Annja stowed her backpack in the overhead compartment above her first-class seat. Then she sat down next to Roux. The old man read the backs of the novels he'd purchased, then put three of them away. From what Annja could see, Roux's tastes included fantasy, science fiction, Western, and thriller. None of it was especially mind-expanding.
After buckling into the seat, Annja turned to him. "Now you're going to tell me."
Roux sighed and spoke in Latin.
Annja made the transition effortlessly.
Roux asked her for a picture of the back of the belt plaque and she retrieved it from her bag.
When he had the image in his hands, Roux scanned it before he spoke. "The inscription on the back is a code."
"How do you know that?"
"What else could it be?"
"A family history.Just like it reads."
"But it's not. It's a trifle complicated, and you were hampered by being unable to read Chinese. Mandarin, actually."
Annja blew out a breath of frustration. "The man I had translate it said it was Cantonese."
"You had someone translate this?" Roux frowned.
"Yes. I'd just seen Huangfu Cao gun down three men in cold blood. I was more than a little motivated to investigate."
"Did that man know what this pertained to?"
"No. He only knew part of the history. The belt plaque was rumored to be cursed."
"Knowing what I know about it, I have no doubt that it is."
"Maybe you could share."
"The inscription is in Cantonese. However, the code is written in Mandarin."
"It should be in Classical Chinese. That's the language Emperor Qin shifted everyone to when he conquered the Seven Warring States," Annja said.
"Yes. I have to admit, that confused me for a while, as well. I didn't see the message hidden within the other message." Roux shrugged. "But I think deviousness comes more effortlessly to me than to you." He touched a series of lines in the lower corner. "This is the key. It says, 'Even before the ashes in the burning pit became cold, riots had begun in Shandong. It turned out that Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were both uneducated.'" He paused. "I don't know what that means."
The inscription teased Annja's tired mind. Just when she was about to give up on identifying the reference, it suddenly came to her. "That's a poem."
Roux looked askance at the Chinese characters. "If you insist."
"It is. Let me get my computer and I'll look up the file." Annja started to release her seat belt.
Roux gripped her arm. "You're going to have to wait."
Only then did Annja realize the plane was in motion. She vaguely remembered the quick, professional pre-flight intro. She closed her eyes and thought back, managing to place the words on the computer screen in a mental image.
"It was written by a poet from the Tang Dynasty. Zhang Jie, I think. Something like that."
Roux shook his head and smiled. "I don't see how you can remember things like that."
"Because I've trained myself to." Whenever working on a project, Annja built a mental timeline for it and constantly added facts to it, shoehorning them in. She'd always had a near-photographic memory and hadn't had to study much to get through college.
"You said that poem is the key. The key to what?" Annja asked.
"To the characters in the inscription to pay attention to. When you have your printout, I'll show you."
****
Only a few minutes later, the plane leveled off. Annja unsnapped the seat belt and retrieved her computer. Placing it across her knees, she opened it and powered it up. A few clicks later, she had the obverse image of the belt plaque on the screen.
"Here is the key." Roux indicated the four Chinese characters in the lower right corner.
Annja had assumed they were the name of the artist or the name of a family.
"Now look at the placement of the fish icons." Roux pointed to the fish symbols standing on end that Michelle and Harry Kim had pointed out.
"They overlap different characters. How do you know which one a fish is indicating?"
"It's a matter of trial and error." Roux flagged down a flight attendant and ordered a whiskey sour. "Much as you would do a cryptoquote. If one of the characters didn't make sense, I threw it out. That's what took me so long this morning. Would you like anything?"
"Water." Annja remembered the sheets of paper Roux had filled while she'd talked to Professor Hu. "There is a message in the code?"
"Of course there's a message. That's how codes work."
The drinks arrived. Annja opened the bottled water and drank. "What does the message say?"
Settling into his plush seat, Roux frowned at the small screen that had flipped down in front of him. The screen showed an in-flight commercial, offering a free television show immediately afterward.
"The belt plaque belonged to a man who betrayed Sha Wu Ying."
"How was Sha Wu Ying betrayed?"
"The man who owned that belt plaque was one of Sha Wu Ying's most trusted assassins. Before that, he was a monk who lived in disgrace."
Annja was intrigued. "What kind of monk?"
"They were from Chang'an. Have you heard of them?"
"Yes." Annja was somewhat familiar with the order from her martial arts classes. "The name means perpetual peace."
"I wouldn't know. I've never really fancied the history behind open-handed fighting. I've dabbled in it, of course. Anyone who's traveled as much as I have would be a fool not to."
Annja didn't bother to mention the health and mental benefits derived from martial arts. "Chang'an was located near Xi'an."
Roux smiled. "That explains it then."
"What?"
"Xi'an was the easternmost end of the Silk Road. During different periods, the Chinese emperors called upon the various monasteries to provide warriors to protect them or wage war on their enemies."
"Why was the monk disgraced?"
"His name was Wan Shichong. He made the mistake of falling in love with a nun. Knowing they would never be allowed to live together, they ran. Eventually they went to LoulanCity. There Wan Shichong took up employment with Sha Wu Ying."
"As an assassin?"
"The young monk was trained in martial arts. It was probably a good fit. At that time, war was everywhere. Qin Shi Huang was forcibly uniting the Seven Warring States. Eventually, though, Wan Shichong was torn trying to serve two masters. He had sworn loyalty to Emperor Qin, but he'd also sworn loyalty to Sha Wu Ying."
"He had to betray one of them."
Roux nodded. "In the end, he chose to betray Sha Wu Ying."
"Why?"
"Because he believed that Qin was the future of China, and his wife was pregnant with their first child. By this time, he'd also come to suspect that Sha Wu Ying was also Tochardis."
"What led him to that conclusion?"
"Artifacts that Sha Wu Ying had that had once belonged to the Scythians. The belt plaque Sha Wu Ying had chosen as a standard was another."
"So he betrayed Sha Wu Ying?"
"Yes. Wan Shichong went to Emperor Qin's court physicians and got exposed to a plague victim. At the monastery, he'd been trained in medicines that would help him stave off death."
"Plague?As in bubonic?"
"Or measles or smallpox. All were quite deadly."
The thought of the monk deliberately exposing himself to such a sickness sent a cold chill through Annja. "That's insane."
"Sha Wu Ying was a feared man. Desperate times required desperate measures."
"Did it work?"
"When Wan Shichong was certain he was sick with the illness, he returned to the City of Thieves. That was the other name for the City of the Sands. He went among the assassins and spread the plague. Evidently it didn't take long to manifest. The sick thieves wandered out into the desert and were cut down by Emperor Qin's men."
"Wan Shichong led the emperor's men to Sha Wu Ying's refuge?"
"Yes."
"Then how was the location of the City of the Sands lost?"
"All of this took place while Emperor Qin was out taking the last tour of his country."
"Sha Wu Ying had succeeded in bribing one of the emperor's closest advisors into poisoning him."
"What about the warriors who went with Wan Shichong?"
"They contracted the disease. The ones who didn't die in the desert were killed as soon as they reached the ImperialCity. None of them made it through the gates."
"That wasn't exactly the payoff they'd planned on."
"By that time, news of Emperor Qin's death had spread and the country was in turmoil."
"What happened to Sha Wu Ying?"
"According to the inscription, he died inside that underground city."
"Did Wan Shichong survive?"
"He did. But he carried the disease home with him. His wife died from it, but his daughter survived. He lived out the end of his days and never told anyone where the City of Thieves was."
"There was no map?"
Roux frowned at her. "Did you see a map?"
"No, but I thought – "
"There was no map. I decoded the secret message. I suggest you figure out a way to find that hidden city."
Irritation bubbled up inside Annja. "Actually, if you just want to keep hidden whatever Sha Wu Ying took all those years ago, not finding the City of the Sands would serve the same purpose."
"Except that there is a map."
Annja took a deep breath and counted to ten. "You just said there was no map."
"Not on the belt plaque. But there is one. Wan Shichong left one for his daughter and told her she could find the hidden city if she ever wanted to."
"Where did he leave the map?"
"It's in the form of a toy. That's all I know."
A toy. Annja leaned back in her seat, sipped her water, and studied her notes on the computer.
Roux turned pages in the paperback Western. "I'm kind of sad that I missed this."
"That book?"
"The time period.The Wild West. I stayed in Europe during those years. I always imagined what it would be like to meet a cowboy. It was a very interesting period of colonial expansion, you know."
Ignoring him, Annja opened files and started sifting through her research. She brought up maps of LoulanCity, both present and past, and started trying to think like Sha Wu Ying, the Dancing Shadow of Death.