Jack Higgins: Year Of The Tiger

“Nigger bastard,” he snarled.

“That’s right, boy, and don’t you forget it. I’m your worst nightmare. Now go.”

They limped away together, disappearing into the night, and Chavasse said, “Good man, Earl. My thanks.”

“Getting too old for this kind of game,” Jackson said. “And so are you. Think about that.”

The Tibetan stood there holding his trilby, rain falling on the shaven head, the yellowing saffron robes beneath the raincoat indicating one thing only: that this was a Buddhist monk. He looked about thirty-five, with a calm and placid face.

“A violent world on occasion, Sir Paul.”

“Well you’re up to date at least,” Chavasse told him. “Why have you been hanging around for the last three days?”

“I wished to see you.”

“Then why not knock on the door?”

“I feared I might be turned away without the opportunity of seeing you. I am Tibetan.”

“I can tell that.”

“I know that I seem strange to many people. My appearance alarms some.” He shrugged. “I thought it simpler to wait in the hope of seeing you in the street.”

“Where you end up at the mercy of animals like those.”

The Tibetan shrugged. “They are young, they are foolish, they are not responsible. The fox kills the chicken. It is his nature. Should I then kill the fox?”

“I sure as hell would if it was my chicken,” Earl Jackson said.

“But that would make me no follower of Lord Buddha.” He turned to Chavasse. “As you may be able to tell I am a Buddhist monk. My name is Lama Moro. I am a monk in the Tibetan temple at Glen Aristoun in Scotland.”

“Christ said that if a man slaps you across the check turn the other one, but he only told us to do it once,” Chavasse said. Jackson laughed out loud. Chavasse carried on. “Have you eaten?”

“A little rice this morning.”

Chavasse turned to Jackson. “Earl, take him to the kitchen. Let him discuss his diet with Lucy. Tell her to feed him. Then bring him up to me.”

“You are a kind man, Sir Paul,” Lama Moro said.

“No, just a wet one,” Chavasse told him. “So let’s get in out of the rain,” and he led the way across the road.

An hour later there was a knock at the drawing room door and in came Lucy, the apple of Jackson’s eye, a face on her like that of some ancient Egyptian princess, her hair tied in a velvet bow, neat in a black dress and apron.

“I’ve got him for you, Sir Paul. Lucky I had plenty of rice and vegetables in. He’s a nice man. I like him.” She stood back and Moro entered in his saffron robes. “I’ve got his raincoat and hat in the cloakroom,” she added, and left.

A glass in his hand, Chavasse was sitting in one of the armchairs beside the fire, which burned brightly.

“Come and sit down.”

“You are too kind.” Moro sat in the chair opposite him.

“I won’t offer you one of these.” Chavasse raised the glass. “It’s Bushmills Irish whiskey, the oldest in the world, some say, and invented by monks.”

“How enterprising.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Chavasse said.

“Not really. I left Tibet with other refugees when I was fifteen years of age. That was in 1975.”

“I see. And since then?”

“Three years with the Dalai Lama in India, then he arranged for me to go to Cambridge to your old college – Trinity. You were also at the Sorbonne. I too have studied there, but Harvard eluded me.”

“You certainly know a great deal about me,” Chavasse told him.

“Oh, yes,” Moro said calmly. “Your father was French.”

“Breton,” Chavasse said. “There is a difference.”

“Of course. Your mother was English. You had a unique gift for languages, which explains your studies at three of the world’s greatest universities. A Ph.D. at twenty-one, you returned to Cambridge to your own college, where they made you a Fellow at twenty-three. So there you were, at an exceptionally young age, set on an academic career at a great university.”

“And then?” Chavasse enquired.

“You had a colleague at Trinity whose daughter was married to a Czech. When he died, she wanted to return to England with her children. The Communists refused to let her go and the British Foreign Office wouldn’t help.” Moro shrugged. “You went in on your own initiative and got them out, sustaining a slight wound from a border guard’s rifle.”

“Ah, the foolishness of youth,” Chavasse said.

“Safely back at Cambridge, you were visited by Sir Ian Moncrieff, known only as the Chief in intelligence circles, the man who controlled the Bureau, the most secret of all British intelligence units.”

“Where in the hell did you get all this from?” Chavasse demanded.

“Sources of my own,” Moro told him. “Twenty years in the field for the Bureau and twenty years as Chief after Moncrieff’s death. A remarkable record.”

“The only thing remarkable about it is that I’m still here,” Chavasse said. “Now who exactly are you?”

“As I told you, I’m from the Tibetan temple at Glen Aristoun in Scotland.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Chavasse told him. “A Buddhist community.”

“I live and work there. I am the librarian. I have been collating information on the escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in March 1959.”

A great light dawned. “Oh, I see now,” Chavasse said. “You’ve found out that I was there. That I was one of those who got him out.”

“Yes, I know all about that, Sir Paul, heard of those adventures from the Dalai Lama’s own lips. No, it is what comes after that interests me.”

“And what would that be?” Chavasse asked warily.

“In 1962, exactly three years after you helped the Dalai Lama to escape, you returned to Tibet to the town of Changu to effect the escape of Dr. Karl Hoffner, who’d worked as a medical missionary in the area for years.”

“Karl Hoffner?” Chavasse said.

“One of the greatest mathematicians of the century,” Moro said. “As great as Einstein.” He was almost impatient now. “Come, Sir Paul, I know from sound sources that you undertook the mission, and yet there is no record of Hoffner other than his time in Tibet. Did he die there? What happened?”

“Why do you wish to know?”

“For the record. The history of my country’s troubled times under Chinese rule. Please, Sir Paul, is there any reason for secrecy after thirty-four years?”

“No, I suppose not.” Chavasse poured another whiskey. “All right. Strictly off the record, of course. Flight of fancy when you put it on the page.”

“I agree. You can trust me.”

Chavasse sipped a little Bushmills. “So, where to begin?”

But where did anything begin? A long time ago, he told himself. A hell of a long time ago.

Chavasse wore a sheepskin shuba wrapped closely around him, sheepskin boots and a hat of some indeterminate fur, flaps down over his ears. He cradled a British Lee Enfield rifle in one arm and allowed the hardy mountain pony to find its own way. He thought he heard a plane at one point, but could not be sure as the sound faded rapidly.

The Land of Snows the Tibetans called this part of the border area, and it was well named, a living nightmare of a place with passes through the mountains as high as twenty thousand feet. It was not uncommon for mules in the caravans in the old days to die of asthma and for their masters to get pulmonary edema as their lungs filled with water.

An ironic way to die, Chavasse thought, to drown while standing up. Of course, it didn’t matter these days. There were no more caravans to India, by Chinese decree.

It started to snow again lightly and he paused to check the ground ahead. The sky being blanketed by low swollen clouds, there was no snow glare. He had spent the previous night in a herdsman’s cave, sheltering from a sudden blizzard, and had started again at first light. Now, the pass between the peaks emptied onto a final slope that ran down towards the Indian border. In fact, in the far distance there was a flicker of colour, obviously a flag, and Chavasse urged his pony forward.