The Judas Strain - James Rollins [171]
“Nothing’s here,” Nasser said sourly.
Seichan recognized his attitude, read the hard stance to his posture. She doubted his patience would last until noon. Unless there was some real progress soon, she expected he would end things in the next hour. Order Gray’s parents killed. Execute all of them here. And move on.
Ever practical.
No damn imagination.
It made him a dull lover.
Ahead, Gray circled the altar a third time. He was drawn thin, covered in dust and dirt, black hair plastered to his forehead, sticking out in damp tufts. Dried blood caked at his collar, where he’d been pistol-whipped behind the ear by one of Nasser’s men back at the hotel.
He still refused to look at her.
It made her angry, mostly because it hurt, and she hated that even more. She sought that place of cold dispassion where she once easily lived, a dispassion that allowed her to sleep with Nasser to get what she needed, as she’d been trained to do.
Seichan turned her attention to the guards, going practical, strategizing some way out of here. The guards were mostly locals, including many former Khmer Rouge soldiers, long recruited by the Guild, gathered after the fall of the genocidal dictator Pol Pot. They would be fierce fighters. They guarded the four exits to the chamber, heading off in each cardinal direction. More men had taken posts throughout the ruins, discouraging tourists from disturbing them.
“According to what I read about this place, a giant statue of Buddha once rested here,” the monsignor announced, pacing Gray around the altar. Vigor waved an arm across the two rectangular slabs, stair-stepped one atop the other. “But when the religion changed to Hinduism, the Buddha was torn down and tossed into that large well we passed coming up here.”
The only other bits of decoration in the stone room were four more shadowy faces of the bodhisattva Lokesvara. Only these were all gazing inward, toward the altar and its missing Buddha. Kowalski leaned against one face, staring upward.
The great central tower of the Bayon rose above the altar, climbing forty meters. Cored through its center like a chimney, a square shaft cut straight up to the sky above. It was the only source of light.
“This has to be the place,” Gray said, finally stopping. “There has to be a way down from here.”
“Down to where?” Nasser asked.
Gray lifted a hand toward the monsignor. “Vigor mentioned how the foundations of this tower were buried underground. Deep. We need to find some access to those lower rooms. And I wager under the altar would be a good place to look.”
Vigor stepped next to him. “Why do you think it’s important?”
Gray swiped the hair from his brow, plainly weighing how much to say.
Nasser also read the man’s hesitation. “We’re past another hour mark.” He tapped a finger on his wristwatch. “Tick tock, Commander.”
Gray sighed. “The bas-relief we saw earlier. Of the Churning of the Milk. Every piece of the story was important. The snake, the frothing seas, the poison, the world threat, the glowing survivor. But one piece stood out as odd and unexplained. It didn’t fit with the others.”
“What’s that?” Nasser asked.
Seichan saw it pained Gray to speak. Each word came out with a wincing reluctance.
“The turtle,” Gray finally admitted.
Vigor scratched at his chin. “The turtle in the relief represents the god Vishnu, an incarnation of himself. In his turtle form, he supported Mount Meru as it was churned back and forth, to keep it from sinking.”
Gray nodded. “On the bas-relief, the turtle was carved beneath the mountain. Why a turtle?” He leaned and drew in the dust on the altar. He sketched a crude doodle of a mountain with a domed shell beneath it.
He tapped the shell. “What does this look like to you?”
Vigor leaned down. “A cave. Buried beneath the roots of the mountain.”
Gray stared up the shaft of light. “And the tower here represents that mountain.”
Seichan drew closer. “You think there is a cavern beneath this tower.