“If that was true, then why does he need you, why does he need the CIA?” retorted Gache. “Why does he carry the sword of a long-dead warrior, famous for his empire building and his brutality? I’ve heard enough of this rubbish.” Gache turned to the guard. “Take them to the cells to wait. I will call the Council.”
Chapter 22
The door bolted shut with a rusty clank behind them. The cell was much like the previous room, with four sputtering lamps and a rank, greasy, damp smell. It was just missing the whitewash from the walls and most of the furniture; four hard benches lined the four grey, rock walls, nothing else. Sam sat on one, with Pete beside her. Lens lay on the bench to their right, but Jortse remained standing, arms folded, his back against the door.
“I think it’s time for an explanation, don’t you?” said Sam.
“In these matters, it’s dangerous to know more than is absolutely necessary,” replied Jortse.
“There would be no danger to us at all if you hadn’t lied to us,” she replied, meeting Jortse’s gaze.
“I told you about the man I killed, about the danger from the Demagistanis. How was I to know that Tashi had betrayed me to these traitors amongst my own people?”
“And what about the CIA, and this legendary sword?” asked Pete.
“And surely this Council represents your people? Not you,” said Sam.
“They represent only themselves, they are just another self-serving, self-perpetuating elite,” replied Jortse.
“And what will happen if they turn down your proposal tomorrow?” asked Lens.
“I will leave with the sword.”
“And you think they will let you?” asked Sam.
“They won’t be able to stop me,” replied Jortse.
“And us, what happens to us?” asked Lens.
Jortse shrugged. “If you stay, they might believe that you are not CIA and not connected to me, and let you go. Or they might not. If you don’t want to take that risk, then you can come with me.”
“Great,” muttered Lens, “now I feel a whole lot better.”
“Tell us about the CIA, and the sword,” said Pete.
“She’s a journalist.” Jortse stabbed a finger at Sam. “She already knows far too much.”
“I wish only the best for the people of Shibde, Jortse. If we should ever get out of here, I will not put anyone or anything at risk. And we have a right to know – it’s the goddamn reason we’re all locked up,” snapped Sam.
Jortse looked at her for a long while, the cold eyes intense in the flickering candlelight. And then he pushed himself off the door, and took the bench opposite Sam and Pete. “Do you know about the last westerner to successfully enter Shibde, a man called Colonel Harry Spedding?” he said.
“We know a bit about Spedding,” said Lens. “I’ve read his book.”
“Then maybe you’ll know that after the 1854 treaty with the British was concluded, Colonel Harry Spedding returned to London. What you probably don’t know is that there he met and married an American heiress. He immigrated to the US and made a very comfortable home amongst the New York elite. On his death in 1886, his papers were bestowed to what was then Columbia College, now the university, where they lay gathering dust – largely due to the ignorance of you Americans about his pivotal role in our country’s history. Those papers continued to be ignored for well over a century – until I found them.
“Amongst Spedding’s papers were notes about his own investigations into the legend of Dali Shakabpu and his sword. It seems that Spedding was something of an amateur historian, or maybe he sought the sword and the glory for himself. But then, after an affair with the Princess Royal, he left Shibde in a hurry and never had the opportunity to follow the trail that his own work laid out for him. It was left to me to follow up on Spedding’s research, and my investigations led to a place not far from our holy mountain, on the edge of a great plain, exactly as is foretold in the legend. And there – right where he was supposed to be – was the Swordmaster. Many generations of fathers had passed down the sword to their sons, held in care for the Seeker. The last of them is an old man now. He was expecting us, he knew that this was the time, that the centuries of work done by his family in guarding the sword were over. He was right. He gave me the sword.”
Jortse stood and paced restlessly back to the door. “But in truth, I never expected that stories told across millennia and then recorded in dusty, forgotten notes by an English adventurer one hundred sixty years ago would lead anywhere. Never mind that it should be such an exceptional weapon when I found it. Originally, I saw this as a preliminary expedition. My intention was just to try and locate the sword, to see if it might be possible to retrieve it, and then to talk to my people in Shibde, to see if there was stomach for a fight. So, no rebellion, not this time anyway.”
“Then ... when?” asked Sam.
“I was to meet with the CIA when I returned, and we would decide what to do.”
“So there is a CIA connection ...” breathed Sam.
Lens sat up. “Why? Shibde has always dealt with its own problems.”
“Originally, it was never my intention to involve anyone else – it’s just the way it happened,” replied Jortse.
“How did it happen?” asked Pete.
Jortse returned to the bench and sat, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. They waited. Let him fill the silence, thought Sam.
“When my father died just over a year ago,” said Jortse, finally, “I realized that my only link with Shibde and its history was gone. Apart from what he’d told me as I was growing up, I knew nothing about my own country. And suddenly, I wanted to know more. I read Spedding’s book, and then managed to persuade Columbia University –”
“You lived in New York?” asked Lens.
“I worked on Wall Street until a year ago. I’d made plenty of money, and so I gave the job up when my father died and I persuaded Columbia to take me on for a master’s program. I took the classes that were most relevant and started searching the library and archives. One of the professors saw my interest and, as her specialty was central Asia, she started to help. That’s when we found the mother lode – Spedding’s papers.”
“But how did that lead to the CIA?” asked Pete.
“She’d worked for them as an analyst before taking up the appointment at Columbia. I had dinner with her one night, started on about how the sword might become the focal point for an uprising against Demagistan and ... well, before I knew it, I was meeting one of the CIA’s covert-operations people from Langley.” Jortse fell silent.
“So why do the CIA want to sponsor a Shibde uprising against Demagistan?” asked Pete.
“I don’t really care, I just want their help,” said Jortse.
“Same reason as they backed the mujahideen against the Russians in Afghanistan,” said Lens. “It creates a problem for the rival power, it weakens and distracts them, by costing time, money and lives to solve. All part of keeping the USA at number one.”
“So what was the plan?” Sam asked Jortse.
“The idea was to do as thorough a reconnaissance as possible, then report back and we’d decide how to proceed – but essentially the deal was that if I could provide the sword, the leadership and the men, they’d come up with weapons, training and a secure base,” replied Jortse.
“So now you need the Council’s blessing to lead an armed revolt?” asked Lens.
“I don’t need it, but I will take it if I can get it,” replied Jortse.
“And if you don’t get it?” asked Sam.
“Then I will do it without them.”
“If they let you go,” said Lens.
Jortse looked at him scornfully. There was a creak as the bolt was thrown from outside. The door swung open and four guards carrying their bags walked in. They dropped them in the center of the room, and went back out without a word, bolting the door behind them. Lens got up from the bench and started going through his camera gear.
“If the Council decision does not go my way,” continued Jortse, “then I will be leaving with the sword. If you want to come with me, then I suggest that you put some essentials in your pockets before the Council hearing, and leave the rest of your gear packed and ready in case we have time to grab it. It’s not far to the border, and it will be a simple foot race once we get out into the open.”
“Except they will be taking potshots at us,” said Sam.
“And what if we don’t support your rebellion?” said Lens. “What if we agree with Dromo Gache that nonviolence is the better solution?”
Jortse turned and studied him as if he were a strange kind of insect. “Then I suppose you can stay here,” he replied. “But understand that these people represent the old order, the past. Demagistan has destroyed our temples, raped, tortured, imprisoned and executed our people – and the way of nonviolent resistance has hopelessly failed to change anything. So now, soon, we will fight back. I will lead my people and purge Demagistan from this land. The sword has the power of Dali Shakabpu – together we will restore the freedom of Shibde.”
“That’s not something I’m about to help you with,” said Lens, shaking his head. “I don’t believe violence is the solution to anything.”
“So be it, then stay here, I don’t need your help,” said Jortse, then he turned to Sam. “What about you two?”
Sam glanced from Lens to Jortse. All of them were looking at her. “I don’t know,” she said, simply. “I just don’t know.”
Jortse snorted derisively. “So much for the land of the free and the home of the brave. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some robes for the Council hearing.” And with that, he stepped up to the door, rapped sharply with his knuckles, and after a few words with the guards, he was led away. The door slammed shut behind him. The bolt ground back into place.
After he was gone there was a long silence. It was Lens that finally broke it. “He’s a maniac; he’ll turn this place into another Iraq or Afghanistan. If the Shibdeese fight, the Demagistanis will slaughter them. And no one is going to intervene to stop it. It would be a disaster if that happened here. You can’t support him.”
“What if he can free Shibde? Shouldn’t he get that opportunity?” said Pete.
“Demagistan is a nascent superpower with a huge strategic investment in this region,” replied Lens. “They aren’t going to give it up without a serious fight. A lot of people will die.”
“So Shibde just continues to suck it up?” said Sam. “That approach hasn’t exactly worked wonders for Tibet.”
“I know, sixty years of passive resistance and sacrifice and they’ve got nothing to show for it – zippo, zero, zilch.” Lens shrugged. “They have every right to be angry as hell. But at the same time, if those lights in the darkness go out, if Tibet and Shibde just turn into another war zone, what does it say to the rest of the planet?”
“That fighting back works better than not fighting?” replied Pete. “Look, Lens, it’s a crappy old sword, you really think it’s going to make any difference one way or the other? If he starts waving that thing around at the Demagistan army, they’ll just cut him down with a quick burst from a machine gun. It’ll be over pretty quick.”
“No, it’s more than that, it’s symbolic, it’s twelve hundred years old and it has all this meaning attached to it,” replied Lens. “I don’t think Jortse’s planning to lead a cavalry charge with it, just stir up guerrilla resistance. It will be Iraq and Afghanistan all over again.”
Sam took a deep breath, and then sighed it out with an infinite sadness. “My father died fighting in Iraq.”
There was a silence. Pete took one of her hands in his.
“Oh ... I’m sorry,” said Lens. “I didn’t know.”
“There was no way you could know. I was fourteen, and he meant the world to me. I was so proud of him when he went off in his Marine uniform. I never imagined it would be the last time I saw him. That was ten years ago.”
“What happened?” asked Pete, gently.
“I don’t know, they wouldn’t tell us.”
“They wouldn’t tell you?” said Lens, incredulously.
“No, they cited national security, told us he died a hero and that we should be proud, but we couldn’t know any more.”
No one said anything.
“My mom, she’s never forgiven him for dying instead of coming home, but I never knew what to think. To start with, I believed them and I was proud that my father had been a hero – but I missed him so much. And then ... I started to wonder what happened. I’m going to find out. One day. And if someone screwed up, then I’m going to put their name in lights in every major news outlet in the country.”
Lens shifted on his bench. Even the slight movement sounded loud to her. She took another deep breath. “There’s one thing I have learned since then, though,” she said. “It was wrong, that war. We didn’t need to be there. An all-out war was not the answer to that problem. And I think Lens is right, I don’t think Jortse has got the right answer to this one.”
“Thank you,” said Lens, softly.
Pete squeezed her hand. “So what do we do?” he asked. “If the Council decides against him, he’ll try to fight his way out of here and across the border.”
“Maybe Gache and his men will stop him,” said Lens.
“If they don’t, then we must be the second line of defense, we should go with him. And if he gets away, then we have to get the sword off him somehow. It’s the sword that gives him a belief in his authority,” she said.
“And how the hell are we going to do that?” said Lens. “You think he’s just going to hand it over while Gache’s men shoot at us?”
“Sam,” said Pete, “Jortse told us he didn’t like heights, right?”
She thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think so, just after the ambush on the border.”
“Right, then I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Do you guys remember that old movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
Chapter 23
It was an hour later when Jortse returned, now dressed in a long, sweeping maroon robe, tied at the waist with a golden rope. Sam, Pete and Lens had all taken a bench each and were dozing. Sam opened one eye but said nothing as he entered the cell, and he took the fourth bench and sat without a word. It was about twenty silent minutes later when Dromo Gache came for them all. “They’re ready,” he said, as the door clanked and creaked open on the rusty hinges.
Swirling, guttering torches lit the way, and she was able to see how the corridors were constructed from a mixture of natural fissures and other parts that had been carved out of the rock. Everything dripped with condensation. Sam assumed that they had not been blindfolded this time because they were already so deep inside the chambers. A mistake. The route that Dromo led them backtracked through several of the turns that she had memorized, before taking another fork deeper into the mountain. It was easy to revise her mental map so she could find her way back to the entrance. The long folds of maroon cloth swished around Jortse’s feet as they approached a door guarded by a silent sentry in another of the heavy black cloaks, hands crossed over his belly.
They passed through the door, and the walls of the corridor fell away from them and she stopped, stilled by the grandeur that opened up around them. They were entering a cavern, stretching away into darkness beyond a circle of flaming torches – light, heat and smoke swirling upwards. There was a huge gold Buddha, and great tapestries and frescoes lined the parts of the walls that she could see in the shadows. There were more Buddhas – fierce, benign and meditative – and rows of prayer wheels, their gold surfaces blackened with the yak-butter grease from uncountable hands. Thousands of yak-butter lamps seeped out their yellow, smoky light. The smell was overwhelming. She thought she might gag, and started to breathe through her mouth.
Jortse and the others had followed Gache without hesitating, and she had to hurry to catch up to them. Before them was a vast semicircle of a wooden tab
le. The sword lay in its scabbard, at the center. Around it, on the circumference, sat what must be the Council – twelve men, in matching maroon robes, a single empty seat at the left-hand end. Gache halted in front of the table and, with his hands in a sign of prayer, made a shallow bow. Jortse, standing beside him, made no such gesture.
“I present Jortse Choedron to the Council. And these are his American friends, the people I told you about,” said Gache, with a quick stab of the hand towards Sam. He walked to his seat at the table. It occurred to her that he had never even bothered to ask their names – but then, this was not about them. Nevertheless, their fate would be tied to the outcome. At least they are going to conduct the whole thing in English, she thought.
“I am Trisong Detsen, president of the Council. Who will speak for you?” asked the man at the center of the circle as he stood. He was tall and rail-thin like Gache, with the same lined face, but finished with a silver-grey goatee beard.
“I will speak,” replied Jortse, his expression as dead as the pale, blank eyes.
“You may sit,” instructed Detsen, waving Sam, Pete and Lens to three high-backed chairs set a little to one side.
Sam sat, shuffled for a few moments and then gave up. The chair was not designed to allow its user – the interrogated, the petitioner – to feel comfortable or settled.
“Where is the king?” demanded Jortse.
“The king is safe, he will hear of this meeting,” replied Detsen.
“He didn’t feel it was worth his time to attend himself?”
“It is too risky to have the king together in the same place as the Council, unless the circumstances are exceptional.”
“I can assure you that the circumstances are exceptional,” said Jortse, folding his arms.
Detsen watched him impassively for several heartbeats. “You should know that all of Shibde was sorry to hear of the death of your father. I would be grateful if you would communicate both the country’s and the Council’s sympathy to your mother.”
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