Carefully, they worked the slab free and scooted it to the side. Beams of morning sunlight filtered through the canopy of forest above them cast the space beneath it in a golden glow. Beneath them lay an empty vault, six feet long, three wide, and four deep. The floor was lined with gray flagstone, and a symbol was etched in the center stone.
Alex sprang nimbly down into the vault and knelt over the symbol. “It’s the square and the compass, the Freemasonry symbol. But it looks like it was scratched into the surface in a hurry. Like they wanted it known that they’d been here.” He looked up at Stone and frowned. “Why would…”
He didn’t get to finish the question. At that moment, the floor beneath him gave way and, with a shout of surprise, he fell from sight.
Interlude 1
Brock Stone had been cold before, but this place was different. The wind sliced through his layers of clothing and numbed him to the bone. He moved robotically, his boots crunching through the frozen crust and plunging deep into the snow beneath. High above, a single cloud drifted across the azure sky like a ship adrift at sea. The sight filled him with sadness. It also strengthened his resolve.
He kept climbing, ascending the frozen slope with painstaking slowness. The stark white peak in the distance seemed to grow no closer. Not that he planned on going that far.
“Just a little bit farther.” It was a refrain had repeated at least twenty times since beginning his ascent. The truth was, the few locals who had been willing to talk with him had provided only a general idea of where his destination lay, and not a single guide had been willing to take the job, even after he offered to triple their pay.
In the distance, he caught a glimpse of something moving. He squinted, shielded his eyes. Something was moving up the surface of a sheer cliff up ahead. It appeared to be human, or at least roughly shaped like one. Perhaps a Tibetan macaque? He immediately dismissed the idea. The altitude was far too high, and if he didn’t miss his guess, the thing was closer to the size of a fully grown man. Perhaps that meant the monastery was close by!
“Hello!” he shouted. No response. “Can you help me?” The figure kept climbing.
With renewed vigor, Stone fought his way up the frozen slope, slipping and sliding but still moving upward until he finally reached the base of the cliff. Chest heaving from exertion, he took a few steps back and looked it up and down. The climber had vanished. Stone needed to hurry if he was to catch up.
“Would it have killed you to answer me?” he grumbled as he began his ascent. Stone had been climbing since his youth in Virginia, but this was one of the more challenging free climbs he had ever made. He picked out handholds and footholds that weren’t slick with ice and slowly worked his way up.
Despite long years of experience, Stone found the going slow. His muscles were weary from hours of mountaineering and the climb itself was fraught with peril. The person he had seen climbing had moved much faster. Probably the locals had created their own path, like the cliff dwellers of the American Southwest. The latter had also incorporated false trails in the form of superfluous handholds that led the climber off the path, so that someone who did not know the correct path could find himself stuck hundreds of feet off the ground. Hopefully, that would not be the case here.
About twenty feet from the top of the cliff he paused to catch his breath. He looked out at the white mountains. One imposing peak stood about above the others. It had been known by many names over the years. The Chines had dubbed it Shèngmǔ Fēng, which roughly translated to ‘Peak of the Goddess.’ Tibetans called the peak Chomolungma, or ‘Mother of the Universe.” In Sanskrit, it was Devgiri, meaning ‘Holy Mountain.’ But the English speaking world knew it as Mount Everest.
Named for British surveyor Sir George Everest, Everest was the tallest mountain in the world. None had yet reached its summit, though many had tried. But that mountain held no interest for Stone. He did not climb for glory.
It was only Stone’s sharp hearing that saved his life. He heard a soft sound above him, like someone tiptoeing barefoot on a hard surface. He glanced up to see a boulder come tumbling over the edge of the cliff directly above him.
He swung to the side, hanging on with one hand as the boulder tumbled by, missing him by inches. His shoulder wrenched under the burden of his full body weight, but he held on. Desperately he searched for a foothold but his boots found none. His free hand found a crack in the frozen rock and he forced his fingers inside. It wasn’t much of a grip, but it prevented him from plunging to his death.
All of his weight was now on his frozen fingers. His grip was slipping.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” he grunted, struggling to hang on. Suddenly, all the unanswered questions seemed insignificant in the face of death. The toe of his right boot caught on something — the remnants of a woody plant that had once grown from the cliff face.
Now secure in his position, he looked around, his eyes scanning the cliff, searching for the path he had followed once before. A shadow appeared above him. He tensed, but no more boulders fell. Instead, a rope dropped down beside him.
Smiling, Stone took hold of the lifeline and began to climb.
3-The Lumber Camp
Everyone looked up when Trinity Paige, clad in a khaki shirt, boots, and snug-fitting dungarees, strode into the middle of the camp. She saw confusion there, even curiosity, but little of the hunger one might expect from men who had been sequestered in a logging camp for Lord knew how long. Not that such looks would have stopped her. She had a job to do.
“That is one cutie patootie,” a young man whispered to the man standing beside him. “I wish she was my filly.”
“You have never ridden horse,” the man replied in a thick, German accent.
“Filly means a pretty dame,” the young man said, grinning.
“I know.” The German’s simple reply wiped the smile off the youth’s face and elicited laughter from all the lumberjacks within earshot.
Suppressing a grin, Trinity chose her target, not the biggest man in the group, but the meanest looking. She marched right up to him, her eyes locked on his.
“Do you have a foreman around here?” she snapped.
“What do you think?”
“I think you don’t know the answer to my question or else you’d have answered me.” She punctuated the rejoinder with a sly smile.
It worked. The man’s hard tone softened and there was a twinkle of amusement in his eye.
“You want Davis. He’s the big fellow who’s always sitting on his behind.” The fellow flicked a glance off to his left.
“Bosses. You should see the backside on mine.” She spread her hands a good three feet apart. It wasn’t true, but it got her a few laughs. It was better to have people laughing with you than laughing at you.
Davis examined her the way a man might look at an unexpected blister on his privates. For her part, Trinity examined and assessed him in an instant: big, soft, slack-jawed, vacant stare. Probably got this job because he knew someone, not because he was a good lumberjack. That might be bad for the crew but a plus for her. She had a nose for things that didn’t belong.
“I’m Trinity Paige, reporter for the Washington Scribe,” she said. “I’m here to investigate reports of deaths.”
Davis didn’t rise from his seat on a stump. He took a sip of coffee, swished it around, and spat it on the ground.
“Nobody’s died,” he said. “Those are just rumors.”
“How about Sam Price?” She posed the question loud enough for others to hear. You never knew who might be listening and what they might be able to tell you.