Chapter 60

Javier forced the group to walk quickly through the forest. He had overheard Tyler’s discussion with the authorities, so time, he understood, was running out. With frantic haste bordering on obsession, he hiked through the undergrowth. He growled and turned his head left and right every time a twig broke under someone’s foot.

One of his men, too, looked nervous, making sure he covered a 360-degree area with his pistol as he whirled it around wildly.

Tyler’s thoughts drifted to Mary. He wished that the police would come fast enough to get her medical treatment. The wound hadn’t looked good, and his wife must have lost a tremendous amount of blood in a short amount of time.

After a few more minutes of marching through the trees, the group entered what Tyler had seen earlier.

Dave stared at one of the most outstanding Buddha shrines he had ever seen. Loose ground encircled it, indicating that the enormous thing had been largely concealed and buried, if not totally underground, for hundreds of years. So this was why the Lek-Mraphi residence was renovated, and they made rumours about moving the golden Buddha and its vast treasure to Europe, and those many fake chambers in Leba were made to make the story believable. Thinking about it, Dave realised how smart the plan was. The plan was to lure the hunters into thinking about the impossibility of keeping it here. It was a smart move to hide it in plain sight. The keepers had made sure that it was hidden well, though.

The forests had been somewhat flat up until they got to that point. There, the forest ground gave rise to a tiny hill with the immense statue pole at its base. Just beyond it, at the foot of the hillside, there was an opening to a cave.

Javier motioned towards the entrance and said, "Quickly, inside!"

The three hostages heeded the warning and swiftly scurried over to the entrance. It was a rift about six feet high and five feet wide. A wad of grass and mud lay next to it, insinuating the evidence that the passageway had been hidden for centuries. Javier removed a pen-sized military flashlight from a jeans pocket. One of his men did the same. "Go on, Tyler! Faster or Mary will be dead," he said, pushing the bleeding woman onto Tyler's side, which made him growl.

"One wrong move, cousin... one wrong move and you will be a widow," Javier smirked.

"Mary, are you—" Tyler halted when Javier's gun pointed to her head.

"Move, Tyler, move fucking now, and don't look back!"

"But she is weak. She needs my—"

"Help her, and she is dead." To make his point, Javier fired the gun at her feet, which made Mary scream.

"Ok! Stop scaring her, asshole!"

Mary wanted to cry and be done with the pain, but she knew she just couldn't give up yet. Moving without pain or aches was just one thing she used to take for granted. Today her muscles feel as though they have been flash-burned with acid from the inside—just sufficient to make them move like the living cells have been replaced by ageing rubber bands, thick and twisted. Plus, her vision became blurry by the minute. The pain in her shoulder was getting worse. The ache was dull, as if some lazy torturer were standing right behind her, only applying enough pressure to be an annoyance. It sits there, just to the side of the right shoulder blade, towards the spine. She imagined herself lying on a large glass marble, and while it might be pleasant at first, it would quickly become painful. "Tyler, I'm fine. Just walk." She murmured under her breath, too weak to shout at her captors, who kept their guns on her head.

Tyler swallowed his anger and looked at Dave, who did the same. His fury smouldered like molten lava. "Do not hurt her, or I swear, Javier."

"Shut up and walk faster," Javier grumbled.

Dave turned around at the edge of the dark corridor. "Are we supposed to just go on through the dark?"

“Whatever suits you!” Javier replied with a fake pitying grin and tossed him the small light. "Lucky for you, I brought an extra. Now, move, boy!" He flicked the gun, herding Tyler and the others into the darkness.

Dave led the way in with Tyler just behind, followed by the stumpy men, then Mary and Javier. There were cobwebs everywhere, and it was a struggle just to retain sanity while brushing them away every five or six feet. The walls of the walkway were smoothly carved stone, cut with laser precision. Overhead, the awning was also a flawlessly scored surface. “This is magical," Dave grumbled. The awe-inspiring stillness shattered as they moved further underground. "Do you realise what we are seeing? No one has been inside this hall for maybe a hundred years. We are the first humans to set foot here in centuries."

"I'm not sure about that. My grandfather might have been here, but I'm not sure. It looks undisturbed," Tyler replied to him with the same wonderment.

"Yeah," Dave responded, only half interested. The current situation overwhelmed his admiration of the surroundings. The foyer came to a nook and whirled ninety degrees to the left, sloping down somewhat steeply. After about 15 feet, the same turn happened again, and the path went on below almost like a spiral staircase without steps.

After turning left numerous times and plummeting deeper into the dirt, the group came to a point where they could go no further. In front of them stood an embankment made from the same stone as the rest of the corridor. The variation was that the other embankments had no identifying markings. This one did.

Runic symbols and markings of remarkable detail jumped out of the solid gemstone canvas before them. There was no mistaking the inscriptions’ heritage. Various Thai deities, creatures, symbols, and other characters were easily recognisable, even for the most amateur of chroniclers.

"Wow! This is amazing," Dave whispered. Tyler reached out slowly so the two men with guns wouldn’t freak out. He traced the outline of a statue that he’d never seen before. It was a picture of some kind of small oval object, with diagrams of civilization and beasts surrounding it.

"That must be one of the alien spaceships that brought the Europeans over here to Thailand," Dave teased.

Javier looked at him wide-eyed. "Shut the fuck up, boy!"

Ignoring their captop, he said. "It looks like they brought a bunch of gold with them, probably as a payment."

"That would make sense," Tyler agreed. Then he whirled his attention to two anomalies on either side of the hallway.

Carved into the boulder were two sunken areas. Within each vacant seat sat a stone lion, with the same lion at the entrance. The two beasts faced each other from across the aisle, and both had a small description below them.

Javier was obviously irritated by their break in progress. "Borthman, what the fuck are you doing? Where the hell is the chamber? Where is the golden Buddha? There is nothing here! Where the fuck is the gold? The diamonds?"

"He always likes this?" Dave jerked his thumb towards Javier.

"You have no idea," Tyler chuckled, despite himself. "He has been like that since kindergarten. Believe me, he is that bitter. Chase and I used to kick the hell out of—"

"Shut up, Tyler!" Javier shouted. "I’m glad you two are comfortable with the fact that you are about to die," he threatened.

Tyler’s smile disappeared for a moment as he turned to face his cousin's deadly eyes. Obviously tired of the little trip down memory lane, Javier forced the pistol barrel into the back of Mary's head.

Both faces turned sombre. "Don't you dare, Javier?" Tyler was enraged.

"Try me, cousin, dear. Try and we'll see. Show me the treasure and I might spare her."

Dave spoke up. "Alright. Alright. Obviously, we can’t just move this wall. It’s got to be like two or three tonnes, easy." His eyes scanned the smooth surface that made Javier curious.

"What do these markings say? Can you translate it?" Javier urged and pushed Mary to Tyler's side as the latter caught her in time before her face met the floor. Tyler turned to her. "Sweetheart, are you OK?"

"I'm fine, just a little dizzy," Mary replied as she sat on the corner. "I need to rest. This wound is small, but... I'm losing blood."

"Here," Tyler said, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and saying, "Let me help you with the tourniquet."

"Thanks."

Ignoring the couple, Javier yelled. "Now, Borthman! Tell me something useful."

"Nothing much! That is just a... well, some miracles and sayings of the Buddha. Basically, it’s a story of how the people came here to worship their many gods. Apparently, there was one man who they believed to be some kind of a redeemer for their civilization, someone who would take them to a new land."

"Sounds like the Buddha." One of the men finally spoke up.

"Sort of like that. But this tale predates that one. These drawings are from a much earlier kingdom." He paused for a moment, thinking.

"I wonder what they wanted to get away from?" Tyler said from behind them.

"Yeah," Dave continued. "You can tell from the formation of the images, the lines, and the way they have been etched that these are some of the more historical forms of writing. Very old. Not just 14th-century kinds of old, but older than that."

"You see," he went on, "eventually, this one went to a more abbreviated form of writing. Odd, almost like the Indian thingy."

"Make sense," Tyler said. "As far as I can remember, Thailand's archaeological documentation implies an extensive human settlement history since the 4th century. The region also hosted several indigenous Austroasiatic-speaking and Malayo-Sumbawan-speaking civilizations."

"Really?" Daved raised a brow.

"Yes, however, little is known about Thailand before the 13th century, as the literary and concrete sources are scarce and most of the knowledge about this period is gleaned from archaeological evidence. Similar to other regions in Southeast Asia, Thailand was heavily influenced by the culture and religions of India, starting with the Kingdom of Funan around the first century until the Khmer Empire."

"Hmm, make sense." Dave nodded his head as he kept reading the wall. One of Javier’s men’s attention had been diverted by the bat on the left wall. His right hand held the gun, but the man’s curiosity led his left hand to the smooth stone of the carving’s head.

He was just about to feel it when Tyler yelled, "Stop!"

The massive man yanked his hand back, startled.

"Don’t touch anything," Tyler ordered. "There is a riddle here. I think this whole place might be booby trapped."

"You are watching too much Indiana Jones here, Tyler," Javier barked, yet he cast his men a warning glance.

"We can't risk it, so we need to be careful," Tyler explained.

"Take care, my ass. I need my treasure, boy! And that is all that matters.”

"Guys, stop... look," Tyler muttered, his excitement palpable. "It says, 'To find the way, the lion will guide you. Death will bring forward the one who retreats. The other shall lead you safely."

"Now, tell me, Johnson, what the hell is it supposed to mean?" Javier roared.

"Beats me!"

"Talk, or I will kill your wife," he said, and he pointed his gun at Mary's head.

She rolled her eyes and murmured something. Somehow, Tyler was amazed at how relaxed she was.

Tyler said sarcastically, "Ok. That seems simple enough. To move the wall, we have to do something with one of these lions." He looked at one and then the other.

"Yeah, but if we choose the wrong one, we may not get out of here alive," Dave added.

"How do you know which lion? They look the same to me," Mary asked.

"Point taken, but I’m not sure, sis. But let's guess," Dave replied, scratching his head. "The one who returns... I wonder what that means.

"It must have something to do with the writing beneath the lion's head. But the language is different from that on the wall." As Dave pondered the problem.