Forbidden City

She acted as if she hadn’t seen the tattoo, but dark suspicions formed in her thoughts. She suddenly didn’t feel as comfortable and confident as she had.

“Here?” Huangfu pointed at the ground in front of her.

Annja nodded, capped her canteen, and picked up her trenching tool.

“How deep, do you think?” Huangfu shoveled like a machine.

“A foot or two at least. This far into the forest, foliage and dead trees are going to compost and add to the humus layer. If you leave anything on the ground long enough, nature has a tendency to pull it deep and cover it over.”

They dug rhythmically. The shovel blades bit into the earth and turned it easily.

Ban Zexu had suffered a harsh death that had mirrored the men who’d worked the Cooley Mine. Jealousy, fired by desperation, had turned the white miners against everyone else. Chinese and Mexican miners had become targets.

In 1875, little less than a year after the murder of the Cooley Mine workers, Ban Zexu and his small group of miners had been burned out, as well. The stories varied. Some said it was over a slight made by one of the Chinese miners, and others insisted it was over a woman. There was even a story that Ban Zexu and his friends had struck it rich, though no gold had ever turned up. Locked inside the building they’d lived in while working different claims, the Chinese miners had had no chance when the building had been torched.

As Annja worked, she tried not to think about that horrible death. Or about the tattoo she’d seen on Huangfu’s arm. She still wasn’t sure what that meant; only that Huangfu was more than he seemed, and that waiting for Bart to conduct a deeper background check might have been a good idea.

L ATE INTO THE DAY and almost three feet down, the light was fading fast and Annja’s certainty about her calculations was ebbing away as the dirt piled higher and higher. Suddenly her shovel struck burned wood. She saw the black coals stark against the lighter colored dirt.

Rotting wood would have been absorbed back into the earth. But the burned wood had been carbonized and would take longer to leach back into the soil and break down.

“Huangfu,” Annja said.

He looked at her. Although he hadn’t said anything, Annja had felt the wave of exasperation coming from him. He wasn’t a man used to failure.

“We’ve found it.” Annja pointed at the coals left from the fire over one hundred and thirty earlier. “We must go slowly now.”

Huangfu nodded. “What about the belt plaque I showed you?”

Is that what this is really about? Annja knew she couldn’t ask, but she was certain that retrieving the bones of his ancestor wasn’t the man’s real goal.

“If it’s jade or steatite, it’ll break easily. Just go slow.”

Huangfu looked at the sky. “I would like to finish tonight.”

So would I, Annja thought. “If it’s possible, we will. But hurrying and ruining everything we might find isn’t the answer.”

Reluctantly, Huangfu nodded.

“Shovelful by shovelful. Feel your way into the ground, then shake it out so you can see anything you might have found. When we reach a body, we’ll work with our hands.” Annja showed him, slowly scooping up the earth and spreading it out across the hill she’d created.

Huangfu did as she directed, and they continued digging.

F ORTY MINUTES LATER , Huangfu found a body. “Here,” he said. Excitement tightened his voice.

Tossing her shovel onto the dirt hill beside the hole she’d dug, Annja joined him. Enough light remained that they didn’t need flashlights, but they would soon. The air was turning colder and their breath showed constantly.

Dropping to her knees, Annja looked at the rib cage Huangfu had uncovered. Carrion beetles had stripped the bones of flesh before the earth had claimed the body. Soot still stained the ivory.

Removing her digital camera from her backpack, Annja took several pictures. Huangfu stood by impatiently.

“We’ll take pictures as we go,” Annja explained as she replaced the camera in the backpack. “We can search through them later. They might help us discover if we missed anything.”

Annja slipped her gloved hands around the bones and gently began disinterring them. She placed them carefully beside the hole, keeping them together as she found them.

Huangfu watched her. “Do these bones belong only to one man?”

“So far.” Finding the pelvis, Annja headed in the other direction, searching for the skull. More bones created a skeleton on the ground.

“I can help.”

“Keep the bones in order as we find them.” Annja handed over the collarbone.

“Why?”

“We’ll learn more if we do. How many people were in here. Maybe who they were. If we post this on the Internet, we might find others who are looking for lost family members. Information works best if it’s keep neat and arranged.”

Annja found the skull and lifted it free of the earth. “Your ancestor might have escaped that night.”

“According to the journal that came into my possession that did not happen. Ban Zexu died here.”

“Judging from the roundness of this skull, and the arched profile, and widely spaced round eye sockets, this person was of Mongoloid decent.”

“Chinese?”

“That’s one possibility. Pathology isn’t an exact science when it comes to race. We can identify the three different racial characteristics of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid.”

Annja handed Huangfu the skull, noting that the man took it without hesitation. That wasn’t a normal reaction for most people when they were confronted with such a situation. She knew beginner archaeologists who took years to get over the queasiness of handling dead bones fresh from a dig.

Huangfu placed the skull at the top of the skeleton they were building.

Annja continued digging, going back toward the pelvis now. Noting the narrowness of the pelvis and the sciatic notch that allowed the sciatic nerve and others to go on through to the leg, she also knew the remains were male. Pathology was more exact about sex and age.

Below the pelvis there was a leather bag that hadn’t yet rotted away. But her attention was riveted on the rectangular shape she’d spotted. Even with the gloves and though the rectangular shape looked more like a clod or a rock, she knew what it was.

Excitement filled her as always. Every discovery she’d made affected her the same way. She hoped that would never change.

“Is that the plaque?” Huangfu asked.

“I think so.” Annja breathed out and started brushing dirt from the piece. With the shadows in the hole they’d dug, she couldn’t clearly see the piece, but she saw enough of it to note the stylized tiger poised with its ears flattened to its head and one clawed paw raised to strike. Scythian art stylings, picked up by some of the people they traded with—including the Chinese, often showed fierce animals.

“Let me see,” her client said.

Annja was loath to let go of the prize. The memory of the tattoo hidden on Huangfu’s arm disturbed her thoughts and took away some of the joy of discovery.

The unmistakable ratcheting of a rifle bolt seating a round in the chamber caused Annja and Huangfu to freeze. Glancing up toward the sound, Annja saw three armed men emerge from the gathering darkness.

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