The lamasery consisted of several flat-roofed buildings painted in ochre and built into the side of the valley. The whole place was surrounded by a high wall, and great double gates stood open to the courtyard inside.
Flocks of yaks and small Tibetan horses grazed beneath the walls and the black skin tents of the herdsmen clustered beside a stream.
It was a peaceful scene and smoke from the cooking fires, carried to them on the wind, was pungent in the nostrils, taking Chavasse back by some trick of memory to the campfires of boyhood.
A crowd of fifty or sixty people stood by the gate peering into the courtyard, and suddenly the air was filled with an unearthly, deep booming sound that reverberated between the walls of the valley.
Kurbsky pointed excitedly. “See, there on the highest roof. A monk is blowing a radong. They can signal with them for miles, I understand.”
The crowd by the gate turned towards them. They were mainly herdsmen, hardly mountaineers in sheepskin shubas, some with broad knives in their belts. They looked distinctly unfriendly and the Chinese soldier at the machine gun cocked it quickly and checked the magazine. The jeep slowed as the driver changed gear and the crowd parted to let them through.
For a moment, every other consideration was driven from Chavasse’s mind at the sight of the magnificent spectacle which was taking place in the courtyard.
A group of lamas in brilliant traditional costumes were in the middle of enacting some religious ceremony. In their silken robes of blue, red and green and wearing huge masks with hideous demons’ faces painted on them, they whirled together in an intricate and deadly pattern, wielding great swords above their heads.
“What luck!” Kurbsky exclaimed excitedly. “I’ve heard of this ceremony. It’s something few travellers ever see. The Downfall of the King of Hell.”
He opened his knapsack, took out a camera and started to take photos as fast as he was able. For Chavasse, there was a terrible fascination in sitting there, waiting for something to happen, and suddenly he felt curiously light-headed and there was that faint feeling of nausea again.
The demons spun in ever-faster circles, leaping into the air, their aprons of human bones swinging out until they were parallel to the ground. The music from the conches and the drums became even more frenzied and the soldier at the machine gun leaned negligently forward, his mouth agape with wonder.
And then Chavasse realized that the demons had gradually encircled the jeep, that they were moving closer and closer, tightening the circle every moment, and that the crowd who had stood outside had now moved in through the gate.
Kurbsky and his men had noticed nothing. Once, the Russian cursed and hastily reloaded the camera, then continued to take pictures as fast as he could.
Chavasse had been keeping an eye on one man who seemed to be leading the others in their dance. His robe was scarlet, his mask scarlet and white with dark horsehair tails.
The sword in his hand spun in a glittering circle of steel as he revolved, and suddenly he was very close. His right arm swung from behind his left shoulder in one terrible, backhanded blow. The soldier at the machine gun staggered against Chavasse, his head half-severed from his body, and toppled over the side.
There was a moment of utter stillness during which the whole world seemed to stop breathing, and then the crowd roared and moved in. Everything seemed to move away from Chavasse as the demon wrenched off his mask and Joro glared up at him, his face cold and hard, the face of a killer.
The driver screamed once as hands reached for him, dragging him from behind the wheel, and Kurbsky stood there, his face frozen with horror, the camera still half-raised. He threw one terrible, agonized glance at Chavasse and then was pulled backwards out of his seat.
For a brief moment, he managed to get to his feet, covered in dust, blood on his face, and then they swarmed over him like a great sea, blotting him from sight.
Chavasse found himself scrambling over the side down into the crowd, his mouth open in a soundless scream as he tried to claw his way through the living wall towards the Russian.
Faces turned towards him, blind with fury and passion, lips drawn back from decaying teeth. As hands clawed at his clothing, he smashed a fist into someone’s mouth and then a searing pain flooded through his head and he plunged into darkness.
7
He opened his eyes slowly. For a moment, his mind was a complete blank, and he struggled up on one elbow, panic moving inside him.
He was lying on a narrow bed in one corner of a dark and windowless room. A flickering butter lamp hung from a chain in the centre and all the gods and devils in the Buddhist pantheon chased each other through the shadows on the ancient tapestries which covered the walls.
Their great demons’ faces loomed out of the darkness at him and he closed his eyes for a moment and became aware of a low, monotonous voice. When he opened them again, he realized that a saffron-robed monk in a conical hat was sitting in the shadows a few feet away, beads clicking between his fingers as he prayed.
As Chavasse moved, the old man stopped praying, got to his feet and came forward. He looked incredibly old, his yellow parchment face netted with a thousand wrinkles. Quite suddenly, he smiled and, pulling the tapestry at the end of the bed to one side, went out through a low arch.
Chavasse felt completely rested and his headache had vanished. He flung the sheepskin to one side and swung his legs to the floor. At that moment, the tapestry was pulled back and Joro entered.
The Tibetan was dressed in the brown robe and sheepskin shuba he had worn on the plane and there was a smile on his face. The other Joro, the one who had worn the mask of the King of Hell, might never have existed.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“All things considered, pretty good,” Chavasse told him. “I don’t know what made me act the way I did. I think I had a touch of fever or something.”
“It was the mountain sickness, nothing more.
It makes a man do strange things. The abbot gave you something for it while you slept.”
“That was a pretty neat trick you pulled out there in the courtyard,” Chavasse said.
Joro shrugged. “They had the machine gun so we had to be careful. I’m glad it worked. I had to walk most of the night to get here in time. But I knew they would take you to Changu and this meant that they would have to pass through here.”
“What happened to the Russian? Is he dead?”
Joro nodded. “Naturally. To my people, the Russians and the Chinese are simply two sides of the same coin. Here is your Walther. I found it in his pocket.”
Chavasse sighed, a feeling of genuine regret running through him. “He was a good man, by any standards.”
“Not by mine,” Joro told him. “To me this is war and he was the enemy. It is as simple as that. In any case, I couldn’t have stopped the people once they got started. I had enough trouble saving you when you got in among them.”
“My thanks for that, anyway.”
Joro shook his head. “They are not needed. I was simply repaying a debt. It was your quickness which saved me at the lake.”
“You’ve found the arms, I suppose?” Chavasse said. “They were in the rear of the jeep.”
Joro nodded. “Some of my men are preparing them for use in the next room. Why not come through. There is a fire there and some tea. Tibetan, I’m afraid, but it’s time you got used to it.”
He plucked back the tapestry and Chavasse followed him into a much larger room with a low, crudely plastered ceiling and tiny windows set high in the wall. The guns were laid out on a large wooden table and three Tibetan warriors cleaned them expertly.
“They seem to know their stuff,” Chavasse commented.
Joro nodded. “They are quick to learn. This is something the Chinese have yet to discover.”
A fire of yak dung burned brightly on the large stone hearth and as Chavasse watched, Joro crumbled a handful of brick tea into a cauldron of boiling water and added butter and a pinch of salt.
“You haven’t got such a thing as a cigarette, have you?” Chavasse asked.
Joro nodded across to the table. “One of my men emptied the Russian’s pockets. His things are over there. There were three of four packets of cigarettes, I believe.”
Chavasse crossed to the table and stood looking down for a moment at all that remained of a man: a wallet, his travelling papers and three packets of cigarettes.
He lit one slowly and, carrying the wallet and travelling papers, returned to the fire, where he sat down on a rough wooden bench.
The wallet contained a wad of Chinese bank-notes, a couple of letters obviously received from friends in Russia and a membership card for a Moscow press club. There were no intimate little snapshots of wife or children, and feeling curiously relieved, Chavasse turned to the papers.
There were the usual travelling permits plus a special visa for Tibet, date-stamped Peking and countersigned by the military governor in Lhasa. They were smeared with blood and badly damaged by a knife-thrust, but Kurbsky’s face still stared out from the photo of identification.
Chavasse sat there looking at the papers, so deeply immersed in thought that when Joro pronounced the tea ready and handed him a metal cup, he drank the contents down without thinking.
“The tea.” Joro smiled. “You like it?”
Chavasse looked at the empty cup in his hands with a slight frown and then grinned. “I didn’t even feel it go down. You’d better give me another.”
It was curiously refreshing and he felt life returning to him. He lit another cigarette and said, “How far is Changu from here?”
“Perhaps ninety miles,” Joro said. “Two days’ hard travelling by horse.”
“What if we went in the jeep?”
“That would be impossible,” Joro said. “There are at least two hundred troops stationed there, and they patrol the vicinity regularly. If we even tried to approach the town in the jeep, we would be arrested.”
“But what if we drove right in?”
Joro frowned in bewilderment. “How would this be possible?”
“By my telling the authorities that I’m Andrei Sergeievich Kurbsky, a Russian journalist touring Tibet on a visa from the Central Committee in Peking. I speak excellent Russian, by the way.”
“And what about your escort?”
“Murdered by the bandits who ambushed our camp during the night. You can be the guide I hired in Lhasa who pretended to fall in with them and saved my life by persuading them to hold me for ransom.”
Joro nodded slowly. “I see—and presumably we escaped in the jeep while the others slept?”
Chavasse grinned. “You’re catching on fine.”
The Tibetan shook his head. “There is one thing you are forgetting. The Russian’s papers—they carry his picture.”
Chavasse tossed them into the fire. The bloodstained documents started to go brown and curled at the edges. For a brief moment, Kurbsky stared out at him for the last time. Then they dissolved in a puff of flame.
“Let’s say the bandits emptied my pockets,” Chavasse said. “Anything else?”
Joro shook his head. “Only that it will be very dangerous. There is possibly one thing in our favour. One of my men arrived from Changu last night. Apparently, Colonel Li is away for a few days visiting the outlying villages. Only a captain called Tsen is in charge, and he is young and inexperienced.”
“Couldn’t be better,” Chavasse said. “Even if he radios Lhasa, what can they do except regret such unpleasantness befalling a Russian national in their territory and confirm my existence.”
“Assuming that Tsen accepts us, what then?”
“Kurbsky was looking for stories,” Chavasse said. “I don’t see why he couldn’t have visited Changu with the intention of interviewing Doctor Hoffner.”
The Tibetan smiled suddenly and his eyes sparkled. “This would really be a very good joke at the expense of the Chinese. Perhaps Doctor Hoffner would even agree to accommodate you at his home during your stay.” His smile suddenly disappeared and he looked serious again. “But whatever we do, it must be handled quickly and before Colonel Li returns. He is not an easy man to fool, I assure you.”
“Then we’d better get started.”
He left Joro to make arrangements with his lieutenants, went outside and stood at the top of a flight of stone steps gazing down into the dusty courtyard.
It was peaceful and deserted except for the row of monks sitting against a wall in the pale sunlight and praying together, their voices only a murmur on the quiet air.
That death had visited this place such a short time before seemed incredible and yet, as he crossed to the jeep, he passed great purple patches of blood which had soaked into the dust.
He climbed behind the wheel and lit a cigarette and thought about life. Five thousand years before, an Old Testament prophet had put it as perfectly as anyone ever could: Time and chance happeneth to all men!
For Kurbsky, who had seen so much of danger in his life, death had erupted out of nowhere in this dusty courtyard a thousand miles from nowhere when he had least expected it.
Chavasse shivered involuntarily. It was a sobering thought, and he was still considering it when Joro joined him a few minutes later. Then they drove out through the gates and started their journey.
For the first couple of hours, they followed the winding course of an ancient caravan trail through the steppes, now rutted by the wheels of Chinese military vehicles.
On several occasions they passed herdsmen and their flocks and once, a long caravan of heavily laden yaks and mules. The landscape was harsh and forbidding, with the skyline broken here and there by strange stone shrines and poles bearing sacred garlands and prayer flags.
Almost four hours after leaving Yalung Gompa, Chavasse braked to a halt and touched Joro, who was dozing in the corner, on the shoulder.
Changu stood beside a river in a wide and shallow valley and its flat-roofed buildings climbed the opposite slope in tiers. The most imposing structure by far was the monastery, which stood in the very centre of the ancient walled town, its walls striped in red, green and black.
“Is the monastery still functioning?” Chavasse asked Joro as he engaged a low gear and took the jeep down the steep slope.
The Tibetan shook his head. “Colonel Li uses it as his headquarters. There are only a few monasteries left in Tibet now. Only Yalung Gompa’s isolation has saved it so far.”
The familiar tents of the herdsmen clustered around the walls of the town and they passed a caravan, causing heads to turn cautiously, and went in through the great archway of the main gate.
Just inside, a white concrete pillbox looked somehow incongruous and three soldiers in quilted drab uniforms squatted in the dust and gambled with dice.
“It’s easy to see that Colonel Li is away,” Joro said.
Chavasse didn’t even bother to stop. As the soldiers glanced up in alarm, he roared forward, scattering men and animals, drove into the courtyard of the monastery and braked to a halt in what he hoped was a suitably arrogant manner.
A soldier lolling against the wall beside the main gate straightened at once and unslung his automatic rifle.
“Shall I come with you?” Joro asked.
Chavasse shook his head. “No, you stay here. It should give you some sort of chance if things go sour on me.”
He mounted the broad flight of shallow steps leading to the entrance, lighting one of Kurbsky’s cigarettes as he did so.
The guard stepped forward, fingering his rifle, and Chavasse snapped in Chinese, “Take me to Colonel Li at once, and be quick about it!”
There was just the right amount of iron in his voice and the soldier was properly impressed. He explained hastily that the colonel was away but that Captain Tsen was in his office and he would take Chavasse to him.
They went along a stone-flagged corridor, mounted some stairs at the end and passed into another corridor with a wooden floor. At the far end, the
sentry opened a door and stood back respectfully for Chavasse to enter first.
An earnest and rather scholarly-looking young corporal looked up in surprise from his desk. When he saw Chavasse, his eyes widened behind the thick lenses of his steel spectacles and he got to his feet hastily.
“Where’s Captain Tsen?” Chavasse demanded angrily.
The corporal opened his mouth to speak, shut it again and turned instinctively to the door behind him. Chavasse brushed past him, opened it and went inside.
The young officer who sat behind the desk was perhaps twenty-five and when he rose to his feet, a frown of bewilderment on his face, Chavasse saw that he was no more than five feet.
“Are you Tsen?” he snarled. “My God, what sort of a bloody post are you running here? Guards dicing at the main gate and sentries propping up the wall while rebels gallop around at will, murdering your own men.”
Tsen tried to assert his authority. He came from behind his desk, fastening his collar, and said angrily to the corporal who stood in the doorway, “What is going on here? Who is this man?”
“Who am I?” Chavasse interrupted. “I’m Kurbsky. Surely they radioed you from Lhasa to say I was coming?”
“Kurbsky?” Tsen said blankly. “Lhasa?”
“I’m a journalist, you dolt,” Chavasse roared, “on a roving commission in Tibet to find stories for my paper in Moscow. And a fine story I’ve got for them, I can tell you. Held prisoner by a gang of murderous cutthroats, my escort murdered. That’s going to look good in Pravda. I don’t know who’s supposed to be in charge here, but when the Central Committee in Peking hears about it, heads will roll, I promise you.”
Captain Tsen’s face was ashen and he pulled a chair forward quickly. “Please sit down. I’d no idea.”
“I bet you hadn’t,” Chavasse said. “I trust you’ve at least got a drink handy.”
Tsen turned to the corporal, who went to a cupboard and returned with a dark bottle and a glass, which he hastily filled.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” Chavasse demanded as the liquor burned its way down his throat. “Petrol?”
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