With the lighter held high above his head, he took in the picture. It was of some strange god with blue skin and flaming orange hair. Its lips were pulled back, snarling ferociously with great incisor teeth and yellow eyes that stared accusingly ahead. In its hands were dozens of naked human figures, which were being crushed and burnt in the fires all about its hideous body.
The figure was part of a mural that stretched the entire length of the corridor, from floor to ceiling, reaching back into the darkness. Luca slowly edged his way along, eyes transfixed by the scenes before him. There was just an overwhelming array of colour and form.
‘What is this place?’ he whispered.
In a deep alcove off the main stem of the tunnel, his lighter picked up another figure. It was statue of the Buddha, about four feet high and raised on a plinth. As he slowly approached, the surface of the statue seemed to shimmer in the light. He moved closer still, reaching out his hand and letting his fingertips brush across its hard surface.
The entire statue was encrusted with thousands of tiny gems. Even through the haze of his headache Luca grasped the significance of what he was seeing and for a long moment, just let his hand linger on the cool brittleness of the stones. As he moved the lighter in front of the statue’s eyes, two huge diamonds danced and flashed before him.
Finally he tore his gaze away, looking further down the corridor. He could see other alcoves set back from the tunnel. In the closest, another statue was shining in the darkness. How many more were there? And what other treasures were to be found, sealed away in this vault?
A sense of wonderment spread over him. Surely this was what the fortune hunters had been searching for all those years — the hidden treasure that the professor had said was just a myth.
Studded into the plinth of the statue were long lines of metal nuggets, each no bigger than a human finger. There were hundreds of them. He picked one up at random, turning it over in his hand. The metal was coarse and dull, and at one end he could see a circular mark had been branded into it, with eight points merging into a central triangle.
He had seen that mark before — in the thangka Jack had given him. It was the exact same symbol the priest had held in his open hand.
Running his own hand over the studded surface, Luca finally understood what these were. They were seals, used to brand letters with the official mark of Geltang. They didn’t look valuable, but they would at last be some kind of tangible proof that the place actually existed. Plucking one from the lowest part of the plinth, he slipped it into his pocket.
As Luca looked up again and into the white diamonds of the statue’s eyes, he heard a loud groaning. He froze. The sound was so close, hidden somewhere just beyond the statue.
Then it came again.
Waving the lighter from side to side, Luca tried to peer further into the darkness. The flame blew sideways, struggling to stay lit.
‘Who’s there?’
Nothing.
‘Answer me!’
He shuffled forward, passing round the front of the statue. The alcove opened up into a dark well and on the far side was the grey profile of a human figure, its outline vague against the stone wall. Luca stopped dead, feeling his insides turn to water.
The figure was contorted into the lotus position, head bent low, chin almost touching its chest. The legs were bent across each other and hands folded back, palms facing upwards. Tight leather straps ran right around its body, crisscrossing over the thighs then back across the shoulders, forcing it to remain unnaturally rigid.
‘Holy shit,’ Luca breathed.
At the sound of his voice, the figure’s head suddenly jolted upwards, revealing pale eyes that glowed in the half-light. The apparition wailed, a pitiful, strangled sound that sent Luca leaping backwards in fright. He bumped into the far wall, nearly toppling the statue. Somewhere in the confusion, his thumb slipped from the lighter wheel, plunging him into darkness once again.
He ran back, hemmed in on both sides by the tight walls of the tunnel, his hands brushing against them. Then it came again — the howl from the darkness. He fumbled with the lighter, and a few sparks flashed before the flame finally caught. Hurling himself up the ladder, Luca used his shoulder to barge open the heavy trapdoor into the corridor above.
For a second he stopped there, his hands on his knees, staring down into the black void as he tried to catch his breath.
‘Don’t panic,’ he said to himself, trying to steady his breathing. ‘Just don’t panic…’
Then he shook his head. Screw that. This was exactly the time to panic.
Sprinting off down the corridor, he reached the gilded door of the ante-chamber from where they had taken the monk. It was shut, with no light coming from underneath. Ahead was another stairway. Luca pounded up the steps, taking three at a time. Reaching the top, he bent down and fumbled across the tread.
The piece of chocolate was there! He was on the right track. Feeling a new surge of energy, he started running again, the sound of his boots dulled by the heavy stone walls.
On the lower level by the trapdoor, in a corner hidden from the light of the candle, a figure stood motionless. It listened, senses well attuned to the dark. Concealed under the hood of blue monastic robes, clouded pupils stared out sightlessly, instinctively following the noise of Luca’s retreat along the level above.
Then, without a sound, the figure turned, fading back into the shadows.
Chapter 39
At the base of an enormous cliff, Captain Zhu stood with a thick-weave blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was early-morning and a heavy mist hung in the cold air. He had taken the blanket off one of the yaks and the lingering smell seemed to seep through every pore of his skin, worsening his already foul mood.
Five hundred yards from where he stood, the patrol’s tents were arranged in a semi-circle around a low fire. Thin wisps of smoke smouldered up from the wood and wet heather crackling feebly. The whole camp was still. It was their third day in the same position.
Zhu stared at the cliff-face, the same thoughts circling over and over in his mind. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it.
When they had first begun interrogating the villagers, none of them had said a word. But as the women were forced to stand on the banks of the stream in the sweltering heat of the midday sun, the weaker of them soon collapsed. One woman, skeletal from illness, eventually pointed to the cliff-face as she sagged to her knees, insisting that was the way the Westerners had gone.
Every day, Zhu had walked underneath the exact same spot, wondering how they could have climbed it. The rock was sheer, reaching up hundreds of feet into the sky. Only the summit was lost in a thick band of cloud that seemed to hang over the mountainside interminably. He shook his head, eyes slowly tracing up and down the overhanging rock. He was missing something, he was sure of it. There had to be an easier way.
His eyes followed the line of a deep-set crack that ran from the summit right down to the base. There was something about it that drew his attention. He stood motionless for several minutes, just staring at it with his eyes blurring in and out of focus. Eventually he turned away from the cliff and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs in frustration.
Why were the Westerners here exactly? What was so special about this place? The border and the route to India were over eighty kilometres south of Menkom.
Perhaps he’d been wrong and they weren’t trying to get the boy across the border after all. What if India had never been their destination and there was something here, something beyond these mountains, that they were trying to reach? That was the only possible explanation. Unless… unless Falkus had been leading him astray from the very beginning and they’d been wasting their time staring up at that cliff-face.
Zhu turned suddenly, stalking across the scrub and heather back to camp.
Emerging from the fly-sheet of his tent, René stepped out unsteadily into the fresh air. He looked across the valley, enjoying the misty qu
iet of the morning before yawning heavily. His hand went down the front of his trousers, rearranging himself, as he turned back to the inners of his tent and pulled on a thick knitted jumper that was fractionally too short for him, exposing a patch of hairy midriff.
As René took in the glorious mountain panorama, he caught sight of Zhu striding purposefully towards him. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was anyone else at camp, but everything was still. The captain obviously wanted him.
‘Oh, shit.’
René shook his head and moved slowly towards the fire, poking one of his tea bags into the bottom of a plastic cup. He couldn’t stand it when there were only the two of them in camp. Everything about the captain made his skin crawl.
Each morning the routine was always the same. While two pairs of soldiers scouted in each direction along the cliffs, the others usually left before dawn and set up target practice in one of the fields below the village. René would lie in his sleeping bag, listening to the crack of their QBZ-95 rifles echo across the valley, the sound muted by the damp heather. They would come back a few hours later, tossing the splintered wooden targets on the fire, each one with a fist-sized chunk blown out of the centre by the tight grouping of 5.56mm rounds.
The only other person who stayed in camp was Chen, but he seemed to spend the majority of his time inside his tent, fly-sheet zipped shut, tapping away on a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 laptop. The computer was lightweight with a magnesium alloy cover and a waterproof screen — standard issue for the elite patrols in the field. Chen had it hooked up to an Inmarsat BGAN system, folding open the halves of the satellite dish like an upended briefcase on a rock by his tent. Above the dish, a long string of solar panels dangled from the top of his tent, the sheets of dull blue silicon absorbing what little energy there was from the clouded sky. Occasionally, Chen’s broad face would emerge and he would minutely adjust the solar panels to better catch the sun before sinking back inside his tent for the remainder of the afternoon.
This often left René and Zhu alone by the fire, and despite the open space René still felt flashes of the same claustrophobia he had suffered in the police cell. But this morning was different. He could tell by Zhu’s stride that he wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. Something was about to give.
The captain arrived by the fire, his eyes as black and lifeless as a shark.
‘They were never heading for the Indian border, were they?’
René looked up in surprise.
‘What? No, I never said they were. They were heading back to Makalu to do some climbing.’
‘So why stop here? Why didn’t they head towards Makalu?’
The pitch of Zhu’s voice had risen alarmingly.
‘Look, I know as much as you do,’ René said defensively. ‘They told the yak herders to come this way instead and Menkom’s the last place they were seen. That’s all I know.’
As he said the village’s name, René’s eyes instinctively switched up the valley towards the blackened houses on the far ridge. Husks were all that remained; broken beams, twisted and collapsed, black from ash. They had seen smoke rising from them for three days now, while the villagers limped their way back along the path to find what shelter they could in the lower fields.
‘That’s all I know,’ he repeated, pouring some boiling water into his cup and trying to avoid eye contact.
‘We’ll see,’ Zhu said quietly. ‘We’ll see how much you really know.’
Over René’s shoulder, Zhu noticed two soldiers making their way back along the cliff edge from their patrol. As they came closer, he recognised the sergeant from the SOF group and Xie, that idiot private they had brought with them from Lhasa.
‘If you don’t provide us with answers then all you are is dead weight,’ Zhu continued, his eyes running over René’s bulbous stomach. ‘And I have no use for dead weight. It gets cut away.’
The word ‘cut’ came out in a hiss. As Zhu signalled to the soldiers, René’s mind started reeling with fear. What did he mean, ‘cut away’? He felt his mouth go dry as the soldiers started hurrying towards them. He had seen enough already to realise that Captain Zhu had neither morals nor conscience. Ever since Zhu had first walked into his restaurant, René had been living with the terrifying realisation that this man could do whatever he wanted to him and nobody on earth would be able to stop him.
Zhu gave a few curt orders in Mandarin and without warning the two soldiers rushed towards René, grabbing him by the front of his woollen jumper. Xie was first, his ruddy cheeks and square neck only inches from his face, but René’s eyes were immediately drawn past him to the shoulder strap of the sergeant’s rucksack. Taped across the webbing, he could see the outline of a large survival knife, its metal handle faded and scratched from use. Each soldier had one and despite only being able to see an impression of the blade through the sheath, he knew enough about the sergeant to bet that it was razor-sharp.
René felt his stomach clench tight.
‘You have until tomorrow morning to find out where they went,’ he heard Zhu say from behind him. ‘After that, you are of no further use to me.’
Xie shunted René forward so that he stumbled, tripping over one of the guy ropes. A moment later he was dragged out of the camp towards the long line of the cliff edge.
Zhu ignored the Westerner’s shouts, his mind already elsewhere. Time was ticking away and he still had no results. One month. That’s what he had said to the Director General of the PSB. One month. Yet that time was already nearly up and he knew that Beijing would be waiting impatiently for his next report.
There was a rustling of fabric and Chen’s massive frame slowly unfolded itself from his tent. Reaching back inside, he grabbed his laptop, disconnecting one of the wires as he pulled it out into the open.
‘Sir, I have found something that might be of interest.’
Zhu’s eyes turned towards him.
‘I’ve just downloaded a new email that concerns a report from Cambridge, England.’
Zhu remained silent, an air of hostility surrounding his entire body. Chen cleared his throat, looking back to the computer screen as if for support.
‘The report was from four weeks ago but I am afraid I hadn’t seen it as my security clearance was temporarily revoked… after the incident… with the boy.’
Zhu waited, his patience straining.
‘I have been going back through all my files and found that the report concerns one of the men we are looking for — Luca Matthews. He purportedly spoke to an old informant about something called a beyul. The report was filed by a…’ he paused, double-checking the screen ‘…a Professor Tang.’
Zhu stared at him, his eyes suddenly alive.
‘Read the report again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He read the brief in full, including dates and times.
‘I’ve checked twice, sir, and couldn’t find any reference to the word beyul in any of our files.’
‘That’s because it’s classified,’ Zhu snapped distractedly. He turned back towards the cliff, feeling a sudden surge of excitement. He’d been right all along. There was something up there — but could it really be one of the fabled beyuls? Surely the last of them had been destroyed over thirty years ago? The Cultural Revolution had put paid to all that. They’d combed every river gorge, every mountain summit.
Could there really be any left?
‘Get Beijing on the line immediately. I want full satellite imagery for everything above this cliff-face. Get them to divert a satellite if necessary. And I want full-spectrum coverage to cut straight through this cloud.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Lieutenant, ensure that no one in the bureau hears of this. Instruct the technician to delete all reference to the search once it has been emailed to you.’
Chen looked momentarily puzzled, but then quickly turned back to his tent.
After a moment, Zhu heard him rummaging through the mess of clothing and cables to retrieve one o
f their two GSM 900 satellite phones.
He stood for a moment, staring up at the sheer side of mountain, his eyes tracing up and down the great lines of the rock. If there really was a beyul up there, he was sure that’s where the Gelugpas would have hidden the boy. It made perfect sense. But the discovery had to remain his, and his alone. He wasn’t about to let anyone else at the bureau claim credit for such a monumental finding. The beyul would be his and that cliff was now the only thing standing between him and the final hiding place of the Panchen Lama.
Come tomorrow morning, he would start to send the soldiers up there two at a time, whether they could climb or not.
Chapter 40
There was no path so René and the two soldiers were forced to pick their way over the shrubs and bracken that clung to the mountain slopes, tripping on roots or tearing the lower parts of their trousers on the ragged thorn bushes. It was slow going. Ahead of them, the towering façade of the rock-face continued unbroken for as far as they could see.
They had been walking for six hours without rest. René was continuing with dogged determination, but could feel his thighs getting shaky with the effort. He muttered to himself, channelling his hatred on to the rapist private a few hundred yards in front. He could see the thickset neck and shuffling walk as Xie followed the SOF sergeant like a lap dog.
René stopped suddenly and peered down at some strange flowers, growing by the side of a large boulder. The flowers looked like prunes, black in colour and wrinkled on top. Short, bristly hairs stuck out in all directions.
‘Mandragora caulescens,’ he muttered, gently rubbing his hand over the petals. He had spent almost an entire month trying to find this particular species when he had first arrived in Tibet over eight years ago. And now here it was, right in front of him. If only the circumstances were different.
He looked up to find that the sergeant had stopped and was watching him closely. René stood up and continued walking, coming to a halt just in front of the other two men. He reached into the pocket of his corduroy trousers and pulled out a squashed packet of cigarettes. He was playing for time, thankful for the rest. Folding open the pack, he offered one to the sergeant, who shook his head impatiently. He then deliberately passed over Xie, taking one for himself, and with his other hand, reached back into his pocket for the lighter.
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