Closer now he saw the phenomenon was contained within a gentle stream that was flowing under a fissure in an otherwise impenetrable wall at the back of the cave. Reaching down, he scooped some of the water in his hand.
He had thought perhaps the glow was coming from some bioluminescent algae on the rocks of the riverbed, but he was surprised to see it was the water itself that was sparkling and glowing. It looked a little like the new electric lamps running down the street outside his home in Kensington, but there was something almost magical about this. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.
Tracking the flow of the river up to the wall at the back of the cave he realized the glow was stronger the closer the water was to the wall. He wondered what was beyond the wall with a heavy heart. It was solid, and the crack at the base allowing the water into the cave was no more than a quarter of an inch high.
He sighed, finished his notes and slipped the journal back in his pocket. An hour or so beside a regimental campfire should have its pages — and his clothes — perfectly dry again… but that was presuming he could find the regiment. He pushed himself up on his one remaining boot and readied himself to leave the cave, and that was when he saw them.
Right before his eyes on the cave wall, a yard or so above the silvery, glowing water were dozens of the strangest symbols he had ever seen. Someone had carefully carved them into the rock wall and their diligent turns and flourishes could almost be described as art.
“What’s this then?” he said, peering in closer.
Too dark.
He lifted another handful of the water up to the wall and illuminated the symbols. He knew they weren’t Chinese or Hindi, but other than that he didn’t recognize them and had no way of making an identification. “Old Langley might know,” he said, and pulled his journal out one more time.
Beneath the description and drawings he had made of the cave and river, Stanhope noted the coordinates of the area, and then he carefully copied the symbols on the cave wall until they were reproduced inside his journal. After slipping the leather bound book back inside his jacket pocket, he turned and faced the entrance to the cave.
Outside it was raining, and a fog was descending into the valley. He made sure he had all of his things before trudging back along the riverbank with his swollen ankle. He would only know how far he had travelled when he was regaling his friends back at the regiment — presuming they had won the battle.
And presuming he ever found them again.
1
John Mitchell Decker sighed and pushed the brim of his hat an inch or so up his forehead with a weary forefinger. He was standing on the docks in Kowloon Bay opposite Peter Ying, who was jabbing him in the chest with the tip of his pen.
“Tell me again,” Ying said, “just how my entire inventory was destroyed?”
Decker looked over his shoulder at the enormous Grumman Albatross flying boat that was now gently bobbing up and down in the bay behind him. Written in large black letters on the gunmetal grey tailfin were the words AVALON CARGO. “I told you, it was just a bit of turbulence.”
Ying was astonished. “Just a bit of turbulence? There couldn’t have been any more damage if you had flown upside down all the way from Jiangxi!”
“You can’t help clear air turbulence, Peter. There’s a disclaimer in the contract.”
“Not good enough, Mitch,” he said. “You think I’m going to pay you for this delivery? I paid Avalon Cargo a lot of money to import ten thousand lucky cats, not a hundred thousand pieces of lucky cats.” He turned his angry face down once again to the box Decker had hauled off the Albatross for the inspection. “Look at them — just smashed pieces of ceramic… worthless dust!”
“Turns out they weren’t so lucky, I guess.”
Ying looked like he was about to explode. “Are you trying to be funny?”
Decker looked down at the box of shattered maneki-neko ceramic Japanese cats and sighed once again. The cats were believed to bring good luck to their owners, but this time they had badly failed in their duty. To Western eyes they looked like they were waving goodbye, but this was because in Japan and China the palm-down finger-fold gesture was used to beckon, not wave. The factory owner in Jiangxi had told him that when he’d collected them.
He turned back to Ying. “No, Peter… I am not trying to be funny.”
“I want all my money back, Mitch. I gave you Top Dollar!”
“You paid me squat, which is why you hired me in the first place. All the other guys charge ten times more.”
“Maybe if you didn’t fly this old piece of junk, this disaster wouldn’t have happened.”
“Hey! Don’t talk about the Avalon like that, Peter. She doesn’t like it.” Decker was used to taking heat from above thanks to his years as an officer in the United States Marine Corp, but that was then and this was now, and Peter Ying was definitely not ‘above’ him, but a customer he was supposed to keep happy.
Ying looked at Decker for a moment, unsure if the American was being serious or not. “Nevertheless, I want a refund.”
“There must be something wrong with the quality of the ceramic, Peter. You know that. How many times have I done cargo jobs for you?”
“I don’t know, but this is the last time.”
It was then he saw a good-looking, tall woman with brown hair and a very heavy-set young man in a baseball cap approaching them. They were walking as fast as you can go without breaking into a jog, and both were looking over their shoulders. The man in particular seemed very anxious about a huddle of men gathering around a cutter at the end of the docks.
When they reached Decker and Peter Ying they stopped and the man in the baseball cap let out a long sigh of frustration. “We’re buggered, Lena.”
The woman looked at him with wide eyes. When she spoke, Decker thought she sounded like a queen. “Do you really think so?”
“Uh-huh — they’re already here… and… oh shit!”
The men who were huddled around the boat had started to peer down the docks at them, and one of them started to make a phone call.
The woman turned to Peter Ying. “Is this your boat plane?”
Ying cocked his head at her and took a step back. He looked distracted. “What? No, it’s not my damned plane. Who are you?”
“So it’s yours then?” As she turned to Decker she looked him slowly up and down in the way a countess might regard a mud-caked groundskeeper who had strayed into the drawing room at high tea.
Decker rubbed the sweat off his forehead with a greasy palm and gave the look right back to her. “Who the hell are you, lady?”
“I’m Selena Moore,” she said, breathless. “Professor Selena Moore. How do you do?”
Decker looked down at her hand and brought his up to shake it, wiping the engine grease off on his pants first. “I’m John… John Decker. Friends call me Mitch.”
“And this is your plane?”
Decker turned and looked at the man beside Selena. “And who are you?”
The woman nearly stamped her foot. “I just asked you a question!”
Peter Ying laughed at the look on Decker’s face, but the American was less amused. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but…”
“Name’s Riley Carr, mate,” the man in the baseball cap said in a broad Australian accent. His face burst into a wide, tanned grin all full of white teeth and he offered his hand to shake.