“Ah, I see,” the princess said with a small laugh. “I am willing to do this thing for you, Walther. I can sense you are a man of power. A magician. And I have need of such if I am to correct the mistakes I made when last I walked the earth.”
Femi raised both hands and a strange silence filled the room. Lunt held his breath, sensing the awe-inspiring events that were about to transpire. And then, ever so faintly, came a stirring. It became louder until it sounded like a stuck door being forced open. A foul stench filled the air and Lunt covered his mouth and nose with a hand.
The mummies in the room jerked to life, the sunken pits where their eyes had once been now glowing with a yellow light. With shambling feet and jerking movements, they pushed their way out of the caskets in which they had been propped, moving to stand before Femi. There were eight of them in all, powerful monsters of dark power.
Lunt nodded with excitement. “I can get you more mummies. The group I work with has collected lots of them. If you can resurrect them and control them… then we’ll be unstoppable.”
Femi shrugged. “I am already unstoppable.” The princess tilted her head back as two of the mummies came forward, draping her in finery they’d taken from a mannequin. “And when your enemies are dead, you will owe me, Walther Lunt. You will owe me, body and soul.”
Chapter III
Shanghai
Shanghai, China
“This is awful,” Eun said under his breath, staring down at the plate of eggs and bacon.
Samantha, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, shoveled a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth and grinned around her food. “The breakfast or the hotel?”
“Shanghai,” Eun answered. He kept his voice low, not wanting to disturb the conference going on at the other end of the table. Lazarus, Kelly and Agnes were staring at a map and talking animatedly. Morgan was near them but not involved in whatever they were arguing over. The former confidence man looked dapper in his traveling suit, sipping at cup of coffee. “I visited once when I was a child, before we moved to the States. My father told me that this was a cesspool, a breeding ground for pure evil.”
“That seems a bit extreme,” Samantha said. “I’m excited about being here.”
Eun snorted. “Yeah, why wouldn’t you be? There’s human waste in the streets and you can’t go ten feet without stumbling into an opium den.”
Morgan surprised Eun by scooting his chair a bit closer. Evidently, he’d been paying more attention to them than Eun had realized. “We live in Sovereign City, remember? All of us should be used to crime and filth.”
“This is different,” Eun countered. “Sovereign’s like a diamond that’s gotten soiled. There’s still a chance you could polish it up and restore what it once was. But here… there’s no chance of that.”
“Shanghai is called the Paris of the Orient and with good reason. From what I’ve heard, the real seediness developed from contact with the West.”
Eun sat back in his chair and sighed. “I’m just being grumpy, I suppose.”
Samantha reached out and touched Eun’s knee. “We understand. None of us enjoyed the flight over here.” Memories of three days spent inside a chartered cargo plane flashed through all of their minds. The plane had flown over the Pacific at good speed but it had seemed to take forever.
Morgan gestured towards Eun’s mostly untouched breakfast. “You should eat something. The food’s not going to get any better where we’re going.”
Lazarus stood up, seizing everyone’s attention. He was dressed in a khaki shirt much like Samantha’s, though it fit him quite differently, stretched taut against his muscles. A pith helmet sat on the helmet, holding down one corner of the map, and a leopard-skin band surrounded it. “Kelly and I have come up with a route that should work for us. We’ll travel by train to the base of Shen Shei Mountains. From there we’ll go by road along the cliffs and end up at the Great Wall at Wanshan Pass.”
Morgan whistled. “That’s a long way,” he said, staring at the lines they’d highlighted on the map.
“Nearly a thousand miles,” Kelly confirmed. She looked refreshed and ready for adventure. Samantha felt a bit envious of her. “It’s the traditional route,” she continued, “and it’s the best. Once we pass through the gateway in the wall, we have another long trek to make before we reach the capital in Urga. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the necessary permits while we’re there, using the museum’s pull. If we don’t, then the expedition is pretty much over.”
Agnes chewed her bottom lip, obviously thinking about her missing sister. Lazarus glanced at her and said, “Sometimes money can help grease the wheels of bureaucracy. I’ve brought along plenty.”
Agnes smiled gratefully and Lazarus continued laying out the group’s plan. “If we get the permits, we’ll be able to acquire camels and head into the Gobi Desert. That’s where we hope to find Maggie Drake and Whip Marshall.”
“We don’t have anything else to go on?” Eun asked. “The desert’s a pretty big place.”
“We hope to acquire more clues en route,” Lazarus said. “And obviously we have to be on the lookout for any spies from The Illuminati. The ones I fought in the museum were professional killers so we have to be prepared for anything.”
Samantha was listening to her employer’s words but she was also casting a wary glance around the hotel dining room. The majority of the diners were Westerners, given that this hotel catered to Americans and British. None of them seemed to paying Lazarus and his friends any real attention but Samantha couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. Over the years that she’d worked with Assistance Unlimited, she’d learned to trust her instincts and her personal danger sense was going crazy.
Morgan, ever attentive to changes in Samantha’s mood, whispered to her, “What’s wrong, doll?”
For once, Samantha didn’t even bother correcting him. Normally, she preferred that men didn’t refer to her by any kind of pet nickname. “I think we’re under surveillance.”
Morgan looked about, a bit more obviously than Samantha would have liked. “Sure you’re not just spooked because Lazarus brought up The Illuminati?”
The sound of Lazarus folding up the map gave Samantha an excuse not to answer. She looked up as an Asian man stepped to the table. Samantha tensed, wondering if this was the person who had set off her mental warning bells but when he smiled, she relaxed.
“Miss Emerson,” he said in perfect English. “I wanted to inform you that all of your equipment has been loaded onto the flatcars and you are ready to leave at your convenience.”
Kelly gave the man a quick hug and then introduced him to the others. “This is Andy Hui. He’s an old friend of the family and has helped put together numerous expeditions for the museum. There’s no way we could have gotten this one underway so quickly without his help.”
“It was nothing,” Andy said modestly. “I just hope that you know what you’re getting into. The situation in Mongolia is tense right now.” A change came over Andy’s face and he tentatively pulled a small envelope out of a pocket. “This is for you, as well.”
“What is this?” Kelly asked, opening the envelope to reveal an invitation of some kind.
“These days I mostly work for a man named Yip Sai Wing. He owns a Western-style nightclub called The Den. It’s very popular with wealthy Americans. Someone told him that the famous Lazarus Gray was in Shanghai and he wanted me to invite all of you to visit his club tonight.”