High Priestess td-95

by Warren Murphy

  "We don't need a script! We'll go. I'll liberate the country, write a book about my experiences, and someone can adapt it. I'm thinking of calling it Lamb of Light. How's that for a boffo title?"

  "What's this about liberating the country?"

  "Oops. Almost forgot," said Squirrelly, fishing for a particularly fat chocolate-covered cherry. She picked it apart with her perfectly-capped teeth as she talked. "It seems there's this itsy-bitsy disagreement between the government of China and the Tibetanese, or whatever they call themselves. I'm sure it's been blown all out of proportion. Goodness knows when I visited China back during the Nixon regime it was a lovely country with a very enlightened leadership. I still know a few low people in high places. Once I get to Tibet and claim the Lion Throne-isn't that a scream? I'm the Bunji Lamb and I'm going to sit on the Lion Throne. Isn't there an old saying about the lion lying down with the lamb? Anyway, once I'm there, I'll just make a few calls and straighten it all out. "

  There was a long silence on the line, broken only by the measured breathing of both parties.

  Finally Julius said, "Squirrelly, sweetheart. What are you smoking?"

  "Listen, Julie. You know I'm not one to lose my temper. Just talk to Universal or Amblin or whomever. Work out the money end. Then we'll all go to Tibet together."

  "I don't do locations, you know that. I only have to drive past a Thai restaurant and my bowels clench."

  "And listen, I'm having a party tonight. I'm calling it a little lost Bunji Lamb coming-out party. Drop by. I'll introduce you to Lobsang. You and he can talk. Ciao. Or as we Bunji Lambs say, kale pheb. It means 'go softly.' That's Tibetan for Ciao. "

  Click.

  Squirrelly Chicane leaned back in bed and stretched her limber dancer's body. It was the night of her sixtieth birthday, and she felt as if her entire life stretched before her.

  "I wonder if this would work better as a musical?" she muttered. "Maybe I could convince that Remo hunk to be a chorus boy-or whatever they call them."

  Chapter 11

  "I hope you're happy with yourself," Remo Williams was saying as he brought in the last of the precious lacquered trunks.

  The Master of Sinanju sat on his tatami mat on the polished hardwood floor of Squirrelly Chicane's guest house, facing the television screen. He said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  His pupil continued addressing imaginary wrongs. "I hope you really enjoyed treating me like a second-class citizen in my own country. In front of your friends."

  This time the Master of Sinanju deigned to answer. "Kula was your friend before he was my friend," he said. "In Mongolia he was your Mongol, not mine."

  "Well, he sure acted like one of your friends this time around," said Remo, setting down Chiun's trunk. He began pacing the room, wasting both breath and energy.

  "He has sworn allegiance to Boldbator Khan, whom I discovered riding the barren steppes and whom I encouraged to grasp the birthright that was his. Now I have done it again."

  "Like hell, you have. Boldbator was one thing. Squirrelly Chicane is another. She's an actress, for Christ's sake."

  "What better choice to play the greatest role a person can be asked to play? That of the long-lost Bunji Lama."

  "Tibet is practically in revolt. There's a civil war going on over there. You just made it ten times worse."

  "The outcome has not yet been ordained."

  "Ten times worse," Remo repeated. "And for what? Gold?"

  "A roomful of gold," Chiun corrected. "A mere purse of gold, or six purses of gold, would not have been sufficient. But for a roomful of gold, the Master of Sinanju was willing to put aside the few fading moments of the end days of his bitter life and undertake the momentous and exhausting search for the long-lost Bunji Lama."

  "Exhausting? It took you a freaking day."

  "Less. Technically, fourteen of your hours."

  "Nice work if you can get it."

  "I got lucky."

  "Did you see the look on Lobsang's and poor Kula's faces when they decided Squirrelly was the Bunji Lama?" Remo continued. "They were practically in tears."

  "Yes, it was very moving."

  "It was a scam!"

  "Yes. Kula said that. He is very perceptive. For a horse Mongol."

  "How you can accept gold under false pretenses and not feel bad about it is beyond me."

  "Many things are beyond you," Chiun said coolly. "But to answer your shouted question-I will feel bad if the outcome of the events I have set into motion decree that I feel bad. Until then, I am content. I have earned a roomful of gold, and the long-suffering Tibetan people will soon have their precious Bunji Lama restored to them."

  "You know they're planning to sneak her into Tibet."

  "The Lion Throne has been too long vacant."

  "And she'll probably get killed. The Chinese have beaten Tibet into the ground."

  "Rumors spread by whites. No one knows what is happening in Lhasa, which is the capital of Tibet."

  "What if Squirrelly gets herself killed?"

  "It is very simple. She will be reincarnated once again. And now that I have set her on the proper path, in her next life she will begin as the forty-seventh Bunji Lama, as is her birthright, without the burden of this wasted white interlude."

  "I don't believe that crap."

  "No, you believe other crap. You believe in goodness and justice and a gaudy bolt of cloth called a flag because it is a different pattern and color from the bolts of cloth of other countries. In Vietnam you were willing to throw your life away because fat men in starched uniforms told you it was the correct thing to do. You are willing to die for a slice of your mother's apple pie, and you without even a mother. Are these not the fables of your ignorant youth?"

  The Master of Sinanju's pupil looked pained and said nothing.

  "You believed in these things," the Master went on in a less stern tone. "But you remember Lu the Disgraced. And you have heard the voice of Shiva emerge from your own throat."

  "Shove it."

  "And this is why you are so angry and troubled. You do not understand these things. You wish to bury them in the dead part of your mind. But you cannot. You are still a child in marry ways. It is very sad."

  "The hell it is."

  "Spoken like a true child. Now be silent. The California news is coming on. Perhaps there will be tidings of interest."

  Chiun picked up the remote control that lay in his lap and pressed the On button. The blow-dried head of a local television anchor appeared on the screen. He began speaking in the clear, bell-like tones of those native to the California region of America.

  "Topping our news this evening, the Chinese crackdown on Tibet is in its ninth week and the secretary general of the United Nations is calling for Beijing to put an end to martial law and withdraw her troops. Reports of secret executions cannot be confirmed, but refugees continue to carry out of the beleaguered former kingdom horrific tales of murder, torture and other human-rights abuses. From his exile in India, the Dalai Lama has issued a statement that is widely seen as a mild rebuke. And in Beijing a statement attributed to the Panchen Lama has urged the Tibetan people to lay down their arms and cooperate with the people's republic."

  "Who's the Panchen Lama?" asked Remo.

  "A tool of Beijing. It is his destiny to hand up the Tibetan people into oppression."

  "Same old story," muttered Remo. "The UN will fart around until it's too late to help the people on the ground."

  "Whites do not care about Asians," sniffed Chiun. "Forceful words will be spoken in ringing voices, but in the end no hands will be lifted."

  "No argument there."

  "In other news," the newscaster was saying, "the manager for Squirrelly Chicane, award-winning actress, author and advocate of past-life experiences, has declared herself the forty-seventh Bunji Lama and announced that she will go to Tibet and reason with the Chinese military leaders there."

  "News travels fast," Remo grunted.

  "It is
to be hoped that it also travels far," said the Master of Sinanju in a distant voice.

  Remo regarded Chiun with a questioning eye, but he pretended not to notice.

  Chapter 12

  Denholm Fong was doing his morning tai chi exercises when the faxphone began tweedling.

  He let the air flow out of his stomach as he extended his right arm, brought his left hand back and planted both feet on the ground. He refused to break his rhythm, even though it was the unlisted faxphone that was emitting sound and paper.

  Fong stepped in a circle around the walled-in patio of his Bel Air home that he had purchased for cash, he told his neighbors, from the sale of his first screenplay, Shanghai Cats.

  It was an excellent cover story. Southern California was filled with writers making handsome livings off spec screenplays that were optioned and never produced. And so, after moving into Bel Air, Denholm Fong made it a point to periodically throw a party celebrating his latest "sale."

  That no film was ever made mattered not at all to Fong's neighbors. They accepted it as business as usual. This was Hollywood, where no one was rejected without compensation.

  The trouble was, it had begin to chafe Denholm Fong's ego. People really were making crazy money in this strange country of America writing screenplays that producers paid fabulous sums for and that ended up collecting dust in filing cabinets.

  Denholm Fong took to writing screenplays for real. Why not? All his neighbors were doing it. And the unlisted faxphone seldom sounded these days. His true business had been quiet. The biannual stipend from Beijing covered living expenses, but not the boredom that vexed Denholm Fong's days and nights.

  It had been so long since the unlisted faxphone had rung that Fong had at first no reaction. He waited for the sounds to cease, then he brought his exercises to an end and walked limber and casual into the house.

  There was a single sheet of plain paper in the faxphone output box. He picked it up. It was simply a copy of a Reuter's report that had been faxed from a number in Hong Kong so that there was no phone record of communication between Beijing, China and Denholm Fong-a Chinese-American living in Bel Air, California, who had entered the U.S.A. in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre to claim asylum, dropped out of UCLA after two terms and now listed "screenwriter" on his 1040 Form.

  The article was in Cantonese. It was brief. It reported, in the clipped deadpan prose of newspaper copy the world over, that the American actress Squirrelly Chicane had claimed the title of Bunji Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet who had last died in the early 1930s. She planned to go to Lhasa as soon as Chinese authorities processed her visa.

  There was no cover sheet. No instruction, coded or otherwise. The Chinese Intelligence Service was too clever for that.

  The fax transmission might have been simply an amusing clipping sent by one cousin to another across the gulf of the Pacific Ocean. Self-explanatory. Good for a laugh. No reply necessary. Trust you are living the good life in America, cousin.

  And so Denholm Fong read it over once, neither smiled nor frowned and let it fall casually from his fingers into a waiting wastepaper basket. No surveillance camera, no hidden CIA microphone, no suspicious spy could possibly divine the fact that China's top assassin-in-residence in the United States had been notified of his next victim.

  Denholm Fong dropped into the executive chair before his dormant computer and began calling around.

  "Squirrelly? It's Denholm. Listen, darling, I heard the wonderful news. What a part! Congratulations. What's that? A party? I'd love to come. Of course I'll bring a friend. Ciao. "

  Click.

  "Cousin Nigel? Hello, It's Denholm. My dear friend Squirrelly Chicane is throwing a party tonight, and I'd like you to accompany me. Would you be good enough to tell a few of the others? I'm trying to finish up my latest script. It's called Katmandu Cats. Yes, I'm still mining the cat thing."

  Hanging up, Denholm Fong booted up his computer. If he stayed focused, he might be able to finish a working draft of his latest script before Squirrelly's party started. Surely the party would be packed with eager producers who just might give it a read once the hostess had been shoveled into a body bag.

  After all, this was Hollywood, where even sudden death didn't get in the way of business. Unless, of course, you happened to be one of the suddenly dead.

  It was, the Hollywood community agreed, one of the best parties anyone had thrown in a long, long time.

  Even after the terrorists came and tried to slaughter the hostess. Some of the invitees were later heard to say that the terrorists were the best part.

  Everyone who was hot that week had been invited. They crammed Squirrelly Chicane's Malibu beach house, percolated in and out of the guest house to indulge in various encounters and vices, then spilled out onto her private beach.

  Squirrelly herself held court in her living room with her impressive array of entertainment-industry awards standing at attention on the mantelpiece, the Oscar that had catapulted her to new heights positioned exactly in the center. The air was redolent with a sickly sweet smell coming from a hand-rolled cigarette that was being passed around.

  "As soon as the visa problem is cleared up," she was saying, "Tibet, watch out!"

  "How does it feel to be a high priestess?" asked a well-known director as he handed off the cigarette.

  Squirrelly looked in both directions, grinned and said, "Gotta make sure that sour old Lobsang isn't around when I do this. He always has a yak. Watch."

  Squirrelly knocked hot ash off the cigarette and said, "I'm the high priestess, right?"

  She took a quick hit, held it in and released aromatic smoke in a cloud of high-pitched giggling, shrieking, "Now I'm the higher priestess! Isn't that a hoot?"

  Everyone thought is was a hoot. It was the biggest hoot anyone ever thought of. No one, Squirrelly Chicane was assured, could in the history of the human race, never mind Hollywood, think up a bigger hoot. Pass the joint, please.

  THE TERRORISTS got past the private security stationed at the private entrance leading to Squirrelly Chicane's Malibu home by saying, "We're with Sony Pictures."

  The first car was allowed to enter.

  The second car was not challenged, either.

  The valets finished parking both cars at about the same time, and the friends of Denholm Fong began to mix with the crowd, make small talk, sample expensive finger sandwiches and sip assorted intoxicants. They looked relaxed, polished and very southern California. They were all in the film business, they pointedly told anyone who asked and a few who didn't. Most claimed to be Japanese producers or bankers. Japanese money was very important in Hollywood these days. It was enough to impress people who might, but probably would not, know a Japanese from a Chinese at twenty paces.

  By the time Denholm Fong pulled up to the gate and identified himself, the party had shifted into second gear. Anyone who wasn't high was drunk or borderline intoxicated.

  It would be, Fong saw with a single appraising glance as he stepped from his black Porsche, a piece of cake.

  He looked perfectly natural as he strolled onto the beach, smiling and nodding his head to those who waved to him in recognition.

  Everyone was here, he thought. Good. There would be no problem. He might even make that long-wished-for connection.

  Then he saw the old Korean.

  The old Korean wore traditional clothing. Not the trousers of the Korean peasant of the south or the gray work uniform of Fong's North Korean comrades, but the Japanese-style kimono that Koreans almost never wore.

  Except for one very special Korean.

  It was, in the face of it, utterly impossible. This was a typical ostentatious Hollywood party. It was true that the occasion was rather unusual. And he was expecting Tibetans. He saw no Tibetans. Probably they were wringing their hands in horror at the unspiritual display of opulence.

  But the Korean, who looked as if he had first drawn breath in the previous century, was dressed exactly like a Mas
ter of Sinanju.

  Denholm Fong was a political assassin. He knew his adversaries. He knew also his competition. It was known in Beijing that the House of Sinanju had degenerated to the point that it now worked for the United States.

  There could be no doubt. The Reigning Master of Sinanju was present. Fong paused to accept a stuffed crab leg from a silver tray a waiter offered him. He tasted it carefully as he studied the little man who must be the legendary Master of Sinanju.

  The little man moved about the crowd like a fussy hen. He wore a disapproving expression on his wrinkled features. His kimono was a riotous thing of shimmering scarlet-and-violet silks.

  As Fong watched, the old Korean seemed to be slipping up to each of his own agents. While they blended well in their chic clothes, expensive haircuts and mirrored sunglasses, they nevertheless stood out from the others in one unavoidable respect: they were all ethnic Chinese.

  Each time the old man approached one of Fong's agents, the man lost color.

  What could he be telling them? Fong wondered.

  Denholm waited for the little man to walk away from Nigel before approaching his friend.

  "What did that man say to you, Nigel?"

  Nigel's voice was very tight as he replied, "The old dragon said that I had come to the wrong party. Cat is not being served."

  "A Korean, without a doubt."

  "I respectfully request permission to empty my weapon into the old dragon when the time comes."

  "The time," Fong said as he caught a flash of saffron out of one corner of his eye, "has come."

  Squirrelly Chicane stepped onto the veranda overlooking the beach. She wore the saffron robes of a high lama. On her head, leaning forward drunkenly, perched one of those conical lama hats that resembled a horn of plenty.

  "Is everybody having a great time?" she called out, trying to hold the hornlike hat in place.

  "Yes!"

  Squirrelly hoisted her Oscar high. "Am I the Bunji Lama?"

  "Yes!"

  "Am I the Bunjiest Lama that ever was?"

  "Yes, you are, Squirrelly!" the crowd cried out.