The man who filled the frame looked as broad as he was tall and the bruises on his face seemed to suggest he’d been in some kind of accident. Simon wasn’t the kind of person to start at shadows, but he found his presence intimidating.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
‘Can you hear anything?’
‘No,’ Jamie yawned, blinking against the brightness barely filtered by the thin material of the tent.
‘That might not be good.’
‘Why?’
‘Because every other morning we’ve woken on this trip the porters have been making breakfast and being darned noisy about it.’
‘Stay here,’ he ordered, struggling out of his sleeping bag and putting on his trousers. He wrapped his scarf around his neck, pulled on his hiking boots and his jacket. He was reaching for the tent flap when something occurred to him. ‘Aren’t you going to argue with me?’
She had her arms behind her head outside the sleeping bag, like a butterfly waiting for the right moment to leave the chrysalis.
‘I reckon you can handle things until I’m ready.’
He shook his head, then crept back and kissed her on the lips. ‘Thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘For nothing.’
He pulled back the flaps and emerged into air the texture of raw silk and stark morning sunshine that created razor-edged shadows among the rocks and hollows. They’d made camp in a stony, sheltered bowl close to a stream of cloudy green meltwater. In that first second he knew Sarah had been right. Everyone else was sitting in a circle in the centre of the tents with their hands on the back of their heads. The lip of the bowl seemed to have sprouted trees, or maybe, since they hadn’t seen a tree for two days, that should be statues. Their stillness reminded him of the saints on St Peter’s Basilica as they stood overlooking the circle of tents. Only saints didn’t carry AK-47 assault rifles.
‘I think you’d better join us,’ he called back over his shoulder.
A rifle barrel twitched a silent command, but, despite an empty feeling in his guts that had nothing to do with missing breakfast, Jamie stood his ground and waited until Sarah came out of the tent.
‘Trouble, huh?’ She surveyed the armed men on the rocks around them. ‘Who are—’
They didn’t need an interpreter to tell them that the barked command meant shut up and join the rest, and they took their places at the edge of the little group of porters and film-makers and assumed the same hands-on-head position of surrender.
Jamie kept his face down, but his eyes checked out their captors’ equipment and weaponry. They didn’t appear to be regular soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, but that wasn’t necessarily reassuring. The Chinese authorities had created a paramilitary police force of immigrants, the wujing, to patrol the frontier, and no doubt there were plenty of men among the impoverished tribes of the plateau ready to accept Peking’s bounty for fugitives or interlopers attempting to breach the porous border between the Tibet Autonomous Region and India’s northern provinces. They were armed with what looked like Soviet SKS carbines and AK-47s, but he guessed they would be the Chinese variant, the Type 56, which was virtually indistinguishable from the Moscow version. The only difference was the folding bayonet attached to the barrel, but he hoped he wouldn’t get close enough to make the comparison. He had handled the AK during his time preparing for Sandhurst and he remembered it for the vicious kick and the awfully large hole the 7.62mm bullets made in anything unfortunate enough to get in their way. The weapons appeared clean and well cared for, unlike their owners, who were uniformly hatchet-faced, filthy and wrapped in a variety of layered outer clothing that would be well-suited to the ever-changing climate of the mountains. Low over heavy brows, they wore the type of long-eared, knitted caps that young men in Britain sometimes put on for a joke during wintry weather and their footwear was an incongruous mix of battered climbing boots and branded track shoes. He felt Sarah move beside him and he willed her not to draw attention to herself. One thing was certain, they had to wait this out and deal with the cards as they fell. No chance of fighting. No chance of running. These men would hunt them down within minutes. It was much more sensible to cooperate. If they were lucky it would mean a couple of days trekking and a couple more in a Lhasa jail before they were booted out. He didn’t like to think about what would happen if they weren’t lucky.
Two men scrambled down from the rim of the bowl and snapped an order before hustling Ganesh away from the rest of the group. One gunman sat cross-legged in front of the terrified Tibetan, while the other kept his Kalashnikov conspicuously sighted on the captive’s middle.
From Ganesh’s near hysterical replies, Jamie guessed that he was being questioned about the identity of the westerners. Eventually, the interrogator nodded and his companion shouted a command. Four more men descended into the bowl, ordered the porters to pick up their loads and herded them off down the trail along with the terrified interpreter.
Despite the intense cold, Jamie could feel rivulets of sweat running down his spine. The scenario reminded him of stories he’d read about Vietnam and Cambodia. No witnesses to testify to the fate of the filthy western capitalists or CIA stooges. From the desperate glances Gerry was darting at him, he guessed the film-maker had read them too. He shook his head. Making a run for it would only make things worse. At least this way he’d get a chance to plead for Sarah’s life before someone put a bullet in him.
By now the remaining militia men were going through the tents and removing anything of value. Gerry winced as they fumbled with the expensive camera equipment, but Jamie only had eyes for the interrogator who walked towards the remaining captives with a high-stepping mountain man’s stride. The gunman had tawny, leopard’s eyes and unsmiling, mongoloid features. The eyes surveyed them, deliberately going over each man in turn, then, with a slight frown, turning to Sarah. What did the frown mean? Maybe she reminded him of someone. Maybe killing women was against his rules. Then again, this man didn’t look as if he had any rules.
The Tibetan rapped out a string of orders. Immediately, half of the remaining men pushed the film team towards the entrance of the hollow, gesturing at them to pick up the camera equipment on the way. Gerry shot Jamie a helpless glance as they were led off with a pair of gunmen on either flank, but he had worries of his own. One of the remaining captors attempted to usher Sarah away, and as she was led off protesting loudly, he moved to go with her. The result was a rifle butt in the belly that doubled him over and left him dry-retching into the earth.
‘My wife,’ he choked. ‘I have to stay with my wife.’ Christ, he felt as if he’d been kicked by a donkey. His spleen was somewhere in there and a ruptured spleen was going to be bloody inconvenient in the middle of the Himalayas. He let out a long gasp and fell forward on his knees with his face to the ground. A pair of scuffed leather boots appeared in front of his nose. He noticed that one was laced up with packaging string.
He raised his head and looked up into a pair of merciless amber eyes. The barrel of the Kalashnikov hooked on to his scarf and drew him upwards.
‘King’s, isn’t it?’ the interrogator said in perfect public-school English. ‘I went to Trinity myself and we thought you chaps were nothing but a bunch of smelly, beer-swilling Reds.’
XLV
THE BLANK-EYED buildings of the ruined monastery perched precariously on a cliff at the head of the long valley, clinging like moss to the fractured grey stone. They’d marched for hours without a break and Jamie and Sarah were dead on their feet by the time they arrived just as darkness fell. Throughout the trek the Englishman’s head had been filled with questions for the commander of what he now realized was a group of Tibetan insurgents loyal to the deposed Dalai Lama, but the leader only smiled grimly and told him to save his breath.
When they reached the monastery they were allocated a tiny monk’s cell on the second level. While Jamie checked the contents of his rucksack, Sarah spread her sleeping bag on the stone bed
and closed her eyes. Before she lapsed into sleep she whispered, ‘What was that stuff about the wife, Saintclair? You haven’t even asked me yet.’ He tried to come up with a suitably clever reply, but her breathing told him she was already unconscious. Exhausted beyond words, he leaned against the bare mud wall and allowed his head to fall between his knees.
After what felt like only seconds, a hand touched his shoulder and he opened his eyes to find one of the young Tibetans smiling shyly at him. He followed the boy down to the ground floor where the commander sat by a yak dung fire reading what appeared to be the documentary producer’s diary.
He looked up as Jamie entered.
‘Tell me why you wish to visit our sacred place?’
‘This is madness, of course,’ he said when Jamie had finished. ‘The wujing and the PLA patrol the roads and the passes. It was only a matter of time before you were discovered. If the wujing had taken you they would have raped the woman and shot you all, then left your bodies in a gully for the vultures. You were fortunate that we found you first. I have sent the film-makers back; we cannot afford to have our faces emblazoned on Sky or the BBC. The porters will also return once they have helped replenish our stores.’
‘Why have you kept us here?’
He found himself fixed by the unblinking predator’s eyes. ‘Because you intrigue me. Your story is so unlikely it could well be true, but there are other possibilities. Perhaps you are CIA, who abandoned us many years ago, but who have lately been attempting to woo our representatives in Washington. Or maybe this is one of those subtle puzzles the Chinese are so fond of and you have been sent to spy on us, or draw us into a trap. If that is the case, we will all die together.’
‘I told the truth.’ Jamie waited for a reaction, but none came. ‘You know all about us, but I know nothing about you?’
The guerrilla stared from the window into the darkness. ‘We do not go by our given names, for it could endanger our families here and in India, but you may call me Tenzin. As to what we are,’ he paused for a moment, seeking the precise definition, ‘why, we are ghosts.’
The word, in the faint, flickering light from the tiny fire, with the shadows dancing on the grey mud walls, sent a shiver through Jamie. Tenzin removed his heavy woollen jacket to expose the maroon robe of a Tibetan monk.
‘Yes, I am of the Gelug, Mr Saintclair. But I am also a patriot. Why should it surprise you? The tradition of the warrior priest has been part of your own culture since the dawn of Christianity. Did not an entire sect, the Knights of St John, fight in the Crusades?’
Jamie had placed Tenzin in his mid-forties, but now he could see the monk’s face properly he realized he was at least a decade younger, his features prematurely aged by the privations of the life he chose to live. ‘I had the impression that the only opposition to the Chinese in Tibet was of the non-violent variety.’
‘Aye, and it has been a spectacular success, has it not? More than a million Tibetans dead since the invasion in nineteen fifty, hundreds of thousands still being tortured in Chinese prisons, our people brutalized, our land plundered and polluted, our children taught lies, our religion drowned in the blood of our nuns and monks. Six thousand monasteries destroyed. What you see around you was once a great centre of learning, now it is home only to spiders, bats and vultures – and ghosts.’
The tone was flat and emotionless, but the words evoked images of whole lifetimes of pain and suffering. Jamie struggled for the right response and failed to find it. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
Tenzin laughed. ‘Why should you? A dispute between neighbours in a faraway place. The strong overcome the weak, but Quomolonga is still open to your mountaineering tourists. Tibet was not the Falklands. The oppressed did not speak English, so why should you care about us?’
‘You speak English, and speak it very well,’ Jamie pointed out.
‘Of course. I was sent to school in England from Delhi, where my father was one of the fortunate few who grew rich in exile. At Winchester I proved to be intelligent, but exotic, and was treated the way exotic boys are in your public schools. That was where I learned the futility of passive resistance. When I went to Cambridge I did not stand out quite so much. I made many friends, some of whom now support my little Crusade here in the mountains. Kundun, the Dalai Lama, does not approve of what we do, but we do it all the same. A patrol or a convoy ambushed up in the passes. A wujing garrison attacked while they sleep in their fort. We try to protect those who wish to flee to India. Futile pinpricks, you might argue, but enough to remind the invaders that Tibet still has teeth and they are not welcome here. Then we drift away, like smoke, across the border. Tibet is a place where myth and legend and truth quickly become indistinguishable, Mr Saintclair. Word of our deeds is whispered among the oppressed and gives them hope. So we are the Ghosts of the Four Rivers, the Kamba guerrillas reborn, and proof that some Tibetans are still willing to fight and die for freedom.’
A young fighter entered the room with a rifle on his shoulder and while Tenzin gave him his orders Jamie pondered the reality behind the softly spoken statement. We drift away like smoke. He knew the truth must be brutally different. The Chinese would send whole divisions of specially trained mountain troops to hunt down men like these. The dead eyes of Tenzin’s followers told their own tale. Of men living on the edge, or perhaps beyond it. Men who knew their time was short and their end inevitable. For the Ghosts of the Four Rivers every new breath and every heartbeat was another battle won.
When the young man left, Jamie said, ‘I would have thought Beijing would put pressure on India to stop you from making these incursions?’
Tenzin leaned forward over the fire and allowed the flames to light the leaves of a twig, which immediately gave off fragrant, perfume-scented smoke. He handed Jamie another twig and invited him to do the same.
‘Now you have committed an act of defiance against the regime and are as liable to imprisonment and torture as I. The burning of juniper branches pleases Buddha, but displeases the oppressors. The Indians ignore us, because the Chinese do not acknowledge our existence. To do so would be an admission of failure, a loss of face. They wish the world to believe that after fifty years of their benign rule Tibet is a peaceful, ordered society. In their misplaced pride lies our strength.’ He raised his head to look directly into Jamie’s eyes. ‘When we talked earlier of the sacred place, it seemed to me that your story was not complete.’
Jamie studied him warily. He’d limited his tale of the expedition to what the documentary team had known and meant to keep it that way. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘Perhaps it is a coincidence that a special unit of Chinese engineers have also been taking an interest in it for the past month?’
‘Tell him, Jamie. Tell him it all.’
He looked up to see Sarah standing at the top of the stairs. ‘All right.’ He nodded. And told Tenzin about Walter Brohm and the discovery that would change the world.
The crater was enormous and as Jamie watched through binoculars from a sheltered hide on the rim a mile away, he realized Tenzin had been right and there had never been any chance they would get close to the shaft, never mind inside it. Chinese soldiers swarmed round the entrance while bulldozers and earth-moving equipment stripped the earth for hundreds of yards around and loaded it on to lorries that shuttled back and forth up a roadway of crushed rock that had been dug into the crater side.
‘Let me see.’ Reluctantly, he gave the binoculars up to Sarah who had been twitching impatiently at his side.
‘Make sure the sun doesn’t catch the lens,’ he warned.
‘I’m not an idiot, Saintclair.’ She focused on the digging operation. ‘This has to be costing them millions. Most of the equipment would have been flown in by helicopter. Whatever they’re mining here must be incredibly valuable.’
‘It is not a mine, it is a shrine,’ Tenzin said patiently. ‘A sacred place for a thousand years. And they are digging up nothing but worthless earth
and rock. They seek the Sun Stone, or traces of its passing, but you cannot steal what has already been stolen.’
Sun Stone. The hair stood up on the back of Jamie’s neck as he heard the phrase for the first time.
‘Long before Buddha’s time, a meteorite landed here.’ Tenzin saw Jamie’s look. ‘Yes, Mr Saintclair, I’m something of an amateur geologist – I picked it up at Cambridge when I was studying applied physics, and a monk has plenty of time for reading. As you can see, it must have been very large to cause a crater of this size. Ninety per cent of the object would have burned up in the atmosphere and when it struck it would have disintegrated on impact, creating a huge dust cloud. This is an area rich in such craters, though most are much smaller. Once, a man could become rich collecting the residue of fallen meteorites, glassified minerals known as tektites. But this was a meteorite like no other. It contained a substance so indestructible that it drove a tunnel eight feet in diameter a mile and a half into the living rock. If you move a little to the left, Miss Grant, you will see the entrance to the shaft.’
‘How do you know so much about all this?’ Sarah asked.
‘It has been passed down through the generations,’ Tenzin said simply, as if no further explanation was required. ‘The Holy Men of that time believed the devastation the meteorite caused was the wrath of the Sun god. They came here to carry out a ritual that would appease the god.’
‘A sacrifice?’
Tenzin nodded sadly. ‘They were less enlightened times. Seven prisoners were led down the shaft the meteor had driven into the earth, but as they prepared the victims for the sacrifice they discovered something astonishing.’
The Doomsday Testament Page 25
