Hellboy set the vacuum cleaner with the blue goblin smoke inside on the bar and glanced at Martin. "Keep that back there for me, will you? Don't want it getting into the wrong hands. And don't use it."
Martin started to protest, but Anastasia was walking back to her table, where her mates waited in amazement, and Hellboy didn't hear a word the bartender said.
He followed her.
For the better part of two years.
Chapter 3
The village of Nakchu lay five miles northwest of Lake Tashi, still in the foothills of the snowcapped Nyenchen Tanghla mountain range, but at a slightly higher elevation. They were already at fifteen thousand feet on the plateau where Lake Tashi pooled among the mountains. They had prepared for the breathlessness caused by the elevation and the hard work, but when Anastasia led a small party on a hike to Nakchu, they were out of breath fairly quickly.
She had left Mark Conrad in charge of the dig, and Eleanor Morris to keep an eye on Conrad. Danovich had to oversee the safety of the whole circus, so he had to be left behind as well. There were seven people in the detachment she led to the village that morning--herself; Professor Kyichu; a communications man named Horace Trotter; their local guide, Tenzin; a representative from the government in Beijing named Mr. Lao; and two diggers she had chosen for sheer muscle.
Anastasia carried a gun. She didn't let anyone else have one except for Tenzin, who carried a rifle slung over his back every waking moment. In fact, she thought that the slim, powerful guide with the intense eyes might have been born with a tiny rifle across his back.
Far too many times, they were forced to pause to rest. Tenzin became restless as a hunting dog with a snoutful of his prey's scent, but the rest of them weren't entirely used to the elevation. Tenzin understood this--his English was perfect; it was why they'd chosen him--but it didn't make him any less impatient. If she'd had to guess, Anastasia would have expected Han Kyichu to hold them up the most. He was the eldest among them by at least a decade. But it was the man from Beijing with his black eyes and black hair and new boots who slowed them down. His feet hurt.
Anastasia didn't much care.
Diplomacy was a part of her job. It came with the territory. But if the representative of the government that held Tibet against the will of its people had blisters on his toes, she figured that was a small price for him to pay.
Tenzin led them to a narrow stream that flowed down from the foothills of the mountains and from there they turned northwest, following the water. A flock of black-necked cranes rested beside the stream but took flight at their approach. Anastasia paused and watched in wonder as they skirted low to the land. It seemed impossible to her that they could thrive at such elevations, but she did not question it. Many things she had seen in her life were impossible, and they had already seen ducks by the lake.
As they went up, the terrain became rough, with patches of rocky soil interrupting the sprawl of brownish yellow scrub that was the yak herds' main source of sustenance. A fox raced from a hole and away across the hill, a red streak against the brown land. They followed the stream for several miles, and it seemed to Anastasia they were getting nowhere. Looking back the way they'd come, she could still see Lake Tashi. But ahead were only the mountains, and the higher they climbed, the colder it became.
Then, just as she was about to question Tenzin's sense of direction, they topped a rise to see a flat stretch of grassland below them, covered in grazing yaks. Opposite the rise, in the shadow of the mountain, was a village.
Anastasia smiled at what passed for a modern village in the mountains of Tibet, so far from the nearest city. There were perhaps sixty or seventy dwellings clustered around the base of the mountain, half on either side of the stream--which seemed almost wide enough to be a river here. A wooden footbridge spanned the water. The homes were small, but elegant in design, and smoke rose from several chimneys, reminding her how much chillier it seemed than at the dig site. Farmers' fields spread out for many hundreds of yards in either direction, though the yak herd lazed in the middle, kept away from the crops--or what remained of them.
Perhaps there were generators in the village for electricity, and maybe even a two-way radio. She'd stopped in similar places, where some of the village elders had radios with tall antennas that pulled in a rough static with the occasional melody.
"I simply don't understand it," Horace Trotter said, coming up beside her.
"What don't you understand?" Anastasia glanced at Horace, then surveyed the rest of the group. Mr. Lao, the man from Beijing, only smiled thinly to show his relief that they'd rested and that their uphill climb was finished. The diggers stood near Professor Kyichu, watching him warily, though because of his age or his grief, she did not know.
"Why do they live so far away from the lake? Surely crops would grow better there. It's not quite so cold. There are several caves they could have used to store goods. Where we're conducting our dig, there isn't much land to graze their herds, but the area where this stream runs into the lake is broad enough."
Anastasia had her theories about why no one had settled on the rim of the lake, but only Professor Kyichu knew about those theories, and she wasn't going to start talking about the Dragon King Pool now. Trotter ought to have known enough to realize that ancient superstitions lingered for millennia in such remote places.
"Tenzin?" she asked, turning to their guide.
The Tibetan turned his impassive features toward her and looked at Horace Trotter. "The mountains are sacred."
Trotter scoffed. "I thought the old temple city we're unearthing was sacred. Come to think of it, I thought the lake was sacred."
"Sacred too," Tenzin agreed. "Just different. The mountains are holy. Pure. The lake is not a place for people."
"But we're there," the communications man pointed out.
Tenzin fixed him with a meaningful look. "Perhaps you should not be."
That shut Trotter up. Tenzin descended the other side of the rise and started toward the village, yaks ambling lazily out of the way. The rest of them followed. Anastasia hurried to catch up to their guide.
"That wasn't very helpful," she said in a low voice as she came up beside Tenzin.
He smiled sidelong at her. "Helpful to me. No more stupid questions."
"Are they stupid questions?"
Tenzin gave a small shrug of his shoulders. "Any question is stupid when the man asking is not smart enough to understand the answers."
They trekked into the village. Even before they reached it, people started to come out to watch their approach. Little girls and women with mesmerizing eyes stood together, many of them wearing thick, soft head scarves. A pair of small boys in dark caps marched out as if to meet them, but then only stood aside to watch them pass. The man from Beijing glared at them, and they glared back. But when Anastasia smiled at them, they giggled and ran away.
Staying by the river, they entered the village unhindered and passed among the houses. It was still only late morning, but Anastasia smelled something delicious cooking in one of the houses. The wind stole the scent a moment later, but her stomach rumbled with the memory of it. Clothes hung out to dry on lines. Dogs raced around, barking at the newcomers and each other, then tearing off across the village on some other mad errand.
The gun felt heavy against the small of her back, beneath her jacket.