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Arthur Leong had urged us to proceed as quickly as possible. I knew what his worry was, we both did. Someone might get there before us. We hadn’t told him about the farmers who had kidnapped us in Dalian nor about the attempted robbery on the train. If we had told him about either of those he wouldn’t have allowed us to return to Australia. Somehow he would have got us straight back into China from Singapore.
But we weren’t going to be pushed. As soon as I got back home to Melbourne I did what I had told Benny I would do. The Dragon’s Tooth went into my bank, but not before I’d had a good look at it with a very strong magnifying glass. The scratches, or what I had thought to be scratches, were indeed etchings in an ancient Chinese script. I tried to read some of it using various sites on the internet to help me recognise the characters, but I couldn’t even make out one single word. It would take an expert. I wondered why the tooth was black and was tempted to clean it, to see whether it was soot or maybe a fungus of some sort. But common sense prevailed and I wrapped it carefully in the piece of silk I had purchased for that purpose, and laid it carefully in the metal box the bank had made available. I telephoned Benny.
“It’s locked away,” I said. “I miss it already.”
“I’m on the way to my bank now,” he replied. “I’ve taken a couple of pictures to remind me what mine looks like.”
I was on the point of telling him I didn’t think it was a wise thing to do, but told myself that he was doing what I had asked of him and I should leave well enough alone. He could have insisted on selling just the Orb of Direction to Arthur. One of the pair was not going to give entry to the tomb. You needed both.
Two weeks later we were back on Singapore Airlines on our way to China. The University was not happy at our sudden termination of contracts. I was told in no uncertain terms that I would be hard pressed to find another such position. I felt like telling them where they could stuff their observation, but discretion won. We had a layover in Singapore of six hours and would spend that time with Arthur, firming the arrangements we had discussed over the phone during the intervening two weeks. Benny had suggested to Arthur that we might stay in Singapore for a few days. I think he was hoping to chase up the receptionist from the auction house again. But Arthur wouldn’t have a bar of it. He wanted those horses and he wasn’t going to wait. And it was Arthur who was paying the bill.
We met him in the same hotel as before. Maybe he didn’t have an office, or a home.
“Welcome, Charlie,” he enthused. “Welcome, Benny. It is good to see you both. Come in.” He pointed towards a second man, seated to one side. “I would like you to meet Mr Chen.”
Mr Chen stood and moved towards us, his hand outstretched. He looked to be in his mid-forties, Chinese, of medium height, solid, with eyes that were almost closed as he smiled broadly, in much the same way as Benny’s did. But there the similarity ended. The man’s hair was cropped short all over, and that meant that I wouldn’t have to put up with two of them continually flicking hair back over their foreheads. His nose was flatter and wider than Benny’s, which Benny explained later was a throwback to Chen’s Mongolian ancestors. I didn’t know how Benny had figured that out and didn’t bother to ask.
We both shook the man’s hand. I looked questioningly at Arthur. “Bruce will fly with you to Nanjing,” he answered.
“Bruce?” Benny asked.
“Ah, yes. Bruce,” Arthur said. “Bruce Chen.”
“Oh, right,” Benny replied. I could sense that Benny didn’t take to the man. It was probably a racial thing.
There had only been that one smile from Bruce and it was all we were going to get. His face had gone almost expressionless after the formal introduction. This man was not interested in friendship. He was to be our business associate. He would be there to smooth the way, to make arrangements, and to see that we kept to the bargain. He answered only to Arthur, not to us.
“So Bruce will be with us the whole time,” I said.
“Yes,” Arthur replied. “He has made all the arrangements. He will accompany you to Nanjing. From there you will board the train and travel to Zhengzhou. Bruce has arranged for the vehicles and their drivers to meet you there.
“Vehicles?” I asked. “Why do we need more than one vehicle? Why not just one? And why do we need drivers? Benny’s got a licence to drive in China. How about you, Bruce? Do you have a Chinese licence?”
“Bruce has a licence to drive in Singapore but does not have a licence to drive in China,” Arthur interrupted before Bruce could say a word, and I wondered for an instant whether he was doing so in order to prevent Bruce from saying something that he shouldn’t. “I would prefer that each horse is carried in a separate vehicle. If one of them is stopped, the other still has a chance of getting through. And there is always the risk of an accident on China’s roads. So there will be three vehicles.”
“Why do we need three vehicles?” I asked. “You just mentioned two, one for each horse.” I was certain that Arthur would strip the tomb, but I didn’t think he would be this obvious about it.
“The third vehicle is for the two of you. That vehicle will be an ordinary sedan. The other two will be small vans. I think that it would be best if you are seen to be on your own. A mixed group of Chinese and only one Westerner might raise questions.”
It made sense, but so did the other explanation. If something happened to Benny and me it wouldn’t be linked to Bruce Chen. I was starting to wish we hadn’t agreed to Arthur’s proposal. We were a risk. We were the ones who knew that he now owned the items we had earlier taken from the tomb, and we also knew that it would be Arthur who would come to possess all that still remained in the tomb. If we wanted to, we could blackmail him or, even worse, become remorseful and advise the authorities that Arthur now had the looted items. Being in Singapore wouldn’t stop the Chinese Government from taking action for the return of everything which had been removed.
Bruce Chen would be the cut-out between Arthur and the men who would do the physical work of removing the items from the tomb and driving the vans. But Bruce was obviously a trusted employee of Arthur’s, someone he could rely on implicitly. We were an unknown quantity. And because of this I was glad that I had made a detailed record of what had transpired since the day Benny and I had first arrived in China, changing one detail only, that relating to the farmer who had, according to my story, grabbed my briefcase and leapt from the train. The record also set out the details of our agreement with Arthur Leong. This record was lying in the safety deposit box at the bank which held the Dragon’s Tooth. I had even made a will, making specific reference to the safety deposit box. I hadn’t told Benny. He would have freaked out.
“Okay,” I said to Arthur after a few moments of quiet consideration, and then nodded at Bruce. “That sounds fine. Now, are you all set for our first payment when we get to Nanjing, Arthur?”
Arthur looked at Bruce. “Would you excuse us for a few minutes, Bruce?” he said.
Once the door had closed behind this somewhat quiet man, Arthur turned back to Benny and me. “Bruce is not aware of our financial arrangements,” he said softly.
“Oh, sorry,” I replied.
“It is of little consequence. Yes, the monies are ready and waiting in a separate account. As soon as you arrive in Nanjing and have cleared immigration, Bruce will call me and I will have the first instalment of one million dollars sent to your accounts, half a million into each account.”
“Is there anything else we need to know?” Benny asked.
“No, gentlemen, except to say that I am excited. My businesses will suffer from my inattention until I know that the horses are safe in Shanghai. From there it should be a fairly simple matter to move them to Singapore.”
I started to grin.
“Do you find something amusing, Charlie?” Arthur asked, the pleasant expression vanishing for the briefest of moments, uncertain whether I was perhaps mocking him.
“No, Arthur,” I replied. “It’s just that if we’d met you earlier it would have saved us a whole lot of trouble and anxiety, and you a considerable sum of money. If we’d known about your contact in Shanghai we could have saved ourselves all the time and grief we experienced in smuggling the items out of China. And we could even have cut out the auction house and dealt direct.”
“Yes, quite,” he replied, smiling. “But that is life, is it not?” He paused, and then asked: “Was there grief?”
“No, Arthur. There was no grief.” There was only the sight of a body writhing on the train floor, but that was my secret, my nightmare.
We shook hands. He called Bruce back into the suite, and we left.
Bruce had a seat up in the first class section of the aircraft. We were half way towards the back in tourist class. Arthur could have afforded first class for us without any trouble at all, but he suggested that it might draw unwanted attention. He was probably correct, but first class would have been a lot more pleasant.
“What do you think?” Benny asked once we were airborne.
“About what?” I asked.
“About Bruce.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” I replied, inclining my head in the direction of the person to Benny’s right and to those in the row in front.
“Do you think Arthur’s on the level?” Benny asked as soon as we were off the aircraft and walking along the wide corridor leading to the arrivals hall. Our nearest fellow passenger was at least a few metres distant. It was obvious that Benny had done some serious thinking during the long flight.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“We could take his money and then turn him in, Charlie. The Chinese Government would go after him. They’d leave us alone. He’d be the one with all the loot. There’d be no value in them chasing us, particularly if we got some sort of immunity first.”
“I don’t think Arthur would be too happy if we did that. And I wouldn’t want to experience his anger. I think we’d be in for some serious grief.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he replied. “But do you think he might have some accident or something waiting for us?”
“I don’t think so, but there’s nothing we can do at the moment anyway,” I replied. “All we can do is to keep alert. If something’s going to happen, it won’t happen until we open the tomb. That’s when we have to be ready. Where’s Bruce?”
“Somewhere up ahead, I guess. First class always gets out first.”
It was almost three-quarters of an hour before we cleared immigration and customs. Bruce was waiting outside by the taxi rank. It looked like he’d been there for quite a while. It was near the end of summer in China and the weather was going to be much better than our earlier visit. A shiver ran down my spine at the memory of that second night in the tomb as I had sucked the freezing air down into my lungs through the section of garden hose.
“Have you called Arthur?” Benny asked him as Bruce reached out and opened the rear door of the taxi for us. Bruce replied in Chinese. Benny asked him again in English, saying that his Mandarin was almost non-existent, having been away from China for nearly twenty years. I couldn’t quite understand what he was on about for a second. Benny spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese perfectly. Then I realised. Benny was being cunning.
“Yes,” was Bruce’s short reply.
“We need to stop at an internet bar,” Benny told Bruce.
“There should be one near the train station,” Bruce replied, without asking what we needed it for. Nothing further was said during the journey from the airport. Bruce was not exactly the friendly garrulous type.
Nanjing railway station was a hive of activity. We left it up to Bruce to go and get the tickets whilst we looked around outside for an internet bar. Ten minutes later we had our answer. The cash was in our accounts, half a million each.
“God, Charlie!” Benny exclaimed. “It must be great to be able to dish out money like that.”
“Oh yeah, but it’s even greater to be receiving it.”
Benny’s grin split his face from ear to ear and his eyes crinkled tight.
Once again it was an overnight train journey. Bruce had managed to get Benny and me a compartment to ourselves by the simple expedient of once again buying all four tickets. He was in some other part of the train, probably with a whole compartment to himself as well.
We arrived in Zhengzhou just after nine the following morning. I wanted to book into a hotel for the rest of the day and that night, and start out on the following morning. Benny and I were both jet-lagged. But Bruce wouldn’t agree, insisting that we move on. He’d only come from Singapore. We’d travelled all the way from Australia, with only a few hours in Singapore to break the journey. Benny seemed to have slept soundly on the train, but I had tossed and turned all night. I had kept watching and waiting for the figure of the peasant farmer to return and start pulling one of our suitcases from beneath the seat.
“We go today,” Bruce had replied sharply when I made the suggestion. “We go now! We collect the trucks and we go!”
It was no use arguing and it didn’t make a whole lot of difference. With luck I should be able to catch up on some sleep in the car after we picked it up. We threw our luggage into a taxi and set off, Bruce giving the driver instructions. I noticed that Benny paid attention to everything that Bruce said, no matter who he spoke to. I looked at him and raised my eyebrows questioningly.
“Not a problem, Charlie,” he replied.
Yeah, I thought, not at the moment there isn’t.
“Where do we pick up the vehicles, Bruce?” I asked.
“Not far,” he replied.
“Where are we staying tonight?” Benny asked.
“Yuncheng,” was his one word answer.
“Yuncheng!” I exclaimed. “We can’t stay there!”
“Why not?” Bruce shot back.
We hadn’t told Arthur where Benny’s family lived. We’d only told him that the tomb was in the general area of Yuncheng. I thought we would be staying somewhere a hundred kilometres or so from Yuncheng and would drive up to the tomb during the late evening, arriving after it had got well and truly dark. And neither had we told him about the tomb robbers whom the police had caught, and those they might still be chasing. Maybe we had kept too much back from Arthur.
“It’s too close to the tomb,” I said. “We’ve been seen around Yuncheng, and Linfen. You’ll have to pick someplace else.”
“There is no other place. You were staying at the hotel in Linfen before, so it is not possible for you to stay there. You will stay in Yuncheng.”
We hadn’t told Arthur where I had stayed.
It was at that point that the taxi came to a halt in front of a large warehouse. Bruce instructed the driver to unload the luggage, then paid him and waited until he had turned the corner and was lost to sight. Then he went and thumped on the warehouse door. A minute or so later it opened and was pulled wide for us to enter. There were three vehicles: an ordinary sedan and two almost identical small trucks. Each truck had a load of wooden crates on board.
“What’s with all the crates?” I asked Bruce.
“If we have only one crate in each truck with the item that Mr Leong wants,” Bruce replied. “And nothing else, it might draw unwanted attention. So we have many crates.”
It was all a lie of course. The other crates were for the rest of the things in the tomb. By far the majority of the crates were quite large but very thin, just big enough to take the murals which I knew they were going to chisel from the walls. What I didn’t like was that it was all too obvious. There was no attempt to hide Arthur’s intention to take whatever was left in the tomb, and not just the two horses.
Over to one side, at the rear of the warehouse, was a large flatbed truck, a truck big enough to carry a stone sarcophagus.
“What’s the big truck for?” Benny asked.
“It is for something else,” Bruce replied. “It is not for us.”
I picked up my suitcase and walked over to the car. It seemed to be almost brand new; presumably a rental and not something Arthur had managed to borrow. The trucks looked to be in fairly good condition, although maybe a year or two older than the car, the tyres still with thousands of kilometres left on them. There were two young Chinese men standing to one side, one taller than the other. We weren’t introduced and I presumed that they were the drivers for the two trucks. Neither of them greeted us. Neither of them smiled or even gave a nod in our direction.
“You will follow in the car,” Bruce said, now with a little more authority creeping into his voice. “We will reach Yuncheng later this afternoon. You will go to the hotel. I have already made a booking for you. The drivers and I will be staying somewhere else. Do you understand?” We both nodded. “Do you both have your mobile phones?” We nodded again. “I will call you this evening when we are ready to depart for the tomb. How far is the tomb from Yuncheng?” Benny told him the approximate distance. “Fine, then we will leave Yuncheng at ten o’clock this evening. I will be waiting for you just at the end of the road leading out of the town in one of the trucks. I will come in the car with you to the tomb. You can show me where the tomb is and then we will return to Yuncheng. I will mark our route on my satellite navigation device and we will return the following night for the horses.”
“No,” I said firmly.
“What?”
“No,” I repeated. “We are going nowhere tonight except to bed. I haven’t slept for god only knows how long and I’m bloody tired. We are not going anywhere until we’ve had a good night’s sleep. Right, Benny?”
“Right, Charlie.”
“That is not what was agreed!” Bruce almost yelled.
“Nothing was bloody agreed but that we would show you where the tomb is and help you get the horses out! Nothing was said as to how long it would take, or when we would start!”
“I will speak with Mr Leong.”
“You can speak to whoever you bloody like, mate, but that’s the way it is. Now, can we get going?”
We reached Yuncheng at about four that afternoon. As soon as we were on the main street, the two vans turned off to the right. No sooner had we checked into the hotel and tossed our bags onto the beds in our room than Benny’s mobile started its ring tone.
“Wei!” he said out loud. I could never understand why the Chinese had to yell into their mobiles. It was almost as if they believed they were saving the battery by not making it work so hard, in the same way that they wouldn’t use their lights when driving at night, or their windscreen wipers when it was raining. He listened for a few seconds.
“You’ll have to speak English, Bruce,” he said into the phone. “I told you that my Mandarin is almost non-existent.” He waited a few more seconds and then turned to me.
“Bruce reckons that Arthur is insisting that we go out to the tomb tonight.”
“Tell him to go to hell, Bruce that is. I don’t really want to upset Arthur at this stage.”
Benny passed this on and I could hear yelling coming back over the phone. I held my hand out and motioned for Benny to give me the phone.
“Listen, Bruce,” I said. “We are not going out to the tomb until we’ve had a good night’s sleep. We will go tomorrow night, and not before. And that’s bloody final!”
“Mr Leong insists that we must go tonight! There are arrangements that have to be made!”
I didn’t think that Arthur would have been so impolite. Possibly it was just the way Bruce had translated it. And then I realised that I had no idea what these arrangements were supposed to be.
“What arrangements?” I asked.
“We have to know how long it will take to get out there at night. We have to know what the road is like. We have to prepare the trucks in case the track is rough.”
“I’ll tell you what, Bruce,” I replied. “You and Benny and I will take a drive out to the general area tomorrow after lunch. We’ll take you to within a kilometre or so of where the tomb is, and you can make your bloody arrangements when we get back.”
“No, we go tonight!”
“And that’s another thing, Bruce,” I said. “If Arthur’s not happy with our arrangements, get him to call me.”
“No. No call Mr Leong. We go tonight!”
“Bye, Bruce,” I replied quietly. “Don’t bother to call back. We’re turning our phones off.” And with that I ended the call, turned Benny’s phone off and turned my own off as well.
“Are you certain we’re doing the right thing, Charlie?” Benny asked.
“Right or wrong, I’m buggered. I’m going to go out, find a restaurant, have a good meal and come back and hit the sack.”
“I don’t think so, Charlie.”
“What do you mean? You’re not going out to the tomb with him tonight are you?”
“No, I’m not talking about the tomb. What I mean is that you are not going out to a restaurant.”
“Why not?” I asked. “I’m going to take your advice and check out what everyone else is eating. I’ll point to what I want.”
“You are not going to a restaurant, Charlie.”
“Why not?” I asked again.
“This is Yuncheng.”
“So?”
“The farmer you had the fight with on the train came from Yuncheng, and so did the men we had problems with in Dalian.”
“So?”
“So this is a small provincial town, Charlie. How many laowai did you see?”
“Bloody hell, Benny! Stop using that word!”
“Okay, Charlie. How many westerners did you see? How many Caucasians?”
“Probably none.”
“Right, Charlie. This place is not on the tourist route. You will be obvious. People will notice you. People will talk about you. You will be a topic of gossip. If those farmers hear about you, we will have problems. You will stay in the hotel.”
“What about tomorrow?” I asked.
“You will stay in the hotel room until we are ready to go out tomorrow afternoon. No argument, Charlie!”
“Okay, okay.”
“I will go out and get some food. You will stay here. Don’t make this more difficult than it is already!”
“Okay, okay.”
He brought back a number of plastic containers of Chinese food and we ate in silence. Benny turned the television on and watched for a while. There were no English programs. You could only pick those up in the major centres. I tried to watch, but after a while fell asleep and didn’t wake till morning.
Benny went out next morning and fetched some Chinese tea, as well as four boiled eggs and some steamed buns for breakfast, and then left me to my solitude a couple of hours later while he went for a walk around the town, promising to bring more food on his return.
“See if you can get something with big pieces of meat in it!” I yelled at his retreating back. “And not so many of those bloody noodles!”
He was back just on lunch-time, hurrying through the door, empty-handed, flushed.
“Charlie, Charlie!” he said in a rush. “I saw him!”
“Saw who?”
“The guy who was driving the van in Dalian!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course. He was on a motor-bike.”
“Did he see you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure, Benny?”
“Yes, he was looking straight ahead. If he had noticed me he would have turned his head.”
“Thank Christ for that!”
“If you had been with me, Charlie, he would have noticed you for certain.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now, except be damn careful when we leave. What’s for lunch?”
“Huh?”
“What’s for lunch?” I asked again.
“How can you think of food when one of those tomb robbers is outside on the streets somewhere?”
“Because I’ve been stuck in this bloody room for almost eighteen hours, Benny, and I’m bloody hungry. So, just sneak out and get something.”
“But what about the guy on the motorcycle?”
“What about him?” I replied. “If he was on a motorcycle he’ll be somewhere else by now.”
“No, I’m not worrying about whether he’s still out in the street. Do we tell Bruce about him?”
I thought about it for a second or two. If we told Bruce, he would be even more difficult to deal with. He would have been proved right. We should have gone out to the area the night before.
“No,” I replied. “We keep this to ourselves. We didn’t tell Arthur about the farmers and if we tell Bruce now, Arthur might want to renegotiate the whole deal. He might reckon it’s too dangerous, either that or he might cut a deal with the farmers and leave us out of it. I’m certain they’d accept a lot less than the two million we’ve still got coming to us.”
“But they don’t know where the tomb is,” Benny replied.
“No, but Bruce will after you show it to him.”
“Okay, we’ll keep quiet about them. But keep your head ducked well down and your eyes alert for those farmers when we go out to the car.”
I wasn’t certain how I could do both.
“Yeah, right, Benny. Now go and get me something to eat.”
He wasn’t happy going out again, but he went. Whilst he was gone I turned my mobile phone back on and noticed that there had been about twenty missed calls: all from Bruce. There was nothing from Arthur. I turned the phone off again after sending Bruce a text message confirming that we would pick him up at the edge of town at about four o’clock that afternoon.
We set off from the hotel a few minutes before four. Benny had driven around to the rear of the hotel to collect me and I had scuttled down the rear fire escape steps like some felon hiding from the law.
Bruce was standing by one of the trucks, looking totally frustrated as we pulled alongside.
“Afternoon, Bruce!” I said cheerfully, pushing one of the rear doors open for him and beckoning him inside.
“Go!” he said, and settled back into the seat. A minute later he pulled a GPS from his pocket and started pushing buttons.
“Why do you need that?” I asked.
“It’s a navigation system,” he replied.
“I know what it is. What I want to know is why you need it.”
“If we had gone last night as Mr Leong insisted, it would not be necessary. That is all you need to know.”
There was no conversation after that. I was getting annoyed at Bruce’s attitude, and was considering calling Arthur and suggesting that he have a few words with him. Bruce was supposed to be along to assist, not to take control. We continued on for just over an hour in silence, and then Benny finally spoke.
“We passed the turn-off to the track which leads up to the tomb about three minutes ago,” he said quietly a short time after we had once again negotiated the bamboo hump-backed bridge.
“Why didn’t you tell me!” Bruce demanded.
“I’m telling you now,” Benny replied. “If you had asked me to tell you when we got there, I would have told you then, but you didn’t ask.”
“Turn around! Go back!”
“No.”
“Yes! Go back!”
“No!”
“Well, stop then!”
Benny hit the brakes and Bruce shot forward off the seat. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He opened the door and stepped out and then walked across to the high side of the road and looked around, punching more information into his GPS.
I wound down the window.
“Satisfied now?” I called to him.
There was a grunt and he climbed back into the car. Nothing further was spoken until we dropped him back at the van which was still parked near the end of town, the driver waiting patiently.
“Leave the car at the hotel and start walking in this direction at half past eleven tonight,” Bruce said gruffly. “We will pick you up on the road and then go to the tomb. Do not be late.”
“I’d rather we took the car with us,” Benny said as we climbed the stairs to our room. “I don’t trust that guy. There’s something not quite right.”
I knew what Benny meant about Bruce. Bruce was on edge, and it wasn’t just because we were going to break into a tomb. He wasn’t scared, he was on tenterhooks. Something was going to happen. He knew what it was and what it meant, and he was waiting for it to happen.
“Do you think we should ignore him and take the car anyway?” I suggested to Benny.
“No. He’d probably only insist that we leave it on the side of the road somewhere. And he’d be right. The sight of a convoy of three vehicles heading into those hills would be enough to put anyone on notice. It’s bad enough with just the two vans.”
At the appointed hour, eleven-thirty exactly, we were walking along the dimly lit street which ran past the hotel and continued on out of town. I had the hood of my parka pulled up over my head and my shoulders slumped forward, trying hard to look like the average Chinese. Five minutes later one of the vans pulled up beside us and the door was flung open. We climbed up beside the driver.
“Where’s Bruce?” I asked the driver. He looked at me questioningly.
“Chen?” Benny asked the man. “Chen zai nar?”
The driver rattled off something in Chinese. Benny turned to me.
“He’s up ahead in the other van with the driver and another guy.”
“Another guy?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Ask him who it is?”
“Probably not wise. I don’t want him mentioning to Bruce that I speak Mandarin. We’ll find out who it is soon enough.”
“Do you think this guy speaks English?” I asked, tilting my head towards the driver.
“Not a hope. He’s a driver. He probably never got past sixth grade. Probably never even went to school if it comes to that.”
We both sat quietly for the next fifteen minutes.
“Hey, Benny,” I said, breaking our self-imposed silence.
“Huh, what?” He had been miles away, probably thinking of his family, of how near they were and yet he wouldn’t get to see them.
“Weren’t we meant to change drivers back there?” I asked.
“Sorry?”
“I thought that the plan was for you to drive one van and Bruce the other one once we got outside Yuncheng, and that these guys were to be blindfolded until we actually got on site, and then blindfolded again until we got back onto the main road? Arthur said we’d only be using the drivers to help load the stuff and do the driving between Yuncheng and Shanghai.”
“Yes, you’re right. I’d forgotten. That was my understanding too.”
“Ask this guy what Bruce has told him to do.”
There were a few short sentences in Chinese and Benny turned back to me.
“He said that Bruce just told him to follow the other van.”
“It’s getting weird, Benny. Keep your ears open when we get there. And watch this driver, and the other one. The pair of buggers might have something organised with the other guy who’s up ahead with Bruce.”
“Right.”
We were only a kilometre from the turn-off, according to Benny, when the van ahead came to a halt. Bruce walked back to us and tapped on the window. I wound it down.
“You will lead the way from here,” he said. He tilted his head towards the driver. “Just point which way to go and hold your hand up when you want him to stop.” He rattled off a few sentences to the driver and started to walk away.
“Hey!” I called. “What happened about the blindfolds? These guys weren’t meant to know where the tomb was!”
“Mr Leong decided that it was not necessary,” he said over his shoulder, and kept on walking.
“You didn’t ask him about the other guy,” Benny said.
“We’re not supposed to know about the other guy,” I replied. “If I’d asked him, he would’ve known you’d had a conversation with the driver. Anyway, what did he say to our driver?”
“He just told him to follow my directions.”
“Nothing else?”
“No, nothing.”
“Okay, well, then, let’s go.”
A short while later we had the driver park the van where we had left the car when we had been to the tomb all those months ago, and waited until the other van had drawn up beside us. Benny and I climbed out into the moonlight and waited for Bruce to get out of the other van.
“Who’s the other person?” I asked Bruce as soon as his feet hit the ground.
“He is another employee of Mr Leong. Mr Leong thought that we might need someone with expert knowledge of preservation of Chinese antiques. He sent him to us last night.”
The man was maybe forty or fifty years old. It’s hard to tell with the Chinese. He was dressed in one of those Mao suits, dark blue, but with more of a workman’s cut than that of a scholar or businessman and big enough to cover his fat stomach. He wasn’t a farmer. They were all lean from working seven days a week in the fields. His hair was cut pudding-basin style, and his shoes hadn’t been cleaned in months, if ever. Maybe these were just his working clothes. He did have a certain air of knowledge about him, but also a confidence which I found just a little disconcerting.
“What’s your name?” I asked the man fairly brusquely.
“He doesn’t speak English,” Bruce said. “His name is Shan.” He then rattled off a few words in high-speed Chinese and the man gave a small smile.
“Now, where is the tomb entrance?” Bruce demanded.
“The actual entrance is somewhere under all that dirt over there,” I said, pointing to an area about fifteen metres across to our left. “But the entrance that Benny broke open is just in front of you, about three or four metres or so from your feet. It’s that slight hump.”
“Open it!”
“What?” I shot back at him. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“Open it, please.”
Benny moved forward whilst I kept the others back. “You’ll have to be careful where you step,” I said. “If you move forward another metre or so you’ll be on the roof of the tomb, and it’s not too stable. So it’s best if only one person at a time goes over to the entrance until we see what it’s like down below.”
Bruce turned to the drivers and issued instructions. They walked back to the first van and returned with a narrow aluminium extension ladder and a number of planks made of a similar material. The planks were laid from where we stood and out along to the opening that Benny had now cleared. The ladder was extended and fed down through the opening.
Shan hurried forward but Bruce grabbed him by his jacket and stopped him from going any further. Shan knocked Bruce’s hand away and seemed to swear at him, but stayed where he was.
Lights were fetched and Bruce was the first into the tomb. Shan stood on one of the planks, about a metre back from the opening. I heard Bruce shout out to Shan from below.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Benny out of the side of my mouth.
“He’s telling Shan that it’s all there, just like Bruce promised it would be.”
“Just like Bruce promised! Don’t you mean Arthur?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t look good, Benny.”
Just then Bruce’s head appeared out of the opening, the moonlight shining dimly on his smiling face as he turned towards us. “It is as you said!” he said, the excitement clear. “We must work fast. We don’t want to be here too long.” Then he rattled off a spurt of Chinese and the two drivers moved forward and down into the tomb, followed quickly by Shan. I could hear Bruce and Shan discussing the things we had left behind. Then Shan climbed back up to the surface carrying the sword-fittings that I had left in the sarcophagus. He hurried to the rear of the first van and hauled out a large bundle of bubble-wrap and rolled the fittings up. Then one of the drivers was by his side with one of the glazed pottery houses. That too was quickly wrapped.
I raced to the opening, leaned down, and called out to Bruce.
“Hey!” I yelled. “You’re only supposed to take the horses. Tell these monkeys to put the sword fittings and the house back!”
“Yes, yes,” he replied. “They are too excited. We will move the horse and the other horse in pieces, and then I make them put things back.”
He was holding the bronze helmet which had been in the sarcophagus.
“What are you doing with the helmet?” I asked.
“One of the drivers picked it up. I am telling him to put it back.”
He handed it to one of the drivers, said something to him, and received a puzzled look as the driver took the helmet and moved back into the burial chamber.
An hour later both horses were crated and in the vans. The one that Benny and I had smashed to pieces went into the van that we had ridden in, and the smaller intact horse went into the other. Bruce called to the two drivers and motioned for them to go back down into the tomb, presumably so that they replace the miniature pottery house and the sword fittings which Bruce would pass back down to them.
He waited until they had both gone down the ladder and then turned to us.
“Now, you go down, both of you.”
“What?” I asked.
“Both of you go down.”
“Don’t be stupid, Bruce,” I replied. “Just get back down there yourself and put those things back where you found them.”
“Down!” he snapped, and I found myself looking at a large semi-automatic pistol which he held in his outstretched right hand. I turned to my left, ready to run and take my chances in the hills, only to find Shan standing not three metres away with an even larger revolver pointed at Benny. There was silence, a few sounds in the far distance, vehicles moving along a road a few kilometres away, and nothing else.
“Down!” he hissed. “Or I kill you now.”
I didn’t think he would risk discharging the pistol. The noise would have reverberated around the quiet countryside, waking up half the citizenry. He couldn’t risk it. But then, neither could we. I went first, and then Benny. The two drivers didn’t know what was going on, but they realised we were all in trouble as soon as they saw the weapons. Shan followed Benny down, keeping well away to the side. Bruce stayed up at the top, his head and shoulders leaning in through the opening and the handgun pointing in our direction. There was no chance that we could extinguish the two lamps lighting up the tomb, overpower Shan, take his revolver, and then make a mad dash back up the ladder hoping that Bruce would move away into the dark of the night. Both lamps were battery operated and would stay switched on even if we kicked them over.
Shan motioned the two of us and one of the drivers to go into the low tunnel-like room which led to the original entrance into the tomb. We watched from there as he moved back and went to bind the remaining driver’s hands with one of those plastic ties that electricians use to strap bundles of wires together.
The driver backed away, his eyes staring at the revolver in Shan’s hand. Shan yelled at him, his voice reverberating around the tomb. The driver shook his head and kept moving. His back hit the wall of the tomb. Shan’s right arm, the arm holding the revolver, dropped to his side and then suddenly lashed out, smashing the revolver against the side of the driver’s head. I could see the driver’s eyes roll upwards as he slid down the wall before collapsing to the ground. And all this time Bruce kept his eyes on us and his pistol pointed in our direction.
Shan laid his revolver on the ground and quickly bound the driver’s wrists together and then his feet. There’d been no chance to rush Shan. Bruce would have been able to have fired at least two shots before we could have reached him.
Then Shan beckoned the other driver out, and then Benny, and then me, none of us willing to resist. He pulled the ties tight, almost cutting off the circulation. The first driver moaned and then stirred, blood dripping down his head from the cut across his forehead where the front sight of the revolver had ripped into the skin.
Then Bruce and Shan set about plundering the tomb.