by Tom Martin
In a terse clipped voice, he said, ‘We need to continue down here for about one mile, then we have to head up the valley side. And we will have to hurry if we want to have any chance of catching them. ’
‘And where will that get us?’ said Jack.
Colonel Jen’s tone of voice was firm and decisive, and Nancy suspected that he was not used to being disagreed with.
‘The monks have taken Herzog to the Cave of the Magicians. It is the entrance to an ancient tunnel system that links up all the old gompas of Tibet and that also leads to Agarthi.’ He glanced sharply at Jack and then added pointedly, ‘The holy city of Agarthi most certainly does exist, by the way.’
‘And do you know the way there?’ asked Jack.
‘No. That is why we have to catch them before they get inside. It is not possible to follow them into the tunnels, it would be suicide. We are not far behind but we must hurry.’
As they began hurrying along, Nancy shot a question at their former captive, who had now – it seemed – become their guide.
‘Colonel Jen, how long were you hanging up there?’
He looked at her, with a little more kindness in his expression that made her hope he was not a bad man.
‘Please call me Jen, you are not in the Chinese military.’
‘Thanks. I’m Nancy Kelly and this is Jack Adams.’
‘To answer your question, I was hanging there for about three hours.’
‘But who laid the trap?’
‘Mompas, I expect. Local tribespeople, hoping to catch a deer.’
‘And who attacked you?’
‘As I said, I don’t know.’
‘But was it men, or . . .’
‘Or what?’ The Colonel smiled at her. ‘A migu? I only saw men. Probably Mompas again. They don’t like Chinese soldiers or monks.’
He seemed very blasé about it all, or perhaps he was just pragmatic. Maybe that was what got you promoted to the rank of Colonel at such a young age.
‘You said you had other men with you?’
‘Yes. A dozen men. But they were not good troops. They were garrison soldiers; conscripts, cannon fodder. They didn’t hold the formation, they scattered and fell.’
‘But were there gunshots?’
‘No. The Mompas rarely have guns, they have other weapons. But we must leave,’ said Jen, glancing up the path. ‘We cannot afford to waste a second. Let me carry your rucksack.’
As Nancy handed her rucksack to him, it suddenly occurred to her that he could just run off with all her water and supplies. She hesitated, and straight away he understood what she was thinking.
‘I will not take it. I could overpower you both if I chose.’
He glanced at Jack, who was frowning at this suggestion, and then added, ‘I have been trained.’ He left it at that.
‘It is useful that you are not Chinese, that you are Westerners,’ he said. ‘It may help me to get the monks to hand over Anton Herzog, if he is still alive. I am wearing army uniform and I suspect they would not roll out the red carpet if they saw me approaching alone, and now I have lost my men, I will have to rely on methods other than brute force . . .’
He turned and looked down the track.
‘Keep your eyes open for more animal traps. We will be safe once we’re off this main path.’
47
They had been marching quickly for several hours, gradually climbing the bowl-like incline of the valley side, when finally Jen called a halt. He had set a blistering pace, and Nancy and Jack had scarcely exchanged a word since they had started on the trek. Panting with exhaustion and grateful for the respite, Nancy put her hands on her hips and took a series of long, deep breaths. She reached for her water bottle and drank deeply.
They were standing in dense jungle at the base of an immense ivy-covered boulder. Jen was hunting around for something, peering into the undergrowth. Jack joined them, his shirt drenched in sweat and his face glowing red from the exertion.
‘Why have we stopped? The path is still good.’
Jen knelt down and motioned for them to follow.
‘Here – I’ll show you why.’
After a brief crawl up a scree slope, they emerged
onto a rocky ledge about five yards in length and two yards wide. The view almost took Nancy’s breath away, so used had she become to the endless wall of green. She had failed to consider that they had climbed several thousand feet from the valley floor, and now on this ledge they had a tremendous view over the lush, almost primeval valley below. She could clearly see the Yarlang Tsangpo winding its way towards the mountains to the south. The sun had already dropped behind the high mountains; the daylight was beginning to mellow and fade.
‘There,’ Jen said. Nancy turned to him. He was pointing in the other direction, up the side of the valley. She followed the line of his finger: at first she couldn’t see what he was pointing to.
‘What are we meant to be looking at?’ she asked, still breathless.
‘There. Just above the treeline. Two miles away. That’s them.’
Nancy’s heart almost stopped. Suddenly she saw them, just above the treeline on the scree slope; a line of tiny antlike figures, laboriously picking their way along what looked to be a very narrow precipitous path. Jack delved into his pack and produced a miniature pair of binoculars.
‘My God,’ he said, looking through them. ‘I see monks, two dozen of them, and yes: a stretcher.’
His hands fell to his side in amazement. Nancy grabbed the binoculars from him, and following the treeline she found the train of men. Yes, Jack was right. She counted twenty-four men and it was true that they were carrying someone. It must be Herzog. She almost choked. Finally, she could see him, almost, and yet his body and head were covered in a blue sheet, or robe. Her heart racing, she passed the binoculars to Jen, who quickly scanned the line of men. Then he turned to them both and in a businesslike tone said:
‘Quick, we haven’t a second to lose. It will be dark in one hour. And in two hours they will be at the Caves and all will be lost.’
48
At last the monks had reached the sanctuary of the Cave of the Magicians. The walls within were covered in ancient rock paintings of sorcerers and shamans wearing wild headdresses and dancing around fires, and long-extinct animals being hunted across the Tibetan plateau. Human and animal bones littered the floor, and the debris of long-extinguished fires stained the dark sand with black circles. The air smelt of magic and death. Ten feet further in, the caves became as black as night and opened out into a hundred sinuous, angular corridors that descended deep into the earth. Even with knowledge of the route, enormous skill would be needed to navigate a step further without slipping to a wretched death down a bottomless crevasse, or descending into a blind pothole from which no way back could ever be found.
The Abbot’s deputy knew that they could not afford to hesitate even for a moment. The Abbot had said that if they found themselves being pursued, they should seek sanctuary in Agarthi, deep within the ancient cave system. They would not be safe until they entered the dark labyrinth beyond, and yet he hesitated. The bitter truth was that they could not take the white man any further. They could not carry the stretcher through the caves, and the doctor said the white man would never survive the journey without it. Though they had come all this way, bearing him aloft like a saint, like a king, they would have to leave him to the wolves and the Chinese soldiers. Leaving him to die or to be captured filled the Abbot’s deputy with immense sadness, but at one level he was relieved that the decision had been made for him by the severity of their flight and the treacherous terrain of the caves. The stranger was a dangerous wizard, weak physically but psychically still strong. He should not be allowed into the holy city of Agarthi.
The Abbot’s deputy leaned forward so that his lips almost touched the white man’s ear. He said, softly, not sure if the man was awake or sleeping, ‘You are going to rest here for a while. I am going to leave, I may be some time but
do not worry, we will be back for you.’
Even as he said the treacherous words he felt his heart rebel – but he had no choice. Very quietly he articulated his final question:
‘Before I go, please tell me how you escaped from Shangri-La. And . . . and . . . I must know. Did you ever see the Book of Dzyan?’
The man’s eyes opened. His skeletal fingers met, as if he was praying. Lifting his eyes to the roof of the cave – and the Abbot’s deputy wondered what he saw, and if he knew where he was – he said, ‘I am growing weak. Are we almost there yet? Is this Agarthi? I am so very weary.’
The Abbot’s deputy said nothing; he could find no response to the man’s words. A terrible silence filled the cave. Did the white man understand what was really happening? Did he realize he was being abandoned, being left to die alone? After a pause – perhaps he was hoping for reassurance that never came – the stranger resumed.
‘I will tell you how I escaped and I will tell you the terrible truth about the Book of Dzyan.’
Silence again, as he collected his thoughts, drifting across the days and nights, wandering back to Shangri-La. Then for one last time, he began:
‘Once I had discovered what a horrifying end lay in store for me, as King to be, my mind was made up and I immediately decided to make a thorough exploration of the lamasery and grounds, or should I say a thorough exploration of my prison . . .’
The Abbot’s deputy settled into a guilty silence, glad that he would learn the end of the stranger’s tale, aghast that he was on the point of abandoning him to his death.
The charismatic voice projected through the darkness.
‘I descended the stairs to the ground floor and then walked around the tower in what I thought was the direction of the inner courtyard and the dreaded bonfire. But I came to a locked door. There was no one around to ask for assistance so I turned back and began to wander the interior passages of the lamasery. I passed the dining room, now empty, and continued unchallenged through several other staterooms. Everything was very quiet, a silence which merely menaced me further. Finally, I went through a doorway and found myself in the front courtyard, on the other side of which lay the massive wooden entrance gates and, beyond the gates, the battlements. Standing guard by the gates was a solitary sherpa.
It was then that I had an idea; I crossed the courtyard and in Nepali I said to the sherpa. ‘“Where is the King?”
‘The sherpa put his hands together and bowed, and then pointing back over my head, he said, ‘“He is at the top of the tower, sir.”
‘I spun around; the tower rose up against the clear pale blue sky, and at the top was a forbidding line of battlements.
‘Can I speak to him?’
‘“I cannot answer that, sir. It is up to his Highness.”
‘Then as an afterthought, I turned back to him and asked, “Can you open the gates for me? I would like to walk along the battlement.”
‘“I am sorry, sir, I am not allowed to open the gates for anyone except the Abbot.”
‘“Not even the King?”
‘ “Yes, sir, not even the King.”
‘He was a very thickset stocky man, and although he was smiling and bowing now, I reckoned that if I attempted to overpower him he would quickly get the better of me. I couldn’t risk it.
‘“Thank you.”
‘Back to the tower I went, walking as quickly as propriety allowed, not wanting to look in any way hurried or desperate, but all the time conscious of the fact that time was running out. It would be dusk in three hours, I reckoned, and then their ghastly ceremony would commence.
‘I hurried up the stairs. I passed the door to my cell and carried on up, until the broad stairs became a narrow flight of steps that corkscrewed up to the roof. At the top there was a door. It was ajar; sunlight was streaming in. Gingerly, I pushed it open and stepped onto the roof. There were battlements all the way around and the view beyond was incredible, but I didn’t have time to take it all in, as the moment I stepped onto the roof my eyes fell on the King.
‘He was as the Abbot had described: a European man, who appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He was wearing a white robe, hemmed with gold, and he was gazing out over the battlements, oblivious to my arrival and entirely mesmerized by the view. On his head he wore a golden crown and on his wrists, neck and ankles he was wearing heavy, thick hoops of gold, that gleamed in the sunlight.
‘I paused, breathing heavily after the exertion of running up the stairs. The man appeared not to have noticed me despite the noise I was making. He remained as motionless as a statue, his arms hanging by his sides under the weight of the enormous gold bracelets.
‘“Hello?” I said tentatively. Then without thinking I broke into German:
‘“My name is Anton Herzog.”
‘Ever so slowly, the man turned around to face me. Because of the great weight of the gold, his motion had the heaviness of a deep-sea diver. I noticed that the gold ring around his neck pressed right up under his chin in an uncomfortable manner. The sight of this wretched man made my stomach turn with fear; for that is what he was, a wretched human being, dressed in a grotesque mockery of royal finery, awaiting an awful fate.
‘Now that he was facing me, I could see him properly. His eyes were like two empty caves – devoid of light, devoid of soul, devoid even of hope. Suddenly he spoke. His voice startled me with the depth of its sadness.
‘ “So, it is true then. You have finally come.”
‘Fear was beginning to take hold, my voice was shaking.
‘ “Listen to me. I don’t know what is going on here. You have to help me. I must leave immediately.”
‘“I can’t help you. I cannot even help myself. Even if I wanted to.”
‘Panic was rising within me. I felt as if I was about to lose my mind. I almost shouted in my desperation. “We have to get out of here. They intend to kill you tonight. They are going to burn you . . .”
‘The King stared at me through his dead eyes. I felt a sudden wave of pity and a deep regret for what I had just said. He did not need me to warn him of his fate.
‘ “I’m sorry. But we both have to get out of here. You are German aren’t you? You came with Felix Koenig?”
‘The man ignored my questions.
‘“I cannot leave. And nor can you. There is no way out of here. You must accept your fate, as so many kings have done before you.” He paused for a minute and then with his voice cracking with emotion, said, “I have been preparing myself for the day of your arrival for so long – but still I do not want to go. If only I could have a few more hours as ruler of the world . . . a few more days.”
‘Everything about his manner and speech made me think that he had been brainwashed.
‘“Listen to me. You must stop talking like this. There must be a way out.”
‘“There is no way out.”
‘“The silk rope I came up on?”
‘“They will stop you.”
‘“Then out the back, on to the Himalayas?”
‘“It is too far. It is hundreds of miles to the first blade of grass. No one has ever made it. And even if you did, which is impossible, they would bring you back.”
‘“But the caravans that bring things from the outside world, they make it.”
‘“They are prepared for the journey. They travel with yaks laden with supplies and warm clothes. One man alone will certainly perish up there. It is like the surface of the moon.”
‘My temper and my nerves were beginning to fray in the face of his defiant pessimism.
‘“But how can you stand there and just accept what they will do to you?”
‘“I am the King of Shangri-La. I came from Germany to enlist the monks in our cause and find the Book of Dzyan and unleash the superman. Tonight I will join the Masters above.”
‘He sounded like a hostage reciting a mantra that his captives had given him.
‘ “Well, I intend to try to escape, even if I die in the attemp
t. Come with me. We can take the Book of Dzyan with us.”
‘Slowly, with great effort, the King raised his heavy wrists to shoulder height and turned his hands over, as if he was admiring his gold bracelets for the first time.
‘ “Tonight, I will burn. All that will be left of me are these chunks of solid gold and a few bones that will be scattered on the mountainside outside the gompa gates. In the morning, they will melt the gold hoops down and recast them so that they fit you – then you will no longer even be able to dream of escape.”
‘Of course: it was true. How could he hope to walk anywhere, let alone up into the desolate mountains? It must have taken him an enormous effort just to mount the tower steps; the idea that he could flee overland was preposterous.
‘ “We can take them off . . .”
‘“No. It is not possible. I can go anywhere I please in my kingdom except for the workshop. In any case, I don’t have the skill, I would have to cut my hands and feet off . . .”
‘What a vile, vile method of imprisonment, I thought. What wicked people the lamas of Shangri-La were, posing as holy men, pretending to oversee the world.
‘“This place is evil. These monks have no power beyond their gompa walls, and they have imprisoned you and intend to murder you . . .”
‘“That is a lie!” he said, in sudden agitation. “I am the King of Shangri-La. The Abbot has helped us – through his use of the Book of Dzyan, he helped the German people to win the war . . .”
‘My God, I thought, he was so unhinged that he did not even know what had happened in the outside world. I wanted to shake him and bring him back to his senses.
‘“What are you talking about man? Germany lost the war. The Allies won and all your dreams have been destroyed . . . the monks never helped you . . .”