older. He dressed carelessly; his sparse hair always seemed greasy, and he had the bad habit of picking his nose when he was deep in thought, which was most of the time. He had been an only child, plagued with complexes and bad health; he had no friends and was so brilliant that he was bored in school. His schoolmates despised him because he got the best grades in class without trying, and his teachers liked him no better because he was pompous and always knew more than they did. He had begun his career when he was fifteen, building computers in his father’s garage. By the time he was twenty-three, he was a millionaire and, owing to his intelligence and his absolute lack of scruples, at thirty he had more money in his personal accounts than the entire budget forthe United Nations.
As a boy, like almost everyone, he’d collected postage stamps and coins; in his teens he collected racecars, medieval castles, golf courses, banks, and beauty queens; now, in early maturity, he’d started a collection of “rare objects.” He kept them hidden in armored vaults spread across five continents, so that in case of some disaster not all of his precious collection would be destroyed. The drawback to that method was that it did not allow him to stroll among his treasures and enjoy them all at the same time; he had to hop onto his jet and travel from place to place to see them, but in truth he didn’t have to do that too frequently. It was enough to know they existed, that they were safe, and that they were his. He wasn’t motivated by artistic appreciation of his booty, only clear and simple greed.
Among other items of incalculable value, the Collector possessed the oldest manuscript known to man, the authentic funeral mask of Tutankhamen (the museum example being a copy), the brain of Einstein cut into sections and floating in a formaldehyde solution, Averroes’ original texts written in his own hand, a human skin completely covered with tattoos from neck to feet, rocks from the moon, a nuclear bomb, the sword of Charlemagne, the secret diary of Napoleon Bonaparte, several of St. Cecilia’s bones, and the formula for Coca-Cola.
Now the multibillionaire meant to acquire one of the rarest treasures in the world, a prize that few knew existed and to which only one living person had access. It was a golden dragon encrusted with precious stones, and for eighteen hundred years it had been seen only by the crowned monarchs of a small sovereign kingdom that lay in the mountains and valleys of the Himalayas. The dragon was wrapped in mystery and protected bya curse, as well as by ancient and complex security. It was not mentioned in any book or tourist guide, though many people had heard of it, and there was a description of it in the British Museum. There was also a drawing on an ancient parchment that a Chinese general discovered in a monastery at the time China invaded Tibet. That brutal military occupation forced more than a million Tibetans to flee, among them the Dalai Lama, the supreme spiritual leader of Buddhism.
Before 1950, the hereditary prince of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon had been given special instruction between the ages of six and twenty in the Tibetan monastery where the parchments describing the dragon and its uses had been guarded for centuries. It was part of the prince’s training to study them. According to the legend, the dragon was not merely a valuable statue, it was a miraculous device for telling the future, which only the crowned monarch could use in solving problems of his kingdom. The dragon could make predictions as varied as changes in climate, which anticipated the yield of the harvests, to the militaristic intentions of neighboring countries. Thanks to that valuable information, and to the wisdom of its rulers, the tiny kingdom had been able to enjoy peace and prosperity and maintain its fierce independence.
For the Collector, the fact that the statue was made of gold was irrelevant, for he
As a boy, like almost everyone, he’d collected postage stamps and coins; in his teens he collected racecars, medieval castles, golf courses, banks, and beauty queens; now, in early maturity, he’d started a collection of “rare objects.” He kept them hidden in armored vaults spread across five continents, so that in case of some disaster not all of his precious collection would be destroyed. The drawback to that method was that it did not allow him to stroll among his treasures and enjoy them all at the same time; he had to hop onto his jet and travel from place to place to see them, but in truth he didn’t have to do that too frequently. It was enough to know they existed, that they were safe, and that they were his. He wasn’t motivated by artistic appreciation of his booty, only clear and simple greed.
Among other items of incalculable value, the Collector possessed the oldest manuscript known to man, the authentic funeral mask of Tutankhamen (the museum example being a copy), the brain of Einstein cut into sections and floating in a formaldehyde solution, Averroes’ original texts written in his own hand, a human skin completely covered with tattoos from neck to feet, rocks from the moon, a nuclear bomb, the sword of Charlemagne, the secret diary of Napoleon Bonaparte, several of St. Cecilia’s bones, and the formula for Coca-Cola.
Now the multibillionaire meant to acquire one of the rarest treasures in the world, a prize that few knew existed and to which only one living person had access. It was a golden dragon encrusted with precious stones, and for eighteen hundred years it had been seen only by the crowned monarchs of a small sovereign kingdom that lay in the mountains and valleys of the Himalayas. The dragon was wrapped in mystery and protected bya curse, as well as by ancient and complex security. It was not mentioned in any book or tourist guide, though many people had heard of it, and there was a description of it in the British Museum. There was also a drawing on an ancient parchment that a Chinese general discovered in a monastery at the time China invaded Tibet. That brutal military occupation forced more than a million Tibetans to flee, among them the Dalai Lama, the supreme spiritual leader of Buddhism.
Before 1950, the hereditary prince of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon had been given special instruction between the ages of six and twenty in the Tibetan monastery where the parchments describing the dragon and its uses had been guarded for centuries. It was part of the prince’s training to study them. According to the legend, the dragon was not merely a valuable statue, it was a miraculous device for telling the future, which only the crowned monarch could use in solving problems of his kingdom. The dragon could make predictions as varied as changes in climate, which anticipated the yield of the harvests, to the militaristic intentions of neighboring countries. Thanks to that valuable information, and to the wisdom of its rulers, the tiny kingdom had been able to enjoy peace and prosperity and maintain its fierce independence.
For the Collector, the fact that the statue was made of gold was irrelevant, for he
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