The Kingdom

“I have no knowledge of the specific plan,” Dharel replied, “but as I understand it, there were only a few dozen Sentinels. Upon evacuation, each of them was to leave the city carrying a chest, a chest designed to confuse invaders. In one of the chests was to be the disassembled remains of the Theurang.”

Sam and Remi exchanged sideways smiles.

Dharel added, “Only a select few in the military and government knew which Sentinel carried the genuine remains.”

Sam asked, “And inside the other chests?”

Dharel shook his head. “I do not know. Perhaps nothing, perhaps a replica of the Theurang. At any rate, the plot was designed to overwhelm any pursuers. Equipped with the best weapons and the fastest horses, the Sentinels would race from the city and separate in hopes of dividing the pursuers. With luck and skill, the Sentinel carrying the Theurang would escape and hide it in a predetermined location.”

“Can you describe the weapons?”

“Only generally: a sword, several daggers, a bow, and a spear.”

“There’s no account of whether the plan succeeded?” asked Remi.

“None.”

“What did the chest look like?” said Remi.

Dharel retrieved a pad of paper and pencil from his desk and sketched a wooden cube that looked remarkably similar to the chest they recovered from the cave. Dharel said, “As far as I have found, there is no description beyond this. The chest was said to have been of an ingenious design, the hope being that each time an enemy recovered one of them he would spend days or weeks trying to open it.”

“And in the process, buy more time for the other Sentinels,” said Sam.

“Exactly so. Similarly, the Sentinels had no family, no friends an enemy could use against them. They were also trained since youth to withstand the worst kinds of torture.”

“Amazing dedication,” Remi remarked.

“Indeed.”

“Can you describe the Theurang?” asked Sam.

Dharel nodded. “As I mentioned, it is said to have man-like features but an overall . . . beastly appearance. His bones were made of the purest gold, his eyes made of some kind of gem-rubies or emeralds, or the like.”

“The Golden Man,” Remi said.

“Yes. Here . . . I have an artist’s rendering.” Dharel stood up, walked around to his desk, and rummaged through the drawers for half a minute before returning to them with a leather-bound book. He flipped through pages before stopping. He turned the book around and handed it to Sam and Remi.

After a few seconds, Remi murmured, “Hello, handsome.”

Though highly stylized, the book’s rendering of the Theurang was nearly identical to the etching on the shield they had found in the cave.

An hour later, back at the hotel, Sam and Remi called Selma. Sam recounted their visit to the university.

“Amazing,” Selma said. “This is the find of a lifetime.”

“We can’t take credit for it,” Remi replied. “I suspect Lewis King beat us to it, and rightly so. If he had, in fact, spent decades hunting for this, it’s all his-posthumously, of course.”

“You’re assuming he’s dead, then?”

“A hunch,” Sam replied. “If anyone else had found that tomb before us, it would have been a

Remi continued: “King must have explored the cave system, set those railroad spikes, discovered the tomb, then fell while trying to recross the pit. If that’s what happened, Lewis King’s bones are scattered along some underground tributary of the Bagmati River. It’s a shame. He was so close.”

“But we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Sam said. “For all we know, the chest we found was one of the decoys. It would still be a significant find, but not the grand prize.”

Selma said, “We’ll know if-when-we get it open.”

They chatted with Selma for a few more minutes, then disco

“What now?” asked Remi.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of the creepy King twins.”

“You even have to ask?”

“They’ve been nipping at our heels since we got here. I say it’s time we turn the tables on them-and on King Senior himself.”

“Covert surveillance?” Remi said with a gleam in her eye.

Sam stared at her a moment, then smiled thinly. “Sometimes, your eagerness scares me.”

“I love covert surveillance.”

“I know you do, dear. We may or may not have what King is after. Let’s see if we can convince him we do. We’ll shake the tree a little bit and see what falls out.”

12

KATHMANDU, NEPAL

Knowing the King twins were in Nepal minding one of their father’s mining concerns, Selma took but a few hours to ferret out the details. Working under the ba

After another trip to the surplus store, Sam and Remi packed their gear into the back of their newly rented Range Rover and set out. Though it was nearly five o’clock and nightfall less than two hours away, they wanted to get far away from the King twins, who Sam and Remi felt certain weren’t about to leave them alone.

As the crow flies, the mining camp was not quite thirty miles north of the city. By road, it was over three times that distance-a short drive in any Western country but a daylong odyssey in Nepal.

“Judging by this map,” Remi said in the passenger’s seat, “what they call a highway is actually a dirt road that’s a bit wider and slightly better maintained than a cow path. Once we pass Trisuli Bazar, we’ll be on secondary roads. God knows what that means, though.”

“How far to Trisuli?”

“With luck, we’ll be there before nightfall. Sam . . . goat!”

Sam looked up to see a teenage girl escorting a goat across the road seemingly oblivious to the vehicle bearing down on them. The Range Rover skidded to a stop in a cloud of brown dust. The girl looked up and smiled, unfazed. She waved. Sam and Remi waved back.

“Lesson relearned,” Sam said. “No crosswalks in Nepal.”

“And goats have the right-of-way,” Remi added.

Once clear of the city limits and into the foothills, they found the road bracketed by terraced farm fields, lush and green against the otherwise barren and brown slopes. To their immediate left, the Trisuli River, swollen with spring runoff, churned over boulders, the water a leaden gray color from scree and silt. Here and there, they could see clusters of shacks nestled against the distant tree line. Far to the north and west stood the higher Himalayan peaks, jagged black towers against the sky.

Two hours later, just as the sun was dipping behind the mountains, they pulled into Trisuli Bazar. Tempted as they were to stay in one of the hostels, Sam and Remi had decided to err on the side of slight paranoia and rough it. However unlikely it was that the Kings would think to look for them here, Sam and Remi decided to assume the worst.

Following Remi’s directions, Sam followed the Range Rover’s headlights out of the village, then turned left down a narrow service road to what the map described as a “trekker’s waypoint.” They pulled into a roughly oval clearing lined with yurt-like huts and rolled to a stop. He doused the headlights and turned off the ignition.

“See anyone?” Sam said, looking around.

“No. It looks like we have the run of the place.”

“Hut or tent?”

“Seems a shame to waste the ugly patchwork pup tent we paid so much money for,” Remi said.

“That’s my girl.”

Fifteen minutes later, under the glow of their headlamps, they had their camp set up a few hundred yards behind the huts in a copse of pine. As Remi finished rolling out their sleeping bags, Sam got a fire going.

Sorting through their food supply, Sam asked, “Dehydrated chicken teriyaki or . . . dehydrated chicken teriyaki?”

“Whichever one I can eat the fastest,” Remi replied. “I’m ready for bed. Got a terrible headache.”