The Spirit Banner

Her eyes widened as she realized what they were.

9

They came over the wall like ghosts.

Unheard.

Unseen.

They didn’t hesitate once they were on the ground on the other side but rather set off immediately for their objective, unconcerned with any of the defensive measures that had been put into place to prevent just the kind of thing they were attempting.

The mastiffs caught their scent within seconds of their appearance on this side of the wall. Trained to silently advance and render intruders immobile, the massive dogs moved through the darkness, intent on teaching their prey a lesson about trespassing where they were not wanted.

The lead man caught sight of the dogs as they came around the corner of the house. They were large, a good hundred and eighty pounds if an ounce, and they were coming on fast, but he kept his concentration on his objective, the south wing of the main house, and trusted his companions to handle their part of the job.

The dogs were quick, but the two men stationed in the trees outside the estate were quicker. Seconds after the dogs came into view, the sniper team went into operation, adjusting for distance, windage and the animals’ oncoming speed, and then firing.

Two shots.

Two hits.

The tranquilizer darts took another few seconds to work, so the dogs had closed to within fifteen feet of the lead man before they faltered and then crashed to the ground, unconscious.

Ignoring them, the team raced on.

The intruders made it halfway across the lawn before the dogs’ handlers came around the side of the house on their usual patrol route. The handlers had only just begun to process the fact that their charges were nowhere to be seen when the team in the trees fired again.

Unconscious, the handlers dropped into the grass before they even knew what hit them.

The motion sensors and floodlights came next. A swath of earth twenty feet in width had been seeded with pressure plates attached to a series of high-intensity lights that were intended to blind and disorient intruders who made it past the dogs. The specific section of the lawn containing the sensors looked no different than any other and an ordinary intruder would have been hard-pressed to get beyond it.

But as they had already demonstrated, this was no ordinary group of intruders.

The lead man never slowed. He charged into the designated area, his eyes on the wall that was getting closer with every step, confident that the sensors had been disarmed.

No sirens split the night.

No lights forced back the darkness.

The lead man reached the outside wall of the manor house. Unslinging the grapple gun from where he carried it across his back, he took aim and fired. The small steel hook shot upward, arced over the edge of the roof and embedded itself in the tiles high above. A sharp tug on the climbing rope attached to the hook confirmed its placement.

Hand over hand, the lead man and two others climbed to the roof, while the final two men in the team took up positions at the bottom of the rope, guarding the escape route for the others.

Once on the rooftop they followed the route that they had all committed to memory, moving from their initial entry point at the end of the south wing to a section of the roof above the main manor house. Their leader used the four chimneys to orient the team and then advanced to a spot midway along the roof’s western edge.

At his signal, his two companions began pulling up the roofing tiles and stacking them to one side. When they had created a space large enough for a man to fit through, one of them stepped to the side. The lead man, who by now had assembled a portable cutting rig from parts removed from his pack, passed the rig to his waiting companion.

The item they had come for was less than fifteen feet away, separated from them by just a thin section of plaster and wood.

The leader glanced at his watch.

They were right on time.

He gave the signal for his teammate to start cutting.

A NNJA FOUND M ASON and his employer in Davenport’s study on the first floor. She wasted no time in getting to the point.

“Something about the journal has been bothering me since this morning and I’ve only just now figured out what it is. If Curran died in that cave, who found the journal and how did you come to be in possession of it?” she asked.

Mason glanced at Davenport and the other man nodded, giving permission for him to answer the question.

“I handle a variety of jobs for Mr. Davenport. One of those happens to be scouting out new business opportunities. I was in Mongolia recently with a geological team, looking for mineral deposits. While investigating a series of caves a few days outside of Karakorum, we stumbled upon the mummified remains of two men. The journal was on a shelf near one of the bodies.”

“And so you took it?”

Mason shrugged. “I thought it might be important and taking it with me seemed the best way of preserving it.”

Annja frowned. “But now that you’ve had time to examine its contents, surely you understand that the site, and anything it contains, could be of historic importance to the Mongolian people?”

Davenport stepped in. “Of course we do, Annja. But we also want credit for finding the site and permission to excavate it. That is why we intend to apply for the proper paperwork to sponsor an expedition to do just that in the spring.” He spread his hands, as if to say, Can’t you see we’re doing the right thing here? “Determining the authenticity of the journal seemed an important step in that process.”

Annja wasn’t sure if that was the whole story or not, but she recognized that it was all she was going to get at the moment.

“Good enough,” she said, with a shrug of her own that clearly said she wasn’t going to make an issue of it. “Then I guess it’s okay to tell you…I think it’s real.” Annja couldn’t keep the smile from spreading across her face as she admitted it.

Davenport let out a whoop of joy. “I knew it!” he shouted. “I just knew it.”

Mason was up, shaking his employer’s hand, congratulating him, the two of them laughing and talking, when Annja broke in again.

“I said I think the journal is real. Unfortunately, the map is not.”

That brought both of them up short. Davenport’s voice held a trace of steel as he asked, “What do you mean the map is not? ”

Annja brought her laptop over to the table in front of the chairs where they’d been seated and turned it around to face them.

“Look,” she said. “This is a full-scale image of the map from the back of the journal.” The map appeared on the screen before them. “I cleaned it up some, but otherwise it is exactly the same. No image enhancements or anything like that.”

The two men nodded to show they were following her.

“Now this,” she said, calling up another image, “is a modern-day map of the same area. I’ve reduced it to scale to match the other one.” The two maps appeared side by side.

Davenport glanced between them. “I don’t see…Oh.”

Annja grinned. “Yeah. Oh.” She tapped the keyboard and they all watched as the two images slid over each other. Doing so allowed them to see that Curran, or whoever had drawn the map, had deliberately introduced errors into the positioning of many of the major landmarks. For instance, the Onon River had been moved slightly to the east while the Hentiyn Nuruu mountain range had been relocated a good distance to the south. The other errors were similar in nature; Annja had counted eleven in all.

Davenport stared at the map in confusion. “Why would he do that?”

Annja opened her mouth to reply but Mason beat her to the answer.

“He wanted to pass on the information but didn’t want to make it easy in case it fell into the wrong hands. Remember, there’s no way for anyone at that time to verify the map short of going there themselves. So a few subtle alterations and, voilà—the secret is safe.”

Davenport frowned. “So the map’s a fake? It won’t lead us to the tomb?”

Annja smiled. “The map’s authentic all right, in the sense that it is as old as we expected it to be, and more than likely penned by the individual we think penned it. The thing is, it just doesn’t give accurate directions to the tomb. At least, not directly. The location of the tomb is in there, we just have to break the code to get it.”

Davenport’s eyes shone with curiosity. “Code?” he asked.

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