Suddenly patience was a luxury he no longer possessed.
Chen pulled out his phone and quickly dialed Hong Kong.
Lim Bao picked it up on the second ring. ‘Yes?’
‘The army is coming. They will be here soon. What should I do?’
48
Kunchen led them through a complex maze of twisting stairways down to the lower levels of the Potala. The original Tibetan art and décor had been replaced with plain concrete walls and dozens of cubicles with army cots in them. It was clear that the bulk of these floors had recently housed large numbers of Chinese troops.
‘Are these still manned?’ Cobb asked as the older man nimbly led them over raised doorframes and ducked under lowered lintels, sweeping aside tapestries covering each passageway as he went. His limp from earlier was no longer present.
‘For the most part, no,’ Kunchen answered, the breeziness in his voice absent when he spoke of the intrusion of Chinese troops into a religious structure. ‘There are still over fifty soldiers stationed in the building at any given time, but I am leading you on a circuitous route that will help us to avoid them at this time of day. Some of the men are quite lazy, and therefore unpredictable, but most of them rigidly adhere to their rules and schedules, with the hopes of one day being promoted and relocated back to China proper.’
They fell silent as they entered a more traditional section of the building, where whitewashed walls gave way to brilliant colors, kaleidoscopic paintings of nature, and thousands of images of the Buddha. The passages grew tighter and lower, to the point where Cobb had to stoop and often turn sideways to make it through the tiny doorways, which were now protected by locked doors instead of just being covered by tapestries.
Looking like a high school janitor, Kunchen carried a huge brass ring filled with keys that unlocked most of the doors in the palace, but twice they stopped in front of hidden passageways that required the pressure of Kunchen’s hands on the wall followed by a complex ballet of tiny movements. Cobb wondered if the old monk was being deliberately showy in order to hide the actual placement of his fingers needed to open the recessed doors.
‘The Communists started ripping down walls that they felt were not load-bearing back in the 1950s.’ Kunchen turned to them and grinned. ‘They also took out a few that were, by mistake. Eventually they realized they should stop before the entire palace collapsed. Thankfully, many parts of these lower levels are still intact.’
They moved into a section with long narrow hallways that were lined with ancient codices. The dusty ends of the long wooden slats jutted out of the recesses in the walls. Maggie tried to ask how old the documents were, but the tiny monk was moving too fast for her to keep up.
As the passageway continued to narrow, another monk joined them from behind. He was obviously younger than Kunchen, but Cobb couldn’t have guessed by how much. He smiled far less than their genial host and his skin was not nearly as weathered. The only thing that stood out about him was the ridiculous amount of prayer beads wrapped around his neck. If they had been made of gold, he would have looked like a Tibetan Mr T.
Finally, Kunchen unlocked a tiny doorway that was barely four feet in height. Even he had to contort his body to fit through the narrow frame. Despite the tiny door, the room was filled with bookcases that stretched from the floor to the twenty-foot-high ceiling, the upper levels of which were accessed by a narrow balcony. The shelves were designed as display cases, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle and covered over with glass. Each codex was splayed out slightly like a Chinese fan, so the monks could see the text of the first leaf between the wooden boards that bound it. As he continued to walk, Cobb could see varying scripts on the codices. Although he could read none of them, he knew they were not all written in the blocky Tibetan language.
The massive room stretched on for forty feet before another hall branched to the left. Cobb could see more shelves in that corridor and another room at the end of the hallway. For all he knew, there were more halls and rooms beyond that. The glass over the shelves was clearly a recent addition, but the rest of the library appeared as if its current configuration might have been intact for hundreds of years. Surprisingly, the room did not have the thick cloying scent of incense that he had smelled upstairs. Then he realized why: to protect the fragile old books.
Kunchen was thrilled to see the look of amazement in Cobb’s eyes. ‘Mister Jack, do you know the volumes you are seeking?’
‘I’m afraid not, but Maggie does,’ he said.
Kunchen nodded. ‘Then I will leave you for a while. I have other duties to attend to. Young Sonam here is the caretaker of this collection. The librarian, I suppose you would call him. Once you find a title you wish to inspect, inform him, and he will remove it from its case.’
‘Kunchen,’ Cobb said before the monk departed, ‘you never asked for anything in return for allowing us access to your exquisite library. Is there something we can do for you?’
The monk looked at him, confused. ‘Why should I require anything? You came with a smile on your face and several beautiful khata that you purchased in the market this morning. That was very thoughtful of you. Then you proved your humility by choosing the more arduous path to the doors of this palace when you could have easily taken the tour bus later in the day or driven your own vehicle here. You also showed patience with the tea.’ Kunchen smiled. ‘You have sought only knowledge, and you have asked politely. I require no further reward.’
‘Nonetheless,’ Cobb said with a bow. ‘You strike me as a very intelligent man. I suspect you know what we are after ultimately involves more than simple knowledge.’
‘Thank you for your appraisal. And yes, this is true.’ His face was suddenly serious, showing no hint of his cheerfulness from earlier. ‘However, I also know that whatever riches you seek, they are not Tibetan. I would ask only that you weigh the value of the journey against the value of the reward that you hope to obtain.’
Cobb pondered the advice before responding. ‘Thank you for your wisdom. I promise we will. And whether we are successful or not, I will do whatever I can to help you and your brethren – even if that is nothing more than a shipment of black tea from abroad.’
Kunchen’s grin returned in a flash, and Cobb knew it was genuine. The old monk smiled warmly at him, bowed once, then departed in silence.
Meanwhile the young librarian had wandered to the other end of the room, content to not peer over their shoulders like a hawk. If they were good enough for Kunchen’s trust, they were good enough for his.
‘So,’ Sarah said as she glanced around the room, ‘where do we start?’
Maggie explained. ‘We are looking for the writing, not the shape of the book. All of the books from the time period we seek will be codices like these. If any of them were by Polo’s hand, it will be written in a handful of languages: Mongolian, Turkish, Arabic, and, most importantly, Venetian.’
‘That doesn’t help much,’ Sarah admitted. ‘I can probably tell the difference between Arabic and East Asian scripts, but I have no idea what the others look like.’
‘The Ottoman Turkish will look just like Arabic to you. Large, horizontally curvy letters, all written from right to left. The Mongolian will be easy to spot, too, because it will look like large dragons and jagged-edged knives, all written vertically. If you spot any of those, let me know. Those will most likely be written by Mongol invaders – men loyal to the Khan. There’s a chance they would know something about Polo.’
‘What about Venetian?’ Cobb asked.
‘Venetian used the Latin alphabet, the same letters as English.’
Cobb nodded. ‘That’s more in my wheelhouse.’
Maggie continued. ‘But like I said this morning, it’s unlikely we’ll find anything written in Polo’s hand. My guess is that I’ll have to read several of these volumes to find a single mention of a white foreigner traveling in Lhasa.’
‘What do you want us to look for first?’ Sarah asked.
&nb
sp; ‘Any books written in a language besides Tibetan script. If you find anything like that, let me know. And if we don’t find anything useful, we’ll ask the librarian for assistance. He might be able to help us with the Tibetan volumes that I can’t read.’
Cobb and Sarah took opposite sides of the room from Maggie, working their way halfway down the hall and glancing at the scripts on the wide variety of pages, all contained in nearly identical wooden boards as covers. When they reached the end, they ascended a simple staircase and began searching the upper ten feet, walking back the way they had come, essentially segmenting the long hall into ‘rooms’ based on distance and the placement of the staircases to the upper balcony.
Nothing came close to the description Maggie had given.
They had been at it for nearly an hour when they reached the end of the collection with nothing to show for it. They had discovered a third hall after the second, but it contained more of the same. None of the documents were written in the characters they were hoping to find.
Sarah and Cobb met in the middle of the balcony, practically bumping into each other while their eyes rapidly scanned the hundreds of titles on shelves under glass.
‘Nothing but Tibetan,’ Sarah said.
‘Same for me,’ Cobb agreed.
‘I was certain we’d find something here.’
‘So was I,’ Cobb said.
McNutt’s voice suddenly squawked in his ear. ‘Chief?’
Cobb was thankful for the interruption. ‘Yeah, Josh. What is it?’
‘Your search might have turned up empty, but someone found us.’
‘What do you mean?’ Cobb demanded.
McNutt stared at the approaching forces. ‘I think someone tipped off the goddamned army. We’ve got an entire platoon headed our way.’
49
McNutt stared in horror as a line of Chinese ZBL-09s advanced toward the Potala Palace through a light mist. He knew the kind of damage that could be done by such vehicles, and he knew the peaceful monks in their red robes had no way of stopping it.
With four oversized wheels on each side, the 21-ton armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) were offensively minded personnel carriers. The AFVs could move at sixty mph on a flat road, were fully amphibious, and their heavy exterior was capable of repelling 7.62 mm armor-piercing rounds. In typical Chinese fashion, these four were painted in a high-gloss black, forest green, and white camouflage pattern that failed miserably to blend with the local terrain.
The AFVs had room for three crew members and an additional seven passengers. McNutt knew that they typically had a 30 mm cannon mounted on the front of the gun turret, but for reasons he couldn’t explain the weapon had been removed from the first AFV in the four-vehicle convoy. The defanged turret was still menacing though, with a heavy machine gun mounted on a post and a gunner at the ready.
To McNutt, the AFVs resembled sharks on wheels. He quickly noted that while the first vehicle was missing its main gun, the other three sharks had their cannons intact. Worse still, their top hatches were battened down for business.
McNutt was seated at the foot of the main palace structure at the highest point on the eastern side of the building’s base. He’d slipped out of the guesthouse hours before the others. On this mission, he’d be without a sniper rifle. They were too tough to acquire in Tibet. Instead, he’d come out with just an automatic pistol and his wits. He figured if he couldn’t keep an eye on things through a scope, the least he could do was get in position before dawn.
He had been on site when the first tourists began to wander around the property, and he’d been in place when Cobb, Maggie, and Sarah had made their long ascent up the steps to the front door. He’d already learned his way around, finding the blind corners – the perfect places for an ambush – and scoping out the points of ingress and egress. But what he was mostly looking for were more phony cops coming to mess with his team.
The last thing he’d expected was a military convoy.
That is, if these men were actually soldiers.
The guards in Loulan had been heavily armored, too.
McNutt watched as the first AFV turned off the mostly empty Beijing Middle Road onto a side road that ran parallel to the hillside and ended at the Potala’s rear parking lot. He knew he would have to relocate if he wanted eyes on the winding route that led to the palace’s back door.
He whispered into his microphone. ‘Hey, Sanchez. You hear me?’
‘Loud and clear,’ Garcia said.
Before they had arrived in Tibet, McNutt had asked Garcia to check on local police and military personnel in the area. He knew the physical presence of soldiers on the ground was minimal in Lhasa – mostly to mollify protesters and civil rights groups in the international community, not to administer martial law – but he needed details on their positioning. Garcia had learned there was a small handful of men stationed inside the Potala and more in the eastern part of the city at a barracks not far from the team’s guesthouse. Based on the direction from which the AFVs were arriving, McNutt figured that whole reserve group was headed their way. The next largest contingent of the People’s Liberation Army was a garrison out at the airport.
McNutt continued to whisper. ‘Just wondering if you can do your computer thingy and tell me if the army is mobilizing its troops out at the airport.’
‘That’s a negative. They haven’t moved.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m staring at them.’
Shortly after Cobb, Sarah, and Maggie had left the guesthouse, Papineau and Garcia had slipped out the back to a waiting vehicle that whisked them out of town. Cobb had decided that it would be a good thing to have them both ready to go in case the team was attacked again. Garcia was in a private hangar at the airport keeping an eye on the PLA and the arriving flights while Papineau made arrangements with the jet’s pilot to be ready at a moment’s notice.
‘Okay,’ McNutt said, barely relieved. ‘If they move at all, let me know ASAP. I have a bad feeling that this place is about to get rocked.’
McNutt left his post and ran along the base of the building, hoping to slip around the back where he could shadow the lone AFV if it started the ascent up the back road. There wasn’t anything he could do against an armored vehicle with just a handgun, but if he stayed hidden long enough he could confront the soldiers when they climbed out of the personnel carrier.
He crouched low and raced along the rocky soil, keeping an eye on the AFV as it slowly trundled along the road toward the parking area. The idea had occurred to him that this was simply the vehicle used to ferry soldiers up and down from their living quarters at the palace, which would explain the missing cannon on the turret.
Then again, it wouldn’t explain the other three AFVs out on the main road.
Just as he reached the end of the building, McNutt watched as the AFV turned away from the parking lot and up toward the winding road that led to the palace. His determination growing, he climbed over a low wall and dropped seven feet to the dirt on the other side before rushing around the edge of a curved tower to the back of the building. Staying in the shadows of the palace wall and partly cloaked by the morning mist, McNutt moved like a ghost nearer the AFV, which didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. It trudged along at a slow pace, getting closer and closer to the rear entrance of the palace, showing no signs of hostility.
For a brief moment, McNutt began to doubt his feelings of dread.
Are they merely transporting supplies to the palace?
Maybe the other three AFVs are simply running drills.
But those thoughts vanished when he heard the first shot.
McNutt instinctively dove to the rocky ground. With a gun in his hand, he looked up and couldn’t believe what he saw. The gunner on the AFV was slumped forward, half-extended out of one of the twin hatches atop the vehicle. He was missing a sizeable chunk of his head.
A second later, automatic fire erupted from the hillside below and the armored sides of th
e AFV began sparking so much it looked like a fireworks display.
In a flash, McNutt realized he had gotten it all wrong.
The soldiers weren’t firing at him or anything else.
Someone was shooting at the goddamned army.
50
Kunchen tried to suppress his alarm as he rushed into the library, but the look on his face gave away his emotions. He was quite concerned about the outbreak of violence.
Maggie pressed her palms together and apologized before he had a chance to catch his breath. ‘I am so sorry, Kunchen. I understand from a friend of mine that soldiers are coming. We have brought suffering to your home and to your friends.’
The old man’s eyes were kindly. ‘Yes, they are most likely here for you, but we will do what we can to help. You have been a strong supporter in the past, Miss Maggie, and we know your heart is pure. The soldiers will shout and intimidate. They may even damage things. But they will not physically hurt my brothers. There was a time they would, but this younger generation is better. The soldiers do not know of this library at all, but the possibility exists that they will find it on one of their searches. For that reason and that reason alone, I suggest we move you.’
‘Thank you,’ Cobb said with a bow of his head.
‘Come,’ Kunchen said, and he led them through a hidden door they hadn’t seen in their search of the library. It connected to a long narrow hallway.
‘Chief,’ McNutt said from outside the palace. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I’m pretty sure the army isn’t here for us.’
Cobb stopped at once. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The soldiers are exchanging fire with a bunch of tourists. Actually, the tourists opened fire on them. I think our Guangzhou bad guys are here. The front steps are turning into a war zone.’
‘Shit,’ Cobb said. ‘The army will call in reinforcements to stop the gunfight.’
Garcia’s voice cut in. ‘That’s confirmed. A large force just mobilized out of here at the airport, and they’re hauling ass. You better get out of Lhasa before they arrive.’
The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) Page 23