He shrugged again. "As you may have inferred, bright young women that you are, I am a most results-oriented man, as opposed to a process-oriented one. Failure is unthinkable to me in anything I set my mind to.

"I am also, I pride myself to say, a consummate realist. You are both dangerous as vipers. You are highly resourceful. And you are scarcely more enc.u.mbered by conventional morality concerning the employment of violent means than I am myself. I take for granted that you will try to turn the tables on me. Likewise I take for granted that should you succeed, my own life span will be measurable in milliseconds."

He reached in a pocket, brought out something roughly the size of a cell phone and clicked a b.u.t.ton with his thumb. "This is, please take my word for it, what is quaintly yet accurately termed a dead man's switch. Should you ladies contrive to spring some lethal reverse upon us, then you, and I, and this temple with all its priceless archaeology and culture will be blown to rubble. See how I respect your personhood?"

He looked left and right and nodded his head briskly. "Now, gentlemen."

A pair of husky goons each advanced upon Annja and Easy. They held guns before them, one arm locked out, the other bent for support, and moved with little crab steps in approved counterterrorist style. Annja almost laughed out loud.

"Rather pretentious for hired thugs, wouldn't you say?" Easy muttered sidelong to her.

"Spirited to the end, I say!" Giancarlo called out. He seemed a little miffed at losing his stage for a moment. "And now, since you've been doing as much of the talking as I-"

"Another lie," Easy said.

"I can't be convicted of monologuing if I go ahead and acknowledge what I'm sure is obvious to you both-once the treasure, and we, have flown, you two will be found here. Apparently a cla.s.sic battle between archaeological good and evil will have been resolved by the tragic deaths of both comely young contestants. So sad."

While one goon held down on Easy with a 9 mm Beretta his partner relieved her of her two Sphinxes. She only smiled a cool smile.

She glanced at Annja. Easy was clearly not giving up.

Nor would Annja.

If Giancarlo had his way with this site, as he had with Easy-and thankfully not Annja, although she felt a weird chill sickness in her stomach at how close she had come, and bitterly resented every second she had spent longing to be reunited with him-the treasure and its priceless context were done anyway. So, obviously, were Easy and Annja. And he was right that his announcing his plans to them didn't matter much, since they'd worked them out for themselves already, thank you very much, she thought bitterly.

Annja carried no obvious weapon. So while one thug, a little shamefacedly, pointed his Glock at her, his partner grabbed her upper arm.

"You gentlemen have things well in hand," Giancarlo said. "Now let's see what prize awaits us behind door number one."

He swept confidently up the steps past Annja and Easy.

Then he stopped. And stared. "Dios mio!" "Dios mio!" he all but shrieked. he all but shrieked.

"Boss?" the man with the Glock said in English. His eyes flicked to Giancarlo.

The sword flashed into existence. Blood spurted from the stumps of the gunman's wrists. His piece, still clasped in both scarred hands, clattered on the worn ancient stone steps.

Easy Ngwenya's right hand whipped up over her head. Silver flashed. The gunman holding her grunted as the chromed hilt of a specialized throwing danger suddenly protruded from the juncture of jaw and throat. Easy was just jam-packed with surprises, it seemed.

As his lifeblood spurted past the left hand he had clasped immediately to the wound, his right pumped out two shots, even their echoes shatteringly loud in the entryway.

The bullets slammed into his partner, above the body of Easy Ngwenya, who had twisted free of the second man and dropped p.r.o.ne.

Annja turned away from the screaming, spurting man. The other had released her arm in astonishment. Now he tried to bring up his gun to shoot her.

It was Luigi, she noted, in the split second before she split the heavy, brutal face to the chin with a downward stroke.

Annja heard more shots. Giancarlo ducked an end-the-world slash of her sword and scampered back down the stairs. He held the dead man's switch out at the two women like a talisman.

"Don't forget!" he screamed. "I have this! I'll use it!"

Annja looked around. Both of Easy's opponents lay facedown in widening pools of blood and she had her Sphinxes in her hands. She was an efficient little creature when it all came down, Annja had to admit.

"But you haven't, Giani," Easy said in contemptuous tones. "Because you still have hope. And because it's so unthinkable to you that you should lose you're not ready to admit defeat by ending your worthless life."

Fury blazed in his wide eyes. He pushed the switch toward her.

Easy shot him.

Annja braced for instant immolation. Then as the thump of the bullet hitting soft flesh-not dynamite-reached her ears even beneath the cracking and ringing of the gunshot she saw blood appear on the fine fawn-colored designer fabric over his flat abdomen. He grunted and bent over in terrible agony.

"The pain reflex has caused your muscles to contract," Easy said. "It won't be so easy to let go of the b.u.t.ton, now-"

Annja was already in motion. A skipping, spinning back kick took Giancarlo in his injured belly. He screamed hoa.r.s.ely, staggered back to the very edge of the precipice.

He raised the dead man's switch. Annja kicked him again, hard.

As he fell Annja turned and threw herself facedown on the stone. From a corner of her eye she saw Easy do the same.

The rock face directed the blast's force outward and upward. All that came in through the yawning temple entrance was a cataclysmic roar, and a dragon's-breath puff of superheated air.

32.

Annja stood on the sidewalk in front of a house whose several levels laddered down from the top of a steep black lava cliff. It stood just outside Hilo, Hawaii. This was the last stop on her current quest. It would also be the hardest.

She thought it might be the hardest task she had ever faced.

The Protectors had recovered Eddie Chen's corpse the morning after he died, contemptuously under the noses of the Grand Shan State Army, which was still scaling the mesa at that point.

After Giancarlo met his spectacular end, Annja and Easy had recovered Patty from the mesa's base where the Shans had left her. The Protectors helped-they were willing to do almost anything for the outsiders who had helped them carry out their ancient charge.

Easy's solution to the problem of transporting corpses was brutally direct-she bribed a local drug gang to smuggle them out of Myanmar. The Protectors helped her find one that would stay bribed, in process dropping a few hints that Easy had played a big part in causing the hasty departure of both the GSSA and the Lord's Wa Army, now disbanded, from the scene. Not just the ancient sanctum's defenders but the lesser predators and scavengers heaved a major sigh of relief at that.

What the Protectors weren't willing to do, even for their allies, was allow the temple complex, or the special Temple of the Elephant on its lonely peak, to be revealed to the world. They would continue to await the return of Maitreya as their ancestors had been bidden by the long-vanished princes of Bagan.

To Annja's astonishment Easy concurred readily with her decision to forgo recovery of any artifacts whatever. Even the Golden Elephant.

"Why, Annja," she said with a laugh, "it was never about the money. That's just a token to me-like points in a video game. It helps me keep track of my score. What need do I have for money? My daddy will pay literally anything to keep me from coming home.

"And anyway, once I realized there were actually people up here looking after the site-the owners, in effect-I gave over any intention I had of making off with anything. Dead people have no property, and I don't respect the claims of any government. Least of all one so thoroughly vile as the SPDC. But real, living people-them I leave alone. Unless, of course, they commit aggression. Against me or my friends."

Annja shook her head. She could not quite grasp her new friend's ethics. But she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Easy had ethics. A code as ironbound as her own, no matter how peculiar.

Annja would also never agree with it. At least when it came to their vision of their shared profession.

"It wasn't hard for me to let go of the idea of taking the idol," Easy said cheerfully. "It was all for the sport, all along. It always is for me. And maybe more for you than you realize."

"Perhaps," Annja said.

Easy sobered then. "And I think we both got rather more excitement than we bargained for."

Annja nodded. "I sure did."

"So, about that sword. How did you manage to get it?" Easy said.

Annja shrugged. "I always have a few tricks up my sleeve."

Easy laughed but did not push for a proper answer.

They stood together in Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, awaiting respective flights out. Despite political protests in Thailand and rising internal violence in Myanmar, travelers, foreign tourists and locals alike moved past them, as oblivious to them as to the world's turmoil.

But maybe less to them. Both continued to attract plenty of attention from male pa.s.sersby. Since Annja and Easy were legal for once, fully doc.u.mented under their real names and everything, they could afford to ignore the fact they made an arresting picture-the tall, slender white woman and the short, buxom black one.

"I won't say goodbye, Annja," Easy said. "I suspect our paths will cross again. And I shall keep in touch."

Annja regarded her. c.o.c.ky, impudent, a strange mixture of ageless wisdom and early-adolescent immaturity.

"You realize we're still on opposite sides of the law," she said sternly. "I'll put you out of business if I can."

"You'll try," Easy said, laughing.

She looked up. "Well, there's my flight."

She hugged Annja, as fervently as a child. Annja returned the embrace warmly, if not so tight.

Easy raised her face toward Annja's ear. To Annja's amazement the girl's huge brown eyes gleamed with moisture.

"Thank you, my sister," Easy whispered.

"Thank you, too," Annja said.

"OKAY," ANNJA SAID, returning her thoughts to the present. The morning sun warmed her face. "This won't get easier from being put off."

The first time had been hard. Though he had other children, Master Chen had lost his eldest son. His heir. The boy he had raised, sternly and lovingly, from babyhood, the man he expected to take his place in the world. He showed little emotion at hearing the news. Annja knew he would grieve later, as any parent would who must commit the unthinkable-burying a child.

The second had been, surprisingly, not as hard. Patricia Ruhle's older sister was a Realtor in Connecticut. She had received Annja's news at a coffee shop in Mystic with a sad headshake.

"It was inevitable," she said. "We knew that all along." We We meaning the rest of the family, whom Sarah Kingman would now have to inform. Including a young army Ranger somewhere in Afghanistan. meaning the rest of the family, whom Sarah Kingman would now have to inform. Including a young army Ranger somewhere in Afghanistan.

"Patty was an adrenaline junkie," Sarah said matter-of-factly. "She admitted it. She wouldn't have been a crisis photojournalist otherwise. And she always told us up front-she knew that one day, like any addiction, hers would kill her."

The woman looked down at her cup of green tea, untasted. "And now it has," she said quietly, and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.

But this- Annja supposed she shouldn't have been surprised, especially given what she had seen of the world that few others did. She already knew there existed firms, not altogether legal, that specialized in the covert recovery of loved ones from troubled developing nations. What she never realized was that some specialized in bringing back the dead. If not to life, at least to their families.

It was actually easier in a way, a few moments' reflection had told her. n.o.body had to spring a corpse from a fortresslike jail guarded by trigger-happy thugs with machine guns.

It surprised her rather less that Easy knew of such companies. And quite a bit more that Easy paid to recover the remains of the late Dr. Philip Kennedy from a Shan Plateau village.

"It seems only fair," Easy had said with a shrug. "You'll do the right thing, of course. Because you're Annja Creed. But to speak practically, you're considerably out of pocket on this whole enterprise already. And these services don't come cheap."

She shrugged. "And as I said, money's not that important to me. But please don't mistake this for altruism. I feel I owe you for the pain I put you through, even though the better part was entirely unwitting. And for your help in aiding the Protectors."

"You really cared about them," Annja observed. She had smiled a little then. "Isn't that altruism?"

"Not at all," Easy said with a big grin. "As I told you, I identify to a high degree with tribal peoples. And I harbor a hatred of injustice-of unfairness. Just as you do."

"Okay. But how is that not altruistic?"

Easy laughed. "It gratifies me hugely to aid the victims of bullying," she said. "And if I get to smite the bullies in the process, so much the better!"

"All right," Annja said now, on the Hawaiian roadside with her rented car pinging at her as its engine cooled in the shade of a palm tree. "No more delay."

She had no more excuses. She had to march right up to the door, ring the bell, and then tell a little girl she would never see her father again.

She reached into a pocket of her khaki trousers and took out a piece of paper. On it was printed a digital photograph.

She gazed down at it. Taken by Easy, using Patty Ruhle's camera, it showed Annja standing beside the object of the long and b.l.o.o.d.y quest-the Golden Elephant.

The two-story-tall Golden Elephant. Even though it had been cast hollow it must, according to Easy's calculations, weigh at least ten metric tons.

An object of incalculable worth, to be sure. However, it wasn't going anywhere.

The photo was all the mystery patron who had commissioned Annja was ever going to get of the fabled treasure that so obsessed him. Given that he-or she-had seen fit to likewise commission E. C. Ngwenya and the charming, treacherous, sociopathic Giancarlo Scarlatti to compete with her in the hunt, it was more than the anonymous patron deserved. To Annja, anyway.

One thing was certain-she would not be e-mailing the image to Roux.

She wanted to be there in person to see the look on his smug, bearded, immortal face when he saw it.

Smiling, she tucked the photo back in the pocket and b.u.t.toned it again. Then, drawing a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and set off along the lava-graveled path to the door.