Warren Murphy: High Priestess

"The hour of your ascendancy draws near," the minister of state security told his charge when the Tashi's sandals at last stood on Tibetan soil for the first time.

Closing his small eyes, the Tashi merely nodded.

"In honor of this momentous event, I am pleased to present to you a gift worthy of your station," the security minister said, snapping his fingers once.

Out of the aircraft, a cadre came, bearing a prayer wheel almost as tall as himself.

The Tashi's attendants gasped at the sight of it. Turning, the Tashi himself went wide of eye.

It stood over four feet tall, the mahogany shaft as thick around as a shepherd's staff. Surmounting it was a prayer wheel the size and shape of a snare drum. It was made of rare woods, inlaid with silver, gold, jade and semiprecious stones.

The Tashi took it. Planting the staff onto the tarmac, he shook it until the wheel hummed, its red and blue and green stones making streaks of varicolored light.

"It is an auspicious augury," the Tashi said, smiling.

Together they glided toward the waiting helicopter. The Tashi allowed one of his attendants to bear the prayer wheel that had been looted from the Potala in the early weeks of the annexation of Tibet, more than a generation ago. It was too heavy for his small-boned form to carry.

When they were over Gonggar, the minister of state security noticed a line of military trucks and vehicles speeding toward the airport town. PLA reinforcements, obviously.

He took comfort in the fact that by the time they reached Lhasa, the stubborn difficulty of the Bunji Lama would be resolved.

TWO T-72 HEAVY BATTLE tanks stood guard on the street called Yanhe Donglu at the south approach to Lhasa proper. They sat stern to stern, 125mm Smoothbore cannon pointed menacingly in the direction of Gonggar.

There was enough space between them for a yak to pass-if the yak wasn't pregnant.

"Slow down," Remo told Bumba Fun when they came to the tanks.

"Do you not mean stop?"

"Slow down first. Then stop."

The truck drew to a halt not ten yards from the yawning Smoothbore muzzles.

"What do we do, Gonpo Jigme?" Bumba Fun asked uncertainly. "Those tanks block our path."

"Give me a minute," said Remo, stepping out.

"To do what?"

"Break the tanks," said Remo.

PLA TANK COMMANDER Yun Ting narrowed his eyes at the lone Khampa who stepped out of the lead truck of the unauthorized convoy. He watched the man approach, apparently unarmed. The way the Khampa walked was too casual to suggest a threat. Still, Yun Ting, seated up in the turret hatch, tripped the lever that controlled the turret's revolutions. The turret jerked left, the better to fix the Khampa with the terrifying maw of its cannon. It was a very intimidating action, designed to promote compliance.

The trouble was the Khampa with the silver-fox turban looked not at all intimidated. Not even when Yun's counterpart in the other tank adjusted his Smoothbore so that the Khampa was fixed in an annihilating cross fire.

The Khampa walked right up to the point where the cannon barrels were within easy reach. Ignoring Yun's shouted demand that he identify himself, the Khampa reached up with casual hands and cupped the lower rims of both barrels in his palms, like some brainless peasant ready to milk the teats of a giant goat.

He used his fingers to feel the hard steel, and Yun noticed they were too white to belong to a true Khampa.

The sound came like a thunderclap. For the rest of his days, Yun thought the sound came first. But he also clearly remembered, in the military prison where they threw him for dereliction of duty, seeing the hands withdraw and snap back in unison. The edges of the twin palms struck the hard rim of the Smoothbore together. And at once the long barrels cracked and split for the entire length.

The thunderous crack that jerked Yun Ting up in his hard seat came then. Not before. His shocked nerves only remembered it the other way.

The twin Smoothbores each fell to the hard asphalt in two sections, perfectly halved.

It was impossible. Unbelievable. And most of all, the insolent Khampa who had destroyed the peoples' property simply stood there in the middle of the road blowing on his fingers and polishing his white knuckles on the breast of his native costume.

His eyes, staring at Yun Ting, were insolent and mocking. They as much as said "I dare you to shoot me now."

It was a dare PLA Tank Commander Yun Ting elected not to take. He called for retreat. There was a machine gun mounted on his turret, it was true, but in his quailing heart, Yun knew it would be of no value against a being who could split the finest steel forged in China with what looked like a casual kung fu chop of each hand.

The T -72s belched noise and smelly exhaust as they jockeyed around, pointed their noseless turrets north and retreated into the city.

To the shamed ears of Yun Ting came the exultant shouts of the Khampas who now had a clear path into the city.

"Gonpo!" they cried. "Gonpo Jigme! Lha gyalo! De tamche pham!"

He did not know who or what Gonpo Jigme was. The rest was perfectly understandable Tibetan. "The Gods are victorious," the Khampas were saying. "The demons are defeated."

Yun Ting did not like being referred to as a demon, but he could not argue with the rest of it. Not when he was in full retreat before a single unarmed being who, for all he knew, was one of the long-banished gods of ancient Tibet returned.

Chapter 37

The last mountain peak shot away from under the PLA helicopter's skids, and the Lhasa Valley opened up like a great jewel box. Its grandeur, its roofs and the winding River Lhasa, dominated by the gargantuan Potala Palace, was almost enough to take the minister of state security's breath away had he not been busy with radio contact with the main PLA garrison in the city below.

The situation was strange. The Bunji Lama remained at large, although the city was being scoured to locate this personage. All Tibetans had been ordered to remain indoors. But the Bunji could not be found.

"There may be no need to find the Bunji," the minister of state security informed the ground. "For once the people of Lhasa know that the Tashi is in their midst, the influence of the Bunji clique will have been crushed."

As they were clearing him to land at the Dragon King Pool behind the Potala, the minister spotted the PLA helicopter resting atop a peak on the other side of the valley. He took a pair of field glasses from a door pocket and brought them to his eyes.

After a moment he spoke into his throat mike. "I have found the Bunji," he said without excitement.

There was no need for excitement. The Bunji and her clique of reactionaries were obviously stranded on the mountaintop. There would be no escape for them.

They had reached endgame.

THE MASTER of Sinanju watched Lhasa from his windy vantage point on the mountaintop, his hands tucked in the warm tunnel of his joined kimono sleeves, his parchment features troubled.

Below, the foolish dragonflies of the People's Liberation Army crisscrossed the city, flying low. They searched in vain, he knew.

Still, he considered, they were not the only ones afflicted with excessive vanity. He glanced toward the resting helicopter where the Bunji Lama sat fuming. It was good that he had taken her voice, for in the long hours that lay between this calm hour and darkness her shrill complaints and lamentations would surely have been unendurable. The Bunji grew impatient with every passing minute, and only the Master of Sinanju understood that to wrest control of Lhasa from the Han Chinese was a task possibly without a satisfactory end.

Abruptly a solitary helicopter breasted the mountains to the south. It dropped toward the city below. Just when it seemed that it would alight without causing difficulties, it rose again and climbed toward them.