"You have come down off Mt. Kailas to liberate Tibet?" said Bumba Fun.
"Actually I'm just here to-"
A commotion penetrated the tent. Engine sounds. Yelling. Remo couldn't understand a word.
"The Chinese come!" the girl cried. "They will see the jeep and punish us all."
"I'll handle this," Remo said, pushing out of the tent. "They want me, not you people."
The girl got in his way, her bronze face pleadingly stubborn.
"No! No! You must hide. They must not find you here."
"You forget, I'm Gonpo Jigme."
She put her hands on his chest. "That what I mean. If you kill them all, there will be reprisals. More Chinese come. You must hide. Please!"
Remo hesitated. "What about the jeep? It's stolen."
"We will explain away jeep. Now, quickly. Hide."
Remo ducked back into the tent. He sat down and waited.
"So," he said, "you're Bumba Fun."
"And you are white," said Bumba Fun.
"Sue me."
Bumba Fun stared at Remo with his unwinking tiger's-eye orb and said, "The god does not ride you."
"What god?"
"Gonpo. Also called Mahakala."
"Never heard of him."
"He is known as the Protector of the Tent. You do not know this?"
One ear attuned to the harsh sound of an arriving mechanized column, Remo shrugged. "News to me."
"You are not Gonpo Jigme."
Remo had no answer to that. Instead, he said, "And you're probably not the Bumba Fun I'm looking for."
"Perhaps. But I am the Bumba Fun you have found."
Outside there were voices, high-pitched Chinese shouts and the more subdued strained replies in Tibetan.
Remo crept to the tent flap and peered out.
In the center of the tents, a contingent of Chinese soldiers in PLA green were hectoring the assembled nomads. They took it meekly, with heads bowed low. One Tibetan acting as a spokesman was trying to reason with the PLA commander, whose dark eyes looked as if they had been sliced into his doughy face with the edge of a bayonet. Although Remo couldn't understand a word on either side, he caught the gist of the exchange from the way the commander kept pointing to Remo's abandoned jeep.
In the background other soldiers were going tent to tent, routing out the women and children.
"It's only a matter of time before they come here," Remo told Bumba Fun.
"And it is only a matter of time before they begin shooting until they have their thief."
"Look, this is my problem. Why don't I surrender myself and take my chances?"
"It is a good plan," said Bumba Fun, getting up. "But I will try to reason with them first."
Bumba Fun stepped past Remo and emerged into the light.
He spoke up. The Chinese commander whirled at the sound and pointed at Bumba Fun. PLA troops jumped into action, grabbed Fun and pushed him along with kicking boots and slapping hands.
Remo almost jumped out at that point, but decided to let Fun play out his hand. It was his village. He knew what he was doing.
They made Bumba Fun kneel at the commander's feet by striking him on the shoulders with their rifle butts. The old man went down without resistance.
The soldiers surrounded him. All around them the people of the village watched with the drained faces Remo had seen all over Asia.
It was an interrogation, with the commander screaming, Bumba Fun answering meekly, and Remo clenching his teeth and fists, wanting to jump in.
As he watched, his mind counted the soldiers, factored in the number of weapons and the surest and softest targets. He could take them out. Easy. But with all the women and children standing around, there would be friendly casualties.
Then, in the middle of a screaming tirade, the PLA commander pulled out his side arm and shot Bumba Fun in his bad right eye.
AK-47 rifle muzzles followed the body down, and abruptly, at a sharp order from the commander, swung outward in a circle to menace the cowering villagers. Women clutched their children. Children clutched their mothers' skirts. Men stepped in front of their loved ones.
The commander barked out another order that caused rifle safeties to be latched off.
And seeing what was about to happen, Remo came flying out of the tent, his face a tight white mask of fury.
Chapter 26
The Master of Sinanju kept his papery face stiff as he was escorted through the grim stone walls of Drapchi Prison.
It was a substantial place, much larger now than it had been before the Chinese came. Yet its harsh outlines were the same-a low, one-story structure with thin notches cut in the stone instead of windows. It would have been difficult to breach, for the guards were many and heavily armed.
But the guards, for all their stern purpose and clumsy rifles, were charged with keeping prisoners within. That was their first duty. Their second was to hold the prison against resistance fighters determined to liberate Tibetan prisoners.
When the tiny old man with hair like coal dust on an egg was brought to their gate, a Chinese soldier came out and began an argument over who would take possession of his sturdy gray pony, the guard who had arrested him or the keeper of the gate.
The Master of Sinanju listened frozen faced to their foolish argument.
"This pony belongs to me," insisted the soldier who had arrested him.
"And I outrank you," returned the other. "So it is mine."
The outcome was ordained by rank, but the arresting soldier was stubborn. He only gave in after the superior officer showed superior stiffness of neck.
The arresting soldier trudged off to clean his befouled boots, and the superior officer, a captain, took the pony's reins and led it into the gate, which closed after them with a brassy clang.
Chiun rode serenely on the pony's back, having gained entrance to the impregnable Drapchi Prison by the oldest subterfuge known to man. He was pleased that it still worked on the Chinese, even though the Trojans had tattled its secrets to every idle ear until even the whites knew it.
Inside, the Master was made to dismount, which he did silently. The pony was taken away. It had served its purpose, even if it had cost three gold coins to purchase in the border town of Rutog. The captain, obviously interested only in the pony, handed Chiun off to a mere turnkey.
"Come!" the turnkey snapped.
With feigned meekness, Chiun obeyed. He walked through dank corridors, each with doors that had to be unlocked and locked again when they came to them. The Master of Sinanju took careful note of the way. And of the half-starved faces that sometimes peered through brick sized holes in the cell doors.
The cell that awaited him was bare and windowless. The door was shut. A key turned noisily and was withdrawn.
Chiun waited until the last footfall had faded beyond the last closed door. Then he lifted his voice.
"I seek the Bunji Bogd."
Voices came at once. "The Bunji! The Bunji? Is the Bunji here?"
"Silence, Buddhists. Let your Bunji speak!"
"Is the Bunji among us?" a voice asked anxiously.
"Silence! The Master of Sinanju speaks!"
Silence came. A murmur remained. The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes and sharpened his ears. He counted heartbeats, listening to their individual throbs. None beat with the sound that belonged to the Bunji Lama, whom he had plucked from relative obscurity, nor of Kula the Mongol or Lobsang the Tibetan.
They were not here. Not in this wing. He would have to search them out. Here the difficulties might begin.
The cell door was very simple yet exceedingly stout. An aged wood bound in iron. There was no way to reach the tongue of the lock and no way to destroy the lock without the sound raising an alarm, he saw. The hinges were set on the other side, and iron hasps bolted to the wood held door and hinge as one.
The Master of Sinanju extended his balled fists, revealing the long Knives of Eternity that were his carefully maintained, implacably sharp fingernails. Hardened by diet and exercise, they were more supple than horn yet sharper than the keenest blade.