"It was said by your last body that you would not recognize the trappings of that previous life," Chiun reminded her.
Squirrelly squinted at the titanic shape. "Is that a trapping? Looks kinda big for a trapping."
"We will go to the Potala Palace," said Chiun.
There were soldiers abroad in the night. PLA regulars. PSB watchers. Plain-clothed Chinese. Tibetan collaborators.
They moved through the alleys of Lhasa, unseen. The people of the city slept fitfully. From time to time a jeep whirled past, showing haste but no urgency.
"The alarm has not yet been sounded," Chiun observed.
"Maybe we should sound it," Squirrelly said hopefully.
"What is this?" Chiun demanded.
"Look, we just busted out of prison with all the excitement of a cookout. Unless you're into splatter films. Which I'm not and wouldn't be caught dead in. Now we're moving toward the third act already, and the second act has been strictly wham-bam thank-you ma'am."
Chiun and Kula looked at her in the darkness.
"Don't you see?" Squirrelly said desperately. "Once I plant my tush on the Lion Throne, it's all over but the withdrawal. We can have a really pow Mass Saigon kind of finish."
The others looked blank.
"Look, I still haven't made up my mind if this is a movie or a musical, so bear with me. Okay?"
"Okay," said Kula, nodding uncertainly.
"If I grab the throne without a fight, it'll fall as flat as Ishtar. There's not enough struggle."
"The Tibetans have struggled for forty years. Is that not struggle enough?" wondered Kula.
"That's their struggle. I'm talking about my struggle. That's what this is about. My struggle. The Bunji Lama stands for strugglehood. Let them mount their own production if they want to glorify their personal frigging struggles."
A helicopter rattled overhead, and they fell silent until it had passed. Kula pointed his rifle muzzles upward and tracked it like a human antiaircraft gun. He did not fire. A warning fingernail prodding the small of his back clarified the decision for him.
Squirrelly continued. "But if the Chinese get wind that we're loose, what will they do?"
"Seek us."
"Exactly," Squirrelly said, clapping her hands. She was getting through to them. Obviously they weren't up on their film lore. "They seek us," she said. "We run. We hide and, after a good rousing struggle, we defeat them and I claim the Lion Throne. Me, Squirrelly Chicane, the sixty and sexellent Bunji Lama."
"How will we defeat them? We are outnumbered." Squirrelly leaned closer and dropped her voice conspiratorially. "I don't know. But when we get to that part, do me a huge favor?"
"Yes," said Kula.
"No," said Chiun.
"Let me do the rescuing. I have to save myself. That's absolutely mandatory. The heroine can't be saved by supporting characters in the climax. It just doesn't work. Look at The Rocketeer. They went to all that trouble to build up the hero, and in the end Howard Hughes pulls his fat out of the fire for him. Word of mouth got around, and people stayed away in droves."
"I have another solution," said Chiun.
"What?" asked Squirrelly.
"You will take a nap."
"Nap?"
And the Master of Sinanju reached up with two long-nailed fingers and claimed the Bunji Lama's consciousness with a careful tweak of a nerve the gods had placed in her neck for just this hour.
Kula caught the collapsing Squirrelly Chicane and laid her across his broad shoulder. "It is good that you did that, Master. For the strain had caused her to descend into unintelligible babbling."
"Her babbling was perfectly understandable," said Chiun, starting off. "That is why I found it necessary to grant her the gift of sleep."
"You understand her words?"
"Yes."
"Explain them to me, then."
"No," said Chiun, who only wanted to get the Bunji Lama to the safety of the Potala before the alarm was sounded in truth.
After that their true difficulties would begin.
Chapter 31
Remo knew he had made a mistake in bringing down the PLA helicopter gunship when he spotted a thin brown serpent of dust against the mountainous horizon.
The Nepal-Lhasa Highway was an undulating ribbon before him. He was trapped on it. There were no off ramps in Tibet. And here on one of the innumerable mountain passes there was only narrow road and vertical rock.
The serpent of dust could only be an approaching convoy; whether of commercial trucks or military vehicles hardly mattered. Foreigners were barred from Tibet. Chances were good Remo would be turned over to the PSB.
He downshifted. Maybe, Remo thought, he could reach the bottom of the mountain and hide the jeep somewhere in the rocks below before the mechanized column spotted him.
The trouble was, his jeep was also leaving a trail of thin dust that was sure to be spotted in the dying light of the day.
Remo sped toward a pass between two mountains, intent on his driving. The Sinanju skills, second nature to him, were extended even to driving a gas-guazling jeep. Through the vibrating steering wheel, he was aware of every pebble the tires rolled over, felt every suspension-punishing chuckhole and sensed where the shoulder of the road was too treacherous to support the weight of his vehicle.
The pass was a motorist's nightmare. Curving around the peak, it would narrow without warning, until Remo felt as if he were driving on air.
It was while negotiating one of these tricky curves that the PLA jeep coming in the other direction appeared. There was no room for two vehicles on the narrow road. And there was no time to pass, even if there had been a way to do so without one jeep crashing into the mountainside or plummeting off the yawning cliff.
They were on a collision course moving at nearly fifty miles per hour with no margin for error.
The driver of the jeep wore shock on his bone white face. He would be no help. Remo decided that since he was on his last tank of gas with Lhasa nowhere in sight, he had nothing to lose by driving off the side of the mountain.
The two jeeps closed. Remo held the road until the last possible second, then cut the wheel hard to the right.
The jeep went over the cliff.
Remo was already out of his seat and in midair. He was not going down the mountainside. He executed a back flip that looked as if it were being shown in slow motion and when he landed in the passenger seat next to the wide-eyed jeep driver, he barely made the springs bounce.
The driver, his eyes following the rear of the jeep Remo had just left, became aware of his passenger when a white hand as hard as bone took the wheel.
The driver cursed in Chinese and tried to turn the wheel. It wouldn't budge. The steering wheel might as well have been fixed.
The driver next tried to stomp the brake. Instead, something kicked his brake foot and stomped on the foot that was over the gas. The jeep accelerated.
It was mad. The road was too narrow and circuitous to negotiate at high speed. Especially with two people fighting for control of the steering wheel. Not that it was much of a fight.
The jeep rocked and bounced as if on a shaky track. Every time the nose seemed about to careen over the edge, miraculously it righted itself. And most maddening of all to the Chinese driver was the fact that the alien man controlled the steering wheel with only one hand!
The wild ride came to a halt with breath-stealing suddenness.
Without warning, the foot on the driver's foot that kept the gas pedal pressed to the floorboard came off and tapped the brake.
The jeep jarred to a stop as if it had struck an invisible wall. The driver did not. He kept going, through the windshield, over the hood and beyond.
The driver found himself scrambling for something to hold on to as his body reached the utmost forward impetus and gravity took hold of his stomach and clawed him earthward.
Having no choice, his body obeyed the call of gravity.
His stomach seemed to have stayed
behind. Or that was his predominate thought as his helmeted head encountered a wall of stone, and no thought troubled his jellied brain after that.
Remo backed up, turned the jeep around and got back in the direction he had been traveling originally. He lost a little time but he had a fresh tank of gas. With any luck he might slip past the approaching mechanized column.
When it came into view, down on the plain, he changed his mind.
It was a tank column. Three dull green Soviet-style T-62 tanks were muttering along in a line, their domed turrets swiveling this way and that as if to threaten any lurking snipers.
In the lead tank a green-uniformed figure jockeyed the turret-mounted machine gun around and sent short bursts into anything that caught his attention. A trio of grazing yaks-the lifeblood of the Tibetan people-shuddered and bellowed and fell over, halfchewed tufts of grass spilling from their agonized jaws.
Moving on, the machine gunner noticed a twenty-foot seated Buddha carved into the side of a mountain. It looked very old. And to have carved it out of the granite face of a mountain at this oxygen-starved altitude had to have been the toil of years.
The machine gunner elevated his weapon and concentrated his face. The Buddha's face, element worn but placid, disintegrated in spurts of rock dust.
When his ammo belt ran out, the machine gunner calmly lifted a walkie-talkie to his face and began speaking.
The jeep had obviously been a scout, Remo realized. Maybe they were looking for him. Maybe not. But they were going to find him.
And they were going to regret it for the rest of their lives-a very short time.
CAPTAIN DOUFU ITUI of the Fourth Field Army was trying to raise the scout helicopter gunship that had been sent out on a punishment raid. There was no word of it. Or from it.
It was not uncommon for helicopters to falter in these unforgiving mountains with their rarefied air that made even the land-roving tanks gasp for oxygen. No doubt the craft had gone down. Probably an accident.
If not, it was the twice-accursed Chushi Gangdruk. Captain Doufu hoped in his heart that it would be the work of the Chushi Gangdruk. He had not been allowed to train his tank cannon on a Tibetan monastery since Beijing had allowed foreigners into Tibet. He was getting bored with shooting mere yaks and Buddhas.
And while it was true that there was a temporary cessation of the influx of foreigners into Tibet during the present uprising, still pictures had been taken of the surviving monasteries. To use them for target practice was frowned on by Beijing.
Nevertheless, it was conceivable one or two could be systematically reduced to rubble and an avalanche contrived or blame placed on the resistance.
Captain Doufu rode in the lead T-62 tank. It was risky, for there were mines buried in the roads from time to time. But previous tank commanders had learned to ride in the rear or middle tanks, and the Chushi Gangdruk had adjusted their tactics accordingly.
Captain Doufu had adjusted his tactics, too. The Chushi Gangdruk hardly ever blew up the lead tank these days.
He rode up in the dome-shaped turret, with the hatch popped open because even here a man needed all the oxygen he could muster. He carried, as did his men, a yellow oxygen pillow slung under one arm, with a clear plastic hose for nostril insertion in case he needed an extra burst of oxygen.
Captain Doufu was surveying the endless inhospitable mountains with his field glasses when the T-62 abruptly halted. He had not given the order to halt, so he yanked the glasses off his eyes and turned his head to vent his anger on the stupid driver.
The driver was looking back at him. He was pointing up toward the road ahead.
A man stood in the middle of the road, in front of the scout jeep he had sent on ahead. But the man was not the assigned driver. He was a white man with great round eyes and thin black clothes that made Captain Doufu shiver to think of being so unprotected here on the roof of the world.
"Advance," ordered Captain Doufu.
The T-62 lunged forward.
The man continued walking casually toward him. He showed no nervousness or agitation, unless one considered the way he rotated his thick wrists agitation. To Captain Doufu's dark, appraising eyes, it appeared that the man was warming them up.
But for what reason? He was plainly unarmed.
The tank crawled ahead, the two others following. They clanked along, remorseless and implacable.
The approaching foreigner continued on an undeviating path, so the driver naturally shifted away, intending to draw up on the man's right side.
The man instead shifted leftward, putting himself in the path of the short tank column.
The driver shifted leftward.
The man got in the way again.
Captain Doufu did a slow burn. Well he knew that in the decadent West the pictures of the lone Chinese counterrevolutionary whose name he could never remember had become famous for stopping a tank column by offering his fragile bones as a barrier.
"What do I do, Captain?" the tank driver asked.
"Drive on. He will step aside."
The tank crawled ahead slowly, its treads crunching loose gravel with an obdurate remorselessness that promised broken bones and crushed internal organs to any being foolish enough to stand up to them.
Except the man remained where he stood, thick wrists rotating like engine pistons warming up.
"Captain-" the driver said nervously.
"Drive on! He will leap aside!"
The tank continued crawling.
The 114 mm Smoothbore cannon barrel passed over the man's unflinching head, creating a long shadow that caused the foreigner's eyes to become like the sockets in a faintly smiling skull. The captain felt a chill of supernatural fear ripple along his stiff spinal column.
"What manner of foreigner is this?" he said gratingly.
The nose of the tank inched toward him, tracks ready to gnash and bite.
Abruptly the man dropped from sight.
"Captain!" the driver screamed.
"Drive on!"
The tank passed over the spot where the man had dropped from sight and progressed another four yards.
The clanking of the tracks changed their sound. The sound was unfamiliar to Captain Doufu, but it was a sound like surrender.
He looked over the side. All seemed well. He looked to the rear. And he saw, like two molting snakeskins, the unwound tracks of his very own tank lying flat in the dirt where the tracks of the next tank in line began to pass over them.
The meeting of track and tread was horrible. A grinding, snapping cacophony. The second tank threw a track and began to shift madly as the driver fought for control of his steel steed.
"Column halt!" Captain Doufu cried. But it was too late.
The third tank had not kept a proper interval, and it rammed the second tank. The colliding machines made a clang like the bell of fate resounding over this conquered land.
And suddenly something grasped Captain Doufu's ankles in a grip that made him drop his field glasses and shriek for his life as his ankles were crushed by what felt like squeezing machines.
He was yanked down, where he found himself face-to-face with the foreigner who held his own ankles in hands that looked human but possessed the awful constrictive power of iron clamps.
A hand released one ankle, and the relief was pure pleasure-until the releasing hand took Captain Doufu by his short black hair and rammed his head down into the hatch set in the belly of the tank. The hatch by which the foreigner had somehow penetrated the impregnable T 62 tank, after maiming its tracks.
The top of Captain Doufu's head encountered the hard ground under the tank. The ground won. Captain Doufu was no more.
REMO moves through the tank, taking out the driver by the simple expedient of reaching into the driver's compartment and yanking out the vertebrae that supported his neck with the ease of pulling a tree root.
That depopulated the first tank. Remo crawled down the belly hatch, moved low and got to the tangle that was th
e other two tanks. He eased up on the gas tank, popped a hole with his finger and struck two rocks together close to the trickle of escaping fuel. One spark flew. It was enough.
Remo was a dozen yards away and ahead of the explosion and accelerating across the pasture when the tanks went up.
The ball of fire rose like an angry fist toward the darkening cobalt of the sky. The light made the low thunderhead clouds glow resentfully red as if they were the source of the booming afterexplosions that seemed to fill the universe.
"That's for all the Bumba Funs who won't get to see a free Tibet," Remo muttered, reclaiming his jeep and driving around the steel tangles in which bodies writhed and blackened in the throes of the all-consuming fire of Gonpo Jigme's cold vengeance.
Whoever he was.
Chapter 32
Old Thondup Phintso walked the maze that was the Potala Palace, turning the great cylindrical prayer wheels that squeaked and squealed with each pained revolution.
Save for those in his personal quarters, the vast brass yak-butter lamps had guttered into silence, to be lit only when tourists came.
And save for Thondup Phintso, former abbot of the Potala Palace, now sunk to the status of a lowly tour guide, no one lived in the Potala anymore. Not since the Chinese had come with their loudspeakers and their propaganda and their wheeled vehicles that desecrated the land. Did they not understand that wheels wounded the earth and angered the gods? That the gods would one day exact a just revenge? Or did they simply not care?
The Potala had been stripped of its gold Buddhas, the rare tapestries, everything that could be melted down or used to decorate the homes of communists who had renounced materialism in word only. The Dalai Lama's quarters had been left intact, the calendar still marking the dark day on which he fled into exile. It awaited him. One day he would return. Until that day Thondup Phintso suffered the lot of museum guide, a title without meaning, a lot without joy.
He missed the eerie chanting of the monks that had gone on all the day and much of the night. He missed the amber glow of the great brass urns of yak butter and the pure white flame of sacrifice that had filled every room with a holy lambency.
Only the riotously painted walls remained of the days of enlightenment. Only the smell of yak butter and human sweat remained to fill his nostrils with remembrances.
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