Forbidden City

“I hope so. It would be a coup if I do. I hope I don’t sound insensitive.”

“Nonsense. I’m here for a man I’ve never met. If it weren’t for my grandfather, I might not be here at all. Are these people you hope to discover more about important?”

The grade went down for a while and became a minefield of broken rock and low brush. “There is a lot we don’t know about the Scythians. Located as they were in Central Asia, trading with China, Greece, what is now Eastern Europe, Pakistan and Kazakhstan—probably other nations, as well—there’s a wealth of history that archaeologists, historians, and linguists are missing.”

Annja took another GPS reading, then corrected their course. She’d confirmed the directions she’d gotten over the Internet with the local Ranger station and with the people in Georgetown, which was a small town only a few miles to the west.

“What do you hope to find?” Huangfu asked.

“The same thing that you do. Some proof that your ancestor was—” Annja stopped herself from saying murdered in Volcanoville just in time “—here.”

Annja followed a small stream through the fringe of the Eldorado National Forest. According to her map, they weren’t far from Otter Creek. Paymaster Mine Road was supposed to be only a short distance ahead.

Tall pines mixed with assorted fir trees. All of them filled the air with strong scents. Sunlight painted narrow slits on the ground. Powdered snow covered patches of the ground. Squirrels and birds met the spring’s challenge, foraging for food in the trees, as well as on the ground.

“He is here.” Huangfu’s face looked cold and solemn. “I intend to bring my ancestor’s bones home, if I am able, and see him properly laid to rest. It is my grandfather’s wish to gather all of our family that we may find.”

Scanning through the forest, Annja found the trail she thought they wanted. The trail rose again with the land.

Everything is uphill out here, she thought.

The park rangers she’d talked to over breakfast in Georgetown had assured Annja the path she planned to trace was an arduous one. Only hikers, horses and bicycles were allowed into the protected areas.

The muddy land was sloughing away under the melting snow. Rainfall for days had turned the ground soft in places. They’d have struggled on bikes and Huangfu had said he wasn’t a horseman so Annja had elected to walk to the location.

“Are we close?” Huangfu asked.

“I believe so. Another mile or so should put us there.” Annja kept walking.

V OLCANOVILLE WAS ONE of the hundreds of towns and mining camps that had sprung up in California after James W. Marshall, an employee of John Sutter’s lumber mill, discovered gold flecks in the tail race in January of 1848. By the end of that year, word had spread and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world had flocked to the most recent member of the United States.

The mining camps and towns had risen up like dandelions, springing full-born almost overnight, then dying in the same quick fashion when the gold ran out or was never found. Hell Roaring Diggings, Whiskey Flat, Loafer’s Hollow, and others had each left behind something of a history in the area. But separating the true stories from those that had been embroidered later, or from the lies they’d been mixed with from the beginning, was almost impossible. As with any history, murder, betrayal, success and failure were all part of the tapestry.

Huangfu gazed at the ramshackle buildings that stood under a thick canopy of trees. Many of the trees showed signs of repeated lightning strikes. Broken limbs, shattered trunks, and places bare of bark were scattered around the site.

Not exactly a place to inspire hope, Annja thought as she turned to Huangfu. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

The man offered her a faint smile. “That’s good. Because at the moment it looks impossible.”

“If we were just going off the journal you found, maybe it would be. Fortunately the California Historical Society, as well as dozens of other branches and genealogists in the area, collected stories, journals, and newspapers.”

“I trust your expertise in this matter.” Huangfu smiled. “That’s why I hoped you would help me.”

Annja slid out of her backpack and placed it beside the nearest building. The wind picked up and caused the branches to rattle against the roof. No trace of paint remained on the weathered boards. It was possible the exterior of the building had never been painted.

Working quickly, she paced off the dimensions of the buildings. Most of them appeared to have been constructed roughly the same. She guessed that the building she was searching for would be similar. When she finished, she returned to the backpack.

Huangfu didn’t say a word.

Crouching, her back against the building, she took a bound journal from the backpack, as well as two energy bars, offering one of them to Huangfu. The man took the snack and crouched beside her.

“What’s that?” He pointed at the book.

“A journal I made for the search we’re going to conduct here.”

The journal contained hand-drawn maps Annja had created from topographical surveys she’d found of the Volcanoville area, as well as ones she’d found in newspapers and letters collected in the historical societies she’d visited. Tabs separated sections on known facts, rumors, and stories she’d gleaned from her research. All of the notes were handwritten, and she’d made the sketches, as well.

“You have maps?” Huangfu sounded doubtful.

“I made them, based on geological surveys of the area, as well as stories I found. The forest and the stream, they’re there in the right places. The map of the town is purely guesswork.”

“I thought you’d arrived in Georgetown only this morning.”

“I did.” Annja smiled at him. “The Internet is a wonderful tool.”

“You do this for all of your projects?”

“When I can. I like to have an idea of what I’m getting into before I arrive. Usually time at dig sites is limited. You have to know what you’re looking for and where to look for it. Not all nations welcome archaeologists with open arms.” Annja flipped through the maps she’d created. “A lot of that has to do with the fact that in the early twentieth century a number of archaeologists served as spies for the Western world.”

Huangfu laughed. “Have you ever been a spy, Miss Creed?”

“No,” Annja said flatly.

“Would you be one if you were asked?”

“I guess it would depend on the circumstances. That’s not what I’m about. I’m an archaeologist.” Annja looked around at the buildings, trying to see through the present into the past that had existed over a hundred years ago.

Huangfu drank water from his canteen and sat silently. From the man’s relaxed posture, Annja believed he could have sat that way for hours. She hadn’t yet gotten a fix on him and that left her feeling a little unsettled.

When she’d first connected with Huangfu over the Internet and then the phone, Annja had guessed he was a corporate worker. But from the money involved in his quest—and the fact that he’d generously arranged her flight out and her bed-and-breakfast accommodations in Georgetown—she’d figured he was near the top tier. A background check on him had confirmed that Huangfu Cao worked for Ngai Enterprises, a Shanghai-based international pharmaceutical company.

Bart McGilley, the New York homicide detective who was one of Annja’s closest friends and who had done the background check on Huangfu, had wanted to dig deeper. But Bart tended to be overly protective where Annja was concerned. She hadn’t wanted to wait any longer. Huangfu had volunteered to pay her expenses, and he’d said he only had the next few days to attempt to locate his ancestor’s remains. She’d assumed he’d taken leave to attend to the matter.

Annja was all too aware that her own free time turned on a dime and was often gone before she knew it. She’d already turned down a Chasing History’s Monsters assignment to track down the legend of a vampire living in Cleveland. Vampires were perennial ratings winners on the television show, and her producer, Doug Morrell, had a special interest in them that she hadn’t quite figured out. Given her options, she’d jumped at the free trip to California.

Within minutes, Annja found the few remaining landmarks she’d identified from the stories and the geographical maps. Once she was oriented, she grabbed the straps of her backpack, hoisting it to one shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Huangfu fell into step beside her. “Do you know where the building we’re looking for is located?”

“I think so.” Annja pointed. “Chinatown was up on that ridgeline. Mining towns were usually segregated by race. Chinese immigrants poured into California in the 1850s and 1860s.”

“For the promise of gold. I know.”

“Not just for the promise of gold.” Annja started up the incline, grabbing an exposed tree root as she leaned into the ascent. “They were also escaping the Taiping Rebellion that occurred after the British defeated the Chinese in both Opium Wars to force British trade.”

“I’ll take your word for that, Miss Creed.”

Annja was surprised that Huangfu wouldn’t know that. Those times had been hard on the Chinese people. The British had usurped the emperor’s control and spread opium throughout Shanghai and other provinces through gunboat diplomacy.

The Chinese had invented gunpowder for fireworks, and had even used it somewhat for cannon and flamethrowers, but they had never mounted cannons on ships for use in war. The British had done that with success unmatched by any other nation.

Reaching the summit of the rise, Annja looked down, orienting herself again. She tried to imagine what the town had been like when it had been booming with the promise of gold. In San Francisco, which had been in its infancy when the Gold Rush had started, sailors had abandoned ships and left them sitting crewless in the harbor, chasing after the elusive promise of sudden wealth. Only later, after some of the prospectors had struck it rich and others had returned looking for work, had San Francisco grown into a huge port city.

Men had lived and fought, chased possibilities, drowned sorrows and died in a microcosm fuelled by dreams. Annja felt the history almost come alive around her.

She relished opportunities to go places and see them for herself. She’d never been to an abandoned mining town before. Even though it was only a hundred and fifty years old, not centuries or a millennia as many of her studies were, the history of the place touched her more than she thought it would.

She let go of the city and focused on the man she’d come there to find. She turned to face Huangfu.

“Your ancestor, Ban Zexu, arrived in San Francisco in 1872. I confirmed your research with my own. Most of the Gold Rush was over by 1855, but several strikes kept happening. Some of them took place here in Volcanoville.” Annja walked west along the ridgeline, seeing the layout of the buildings in her mind’s eye.

Huangfu followed her.

“He lived up here in Chinatown, overlooking Volcanoville proper. The Chinese immigrants weren’t allowed to mix with the white population.”

“But the shopkeepers took their gold for things they needed,” Huangfu said.

Annja nodded. “All of these towns were violent. Too many men were looking for too little gold, which had gotten harder and harder to find. In 1874, Chinese miners found a ten-ounce nugget at the Cooley Mine. Drunken miners locked over a dozen Chinese in the cabin at the mine and burned it to the ground with them inside. The men who escaped the fire were gunned down.”

“Was that where my ancestor was murdered?”

“No.” Annja walked along, studying the ground. “Ban Zexu was killed here. A few of the buildings in Volcanoville had root cellars where they kept potatoes and other perishable goods. Fewer still of the Chinese structures up here did. Your ancestor died in a house two houses down from one of the houses that had a root cellar made of rock according to the information I was able to find.”

Dropping her backpack to one side, Annja reached inside and took out an Army surplus trenching tool that snapped together and a metal rod with a handle. She pulled on a pair of leather work gloves.

“First we’ll find the stone foundation of the root cellar, then we’ll find the house where Ban Zexu died.”

She thrust the metal into the thick loam and got started, searching for stone. Thankfully, the early spring thaw had left the ground soft and easy to work. She only hoped the root cellar had truly been made of stone and wasn’t too deep to reach with the tools she was using.

I T TOOK LESS THAN AN HOUR to find the root cellar. Stepping off the measurements of the house, assuming that the cellar was under the center of the building and was entered from the back, Annja quickly located the area where she believed the building Ban Zexu had been murdered in had once stood.

She had stripped off her fleece-lined coat, finding it too hot to work in. Huangfu had divested himself of his jacket.

“Make sure you get plenty of water.” Annja uncapped her canteen and drank. “Cold will leave you as dehydrated as heat.”

Huangfu nodded and drank. Despite his exertions, he didn’t look any the worse for wear. One of his shirt sleeves crept up and revealed the red, yellow and blue ink of a large tattoo. It had scales, so Annja guessed that it was a dragon or a fish. Self-consciously, he pulled his sleeve back down, looking at Annja.

She acted as if she hadn’t seen the tattoo, but dark suspicions formed in her thoughts. She suddenly didn’t feel as comfortable and confident as she had.

“Here?” Huangfu pointed at the ground in front of her.

Annja nodded, capped her canteen, and picked up her trenching tool.

“How deep, do you think?” Huangfu shoveled like a machine.

“A foot or two at least. This far into the forest, foliage and dead trees are going to compost and add to the humus layer. If you leave anything on the ground long enough, nature has a tendency to pull it deep and cover it over.”

They dug rhythmically. The shovel blades bit into the earth and turned it easily.

Ban Zexu had suffered a harsh death that had mirrored the men who’d worked the Cooley Mine. Jealousy, fired by desperation, had turned the white miners against everyone else. Chinese and Mexican miners had become targets.

In 1875, little less than a year after the murder of the Cooley Mine workers, Ban Zexu and his small group of miners had been burned out, as well. The stories varied. Some said it was over a slight made by one of the Chinese miners, and others insisted it was over a woman. There was even a story that Ban Zexu and his friends had struck it rich, though no gold had ever turned up. Locked inside the building they’d lived in while working different claims, the Chinese miners had had no chance when the building had been torched.

As Annja worked, she tried not to think about that horrible death. Or about the tattoo she’d seen on Huangfu’s arm. She still wasn’t sure what that meant; only that Huangfu was more than he seemed, and that waiting for Bart to conduct a deeper background check might have been a good idea.

L ATE INTO THE DAY and almost three feet down, the light was fading fast and Annja’s certainty about her calculations was ebbing away as the dirt piled higher and higher. Suddenly her shovel struck burned wood. She saw the black coals stark against the lighter colored dirt.

Rotting wood would have been absorbed back into the earth. But the burned wood had been carbonized and would take longer to leach back into the soil and break down.

“Huangfu,” Annja said.

He looked at her. Although he hadn’t said anything, Annja had felt the wave of exasperation coming from him. He wasn’t a man used to failure.

“We’ve found it.” Annja pointed at the coals left from the fire over one hundred and thirty earlier. “We must go slowly now.”

Huangfu nodded. “What about the belt plaque I showed you?”

Is that what this is really about? Annja knew she couldn’t ask, but she was certain that retrieving the bones of his ancestor wasn’t the man’s real goal.

“If it’s jade or steatite, it’ll break easily. Just go slow.”

Huangfu looked at the sky. “I would like to finish tonight.”

So would I, Annja thought. “If it’s possible, we will. But hurrying and ruining everything we might find isn’t the answer.”

Reluctantly, Huangfu nodded.

“Shovelful by shovelful. Feel your way into the ground, then shake it out so you can see anything you might have found. When we reach a body, we’ll work with our hands.” Annja showed him, slowly scooping up the earth and spreading it out across the hill she’d created.

Huangfu did as she directed, and they continued digging.

F ORTY MINUTES LATER , Huangfu found a body. “Here,” he said. Excitement tightened his voice.

Tossing her shovel onto the dirt hill beside the hole she’d dug, Annja joined him. Enough light remained that they didn’t need flashlights, but they would soon. The air was turning colder and their breath showed constantly.

Dropping to her knees, Annja looked at the rib cage Huangfu had uncovered. Carrion beetles had stripped the bones of flesh before the earth had claimed the body. Soot still stained the ivory.

Removing her digital camera from her backpack, Annja took several pictures. Huangfu stood by impatiently.

“We’ll take pictures as we go,” Annja explained as she replaced the camera in the backpack. “We can search through them later. They might help us discover if we missed anything.”

Annja slipped her gloved hands around the bones and gently began disinterring them. She placed them carefully beside the hole, keeping them together as she found them.

Huangfu watched her. “Do these bones belong only to one man?”

“So far.” Finding the pelvis, Annja headed in the other direction, searching for the skull. More bones created a skeleton on the ground.

“I can help.”

“Keep the bones in order as we find them.” Annja handed over the collarbone.

“Why?”

“We’ll learn more if we do. How many people were in here. Maybe who they were. If we post this on the Internet, we might find others who are looking for lost family members. Information works best if it’s keep neat and arranged.”

Annja found the skull and lifted it free of the earth. “Your ancestor might have escaped that night.”

“According to the journal that came into my possession that did not happen. Ban Zexu died here.”

“Judging from the roundness of this skull, and the arched profile, and widely spaced round eye sockets, this person was of Mongoloid decent.”

“Chinese?”

“That’s one possibility. Pathology isn’t an exact science when it comes to race. We can identify the three different racial characteristics of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid.”

Annja handed Huangfu the skull, noting that the man took it without hesitation. That wasn’t a normal reaction for most people when they were confronted with such a situation. She knew beginner archaeologists who took years to get over the queasiness of handling dead bones fresh from a dig.

Huangfu placed the skull at the top of the skeleton they were building.

Annja continued digging, going back toward the pelvis now. Noting the narrowness of the pelvis and the sciatic notch that allowed the sciatic nerve and others to go on through to the leg, she also knew the remains were male. Pathology was more exact about sex and age.

Below the pelvis there was a leather bag that hadn’t yet rotted away. But her attention was riveted on the rectangular shape she’d spotted. Even with the gloves and though the rectangular shape looked more like a clod or a rock, she knew what it was.

Excitement filled her as always. Every discovery she’d made affected her the same way. She hoped that would never change.

“Is that the plaque?” Huangfu asked.

“I think so.” Annja breathed out and started brushing dirt from the piece. With the shadows in the hole they’d dug, she couldn’t clearly see the piece, but she saw enough of it to note the stylized tiger poised with its ears flattened to its head and one clawed paw raised to strike. Scythian art stylings, picked up by some of the people they traded with—including the Chinese, often showed fierce animals.

“Let me see,” her client said.

Annja was loath to let go of the prize. The memory of the tattoo hidden on Huangfu’s arm disturbed her thoughts and took away some of the joy of discovery.

The unmistakable ratcheting of a rifle bolt seating a round in the chamber caused Annja and Huangfu to freeze. Glancing up toward the sound, Annja saw three armed men emerge from the gathering darkness.

2

All three of the men looked scruffy. Patched jeans, hoodies, dirty boots and coats clothed them and lent them the sameness of a predatory pack. They were young, barely into their twenties.

But old enough to point a gun at you, Annja thought as she remained frozen. Looking into their eyes, she noticed how red and glassy they were. It wasn’t a huge leap of logic to guess that they were under the influence of something. In the thin cold air, she smelled the acrid odor of marijuana and the cloying stink of horse sweat.

Beside her, Huangfu shifted slightly, just enough to get his footing and redistribute his weight. The three young men didn’t notice.

“I told you I saw somebody out here, Dylan.” The speaker was the thickest of the three. He carried the extra weight around his middle, looking like a football player gone to seed.

Dylan was bearded and had kinky black hair that looked like he hadn’t brushed it since he was a teenager. He aimed the rifle in his arms with grim authority, pointing it at Huangfu.

“Shut up, Beef,” Dylan said. “I can see them. I got eyes.”

“Do you think they’ve been out to the patch?” the third young man asked.

“Shut up, Neville,” Dylan ordered, then spat foul curses. “I swear, neither one of you has any sense.”

Annja looked at the semiautomatic Beef carried and the revolver Neville held. She’d been in similar situations of late. She was afraid she was starting to get used to life-threatening situations.

“What’re you doing out here?” Dylan demanded.

“We’re archaeologists.” Annja gestured to the bones gathered at the side of the hole. “We were sent here to find these bodies.”

Beef walked away from the other two, closing in on the bones. He kicked the skull with the toe of his boot and sent it rolling a few feet away.

“Cool.” Beef grinned and went after the skull. “Think I’ll put this in my room. Get some black light action going on this. Candles for the eyes. It’ll look awesome.”

“Why are you out here looking for skeletons?” Dylan asked.

Beef picked up the skull, hooking his fingers through the eye sockets and his thumb through the mouth. He mimed swinging it like a bowling ball, then laughed uproariously.

Annja kept her voice calm and soft. “These people were Chinese. Their families found out they were murdered here and want them back.” She felt another slight shift in Huangfu’s stance, aware of it only because she’d been involved in martial arts for years.

“That’s all you’re doing out here?” Dylan asked.

“Yes.”

“You aren’t, like, police?” Neville looked suspicious.

“No.”

“That was a dumb question.” Beef snorted derisively.

Neville looked irritated. “Why? All I asked was if they were police.”

“Well, for one, they could lie to you.”

“Uh-uh. Police have got to tell the truth.”

Beef cursed and juggled the skull in one hand. “Dude, I don’t know what planet you’re from, but my brother is a cop, and they can lie to everybody. Ain’t no law against lying for police.”

Neville shook his head. “That don’t seem right. I mean, a police guy has gotta tell you he’s a police guy.”