BELGIUM

MALONE HAD BEEN TOLD ENOUGH ON THE PHONE BY STEPHANIE to know that Pau Wen had maneuvered Cassiopeia a few days ago and was now trying to do it again.

"Why do you want to go to China?" he asked Pau. "I'm told you fled the country decades ago."

"And what is your involvement here?"

"I'm your travel agent. The one who can book your ticket, depending on how I feel about you."

Pau grinned. "There is about to be a revolution. Perhaps even a bloody one. In China, changes in power have always involved death and destruction. Karl Tang intends to assume control of the government--one way or another."

"Why does he need a sample of oil from centuries ago?" Cassiopeia asked.

"Do you know about the First Emperor, Qin Shi?" Pau asked them.

Malone knew some. Lived two hundred years before Christ, a hundred years after Alexander the Great, and united seven warring states into an empire, forming what would later be called China, named after him. The first to do that, starting a succession of dynasties that ruled until the 20th century. Autocratic, cruel, but also visionary.

"Might I read you something?" Pau asked.

Neither he nor Cassiopeia objected. Malone actually wanted to hear what this man had to say, and he was glad Cassiopeia seemed to agree.

Pau clapped twice and one of the younger men who'd watched the encounter at the front door appeared with a tray, upon which lay a stack of brittle silk sheets. He laid the tray in Pau's lap, then withdrew.

"This is a copy of Records of the Historian or Shiji, as it has come to be called. It was written to cover the whole of human history, from a Chinese perspective, up to the time of its author's death in 90 BCE. It is China's first work of recorded history."

"And you just happen to have an original?" Malone asked. "Ready to show us."

"As I said, I knew she would come."

He smiled. This man was good.

"Shiji's creator was the grand historian of the Han dynasty, Sima Qian. He supposedly consulted imperial records and traveled widely, learning from private documents, libraries, and personal recollections. Unfortunately, Qian eventually lost his emperor's favor. He was castrated and imprisoned, but upon his release he again became the palace secretary and completed this work."

"He was a eunuch?" Malone asked.

Pau nodded. "Quite an influential one, too. This manuscript still enjoys immense prestige and universal admiration. It remains the single best source that exists on the First Emperor. Two of its one hundred and thirty chapters specifically address Qin Shi."

"Written over a hundred years after he died," Malone said.

"You know your history."

Malone tapped his skull. "Got a mind for details."

"You are correct. It was written a long time after the First Emperor died. But it is all we have." Pau motioned to the top silk, brown and stained as if tea had been spilled upon it. Faded characters, written in columns, were visible.

"May I read you something?" Pau asked.

And the First Emperor was buried at Mount Li.

From the time he came to the throne, Qin Shi had begun the excavation and building at Mount Li, and when gathered into his hands the whole empire, more than 700,000 workers were sent to the site to toil.

Through three underground springs they dug, and they poured molten bronze to make the outer coffin and to make the models of the palaces, pavilions, and government offices with which the tomb was filled.

And there were marvelous tools and precious jewels and rare objects brought from afar. Artisans were ordered to fashion crossbows as traps so that any grave robbers would meet sudden death.

Using quicksilver, they made the hundred rivers of the land, the Yellow and Yangtse, and the wide sea, and machines kept the waters in motion. The constellations of the heavens were reproduced above and the regions of the earth below.

Torches were made of oil to burn for a long time. Concubines without sons were ordered to follow the emperor in death, and of the artisans and workers not one was allowed to emerge alive.

Vegetation was planted so that it appeared to be a mountain.

"No ruler before, or since," Pau said, "has created a memorial of this magnitude. There were gardens, enclosures, gates, corner towers, and immense palaces. Even a terra-cotta army, thousands of figures who stood guard, in battle formation, ready to defend the First Emperor. The tomb complex's total circumference is over twelve kilometers."

"And the point?" Cassiopeia asked, impatience in her voice. "I caught the reference to torches made of oil that burned for a long time."

"That mound still exists, just a kilometer away from the terra-cotta warrior museum. It's now only fifty meters high--half has eroded away--but inside remains the tomb of Qin Shi."

"Which the Chinese government will not allow to be excavated," Malone said. "I've read news accounts. The site is filled with mercury. Quicksilver, as you said. They used it to simulate the rivers and oceans on the tomb floor. Ground testing a few years ago confirmed high amounts of mercury in the soil."

"You are correct, there is mercury there. And I was the one, decades ago, who wrote the report that led to the no-excavation rule."

Pau stood and walked across the room to another hanging silk image, this one of a portly man in long robes.

"This is the only representation of Qin Shi that has lasted. Unfortunately, it was created centuries after his death, so its accuracy is doubtful. What has survived is how one of Qin's closest advisers described him. He has the proboscis of a hornet and large, all-seeing eyes. His chest is like that of a bird of prey and his voice like that of a jackal. He is merciless, with the heart of a tiger or a wolf."

"How does any of this help us?" Malone asked.

A satisfied look came to Pau Wen's aged face. "I have been inside the tomb of Qin Shi."

Chapter Thirty-Nine.

LANZHOU, CHINA

TANG SHOWED LEV SOKOLOV WHAT WAS SCURRYING AROUND inside the bucket. The Russian's eyes went wild.

"Active ones," Tang said.

Sokolov still lay on the floor, strapped to the chair, his legs folded above his head, eyes to the ceiling, like an astronaut in his capsule. His head began to shake back and forth, pleading for everything to stop. Sweat beaded on the Russian's forehead.

"You have lied to me for the last time," Tang said. "And I protected you. Officials here in Gansu wanted you arrested. I prevented that. They wanted to banish you from the province. I said no. They called you a dissident, and I defended you. You have been nothing but a problem. Even worse, you've caused me personal embarrassment. And that I cannot allow to go unanswered."

His three men stood beside the chair, two at the legs, one at the head. He motioned and they gripped Sokolov so his body would stay in position. Tang quickly approached and righted the metal pail, pressing down hard, holding the bucket in place, the rats trapped underneath, now scurrying around on Sokolov's bare chest. The Russian's head whipped left and right, held tight by Tang's man, the eyes closed in agony.

Tang pressed his own chest against the bucket's end to secure it in place and brought the ropes lying on the floor up, securing the pail to Sokolov's body.

Tang allowed a moment for things to calm, but Sokolov continued to struggle.

"I would suggest lying still," Tang said. "You'll agitate them less."

The Russian seemed to gain some measure of control and stopped thrashing, though the three men retained a firm hold.

Tang stepped to the table and retrieved one of the last two items he'd brought with him from the oil platform. A small, handheld instant-ignition torch fueled with acetylene. The kind of tool utilized for quick fixes on the rigs. He opened its brass valve. Gas hissed from the tip. He stood the torch upright on the table, gripped the final item, a striker, and sparked the end to life.

He adjusted the flame to blue hot.

He crouched down and allowed the heat to lick the bucket's bottom, then painted the sides of the pail with the flame. "As it warms, the rats instinctively shun the metal. They'll quickly sense a desperate need to leave their prison. But there's no way out. Everything is resistant to their claws, except your flesh."

He heard the rats popping against the inside of the bucket, squealing at their predicament.

Sokolov screamed behind the tape, but only a murmur could be heard. The Russian's restrained body was knotted in tension and wet with perspiration. Tang kept heating the bucket, careful not to make it too hot, just enough to entice the rats to attack the flesh.

Sokolov's face squeezed with anguish. Tears welled in the Russian's eyes and rained from the edges.

"The rats will claw down to your stomach," he said. "They will burrow through your flesh, trying to escape the heat." He kept stroking the metal with the flame. "They can't be blamed. Any creature would do the same."

Sokolov screamed again--a long, deep murmur muted by the tape. Tang imagined what was happening. The rats scratching furiously, aided by their teeth, softening the flesh that might allow them to escape faster.

The trick, as Tang had been taught, was knowing when to stop. Too long and the victim would receive severe, perhaps even fatal wounds from the infections the rats left behind. Too short and the point would not be made, and repeating the process was problematic, unless it didn't matter if the subject survived.

Here, it did.

He withdrew the torch.

"Of course," he said, keeping his eyes as gentle as his voice, "there is an alternative to this, if you're willing to listen."

Chapter Forty.