Only the riotously painted walls remained of the days of enlightenment. Only the smell of yak butter and human sweat remained to fill his nostrils with remembrances.
Thondup walked the halls, spinning the prayer wheels, hoping the gods heard his entreaties. Each squeaking seemed to say, "Banish the Chinese. Banish the Chinese. Return the Dalai."
But the years had come and gone, and the Dalai remained in India. A good place. A holy place. But not his place. Hope was fading in the aging heart of Thondup Phintso, last abbot of the Potala.
There were days when he would have been prepared to accept the guidance of the Panchen Lama, who, although a vassal of Beijing, was still of the faith. But the Panchen Lama had died of suspicious causes in Beijing. A heart attack was the stated cause. But his relatives and even advisers had all died of heart attacks within days of this calamity.
Clearly Beijing had given up on that Panchen Lama. Now it was said that there was a new Panchen Lama. It would be many years until the new Panchen could be invested. More years, Thondup Phintso realized, than he had left in this life.
So he spun his prayer wheels and hoped for a miracle.
THE POUNDING on the great wooden entrance doors went almost unheard deep within the Potala. Yet it carried over the squeaking of the prayer wheels. The Chinese. Only the Chinese would pound on the hallowed doors like that. Only the Chinese would come in the middle of the night, with their uncouth accents and their impious demands.
Gliding like a maroon wraith, Thondup Phintso passed toward the entrance and threw open the great red doors.
He gasped at what his eyes drank in.
It was a Mongol, wearing the peaked cap of his race. Over his shoulders was slung a body, sheathed in saffron. And standing at his side, a Korean, very old, with young commanding eyes of hazel.
"Step aside, Priest," said the Mongol, gruffly pushing past. "Make way for the Master of Sinanju."
Thondup Phintso recoiled. The Master of Sinanju! No Master of Sinanju had trod the dust of Tibet in generations.
"What do you wish here? We are closed."
"Sanctuary, Priest," said the Master of Sinanju.
"The Chinese seek you?"
"Not now. But soon."
Thondup Phintso touched prayerful hands to his forehead. "Sanctuary is yours," he murmured.
The Mongol spanked the backside of the figure slung over his broad shoulders and said, "Where can this one sleep?"
Curious, Thondup Phintso craned his shaved head the better to see the insensate one's features. He caught a glimpse of shaggy hair dyed the hue of saffron and a face drained of healthful color. He blinked.
"A white eyes?"
"Restore your own eyes to your skull, Priest, and take us to the deepest, most secure room in this hovel," the Master of Sinanju ordered.
"This is the Potala, and the safest place is the Dalai's own quarters. But it is forbidden for any but the Dalai to take residence there."
The Mongol growled, "This is the Bunji Lama, pyedog!"
"The Bunji!"
"Quickly!"
Hastily Thondup Phintso threw the great doors closed and, taking up a yak butter tallow, led the way. The Bunji Lama! The Bunji Lama was here. There had been rumors, but Thondup Phintso paid the prattling of women and the idle ones no heed. The Bunji! He could not refuse the Bunji anything.
Not even, he thought to himself, if the Bunji did belong to the rival red-hat sect.
Chapter 33
The basalt black of the Tibetan night was shading to cobalt, and the snowcapped massifs of some unnamed mountain range were turning pink and orange with the rising sun when Remo Williams breasted the top of a rise. He stopped.
Below, in a green valley, lay the concrete sprawl of a small Tibetan city. It filled the valley. There was no way around it unless he backtracked or took to the mountains on foot.
It was not Lhasa. Lhasa, from what Remo had read of it, was a kind of Lamont Cranston Shangri-la. There was nothing of historical Tibet in the gray urban sprawl with its sheet-metal roofs and drab concrete uniformity below the mountains. Only the Chinese could have built such a cheerless place in the heart of the breathtaking Tibetan landscape.
Remo was debating what to do when something whistled over his head. His Sinanju-trained senses, fixing the trajectory by its sound, told him he was not in danger. He didn't duck. He looked up.
It was an arrow. A polished thing with a ravenfeather tail. The tip was not an arrowhead, but a perforated box. It whistled in flight.
Remo backtracked its flight with searching eyes.
A lone man stood on a cliff, looking down at him. Not Chinese. He looked vaguely Mongolian in his charcoal native costume. He wore an ornate teak box around his neck. And he lifted a hardwood bow high, as if in signal.
Remo had seen too many cowboy movies not to expect what happened next. Stale human odors were also coming to his nostrils.
On the hills surrounding him, a dozen or so similar figures came to their feet. They brandished bows, knives and oldfashioned rifles inlaid with silver and turquoise with fork rests made from antelope horns. They seemed to be waving to him, as if in warning.
The click was soft but distinct as the jeep's right front tire ran over a soft spot in the road.
Remo knew the sound, understood what it meant and threw himself forward and onto the engine hood. There was no time to brake. Not if he wanted to survive the next three seconds.
There came a whump. The jeep bucked wildly, then slammed back to earth, flattening the three tires the erupting land mine hadn't shredded.
The engine block had protected him from flying shrapnel. A cloud of acrid smoke and road dust mushroomed up, enveloping the jeep, now lurching toward the edge of the mountain pass.
Remo sprang from the hood, landed, rolled and came to his feet in a graceful series of motions as the jeep careened off the side of the mountain. It bounced off a succession of boulders before it stopped. The gas tank exploded with a whoosh that singed the air.
As the jeep crackled, tires melting, far below, Remo looked up. The Tibetans who had obviously planted the mine looked up and shrugged, as if to say, "We tried to warn you."
Remo lifted his voice. He had nothing to lose. He was surrounded. "Chushi Gangdruk?"
"Who you seek, chiling?"
"Bumba Fun." Couldn't hurt to ask, Remo figured.
"Which Bumba Fun?"
"I'll take potluck."
The Tibetan looked vacant.
"Tell him Gonpo Jigme is looking for him."
All around him, Tibetan faces broke apart in startlement. "You are Gonpo Jigme?"
"Yeah."
"We have heard you had come down from Mt. Kailas. Come, come."
Remo started up the sheer rock face. It was the easiest and quickest way for him to reach the man. But the hardy Tibetans, no strangers to scaling mountains, were amazed by the ease with which Remo scaled sheer rock. He seemed to literally float up the rock face.
Remo reached the man, who immediately prostrated himself on the ground. "I am Bumba Fun, O Protector of the Tent."
"Call me Gonpo," said Remo. "All my friends do."
The man got up. "We beg forgiveness for destroying your jeep, Gonpo. We recognized your white face too late to stop you except with our warning arrows."
"I'm headed for Lhasa," Remo said. "I need to get there fast."
"You go to cast out the Chinese enemies of the faith?"
"I go to find the Bunji Lama and pull her chestnuts out of the fire," said Reno.
"There are rumors the Bunji is in Lhasa, to be sure. We will take you through the city, but you must wear Khampa clothes."
"Khampa clothes?"
Bumba Fun struck his chest proudly. "We are Khampa. Fighters. Very fierce. Has Gonpo Jigme not heard of us?"