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Tang pressed his own chest against the bucket’s end to secure it in place and brought the ropes lying on the floor up, securing the pail to Sokolov’s body

Tang allowed a le

“I would suggest lying still,” Tang said “You’ll agitate them less”

The Russian see, though the three men retained a firm hold

Tang stepped to the table and retrieved one of the last two iteht with hinition torch fueled with acetylene The kind of tool utilized for quick fixes on the rigs He opened its brass valve Gas hissed froripped the final item, a striker, and sparked the end to life

He adjusted the flame to blue hot

He crouched down and allowed the heat to lick the bucket’s bottom, then painted the sides of the pail with the flame “As it warms, the rats instinctively shun the metal They’ll quickly sense a desperate need to leave their prison But there’s no way out Everything is resistant to their claws, except your flesh”

He heard the rats popping against the inside of the bucket, squealing at their predicament

Sokolov screamed behind the tape, but only a murmur could be heard The Russian’s restrained body was knotted in tension and ith perspiration Tang kept heating the bucket, careful not to h to entice the rats to attack the flesh

Sokolov’s face squeezed with anguish Tears welled in the Russian’s eyes and rained froes

“The rats will clan to your sto to escape the heat” He kept stroking the metal with the flame “They can’t be blamed Any creature would do the same”

Sokolov screained as happening The rats scratching furiously, aided by their teeth, softening the flesh that ht allow them to escape faster

The trick, as Tang had been taught, was knohen to stop Too long and the victim would receive severe, perhaps even fatal wounds from the infections the rats left behind Too short and the point would not bethe process was problematic, unless it didn’t matter if the subject survived

Here, it did

He withdrew the torch

“Of course,” he said, keeping his eyes as gentle as his voice, “there is an alternative to this, if you’re willing to listen”

FORTY

BELGIUM

MALONE CAUGHT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WHAT PAU WEN HAD said “How is that possible?”

“When the terra-cotta army was discovered in 1974, I was dispatched by Chairate and determine the extent of the find I immediately realized that what had been discovered could prove iround army existed” He pointed at the silks before him “Shiji is silent on the matter No written record mentions its existence It seeotten”

Malone recalled reading about the find Pau was right—it had proven significant for China Millions flocked to the site every year No visiting head of state left without a peek Even the pope ca an unprecedented visit to China last year

“While at the site,” Pau said, “on a fortuitous day, I happened onto so even more remarkable”

The digging had been ongoing night and day for three months Already, several hundred clay warriors had been unearthed, most in pieces, piled one atop the other like trees fallen in the forest Luckily, the pieces were all near one another, so Pau ordered that a restoration workshop be constructed and the figures reasseineers had assured him that it could be done In fact, they were confident that the entire arain, one warrior at a ti with chariots and horses

What a site that would be

And he agreed

But the nearby mound interested him more It stood a kilometer away, south of the Wei River, beside the slopes of Black Horse Mountain A vast, shallow-sided, earth pyrarassy plain, seely part of the landscape

But that had been the whole idea

Men of Qin Shi’s day believed that the dead lived on, only in a different world, and they should be treated as the living So the First Emperor fashioned for himself a massive imperial necropolis, a subterranean empire, to continue his rule in the netherworld Once created, everything had been hidden with dirt, creating a mound that once rose more than a hundred meters

Had it ever been breached?

Literary references penned hundreds of years after Qin’s time reported that the tomb had twice been entered First by rebels in search of weapons three years after the First Emperor’s death, then 700 years later for plunder Scattered ashes, fired earth, and the broken warriors theested that the first violation may well have occurred Few of the weapons the warriors once carried had so far been found But the mound itself was not part of that first violation, and no one knew for sure if the second invasion ever occurred He’d read Shiji and knew that there well could be rivers and oceans of mercury inside, part of an elaborate representation of Qin’s eht of asbut and most likely contributed to the First Eest an elixir each day of quicksilver, thinking that it would grant hi at the ht that perhaps Qin had been right after all

Here was his immortality

Mao hi here The Cultural Revolution was seven years past Gangs waving their little red books of Mao’s thoughts were long gone, thank goodness Schools and universities had reopened The ar the world Warriors from the First Eround ar Mao’s overnment had assumed control of the site, sealed off by theand leaving So had occurred, mostly brass arrowheads sold for scrap Several had been arrested and exa could jeopardize the area’s potential The Chairman had told him to do whatever was necessary to preserve the find

Mao trusted him and he could not disappoint

So he’d ordered s

Shiji made clear that there were countless aspects to the tos had proven fruitful Areas of interest had been identified In one, horses and a chariot were discovered Not representations, but the bones of horses and an actual chariot What else lay in the earth around hiine It would take years to discover it all

“Minister”

He turned to face one of several supervisors he’d entrusted with the local workers, men he could depend on to keep order