The security minister had received his orders from the premier of China himself. They were stark orders. The security minister had related them to Colonel Fang, and then possibly went on an unexpected vacation. Or arranged for trouble with his office telephone. Phone outages were common in Beijing.
The Bunji Lama would die in Drapchi Prison, and Colonel Fang would receive the blame because if she did not die in Drapchi Prison, the premier would blame the minister of state security, who would in turn blame Colonel Fang for not carrying out his orders to the letter.
It was a typically communist way of dealing with unpleasant duties. And Colonel Fang had grown to hate it.
He smoked furiously, one eye half-closed in sly rumination. On his desk stood the gilt statuette confiscated from the American lama in the hope it was made of true gold. It was not. Still, Colonel Fang had decided to keep it. He had always dreamed of winning an Oscar.
Now who among his underlings could he inveigle to take the blame for the inevitable international storm?
AT THE FIRST SET of control doors, there was a PLA guard standing at attention, chin high, eyes all but concealed by his low green helmet.
The Master of Sinanju waved to those who followed to remain behind and then he padded toward the lone sentry.
The sentry heard nothing of his approach, of course. How could he? He was a dull-witted Chinese, and a steel helmet covered his unhearing ears.
So when the rifle left his clenched hands, skinning his trigger finger, the guard was quite surprised to look down and see an ancient Korean standing not two feet in front of him and below his normal line of sight, holding the rifle.
Snarling a pungent curse, the guard reached down to recapture his precious assault rifle. The rifle suddenly dropped from the old Korean's grasp to clatter on the stone floor. He bent at the waist.
This brought his helmeted head within the reach of those long-nailed fingers. One nail swept up and traced a quick circle, using the rim of the steel helmet as a guide. The guard never felt the sting of the nail that scored through skin and skull bone.
With a sound like a champagne cork popping, the top of the guard's head jumped straight up, helmet and all.
These sounds were strange in the guard's ears. A quick rasp against skull bone and the noise of a cork popping. The top of his head felt odd.
Something was wrong. He reached up to touch his helmet and felt something warm and throbbing like a great organ.
Then he saw his helmet drop into the line of his vision to join his rifle on the floor. The inside of the helmet was like the inner portion of a halved coconut. Except instead of white coconut meat, he saw raw red bone.
And he knew.
The stabbing fingernail that burst his pounding heart was a mercy.
Chiun took the iron key from the belt of the quivering Chinese guard and unlocked the control door. Then he beckoned the others to follow.
Squirrelly took one look and shut her eyes. Kula paused to claim the assault rifle. Lobsang sniffed, "It is wrong to kill"
"It is wronger to die at the hands of oppressors," retorted the Master of Sinanju.
Three times they encountered guards. Each time the Bunji Lama and her entourage were made to stay back until they heard an ugly sound as of a great cork popping. They learned not to look as they stepped over each fallen PLA soldier.
COLONEL FANG HEARD a hollow popping sound and sat up in his hard wooden chair. His precious cigarette was almost exhausted, so he snuffed it out on the bare desktop and went to the door.
Through the frosted glass in the door, he saw a short shadow. It looked Tibetan. No Tibetan should have been walking unescorted through Drapchi Prison.
He reached into his belt holster for his Tokarev pistol, unlatched the safety and debated with himself whether or not to shoot through the valuable glass. It had been exceedingly difficult to requisition a door with a frosted-glass panel from Beijing, so he decided against it.
Instead, he flung open the door.
There was no one standing there when the door stood open.
The shadow had been there a second before. He was sure of it. Startled, Colonel Fang shut the door. The shadow had returned. He flung open the door a second time. No shadow. No little figure. It was baffling.
He pushed his square head out of the door. The act cost him his life. Without warning, long-nailed fingers grasped his collar with irresistible force, pulling him down.
Colonel Fang felt something sharp run across his forehead, cutting a thin swath through the hair at the back of his skull. He heard a very distinct pop.
After that the strangeness became stranger still.
There was a bald spot in the back of Colonel Fang's head. He knew it intimately, having watched its progress over the past two years of his life through a facing arrangement of mirrors.
Like some discarded coconut husk, the unmistakable bald spot landed at Colonel Fang's booted feet, along with his scalp. It was, he thought with a nervous mental laugh, as if the top of his head had come off.
The thought stayed with Colonel Fang long enough for him to faint. He never came out of that faint because when his face smacked the floor, his brains slopped out of his exposed skull like so much scrambled eggs.
"YUCK!" Squirrelly said, stepping over the fallen colonel. "Couldn't you have done this in a more PG-13 way?"
"There is your telephone," said the Master of Sinanju, gesturing toward the dull black desk instrument.
"Great. Hang on."
Scooping up the receiver, Squirrelly dialed the country code for the U.S.A., then the Washington, D.C., area code and finally the private number of the First Lady.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
"She's not answering! What's the matter with her?"
"Perhaps she is asleep," Chiun suggested.
"She can't sleep! She's the First Lady. The First Lady never sleeps!"
"She is sleeping now," said Kula.
Squirrelly hung up the phone and placed the back of her hand to her forehead. "Let me think. Let me think. Who do I call? Not Julius. He'll want to dicker for a percentage. Not my mother. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. I know, I'll call Warren."
The rotary dial whizzed, and the line rang only once.
"Hello," a bored voice drawled.
Squirrelly grinned in relief. "Warren! I knew you'd be awake."
"Squirrelly."
"The very same. And guess what? I'm in Tibet."
"I read that. How is it?"
"Not so hot. To be perfectly frank, Warren, I'm under arrest. But don't worry. I just escaped."
"Everyone should escape once in a while. Escape their insanity. Escape the taboos of an unenlightened age."
"I need your help, Warren."
"Name it."
"Call Schwarzenegger"
"Schwarz-"
"And Stallone. Try Seagal, Van Damme and any other hunky muscle type you can think of. Tell them to come running. I need to be rescued. Big-time. A real Technicolor Hollywood rescue."
"I thought you said you just escaped."
"I said," Squirrelly said, her voice going steely, "I just escaped prison. I didn't escape the country. Will you listen for once? I need a big splashy rescue. Tell them we're going to liberate Tibet from the evil Chinese."
"I thought they liked you, Squirl.''
"We're having creative differences, okay?"
"Sooo . . . you need help? My big sister who has all the answers?"
"Yes, Warren, I need help. Liberating Tibet is no two-week shoot. You should see the size of this place. And the mountains. It's positively crawling with mountains."
The drawl at the other end of the line grew oily and ingratiating. "If I make these calls, what're you gonna do for me?"
"Okay. Okay. I can see where this is going, Warren. You wanna be low lama? You got it. You wanna be Tibetan ambassador to Tahiti? I can arrange that."
"What do the Tibetan girls look like?"
"Short, round
and not your type."
"Okay, then I want you."
"Cut it out, Warren."
"You, or I hang up."
"You wouldn't do that to your own sister."
"I've run out of erotic experiences. It's you or I slash my wrists."
"Warren, be my guest. Slash your wrists. Enjoy." And Squirrelly slammed the phone down. "I hope you come back as a sexless worm in your next incarnation, Warren!" she added for good measure.
When she turned, the others were staring at her with round, dubious eyes.
"Don't look at me like that!" she fumed. "You can't pick your relatives, you know."
Kula beamed. "Such wisdom from one who has been Bunji Lama for only three days. Truly the Chinese have no chance against us."
"And we will have no chance if we do not leave this place before alarms are raised," warned Chiun in a stern tone. "Come."
On the way out Squirrelly grabbed her Oscar off the desk.
Chapter 29
The word was flashed from Lhasa to Beijing by military radio: "The Bunji Lama has escaped."
It reached the ears of the premier of China by coded telegram.
In his office in the Great Hall of the People, where the air hung thick and stale with tobacco smoke, the premier smoked furiously as he read the telegram slowly. And then again. Once it had been committed to memory, he used the burning end of his cigarette to set the sensitive telegram alight.
He placed it in the porcelain ashtray in one corner of his desk and watched the edges brown and darken to black as the leaping orange flames danced and consumed the sheet. When it was a delicate ball of unreadable paper, he crushed it to ashes with tobacco-stained fingers so callused they felt none of the dissipating heat.
Only then did he call the minister of state security.
The line rang and rang. Finally an operator came on to report that the line was not currently in working order.
"By whose order?" asked the premier in a hoarse voice.
The operator obviously recognized the voice of the highest authority in the People's Republic of China.
His voice squeaked as he replied, "By order of the minister of state security."
"Get me the minister of public security."
When the correct voice came on the line, the premier issued gruff orders. "Have the minister of state security brought before me without delay."
"In irons?" the minister of public security asked hopefully.
"No. But have irons ready."
The minister of state security arrived within fifteen minutes. He was ushered in looking ashen and wiping his high brow.
"Sit."
The security minister sat. With a casual wave of two fingers that vised a smoking cigarette, the premier waved the security guards to shut the door. He did not have to stipulate that it should be shut as they left. It was understood that this was to be a very private conversation.
"The Bunji has escaped Drapchi Prison," the premier said without preamble.
The minister of state security showed quickwittedness. He jumped to his feet and announced, "I will have those responsible shot for dereliction of duty."
"You are responsible."
"But I have been in Beijing all along and out of touch with Lhasa"
"And now you will go to Lhasa and resolve this unpleasant matter."
The security minister, relief in his voice, started for the door. "At once, Comrade Premier."
"Sit. I have not yet told you how you will accomplish this."
The security minister sat down hard. He waited.
"You will not go alone," the premier said in a voice so low it was almost a purr.
The security minister nodded.
"Paper cannot wrap up a fire," the premier said, lapsing into Confucian epigrams. "This cannot remain secret for long."
"The populace has already begun to talk openly of the Bunji's return. They grow restive."
"There is a Western saying," the premier said. "I do not recall how it goes. It is something along the lines of using a flame to fight a conflagration."
"Fighting fire with fire, is what they say."
The premier wrinkled up his bulldog face. "They say it without grace. When you go to Lhasa you will take with you a flame with which to battle this conflagration. Do you know what I mean by this flame?"
"No," the security minister admitted.
The premier eyed his cigarette tip and blew upon it. It flared up red and hot. "It is a small flame," he purred, "and it has not been smoldering long. Therefore, when it flares up it may be an unexpected thing. Perhaps this tiny flame may come to quench the larger conflagration with its purifying heat."
The security minister considered. "The Tashi?"
The premier of China nodded solemnly. "The Tashi."
"Is it not too soon to introduce the Tashi into Tibet?"
"Let us hope," the premier said in a very low voice, "that it is not too late."
Eyes strange, the minister of state security rose to go.
"One last item," the premier said softly.
The security minister turned, face quizzical. "Yes, Comrade Premier?"
"The unworking telephone was a clever subterfuge. I will have to remember it when the vultures of the politburo sink low enough to be picked off in flight."
IN A PALATAL HOME not many miles west of Beijing, the Tashi sat meditating on a platform that raised him so far above the polished cherrywood floor that he could look down upon even the tallest of his manservants.
His feet were tucked under his saffron-robed body, out of sight. His eyes, very bright yet very wise, were resting upon the pages of a very old book. It was one of his few pleasures, reading these old books.
Television had been banished from the house of the Tashi as a possibly corrupting influence. It was the only thing the Chinese leadership had denied the Tashi. He did not resent this, although television excited his curiosity wonderfully, from the stories he was told by his servants.
So the Tashi turned the pages with short fingers that had never known toil, not even here in the workers' paradise in which he now resided and bided his time, for the hour of his glory was soon to come, the Chinese continually assured him.
It had been a long time already. Perhaps the Chinese, not being followers of Buddha, looked upon time differently than he did. But he tried to be patient because he was the Tashi and it was his responsibility to await the correct astrological conjunction that would presage the fulfillment of his destiny.
The double doors pushed inward, and a servant entered, stopped and prostrated himself in the correct fashion, dropping on his stomach and touching his head to the sumptuous rug.
"Speak," said the Tashi in a voice as sweet as honey.
"The hour has come, O Tashi"
"What is this?" asked the Tashi, closing the heavy book on his silken lap.
"A fei-chi awaits to bear you to holy Lhasa, O Tashi."
The Tashi blinked bright brown eyes at the grating Chinese word, meaning "thing that flies," that spoiled the cadences of his servant's perfectly enunciated Tibetan.
"I am ready," said the Tashi, laying the book aside and coming to his full height. With resolute chin and stern expression, he waited for his strong servant to come to lift him down from the high platform on which he stood.
Chapter 30
No mortal eye witnessed the escape of the Bunji Lama and her protectors from Drapchi Prison, but the scriptures duly recorded that this miraculous feat was accomplished with great stealth in utter darkness. And while many oppressors died, they died quietly, oblivious to the doom that stole upon them, which was a blessing and unquestionably the result of the Lamb of Light's infinite mercy.
"MAYBE WE SHOULD SHOOT a few of these guys," Squirrelly Chicane muttered as she slipped out of the gate to Drapchi Prison in the impossibly silver Tibetan moonlight. The Milky Way overhead appeared close enough to touch.
"Why?" demanded Kula, who walked with an AK-47 assault rifle in each hand as if t
hey were toy pistols.
"Because this isn't very dramatic," Squirrelly said.
"Dramatic?"
"We're just stepping over bodies," said Squirrelly, stepping over a PLA body. "Look at these guys. Not a mark on them. It won't translate to film. It's too unrealistic."
Kula waved Squirrelly to wait. Up ahead the Master of Sinanju was at work. "You asked the Master of Sinanju to separate no more Chinese from their skulls."
"But I didn't say for him to let the rising action go flat."
"You speak in riddles, Bunji!'
"Call me Buddha Sent. I like that better. It's more cosmic. And a little gunfire will keep the audience from going to sleep in their seats."
"You are going to give an audience?" Kula asked, puzzled.
"No. I want to have an audience. All this creeping around reminds me of Hudson Hawk. We need a North by Northwest scene."
"I understand," said Kula. Seeing the Master of Sinanju beckon in the darkness-and only because the old Korean chose to be seen-he urged the Bunji Lama ahead.
In the darkness Kula told Chiun, "The Bunji has a vision. She says we are to go north by northwest."
"This is not a good plan," said Chiun.
"But she is the Bunji."
"Call me Buddha Sent."
"Northwest of here is only mountains, and beyond them lies Chamdo and those who live there," said Chiun.
Kula made a face. "Khampas," he grunted.
"What are Khampas?" Squirrelly asked.
"Hill fighters," said Chiun. "Bandits."
"Sissies," said Kula. "They wear red yarn in their hair and think they are like Mongols," he added for Squirrelly's benefit.
Squirrelly said, "Actually they sound kinda neat."
"It is the destiny of the Bunji Lama to claim the Lion Throne," Chiun interrupted. "Nothing must hinder this."
"Yes. Yes. The Lion Throne. Point me to it!"
"There," said Chiun, pointing toward Red Mountain.
In the darkness it was a sprawling white shape in the moonlight with many windows, but only one lit.
"What is it?"
Lobsang said, "Do you not recognize the Potala Palace, Bunji? The scat of your temporal power."
Squirrelly made an unhappy face. "No-should I?"
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