The Cloud Maker

by Patrick Woodhead

  After he had made the call, they both sat in silence as the second hand ticked around on the wall clock. Sweat had started to flow freely from the aide’s armpits and down the sides of his body when there was a soft knock on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said the Director General, pulling himself to his feet again.

  He looked at the man who walked in, remembering, with a sudden chill, how effeminate he always seemed.

  He was pale, even for a Chinese, with black hair combed away from his forehead and swept over in a neat side parting. The hair around his ears and the back of his neck had been cropped so short that the white skin of his scalp was visible underneath. His face was oval, with a delicate jawline and thin, pursed lips that were nearly the same colour as his skin. It looked as if all the blood had drained out of them.

  Zhu was dressed in an immaculately pressed uniform which hung from his narrow shoulders in perfect vertical lines. He didn’t salute or make any gesture of greeting, but merely stood rigid in the centre of the room with one hand folded over the other, while the gold epaulettes of his captain’s insignia stood out in proud horizontal streaks across his shoulders. As the Director began speaking, outlining the events of the last twenty-four hours, Zhu remained absolutely still, not a single twitch from his entire body betraying his air of composure.

  The aide found himself leaning forward slightly, trying to see past Zhu’s silver wire-framed glasses and into his eyes. He remembered them from before: the blank stare, the wide, black pupils.

  The Director finished. After a brief silence Zhu finally moved, unclasping his hands and placing them behind his back. The movement caught the aide’s eye and something nagged at the back of his mind. He had heard a rumour from one of the other aides on the sixth floor… what was it about Zhu’s right hand?

  ‘So your man murdered the wrong brother?’ Zhu said, his voice soft, almost pleasant.

  The Director nodded. ‘Yes, exactly, and if it ever got out that an attempt had been made on the eleventh Panchen Lama’s life, there would be a full-scale revolt across Tibet. We need you to contain this.’

  Zhu didn’t answer. The Director continued, his tone becoming unusually conciliatory, ‘I will obviously have you reinstated on the active list, with whatever team you deem necessary to carry out the operation.’

  Zhu smoothed his side parting. He was clearly in no hurry to make a rejoinder and instead seemed to look around him for the first time, taking in the large rectangular coffee table, the solid wood desk and the hard, high-backed chairs. As his gaze fell on the aide, he gave a tiny smile of satisfaction that made the aide’s mouth go dry. Zhu’s reversal of fortune was obviously pleasing him hugely, and no wonder — from being struck off the Ops list, he now had the Director General of the PSB practically begging him to clean up his mess.

  ‘I would like the lieutenant who failed in his mission to be on my team,’ he said finally.

  The Director shrugged. ‘I cannot imagine he will be of much use, but if that’s what you wish…’ he gave a nod in the direction of the aide ‘…consider it done.’

  Zhu nodded. ‘And how long do I have to complete the mission?’

  ‘There are seven weeks until the Linka Festival and we need to be absolutely confident that this matter is resolved by then. You are booked on a flight to Chengdu tonight, with a connection to Lhasa the following morning. I am granting you the same dispensation as previously. You are free to use whatever methods you deem appropriate.’

  He shot a sideways glance at the aide before looking Zhu straight in the eye.

  ‘But, Captain, there’s no need to… complicate matters. You are required to contain this situation and ensure that it remains secret. We need you to find the boy. That is all.’

  ‘Find?’ replied Zhu in a tone of mild surprise, hands still clasped behind his back.

  The Director looked down at his desk, averting his eyes for the first time. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘Kill,’ he said simply.

  Zhu’s lips curled slightly into a smile.

  ‘I’ll be back within a month.’

  Chapter 11

  Tossing his car keys into the empty fruit bowl, Luca pulled some dirty clothes off the bed and lay down. He stared up at the ceiling and breathed out, attempting to exhale all the staleness he’d felt since first walking into his father’s office.

  He had left the building almost immediately after their conversation, shaking his head as he had gathered up the scattered papers from the floor. As he walked out of the lift a small group of colleagues were standing at the entrance, clutching take-away cups of coffee and shaking their umbrellas. Luca had dredged up a smile as they clapped him on the back and asked him about the trip. Then, pleading a bad headache, he’d escaped to his car.

  Now he exhaled again, feeling the tension slowly seep out of him. He glanced across his small flat towards the tiny open-plan kitchen in the corner. By the cluttered sink was a huge stack of mail. He had scanned through it all when he first got back, looking for any handwritten envelopes. The rest, he knew, would just be an assortment of bills or endless offers for broadband or the latest mobile phone.

  Christ, there was just so much of it.

  They had only been away five weeks. Five weeks. Such a brief amount of time, yet the rest of the world had been churning away at such a pace it made him feel he had been away for years. At some point today he should file it all away, write letters, send cheques.

  Raising himself off the bed, Luca walked over to the kitchen and stood by the mail. Then, with a sudden angry movement, he gathered up all the envelopes in both hands and rammed them into the lowest kitchen drawer.

  Screw it. It could wait some more.

  Glancing at his watch, he took a bottle of Coke out of the fridge and levered the top off using the sideboard. Then he took a few gulps and sat down to make some work calls. For a couple of hours he worked steadily through the emails and phone calls, hating the sound of his own voice as he grovelled to the string of customers he had neglected.

  He felt so tired, so drained of energy, yet it was only midday and he’d done nothing more strenuous than travel a few miles up and down a motorway in a car. Out in the mountains, he could climb for hours on huge vertical pitches, swinging his axe in again and again. Then, after no more than a few hours’ sleep, he could do it all again, day after day, even at high altitude. But here he felt perpetually out of breath: choking on the dense, petrol-fumed air, jolted by the barging shoulders of commuters on the streets. It made him feel like an old man.

  As he worked his eyes would occasionally flicker over to the stack of papers lying by the side of his bed in the adjacent room. Most of them were photocopies from the library book that had mentioned that ring of mountains. At the bottom, larger than the rest, was the folded satellite map that Jack had given him. He had looked at it several times over the last few days, and each time he did, his thoughts went straight to Bill.

  He should ring his friend. Get back in contact. They had already let this argument fester for too long, and besides, he couldn’t feel any worse than he did right now.

  Luca was just about to pick up the phone again when a text came through. It was from Jack Milton, asking if a package had arrived.

  After dialling his uncle’s number and resting the phone under his ear, Luca strode over to the kitchen drawer and sifted through the contents. Nothing. As the phone continued ringing, he opened the front door of his flat and went into the communal hall to look through today’s mail. There was a brown cylindrical tube, taped up with thick sellotape and slightly crushed from being pushed through the letterbox.

  ‘Jack. It’s Luca.’

  There was a clunking sound, then a soft cursing as Jack caught the edge of his coffee cup on the desk.

  ‘Hey, Luca, how are you? Did you get the package I sent?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s right here. Hold on a second.’

  Ripping open the cylinder, Luca pulled out
a large photocopied sheet of paper that was curled in on itself. Clamping the phone to his shoulder, he spread it out on the kitchen counter, using the empty bottle of Coke to hold down one edge. A beautifully detailed pen-and-ink drawing filled the entire piece of A3 paper. It had been rather clumsily photocopied, so that the bottom right-hand corner was missing, but as Luca realised what he was looking at, he felt his pulse quicken. A disbelieving smile crept across his face.

  ‘Holy shit, Jack! Where the hell did you find this?’

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ he replied, a smile in his voice. ‘After you mentioned the word beyul, I did a little bit of research myself. That scroll is just the half of it.’

  The picture showed eight snow-capped mountains forming in a perfect circle, and at its centre another mountain shaped like a pyramid. The artistry of the original work must have been spectacular. The detail was meticulous, every inch crowded with finely inked images and complex symbols.

  In the centre, at the very summit of the pyramid, a priest was depicted, staring out from the page with the otherworldly detachment of someone deep in meditation. In his open hand was a symbol: a circle with eight points merging into a central triangle.

  ‘It’s called a thangKa,’ Jack continued. ‘They were originally teaching scrolls, drawn by Tibetan Buddhist monks and passed on from monastery to monastery. And I found your pyramid mountain when I was looking though the Mahayana Sutras.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s a philosophical doctrine adopted by a certain sect of Buddhists. I was put on to it by one of the lecturers here in Cambridge, but they said the real people to talk to were from the Asian Studies Department.’

  Luca’s voice rose in pitch. ‘But that pyramid is exactly what I saw from Makulu. This proves that the mountain actually exists!’

  Jack laughed. ‘As a scholar, I can assure you that it doesn’t prove anything. You’ll need to find a few other corroborating sources before you can claim that.’

  ‘But Bailey’s book in the library,’ said Luca excitedly, his eyes falling on the photocopies stacked by his bed, ‘it mentioned that the pyramid mountain was in one of these beyuls.’

  ‘Again, that’s anecdotal. But you’re right, it is beginning to get interesting. Listen to what I discovered in the Sutras.’ Jack paused, trying to find the right place in his notes. ‘So, according to this, the ring of mountains is supposed to depict the eight-fold path of a lotus flower. And then, right in the centre, is this mythical kingdom.’ He paused again as he tried to decipher his own spidery handwriting. ‘It’s called Shambhala.’

  ‘A mythical kingdom?’

  ‘Apparently so. It’s a place where the Lamas have moved on to some kind of higher spiritual plane. You know, total enlightenment and all that.’

  Jack reached out one shaking hand and picked up his mug of coffee. Kingdoms of total enlightenment — Jesus, he could do with a bit of that around here.

  ‘What do you think this means?’ asked Luca.

  ‘Like I said, it might not be anything more than coincidence, but I thought it would give you a bit of a boost. I know how you get when you come back from a trip.’

  Luca traced his fingers over the picture, his eyes fixed on the focal point. A ring of mountains with a pyramid at the centre… It just seemed incredible.

  ‘Thanks, Jack. That’s the best news I’ve had all day.’

  ‘Pleasure. And, in the meantime, I’ll send you this Mahayana book and you can read up about it for yourself. If you are serious about finding out some more, then I’ll make a few more enquiries and see if I can’t arrange a meeting or two.’

  Putting the phone down, Luca walked over to his bedside table and fished out the folded satellite map. With a handful of drawing pins and a thick black marker pen in his left hand, he unfolded it and pinned it up on the patch of wallpaper at the end of his bed. He then wrote a single word in the bottom right hand corner.

  BEYUL?

  Chapter 12

  His face was old as only a Tibetan face can be.

  Lines cross-hatched their way across its leathery surface, like a paper bag that had been crumpled into a ball and hastily smoothed out. His dark brown eyes were set deep in their sockets, staring out from beneath long, straggling eyebrows. Around his body were wrapped thick red robes, but years of exposure to dirt and sunlight had faded them to almost the same colour as the ground.

  The old monk sat on a pile of earth a few hundred yards from the entrance to Menkom village, but rarely turned from his vigil to look back at the thatched houses. Although a few thin wisps of smoke still trailed out from the chimneys into the cobalt sky, the village was almost completely still. It had been ravaged by disease for over a month, ever since the traders had come.

  The first to fall ill were the old men, disappearing from their usual place by the side of the road. Then it spread: to young children, women, and finally the men working out in the fields. In just a few weeks, the once lively village had become ghostly and withdrawn.

  Most people remained indoors, lying fever-ridden on the wooden floors of their homes, while outside cattle ambled through the streets untended. Small, black pigs poked their noses through piles of rubbish in the stream and chickens nested in the thatch rooftops. No stones were thrown at them, no voice raised to scare them away.

  As the old monk watched, something distant on the pathway seemed to move then became stationary again. He got slowly to his feet, leaving his prayer wheel lying at his side, and squinted down on to the bare earth slopes of the lower valleys. Haloed by the late afternoon sun, he could just see a small cloud of dust hovering above a black shape. It was hazy, little more than a smudge merging into the horizon.

  Gradually, the shape began to separate into its component parts: first, the outline of a yak’s great arching horns, then came the silhouettes of people following behind. Through the dust came a second yak, then another, until he could see an entire caravan of men and beasts toiling up the valley at a steady pace.

  It was them. It had to be.

  Finally the first of the yaks drew level with him, the heavy brass bell around its neck clanking with each step. Its huge flanks were dread locked with dust and dried mud, and on the arch of its withers heavy saddlebags were roped tight. As the mighty beast snorted, long strands of saliva oozed from its nose, beading with the dust from the pathway.

  From somewhere near the back of the line, a voice called out above the noise. Amidst a ragged cacophony of bells the row of animals came to a juddering halt. With clothes stained grey from travel, a figure slipped off the back of one of the yaks and approached the monk. As she pulled away a filthy cloth from her face, the monk found himself looking at the dark suntanned cheeks and green eyes of a young woman clearly exhausted from her journey.

  ‘Tashi delek, venerable father,’ she said, bowing her head to reveal long, black hair that was matted with dust. ‘We are looking for the gatekeeper.’

  The old monk nodded, an unaccustomed smile creasing his face even further.

  ‘Tashi delek,’ he replied, in a voice hoarse from disuse. ‘I am he.’

  With that he reached forward, clasping her hands in his and bringing them towards his heart. ‘I did not expect to see you until the solstice. But it is wonderful indeed that you have arrived safely. Our guide is ready to escort you when you have gathered your strength. He is a climber from your own country and has been looking forward to meeting you for many weeks now.’

  The young woman smiled briefly in thanks before grasping the monk’s hands tighter. ‘Sir, I know you have not yet been informed of this, but there is someone I need to take with me.’

  The monk’s expression clouded over and he began shaking his head before she had even finished speaking. ‘I know how precious you are to our order, but that will not be possible. The guide can take only one person at a time. And, as you know, only the chosen may go.’

  The woman looked down at the ground for a moment. When she raised her head again, her
green eyes were bright with determination.

  ‘He has been chosen, and must be taken first. It is vital that your guide should leave with him immediately. In the meantime, I will wait in the village until the guide returns to escort me. You must trust me, venerable father, he is more important than I.’

  She had barely finished speaking when there was a scuffling sound from behind the herders and a small boy of about nine years old raced up to the woman and slipped his hand trustingly in hers. He had ragged dark hair and bright brown eyes, although the whites were bloodshot from dust and fatigue. He was wearing an oversized sheepskin coat, tied at the middle by a piece of knotted rope. Looking first at the woman, he then turned his gaze on the monk and asked in a voice that was clear and calm: ‘Is this the place?’

  The woman smiled down at him, one hand resting on his shoulder.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But we’re not far now.’

  Chapter 13

  The brass plaque said PROF. SALLY TANG, ASIAN STUDIES. Jack caught a glimpse of his reflection in the shiny metal, and running a hand briefly through his hair, gently rapped on the door.

  ‘Come in!’

  Sally Tang came out from behind her desk, shifting her reading glasses on to the top of her head. She was even more petite than he remembered, with a smart beige jacket hanging off her tiny frame and long brown boots that were little bigger than a child’s.

  ‘Jack.’ Sally shook his hand warmly. She tucked a lock of her jet black bob behind one ear and studied him, her fine-boned face angled to one side like a bird’s. ‘You look well. Much better than in Kathmandu. Sit down, please.’

  Jack smiled, settling himself into a burgundy leather armchair in front of her desk.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my usurping your meeting with Robert,’ she continued. ‘I heard him mention that someone was coming into the department to talk to him about beyuls, and when I found out it was you, I couldn’t resist cutting in.’ She perched herself on the front of her desk. ‘But I must say, Jack, spiritual myth is a bit out of your usual line, isn’t it? As I recall, you were never interested in anything much unless it was as solid as a rock.’