Read Online Murder on the Silk Road by Stefanie Matteson - Free Book Online
Authors: Stefanie Matteson
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waiting at the curb—if that’s what you could call the edge of the dusty beaten-earth road—to take them to Dunhuang. They were a party of eight: Charlotte, Marsha, Victor, and Peter; and the four members of the paleontology team. If the train had been hot, the minibus was even hotter. Although it must have been equipped with air conditioning—the bus appeared to be brand new—it wasn’t working. Nor did the landscape offer any diversion from the heat. The pitted band of asphalt that had replaced the ancient camel track skirted the edge of the Black Gobi, so-named for its expanses of coal-black gravel. It reminded Charlotte of the most barren sections of West Texas, but at least West Texas had sagebrush and tumbleweed. This landscape didn’t even have a blade of grass. She had read that the top-secret test site for China’s nuclear weapons program was located nearby. It didn’t surprise her that they had chosen, this barren wasteland; there was nothing here that could have been destroyed in a nuclear blast.
After a little over an hour the soil started turning pinkish-red, and struggling patches of vegetation began to appear—tufts of grass, thickets of bush, and even a tree or two. Herds of camels grazing on the thorny bush placidly watched the traffic go by. Another half an hour, and the appearance of poplar trees in the distance indicated that they were drawing near Dunhuang. Although it had a population of thirty-five thousand, the town turned out to be barely more interesting than the desert around it. A collection of dreary concrete-slab buildings intersected by dusty streets filled with bicycles and donkey carts, it hardly seemed like the Silk Road city of legend. But then it wasn’t—the ancient city had long ago been buried by the sands. After passing through town, they continued south on an arrow-straight road colonnaded with poplars that ran through irrigated fields of corn, wheat, millet, cotton, and vegetables. Then, suddenly, they were in the desert. The desert began precisely where the irrigation left off—not the black gobi , or gravel and rock debris, that they had seen so much of, but a storybook desert of golden, wind-sculpted dunes stretching away to the horizon. “Like the, topping on a lemon meringue pie,” said Marsha.
A couple of miles later the road emerged onto a barren gravel plain, and followed the wide, shallow, boulder-strewn channel of a stream for another eight or ten miles. Then it turned into the mouth of the narrow valley that was the site of the caves.
As the member of their group most familiar with Dunhuang (this was his third trip), Victor Danowski was asked to give an impromptu lecture. Like Marsha, he had been invited to Dunhuang to translate the recently discovered manuscripts, but his area of expertise was religious texts rather than poetry.
Assenting to the group’s request, Victor made his way up to the front of the minibus. He was a thin, balding, wiry man—a runner, Charlotte had learned when she encountered him on an early morning walk in Shanghai—with a pale complexion, heavy black-rimmed eyeglasses, and a graying Vandyke-style goatee.
“If you’ll look to your left,” he said, pointing out the window, “you’ll see a mountain ridge. That’s the Mountain of the Three Dangers, where the wandering monk Lo-tsun had his vision of a thousand Buddhas in a shining cloud of brilliant golden light. He called the phenomenon Buddha’s Halo.”
“Looks like pretty good fossil huntin’ territory to me,” said Dogie, as they gazed out at the reddish-purple mountain range that rose from the barren plain, its rugged foothills a glowing pink in the late afternoon light.
“Lo-tsun was traveling in the area in 366 when he had his vision,” Victor continued. “Of course, we now know that it was an illusion caused by minerals in the rocks caught in the glow of the setting sun.”
“I preferred the shining cloud,” whispered Marsha.
“Lo-tsun believed that
After a little over an hour the soil started turning pinkish-red, and struggling patches of vegetation began to appear—tufts of grass, thickets of bush, and even a tree or two. Herds of camels grazing on the thorny bush placidly watched the traffic go by. Another half an hour, and the appearance of poplar trees in the distance indicated that they were drawing near Dunhuang. Although it had a population of thirty-five thousand, the town turned out to be barely more interesting than the desert around it. A collection of dreary concrete-slab buildings intersected by dusty streets filled with bicycles and donkey carts, it hardly seemed like the Silk Road city of legend. But then it wasn’t—the ancient city had long ago been buried by the sands. After passing through town, they continued south on an arrow-straight road colonnaded with poplars that ran through irrigated fields of corn, wheat, millet, cotton, and vegetables. Then, suddenly, they were in the desert. The desert began precisely where the irrigation left off—not the black gobi , or gravel and rock debris, that they had seen so much of, but a storybook desert of golden, wind-sculpted dunes stretching away to the horizon. “Like the, topping on a lemon meringue pie,” said Marsha.
A couple of miles later the road emerged onto a barren gravel plain, and followed the wide, shallow, boulder-strewn channel of a stream for another eight or ten miles. Then it turned into the mouth of the narrow valley that was the site of the caves.
As the member of their group most familiar with Dunhuang (this was his third trip), Victor Danowski was asked to give an impromptu lecture. Like Marsha, he had been invited to Dunhuang to translate the recently discovered manuscripts, but his area of expertise was religious texts rather than poetry.
Assenting to the group’s request, Victor made his way up to the front of the minibus. He was a thin, balding, wiry man—a runner, Charlotte had learned when she encountered him on an early morning walk in Shanghai—with a pale complexion, heavy black-rimmed eyeglasses, and a graying Vandyke-style goatee.
“If you’ll look to your left,” he said, pointing out the window, “you’ll see a mountain ridge. That’s the Mountain of the Three Dangers, where the wandering monk Lo-tsun had his vision of a thousand Buddhas in a shining cloud of brilliant golden light. He called the phenomenon Buddha’s Halo.”
“Looks like pretty good fossil huntin’ territory to me,” said Dogie, as they gazed out at the reddish-purple mountain range that rose from the barren plain, its rugged foothills a glowing pink in the late afternoon light.
“Lo-tsun was traveling in the area in 366 when he had his vision,” Victor continued. “Of course, we now know that it was an illusion caused by minerals in the rocks caught in the glow of the setting sun.”
“I preferred the shining cloud,” whispered Marsha.
“Lo-tsun believed that
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