High Priestess td-95

by Warren Murphy

  She wondered where she was. Her foggy brain failed to summon up the memory of how she had gotten to this place-wherever she was. Dimly she heard music-brassy, discordant, martial music. It seemed very loud, yet far away.

  Squirrelly made a mental note to have the music replaced with a John Williams score-unless she ended up doing a musical. In which case she might take a fling at writing the music herself. After all, who was going to tell her no. She was the Bunji Lama now.

  Footsteps came toward the closed wooden door. She arranged her robes about her crossed legs in case it was that dried-up Tibetan Peeping Tom, who had barged in while she was on the john.

  "Bunji! Bunji!" It was Kula. The big Mongol barged in as if his mohair pants were on inside out.

  He took one look and stopped, the alarm going out of his eyes.

  Then he got down on hands and knees and began bumping his forehead on the floor. "This is a very great scam," he sobbed in English.

  "What is?" Squirrelly said.

  "You have assumed the Lion Throne."

  "I have? I mean, I have! Where?"

  "Your precious bottom sits upon it, Bunji.' "

  Squirrelly leapt up. "This is the Lion Throne! Really? You're kidding me. You've got to be. Tell me you're kidding."

  "I kid thee not, Bunji. The hour Tibet has awaited has come."

  Squirrelly dropped tack onto the golden seat. "Wow! The Lion Throne. I'm sitting on the Lion Throne. What a moment. I can just feel myself vibrating at a higher cosmic frequency. What should I give as my first decree? Oh, I hate these unscripted moments."

  "Protectoress, cause the Chinese who are pounding at the Potala gates to shrivel up into sheep dung."

  "What Chinese?"

  "We have been betrayed, Bunji."

  "We have?"

  "The, stinking abbot who gave us sanctuary has betrayed us to the hated Han."

  "It's karma," cried Squirrelly, leaping to her feet.

  Kula got up, too. "What have we done to reap such bad karma?"

  "No. No. It's good karma. This is perfect! This is great."

  "What is?"

  Squirrelly spread her hands wide as if to conjure up the scene. "It's the end of the second act. No, wait, the beginning of the third act. The Bunji Lama awakens as if from a dream, instinctively taking her throne. And at her moment of perfect triumph, she is betrayed by one of her subjects. A notorious Peeping Tom, I'll have you know. In bursts her faithful Mongol servant-that's you-with the bad news."

  "But you said it was good karma," Kula countered.

  Squirrelly began pacing the floor. "It's bad in real life but great cinema. Don't interrupt your Bunji. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Now she knows she has to take the yak by the horns and win the day." Squirrelly, popped her hands together. "The audience will eat this up like popcorn!"

  Kula glanced toward the door. "Why are you saying all this, Bunji, when our very lives are in danger?"

  "It's a plot point. We have to slip them into the script from time to time."

  Kula looked blank.

  Squirrelly paced the floor. "Okay, now I gotta turn the tables. But how? How?"

  From beyond the door came a great crashing.

  Squirrelly stopped in midpace. "What was that?"

  "The gates have fallen to the enemies of the faith," said Kula.

  "Perfect!" Squirrelly crowed.

  "They will flood in like ants," Kula added.

  "Fantastic! We're outnumbered a hundred to one. The audience will be on the edges of their seats. Perfect! I love it! I love it! I just love being the Bunji Lama!"

  At that moment the Master of Sinanju flew in. "We must flee!" he said.

  "Flee? Not on your life. I'm in costume, I have my Lion Throne, and I'm keeping it!"

  "The Chinese will overrun us. We cannot fight them all."

  "The way is blocked," said Lobsang from the door. "The Bunji must make her stand here."

  "She will die," Chiun said firmly.

  "If she dies," Lobsang intoned calmly, "it is the will of the gods. The people will hear of this and rise up,"

  "The Bunji is under the protection of the House of Sinanju. Her death would bring shame upon my house. I will not have it."

  Kula stepped up to Lobsang and laid the edge of a dagger against his throat. "We will do as the Master of Sinanju bids."

  Squirrelly stamped a bare foot. "Don't I get some say here?"

  "You are the Bunji," said Kula, bowing his head in Squirrelly's direction. "Of course we will obey your merest whim."

  "Fine. My whim is that we-"

  The Master of Sinanju slipped up and touched the back of Squirrelly Chicane's neck. Her mouth kept moving, but no words issued forth. She tried coughing. It only made her throat raw. Not a syllable came out.

  My voice! Squirrelly thought with mounting panic. I've lost my voice!

  Then she was unceremoniously thrown over Kula's hamlike shoulders and began bouncing with his every rolling step.

  "This way!" hissed Chiun.

  "This way leads to a cul-de-sac," Lobsang said unhappily. "We will be trapped."

  "You may go another way, Priest," Kula said, his voice contemptuous.

  At the end of a corridor there was a big brass Buddha, too heavy to be carried away by the Chinese who'd stripped the Potala. The Buddha sat on a wooden dais with his open palms cupped upward. In his palms rested a lotus flower.

  Chiun seized it, wrenched it right, then left and finally all the way around. The Buddha began to sink into the floor of its own weight, dais and all, accompanied by a soft gritty hissing.

  As the smiling head began dropping, Chiun motioned for the others to mount on the dais. Kula clambered aboard, one hand clapping a struggling Squirrelly Chicane to his shoulder. Lobsang followed, his thin face baffled. They rode the dais down into a cool yawning space as if it were a great freight elevator.

  Down below it was very dark. Lobsang lit a yak butter candle, and its mellow light showed a dripping passage leading toward a clot of crepuscular shadow.

  "Follow the passage to its end and await me there," Chiun instructed. "I must restore the Buddha in order to baffle the Chinese. Make haste!"

  They complied, moving down the passage enveloped in a halo of malodorous light.

  The Master of Sinanju examined the Buddha. It now sat on a pile of soft sand. The turning of the lotus had released catches that supported the idol. Its weight had caused the sand pile to spread outward and the Buddha to slip below the level of the floor. It was a secret a previous Master had learned and duly recorded in the histories of the house. He had not shown how to restore the Buddha, however.

  Distantly there were shouts and the heavy fall of rushing feet. Searching PLA cadres. If they discovered the sunken Buddha, all would be lost.

  Chiun, understanding that restoring the Buddha would be the work of hours, and not having hours, decided that it would be more efficacious to eradicate all evidence of the secret passage.

  The passageway was constructed of mortarless blocks, in the fashion of architecture in Tibet. He retreated to the junction where the passage turned and looked for a keystone. It sat in its niche, fixed and immobile.

  The Master of Sinanju laid the flat palm of his hand against it, feeling the ancient stone for cracked or weak points. When the sensitive flesh of his palms told his mind that such a place existed, he made fists of his bony hands.

  He struck the spot with one fist, pulled back and struck with the other. Strike. Return. Strike. Return. The stone retreated into its niche with each shock. Finally, it reached the point of no retreat, and the blows of his fists, hard and resolute, began to chip away at the block's innate integrity.

  The fists of the Master left no mark on the stone. Then abruptly, without warning, the stone broke apart.

  The surrounding blocks began to groan.

  Chiun flew down the passage, pipe-stem feet churning, fists pumping, head back.

  There had been sufficient time for the others to have rea
ched the egress of the passage, Chiun knew. If the gods were with him, there would be time for him to join them before disaster struck.

  The rumble began far back and chased the Master of Sinanju down the passage.

  He thanked the gods Remo had not come with them. For surely his clod-footed pupil would now be two or three paces behind, his thick head in imminent danger of being crushed by the falling blocks that now came down in a merciless rain.

  Chapter 35

  By early morning the caravan that had formed behind the truck carrying Remo Williams to Lhasa was half a mile long.

  It was the perfect target for Chinese helicopter gunships or short-range artillery.

  They rode through a sleepy hill town unchecked, picking up more trucks and leaving in their wake burning buildings.

  "Once word travels, the Chinese are going to be all over us like hair on a yak," Remo said unhappily as he scanned the bright blue morning skies.

  Bumba Fun grunted unconcernedly. "They fear Gonpo Jigme. They fear the Dreadnought. They will give back before us. You will see."

  "Don't count on it."

  A line of gunships appeared on the western horizon. They were moving north.

  "Here they come," Remo warned.

  But they didn't come. They kept traveling north. Then Remo realized they were headed toward Lhasa.

  "Something's up."

  "Yes. The Chinese are too frightened to strike at Gonpo the Dreadnought."

  "Is there a radio in this thing?" Remo asked, reaching for the dash knobs. He got a radio station. A excitable voice came from the speaker, speaking Tibetan or Chinese. Remo couldn't tell.

  "What's he saying?" Remo wanted to know.

  "It is Radio Lhasa," said Bumba Fun. "They have declared martial law."

  "And..."

  "That is all they say. All Tibetans have been ordered indoors. Perhaps word of Gonpo Jigme's nearness has reached them, and they cower in fear of your coming."

  "Maybe the Bunji Lama's stirred the place up," Remo countered.

  "Oh, yes, the Chinese announcer mentioned the Bunji Lama also."

  "What'd he say?"

  "The Bunji has been taken to Drapchi Prison."

  "That's probably good," Remo decided.

  "But he has escaped."

  "That's not good."

  "Why is that not good, Gonpo?"

  "You don't know the Bunji Lama like I know the Bunji Lama."

  "I do not know the Bunji Lama at all," Bumba Fun admitted.

  Another flight of helicopters appeared and made a beeline for the daunting mountains surrounding Lhasa.

  "They must think we're the Chinese cavalry coming to the rescue," Remo said, watching the gunships rattle over a ridge.

  Bumba Fun grinned. "We will blow into Lhasa like the end of the world."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," said Remo, wondering how he was going to get out of Tibet alive, alone or not, with the entire country being mobilized.

  SQUIRRELLY CHICANE WAS royally pissed.

  She couldn't vent her holy pissedness. That was the part that pissed her off the most. It was bad enough to be packed around like a side of beef, but not having a say in the matter was just too much.

  Beating on Kula's broad back only hurt her fists. Besides, Squirrelly didn't want to break her Oscar.

  She was being saved. In all the movies she had ever done, being saved by males annoyed her most. She was over forty before she had been allowed to save her own cinematic behind.

  Now, invested as the pontiff of Tibet, for Buddha's sake, and here she was reduced to being saved again. It was a major step backward, image- and career-wise. If only she could speak. She'd give them all a piece of her Bunji mind.

  After what seemed like forever they emerged from the dank passage into a cool cavern of some sort. Fresh air blew in steadily. Squirrelly had only a moment to drink in the invigorating air when there came a low rumble from the passage.

  And the Master of Sinanju flashed out of the maw, saying, "Make haste! The ceiling may fall at this end."

  What is that sound? Squirrelly wondered as she was carried away from the spot. An earthquake?

  From the mouth of the passage came another rumble, and the ground under their running feet shook. Out of the stone passage came a breath of fetid air mixed with dust and grit. It met with the incoming fresh air, mixed-and the fetid air won out.

  The passage had collapsed. Squirrelly didn't know how. But it meant that the Chinese wouldn't be chasing them.

  Nice plot twist, but where could the story go from here? A breakneck chase would have been better.

  Otherwise, the ceiling held. The danger was over.

  Kula set her on her feet, and she made a point of inflicting the blue lasers of her best on-screen glare at each of them in turn. Kula looked abashed. Lobsang actually flinched. But the Master of Sinanju pointedly ignored her.

  Squirrelly hated that. But she was more interested in taking stock of her surroundings. This cavern was amazing. Every corner was a set unto itself. There were stone statuaries cut into the cave walls and great brass tubs of yak butter in which lit wicks floated and burned with a buttery yellow light.

  A bank of prayer wheels stood like vertical press rollers, and Squirrelly gave them a spin, mentally praying for her voice to come back. It didn't happen. She wondered if praying to herself had been a mistake.

  Carefully they crept toward the fresh air. The clear light of early morning filtered in a little from the near mouth of the cave.

  At the entrance-the cavern was some kind of temple cut into the side of a great hill-they stood looking across at the Potala. Its multistoried white levels, like some Hare Khrishna's idea of a condominium, were busy with greenuniformed soldiers. They swarmed along the many-leveled roofs with its golden lions. Smoke and dust boiled out of a cluster of windows.

  "A jeep comes," hissed Kula, pointing to the road below.

  Instantly everyone squatted down to get out of sight. Except Squirrelly. A hand reached up and yanked her flat.

  The jeep passed without incident.

  Squirrelly lay on her stomach and tried to make sounds come out of her mouth. She pointed to her mouth angrily. More jeeps whirled by. Tanks clanked, taking up defensive positions. Canvas-backed trucks laden with hard-faced PLA cadres rolled back and forth.

  Lobsang hissed, "There are too many Chinese even for a Master of Sinanju and one Mongol."

  Squirrelly glowered at them. What was she-chopped yak liver?

  From his crouching position, Chiun searched the busy street with his eyes. "Escape will be difficult," he admitted, his hazel eyes narrowing to slits.

  "Then we will make our stand here," vowed Kula. "Prepared to die if need be in the service of the Buddha-Sent One."

  Die? thought Squirrelly. I can't die. I'm the heroine.

  She tried to communicate that, but the three were too busy arguing among themselves to pay her attention. Typical supporting actors.

  "Any fool can die," Chiun was saying. "We must seek out a place of true refuge in order to plan our strategy."

  His eyes went to a ring of snowcapped peaks that seemed so close but could not be reached on foot without incurring great risk.

  Kula followed the Master of Sinanju's gaze. "Yes, the mountains would be a good place."

  "But how to reach them," said Lobsang.

  Kula checked his AK-47 and said, "I will find us a worthy steed." Without another word, he clambered down the mountainside.

  THE NEXT HOUR was one of the most boring yet nervous in Squirrelly Chicane's sixty years on earth. It was worse than waiting for the director to set up a shot.

  They withdrew to the cool shadows of the temple cavern and waited. The sounds of motorized infantry, helicopters and the unintelligible shoutings of Chinese commanders came and went. More than once the loudspeakers distributed throughout Lhasa blared shouts and exhortations.

  "They are calling upon us to surrender," Chiun said.

  "We will never s
urrender," Lobsang said, stiff-voiced.

  Squirrelly said nothing. She spun the prayer wheels furiously, imploring the Buddhas of the Past, Present and Future to give her back her voice. They must have been on another cosmic line, because all she managed were some hoarse gasps.

  The whup-whup-whup of the helicopter at first sounded like any other. Then it drew alarmingly close. Then its earsplitting racket filled the cavern.

  Squirrelly's blue eyes went to the cave mouth. A helicopter bubble hovered just outside like the clear, all-seeing eye of a great dragonfly. Kicked-up dust obscured everything.

  Lobsang had possession of one of Kula's AK-47s. He snapped it to his shoulder and aimed toward the pilot.

  A hand swept out and relieved the Tibetan of the weapon, and the voice of the Master of Sinanju squeaked, "It is Kula. He has brought us the steed by which we will make our escape."

  Squirrelly looked past the helicopter windshield. Sure enough, there sat the big, lovable Mongol. Kula was grinning and pointing upward. Then the helicopter lifted from sight.

  After that it was just a matter of climbing to the hilltop to join him under the whirling rotor blades.

  "We will escape from right under the noses of the Chinese enemies of the faith," he boasted.

  "You can fly this unholy machine safely?" Lobsang asked doubtfully.

  "If we die, it was meant to be," laughed Kula.

  "If we die," said Chiun, gathering up his skirts to step aboard, "I will hold you personally accountable throughout all your lives to come."

  They lifted off and went rattling toward the snowcaps surrounding Lhasa Valley so smoothly that right on the spot Squirrelly decided the scene was too good not to use. She'd just have to rewrite it so she commandeered the helicopter. Why not? It was her movie. If anyone questioned it, she'd invoke the old dramatic-license chestnut.

  Chapter 36

  There were fires burning to the south as the CAAC turboprop bearing the minister of state security fought the terrific downdrafts above Gonggar Airport, eighty miles to the south of Lhasa.

  Tibet was in revolt. The radio reports verified it. Chushi Gangdruk guerrillas were committing depredations in towns and cities strung all along the Friendship Highway.