The Breath of God (45 page)

Kristin leaned forward. “What have the monks said?”

“Before I returned, Kinley was spotted meeting with the Je Khenpo, our spiritual leader, which of course infuriated Lama Dorji. I suppose you two have a better idea where he is than I do.” Jigme raised his eyebrows, not asking the question, while asking it at the same time.

Grant inclined his head in the direction of the driver. Jigme said, “A friend of mine. Doesn't speak English.”

The story spilled out of both Grant's and Kristin's mouths as they recounted the discussions they'd had in Varanasi and Sarnath and the mural they'd seen in the temple.

By the end of the story, Jigme nodded. “Always the teacher, Kinley is.”

“I have to admit I have a better understanding of Issa's journey,” Grant said, but for him understanding alone was still not enough. He needed the actual texts.

“Yeah, me too,” Kristin added, but Grant noticed that her soft tone and unfocused expression suggested that she was speaking more to herself than to them. She leaned forward. “Kinley has brought us back to Bhutan, where we began our journey, to the place where Buddhism spread through this country. A poetic climax to our quest.”

“Ah yes, so like Kinley.”

“Are we heading to Tiger's Nest now?” Grant asked.

“Too late to begin the hike,” Jigme said. “I'll drop you off at your hotel in town. We'll meet at the Paro Dzong at dawn.”

Staring out the car's window at the cottages that dotted the green hills rising from the valley like Swiss chalets in the foothills of the Alps, Grant began to replay in his mind the scene of his reunion with Kinley: the questions he wanted to ask, the experiences from their journey he wanted to relate. But his questions were secondary.
By tomorrow
—

He closed his eyes. He was speculating about the future again, he realized. Playing movies in his head.
But
, he thought,
we are so close
.

T
WELVE HOURS AFTER HIS LAST hike up the same mountain, Tim once again crept along the narrow stone steps, hugging the cool granite wall to his left. On this trip, however, it was pitch black, and he didn't have a guide to lead him. Tripping in the darkness would have tragic consequences; the edge of the steps dropped to the valley floor two thousand feet below him. He paused to catch his breath, which cast a light green fog through the viewfinder of the night vision monocular he held to his eye. Cocking his head to listen, he heard only the gurgling of the small waterfall he'd just passed.

One last flight of steps to go. Ahead of him, the monastery stood as dark and quiet as the night itself. He pulled back the sleeve of his black wool coat and the black sweater underneath it. It was two AM. The monks would be asleep and unsuspecting.

Before climbing the final steps, Tim reviewed his inventory. Tonight would be simple and efficient—no fancy drugs in EpiPens and no gimmicks like the snake, although holding the shaking basket over the professor's face had given him quite a rush. Tonight the only weapons Tim carried were the knife strapped to his leg and the forty-caliber Glock he held in his gloved hand. Tonight he would tolerate no mistakes, no hesitations. Tonight no one would be left alive.

A few hours earlier, Tim had stolen a scooter, one of many parked at his hotel in town. He'd hidden it just off the road in the woods, at the trailhead for the shortcut he'd taken up the mountain. Once his mission was
accomplished, he would race down the trail and drive the scooter onto the tarmac at the airport. His pilot had instructions to have the plane ready to depart at dawn. Tim would be airborne before anyone realized what had happened in the remote monastery. Then he would return to Birmingham and reap the glory of his success.

Grant stared at the sun yellow wall opposite his twin bed. Above a wood-laminate dresser, the painting of a three-foot-long red dragon chasing its tail stared at him. He should be sleeping, but the lights on the outside of the hotel, shining into the room with no curtains, kept him awake.

He used the time to organize the thoughts that rolled across his mind like waves hitting the beach. Although he was so close, he wrestled with a new concern. With the strict Bhutanese laws against removing historical artifacts from the country, and the obvious hostility of Lama Dorji, how would they get the texts out of Bhutan, if indeed they found them at Tiger's Nest? They had Kristin's camera and two backup memory cards, but Grant suspected that after the negative publicity, only the actual books themselves would convince the naysayers.

“Are you awake?” Kristin's voice from the other twin bed startled him.

“You too?”

A breath of cool air touched him as the quilt covering his body lifted. He rolled over to face Kristin as she crawled onto the narrow mattress beside him.

“Hi,” he said, pleasantly surprised at the smooth skin of her legs next to his. He wore only boxers.

“Do you mind?”

His hand traced the bruise along her cheek. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.” Her body was warm, and it seemed to him that the two of them fit on the narrow bed like two puzzle pieces joined together.

He moved a few strands of hair that had fallen in front of her face, and then, as if drawn magnetically, he brushed his lips against her upturned face. He kissed the bruise, then her jaw, and then her neck just below her ear. Her
body arched subtly. He dropped his hand from the soft curls of her hair to the soft curve of her waist.

“Look, Kris,” he whispered. “I mean Kristin ...”

“You called me that in Varanasi too.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it's okay now.” Her voice was breathy. “I find it comforting. Reminds me of my sister.”

She raised herself onto her elbow and then pushed him back into the firm mattress. She rolled on top of him. The only fabric separating their bodies was her thin T-shirt and the cotton shorts each wore. The sensation of her body pressed into his sent a current of electricity through his core.

Her eyes locked on to his. “I'm ready,” she said.

U
MMON SAT ON HIS REED MAT, rubbing his eyes. He closed his crimson robes around his small body. The winter cold was moving in quickly. Soon the mountain would be covered in snow. Ummon glanced at the three empty sleeping mats in the room. He looked forward to the older monks, who should have been there beside him, returning from town in the morning. They had left earlier in the day to restock the monastery's supplies. One would bring dry wood for the stove. He glanced at the profiles of the only two other occupants in the dormitory room. One belonged to an elder monk, whose advanced age relieved him from the duty of the long hike into town. The other was Ummon's snoring teacher. Kinley was more like a father to the eleven-year-old than his own father. Since the day four years ago when his parents brought him to the monastery, Ummon had only seen his family twice a year. The youngest of three brothers, he wasn't needed on their small farm.

Although studying to be a monk was boring at times, he generally enjoyed the
goemba
. Kinley's other students had become his new family, and they didn't pick on him the way his older brothers had. Jigme was Ummon's favorite. He wondered why Kinley hadn't brought his senior student to Taktshang with them, but he knew not to question Kinley about such things. While Ummon was happy that his teacher was finally back from the travels that had taken him away several times these past few weeks, he looked forward to returning to the warmer Punakha valley and to his friend Jigme. After all, the
older monks who lived at Taktshang preferred to spend long hours playing dice games instead of kicking around a ball with him.

Ummon tiptoed to a small door at the rear of their dorm room. He opened it slowly so that no noise would wake the sleeping men. One advantage of being little was that he could take the shortcut to the latrine; the door was just one meter square and meant to be an emergency fire escape. Once outside, he shuffled along the narrow ledge at the back of the building. Then he climbed the ladder to the next higher level, where the single toilet was located.

Ummon opened the red swinging door of the closet-sized latrine and flicked the light switch. Nothing. He shook his head. The bulb had been out for three days now. He would have volunteered to change it, but he was too short to reach it. He left the door open to let in the dim starlight from the clear sky. Squinting his eyes, he could barely make out the footrests in the ground. He had to be careful not to step into the hole itself. The old monks would get a laugh out of that.

The explosions that pierced the silence of the night startled Ummon so badly that he misdirected his stream of pee down the side of his robes. Terrified, he placed a hand on the wall to steady his shaking body. The noises sounded like fireworks going off inside the
goemba
. Was the monastery exploding? Ummon knew that Taktshang had been severely damaged by fire before; in fact, it had only reopened recently after decades of rebuilding.

The image of being trapped inside the
goemba
as it tumbled down the mountainside in a burning heap snapped Ummon out of his paralyzed state. Closing his robes, he raced out of the bathroom and slid down the ladder.
I have to warn them!

As he reached the ledge at the rear of the dorm building, Ummon opened his mouth to shout for the two elders to wake up when he realized two things. First, he didn't detect any evidence of a fire. No smell of smoke, no glowing flames, nothing. Second, in place of the sounds of the explosions, which had disappeared as quickly as they had startled him, Ummon heard screaming voices through the dorm walls. Something was wrong inside the building. Ummon knelt silently outside the small door.

He heard voices in English, a language he recognized but didn't yet speak. He'd last heard it when Grant, the friendly American with the broken leg, was
recovering in Punakha. Although students in Bhutan studied English in school, for a monk living in a monastery, English was not a regular subject. Kinley had promised to teach him as he grew older.

Pressing his ear to the cracked wood, Ummon heard that one of the voices belonged to Kinley, but it contained a tone Ummon had never heard before, a deep sorrow. He didn't recognize the other voice, but it sounded angry. He knew immediately that his teacher needed help.

Ummon twisted the handle of the square door, opening it a crack. For the rest of his life, Ummon would never forget the scene inside. He bit his lip to suppress the scream that desperately wanted out of his body. The old monk who had been sleeping by him lay on his back in a contorted position. A pool of blood the same color as his robe spread outward along the floor. Ummon's stomach lurched into his throat. He swallowed back the acidic bile. The gentle man's eyes were open, staring unblinking at the ceiling.

Kinley thankfully was alive. Kneeling in the center of the room, the monk faced the rear wall where Ummon watched through the crack in the doorway. The look of sadness and pain on his mentor's face disturbed Ummon almost as much as the gruesome death before him.

Ummon's heart threatened to explode out of his slight chest. Standing in front of Kinley with his back to the boy was the Dark One himself.
Mara, the God of Death
. Ummon had seen the murals on the walls of the dzong that depicted him with multiple horned heads, fangs, and flames for hair, but in person he was simpler, and much more terrifying to the eleven-year-old.

He was dressed in black as dark as the night itself from his boots to his clothes and even to the cap on his head; the only skin exposed was the demon's neck and face, which Ummon caught a glimpse of when he paced in front of Kinley. The Dark One's skin was flushed almost as red as the depictions Ummon had seen on the temple walls, and it had a scaly appearance, like a serpent's. The man yelled at Kinley with such a force that spit flew from his mouth as he shouted. A gap in the front of his mouth, where teeth should be, added to his snakelike appearance.

Watching his teacher's suffering pained Ummon deep in his chest. But what could he do? He was frightened as he'd never been in his life; he was so scared
that as much as he wanted to turn and run down the mountain, his limbs were frozen where he crouched.

The slapping sound of a blow from the hand of Mara stung Ummon almost as much as it must have hurt his teacher. Kinley rocked backward from the strike. As soon as Kinley righted himself, the man struck a second time, but this time with his opposite hand, the one holding the gun—the gun which must have killed the eldest monk. This second blow landed with a harder sound that sent Kinley sprawling to the floor. A whimper escaped Ummon's lips, causing him to clasp his hand over his mouth. Kinley, on the other hand, was silent and still.