by Fritz Galt
There was much that he could accomplish with the financial empire that he would build. He could influence those he installed in the highest seats of power. He could command armies and nations. In short, he and Liang would soon be the wealthiest and most powerful men on earth. And he would finally earn the respect that he had been denied for so long.
He rankled at his past failures. Brad, his ungrateful stepson, had debunked his theories and denied him power. But this time, Buford wouldn’t fail. According to Liang, his stepson and May were safely behind bars in China.
Nothing could stop him now.
He plucked the ends of his leather gloves and pulled them off. Then he picked up the telephone and dialed the personal mobile phone of Chuck Webster, the President of the United States.
“Mr. President,” Buford began. “First of all, I want to thank you for dropping all Federal charges against Professor Richter, a very close associate of mine.”
“Not a problem,” the president said. “Presidential pardons are easy. I won’t care about political ramifications once you make my dreams a reality.”
Buford smiled. He had primed the president well. “So pack your bags, Chuck. I want you to fly to Beijing, where we’ll arrange transportation for the final leg of your earthly journey.”
“You are sure that this place exists,” the president said on less of a light note.
“I am certain of it,” Buford said. “My colleague is flying over it right now.” After all, Liang’s latest phone call had come from the cockpit of a business jet as he prepared to take off for the Himalayas.
“I wonder if I should pack my golf clubs.”
“Pack ’em.”
“I’m also wondering if I should bring my wife.”
Buford reflected on the president’s stormy relationship with his wife, a feisty political warrior that would do him no good in paradise. “Pack the clubs, leave the wife. You’ll have your pick of women every day.”
“Then it’s settled.” But the president continued to ruminate. “I’ve been wondering how to explain a sudden trip to Beijing.”
“You can set up a state visit.”
“Not on such short notice. I think I’ll request an emergency meeting with President Qian and go through the motions with him.”
“Good idea. Now about the final payment,” Buford reminded him.
“I’ve got that covered. Tax season just finished. I’m prepared to divert your funds to Zurich.”
“And the land?”
“You’ll have to talk to Secretary Walsh about that.”
“He’s on my list.” Buford made a mental note to call the Secretary of the Interior next. Some of his prize possessions would be vast tracts of government land turned over to his corporation on a renewable, dollar-a-year lease. “So,” he concluded, “gather your belongings and head to China. I’ll expect you there tomorrow.”
“Just one more thing.” There was a suspicious tone to his voice.
Buford braced himself.
“What if this is all a wild goose chase?” the president said. “I’ve only heard your audio tape of President Qian, with the National Security Agency verifying his voice.”
“That should be proof enough.”
“I need more.”
“That’s the whole idea. You don’t leave Shangri-la. There is no evidence.”
“But I need some assurance that I’m not about to make a total fool of myself before I burn my bridges.”
“Okay. You have a unique opportunity. I’m in cell phone contact with a member of my team. He’s reaching Shangri-la as we speak.”
“I need more than a phone call. Send me pictures or some such evidence. I hope you understand.”
“Certainly,” Buford said. “My colleague has a camera. I’ll have him send you snaps.”
“Call me when there’s something to see,” the president said. “I’ll stay put until then.”
The president hung up. That presented a new challenge. Buford needed photographic evidence.
He held his breath and dialed Liang back.
“Wei?” A powerful jet engine droned in the background.
Buford felt his goal within reach. But at the same time, he felt a mounting dread. There was always the possibility it did not exist. But he pressed on with business. “I have just called the White House. The president will be flying to Beijing today.”
“And the rest of the money?”
“He’ll wire it to Zurich. Only, he’s getting a little antsy. He wants proof that this place actually exists before he leaves for China.”
Then he heard a second voice in the cockpit.
“Is that Dr. Yu?”
“He’s telling me which direction to fly,” Liang answered. Then to Yu, he asked, “Beyond that mountain?”
Yu responded in Chinese.
“I’ll be right back,” Liang said over the phone.
Buford held his breath and listened to the squeak of leather seats, the easing of controls, the occasional static from distant radio transmissions, and the increased hum of the engines. Liang was repeating their GPS coordinates to Yu, who seemed to be working from a map.
Buford reached for his pen and jotted the GPS reading down precisely as Liang reported it to Yu.
Then he heard a startled intake of air. The static went instantly quiet.
“What is it?” Buford said, alarmed. He could imagine his entire plan unraveling. Perhaps there was no Shangri-la after all. Perhaps all his efforts had led them to a junkyard in western China. Maybe the two men had gotten the directions wrong. “Say something!”
Liang let out his breath in evenly spaced words that Buford would never forget.
“Ay-yo. It’s beautiful!”
Buford looked up from the wooden floor. He tried to focus on the wavering blue light of the morning as it crept into the valley and revealed the glassy stillness of the lake. “Tell me what you see.”
“It’s paradise.” Then Liang’s awed voice broke off.
Buford heard several clicks on the line. He stared at his cell phone, and slowly, an image materialized. It loaded from the top down, beginning with a deep blue sky at high altitude. A snow-covered mountain appeared next. Below the snow lay a verdant valley. The details were indistinct, but he could make out several dome-shaped roofs with light emanating from within.
That was interesting. But he needed more. He needed vestal virgins.
“Take some close-ups.”
He waited for Liang to come back, but instead heard the hum of transmissions at a high baud rate.
Then a second image appeared on his display, this one much closer to the ground. Liang was approaching a landing strip, a green carpet of grass. There were some flat disks in sight.
“What am I seeing here?” he asked. But there was still no response.
Instead, another image began to replace the current one. There was the curly black hair of a woman with stunning blue eyes and wide cheekbones. She held landing paddles and was successfully waving them off.
As the picture scanned in, further aspects of the woman came into view. Buford gaped at it. Her shoulders were broad and strong and her waist was so small, he could probably reach his fingers around it. Her luminescent skin stood out against a red gazebo and a stream of deep blue water. Finally, the picture was complete, right down to her bare toes.
“Liang!” he said, barely able to breathe. “This is fantastic.”
But there was no verbal response. The phone line had gone dead.
He tried to suppress conflicting emotions of horror and excitement as he made repeated attempts to reach his business partner.
But the recorded voice only said that the party was beyond the reach of the phone company.
He stared at the vision that still lingered on his cell phone screen. It was the kind of image that would make any man drop everything and go there. And if he knew the president, that was exactly what he would do.
He dialed the Oval Office and got the president.
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“I have some pictures for you, Chuck baby,” he began. He cycled back to the first of the three pictures and began to transmit them one by one.
“Nice aerial view,” the president commented.
He was waiting to be impressed.
“Okay. I can see the runway. That could be anywhere. Strange-looking round aircraft, though.”
Still waiting to be convinced.
“Hot damn!” came the next response. “What a cute pair of avocados!”
The president was sold.
“I’m there.”
“And the money?” Buford asked.
“On its way.”
The president hung up and Buford closed his eyes with satisfaction.
Beyond convincing the head of the free world to drop everything and move to the most remote place on earth, he and Liang had just solved the world’s last great mystery. For a brief moment, he forgot about the scads of money he would reap from the endeavor. All that occupied his mind was the thrill of the discovery and the gratification of having been proven right.
So Liang thought it was paradise. The pictures proved it.
His finger trembled as he scanned through his electronic phone book and found his list of clients. One down, seven to go.
As daylight broke over the grounds of his villa, he concluded his last phone conversation to America. All five Americans were heading for Shangri-la. The price they had paid was enormous. Once the business day began in Zurich, he would check with his bank to make certain all the funds were there. Then he would call the remaining two men on his list, both prime ministers in Europe.
He was exhausted, but what a productive day.
He glanced at the latitude and longitude reading that he had jotted down while overhearing Liang in the cockpit. Maybe he should get on a plane and head there, too.
But he knew himself too well. He stood and stretched, then limped in a circle around the study. He was more than a hedonist like those he had identified in the world of government and business. He was ambitious. He wanted to succeed in life. He needed respect.
He didn’t bother to dwell on what made him so driven. What drove Napoleon? What motivated the robber barons of America’s past? He was a creature of the real world, and he was determined to possess all there was to have.
Chapter 45
Brad and May lurched together on the crowded bus heading toward Dali. Her bridal veil swept back, she stared at her cell phone with disappointment. Finally, with a resigned grunt, she turned it off completely.
He understood the frustration. She had made several attempts to reach President Qian and was rebuffed each time. The old guy was shunning her deliberately. It was exasperating, not only because the army was after them, but also because nobody was after Liang.
She squirmed away from him to put the phone away under her wedding dress.
After five hours on the bus, his legs had cramps and he had yet to relax. Whenever they reached the top of a hill, there was only another valley and further hills. Whenever they veered close to a drop-off, he looked away, for there were no guardrails. Every vehicle that passed could be a police car.
Finally, he twisted sideways and asked May if he could occupy her foot space. To put her feet in his lap, she first needed to take her dress off. He obliged by peeling it up over her head. At last, she was reborn as the svelte figure she had been before. She folded the dress with proprietary care and buried her face in it.
He turned to leave her alone with her thoughts. As he surveyed the stony faces about him, he resolved that he would marry May one way or another. She would not end up an unhappy maiden. He would give her all the world had to offer, and Paris had been a great start.
She bent forward and stuffed the dress under their seat, undoubtedly smudging it with whatever filth had accumulated there. Then two dainty feet with black soles appeared in his lap. He threw her a look. Moist-eyed, she gave him a smile. Dirty though they were, those were the feet of a princess who loved him and gave him the space he needed for his legs. He grabbed her feet with loving hands and began to apply a firm massage.
Moments later, she was purring.
Traffic was light. The only vehicles they encountered were buses and the occasional truck. There were few cars in western China. When one did appear, it would be white and blue, signifying the police. One squad car passed and the cop was talking on his radio.
“The problem is roadblocks,” Brad told May. “I want to get to a city soon.”
She agreed and started engaging other passengers in conversation. Shortly, she was able to relay to Brad what she had learned.
After reaching Erhai Lake, the bus would follow the shoreline until New Dali. Then, halfway around the lake, they would pass through Old Dali, tucked under the mountains.
“What mountains? I only see hills.”
“You will recognize the Himalayas.”
“Will the bus take us up there?” Maybe they could reach Shangri-la by road.
She posed the question to their fellow passengers and was met by a chorus of laughter. Apparently no roads climbed into the mountains.
She was regarding him seriously. “You are lost, aren’t you.”
The truth hurt. He was lost. Shambhala was supposed to be his area of expertise. Through skill and daring, she and Jade had gotten him to western China. Now it was up to him to find her father, and he didn’t have the vaguest clue where to look.
He peered ahead. Still no high mountains. There were only dry, grassy hills with forests on top.
“Just give me time,” he told her. “I’m sure I can find it.”
He searched the horizon for snowcapped peaks. According to legend, Shambhala was surrounded by mountains made of ice that shone with a crystalline light. So far no such light, no ice and no mountains.
Perhaps Sullivan, by marshalling the research capabilities of the CIA, could pinpoint Shangri-la. Could this be the first time the American Government made a concerted effort to find the place?
He’d be lucky if he could find the Himalayas, much less a kingdom buried therein.
One item his father had told him still stuck in his mind. Sullivan had said that it would take Dr. Yu’s understanding of the Shambhala legend together with the document’s directions to find Shangri-la. Well, Brad didn’t have the document as a guide, but he was as well versed as the old anthropologist in the Shambhala legend. He had poured over the many translations and interpretations of the Kalachakra in search of clues to whether Shambhala even existed. How could he use his knowledge of the legend to find a place he had already concluded did not exist?
On the flip side, Yu knew less about the Kalachakra. If Brad concentrated, he should be able to find where Yu was leading Liang.
He felt a familiar vibration in the seat of his pants. No, it wasn’t the food he had eaten at the market. Before he could reach his pocket, the hum turned into the shrill theme song from Star Wars. They were back in a country where his cell phone worked. He flipped it open.
It was Jade calling from Beijing.
“There already?” He hadn’t even reached Dali yet.
“Landed an hour ago,” she said. “I checked out where Liang was headed.”
He leaned toward May so they could both hear.
“I had friends in the Civil Aviation Authority investigate Liang and Dr. Yu’s whereabouts. As I suspected, Liang took control of our Cessna Citation X. However, he didn’t file a flight plan, and the CAAC has no record of where he’s headed. Nor is there any record of a landing.”
He felt May flinch.
“Do you suppose they reached Shangri-la?” he asked.
“Either that, or—” Jade started to say.
“Let’s assume they reached it.”
May looked nervously out the window.
“Is there any way you can contact President Qian?” he asked. “I’m afraid the police will find us sooner or later.”
“Once I tell the president that Liang is after Shangri-la,” Jade s
aid, “I’m sure Qian will act to find him and call off the manhunt for you.”
Brad looked nervously at his fiancée. May couldn’t get through to the country’s leader. How could Jade?
“Good luck,” he told her and hung up.
He stared at his phone. The police could track him down based on where he answered the phone. Maybe they should get off the bus.
May was pointing out the window. “Erhai Lake.”
Sure enough, a sapphire lake reached out to them as they descended into marshland. Beyond the lake, buildings lay outlined in the shadow of an enormous wall. His gaze traveled up the rocks and forests. At the top, the afternoon sun glinted off a rim of snow.
May nudged him. A police car was just overtaking them.
“We must jump before New Dali,” she whispered.
He nodded. They had to jump now.
May called out for the bus driver to let them off.
Brad was still wedged sideways under May’s seat. She used her feet to shove him and he ended up landing in the aisle.
They were back in China, and she reverted to standard bus etiquette. She walked over him to get to the front.
The driver swerved to the side of the road. From his position, Brad saw a loose handbag on the floor. It belonged to a girl who sat with her boyfriend across the aisle. If the bag contained money, he needed it.
So he snatched it. He tucked it under his silk jacket and staggered forward. The bus came to a halt just as he reached the front door. It opened and dust billowed in.
He made a point of not thanking the driver. If he were in disguise, he would have to follow the customs of the people.
“Xie xie,” May politely said to thank the driver.
Oh well. Call him the clod.
A cold gust swept over the lake. They waved at the bus as it pulled away. He was happy the bumpy, noisy ride was over. But where to go from there?
