The farther he walked, the more of an entourage Remo acquired. People were crying, reaching out to touch him, pleading and begging him in words that were unintelligible but voices that were universal in tone. Remo kept walking. It was a long way to Lhasa. He had no time for this.
"They want to know if you are really Gonpo," the Tibetan said.
"If it makes them feel better, tell them yes."
"Are you Gonpo?"
"Do I look like Gonpo to you?"
"You look like Gonpo wearing the body of a chiling. "
"Maybe that's what I am."
"I will call you Gonpo Jigme, then. Gonpo Dreadnought."
And the word was passed back to the other.
"Gonpo Jigme. Gonpo Jigme," they began chanting.
There were no Chinese soldiers at the local garrison. Their jeeps sat idle. Remo picked one, hot-wired the ignition and got the engine going. He loaded extra cans of gas in the back and started off.
The locals ran after him. Remo had to drive slowly in order not to run them down.
"Will you come back, Gonpo Jigme?" one called.
"Doubt it."
"Then who will save us from Chinese reprisals, Gonpo Jigme?"
"Pick up the weapons the Chinese dropped and save yourself."
"We cannot kill the Chinese. It is not our way."
"Then hunker down for a long occupation," said Remo, seeing a break in the mass of people and flooring the gas.
The Chinese jeep surged ahead and soon left the running crowd behind.
Eyes bleak, Remo pushed on north into the endless mountains that seemed to be calling to him.
The strangest part was, they started looking familiar. And Remo had never been in Tibet before.
Chapter 24
Lhasa held its breath.
Everywhere it was whispered that the Bunji Lama was coming to Tibet. No one knew when or where. It was said by some that the Bunji Lama has already been spirited into the city itself. No one could confirm this.
All eyes went hopefully to the Potala, the great 999-room fortress-temple that had been the abode of the Dalai Lama in greater times. It was there that the Lion Throne awaited the future ruler of Tibet. The Dalai Lama had not reclaimed it because he possessed the wisdom to avoid falling back into the toils of the Chinese occupiers. The Panchen Lama had not claimed it because he knew that the Chushi Gangdruk would assassinate his treasonous bones if he dared.
Only the Bunji Lama had the courage to take the throne. All Tibet knew this. The people of Lhasa knew this very well. They also knew that if the Bunji Bogd dared to claim the rightful throne, the Chinese would not react well.
And so Lhasa held its breath and cast uneasy eyes toward the sprawling whitewashed Potala perched high on Red Mountain.
No one was watching the road when the old man rode into the outskirts of the city. He was very old yet black of hair, and sat on his pony like a raven in his red robes, his slitty eyes casting about with a narrow, smoldering anger as they fell upon the shattered lamaseries and other evidences of destroyed traditions.
"They have crushed this place," he muttered under his breath, and there was no one to hear his complaint.
The old man was spotted by a Chinese soldier, who saw at once that he rode a gray pony with a black muzzle. Legend had it these were the strongest of Tibetan ponies, and the Chinese soldier fancied the pony for himself.
And so he unlocked his Type 56 assault rifle and approached the old man with the weapon pointed at him.
"Stop, old one."
The old man pulled back on his reins. The pony stopped and began flicking its tail like a fly whisk.
The soldier demanded the man's name. "Kayrang gi mingla karay sa?"
"Nga mingla Dorje sa."
"Kayrang lungba kanay ray, Dorje?" Where are you from, Dorje?
"Nga Bowo nay yin." I am from Bowo.
"It is forbidden to enter Lhasa," the soldier snapped. "I will have to confiscate your pony."
"If I cannot enter Lhasa," said the old man who called himself Dorje, "I will need my pony to return home."
"You cannot return home until I first confiscate your pony."
"It is not my pony," the old man pleaded, "but my son's pony. He will whip me if I lose him."
"Would you rather be whipped or go to Drapchi Prison?" the soldier countered.
"I would rather do neither," the old man said gently.
"Then you will do both, stubborn one!" ordered the soldier, pushing the barrel of his rifle into the old man's stomach.
"I will do what you say, for I am an old man and defenseless against a strong young soldier such as you."
With an impatient swing of his rifle muzzle, the soldier motioned the old man to enter the city limits. He walked several paces behind the whisking tail of the gray pony, prepared to shoot the old man in the back if he attempted to flee, and trying not to step on the fresh dung the pony was inexplicably beginning to drop in profusion.
It was very strange. Whenever he watched his feet, the way was clear. But as soon as he turned his attention elsewhere, the dung was suddenly soft under his boots.
Perhaps, the soldier thought, this man was one of the old Bon magicians who still roamed the northern solitudes. It was said they could do strange and terrible things. Freeze a man in his tracks. Scorch his sight. Call down shangshang birds. The soldier noticed that the hair on the old man's head lay close and intensely black. It was not like hair, but resembled dry black snow.
A shiver of supernatural fear ran up the soldier's spine, and thereafter he dared not take his watchful eyes off the man's back. No shang-shang would sink its fangs into his throat, if he had to walk through all the dung in Tibet.
Thus did the Master of Sinanju come into the city of Lhasa, alone and unsuspected.
Chapter 25
Remo fought to keep his eyes on the road. It was not easy. Sometimes there was no road. He was on his third tank of gas, it was coming up on dawn, and he had no idea where he was, other than somewhere on the winding road to Lhasa.
All around him were mountains. Snowcapped, misty, eternal and hauntingly familiar mountains. Back in the world-he was thinking of the U.S.A. the way he had in his Vietnam days-Remo walked confident and unstoppable through almost any situation he encountered.
Here, for the first time since he had come to the sun source, he felt small, insignificant, unimportant.
And he was getting nowhere.
So he kept his eyes on the elusive, twisting road and tried not to think of how tiny he felt in this alien but eerily familiar land.
Most of all he tried not to think of what he had seen back in that Tibetan village.
Remo had not come to Tibet to save it. He had a simple mission. Find Chiun. Find Squirrelly Chicane. Drag them both back to the world, hopefully without causing any international complications.
Tibet wasn't his problem. Not that he didn't want to see it liberated from Chinese occupation. But the country was huge, infested with dug-in PLA troops, and most of all the Tibetans were docile to the point of gutlessness. Their religion forbade violence, so they accepted their conquerors and put their faith in faraway, impotent religious figures. Remo felt sorry for them. But if they didn't want to fight for their freedom, that was their problem, not his.
He could only think of what would happen if the PLA suddenly showed up in the Rockies. The Chinese would not last long against ordinary Americans, even armed with pistols and hunting rifles.
Freedom. You want it, you have to fight for it. But Remo had not come to Tibet to fight for its freedom. That wasn't the mission. That didn't mean he wouldn't inflict a little pain along the way if the Chinese pissed him off, but he wasn't going to make a point of it. That village had been a fluke.