The Forbidden Temple

by Patrick Woodhead

  After a while, they came up to a large, tabular boulder and Xie swiftly levered himself on top. Straightening up he started walking across to the other side. Chen was a few metres behind when he suddenly stopped. To the left of his hand he noticed a small triangular mark that had been etched into the rock. It looked to be man-made. He peered closer, wondering what it could be.

  As his finger traced the lines of the mark, he slowly became aware of the sound of rushing water. He hadn’t heard it before over the noise of his own breathing but it was definitely there, bubbling away in the distance. Chen was looking about him, wondering where it was coming from, when the rope impatiently tugged at his waist. Xie, standing on the far edge of the boulder, was ready to drop down the other side.

  Chen stopped dead in his tracks. Water! They must be standing on top of an underground river.

  ‘Wait,’ he shouted, advancing quickly across the top of the rock, but Xie turned away, ignoring him. He had followed the lieutenant for hour after hour in the wrong direction. This was the way ahead, he was sure of it.

  ‘I said, wait!’ Chen bellowed, moving faster, but Xie simply slithered down the far side of the boulder. He took another pace forward when the rock beneath his feet suddenly shifted, breaking off and falling into the darkness below with a dull hiss. Xie’s whole body jerked downwards, his chest smashing into the boulder in front and almost winding him.

  Xie screamed, his hands clawing over the smooth rock facing him while his legs kicked out helplessly into thin air. The climbing rope was tight at his waist – the only thing preventing him from slipping into the blackness below.

  A few metres away, Chen was yanked off his feet, landing heavily on his elbows. He groaned in pain, but his hands instinctively tightened around the rope in front, trying to resist its pull. Swivelling round, he managed to dig his heels in, but as the rope jarred, he felt himself slide forward again, the drop on the far side looming closer with each inch.

  Xie screamed again, a high-pitched note stretched by terror as he frantically jerked his body up and down, trying to pull himself free from the hole. The sound of gushing water was all around him now. He could feel the sudden chill of the river drawing up from the gaps between the rocks. It was somewhere in the darkness just below his feet, rushing over the stone in an underground torrent.

  Xie reached forward, grabbing on to the rope and pulling down on it with all his strength, trying to lever his body upwards. He kicked again and again, desperately trying to worm his way out while his shoulders spasmed from the strain. As he slumped back and the rope burned through his hands, his scream faded into a frantic, breathless whimper.

  ‘Stop pulling the rope!’ Chen screamed, his feet now only a couple of inches from the edge. His whole body was rigid, trying to resist its immense pull, but each time Xie jerked downwards, the rope would bounce from the strain, yanking him closer.

  ‘Please . . . please,’ Xie whimpered, his cries muffled by his camouflage jacket which had bunched up past his neck and was now covering his mouth. Only his eyes were visible above the collar, pupils wide as they stared pleadingly at the top of the boulder. He jerked forward again, trying to break free.

  ‘Don’t pull the rope!’ Chen roared again, but there was no response.

  Xie felt the tip of his right boot connect with the rushing water below. As it dipped only an inch below the streaming surface, the river grabbed hold of it, wrenching it along with the fast-moving current. Xie’s whole body twisted from the force, pulling him a few more precious inches further down the hole and into the blackness of the river. He could feel the icy water surging up his leg as if reaching up to claim him.

  Chen teetered on the very edge of the boulder, every muscle in his back and thighs fighting. He could now see the top half of Xie’s head poking out from between the line of rocks below. Turning his own head a few inches to the side, he stared down at the instep of his own boot. It was wedged into a crack no more than a couple of millimetres deep. It was all that was stopping him from being flung into the same chasm as Xie.

  Chen murmured a silent prayer, willing his grip to hold. He could see the rubber on the sole of his boot buckling to one side from the pressure.

  There was another jolt on the rope as Xie’s other leg dipped down into the water.

  Chen couldn’t hold it. He was going to be dragged down too.

  On the shoulder strap of his webbing was his survival knife. With one fluid movement, he reached up and unclipped it from its sheath. His hand curled round the cold metal of the handle, while the steel blade gleamed in the darkness.

  At the sudden movement of the knife, Xie froze.

  ‘Please . . .’ he whimpered, staring into Chen’s eyes. His arms had stopped flailing and hung pathetically by his sides. Underneath the line of the rocks, his legs were bent back on themselves, knees skimming the surface of the rushing water.

  Chen held his gaze for the briefest moment. Then, bringing down the knife, he pressed it against the rope. The line was under such pressure it felt as rigid as steel. He had to saw down on it, drawing the blade back and forth with sharp jerks of his wrist.

  ‘Plea—’

  Xie did not have time to finish the word before the blade finally cut through and the fibres of the rope tore in two. Immediately he was sucked down into the heaving mass of icy water with just the frayed end of the rope trailing behind him like an umbilical cord. The raging noise of the river was all around him, the cold driving the breath from his lungs as if his whole chest had imploded. Then there was a crack as his neck struck against stone and everything went black.

  Chen stared at the empty space beneath the rock for a few moments. Then slowly raising himself to his feet, he slid the survival knife back into its sheath. He remembered the overwhelming sickness he had felt when shooting that boy all those weeks ago. How he had spent the time since trying to banish the terrible guilt.

  There was none of that now. No pity, no remorse. For a moment he wondered whether he had lost all feeling; whether this mission had finally got to him, making him as ruthless as the others. But somewhere deep within him, he already knew that wasn’t the truth. The fact remained that Xie had been nothing more than a rapist and a thug. If he hadn’t panicked and pulled on the rope, he would still have been alive now.

  ‘So long,’ Chen muttered under his breath. He turned, walking back along the boulder towards the marking he had seen on the way up. That was the key to finding their way out of this maze, he was sure of it.

  Chapter 47

  ‘PLEASE, MR MATTHEWS, we must hurry.’

  Dorje padded down the corridor with Luca following a few feet behind. The monk’s arms swung briskly by his sides, the hem of his robe wafting behind. He glanced over his shoulder, checking on Luca’s progress, then swept down yet another staircase.

  ‘I have been instructed by His Holiness the Abbot to take you to see Miss Shara immediately,’ he said, eyes fixed ahead in search of the correct door.

  ‘Shara?’ Luca said, hurrying forward. ‘But you said we were going to see Bill. What’s going on, Dorje? The Abbot gave me his word on this.’

  ‘Plans change!’ Dorje exclaimed, raising his hands into the air. ‘You will get your wish, Mr Matthews, but not everything in this monastery revolves around you.’

  Luca stared at the perfectly shaved back of Dorje’s head, wondering what had made him so agitated. He had only ever seen Dorje meander through the monastery, his pace infuriatingly slow, yet today he was striding forward as if his life depended on it. The habitual sense of calm had vanished, and for the first time since Luca had met him, Dorje looked decidedly flustered. Luca paced behind him, wondering what could have rattled the monk so badly.

  Eventually the corridor came to an end with a large wooden door barring their way. It was ornately carved and, after a moment, Luca recognised it as the same door he’d found on the night he’d broken out of his room. It led to the chamber filled with books and piles of parchments – the one he’d
guessed was the monastery library.

  Dorje strained to get the heavy door open, waving away Luca’s attempt to help before he finally succeeded in drawing it back on its hinges. In front of them stood the same long line of bookshelves. This time, however, the room was brightly lit by the line of iron candelabra that stretched back along its immense vaulted ceiling.

  In the light, Luca could now see just how vast the room was. It must have occupied a huge proportion of the monastery. But despite its obvious size, the main part of the chamber was concealed beyond the line of the bookshelves.

  ‘Wait here, Mr Matthews,’ Dorje said sternly, and quickly paced forward. At the end of the shelves, he turned left into the main chamber and disappeared from view. Luca was leaning against the wall watching him go, when he heard a soft murmuring sound. It was faint, almost imperceptible. He listened harder. It sounded as if someone was murmuring an unintelligible stream of words. Then he realised – it wasn’t just one person speaking, there was a whole cross-current of voices.

  The noise was coming from somewhere past the endless line of books. His eyes traced across them, at the spines running back in a crooked sea of colour. Most were weighty tomes, inches thick, with decrepit old covers that had long since seen better days.

  What was that noise?

  Luca guessed the top of the shelving was about twelve feet high. With the toe of his boot pressing down on the first row of books, he suddenly sprang upwards, reaching his right arm up and over the top. His fingers gripped the dusty wooden surface before he swung his left arm over as well and pulled himself higher. The top of his head slowly craned above the line of the shelving and he was able to look down into the room behind.

  About thirty monks were seated at individual writing desks spaced neatly in rows across the central part of the room. Each of them sat with a huge book open in front of them and an old-fashioned quill pen in their hands. Some were at the beginning of their volume while others were on the final few pages, but all of them had their eyes half-closed and were rocking back and forth in their seat, their pens scratching across the pages in continual movement.

  As their pens moved so did their lips, working in time with the soft undercurrent of murmuring. They were all saying different things, each one reciting his own endless monologue. Luca pulled himself a little higher, staring down at the monk closest to him. His pen moved in a constant flow, only stopping for a second as his left arm whipped across the desk and turned the page to begin once again. There were no spaces in the writing, no gaps or punctuation. The words were coming out as if melded together by memory.

  Luca could feel his muscles straining, but knew he could hold the position for a little longer and resisted the gentle tremor in his forearms. His eyes passed from monk to monk, watching their heads sway up and down. It was as if they were all in some kind of trance. For the entire time he had been watching, not a single one of them had paused to draw breath.

  What were they writing? And how could they keep going without a moment’s hesitation?

  As he was about to lower himself back down, he suddenly caught sight of Dorje standing over one of the desks. For a moment he saw Shara’s long black hair swaying in time with the others, then Dorje placed his hand on her shoulder and she seemed to break out of the spell. She stared up at him, confused, then slowly put down her pen and took the scroll that he was offering. She read it in front of him then briskly stood up, following him along the line of desks and out towards the bookshelves.

  As Luca landed on the floor, he saw them both turn the corner and approach.

  ‘We must talk in private,’ Shara said, without further greeting. Luca looked from her to Dorje as she led him by the arm into the corridor outside.

  ‘I will take him to see Bill,’ she said to the monk.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Dorje nodded his consent. ‘Very well, but be sure to keep me informed.’

  As Dorje hurried off, Shara looked about her. Opening a small door just a few metres to their left, she beckoned Luca inside. It was a storeroom filled with urns of blue ink stacked against the far wall. A multitude of books were piled in high, tapering columns reaching all the way up to the low ceiling.

  Shara drew level with him, her face so close he could smell her freshly washed hair.

  ‘Something terrible has happened,’ she whispered, her green eyes staring directly at him. Luca felt his mouth go dry, his thoughts immediately turning to Bill. Had something else happened to him? He went to speak, but Shara reached out, grabbing on to his arm.

  ‘We were followed by Chinese soldiers,’ she said. ‘They have just been sighted just below the cliff-face and are trying to reach Geltang.’

  ‘Chinese soldiers?’ asked Luca, his forehead creasing in confusion. ‘What the hell would they want with us?’

  ‘It’s not you they’re after. Listen, Luca, the Abbot wants to know if you will help us. And, in doing so, he is putting an enormous amount of faith in you.’

  She took her hand off his arm and inhaled deeply.

  ‘Can we trust you, Luca?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, his gaze breaking from hers and moving down past her lips. He nodded distractedly, trying to dismiss a sudden urge to lean forward and kiss her.

  ‘No. You need to think about your answer. What you decide now could alter everything.’

  He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to steady his pulse and focus on what she was saying. ‘I promise you, Shara, you can depend on me. I meant what I said to the Abbot.’

  Shara seemed to steady herself, rubbing her wrists distractedly. In one hand she still held the scroll Dorje had given her. Luca could see her forefinger was stained with blue ink from the hours she had spent at her desk. No wonder this woman was getting under his skin – she was just so damn mysterious. There was always such urgency to the way she spoke, each sentence whispered, each question only ever partially-explained.

  ‘OK,’ Shara said, glancing back towards the door. ‘For reasons that I can’t go into right now, we need to get a nine-year-old boy called Babu out of this monastery. That’s why the Chinese are here. It’s who they’re looking for.’

  ‘A nine-year-old boy?’ Luca repeated, his voice rising in surprise. ‘What the hell do the Chinese want with a little boy?’

  ‘He’s not just a boy.’ Shara paused, glancing down. Every instinct screamed to her to keep his identity secret, but the Abbot had specifically instructed her to tell Bill and Luca. It was their help that was now needed.

  ‘Babu’s full name is Babugedhun Choekyi Nyima. He is the next reincarnation of His Holiness the eleventh Panchen Lama.’

  Luca’s eyes widened.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But that’s impossible. There were posters of him all over Lhasa. The Panchen Lama was this pale, older-looking guy.’

  ‘That’s the candidate the Chinese are preparing to install at the Linka Festival. And that is precisely why Babu is in such danger. They need to get rid of him before the festival takes place because if Babu’s true identity ever became known, the whole inauguration would become a farce.’

  Shara’s hand tightened around the scroll, scrunching it in the middle. As she continued, Luca could hear a new edge to her voice, a hardness that he had heard once before at Menkom.

  ‘What few foreigners understand is that the Chinese only hold on to this country by their fingertips. If you’d ever been in Lhasa after one of the uprisings, you’d have seen how deep the tensions run. And if it ever became public knowledge that they had tried to assassinate the rightful heir to Tibet . . .’

  She paused, trying to imagine the chaos that would ensue. Uprisings would spread throughout the land, rippling out along the spine of the Himalayas as the local tribes rose up against the military garrisons in each town. Every police station would burn, every Chinese shop window would be smashed. It had happened in the past on a smaller scale. This time, it would be unstoppable.

  ‘It would get very bloody,’ Shara sai
d eventually. ‘They have already tried to kill Babu once, but we managed to get to him first. And now, with the Dalai Lama in permanent exile, the stakes are too high for the Chinese just to let him be. They won’t rest until he’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Luca shook his head. ‘Jesus, I had no idea. The poor kid must be terrified.’

  ‘The only people to know of his identity are you, me and the Abbot. Dorje has only just been informed this morning.’

  ‘But Dorje’s just a guide here at Geltang. Why would he know?’

  ‘Dorje is a great deal more than he seems. He is one of the High Lamas here at Geltang and along with Rega, second only to his Holiness the Abbot.’

  Luca stared past her thoughtfully.

  ‘All this time and he told me he was just an interpreter,’ he said, remembering how Dorje skillfully seemed to dodge every enquiry. Throughout their many hours touring the monastery and eating together, Luca had wondered if he was telling him the truth, but there had always been so many other unanswered questions. ‘But, Shara, there’s something I don’t understand. The Chinese have still got to find a route up the rock-face and through the Kooms. Surely Geltang’s got to be the safest place for the boy right now?’

  Shara shook her head. ‘There are other elements at work. He’s safe in the Abbot’s quarters for now, but we have to move him to another location, and to do that, we need mountaineers. The Abbot thought you and Bill would be willing to guide us.’

  Luca stared at her quizzically.

  ‘Bill? Bill’s not going to be well enough. The last I saw him, he couldn’t even stand.’

  ‘I’ve checked on him many times and saw him yesterday. He is over the worst of the fever now. He hasn’t got all his strength but he can definitely walk.’

  Luca’s eyes narrowed in frustration. ‘You saw him yesterday? So why haven’t I been allowed in?’

  ‘I’m taking you to him now,’ Shara replied evenly. ‘The Abbot had to know whether he could trust you before letting you see each other. Please understand that it was for your own good. But the question still stands, Luca. Will you help us or not?’