by Fritz Galt
Brad stopped breathing.
May looked at him with concern. She patted his cheeks.
“Released? Why would anybody release Richter? He’s a total sleaze and guilty as sin on numerous federal offenses. Who let him go?”
“President Webster pardoned him.”
“Then I’m not going to risk my life for Mr. Webster.”
“Yes you will. But I also want you to keep an eye out for Richter. You know how he and Liang are inseparable.”
Boy, did Brad ever know it. Liang and Richter were the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of the modern world, or more fittingly the Godfather and Scarface. The two had threatened the lives of millions on both sides of the Pacific for personal gain. If the two ever linked up again…
“Wait a sec.” Brad’s mind raced back to Paris. The Oriental guy who turned out to be Liang had been awfully chummy with the millionaire from the South. What was his name? “Beau Buford,” he said aloud.
“What about him?” Sullivan said.
“Don’t you see? Richter is Beau Buford. Shave Richter’s head, use some makeup, put him in a wheelchair, give him a phony accent, and you’ve got Beau Buford.”
Sullivan’s fingers were already clicking on his keyboard.
Brad had to kick himself. How could he have missed what was now so obvious? Buford had underwritten the Shangri-la Symposium. Brad had even shaken the guy’s hand.
“Buford’s last known whereabouts: Paris,” Sullivan said. “Last known purchase: a train ticket to Geneva, then Zurich. We have no validation that he actually took the trip.”
“Have your agents look for him in Zurich.”
“Brad. He’s been granted a full pardon. We don’t have grounds on which to apprehend him.”
Perfect.
“I’ll have the computer flag any further hits on him. But for the moment, you’ve got your work cut out for you. You’ve got a mountain to conquer.”
Brad hung up the phone and stared at it. Why did he even own one? Now he knew why he hated cell phones so much. Ignorance was not only bliss; it kept one out of trouble.
“May,” he said. “Find us a way up that mountain. And fast.”
It didn’t take long for them to buy cheap hiking boots and for May to arrange transportation into the national park. What she couldn’t find was someone crazy enough to lead an expedition to the summit of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.
Soon, Brad was watching the jagged facets of the peak from a bus. He could see why it had never been conquered. The only accessible face was sheer rock topped by glacial snow, a recipe for disaster.
And yet, he allowed it to draw him.
“Can’t we fly over it?” May suggested. After all, she was a pilot.
Dr. Yu had specific directions and could probably circumvent the entire experience of climbing the mountain. But by definition, Shambhala was hidden and protected by a psychic barrier. According to the texts, one could only find it if one were meant to. After all, Tibetan lamas spent their entire lives in spiritual development before setting out on their final journey to Shambhala. Some got there, others didn’t.
Those who got there but were unprepared were swallowed up by crevasses or crushed by avalanches. Supposedly snow people guarded the cliffs and could jump down hundreds of feet without injury. Invisible rays might zap unwanted travelers.
As he contemplated the sudden appeal of flying in, the bus passed through a gorge where a smooth, turquoise lake reflected the massive mountain. In the foreground, white-and-brown-haired yaks stood knock-kneed in the shallows.
Something told him that he needed to meet each person and experience every step along the road.
In the end, he fell back on a more mundane argument.
“We’re short on time. Where can we find an airplane on such short notice?”
Once again, she didn’t question him. Being the boss sure was a power trip, and a first in their relationship.
They had to wait in a line of tourists, mostly Chinese high school students, for a chairlift up into the park. He took the opportunity to read the back of his lift ticket. “The visitors often acclaim the rich vision enjoys as the acme of perfection and enjoy themselves so much that they forget to go home.”
If Shangri-la was as good as advertised, maybe he would never go home.
Eventually they reached the chairlift, which caught them under their bottoms and swooped them away. Below, some students clawed up the mountain stone by stone. To their left, morning clouds lifted to reveal the peaks that surrounded the mountain and the summit itself. He shivered. The rocky, snow-covered peaks were straight out of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.
At the top of the lift, they stood up and ran down a short ramp. He was ready to go exploring, but May paused by a map.
“There is a big loop,” she said.
“No maps,” he said. “Pure instinct.”
He led her with other tourists along a wooden walkway through a spruce forest. He could see his breath and had to keep moving to stay warm. Then, suddenly, they arrived at a meadow. Beyond the tall grass lay the full splendor of the Himalayas.
He stepped off the walkway, straight into yak poop.
“Wha—?”
He stepped back onto the wooden planks.
The walkway led into a crowd of Yi minority women dressed in beefeater hats with pheasant feathers sticking out. Some were singing halfheartedly while others danced and posed for pictures. He could miss all that.
Just as he was scraping off the bottom of his boot, he heard the unmistakable sound of a small plane taking off. The roar increased and reverberated off the mountains.
“A Y-12 turboprop,” May said. “Good for high altitude and rough landings.” She shaded her eyes and pointed to a small military transport jet emerging from behind the mountain.
What an intrusion on the beauty of the spot. What possible reason did anyone have to buzz that lovely pasture?
He was bumped from behind. More tourists came bounding along and knocked him back into another soft mound. It sent up a cloud of flies.
“Yuck.”
Why even bother wiping?
May pulled him back onto the wood planks.
“You have to fall off the path more carefully,” she scolded.
Holding his nose, he followed her toward the line of dancers.
“Sorry,” he told them. “No camera.” He showed them that he was unarmed, and they turned away, disappointed.
“This really sucks.” Here he was at the gates of paradise, and it was full of touts, tourists, and turds.
At least he was out of the woods. Standing next to the field, he felt the full warmth of the sun. From that vantage point, he could check out the terrain. The forest grew sparser at the far end of the meadow. A string of mountains abutted the plateau. It was almost a straight shot up to their summits. A skilled rock climber, having scaled many cliffs above Tucson, he knew that without proper gear, there was no way to scale the giants before him.
“Rock,” he said aloud. “Vertical rock.”
“You want Dr. Rock?” a voice sounded beside him.
Brad looked to see who was speaking. It was a young Yi fellow, perhaps a boyfriend of one of the dancers.
“What do you mean ‘Dr. Rock’?” Brad could imagine some local guide who took tourists rock climbing.
“He’s the scientist from America, originally from Austria.”
Brad wasn’t getting it.
“Dr. Joseph Rock,” the man persisted, his English accented but understandable.
“What kind of a scientist is he?”
“A botanist and linguist.”
Boy the guy’s English was good.
“He took pictures and wrote articles for National Geographic in the 1940s.”
All this was interesting, but, “1940s? He must be a fossil now.”
The guy’s eyes were thin slits, looking up at him in the sunlight. “Here’s a map. Go find him.”
The man shoved a newspaper into his ri
bs. In one margin, he had sketched a map.
Now Brad got it. The young Yi chap was nothing more than a tout for some relic trying to sell his past to the modern tourist. Sorry, but he wasn’t falling for that.
Only because he didn’t want to litter, he shoved the newspaper into his back pocket.
May had been watching him the whole time. Now that the guy had concluded his business and passed on to other tourists, she opened her mouth.
“What were you saying to him?”
“Huh? Oh right.” May’s English wasn’t good enough to catch all the nuances about Austrians and botanists and National Geographic. “He was just telling me about a scientist who lives up here somewhere and used to write for an American nature magazine.”
She gave him a funny look. “He told you all that?”
“Yeah. Weren’t you listening?”
“Yes, I was. But he was speaking to you in Yi.”
“In Yi?” Boy, maybe she had trouble hearing. “The guy spoke fluent English.”
“I did not know you speak Yi.”
“Me? I don’t speak Yi. I didn’t even know it’s a language.”
“Well, mister. He was talking and you were speaking in Yi.”
How could that be? The only language besides English that he spoke was French. His Mandarin Chinese was rudimentary at best. Some dialect of western China was way past him.
“Talk to this woman,” May said, and pushed a costumed dancer his way.
“Hi, miss.”
“No. In Yi.”
This was embarrassing. “Excuse me, my fine young lady.”
May jabbed him with her elbow.
The woman turned to him. “Picture?”
May grunted and yanked him away. “I did hear you talk Yi.”
He looked around for the young man who was advertising the Joseph Rock tour. The guy had struck up a conversation with one of the dancers.
Brad listened in, but couldn’t understand a word he said. Beyond that, he had no idea what language he was speaking. It might as well be Martian.
“Excuse me,” Brad said, and tapped the man on the shoulder. “Do you speak English?”
The man gave him an empty look.
“You don’t speak English?”
The man still looked blank.
How could Brad have just conversed with him? Maybe they had just been speaking past each other.
But no, he had remembered distinctly. The conversation had begun with confusion over the word “rock” and continued from there with perfect clarity to the point where the guy had foisted a map on him.
Maybe he should take a closer look at that map.
Chapter 58
The map was hand-drawn on an issue of the People’s Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper that Brad couldn’t read if his life depended on it. But the map was labeled in English.
A taxi driver at the base of the chairlift was willing to take them to Dr. Rock’s house for fifty yuan. May haggled the fare down to fifteen.
They skirted the base of the mountain, and Brad could observe its multiple facets from every angle. There seemed to be more than one approach to the peak.
Dr. Rock’s house was in the tiny hamlet of Yuhu. The village had the twin advantages of being at timberline and above the ox dung. But it was no more than a warren of stones, offering a hardscrabble existence to those who could survive there.
“Yuhu,” May announced. Her voice vanished in empty space.
Not a soul was in sight.
She leaned into the cab to talk to the driver.
“He says he can wait.”
Brad stared at what looked like a prehistoric civilization miles from the nearest thoroughfare. It was a goldmine for an aspiring anthropologist. “We won’t need him.”
Upon hearing the verdict, the cabbie kicked up gravel and sped away.
“Extortionist,” Brad said. “He thought he could bilk us on the ride back to town.”
“We are not going back to town?”
“That’s right.” He held up the newspaper and turned it so that the map lined up with the only road in town. “This shouldn’t be a long walk.”
The road led upward past a schoolhouse and several small family compounds. It paralleled a stream with boulders that had been carved smooth by rushing water. Palm trees, unusual for that climate and altitude, grew at the river’s edge.
Where were all the people? A rooster scooted past. A cow stood tied to a tree. A team of horses waited patiently before a cart. Dried sides of pork dangled from eaves here and there.
He stopped at a pipe spraying droplets from the stream. May straddled the pipe and waited for the wind to blow the water her way, then took a swig.
They passed a pair of smiling old men who had just slaughtered a pig. Blood dripped from their hands.
Brad continued toward the place designated on the map. Young women walked down a mountain path with baskets of firewood on their backs. The group giggled at the sight of the strangers.
Brad reddened, but pressed on. In the end, he didn’t need the map. A small, hand-painted sign read “Dr. Rock.” It pointed down an alley. He folded up the newspaper and stuffed it in his pocket.
A gate to a courtyard was open, but he paused to knock.
An old man grunted in response.
Brad peered inside. A Chinese fellow in a blue mechanics suit relaxed in the shade with a boxed lunch in his lap.
May stepped in and inquired if Dr. Rock was home.
The old guy gestured that Rock was asleep. Nevertheless, he grabbed a key and let them into a room to one side of the courtyard.
It turned out to be a small museum of Dr. Joseph Rock’s work.
Brad circled the walls and studied newspaper clippings and photographs that had appeared in the press. The Austrian-born American naturalist had lived in Yuhu in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s cataloging the flora and fauna of the region. A heavy book, the result of his work, lay on a table. Brad flipped through the pages. It was too detailed to be of any interest to him.
Then, apparently, Dr. Rock had turned his attention to translating the Naxi language and exploring its culture. He had sent photos and articles back to National Geographic, and fueled the image of paradise in the minds of readers from America to Europe and beyond.
A yellowed print showed a stout, graying man standing in a broad-brimmed hat beside a biplane. Sixteen men in heavy woolen garb surrounded him. The caption described them as bodyguards.
Now Dr. Rock’s museum had only one guard. And the scientist must be well over a hundred years old.
Brad crossed the compound to the main building. The guard didn’t seem to mind, so Brad went in.
He was disappointed to find an empty room. A ladder led up through a hole in the ceiling. He grabbed it firmly and tested its strength. It should be able to hold him.
May waited below while he climbed up. He poked his head through the hole for a look. The room was furnished with a primitive dresser, a chair and table, a chamber pot, and a bed.
Oops. There was someone in the bed.
Brad was about to duck out when he made a mental connection. Could he be right? The sleeping man was no off-duty guard. He looked old and Western, and resembled the man in the photograph.
“Dr. Rock?”
The chubby figure stirred on the woven mat that served as a mattress.
“Jawohl?”
“Wait a second. I didn’t know you still lived here.”
The man peered at him. “I didn’t know that you were invited.”
He slowly swung his feet to the ground.
“I can’t believe this,” Brad said. He had a fairly firm grasp of history and how time affected the human body, and what he saw defied explanation. Dr. Rock was barely a day older than the image of him in the photograph. “I figured you were…”
“Dead? I got sick and went to Hawaii for treatment,” he said, a trace of German accent in his gravelly voice. “But who wants to die in Hawaii? So I came back here.”
“You look remarkably well preserved.”
“Is that considered a compliment these days? I don’t see outsiders much anymore.”
At that moment, May popped her head into the room.
“Did you see my father?”
Rock took a look at her and raised an eyebrow. Then he closed his mouth.
“Yes? What is it?” Brad said. “Does she remind you of anyone you saw in the past few days?”
Rock stuffed his feet into a pair of slippers.
“Has Dr. Yu Zhaoguo been here?” Brad persisted.
He saw a reaction flicker across Rock’s face.
May gasped in relief, then covered her face with her hands. It was true. Her father was still alive.
It was too late for Dr. Rock to deny it.
“The man you mention came here two days ago,” Rock said. “He was accompanied by a most unpleasant Chinese fellow.”
“Which direction did they head?” It was hard to keep the excitement out of his voice.
“I cannot say. I fell asleep, and when I awoke, they were gone.”
All right. So the guy wanted money to loosen his tongue.
Rock stood and headed for the ladder. “Dr. Yu seemed to know where he was going,” he went on. “He was following written directions. All he needed was to look at my latest translations.”
With practiced skill, he eased his stout body onto the ladder, and May retreated downstairs. Brad hustled to catch up, lest he miss a word of the story.
Standing in the empty room, Rock went on. “Dr. Yu reminded me of a German professor I met years ago. He had wanted a peek at the same translation. Then he was on his way.”
Brad remembered back to his phone conversation with his father while he and May were holed up in the bell tower of Notre Dame. Sullivan had revealed the identity of the dead man in Paris. He was a contact who was there to deliver the Shangri-la Code to Dr. Yu. “Was the German’s name Professor Fried?”
“I don’t remember anymore.” Rock headed out into the blinding sunlight.
Brad glanced at May. “This is spooky. How old is this guy?”
“Forget that. Just look at the translation.”
Like he would understand the ancient pictographic language. Without Fried’s document, there was no way to decipher the directions that Fried and Yu had sought.
