Rega’s nostrils flared again. ‘So finally, I meet the child. Governor Depon’s son.’
He reached out a hand, the fingers long and delicate. ‘Come closer, child.’
Shara gave a strained smile.
‘With due respect, His Holiness the Abbot has instructed that he should not socialise with other members of our order. I will take him back to his quarters.’
‘Yet he is here with the Westerner? And I only ask the chance to meet a boy so special that he does not even pass our initiations.’ Rega’s lips pulled back to reveal worn teeth as he attempted a smile. ‘The only way for me to see is through touch. Surely you would not begrudge an old blind man?’
Shara hesitated for a second, glancing to where Drang was standing by the door. He looked preoccupied, staring at the jade beads Babu was holding in his hands. His head finally tilted up, to meet her gaze, then he moved a step to his right, covering the door.
Shara helped Babu on to the ground and as Rega approached he stood rigid, hands outstretched.
‘Hold still while our father greets you,’ Shara said, hearing the tension in her own voice.
Rega’s bony hands traced across Babu’s cheeks, sweeping over the top of his forehead and down under his chin. As his fingers passed over Babu’s closed eyes, the prayer beads in his hand fell to the floor with a clatter. Eventually, Rega straightened, flexing his fingers.
‘You say you are the son of the governor, but I can tell you were born on the plateau. Tell me, child, when did you move to Lhasa?’
‘Really Father, he is just a child,’ Shara protested. ‘He is surely too young to answer such questions.’
‘Too young or unable?’ Rega said. ‘Many irregularities have occurred recently and it is for me to decide what…’
He was interrupted by clattering footsteps. A young monk appeared at the doorway, his eyes frantic. He bowed quickly at the room, and then leaned forward again, supporting hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.
‘Father, I must speak with you.’
Rega swivelled round, his jaw clenched.
‘Wait, impertinent child,’ he hissed, raising a finger, ‘I am engaged with other matters.’
‘Father you must listen! Something terrible has happened.’
Rega hesitated for a second, then with a sweep of his hand, signalled for Drang to follow him. He stalked out of the door, his robe billowing behind him. As his steps disappeared down the corridor, Bill propped himself further up in the bed.
‘What on earth was all that about?’
‘I’ll explain later,’ Shara said quickly, scooping Babu up from the ground. ‘I’m sorry, Bill, but it was stupid of me to have brought him here. I’ll come back, I promise.’
As she carried Babu to the door, he started squirming in her arms, his eyes locked down towards the floor.
‘Shara, wait!’ he said, pointing over her shoulder.
‘Not now,’ Shara said distractedly. ‘We’ve got to go.’
With Babu still trying to break free of her grip, she swept out the door and into the corridor beyond, leaving Bill alone in the sudden quiet of his chamber.
Two hours later, the bolts on the door to Bill’s room were softly drawn back.
As the door inched open, the gentle draught of air made Bill stir in his sleep, but not wake. Drang stepped silently into the room. His eyes remained fixed on Bill’s face, the scar on his face glinting in the light. He moved further into the room, his felt boots padding over the stone floor.
With his eyes still fixed on the bed, he crouched down, his hands feeling across the stone floor. Eventually his fingertips connected with the beads he was looking for and with another quick glance at Bill’s sleeping form, he retreated back towards the door.
In the corridor outside, he lifted the prayer beads towards the nearest lamp, so that it cast a dim light across the silver clasp. He was right to have come back.
He had seen that sign before.
Chapter 43
‘Keep it tight.’
The words drifted up the cliff-face to where Chen stood, his stance wide and his arms flexing as he hauled on the rope. He grunted from the effort, his powerful shoulders swinging forward with each great heave. A moment later Zhu appeared, his gloved hands clinging to the rock while the rope snapped taut at his waist.
As Chen watched him worm his way on to the ledge, he stared into the captain’s face, at the black eyes and thin, pursed lips. Zhu was sheet-white, his cheeks devoid of the slightest hint of colour. He looked as if he were about to be sick.
Coiling in the slack, Chen wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his heavy winter jacket. He had practically pulled the captain up the entire cliff-face and, despite their difference in size, it was heavy work. As they went higher, it had slowly dawned on him that Zhu was more or less a dead weight, his eyes moving nervously in a constant rhythm from the rock to the rope and back again.
It was almost unbelievable, but there was only one explanation — Zhu was scared of heights.
‘Are you OK, sir?’
For a moment Zhu didn’t answer. He simply moved past Chen to the back of the ledge, pressing his shoulders against the rock.
‘How much further?’ he murmured.
Chen looked up, watching the other soldiers climbing in pairs along the line of the ledge. They were getting close to the top, maybe a hundred metres more to go.
‘Another twenty minutes. No more.’
Zhu nodded. He was trying to steady his breathing and tiny beads of sweat had collected on his upper lip.
Chen watched him curiously for a moment. It was hard to believe this was the same man who had so casually ordered the execution of the monk in Drapchi or the rape of the little girl in Lhasa headquarters.
Zhu caught his gaze and his expression hardened.
‘Don’t you ever say a word about this,’ he hissed.
‘No, sir.’
Chen turned away, staring down into the valley below. Blurred from the height, he could see the single tent. It was all that remained of their campsite and in it, he knew, the Westerner would be either dead or dying.
All night they had heard his desperate whimpering. It was soft, little more than a murmur, but Chen had been unable to sleep through it. It had echoed round the campsite, the undercurrent of another’s suffering silencing everyone at dinner. Only Zhu had eaten heartily, spooning out extra portions of noodles and, unusually, making idle conversation with the men.
From the sheer amount of blood lost, Chen was almost certain the knife had severed the Westerner’s femoral artery. By now, he must surely have bled to death. Many years ago he had seen a construction worker injured in the same way. A crane had malfunctioned, the wire cabling slicing his artery in two. Blood had pumped ceaselessly on to the dusty ground, the life seeping from the man with terrifying ease.
Zhu had surely known that. He had known that such a knife wound, left untreated, would inevitably lead to a slow and painful death.
Chen had come across many ruthless men at the Bureau. While out in the field, they chose between life or death, using torture whenever it served their purpose. It was how the Bureau operated.
From their first meeting at Drapchi, Chen had thought Zhu was the same as the others. The ruthlessness he displayed was simply part of the job. But last night something had switched inside him and Chen had finally seen things the way they really were. Expedience was only one part of the equation for Zhu. What really drove him was pleasure.
He had decided to let the Westerner bleed to death when, at any stage, he could have put a bullet in the back of his head and been done with it. But for Zhu violence was not merely a means to an end. Violence was the end. He was a sadist, Chen realised. A man made genuinely happier by the suffering of others.
When they had struck camp in the morning, no one had approached the Westerner’s tent. There was only silence from within and the soldiers had left it standing, like a tombstone to mark his unburied body.
Behind him, Chen heard the sound of coughing. He turned to see Zhu still standing with his shoulders pressed against the rock.
‘What’s the route from the summit?’ he asked, his face ashen.
Chen reached behind him automatically to touch the back of his rucksack, where he knew his laptop was sitting protected by its hardened casing.
‘We head south, sir. Nearly five kilometres across the glacier floor. I think it’s due east after that, but I shall check.’
‘Then get moving,’ Zhu said, waving his hand impatiently. ‘I want to reach the monastery before nightfall.’
Chen nodded his head, and without another word started up the ledge once more, paying out the rope as he went.
Four hours later Zhu held open the corner of his tent with his gloved right hand, blinking as the afternoon light reflected off the snow. He cursed as the icy wind sent the smoke from his cigarette twisting away behind him.
They had made it across the flat ground of the glacier with ease, but now a new obstacle stood in their way.
Reaching behind him for his Leica Ultravid 20 binoculars, he adjusted the focus and stared ahead at the problem: the piles of rock stacked in front of their new campsite. The scene was apocalyptic, as if half the mountain had somehow collapsed during the night, leaving debris strewn in every direction. Finding a route through that would be difficult. It would also be highly dangerous.
With his spare hand, Zhu stubbed his cigarette out in the pristine white snow. Perhaps they had made a mistake. Perhaps there was no route through here after all.
His attention was drawn to the SOF sergeant walking between each tent, checking on the men. His head was angled to one side as he tried to shelter his face from the worst of the wind. With each pace his boots punched through the crust of snow, so that he sank down into the powder beneath. He trudged past the line of tents slowly, tightening the guy ropes and double-checking that everything had been properly stowed away.
Eventually, he made it to Zhu’s tent and saluted.
‘Everything all right, sir?’
Zhu nodded distractedly.
‘Send out two men to find a route through the rocks,’ he said. ‘And get Lieutenant Chen to report here immediately with the satellite mapping.’
The sergeant hesitated for a second, shifting uncomfortably from one leg to the other.
‘With all due respect, sir, the sun will be down in no more than an hour. The weather’s worsening. I thought perhaps we might send out scouts tomorrow morning instead.’
‘Send them now,’ Zhu ordered. He began folding shut the fly-sheet of his tent, then paused. ‘And make sure one of them is that idiot private.’
The sergeant saluted then continued back along the line of tents, squatting down by Chen’s. He banged on the tent frame before reaching forward and pulling open the zipper. The lieutenant was there, sitting with his back to the entrance.
‘Sir, the captain wants you to bring the satellite imagery to his tent.’
Chen didn’t turn, instead only raising his right hand in response. The sergeant nodded briefly, then straightened up, walking back to his own tent, grateful to be out of the cold.
Chen remained absolutely still, letting the open tent door flap in the wind. He had been in the exact same position for nearly an hour, staring down at the rucksack by his feet. Eventually, he closed his eyes, feeling the nervous weight press down on his chest, stifling his breathing.
He had no choice. He was going to have to tell the captain.
After they had first made camp, Chen had unfolded his laptop and pressed the start button. Nothing happened. He rubbed his hands over the cold metal before pushing the button again, craning his head down to listen for the soft whir of the hard drive booting up. Nothing. With a growing sense of dread, he’d swivelled the computer over in his hands and immediately realised what was wrong.
The battery was missing. Someone had deliberately removed it.
He’d immediately looked in the bag for the spare, but it had been taken too. Then he realised something else was missing. The map. He had carefully folded it inside the screen of the laptop.
Falkus… It had to be him. Chen had left the pelican case with all the communication equipment by the entrance to his tent the previous evening. Even the small rectangular batteries for the GSM 900 satellite phones had been pulled out from the protective foam casing and were gone.
Chen had frantically tried to find a way of rewiring the solar panels to link directly into the power adaptor. He knew it wouldn’t work, but tried anyway, cutting back the plastic coating on the wires with the razor edge of his survival knife and twisting the metal fibres together. The panels only had the power to trickle charge the batteries and without a single flicker of power he had eventually given up, leaving a tangled heap of wires at his feet.
There was no other choice. He was going to have to tell the captain he no longer had the map.
Chen inhaled slowly, steadying his breathing. When they had studied the maps together at Menkom, he remembered the monastery as being due east from the cliff edge. But due east led them straight into this impassable avalanche of rocks, and even if they did manage to find a way through, the gulley behind looked impossibly steep. Had he made a mistake? Was the monastery really on another bearing altogether?
If only he had the damn’ maps!
Eventually Chen rocked forward on to his knees. He slowly manoeuvred his massive frame round inside the tent and laced up his snow-covered boots.
As he stepped out into the wind, he shivered from the sudden change in temperature. His right hand instinctively went up to the top pocket of his winter jacket, resting on the photos of his family that he knew were carefully tucked inside. Tilting his chin up defiantly, he took a deep breath.
He was an officer of the PSB, not some common villager. Zhu would have to treat him by the book.
He trudged forward purposefully, passing the line of tents, but as he drew closer to Zhu’s, his pace slowed further with every stride. The wind tugged at his hair. Once again he felt a shiver run down his spine.
This time, however, it had nothing to do with the cold.
Chapter 44
Rega sat in the dark of his chambers, thumbing through the string of jade prayer beads. They passed over the back of his hand with an endless clack, clack, clack.
In the far corner, a small fire burned in the hearth, but did little to warm the remainder of the room. Drang stood close by, slowly working some heavy leather bellows. With each gust of air the fire crackled to life, the embers flaring white and sending shadows dancing on the high, vaulted ceiling.
Placing the bellows back on their stand, Drang sat back down at a small table and continued to thumb through a giant leather-bound book, his ugly face creased in concentration. The book was filled with ornate designs, some sketched in black ink, others outlined in ornate gold leaf. The pages crackled as he turned them. Rega’s head twitched towards him with impatience.
‘Well?’
‘Not yet, Father,’ said Drang, flicking over another page, and studying the next symbol.
A blackened metal kettle hung from a chain above the centre of the fire, slowly twisting in the heat. As it turned, some of the water boiled over the edges, sloshing onto the coals with a hiss.
A muscle twitched in Rega’s face. Since the messenger had told him that Menkom was burning, the old memories had begun to resurface again.
Five decades had passed, but he remembered that night in every detail; the intoxicating heat of the burning rooftops, the panic as he stumbled blind through rhododendron bushes, headlong into the night. Despite so many years and the peace he had found at Geltang, the same feeling of absolute terror washed over him. And only now, with the threat before him once again, did he finally realise that the terror had never left. It had always been with him, behind every waking thought and deed.
And now the Chinese were here again. The messenger had reported towers of smoke rising into the s
ky from the village at the bottom of the cliff-face, before spotting a small military encampment in the valley directly below. It could be no mere coincidence. The Westerners had led them there, straight to their gates.
The single consolation was that they still had to discover the way up the rock face and then pass through the Kooms, and without the Kalak Tantra, surely that was not possible?
But the Chinese weren’t the only threat. The Westerners were already within their walls. And now it appeared that the Abbot had welcomed them with open arms, allowing them to wander through the monastery at will and discover its secrets. This had to stop. The old fool’s misplaced belief in them would be the ruin of them all.
Surely now, with the enemy pressing in on them, the Abbot would finally see sense? He would understand the need for action.
Action. Rega’s lips moved as he mulled the word over in his mind. That is what they truly needed — action.
For years now he had believed that Geltang itself had to change. It had to evolve and understand the true nature of the modern world and fight for what it held dear. Every other religion had shed blood for its belief, yet still they persisted in their passive ways. Even as their lights were snuffed out one by one by the Chinese.
Tibet had always been in the balance, the Chinese only maintaining control through fear and isolation. In every village and town, the hatred ran deep; a tinderbox requiring only the slightest spark. For fifty years, Beijing had sat like a cancerous plague across their land, robbing every last vestige of pride and identity from their people.
And while the people suffered, while their monasteries were razed to the ground and their leader fled into exile, Geltang had done nothing but remain hidden, sulking in the shadows of the Himalayas. Decades of inaction had left them unsure and fragmented, the Abbot nothing more than a slave to the old ways.
Yet the truth was plain to see. They were the single power that could unify the tribes of Tibet. Under Geltang, there could be a call to arms, a focus for the revolution. The treasure that they had held for so long would give them the legitimacy they required. Now, they just had to fight.
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