The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan (6 page)

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s another ice-cream van following us. It’s been there for the last two miles.”

Groanin leaned forward and glanced in the side mirror. Bruno was correct: A green ice-cream van was about thirty yards behind them. And even as he watched, this other ice-cream van accelerated toward them.

“What will they do if they stop us?” asked Groanin.

Bruno laughed grimly. “I don’t think they will buy an ice cream, English,” he said. “And maybe there’s raspberry sauce on the ground before this is over, yes?”

“Put your foot down,” yelled Groanin. “They’re gaining on us.”

But the green ice-cream van was more powerful than the blue one driven by Bruno and swiftly came alongside Groanin’s window.

The driver was another very fat man with a mouth as wide as a shovel and hair so thick and black and curly it looked like a woolly hat. He grinned at Groanin and then drew his finger across one of his many double chins.

“Let them have it!” yelled Bruno. “The shotgun! Let them have it!”

Groanin hardly needed telling twice. And feeling very relieved that Bruno didn’t seem to want to make a fight of it after all, he leaned out of his open window and handed the shotgun, stock first, to the driver of the other van.

“What are you doing?” yelled Bruno.

“You told me to let him have it,” said Groanin. “So I did.”

“I meant you to shoot him.” Bruno cursed loudly as the other driver pointed at the roadside.

“With the gun?” Groanin sounded shocked.

“Now we have to stop,” said Bruno, slowing down. “Or they will shoot us.” He shrugged. “Maybe they shoot us, anyway, English. I hope you know how to pray. And I hope you know how to beg. And I hope you know how to act.”

“Act? What are you talking about? Act.” Groanin shook his head. “I’m a butler, not some lovey-dovey thespian.”

Bruno stopped the van, switched off the engine, and finally the jingle stopped.

“Well, thank goodness for that,” said Groanin.

“Your one chance is to act like you are crazy,” growled Bruno. “The Roman Mafia is very superstitious. They no like to kill crazy people. Not unless they’re politicians. So, maybe if you act crazy, they let you go.”

“I shall do no such thing,” said Groanin. “I’m English. We didn’t get the British Empire by acting crazy in a crisis, you know. What’s required here is a bit of backbone, my Neapolitan friend. Backbone. Nerve. British stiff upper lip.”

He put on his bowler hat and stepped out of the ice-cream van and prepared to face the enemy.

T
he old Vesuvius Observatory, an elegant, red-ocher building in the neoclassical style, was located on the west flank of Mount Vesuvius, at around two thousand feet above sea level, in a verdant oasis of pine and ilex trees and yellow rock helichrysum flowers.

Professor Sturloson unlocked the rust-colored gates and opened the main doors.

“The other institute,” he explained, “the modern institute, is lower down the slope. But I much prefer this place. Please. Go inside.”

“This looks more like a villa than a scientific institute,” observed Philippa.

“True,” said the professor. “But I sometimes think that everything in Italy looks better than it should. Even this volcano. After all, who would expect a volcano to be covered in so many beautiful flowers, and to smell so sweetly?”

“It is rather fragrant,” said Nimrod. He walked straight over to the rock saw and switched it on.

“Then again,” said John, “it’s not much of a villa that doesn’t have any windows. These ones look like they have been filled in with concrete.”

“That’s just one of the reasons that the building is able to resist the seismic and eruptive activity of the mountain,” said the professor. “For example, during the 1872 eruption, the director of the observatory, Luigi Palmieri, although surrounded by incandescent lava, stayed to observe the electric phenomena that resulted from the large amounts of ash in the sky.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” said John. He looked up at a picture on the wall. “Is that him?”

“No, that’s Vittorio Matteucci,” said the professor. “Sadly, he was killed here. As a result of his rather too close observation of Vesuvius and its related phenomena.”

John pulled a face and looked at another portrait. “And him?”

“Umm,” said the professor. “That would be Giuseppe Mercalli. He was killed here, too, I think.”

“I’m beginning to suspect that volcanology is much more dangerous than you’d have us believe,” Philippa told her uncle.

“Me, too,” said John. “To have one dead director is unfortunate. But to have two dead directors — well, that looks even more unfortunate than having just the one who’s dead.”

Nimrod was too busy with the rock saw, cutting a section from the golden lava sample, to answer Philippa’s or John’s remarks.

“There’s no getting away from the fact that volcanoes are
dangerous,” said Axel, who was helping him. “But by trying to understand them we hope to make them more predictable and, as a result, make them less dangerous.”

John look at the rock saw with curiosity. “What kind of saw is it that can cut through rock?” he asked.

“One with industrial diamonds in the blade,” said his uncle.

The telephone rang and the professor answered it. As soon as he finished his call he turned on the TV, which was how everyone learned that several other countries and regions throughout the world were reporting new volcanic activity — not just Italy, but Russia, the United States, New Zealand, Iceland, and South America. The situation appeared to be worst of all in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Nyamuragira, Africa’s most active volcano, had just erupted with devastating effect. For half an hour they watched dramatic television pictures of two fiery craters throwing glowing molten rock thousands of feet into the air, and several dozen villages on the Rwandan border being evacuated.

And some of the people who had witnessed the eruption were reporting that pieces of the solidified lava
resembled nuggets of gold.

“This is looking much more serious than I had thought,” said the professor.

“Is this normal?” asked Philippa. “That all these volcanoes become active at once?”

“There’s no reason why they
shouldn’t
all be active at once,” said the professor. “Much of the volcanic activity that
occurs on the seabed usually goes unreported. But, no, it’s not normal.”

He looked anxiously at Nimrod, who had finished with the rock saw and was carrying his section of the golden lava to a large, white microscope that was attached to a small computer screen.

Nimrod sat down in front of the microscope, switched it on, and then placed the slide section under the lens. For several minutes he peered through the viewfinder while he fiddled with the focus knobs and the light-intensity control.

“This section of rock is now thin enough so that we can shine a light through it,” explained Nimrod. “A special polarizing light that will enable us to identify its various chemical properties. And which will explain the unusual golden color.”

Gradually, the picture on the screen grew sharper. And so did the professor’s interest.

“There seems to be an extraordinarily high level of silica here,” he said.

“More than eighty-five percent,” said Nimrod. He switched the view to a powerful lens. “There we are. A normal silicon tetrahedron, as you might expect.”

“What’s a tetrahedron?” asked John.

“Four triangular faces,” said Philippa. “Three of which meet at each point.”

“Only there’s something else,” said Nimrod.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” observed the professor. “A silicon tetrahedron with four oxygen atoms at the corner of the tetrahedron and, in the center, one silicon atom and
something else closely attached to it that looks like gold, which probably accounts for the lava color.”

Nimrod typed some instructions into the computer. “Let’s see if it is gold,” he said.

They waited for a second before the computer came back with an answer.

UNKNOWN ELEMENT
.

“There must be something wrong with the computer,” insisted the professor. “Try again.”

Nimrod retyped the instructions but the answer that came back was the same.

UNKNOWN ELEMENT
.

Nimrod began typing again. “Let’s try to narrow it down,” he said. “It’s not oxygen or silicon; and it’s not aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, magnesium, or potassium, which, together, account for all but half a percent of the elements in the earth’s crust. We will get the computer to take a closer look in that half percent, and see if it doesn’t resemble one of those other elements. And —”

Nimrod pressed the return key and waited for a second.

“It doesn’t,” said the professor.

“No,” agreed Nimrod. “However, according to the computer, this mystery element does share one particular characteristic with the following list of minerals: barringerite, brezinaite, brianite, buchwaldite, carlsbergite, daubreelite, farringtonite, gentnerite, haxonite, heideite, kosmochlor, krinovite, lawrencite, lonsdaleite, majorite, merrihueite, niningerite, osbornite, panethite, ringwoodite, roedderite, schreibersite, stanfieldite, and yagiite.”

“And what characteristic is that?” asked Philippa.

“These are all non-terrestrial minerals,” the professor said quietly. “Found only in meteorites.”

“So maybe a meteorite fell into a volcano,” said John. “Wow. I can see that causing a few problems.”

“Maybe,” said the professor. “But unlikely. One meteor falling into Vesuvius would hardly affect all of these other volcanoes. Besides, there’s no trace in this lava sample of any of these other non-terrestrial elements. Just this unknown one that’s the color of gold.”

Absently, the professor began to tap the edge of his black mask with a fingernail, which prompted John to wonder exactly how it remained on his head. There was no string or elastic holding it in place that he could see. Really, it was most peculiar, almost like it was actually sticking to his face.

“If only,” said Axel, “we knew more about its properties.”

“We don’t have time to isolate it.” Nimrod started to type again. “To analyze it properly. However, we can construct a computer simulation of how it might behave in the laboratory. In other words, how it would react if we were to put it in water, cool it, heat it, or bombard it with radiation. And most important of all, to see how it reacts within a lava flow.”

“Good idea,” said the professor.

“You mean like a pretend experiment?” said John.

“Yes, John.”

Once again Nimrod started to type on the computer keyboard.

Philippa didn’t know which was the more impressive: all of the scientific information Nimrod seemed to carry within
his head and that he fed into the computer, or the speed with which he typed it. Even so, he was typing for almost half an hour before he announced that “the experiment” was ready. Everyone came away from watching the television news and some pictures from the island of Bali, in Indonesia, where one of the three interlocking craters on Mount Batur had suddenly started emitting ash and smoke, to watch Nimrod’s computer simulation.

When the element was heated, it seemed to become more fluid, and at the same time dramatically more explosive. When added to lava the mystery element seemed to make the lava behave much more violently than might have been expected.

“I think it’s reasonable to assume,” said Nimrod, “that it’s the mystery element that is affecting the behavior of all of these volcanoes.”

“I’m obliged to agree with you, Nimrod,” said the professor.

“Then perhaps you’re also ready to admit the possibility that this might just have something to do with the Fu Xi legend,” said Nimrod.

The professor nodded. “I’m beginning to think it does,” he said.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned this legend,” said Philippa. “Would someone mind telling me what it is?”

“I’m not entirely sure myself,” admitted the professor.

“Well, now,” said Nimrod. “Where to begin? It’s been a while since I told anyone this story, which, since it’s almost eight hundred years old, is largely dismissed or forgotten by
most modern scholars of Mongolian and Chinese history. Although not by me. Many years ago, after university, I wanted to travel somewhere really remote, and Mongolia seemed about as remote as one could get. So I learned the language and read some books. Although to be honest, there’s really just one book that matters when it comes to Mongolia.

“
The Secret History of the Mongols
is the oldest surviving book about the Mongols, although it is more of a history of the rise and death of Genghis Khan in particular than of the Mongols in general. This is hardly surprising since he’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to the Mongols. It was written sometime near his death in the early thirteenth century. Around
A.D.
1227. After he had conquered the largest contiguous empire in recorded history.”

“What does
contiguous
mean?” asked John.

“It means ‘connecting without a break,’ ” said Nimrod. “Within a common boundary. The Mongol Empire stretched from the Black Sea to North Korea. It was truly vast. And what’s more, it took a little over seventy years to conquer. Compare that to the Roman Empire and the British Empire, which took much longer to bring together and you can understand just how great a warrior Genghis Khan really was.”

Philippa drew her uncle aside for a moment so that she could speak without being overheard by the professor and Axel; John followed.

“Wasn’t he a djinn?” asked Philippa.

“Part djinn,” said Nimrod. “Almost certainly.”

“Well, that would help explain why he was such a great warrior, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but the Mongols didn’t know that. You see, Genghis preferred to conquer countries the old-fashioned way. He wanted to measure himself and his own conquests against great heroes like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. And his military conquests would hardly have been the same in his own eyes if he’d relied on djinn power to bring them about. It’s these conquests that
The Secret History
largely deals with.”

Nimrod strolled nonchalantly back to the professor and Axel to continue with his story.

“However, no Mongol-language versions of this book —
The Secret History
— have come down to us today and all surviving versions derive from Chinese translations dating from the end of the fourteenth century. Only one of these — itself now lost — mentioned a secret weapon called Fu Xi that the Xi Xia Emperor Xuanzong threatened to deploy against the Mongols when Genghis Khan threatened to invade his country. The Xi Xia Empire was the largest province in ancient China.”

“Isn’t Fu Xi a kind of dragon?” said Philippa. “In the I Ching?”

“Very good, Philippa,” said Nimrod. “Yes, that’s quite right.”

“So was that his weapon? A dragon?”

“Metaphorically speaking, yes,” said Nimrod. “Which means it was not a real dragon. But as a figure of speech, something that was like a dragon. You see, it was said that with his dragon weapon the Emperor Xuanzong would bring ten thousand days of fire down upon the heads of not only
the Mongols but the Xi Xia, too. What he called
yi wàng nián de huŏ zâi.
A kind of extreme scorched-earth policy in which one country destroys itself in order to deny it to the enemy.

“As it happened, the speed of the Mongol cavalry tribesmen was such that the Xia were completely overrun before Xuanzong could deploy his weapon; and the ‘dragon’ fell into the hands of the Mongols. Just like a lot of other weapons — gunpowder and siege engines and better swords. Genghis Khan was fascinated with new weapons, which partly explains his success in conquest. And he was especially interested with this ‘doomsday’ weapon of the Emperor Xuanzong.

“Having said that, there’s little known for sure about the true nature of the weapon. Some people think it was just gunpowder, which the Mongols took from the Chinese and learned to use, but other contemporary Chinese sources mention a dragon that came out of the Yellow River and which some people have speculated may actually have been a meteorite — and more specifically some crystals from the meteorite that had the power to turn lava to gold.”

“Maybe that’s what turned the river yellow,” offered John.

“I never thought of that,” said Nimrod. “Anyway, these crystals were called Ho Tani Ya Chin Shi,
, which means ‘fire medicine crystals,’ and it was probably them that gave the medieval alchemists the idea of the philosopher’s stone that would turn base metal into gold.