"It was meant to be," said Lobsang.
"Don't sweat it," Squirrelly said. "I have a B-plan. When they let me make my call, I'll just dial the First Lady. She'll pull the strings that'll get us out of here."
But when Squirrelly later asked a passing turnkey when she would be allowed to place her phone call, the man only laughed.
"You come back here! I know my constitutional rights. I'm entitled to call my lawyer. I'm an American citizen and an Oscar winner! You hear me?"
Chapter 23
No prayer wheels spun in the hill village of Tingri as Kelsang Darlo stood on the tin roof of his humble stone house in which his family cowered. Kelsang Darlo refused to cower.
Someone had stolen a box of grenades from the hated People's Liberation Army garrison, a former monastery. It was Chushi Gangdruk. Everyone knew it was Chushi Gangdruk. But no one knew who belonged to the Chushi Gangdruk except for those who belonged.
This way, no Tibetan who was not Chushi Gangdruk could give up those who were.
So when the Chinese captain, Ran Guohua, had failed to obtain by torture the whereabouts of his missing grenades from the people of Tingri, he had not given up. He had simply waited for the thunder.
It was spring, the season for thunder and lightning and slashing rain, so Captain Guohua did not wait long.
With his soldiers surrounding him protectively, he had gone house to house, not to search this time, but to pick ten men. Good Tibetans. Men of families who would be missed.
And as the thunder grew louder and more fearsome, he made the ten innocent men climb to the roofs of their own houses to catch the lightning.
It was not the first time that good men of Tingri had been made to catch the lightning. The last time, five had done this and two had died. This time the offense was much greater. Captain Guohua understood that the stolen grenades would be used against his own troops if they were not soon found.
And so ten men were forced to stand exposed to the elements, enduring first the slashing rain. When the rain was over, all ten stood unbowed, their faces wet with a clean fresh rain that masked the shame of their tears of frustration, before the terrible lightning.
And no prayer wheels spun to entreat mercy. The Chinese had smashed them and made the people of Tingri melt down their brass for cannon shells and other violent objects. It was a sacrilege. It had been an unending sacrilege since the Iron Tiger Year so long ago.
If Lord Buddha saw to it that he should drop his body, Kelsang Darlo prayed that his wife and children would be spared further indignities. He tried to understand the soldiers, who were only doing the bidding of the captain, who in turn was only doing the bidding of the leaders in Beijing. But there had been rapes. The young women of Tingri had been offered work, paying work, to be trained as nurses for the PLA. On the first day they were raped.
Later, it was true, they were given nurse training. Those who did not take their own lives became good nurses, but very sad and silent in their duties. It was not like a Tibetan maiden not to be full of life and laughter. But this was the lot of Tibet since the Chinese had come.
A crackling bolt of lightning forked down from the blue-black northern sky. It struck two mountain peaks at once, creating a great spectacle of light.
The thunder came twenty seconds later. It made Kelsang flinch. He feared the thunder more than the lightning.
But he feared the wrath of the green soldiers of China most of all. The lightning struck blindly and without malice. Lightning did not punish. It did not ravish young women. It was only doing what Lord Buddha intended lightning to do.
Kelsang found himself praying for the lightning to strike the Chinese, and the thought made his heart sink in sadness. It was not his way to wish harm on any man. But the hardships the Chinese visited upon his people had shattered his faith.
He found himself praying to other gods-the protectors of the faith, Lhamo, Gonpo and Yama, Lord of Death. Perhaps one of them would take pity on him.
Another bolt appeared. This time to the south, behind the plateau.
Illuminated against the bolt was the figure of a man. Tall-too tall to be a Tibetan or a Chinese. The lightning struck thick and hot, and it lasted long enough to show the man clearly as he came down off the plateau.
He came bareheaded, Kelsang saw, and his clothes were thin and insufficient for the chill Tibetan night. His hands were fists and the wrists were very thick, like lengths of wood.
Kelsang looked down. Two Chinese soldiers, their faces hard under their green helmets, were pointing their assault rifles up at him.
They yelled at Kelsang to keep his head high, so the lightning would know where to strike. Unless he wished to tell the truth now.
There was no truth in Kelsang Darlo, so he lifted his head and looked to the south.
Another thunderbolt came and picked out the thick wristed shadow. Perhaps he was some hermit come down off the mountains to seek shelter from the storm. A monk, possibly. He would be a very sorry monk when the Chinese caught him, Kelsang thought.
Yet the man was coming undaunted, purposeful and proud. The way his grandfather had walked down the valley in the days when Tibetans were masters of their own land. It was good to see a man walk as if there was no fear in his heart. Tibet had been so long bereft of such men.
Who was this unafraid one? Kelsang wondered.
The next bolt struck to the west. Something exploded, and Kelsang turned. A roof smoldered. And in the pile, a black shape that had been human a moment before gave off smoke and a sweetish charcoal odor that soon came to Kelsang's nose.
Kelsang recognized the roof. It belonged to Paljor Norbu, a simple barley farmer. A good man. Perhaps his next life would be happier, Kelsang thought sadly. He had not been the same since his only daughter, a nurse, had walked off the mountain before the eyes of the entire village.
A wailing coming from under the burning roof reminded Kelsang that there were those who had still to contend with this life.
The next peal of thunder came from very far away. As did the next. East. And then north. Then east again. It seemed that the storm was changing direction. Perhaps, Kelsang thought, only one would catch the lightning this bitter night. Perhaps he would live.
The soldiers of Beijing thought so, too. They began to mutter to themselves. They still had no answers. The captain would punish them if the truth was not uncovered, and if the captain did not, surely the lost grenades themselves would inflict their own punishment at a later, unexpected time.
Then, just as Kelsang began to breathe more easily, he felt the hair at the back of his neck rise and the unmistakable warning tang of ozone filled his nostrils.
The lightning! It had found him. It was coming.
There was no time to think and no possibility of escape. In the millionth of a second it took for his senses to react to the knowledge of impending lightning, Kelsang's brain could only process the certainty of death.
He had no time feel fear or remorse or any emotion. There was only time to die.
A brilliant blue-white light stabbed through Kelsang's closed eyelids as if they were red-tinted glass. The thunderbolt struck with the force of a thousand blows. It seemed to strike his chest like a stone fist that exploded the air from his lungs and knocked him off his feet.
The thunder smote his ears. He was surprised he could hear the thunder. He should be dead. Was he dead? Sometimes men survived lightning. Sometimes it did not kill at once.
Kelsang thought his eyes were open. But all the world was blue-white. Was he dead or just blind? He felt a pain in his lungs, and the quick, sharp intake of his next breath brought pain. He breathed!
Blinking the harsh lightning light from his eyes, Kelsang tried to feel his body.
"Give me your hand, pal," an alien voice said. It was a man's voice, speaking English, a language Kelsang knew imperfectly.
Blindly Kelsang lifted one hand and felt a wrist. Hard, thick, as solid as a yak's horn. The hand grasped his with firm stre
ngth, and Kelsang was yanked to his feet.
The blue-white had gone from his eyes, and in the darkness a hard, humorless face looked at him. It was white and strong like a skull sheathed in porcelain flesh. The man wore simple black clothes. His eyes were deep and dark and without human warmth.
Behind him a fork of lightning seared the night sky, throwing the white man wearing black into relief.
The thunder, when it came seconds later, reminded Kelsang of the man's voice-low, threatening, awful in its muted power.
"Who-who are you?" Kelsang stuttered.
"Doesn't matter. Go home. Protect your family."
And the man stepped back into the darkness. Kelsang watched him go. He shifted from man to shadow to something that seemed to be there and then wasn't.
Kelsang did not go inside his home. He tried to follow the strange white man. In the darkness he tripped over the bodies of the PLA soldiers who had forced him to stand on his roof and brave the elements.
At first Kelsang thought that the soldiers had been relieved of their heads and their helmets had been placed on the stumps of their necks to hide the gory wounds.
But when he looked more closely, Kelsang saw that something had come down with great force on the tops of the helmets, driving them down with a dread force that squeezed their soft human heads into the ridiculously small confines of their helmets.
Kelsang looked for the footprints of the man who had done this awesome thing-the same one he now realized who had struck him with preserving force, carrying him out of the path of the lightning bolt.
There were no footprints. The ground was soft and muddy from the rain. But there were no footprints save for his own and those of the dead soldiers.
Still, Kelsang searched the village for the being who had done these miraculous things.
He found more soldiers. Dead. Dead in horrible, impersonal ways. Heads twisted around backward. Arms torn and flung aside.
Yet none had screamed out as death overtook him.
Even as he thought this, Kelsang heard a man scream. Loud and long. He ran toward the sound.
And there he found Captain Ran Guohua on his knees.
The white man stood over him. It was a joyous sight. The captain on his knees, his head bowed, mouth open in anguish. The white man was simply holding the captain by the back of his neck, somehow exerting enough pressure that the captain's legs refused to move and his arms hung limp in his lap.
As he watched, the white man gave the captain a final wrench, and the captain simply gurgled.
A hand snapped down edge-on and sheared the captain's twisted face off as cleanly as if a broad blade had dropped. The implacable one released the captain's dead carcass, and it fell forward into the mess of its detached face.
Gingerly Kelsang approached the white man. "Jigme."
The white man turned his expressionless face. "What's that?"
"I call you Jigme. In my language, it means 'dreadnaught ' You are the dreadnought who cannot be stopped. Where you come from, Dreadnought?"
The white man pointed toward the mountains to the southwest wordlessly. He seemed preoccupied.
"It is said that among those mountains is the abode of Gonpo," Kelsang said in a trembling voice. "Are you Gonpo?"
The man did not answer directly. "I need to get to Lhasa," he said.
"There are horses."
"No cars?"
"We are poor village. Only Chinese have jeeps here."
"Show me the Chinese jeeps," said the white man, who might not be a man after all.
AS REMO WILLIAMS followed the Tibetan whose life he had saved to the other side of the village, people began pouring out of their houses. They saw the dead Chinese soldiers scattered about like so many shattered puppets. The sight made them cry out.
The Tibetan called back to them in his native language. Remo understood almost none of it. Just two words. Gonpo and Jigme. He wondered who Gonpo was supposed to be. Probably some Himalayan legend. The abominable snowman or the local Hercules.
The farther he walked, the more of an entourage Remo acquired. People were crying, reaching out to touch him, pleading and begging him in words that were unintelligible but voices that were universal in tone. Remo kept walking. It was a long way to Lhasa. He had no time for this.
"They want to know if you are really Gonpo," the Tibetan said.
"If it makes them feel better, tell them yes."
"Are you Gonpo?"
"Do I look like Gonpo to you?"
"You look like Gonpo wearing the body of a chiling. "
"Maybe that's what I am."
"I will call you Gonpo Jigme, then. Gonpo Dreadnought."
And the word was passed back to the other.
"Gonpo Jigme. Gonpo Jigme," they began chanting.
There were no Chinese soldiers at the local garrison. Their jeeps sat idle. Remo picked one, hot-wired the ignition and got the engine going. He loaded extra cans of gas in the back and started off.
The locals ran after him. Remo had to drive slowly in order not to run them down.
"Will you come back, Gonpo Jigme?" one called.
"Doubt it."
"Then who will save us from Chinese reprisals, Gonpo Jigme?"
"Pick up the weapons the Chinese dropped and save yourself."
"We cannot kill the Chinese. It is not our way."
"Then hunker down for a long occupation," said Remo, seeing a break in the mass of people and flooring the gas.
The Chinese jeep surged ahead and soon left the running crowd behind.
Eyes bleak, Remo pushed on north into the endless mountains that seemed to be calling to him.
The strangest part was, they started looking familiar. And Remo had never been in Tibet before.
Chapter 24
Lhasa held its breath.
Everywhere it was whispered that the Bunji Lama was coming to Tibet. No one knew when or where. It was said by some that the Bunji Lama has already been spirited into the city itself. No one could confirm this.
All eyes went hopefully to the Potala, the great 999-room fortress-temple that had been the abode of the Dalai Lama in greater times. It was there that the Lion Throne awaited the future ruler of Tibet. The Dalai Lama had not reclaimed it because he possessed the wisdom to avoid falling back into the toils of the Chinese occupiers. The Panchen Lama had not claimed it because he knew that the Chushi Gangdruk would assassinate his treasonous bones if he dared.
Only the Bunji Lama had the courage to take the throne. All Tibet knew this. The people of Lhasa knew this very well. They also knew that if the Bunji Bogd dared to claim the rightful throne, the Chinese would not react well.
And so Lhasa held its breath and cast uneasy eyes toward the sprawling whitewashed Potala perched high on Red Mountain.
No one was watching the road when the old man rode into the outskirts of the city. He was very old yet black of hair, and sat on his pony like a raven in his red robes, his slitty eyes casting about with a narrow, smoldering anger as they fell upon the shattered lamaseries and other evidences of destroyed traditions.
"They have crushed this place," he muttered under his breath, and there was no one to hear his complaint.
The old man was spotted by a Chinese soldier, who saw at once that he rode a gray pony with a black muzzle. Legend had it these were the strongest of Tibetan ponies, and the Chinese soldier fancied the pony for himself.
And so he unlocked his Type 56 assault rifle and approached the old man with the weapon pointed at him.
"Stop, old one."
The old man pulled back on his reins. The pony stopped and began flicking its tail like a fly whisk.
The soldier demanded the man's name. "Kayrang gi mingla karay sa?"
"Nga mingla Dorje sa."
"Kayrang lungba kanay ray, Dorje?" Where are you from, Dorje?
"Nga Bowo nay yin." I am from Bowo.
"It is forbidden to enter Lhasa," the soldier snapped. "I will have to confiscate your pony."
"If I cannot enter Lhasa," said the old man who called himself Dorje, "I will need my pony to return home."
"You cannot return home until I first confiscate your pony."
"It is not my pony," the old man pleaded, "but my son's pony. He will whip me if I lose him."
"Would you rather be whipped or go to Drapchi Prison?" the soldier countered.
"I would rather do neither," the old man said gently.
"Then you will do both, stubborn one!" ordered the soldier, pushing the barrel of his rifle into the old man's stomach.
"I will do what you say, for I am an old man and defenseless against a strong young soldier such as you."
With an impatient swing of his rifle muzzle, the soldier motioned the old man to enter the city limits. He walked several paces behind the whisking tail of the gray pony, prepared to shoot the old man in the back if he attempted to flee, and trying not to step on the fresh dung the pony was inexplicably beginning to drop in profusion.
It was very strange. Whenever he watched his feet, the way was clear. But as soon as he turned his attention elsewhere, the dung was suddenly soft under his boots.
Perhaps, the soldier thought, this man was one of the old Bon magicians who still roamed the northern solitudes. It was said they could do strange and terrible things. Freeze a man in his tracks. Scorch his sight. Call down shangshang birds. The soldier noticed that the hair on the old man's head lay close and intensely black. It was not like hair, but resembled dry black snow.
A shiver of supernatural fear ran up the soldier's spine, and thereafter he dared not take his watchful eyes off the man's back. No shang-shang would sink its fangs into his throat, if he had to walk through all the dung in Tibet.
Thus did the Master of Sinanju come into the city of Lhasa, alone and unsuspected.
Chapter 25
Remo fought to keep his eyes on the road. It was not easy. Sometimes there was no road. He was on his third tank of gas, it was coming up on dawn, and he had no idea where he was, other than somewhere on the winding road to Lhasa.
All around him were mountains. Snowcapped, misty, eternal and hauntingly familiar mountains. Back in the world-he was thinking of the U.S.A. the way he had in his Vietnam days-Remo walked confident and unstoppable through almost any situation he encountered.
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