Remo was freewheeling down one of the rare straightaways on a mountain that looked like every other mountain for the past two hundred miles, his engine off, when he heard a sound from his past.
Thunk.
Low, hollow-but unmistakable. In Nam it used to trigger his adrenals and cause him to instinctively duck. It was the sound of a round being dropped into a mortar tube.
Remo eased down on the brake. The jeep jerked to a stop. And a hundred yards in front of the jeep's steel bumper, about where he would have been, the round struck. Exactly where the whistle of the falling round told him it would.
Sand and gravel gushed up. Stinging bits struck the windshield and rattled along the hood and frame of the jeep.
Remo gunned the engine, swerved around the smoking crater and made the bottom of the mountain before his attackers could get organized.
In the side mirror he caught a glimpse of tiny figures hunkered down on a ridge. They were too far away to make out, Chinese troops or Tibetan resistance, it was impossible to tell.
If they were Chinese, he was in trouble. They would have radios. But he had a head start.
Remo piloted the jeep through a valley between mountain scarps that was yellow with poppies. It looked exactly like a a scene out of The Wizard of Oz. Somewhere up ahead, he heard the lazy ringing of bells, and Remo wondered if he should try to avoid it.
Farther along, the road simply disappeared, and he found himself running along dry pastureland. That made up his mind. The only way to reach Lhasa was to stay on the road to Lhasa. He had to find the road again.
Checking his side mirror for pursuit, he steered toward the pleasant ringing.
The ugly black shapes of yaks began to appear. Tin bells around their necks made the bucolic sound.
Two yak herders in dusty robes were tending the herd. They looked in Remo's direction with hard, care-worn eyes that held absolutely no welcome.
Yet as Remo drew close, they broke out in applause. The clapping was not exactly hearty, but it was steady. Remo pulled up beside them.
"Lhasa?" he asked.
The two yak herders stopped clapping. They looked at Remo, noticed he was not Chinese and seemed bewildered.
"Lhasa?" said Remo again.
They just stared. Then Remo remembered the Tibetan guidebook on the passenger seat. He thumbed through it a moment and read carefully, "Wo dao Lhasa. I'm going to Lhasa."
Abruptly the two men turned their backs on him and walked back to their yaks, calling over their shoulders something that sounded like "Bu keqi!"
"What'd I say?" Then Remo realized he had been reading from the Chinese section of the guide. They had said the equivalent of "What are you waiting for?"
Frowning, Remo drove on.
Farther along he spotted smoke. And then round black tents. They reminded him of the felt yurts of the Mongol herdsmen, which they called gers. These were smaller. They were scattered around the dun-colored pasture like black beehives. Yaks and a few ponies grazed in the open spaces. Remo saw no people. The only sound was the laughter of children playing.
Remo slowed the jeep as he approached. There was no telling what kind of a welcome he'd get. Heads began poking out of the tent flaps, and the children playing in the dirt with great hilarity suddenly scampered from sight.
"Nice welcome," he muttered. "I feel like the local welcoming committee leper."
In the middle of the sprinkling of tents, Remo shut down the engine and tried his luck with Tibetan.
"Tashi delay!" he shouted.
The heads sticking out of the tents were followed by thick bodies. The men of the village gathered around him. They stood impassive and stony faced. After a moment they began clapping.
"Tujaychay," he said, by way of thank you. The clapping subsided. The Tibetans began returning to their tents.
"Wait! Nga Lhasa dru-giy yin. I'm going to Lhasa."
"Kalishu," a voice said.
Remo looked it up. He had just been told goodbye.
"Great," he muttered. "Anyone here speak English?"
No response.
"Inji-gay shing-giy dugay?" he said, repeating the question in his best Tibetan.
His best Tibetan was obviously not good enough. No one replied.
"I gotta reach Lhasa. I have a meeting with Bumba Fun."
"Bumba Fun!" a female voice cried. "You seek Bumba Fun?" Remo turned in his seat. A young Tibetan woman was pushing out of one of the big round tents. She wore a native costume of many layers-an apron over a long sleeveless dresslike garment the color of charcoal and over that a white blouse. Her hair hung in tight black braids around a pleasantly bronze face.
"You speak English?" Remo asked.
"Ray. Yes."
"Then why didn't you say so?"
"Why you not say looking for Bumba Fun?" she countered.
"Good point. How do I get to Lhasa?"
"Drive north to purple shadow at base of mountain."
"Which mountain?"
The girl pointed north. "That mountain. It called Nagbopori. That mean Black Mountain."
"Okay. Got it. After that?"
"Drive up mountain then down mountain. Keep driving up and down mountain until reach Lhasa."
"Same mountain?"
The girl shook her braids. "No. Many mountain. Take you one day if gas last, never if it run out or tires break."
"Okay. Great. Got it. When I get to Lhasa, how do I find Bumba Fun?"
"Turn jeep around, drive up mountain then down mountain until you come back here. Then I take you to Bumba Fun."
Remo blinked.
"Bumba Fun is here?"
"Ray. Yes."
"Then why don't I just skip the Lhasa part and you take me to meet him here and now?"
The Tibetan girl frowned. "You not go to Lhasa?"
"I need to see Bumba Fun more."
"You could see Bumba Fun in Lhasa, too."
"How can I see him in Lhasa if he's here?"
"Bumba Fun in Lhasa and here also," the girl said.
"Are we talking about the same Bumba Fun?" Remo wanted to know.
"How many Bumba Funs you know?"
"I don't know any. How many are there?"
The girl scrunched up her face. "Fifty, maybe sixty Bumba Funs."
"How do I know where I find the right one?"
"All Bumba Funs are correct." The woman looked at Remo with about as much puzzlement, Remo figured, as he was looking at her. Finally she said, "You go to Lhasa to see Bumba Fun or you see Bumba Fun here?"
"I'll settle for the local Fun," said Remo, getting out of the jeep.
"Come this way," invited the girl.
"Why did everyone clap when I drove up?" Remo asked, just to keep a fascinating conversation going.
"At first they think you Chinese."
"Tibetans applaud the Chinese?"
The girl shook her braided hair. "Beijing insist when Chinese come, we clap to make them feel welcome even though in our hearts we want for ravens to pluck out their eyes."
"Oh."
"We call it the clapping tax."
The girl took him to a tent on the outskirts of the village and swept the entrance flap aside.
"I present to you Bumba Fun," she said.
Remo stepped in. The interior of the tent was thick with a smoky buttery odor he associated with Lobsang Drom. It was dark. There was light coming down from the smoke hole in the center of the tent roof, and it made a bright circle. Around the edge of the circle was shadow mixed with stale yak dung smoke hanging still in the air.
The man seated outside the circle of light looked old. He was big, and reminded Remo of a Mongol, except for the turquoise buttons in his earlobes and the bright red yarn interwoven in his thick hair. He looked up with one brown eye like a tiger's-eye agate. The other eye was a blind milky pearl.
"What your name, chiling?" he asked.
"Around here they call me Gonpo Jigme," Remo told him.
Behind him the Tibetan girl gasped. Bumba Fun opened his good eye to its widest.