway, hardly a place for life human or otherwise. They could be out of communication with anyone who knew them. Their fates rested with the silent men in the truck.

Rigidness lined her brow. “Nash?”

“Yes?”

“There’s no sign of civilization. I haven’t seen a town, truck, cattle, or a camel for the last two hours. Not even a riffraff shop or temple.”

His eyes lingered on the swords. “Thinking the same thing here.”

She edged into him, the frigid metal of the side of the truck seeping through her skin as they hunched in the rear of the truck. A swarm of zone-tailed hawks squawked overhead in search of prey, crossing the sterile expanse.

How long? Had they been too quick to accept Honghui’s terms? Nash’s face set off a warning glare as he peered through the torn canopy. “Damn it!”

Calla lifted her head and squinted at the approaching menace of nature’s force. Having never experienced one, the veiling dust that headed their way, dropped a weight in her gut. “A sandstorm!”

Nash’s eyes narrowed focusing on a cacophony thudding behind him. Close to a dozen, military men veered up the dune on horseback, the hooves of their beasts trudging the sand.

“Up!” the first military man bellowed at them. “We’ll take all those tablets, phones and any piece of wire on you that dares uses a byte or link to a satellite.”

“No, you won’t.” Calla said.

His dagger edged to her throat. “Let’s see how well you handle diplomatic relations in China.”