by Tom Martin
He hesitated for a second, then continued. ‘I’ve only met Adams a couple of times, with Anton, and to be honest, I find him a little annoying. And I don’t think Anton liked him much either. They had shared interests, that was all. They would meet every few months. They are very different people.’
‘Why is he annoying?’
Krishna paused, frowning at her and then answered:
‘. . . He’s brash, loud, always talking and boasting. He’s like the stereotype of the overconfident American abroad. Forgive me, but it’s true.’
Nancy found this funny, despite its rudeness.
‘Not all Americans are like that.’
‘No. Of course not. I mean he’s very macho. He’s in his mid- to late thirties, I’d say, and very fit and strong from mountaineering. I’m sure you have met the type. Anton once told me that Adams got himself kicked out of Yale for some kind of terrible faux pas, something very public and excruciating, but not before he managed to acquire two PhDs, one in genetics and one in palaeoanthropology. He had lots of theories about mankind being far older than we currently believe, and before his final disgrace he was always telling the professors that they were a bunch of old buzzards . . .’
‘So Anton thought he was a nut?’
‘No, not at all. That is precisely my point. I don’t think that Anton knows him very well, but he certainly doesn’t think he is a nut. He actually thinks that Adams really knows his stuff. In fact he would probably say Adams is a world authority and it’s certainly not out of the question that modern man is in fact much much older than we presently believe. Anton used to point out how absurd our current theories are, how they are all based on a handful of old bones dug up in East Africa. But Anton can also see why Yale threw him out. And I agree. He’s abrasive and I am quite sure that he can be very rude when he wants to be.’
‘So why’s he running “Yeti Tours”?’
‘He’s broke. Anton once told me that Adams would never make a good antiques dealer because he can’t bear to part with anything in his collection and, anyway, half the stuff he buys has no proof of origin. You can’t sell anything on the international market without being able to prove its provenance – in fact you can’t even give it away. It’s to stop people tomb-raiding and robbing monasteries and so on. Adams buys this stuff because he likes it and because he’s sure that one day, he’ll stumble across the big one.’
‘What does he think of as “the big one”?’
‘You know: a Maltese Falcon, or a Topkapi diamond, or maybe a Buddhist equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He’s always being suckered by smugglers who’ve got a good story. Anton says he’s got a wild imagination – he’s too credulous. But what he really wants to find, what he really believes he will find in fact, is some firm, hard evidence that anthropologically modern man, the same as you and me, walked the earth a million years ago.’
‘What about evolution?’
‘There are plenty of examples of animals that don’t evolve over hundreds of millions of years, and Adams maintains that human beings are just the same. All the fossil remains of other hominids that have been dug up over the years, all the Lucys and other missing links that you read about in the newspapers, aren’t our predecessors at all. They’re our contemporaries because our ancestors were alive back then as well. And one day someone will find an intact skeleton of Homo sapiens, dating from one million BC, that will prove all our ideas of history and evolution wrong. Adams reckons the Himalayas are the place to look because they are so high up. People up there would have survived the floods and cataclysms that have buffeted the earth for millennia.’
‘But it’s crazy isn’t it?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. Anton had time for him. Anton used to say that if in a hundred thousand years’ time archaeologists only investigated the area in the Congo basin where the pygmy tribes live, then they might think that pygmies were the only humans alive today. You see, the dating of mankind is all about fossil evidence, and if you look at the fossil remains that we have, you could fit them all on one large dining table. That’s hardly a worthwhile statistical sample of early hominid life. Adams reckons we’ve only found the remains of other hominid species that lived contemporaneously to our ancestors – we haven’t found the bones of our ancestors at all. He believes that one day we will.’
‘Well, he certainly sounds like an original.’
‘Anyway, he originally came to India not to deal in antiques but to continue his research. He’s been in Delhi for ten years now – he’s part of the furniture. But he ran out of money pretty early on. He is always buying antiques and old bits of bones and other such junk. He is a collector, like Anton – an enthusiast. But he doesn’t have a salary so he had to start “Yeti Tours”.’
‘Do you think I can get a meeting with him today?’
Krishna didn’t smile.
‘He lives here in Delhi and he’s always short of cash. If you told him you were interested in going to Pemako on an expedition and were willing to pay good money, then I’d say he would be delighted to meet you.’
14
‘Eat! Don’t worry; it is vegetarian. I am vegetarian too. I hope you like Chinese food.’
Colonel Jen was seated in a high-backed chair at one of the long library tables. He was smiling warmly as he spoke in fluent Tibetan. Opposite him, in a clean and dry orange robe, sat the monk Dorgen Trungpa. His bruises had been tended to and the blood had been washed from his nose and ears, but still he was consumed by fear and suspicion.
The Colonel took a swig of water, without taking his eyes off the monk. Before them on the table was a great spread of dishes, freshly prepared in the monastery kitchen by the Colonel’s chef. In gentle tones, the Colonel said, ‘I am very, very sorry about what has happened here today. I just wish that I had arrived a few minutes earlier . . .’
Dorgen Trungpa was staring at the food in front of them. The Colonel smiled at him and urged him on:
‘Go on. Eat! You must be hungry. This isn’t a trick. Please eat. I beg you. It is for your own good.’
Not taking his eyes off the Colonel for a moment, the monk took a spoonful of one of the dishes and hungrily swallowed the food down. Then he took another. He began to eat steadily; he was very hungry.
The Colonel watched the young monk’s every move and then, when he felt that the moment was right, he began again to speak. ‘When I was a boy, my grandfather, a senior Communist Party official, took me to the Zhongshan mountains in southern China. This is where the Taoist poets lived in the old days, when China was a land of wisdom, before it was destroyed by communism.’
The boy had stopped chewing and was listening in surprise to the Colonel.
‘. . . It is such a beautiful place,’ Jen continued. ‘White clouds pile up around the mountain tops and the valleys are filled with misty rain. The tiny houses of the woodcutters are the only human habitations and the distant sound of an axe echoing through the mountains is the only sound of civilization . . .’
The Colonel paused for a moment, lost in a reverie, and then continued.
‘The paths of the old poets lead through long gorges choked with scree and boulders; wild rivers tumble alongside them and mist-laden grass covers the canyon sides. Moss clings to the rocks of the path, and the pines murmur, and the water is always trickling. The paths lead between the vines and rocky caves, to hidden huts deep in the mountains, where the white clouds touch the snow. It is another world.’
Now the Colonel was speaking in an urgent whisper, as if afraid that even his own orderly might hear.
‘We walked for days through this beautiful scenery and finally we came to a halt at a ruined shrine. There we camped for seven days and my grandfather spoke to me about the world and about China and about our past – things that we cannot speak about any more in Beijing. Forbidden things. He taught me about Taoism, he taught me about alchemy, he taught me about The Way.
‘My grandfather came from an aristocratic family. My forefa
thers were landowners and poets and served at the court of the emperors. After Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, they were stripped of their property and wealth and either murdered or sent to work the land. My grandfather survived by joining the Communist Party and renouncing his past life. He became a senior official in Beijing, but in his heart he never gave up The Way. He taught me and introduced me to the ancient brotherhoods that still survive in China in secret, despite the purges.’
The Colonel stopped for a moment and then he leaned towards the terrified monk and whispered, ‘If my senior officers knew one word of what I have just told you over this table, I would not live to see the end of the day. I am risking my life and the lives of my family. I know that your lama was a bodhisattva. I know that he was a wise man. We are on the same side. I work for the PSB – but that is just a front. I really work for my secret brotherhood. There is a tiny handful of us who have come together. We operate in continual fear of our lives – our desire is to throw off the communist yoke and return China to the path of wisdom. I believe that your high lamas may know of the whereabouts of the lost kingdom of Shangri-La. In the ancient library of Shangri-La we hope to find the most powerful artefact in all the world: the long-lost Book of Dzyan. With the knowledge contained in the Book of Dzyan, we will finally be able to set China free and return her to the old ways of the Tao; for whoever holds the Book of Dzyan controls mankind’s destiny. Genghis Khan possessed it, Alexander the Great and Charlemagne and Napoleon have all possessed it and, each time it has been used, it always mysteriously returns to the library of Shangri-La. The Book of Dzyan represents our last and final hope. I beg you to help me, we have to find Shangri-La – we have to make contact with your lamas . . .’
Silence fell in the great library. The rain drummed relentlessly on the roof. Dorgen Trungpa stared in awe at the Colonel, paralysed by all he had heard, with no clue what to do or say.
15
Night had fallen over Delhi. The hot and crowded bazaar was lit up by fires and lanterns. Beggars and yogis, in the thick of the scrum and yet apart from it, collected alms from passers-by. Jostling for right of way with the people were the animals and vehicles. Camels, horses, donkeys and the sacred cows that wandered where they chose, protected by law and allowed to pass unmolested throughout the streets of India. Huge trucks, laden with boxes and draped with tarpaulins, lurched through the crowds, belching diesel fumes, their loads wobbling above the heads of the throng.
Krishna scuttled ahead, leading the way through the chaos. It had taken some persuading to get him to take Nancy to meet Adams. Yet ultimately she was his boss and, besides, he could hardly let her disappear alone into one of Delhi’s busiest markets on her first night in India.
With every hour that had passed since her interrogation by the police, Nancy’s indignation and self-confidence grew. Bullied by the police on the one hand and, as she saw it, given no assistance by Dan Fischer on the other, her journalist’s natural instinct was to take things into her own hands. And besides, she was thinking, with a nervous attempt to be mischievous, Dan Fischer had told her to do a local-colour piece, and where better to look for it than the teeming market by night?
She watched Krishna marching ahead. There was a stiffness and tension to his body that was most uncharacteristic of almost everyone else in the crowd. He didn’t look very comfortable in the thick of the market; he was too delicate, too well educated and too used to moving within the powerful elite of India. Then again, it was no different from her wandering around the rough parts of DC – she was never very comfortable there, but she liked to think she would have made a better attempt at masking her distaste for the environment.
They passed under the old gate to the Kashmir Serai, the main Bazaar, which was seething with people from all across central Asia: camel-herders from Baluchistan, Pashtuns from Kabul with their orange beards, Sikkimese in their short red garments and conical feathered hats. Men argued and struck deals. Boys kicked the caravan dogs and shovelled hay into the mouths of the horses or lugged plastic petrol cans on their backs. The Bazaar was in an old British-built Victorian square by the railway station. Around the square, up flights of steps, were shaded cloisters, and within the cloisters the more prosperous merchants had set up shop. Each arched cloister had been bricked up and a door had been installed, more or less durable, depending on the success of the merchant. In these shadowy lairs, all kinds of trades and crafts were being practised: money-lending, cobbling, horseshoe manufacture, key-cutting.
Nancy had never imagined that a place like this could exist. She was marvelling at the colour and density around her, while Krishna tugged her sleeve and dragged her past a gang of bickering Tajik truck-drivers who were arguing with their Hindu overlord about how much money they were owed for their most recent journey.
Smiling at it all, she leaned forward and shouted towards Krishna, ‘What on earth is an American doing in a place like this?’
He yelled back at her, still with his eyes on the melee around them, ‘It’s a good place for the illegal antiques trade. Lots of stuff still comes down from Afghanistan over the Khyber Pass and the Karakoram highway from China. The old merchants can get anything through . . . If you try to fly it out and get caught, you can spend a very long time in jail . . .’
She shook her head, not bothering to respond above the din. What am I doing? she thought suddenly. A wave of tiredness washed over her and her confidence suddenly began to ebb away again. Surely I should just go home and get some sleep? Dan Fischer’s advice was perfectly sensible and she was supposed to be a journalist, not a private detective. Her mood swings were becoming disorienting; for a second she had the distinct feeling that she was walking out over an abyss and beneath her there was nothing but a cold dark chasm, stretching infinitely away. But she tried to shrug off the thought. It was too late now. Krishna was climbing up a flight of stairs, and she watched him moving through a wooden doorway and into one of the mysterious cloisters. She followed behind him, and at the top of the steps she paused and glanced down briefly at the frenetic business of the market.
You could spend months here, she thought, just exploring this place, let alone the rest of Delhi. It was exactly what she’d hoped for when she had decided to pack her bags and leave her old life behind with its over-familiar routines, those rituals that had grown dull and eventually sapped her energy: buying a cup of coffee from the store on the corner on the way to work, the bland expanse of the newsroom with its trading floor-like rows of desks, lunch in the canteen or on the lawn when it was sunny. Now she was here and a huge continent lay waiting to be explored, another world, full of novelty and fascination. If only things hadn’t started like this, she thought wistfully, if only Herzog would just walk back in off the dusty streets, it could all be so much fun. But that was never going to happen, Herzog was gone, and she had a horrible feeling he might never be coming back.
16
Inside, the cloister looked like a cross between a Turkish seraglio and a natural history museum. Two large fabulous lamps hung from a vaulted ceiling that arched over a space about twenty-five yards square. They illuminated a vast collection of antiques and ancient fossils and bones of all shapes and sizes and descriptions. Beautiful multicoloured Persian rugs hung from the walls and covered the floors; antique tables and cabinets from China and Japan were scattered everywhere, and on every surface imaginable lay the thousands of items that made up what Nancy assumed was Jack Adams’s Tibetan collection.
The sight was breathtaking. In the middle of the room, in the only clear space available, Krishna was sitting on a pile of cushions, talking to a small Indian boy who appeared to be about twelve years old. The boy was dressed in shalwar kameez, the long baggy trousers of the Pashtuns, a pair of worn leather slippers and a grubby white skullcap. His expression was alert and as soon as Nancy entered the den he stood and made a small bow.
‘Come over,’ said Krishna to Nancy. ‘This is Kim, Jack’s assistant. Kim, this is Nancy Kelly of
the Herald Tribune newspaper.’
Krishna turned back to the boy and continued to speak to him in Hindi. Nancy picked her way through the chaos and stepped on to the rug.
‘Kim will get Mr Adams,’ said Krishna to her as she approached.
The boy bowed again to both of them and then wriggled his way to the back of the room and disappeared through a doorway that Nancy hadn’t noticed before, into the back of the cloister.
Krishna nodded at her. He looked a little nervous. ‘Adams is here – which is lucky. I suddenly thought he might be away on one of his trips. Ask him about going to Pemako and then, once you’ve got him interested, ask him about Anton . . . I’m sure you know what to do, with your journalistic credentials . . .’
There was a noise from the darkness beyond and out stepped a tall, deeply bronzed white man. He had short-cropped blond hair and sky-blue eyes. He moved with a nonchalant swagger and with a compressed energy, the line of his muscles visible through his thin shirt. Nancy saw at once what Krishna had meant about his macho arrogance, though all he was doing was wiping his hands on a rag that he tossed to the floor as he came forward. Arrogant and requiring careful handling, she thought, with her journalist’s instinct for a tricky customer. Charming if it pleased him, but given to treachery, or outbursts – certainly he looked like a man who played his own game and no one else’s.
‘So you want to go to Tibet?’ he said, coming towards her with his hand extended.
As she shook the proffered hand, Nancy wondered about the best way to proceed. He was shrewd; she suspected he would see through her soon enough. Was it better to be honest with him from the start? As Krishna added his own wary greeting, Nancy thought that this image of the rugged explorer looked carefully calculated. Adams had fitted himself up with a wonderfully scenic office location, a great collection of antiques, and then he had his own physical appearance to draw on: the tough mountaineer-cum-adventurer. It was all a crucial part of his sales pitch no doubt, but she wasn’t interested in that. He was handsome though, she conceded, and he must be used to women falling at his feet, mistaking what was probably quite a hard, ambivalent way of life for glamour and adventure.
