Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

by Isabel Allende

  “Is that language written anywhere?”

  “It is preserved in the memories of four lamas in four different monasteries. Except for my son, Dil Bahadur, and me, no one knows the complete code. It was once written on a parchment, but that was stolen by the Chinese when they invaded Tibet.”

  “So the person who has the parchment can decipher the dragon’s prophecies,” she said.

  “The code is written in Sanskrit, but when the parchment is moistened with yak milk, a dictionary appears in a different color, with each ideogram translated into the four sounds that represent it. Is that clear, Judit?”

  “Perfectly!” cried Armadillo, who had a pistol in his hand and an expression of triumph on his face. “Everyone has his Achilles heel, Majesty. You see, we got the code after all. I admit that I was a little worried. I thought you would carry the secret to the tomb, but my boss was too clever for you,” he added.

  “What does this mean?” murmured the bewildered monarch.

  “You never suspected her? Good God, man! You never wondered how or why Judit Kinski walked into your life at just this moment? I can’t imagine that you didn’t check the credentials of the landscape designer who specialized in tulips before you brought her to your palace. How naïve can you be! Look at her. The woman you were willing to die for is my boss, the Specialist. She’s the brains behind this whole operation,” the American trumpeted.

  “Is it true what this man says, Judit?”

  “How do you think we managed to steal your Golden Dragon? We knew how to get into the Sacred Chamber because she attached a camera to your medallion. And in order to do that she had to gain your confidence,” said Armadillo.

  “You took advantage of my feelings for you,” the monarch murmured, pale as ash. His eyes never left Judit, who could not look him in the face.

  “Don’t tell me you even fell in love with her! What a joke!” exclaimed the American, snorting with laughter.

  “That’s enough, Armadillo,” Judit snapped.

  “She was sure we couldn’t drag the secret from you by force, and that’s when she thought of the threat to torture her. She’s such a professional that she was ready to go through with it, just to frighten you and force you to tell us,” Armadillo explained.

  “All right, Armadillo, we’ve done it. We won’t have to hurt the king further, we can go now,” Judit ordered.

  “Not so fast, boss. Now it’s my turn. You don’t think I’m going to hand over the statue to you, do you? Why would I do that? It’s worth much more than its weight in gold, and I mean to negotiate directly with the client.”

  “Are you crazy, Armadillo?” the woman barked, but before she could say anything more, he cut her off by shoving his pistol into her face.

  “Give me the tape or I’ll blow your brains out, woman,” Armadillo threatened.

  For a second, Judit’s always-alert eyes shifted to her purse, which lay on the ground. It was barely a flicker, but that tipped Armadillo off. He bent down and picked up the purse, never shifting the pistol, and emptied the contents onto the ground. Out fell cosmetics, a pistol, photographs, and a number of electronic gadgets the king had never seen before. Several small tapes also fell out. The American kicked them aside, they weren’t what he was looking for. He was interested only in the one that had been in the recorder.

  “Where’s the recorder?” he yelled, furious.

  With one hand he pressed the gun into Judit’s chest, and with the other he patted her down. Then he ordered her to take off her belt and boots, but found nothing. Suddenly he focused on the wide bracelet of carved bone at her wrist.

  “Take that off!” he commanded.

  Clenching her teeth, she removed the bracelet and handed it to him. Armadillo stepped back several paces to examine it in the light, then grunted with satisfaction. It held a tiny recorder that would have thrilled the most sophisticated spy. In matters of technology, the Specialist was in the vanguard.

  “You will regret this, Armadillo, I promise you. No one sells me out,” Judit sputtered, her face distorted with rage.

  “But you and this pathetic old man are not going to be here to get your revenge. I’m tired of obeying orders. You’re history, boss. I have the statue, the code, and the helicopter. That’s all I need. The Collector will be very pleased.”

  In the split second before Tex Armadillo pressed the trigger, the king stepped in front of Judit, protecting her with his body. The bullet intended for her hit him squarely in the chest. The second bullet struck sparks from the stone wall, because Nadia Santos had raced like a meteor and thrown herself as hard as she could upon the American, who tumbled to the ground.

  Armadillo, however, jumped back on his feet with an agility born of many years of training in martial arts. He punched Nadia in the face and sprang like a cat toward the pistol, which had spun some feet away. Judit was also racing toward it, but Armadillo was quicker, and it was he who picked it up.

  Tensing and the Yetis exploded into the far end of the monastery where most of the Blue Warriors had gathered, while Alexander and Dil Bahadur went in a different direction to search for the king, following the images Nadia had sent telepathically. Although Dil Bahadur had been there before, he didn’t really remember the plan of the building, and the piles of rubble and obstacles scattered everywhere made it even more difficult to recognize anything. Dil Bahadur ran with an arrow drawn and ready to shoot, with Alexander close behind, inadequately armed with the wood staff the prince had lent him.

  They had hoped to evade the bandits, but soon happened upon two of them, who were for a brief instant stopped in their tracks by surprise. That hesitation gave the prince enough time to send an arrow into the leg of one of the Blue Warriors. In accord with his principles, he did not shoot to kill, only to immobilize. That man fell to the ground with a scream from his gut, but his companion already had a knife in each hand, which he fired at Dil Bahadur. Things were happening so fast that Alexander couldn’t keep up with them. He would never have been able to dodge the daggers, but the prince moved only slightly, as if performing an elegant dance step, and the sharp steel passed by, barely brushing him. His enemy had no time to pull out another knife, because an arrow struck his chest with unbelievable precision—below the clavicle, a few centimeters from his heart, without touching any vital organ.

  Alexander used that diversion to club the first bandit, who, though lying on the ground and bleeding, was struggling to pull out another of his many knives. Alex acted without thinking, moved by desperation and the urgency of the moment, but as the heavy staff made contact with the man’s skull, he heard a sound like a nut being cracked. A wave of nausea swept over him as reason was restored, and he recognized the brutality of his action. He broke out in a cold sweat, and his mouth filled with saliva; he thought he was going to vomit, but Dil Bahadur was already running forward, and Alex had to suppress his squeamishness and follow.

  The prince had no fear of the bandits’ weapons, because he believed he was protected by the magic amulet he wore around his neck, the petrified dragon dropping Tensing had given him. Much later, when Alexander described events to Kate, she commented that it was his training in Tao-shu that allowed Dil Bahadur to dodge the daggers, not the amulet. “I don’t care what it was, it worked,” her grandson had replied. Dil Bahadur and Alexander rushed into the room where the king lay wounded just as Tex Armadillo’s hand closed over the pistol, a fraction of a second before Judit Kinski reached it. In the time it took the American to place his finger on the trigger, the prince shot his third arrow, piercing Armadillo’s forearm. The American uttered a terrible scream but he didn’t drop the weapon. He still clasped the pistol, although it seemed probable that he lacked the strength to aim or fire it.

  “Don’t move!” Alexander shouted, nearly hysterical, with no idea how to back up his command with only a staff against the American’s bullets.

  Armadillo seized Nadia with his good arm and lifted her like a doll, protecting himself with
her body. Borobá, who had followed Dil Bahadur and Alexander, ran to cling to his mistress’s leg, screeching desperately; one kick from Armadillo sent the little monkey flying. Although still stunned from being punched in the face, Nadia tried weakly to break loose, but Armadillo’s iron grip did not allow the least movement.

  The prince reviewed his possibilities. He had blind faith in his aim, but the risk that the man would shoot Nadia was too great. Helpless, he watched Armadillo back out of the room, dragging the inert girl in the direction of the small field where the helicopter sat waiting on a thin layer of snow.

  Judit took advantage of the confusion to run off in the opposite direction, disappearing among the rubble of the monastery.

  While all this was happening at one end of the building, a violent scene was unfolding at the other. Most of the Blue Warriors had congregated around the improvised kitchen, where they were drinking liquor from their canteens, chewing betel, and discussing in low tones their chances of betraying Armadillo. They were unaware, of course, that it was Judit who was actually giving the orders; they thought that she was a hostage, like the king. The American had paid them the agreed-upon sum in cash, and they knew that in India the weapons and horses that completed the deal were waiting, but after they’d seen the gold statue studded with precious stones, they believed they were owed considerably more. They didn’t like the fact that the treasure was stowed in the helicopter beyond their reach, although they realized that that was the only way to get it out of the country.

  “We have to kidnap the pilot,” their leader grunted, glancing toward the Nepalese hero who was over in a corner, drinking his cup of coffee with condensed milk.

  “Who will go with him?” one of the bandits asked.

  “I will,” the leader said.

  “And how do we know that you won’t go off with the statue?” put in another of his men.

  Insulted, the leader reached for one of his knives, but he didn’t complete his move because at that moment Tensing, followed by the Yetis, stormed into the south wing of Chenthan Dzong. The small war party was truly terrifying. In the lead came the monk, armed with two chain-linked sticks that he had found among the ruins of what had once been the armory of the famous warrior monks who had lived in the fortified monastery. By the way he moved and held the heavy sticks, anyone could see he was expert in the martial arts. After him came the ten Yetis, who were awesome to see even under normal conditions, and who in this instance were monsters out of anyone’s worst nightmare. They seemed to have multiplied to twice their number, creating the tumult of a horde. Armed with clubs and rocks, in their leather breastplates and tribal helmets with blood-smeared horns, they shouted and leaped about like crazed orangutans, thrilled with this opportunity to swing their clubs and—why not—take a few blows, too, since that was part of the fun. Tensing ordered them to attack, resigned to his inability to control them. Before they burst into the monastery, he had sent a brief prayer to the heavens, asking that there be no deaths in the melee because he would carry them on his conscience. The Yetis were not responsible for their acts; once their aggression was awakened, they lost what little reason they had.

  The superstitious Blue Warriors thought they were victims of the curse of the Golden Dragon, and that an army of demons had been loosed to avenge the sacrilege they had committed. They could stand up to the most savage enemies, but the idea of facing the forces of hell terrified them. They started running, closely followed by the Yetis, to the stunned amazement of the pilot. He had flattened himself against the wall to let them pass, cup still in hand, with no idea of what was happening around him. He thought he had come to meet some scientists, and instead he found himself in the midst of an uproar of blue-skinned barbarians, extraterrestrial apes, and a gigantic monk armed as if he were in a kung fu movie.

  Once the stampede of bandits and Yetis had gone by, the lama and the pilot found themselves alone.

  “Namasté,” the pilot said in greeting, once he had recovered his voice. It was all he could think of to say.

  “Tampo kachi,” Tensing returned in his language, bowing briefly, as if he were at a social gathering.

  “What the hell is going on here?” the pilot asked.

  “It may possibly be a little difficult to explain. The ones wearing helmets with horns are my friends, the Yetis. The others stole the Golden Dragon and kidnapped the king,” Tensing informed him.

  “Are you talking about the legendary Golden Dragon? Then that’s what they put in my helicopter!” cried the hero of Nepal, and shot off toward the landing field.

  Tensing followed. The situation seemed slightly comic to him, because he still didn’t know that the king was wounded. Through a hole in the wall he watched as the terrorized members of the Sect of the Scorpion scuttled down the mountain, pursued by the Yetis. In vain, he tried to summon the latter mentally, but Grrympr’s warriors were having far too good a time to pay attention to him. Their hair-raising battle cries had turned to shrieks of anticipated pleasure, like children at a party. Tensing prayed once again that they would not catch up with any of the bandits: he did not want to add indelible marks to his karma with further acts of violence.

  Tensing’s good humor changed the minute he left the monastery and saw what was developing before his eyes. A stranger, who according to what Nadia had reported had to be the American in charge of the Blue Warriors, was standing beside the helicopter. An arrow had completely run through one of his arms, but that hadn’t prevented him from waving a pistol. With the other arm he held Nadia, feet barely touching the ground, tight against his body, so that she served as his shield.

  About ninety feet away stood Dil Bahadur, the string of his bow pulled back to shoot, accompanied by Alexander, who was too stunned to do anything.

  “Drop the bow! Move back or I kill the girl!” Armadillo threatened, and no one doubted that he would do it.

  The prince dropped his weapon, and the two young men retreated toward the ruins of the monastery, as Armadillo fought to climb into the helicopter, dragging Nadia, whom he pushed inside with brutal force.

  “Wait! You can’t leave here without me!” the pilot yelled, running forward, but the American had already started the engine and the blades were beginning to turn.

  This was the moment for Tensing to use his supernatural psychic powers and alter the course of nature by calling on his resources as a tulku. He had only to concentrate and call on the wind to prevent the American from fleeing with the sacred treasure of his nation. However, if a wind sheer caught the helicopter in mid-flight, Nadia, too, would perish. The lama rapidly weighed the possibilities and decided that he couldn’t risk it: a human life was more important that all the gold in the world.

  Dil Bahadur was pulling back the string of his bow again, but his arrows were useless against the metal craft. Alexander had finally absorbed the fact that the vicious American was taking Nadia with him, and he began screaming his friend’s name. She couldn’t hear him, but the roar of the engine and the draft from the blades cleared her mind. She had fallen like a sack of rice across the seat where her captor had pushed her. As the helicopter began to lift off the ground, Nadia took advantage of Armadillo’s struggle with the controls, which he was operating with only one hand since the wounded arm was hanging useless. She slid toward the door. She opened it, and without a second thought, never looking down, she dropped into empty space.

  Alexander ran to her, oblivious of the helicopter that was racketing above his head. Nadia had fallen several feet, but snow cushioned the fall that otherwise might have killed her.

  “Eagle! Are you all right?” yelled Alexander, terrified.

  She saw him running toward her, and waved, more amazed at her accomplishment than frightened. The roar of the helicopter drowned out their voices.

  Tensing went to her, too. As soon as Dil Bahadur saw that she was alive he turned and ran toward the room where he had left his father wounded by Tex Armadillo’s bullet. When Tensing bent over Nadia,
she shouted that the king was badly hurt and gestured for him to go. The monk rushed after the prince, while Alexander folded his jacket and tried to make his friend comfortable amid the wind and blowing snow the helicopter had stirred up. Nadia was bruised from her fall, but the shoulder she had earlier dislocated had not been reinjured.

  “It seems I’m not meant to die young,” Nadia commented, gathering herself to get up. Her mouth and nose were bleeding from the punch she’d taken from Armadillo.

  “Don’t you move till Tensing comes back,” ordered Alexander, who was in no mood for jokes.

  From where she lay on her back, Nadia watched the helicopter ascend like a great insect, silver against the deep blue of the sky. It flew along the sheer side of the mountain and rose unsteadily through the funnel formed by the peaks of the Himalayas. Minute after minute it seemed to grow smaller in the sky, receding into the distance. Nadia pushed away Alexander, who wanted her to lie still in the snow, and with a great effort got to her feet. She put a fistful of snow into her mouth and immediately spit it out rosy with blood. Her face had begun to swell.

  “Look!” shouted the pilot, who had not taken his eyes from his craft.

  The helicopter was shuddering like a fly stopped by a windowpane. The Nepalese hero knew exactly what was happening: it had been caught in a burst of whirling air and the blades were vibrating dangerously. He began to wave his arms in the air, shouting instructions that, of course, Armadillo couldn’t hear. The one possibility of escaping the whirlwind was to fly with it in an ascending spiral. Alexander thought it must be something like surfing: if one didn’t take the wave at the exact moment and use its impetus, the ocean would roll the surfer under.

  Armadillo had logged in many hours of flying, as this skill was indispensable in his line of work, and he had flown all kinds of aircraft—small planes, gliders, helicopters, even a dirigible. This was often how he sneaked unseen across borders with his illegal weapons, drugs, and stolen goods. He thought of himself as an expert, but nothing had prepared him for this.