High Priestess td-95

by Warren Murphy

  Here, for the first time since he had come to the sun source, he felt small, insignificant, unimportant.

  And he was getting nowhere.

  So he kept his eyes on the elusive, twisting road and tried not to think of how tiny he felt in this alien but eerily familiar land.

  Most of all he tried not to think of what he had seen back in that Tibetan village.

  Remo had not come to Tibet to save it. He had a simple mission. Find Chiun. Find Squirrelly Chicane. Drag them both back to the world, hopefully without causing any international complications.

  Tibet wasn't his problem. Not that he didn't want to see it liberated from Chinese occupation. But the country was huge, infested with dug-in PLA troops, and most of all the Tibetans were docile to the point of gutlessness. Their religion forbade violence, so they accepted their conquerors and put their faith in faraway, impotent religious figures. Remo felt sorry for them. But if they didn't want to fight for their freedom, that was their problem, not his.

  He could only think of what would happen if the PLA suddenly showed up in the Rockies. The Chinese would not last long against ordinary Americans, even armed with pistols and hunting rifles.

  Freedom. You want it, you have to fight for it. But Remo had not come to Tibet to fight for its freedom. That wasn't the mission. That didn't mean he wouldn't inflict a little pain along the way if the Chinese pissed him off, but he wasn't going to make a point of it. That village had been a fluke.

  Remo was freewheeling down one of the rare straightaways on a mountain that looked like every other mountain for the past two hundred miles, his engine off, when he heard a sound from his past.

  Thunk.

  Low, hollow-but unmistakable. In Nam it used to trigger his adrenals and cause him to instinctively duck. It was the sound of a round being dropped into a mortar tube.

  Remo eased down on the brake. The jeep jerked to a stop. And a hundred yards in front of the jeep's steel bumper, about where he would have been, the round struck. Exactly where the whistle of the falling round told him it would.

  Sand and gravel gushed up. Stinging bits struck the windshield and rattled along the hood and frame of the jeep.

  Remo gunned the engine, swerved around the smoking crater and made the bottom of the mountain before his attackers could get organized.

  In the side mirror he caught a glimpse of tiny figures hunkered down on a ridge. They were too far away to make out, Chinese troops or Tibetan resistance, it was impossible to tell.

  If they were Chinese, he was in trouble. They would have radios. But he had a head start.

  Remo piloted the jeep through a valley between mountain scarps that was yellow with poppies. It looked exactly like a a scene out of The Wizard of Oz. Somewhere up ahead, he heard the lazy ringing of bells, and Remo wondered if he should try to avoid it.

  Farther along, the road simply disappeared, and he found himself running along dry pastureland. That made up his mind. The only way to reach Lhasa was to stay on the road to Lhasa. He had to find the road again.

  Checking his side mirror for pursuit, he steered toward the pleasant ringing.

  The ugly black shapes of yaks began to appear. Tin bells around their necks made the bucolic sound.

  Two yak herders in dusty robes were tending the herd. They looked in Remo's direction with hard, care-worn eyes that held absolutely no welcome.

  Yet as Remo drew close, they broke out in applause. The clapping was not exactly hearty, but it was steady. Remo pulled up beside them.

  "Lhasa?" he asked.

  The two yak herders stopped clapping. They looked at Remo, noticed he was not Chinese and seemed bewildered.

  "Lhasa?" said Remo again.

  They just stared. Then Remo remembered the Tibetan guidebook on the passenger seat. He thumbed through it a moment and read carefully, "Wo dao Lhasa. I'm going to Lhasa."

  Abruptly the two men turned their backs on him and walked back to their yaks, calling over their shoulders something that sounded like "Bu keqi!"

  "What'd I say?" Then Remo realized he had been reading from the Chinese section of the guide. They had said the equivalent of "What are you waiting for?"

  Frowning, Remo drove on.

  Farther along he spotted smoke. And then round black tents. They reminded him of the felt yurts of the Mongol herdsmen, which they called gers. These were smaller. They were scattered around the dun-colored pasture like black beehives. Yaks and a few ponies grazed in the open spaces. Remo saw no people. The only sound was the laughter of children playing.

  Remo slowed the jeep as he approached. There was no telling what kind of a welcome he'd get. Heads began poking out of the tent flaps, and the children playing in the dirt with great hilarity suddenly scampered from sight.

  "Nice welcome," he muttered. "I feel like the local welcoming committee leper."

  In the middle of the sprinkling of tents, Remo shut down the engine and tried his luck with Tibetan.

  "Tashi delay!" he shouted.

  The heads sticking out of the tents were followed by thick bodies. The men of the village gathered around him. They stood impassive and stony faced. After a moment they began clapping.

  "Tujaychay," he said, by way of thank you. The clapping subsided. The Tibetans began returning to their tents.

  "Wait! Nga Lhasa dru-giy yin. I'm going to Lhasa."

  "Kalishu," a voice said.

  Remo looked it up. He had just been told goodbye.

  "Great," he muttered. "Anyone here speak English?"

  No response.

  "Inji-gay shing-giy dugay?" he said, repeating the question in his best Tibetan.

  His best Tibetan was obviously not good enough. No one replied.

  "I gotta reach Lhasa. I have a meeting with Bumba Fun."

  "Bumba Fun!" a female voice cried. "You seek Bumba Fun?" Remo turned in his seat. A young Tibetan woman was pushing out of one of the big round tents. She wore a native costume of many layers-an apron over a long sleeveless dresslike garment the color of charcoal and over that a white blouse. Her hair hung in tight black braids around a pleasantly bronze face.

  "You speak English?" Remo asked.

  "Ray. Yes."

  "Then why didn't you say so?"

  "Why you not say looking for Bumba Fun?" she countered.

  "Good point. How do I get to Lhasa?"

  "Drive north to purple shadow at base of mountain."

  "Which mountain?"

  The girl pointed north. "That mountain. It called Nagbopori. That mean Black Mountain."

  "Okay. Got it. After that?"

  "Drive up mountain then down mountain. Keep driving up and down mountain until reach Lhasa."

  "Same mountain?"

  The girl shook her braids. "No. Many mountain. Take you one day if gas last, never if it run out or tires break."

  "Okay. Great. Got it. When I get to Lhasa, how do I find Bumba Fun?"

  "Turn jeep around, drive up mountain then down mountain until you come back here. Then I take you to Bumba Fun."

  Remo blinked.

  "Bumba Fun is here?"

  "Ray. Yes."

  "Then why don't I just skip the Lhasa part and you take me to meet him here and now?"

  The Tibetan girl frowned. "You not go to Lhasa?"

  "I need to see Bumba Fun more."

  "You could see Bumba Fun in Lhasa, too."

  "How can I see him in Lhasa if he's here?"

  "Bumba Fun in Lhasa and here also," the girl said.

  "Are we talking about the same Bumba Fun?" Remo wanted to know.

  "How many Bumba Funs you know?"

  "I don't know any. How many are there?"

  The girl scrunched up her face. "Fifty, maybe sixty Bumba Funs."

  "How do I know where I find the right one?"

  "All Bumba Funs are correct." The woman looked at Remo with about as much puzzlement, Remo figured, as he was looking at her. Finally she said, "You go to Lhasa to see Bumba Fun or you see Bumba Fun here?"r />
  "I'll settle for the local Fun," said Remo, getting out of the jeep.

  "Come this way," invited the girl.

  "Why did everyone clap when I drove up?" Remo asked, just to keep a fascinating conversation going.

  "At first they think you Chinese."

  "Tibetans applaud the Chinese?"

  The girl shook her braided hair. "Beijing insist when Chinese come, we clap to make them feel welcome even though in our hearts we want for ravens to pluck out their eyes."

  "Oh."

  "We call it the clapping tax."

  The girl took him to a tent on the outskirts of the village and swept the entrance flap aside.

  "I present to you Bumba Fun," she said.

  Remo stepped in. The interior of the tent was thick with a smoky buttery odor he associated with Lobsang Drom. It was dark. There was light coming down from the smoke hole in the center of the tent roof, and it made a bright circle. Around the edge of the circle was shadow mixed with stale yak dung smoke hanging still in the air.

  The man seated outside the circle of light looked old. He was big, and reminded Remo of a Mongol, except for the turquoise buttons in his earlobes and the bright red yarn interwoven in his thick hair. He looked up with one brown eye like a tiger's-eye agate. The other eye was a blind milky pearl.

  "What your name, chiling?" he asked.

  "Around here they call me Gonpo Jigme," Remo told him.

  Behind him the Tibetan girl gasped. Bumba Fun opened his good eye to its widest.

  "You have come down off Mt. Kailas to liberate Tibet?" said Bumba Fun.

  "Actually I'm just here to-"

  A commotion penetrated the tent. Engine sounds. Yelling. Remo couldn't understand a word.

  "The Chinese come!" the girl cried. "They will see the jeep and punish us all."

  "I'll handle this," Remo said, pushing out of the tent. "They want me, not you people."

  The girl got in his way, her bronze face pleadingly stubborn.

  "No! No! You must hide. They must not find you here."

  "You forget, I'm Gonpo Jigme."

  She put her hands on his chest. "That what I mean. If you kill them all, there will be reprisals. More Chinese come. You must hide. Please!"

  Remo hesitated. "What about the jeep? It's stolen."

  "We will explain away jeep. Now, quickly. Hide."

  Remo ducked back into the tent. He sat down and waited.

  "So," he said, "you're Bumba Fun."

  "And you are white," said Bumba Fun.

  "Sue me."

  Bumba Fun stared at Remo with his unwinking tiger's-eye orb and said, "The god does not ride you."

  "What god?"

  "Gonpo. Also called Mahakala."

  "Never heard of him."

  "He is known as the Protector of the Tent. You do not know this?"

  One ear attuned to the harsh sound of an arriving mechanized column, Remo shrugged. "News to me."

  "You are not Gonpo Jigme."

  Remo had no answer to that. Instead, he said, "And you're probably not the Bumba Fun I'm looking for."

  "Perhaps. But I am the Bumba Fun you have found."

  Outside there were voices, high-pitched Chinese shouts and the more subdued strained replies in Tibetan.

  Remo crept to the tent flap and peered out.

  In the center of the tents, a contingent of Chinese soldiers in PLA green were hectoring the assembled nomads. They took it meekly, with heads bowed low. One Tibetan acting as a spokesman was trying to reason with the PLA commander, whose dark eyes looked as if they had been sliced into his doughy face with the edge of a bayonet. Although Remo couldn't understand a word on either side, he caught the gist of the exchange from the way the commander kept pointing to Remo's abandoned jeep.

  In the background other soldiers were going tent to tent, routing out the women and children.

  "It's only a matter of time before they come here," Remo told Bumba Fun.

  "And it is only a matter of time before they begin shooting until they have their thief."

  "Look, this is my problem. Why don't I surrender myself and take my chances?"

  "It is a good plan," said Bumba Fun, getting up. "But I will try to reason with them first."

  Bumba Fun stepped past Remo and emerged into the light.

  He spoke up. The Chinese commander whirled at the sound and pointed at Bumba Fun. PLA troops jumped into action, grabbed Fun and pushed him along with kicking boots and slapping hands.

  Remo almost jumped out at that point, but decided to let Fun play out his hand. It was his village. He knew what he was doing.

  They made Bumba Fun kneel at the commander's feet by striking him on the shoulders with their rifle butts. The old man went down without resistance.

  The soldiers surrounded him. All around them the people of the village watched with the drained faces Remo had seen all over Asia.

  It was an interrogation, with the commander screaming, Bumba Fun answering meekly, and Remo clenching his teeth and fists, wanting to jump in.

  As he watched, his mind counted the soldiers, factored in the number of weapons and the surest and softest targets. He could take them out. Easy. But with all the women and children standing around, there would be friendly casualties.

  Then, in the middle of a screaming tirade, the PLA commander pulled out his side arm and shot Bumba Fun in his bad right eye.

  AK-47 rifle muzzles followed the body down, and abruptly, at a sharp order from the commander, swung outward in a circle to menace the cowering villagers. Women clutched their children. Children clutched their mothers' skirts. Men stepped in front of their loved ones.

  The commander barked out another order that caused rifle safeties to be latched off.

  And seeing what was about to happen, Remo came flying out of the tent, his face a tight white mask of fury.

  Chapter 26

  The Master of Sinanju kept his papery face stiff as he was escorted through the grim stone walls of Drapchi Prison.

  It was a substantial place, much larger now than it had been before the Chinese came. Yet its harsh outlines were the same-a low, one-story structure with thin notches cut in the stone instead of windows. It would have been difficult to breach, for the guards were many and heavily armed.

  But the guards, for all their stern purpose and clumsy rifles, were charged with keeping prisoners within. That was their first duty. Their second was to hold the prison against resistance fighters determined to liberate Tibetan prisoners.

  When the tiny old man with hair like coal dust on an egg was brought to their gate, a Chinese soldier came out and began an argument over who would take possession of his sturdy gray pony, the guard who had arrested him or the keeper of the gate.

  The Master of Sinanju listened frozen faced to their foolish argument.

  "This pony belongs to me," insisted the soldier who had arrested him.

  "And I outrank you," returned the other. "So it is mine."

  The outcome was ordained by rank, but the arresting soldier was stubborn. He only gave in after the superior officer showed superior stiffness of neck.

  The arresting soldier trudged off to clean his befouled boots, and the superior officer, a captain, took the pony's reins and led it into the gate, which closed after them with a brassy clang.

  Chiun rode serenely on the pony's back, having gained entrance to the impregnable Drapchi Prison by the oldest subterfuge known to man. He was pleased that it still worked on the Chinese, even though the Trojans had tattled its secrets to every idle ear until even the whites knew it.

  Inside, the Master was made to dismount, which he did silently. The pony was taken away. It had served its purpose, even if it had cost three gold coins to purchase in the border town of Rutog. The captain, obviously interested only in the pony, handed Chiun off to a mere turnkey.

  "Come!" the turnkey snapped.

  With feigned meekness, Chiun obeyed. He walked through dank corridors, each with doors that had
to be unlocked and locked again when they came to them. The Master of Sinanju took careful note of the way. And of the half-starved faces that sometimes peered through brick sized holes in the cell doors.

  The cell that awaited him was bare and windowless. The door was shut. A key turned noisily and was withdrawn.

  Chiun waited until the last footfall had faded beyond the last closed door. Then he lifted his voice.

  "I seek the Bunji Bogd."

  Voices came at once. "The Bunji! The Bunji? Is the Bunji here?"

  "Silence, Buddhists. Let your Bunji speak!"

  "Is the Bunji among us?" a voice asked anxiously.

  "Silence! The Master of Sinanju speaks!"

  Silence came. A murmur remained. The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes and sharpened his ears. He counted heartbeats, listening to their individual throbs. None beat with the sound that belonged to the Bunji Lama, whom he had plucked from relative obscurity, nor of Kula the Mongol or Lobsang the Tibetan.

  They were not here. Not in this wing. He would have to search them out. Here the difficulties might begin.

  The cell door was very simple yet exceedingly stout. An aged wood bound in iron. There was no way to reach the tongue of the lock and no way to destroy the lock without the sound raising an alarm, he saw. The hinges were set on the other side, and iron hasps bolted to the wood held door and hinge as one.

  The Master of Sinanju extended his balled fists, revealing the long Knives of Eternity that were his carefully maintained, implacably sharp fingernails. Hardened by diet and exercise, they were more supple than horn yet sharper than the keenest blade.

  Curling three fingers and a thumb back, he laid the longest of the nails against the topmost iron strap and began to file away the bolt heads. It could be done more quickly than this, but not without making warning sounds.

  Slowness ensured silence. The bolt heads began dropping off, revealing smooth, shiny spots against the black iron.

  He caught each one in his free hand and tossed it back into the sleeping sandpile, where they landed with tiny mushy sounds.

  When the last bolts had been sheared, the Master of Sinanju peeled the iron strap from the wood with his fingers. The metal groaned in slow surrender.