by Adam Hall
Xingyu and myself. Chong would make his way back and report to Pepperidge and provide liaison.
I put my feet on the top of the dashboard to ease the muscles, head was all right, wasn't throbbing so much now in spite of the bouncing around. A crack had started in the windshield; this wasn't shatterproof glass. The whole truck was taking a beating and that couldn't last for ever, perhaps not even for fifty kilometres.
'What are the chances,' I asked Chong, 'of finding somewhere for him between here and the airport?' He knew the region better than I did, and I could be missing something.
He turned to look at me. 'We don't have any. We don't have any chances. Go south with him on board, we're just putting him into their hands.'
'North then,' I said, 'within fifty kilometres, what have we got?'
'Few farms. Few more monasteries, up in the hills. Yak herds, nomad camps, couple of mining sites.'
'They'll check all those. The military.'
'Bet your ass they will. They got choppers, go where they like, put troops down and beat the bushes.' A front wheel hit a rock and something smashed, I think a headlamp.
'Shit.'
I asked him if there were caves.
'Caves? You bet. Few hundred.'
'How big?'
He half-turned on the seat, interested. 'All sizes, I guess, but there'd be plenty with enough room for just two people, no crowding, you know? Some of them big as a ballroom. Sure, you could do that for a couple of days, maybe more if you had to.'
I thought about it. The objective for Bamboo was to fly Xingyu Baibing into Beijing, assuming the coordinator replacing Sojourner had managed to take over without any delay. But we couldn't do that now. All we could do was keep him from being flushed out and sent to Beijing and brainwashed and pushed in front of the cameras, the return of the prodigal son, penitent, reformed, an example to others who thought fit to impede the onward struggle for socialism.
'That's the plan?'
Chong was watching me, taking snatched glances away from the moonlit rocks ahead.
'There's nothing else,' I said, 'we can do.'
'Okay. Have to do it tonight, use the dark. That sun comes up, we're going to see a sky full of choppers looking for that fucking sergeant.'
That had been an hour ago, and now he was waiting outside the monastery with the truck. It didn't need two of us to fetch Xingyu Baibing.
Thugs rje hdul dang dbang…
I crossed the earth floor and climbed the ladder. If there had been movement, if it hadn't been an errant flicker of hallucination, I would find out what it was at close range. The first ladder had a tilt to the left, and I put my feet on the other side, testing the rungs. This was the ladder the monks used, Bian the guard and his replacement; they brought water from the reservoir, and food, and changed the sanitary bucket. It was a good strong ladder, and the tilt didn't worry me. It was something else that worried me.
I stopped climbing and let the data come in, the chanting and the bells and the moonlight and the scent of the incense and the lamps, the feel of the rough wood under my hands, while the primitive brainstem signalled the nerves, opening the pupils by a degree, stimulating the olfactory sensors, turning the tympanic membranes to sweep the environment for unfamiliar sounds, sensitizing the tactile nodes of the fingers and palm, returning me to the ancient status of the animal in the wild seeking the means for survival, the skin crawling now and the hairs lifting on the scalp because of the scent I'd detected, strange and sweet and unfamiliar here, perhaps dangerous.
I couldn't identify it, couldn't find the key, the association with other things, other environments where I'd smelted this scent before. I waited, standing still on the ladder, and let the mind range on its own, taking slow breaths to present the stimulus. Nothing came. Nothing came and I climbed again, watching the long gallery on the second floor, watching the gap where the timbers had fallen during the fire, watching for movement.
Ldna na… Dpal ldan mgon po…
My boot scraped a splinter from a rung of the ladder and I heard it fall, because it was silent here in this huge derelict place, with a silence beyond the chanting and the bells and the creak of the beams as the cold contracted them, a silence in which all I could consciously hear were unfamiliar, unexpected sounds, the animal brainstem tuned to them, and this was good, this was as it should be, the senses taut, alert beyond the norm; but I was not reassured. There was still something else, other than the strange sweet unfamiliar scent, that was causing the gooseflesh, lifting the hair on the scalp.
Screech of a night bird somewhere and I felt the sweat springing, saw lights for an instant leaping against the dark as the nerves were fired.
I stopped moving, absorbed the shock, climbed again. Still something else, but I was beginning to know that its source wasn't physical, sensory. Information was shimmering at a level of awareness beyond the conscious, as subtle as the trembling of a web, and it was bringing fear into my spirit, bringing desolation.
But let us not, my good friend, lend ourselves overmuch to the imagination: the organism is under stress, and prey to fancy. Let us rather climb to the gallery and find things out.
You know it's true. It's not just your imagination.
Yes, but what can I do about it, for God's sake?
The ladder gave a little when I reached the top; one of the rawhide straps had worked loose, but no matter, I was safe enough, I was on the gallery and this was where the movement was, the one I had seen from below. It was a colored rag, hanging across a strut of timber and moving very slightly in a draft of air; it must have dropped from the floor above, and caught across the rough woodwork. I hadn't noticed it the first time I'd come; perhaps it hadn't been there.
Po spyan hdren na a…
Faint now, the voices below, the muted tinkling of the bells. What were they praying for down there where the great gold Buddha sat with his fat stomach and his enigmatic smile? For peace on earth and goodwill to all men? For a brave new China and the blessings of democracy? For the sergeant down there across the trackless wastes, or perhaps for Dr Xingyu Baibing, the new messiah? Let them pray for him, above all pray for him.
Screech of that bloody bird, enough to scare the wits out of you as they say, I suppose it was one of those that wheeled and dived across the burial site that Chong had spoken of, as I'd seen them doing in Bombay, and there's a euphemism for you, sky-burial, a pretty thought but what it means when you get down to it is that you leave your dear ones out there under the sky and those bloody birds come down and pick at them, taking chunks of flesh in their great hooked beaks and flying off with them, plundering the dead I would rather call it, the flesh tearing under the talons — nor is it the time, though, to be morbid, no, I take your point, standing here on the gallery with the sweat seeping along the skin and the hackles raised and the fear of Christ in me because of that strange smell and the intelligence that informed my spirit that something had gone wrong here in the monastery tonight, horribly wrong.
Chapter 20: Dawn
'The subject has been seized.'
I waited, giving him time.
In a moment: 'Is he still alive?'
'I don't know. They killed the monk on guard.'
Waited again. Pepperidge would want to put the questions in order of their priority and I left it to him. He'd have to signal London as soon as I'd rung off, and they'd want the precise facts. The mission had crashed and I didn't know what they would do, put another one together with a standby executive, fly people in from Hong Kong, call out everyone they'd got in Lhasa, sleepers, supports, agents-in-place, God only knew what they would do, if there was anything they could do at all.
'When would you say it happened?'
There was a lot of crackle on the line but I suppose that was normal for this place. 'I can't say for certain. One of the monks said he thought he heard something like a shout, not long before we got there. Call it between twenty-three-thirty and midnight.'
Chong watched me f
rom the cab of the truck. He'd broken the lock on the gates of the depot to get me inside to the phone and then brought the truck up to block off the entrance. His face looked smaller than ever at the window of the cab, cold, pinched, his eyes watchful, pain in them, it hadn't been his fault but it had bruised him: he'd been called in by Pepperidge to support a major operation and the subject had been Dr Xingyu Baibing, the messiah, and he'd only been with the mission a matter of hours before it had crashed, and on the long nerve-wracking trip south across that appalling terrain he'd been terse, brooding, banging his fists on the rim of the big wheel and shouting above the din of the truck, cursing in Chinese, cursing or praying, I didn't know which, then falling quiet for an hour, two hours, finally finding his centre and talking normally, the rage and frustration buried again behind the easy, American-style manner.
He watched me from the cab, turning sometimes to check the street. In the sky behind him, to the east, a crack of saffron light lay across the horizon. Neither of us had eaten, slept, washed for the past twelve hours, rations in the truck but we couldn't touch them, no appetite for anything but the rancour in the soul to chew on.
'Was there any sign,' Pepperidge asked me, 'that he wasn't taken alive? That he was killed?'
I thought back. It didn't look as if there'd been a struggle. Bian, the monk was lying on his back staring into the moonlight, his prayer beads lying half across his face; I would think that another monk or someone in a monk's robes had brought food or water to the third floor and surprised him, killing him silently and going in to Xingyu's cell.
Told him these facts, Pepperidge, these assumptions.
'There would have been a second man?'
'Possibly.'
A second man who'd climbed the ladder as soon as Bian had been dealt with, in case it needed physical force to take Xingyu. But I thought I knew now what that strange sweet smell had been in the monastery: chloroform.
'Were his things missing?'
'Yes.' The diary, the technical papers, the flight bag, insulin kit. 'But they didn't find the thing that Koichi made.' The mask. 'I brought that away.'
'And you'll keep it with you.'
'Yes.'
Hell was he talking about, there was only one man in this world the mask would fit and he was gone and it looked unlikely we'd ever see him again.
'You told the abbot?'
'Yes.'
Brought them away from their prayers, the abbot and the interpreter, committing a sacrilege I've no doubt, their sandals scuffing the earth floor, their robes sickly with the smell of incense, the abbot's eyes wide as I told him, his hands going at once to his beads.
'Ni kendin Bian shile?'
The interpreter looked at me. 'You are sure that Bian is dead?'
'Yes. I'm sorry.'
'Xingyu xianshen, ta met shi?'
'I don't know. They came for him, but I doubt if it was to kill him later.'
The abbot spoke to the interpreter, who turned and called two other monks away from their prayers; they passed us with shock in their eyes, their robes flying as they hurried across the main floor to the ladder in the corner.
In a moment I said, 'Your Holiness, I imagine there are monks here who joined you not so long ago, people you don't know very well as yet. Do you think anyone like that could have betrayed Dr Xingyu?'
For an instant he looked appalled, then said through the interpreter: 'Only four of us knew about our guest. Only four.'
The abbot himself, the interpreter, Bian, and the monk who'd shared duty with him.
'The man who helped Bian.' I said, 'did you know him well?'
'But of course. It was a great responsibility I gave him.'
I left it at that, didn't ask if this man might have talked to anyone else here. It wouldn't have been easy for those who knew about this eminent guest of theirs to keep silent. This was a small sect, and the messiah was in their house.
I told Pepperidge this much, and then for a moment there was nothing on the line but crackling. Then he said, 'That could have been what happened, yes. People talked, someone chose to betray him. But they didn't go to the police.'
'No.' Xingyu hadn't been taken by the police, the PSB, the KCCPC, or the military, or there would have been jeeps raising the dust outside this place and shouting and the tramp of boots and Xingyu would have been hustled away with his wrists bound and his feet dragging, the abbot too, summary trial and execution. 'It wasn't the police,' I said, 'who took him, or anyone official. It was a private cell.'
And this was the worst of it. I hadn't told Chong on the way south in the night; he was support, not executive; his job was to provide manpower, pass information, liaise with the director in the field, protect the shadow, blow up sergeants. Support people must be told even less than the executives because they're more vulnerable, more in danger of capture and interrogation.
I wouldn't have told him in any case; he was frustrated enough as it was. But this was what we faced now: we hadn't just got the police and the Public Service Bureau and Chinese Intelligence and the People's Liberation Army to deal with. Somewhere in Lhasa, in the streets, behind the walls, behind the doors, in the shadows, there was a private cell operating, professional, effective, and with powerful political backing, or they wouldn't have targeted a man like Xingyu Baibing, and this was the worst of it because the forces of vast organizations like the police and the military have got the advantage in numbers and equipment and information resources and it's often difficult to keep out of their way, but at least you know where they are and what they look like, you can see them coming.
A private cell is different. You can be standing next to a man in a bar or a hotel or an airport and not know that you're in hazard, not know that your mission has been infiltrated and that you'll crash if you're lucky or be found dead by morning if you're not.
A private cell can work in the dark, in silence and in stealth. Its power to destroy the opposition is not paraded, like that of a rattlesnake, but shrouded, like that of the black widow.
We were the opposition.
'Do you think' — Pepperidge on the line — 'that someone is just trying to make some money?'
Xingyu would have a price on his head, a big one.
'No. The people who took him were professionals, not mercenaries, not terrorists.' It had been done with great expertise: they'd not only succeeded in finding Xingyu Baibing but they'd gone into a monastery full of monks and got out again with the man they wanted, killing silently and disturbing no one.
Chong was getting out of his cab, looking along the road, looking at me, his gloved hands palm down, pressing the air, don't worry, just keep a low profile, stay where you are, don't come into the street.
I told him I'd gone to ground, but going to ground doesn't necessarily mean that you've got to bury yourself in a cellar, though it might come to that if it's the only way to survive the field and finally get out and go home; it normally means you've got to keep off the streets if you can, stay away from hotels and taxis and airports, watch for the police every minute you're exposed and be ready to duck and run and wait things out if they see you. It's a status we loathe and fear because it can only get more dangerous as time goes by.
They knew my name at the Public Service Bureau: they'd checked my papers there and asked Su-May Wang if she knew where I was. The police would have been alerted as a routine procedure and I'd given my passport and visa to Pepperidge in the cafe because if I were stopped on the street I couldn't show them, would have to say I'd lost them and then try to get clear before they took me along to the station for an inquiry: you cannot, in a town where martial law obtains, go without papers.
Pressing his hands down, Chong, everything's under control, his breath clouding on the raw morning air as the light in the east took on more colour, pouring gold along the horizon.
'Do they want the subject,' Pepperidge asked, 'or what he's got in his head?'
Not after facts now, simply tapping me for what he could get, fo
r what I could give him, because London would ask these questions and he'd need answers. 'If all they wanted was information,' I said, 'they'd have gone for me, not him.' Information on Bamboo, the information I'd been forced to give Xingyu to keep him from running home to Beijing.
'So what do they want him for?'
I had to think, but it wasn't easy, the cold was like a clamp, numbing the body, numbing the brain, not cold so much as fatigue, been a hard day last night. 'They want him,' I said, 'for bargaining, perhaps. As a hostage.' There were a lot of possible scenarios with Xingyu Baibing as the catalyst, brought forward to bring political pressure, a guarantee, a bargaining chip, a martyr to bring the weight of the people against the Chinese government.
'They can't do anything with him here.'
'No. They'll have to take him to Beijing.'
'But they can't do that.' His voice kept fading, coming back. 'Any more than we could have, now that he's being actively sought. In a moment, 'What is your situation?'
'Ground. Chong's still in support.' I told him about the roadblocks, the sergeant.
'Can you still use the truck?'
'Yes.' The sergeant wouldn't have seen it distinctly enough from the roadblock to identify it as a green Jeifang, and the most he would've said to anyone would have been that there was a vehicle on the move down there, he'd go and check it out.
'If they were searching vehicles,' Pepperidge said, 'it couldn't have been a coincidence. Someone must have told them you were going to him.' A beat. 'They're very close, aren't they?'
I didn't say anything. I'd thought about that before but it hadn't got me anywhere, simply confirmed that we had a private cell dogging my shadow, infiltrating Bamboo, driving me to ground.
'I'll have to signal,' Pepperidge said, 'of course.' The line cracked, and I waited. Chong came through the gates, standing inside, his back to me, stamping his feet, gloved hands rammed into the pockets of his coat. An engine was rumbling and I watched the gates; they were heavy timber, with gaps at the hinged ends, a gap in the middle. 'I will relay,' Pepperidge's voice came again, 'what you've told me. They'll want to know what your plans are.'
