The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [107]
‘It could be hidden. In a cave, through a crevice - however many tourists have been there, I doubt they’ve crawled over every square inch of the entire peak.’
‘It doesn’t help us find it either, though,’ Eddie said.
‘I know. If I had the translation . . . wait a minute. I’m a dumbass.’ She looked at Kit’s laptop. ‘I can get the translation. Can I use your phone?’
One call to Lola in New York later, and - after telling the relieved PA that she and Eddie were okay - the IHA’s translation of the Talonor Codex sat in Kit’s inbox.
‘So computers do have their uses, then?’ joked Eddie.
‘For some things, yeah,’ Nina admitted as she scrolled through the text. ‘I don’t know why I’ve suddenly gotten this reputation as a Luddite, though. I’ve used computers to help me my entire career. It’s when you rely on them to think for you that you have a problem - as Khoil hopefully won’t find out until it’s way, way too late.’ She remembered something and gave her husband a scathing look. ‘Speaking of problems . . . we need to have a little discussion about your internet surfing habits.’
‘Eh?’
‘Khoil knows what you’ve been looking at. Everything. Qexia has a record. He showed me.’
‘Oh, that. Yeah, he mentioned it. And next time I see him, I’m going to kick his arse so hard that he’ll shit out of his mouth.’
Mac tried to hide a smile. ‘Something you want to share, Eddie?’ He put his hands on Nina’s shoulders and grinned. ‘Only with my wife.’
‘I don’t want to share . . . that,’ Nina protested.
‘I bet you’d like it once you tried it.’
‘I don’t want to try it! We shouldn’t need . . .’ she blushed, ‘props.’
He kissed the top of her head. ‘Such a prude.’
‘Shut up. Oh, here it is.’ She highlighted part of the text.
‘Talonor describes the part of the mountain where the priests said the Vault of Shiva is hidden. “A ridge, higher above us, many stadia distant across hard but passable terrain. It was marked by a notch like that in the edge of a damaged blade.” Everything in military terms again,’ she remarked to Eddie.
‘Can we use that to work out the Vault’s location?’ Kit asked.
‘We should be able to, since we know where the temple is. Do you have Google Earth or something on your laptop?’
He did; a few minutes later, the screen showed a virtual view of Kedarnath mountain from the village of the same name. Off to the northeast, there was indeed a ridge with what could be described as a notch cut into it, though the relatively low resolution meant it could just as easily be a glitch of the rendering system.
‘The ridge is, let’s see . . . about three and a half miles from the village,’ said Nina. ‘The Vault’s supposedly somewhere up there.’
Eddie brought the camera higher, pulling back for an aerial view. ‘It says the village is at about three and a half thousand metres, but the ridge is . . .’ He moved the cursor across the screen. ‘Christ, it’s almost six kilometres up in places.’
‘Steep climb,’ noted Mac. ‘You’d have to take it slowly, or risk getting altitude sickness.’
‘That’d explain why the priests needed a full day to get to the Vault, I guess,’ said Nina. ‘But they wouldn’t have had anything close to modern mountaineering gear, so there must be a way that’s passable by foot. Could they have gone through the notch?’
‘Depends how big it is.’ Eddie indicated the angular graphic on the screen. ‘That doesn’t tell us anything. Could be fifty metres deep, or five hundred. We’d need to see it for real.’
‘What are the chances of that?’ Nina asked Kit. ‘You said that Eddie’s no longer Public Enemy Number One - are we free to travel?’
‘You really want to go to Kedarnath?’ he asked. ‘Is that a good idea?’
‘Whatever the Khoils are planning, it seemed to be on a deadline, otherwise they wouldn’t have been in such a desperate rush to get hold of the Codex. And they both seem pretty smart - they might not be archaeologists, but they’ll figure out that Mount Kailash isn’t the right place sooner rather than later. And when they do, they’ll start looking for other possibilities. Since they’re both devout