The Forbidden Temple (33 page)

‘Sir, the captain wants you to bring the satellite imagery to his tent.’

Chen didn’t turn, instead only raising his right hand in response. The sergeant nodded briefly, then straightened up, walking back to his own tent, grateful to be out of the cold.

Chen remained absolutely still, letting the open tent door flap in the wind. He had been in the exact same position for nearly an hour, staring down at the rucksack by his feet. Eventually, he closed his eyes, feeling the nervous weight press down on his chest, stifling his breathing.

He had no choice. He was going to have to tell the captain.

After they had first made camp, Chen had unfolded his laptop and pressed the start button. Nothing happened. He had rubbed his hands over the cold metal before pushing the button again, craning his head down to listen for the soft whir of the hard drive booting up. Nothing. With a growing sense of dread, he’d swivelled the computer over in his hands and immediately realised what was wrong.

The battery was missing. Someone had deliberately removed it.

He’d immediately looked in the case for the spare, but it had been taken too. Then he realised something else was missing. The map. He had carefully folded it inside the screen of the laptop.

Falkus . . . It had to be him. Chen had left the pelican case with all the communication equipment by the entrance to his tent the previous evening. Even the small rectangular batteries for the GSM 900 satellite phones had been pulled out from the protective foam casing and were gone.

Chen had frantically tried to find a way of rewiring the solar panels to link directly into the power adaptor. He knew it wouldn’t work, but tried anyway, cutting back the plastic coating on the wires with the razor edge of his survival knife and twisting the metal fibres together. The panels only had the power to trickle charge the batteries and
without a single flicker of power he had eventually given up, leaving a tangled heap of wires at his feet.

There was no other choice. He was going to have to tell the captain he no longer had the map.

Chen inhaled slowly, steadying his breathing. When they had studied the maps together at Menkom, he remembered the monastery as being due east from the cliff edge. But due east led them straight into this impassable avalanche of rocks, and even if they did manage to find a way through, the gulley behind looked impossibly steep. Had he made a mistake? Was the monastery really on another bearing altogether?

If only he had the damn maps!

Eventually Chen rocked forward on to his knees. He slowly manoeuvred his massive frame round inside the tent and laced up his snow-covered boots.

As he stepped out into the wind, he shivered from the sudden change in temperature. His right hand instinctively went up to the top pocket of his winter jacket, resting on the photos of his family that he knew were carefully tucked inside. Tilting his chin up defiantly, he took a deep breath.

He was an officer of the PSB, not some common villager. Zhu would have to treat him by the book.

He trudged forward purposefully, passing the line of tents, but as he drew closer to Zhu’s, his pace slowed further with every stride. The wind tugged at his hair. Once again he felt a shiver run down his spine.

This time, however, it had nothing to do with the cold.

REGA SAT IN
the dark of his chambers, thumbing through the string of jade prayer beads. They passed over the back of his hand with an endless clack, clack, clack.

In the far corner, a small fire burned in the hearth, but did little to warm the remainder of the room. Drang stood close by, slowly working some heavy leather bellows. With each gust of air the fire crackled to life, the embers flaring white and sending shadows dancing on the high, vaulted ceiling.

Placing the bellows back on their stand, Drang sat back down at a small table and continued to thumb through a giant leather-bound book, his ugly face creased in concentration. The book was filled with ornate designs, some sketched in black ink, others outlined in ornate gold leaf. The pages crackled as he turned them. Rega’s head twitched towards him with impatience.

‘Well?’

‘Not yet, Father,’ said Drang, flicking over another page, and studying the next symbol.

A blackened metal kettle hung from a chain above the centre of the fire, slowly twisting in the heat. As it turned, some of the water boiled over the edges, sloshing onto the coals with a hiss.

A muscle twitched in Rega’s face. Since the messenger had told
him that Menkom was burning, the old memories had begun to resurface again.

Five decades had passed, but he remembered that night in every detail; the intoxicating heat of the burning rooftops, the panic as he stumbled blind through rhododendron bushes, headlong into the night. Despite so many years and the peace he had found at Geltang, the same feeling of absolute terror washed over him. And only now, with the threat before him once again, did he finally realise that the terror had never left. It had always been with him, behind every waking thought and deed.

And now the Chinese were here again. The messenger had reported towers of smoke rising into the sky from the village at the bottom of the cliff-face, before spotting a small military encampment in the valley directly below. It could be no mere coincidence. The Westerners had led them there, straight to their gates.

The single consolation was that they still had to discover the way up the rock face and then pass through the Kooms, and without the Kalak Tantra, surely that was not possible?

But the Chinese weren’t the only threat. The Westerners were already within their walls. And now it appeared that the Abbot had welcomed them with open arms, allowing them to wander through the monastery at will and discover its secrets. This had to stop. The old fool’s misplaced belief in them would be the ruin of them all.

Surely now, with the enemy pressing in on them, the Abbot would finally see sense? He would understand the need for action.

Action. Rega’s lips moved as he mulled the word over in his mind. That is what they truly needed – action.

For years now he had believed that Geltang itself had to change. It had to evolve and understand the true nature of the modern world and fight for what it held dear. Every other religion had shed blood for its belief, yet still they persisted in their passive ways. Even as their lights were snuffed out one by one by the Chinese.

Tibet had always been in the balance, the Chinese only
maintaining control through fear and isolation. In every village and town, the hatred ran deep; a tinderbox requiring only the slightest spark. For fifty years, Beijing had sat like a cancerous plague across their land, robbing every last vestige of pride and identity from their people.

And while the people suffered, while their monasteries were razed to the ground and their leader fled into exile, Geltang had done nothing but remain hidden, sulking in the shadows of the Himalayas. Decades of inaction had left them unsure and fragmented, the Abbot nothing more than a slave to the old ways.

Yet the truth was plain to see. They were the single power that could unify the tribes of Tibet. Under Geltang, there could be a call to arms, a focus for the revolution. The treasure that they had held for so long would give them the legitimacy they required. Now, they just had to fight.

Rega had already convened the Council of Elders. They would meet in just a few hours to discuss the burning of Menkom and the approach of the Chinese. With such a threat on their doorstep, surely they would now understand the truth. They could not sit by and listen to the Abbot procrastinate while the very last of their sacred
beyuls
was under threat.

‘That’s it!’ Drang’s voice cut through Rega’s daydream. Scraping back his chair, he padded towards his master with the book open in his hands, his scarred face lit with triumph.

‘The clasp,’ Drang took the beads from Rega’s hands and examined the seal engraved on the silver, comparing it with the one on the page. ‘It’s the sign of Tashilhunpo. I knew I had seen it before.’

Rega’s old spine straightened in shock, his mind whirring. The meaning was unmistakeable.

From the night of his arrival, Rega had suspected something was amiss, but he had never suspected anything so incredible. Could it really be possible? Could it really have happened at the monastery without him knowing?

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Why else
would a boy have been brought to Geltang in such haste and secrecy? Why else would he be the only one exempt from the initiations? There was only one possible explanation.

The new reincarnation of the Panchen Lama was within these walls. The rightful ruler of Tibet was here amongst them!

Rega stood up from the chair in a flurry of robes. Drang went to support his arm, but Rega brushed past him, sweeping out of his chambers and along the corridor. He had to convene the council immediately.

The boy was the key to it all. Everything hinged on him. If he found a way to control him, he would be armed with Geltang’s sacred treasure and the rightful leader of Tibet – the Panchen Lama himself.

‘
THE ABBOT WILL
deliberate!’

Rega swept out of the council chamber and into the corridor, repeating the same sentence again in disgust. His head moved from side to side in a nervous twitch and he pulled the ornate prayer beads Drang had taken from Babu from the folds of his robe, rattling them over his knuckles as he walked.

‘Deliberate!’ he said again, his voice raised in frustration.

Two novices were about to shut the doors of the council chamber when Dorje suddenly bustled through them into the corridor.

‘Wait!’ he called, gathering his robes and hurrying forward. ‘Please, Rega, you must listen.’

Rega raised one hand in refusal, continuing at the same pace.

‘I have heard enough,’ he said, the words drifting back to Dorje across his shoulder. ‘I inform the Council of the proximity of the Chinese and what does the Abbot decree? He asks for time to deliberate!’

He spat out the last word as Dorje finally caught up with him, reaching forward to grab on to Rega’s arm.

‘The Abbot needs time to make the right decision,’ he explained, cheeks flushed. ‘There still remain two formidable obstacles between us and the Chinese. There is time left.’

Rega squeezed the beads in his fist, the knuckles whitening. For over two hours the arguments had been batted back and forth in the
Council, with many of the elders inclining to his point of view. The enemy was at the gates. This was finally the time for a new beginning, for their defiance to be spread across the rest of Tibet.

Then, from behind the screen concealing the Abbot, a scroll had been passed forward. The Abbot had written that he wanted more time to consider what must be done.

Rega’s voice dropped to a hiss as he swivelled round to face Dorje.

‘Now is the time to act. Now! And if the Abbot has not got the courage to do what needs to be done, then . . .’

His voice trailed into silence as Dorje stared at him, at the jutting chin and pale skin that looked ghostly even in the daylight.

‘You mustn’t even talk this way,’ Dorje said, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘You may not agree with the Abbot’s path, but that does not give you the right to question him or to act without his permission. He is still our Abbot.’

Rega nodded slowly. ‘Yes. He is indeed.’

A novice approached from the far end of the corridor, a large lantern held above his head. As he passed each of the yak-butter candles along the corridor, he reached inside the glass door of the lantern and fished out a flaming taper with which to light it. Seeing both Rega and Dorje ahead of him, he bowed low before moving silently forward. Both men waited until he was out of earshot before continuing.

‘The Abbot values our counsel,’ Dorje continued, his tone softening. ‘He trusts your judgment but must be allowed time to decide our future, especially given the significance of such news.’

‘Trusts our judgment?’ Rega repeated, the corners of his thin lips twisting cynically. ‘If you think he trusts us so much, why has the identity of that boy remained such a secret?’

‘The boy? What has he to do with all of this?’ Dorje asked. ‘The Abbot’s aide was quite specific on the matter. He is the governor’s son.’

‘Is he?’ Rega asked, still smiling.

Dorje thought back to the night the boy had arrived at the monastery
and all that the mountain guide had said. He was the third son of Governor Depon and had been spirited away from Lhasa in the middle of the night.

Rega raised the prayer beads in his hands so they dangled an inch away from Dorje’s face.

‘Do you really think a Governor’s son would possess such unique riches? The mark of Shigtase is on them.’

‘Shigatse?’ Dorje repeated, eyes casting down to the delicate clasps of silver connecting the individual nuggets of worn jade. ‘I don’t understand what Shigatse . . .’

‘Don’t be such a trusting fool,’ Rega interrupted. ‘Wake up to what is really happening.’

With that he strode off down the corridor, leaving Dorje to stare after him in confusion.

CHEN PUT HIS
hand up against the cold rock and stopped. He looked from side to side, taking in the mass of towering columns, twisted and broken in every direction, and sighed.

They were lost. And had been ever since they had first walked into this God-forsaken maze.

Adjusting his footing, he unclipped the waistband of his battered rucksack and swung it on to the ground. Still holding his rifle in his left hand, he reached up, pulling off his fleece hat and scratching the back of his neck. His fingers ran through his damp hair and he exhaled heavily, watching the moisture in his breath condense in the cold air like cigarette smoke. For the briefest of moments he shut his eyes, blotting out the frustration of the last few hours.

This was Zhu’s punishment of him for losing the satellite map, of that much he was sure. There was no other reason why they would have been sent off to find a route through the rocks so late in the day. Tilting his head up towards the leaden sky, Chen watched the light greying out as evening approached. He consoled himself with a single thought – it could have been worse. With Zhu it could always be worse.