Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

‘Send them now,’ Zhu ordered. He began folding shut the fly-sheet of his tent, then paused. ‘And make sure one of them is that idiot private.’

The sergeant saluted then continued back along the line of tents, squatting down by Chen’s. He banged on the tent frame before reaching forward and pulling open the zipper. The lieutenant was there, sitting with his back to the entrance.

‘Sir, the captain wants you to bring the satellite imagery to his tent.’

Chen didn’t turn, instead only raising his right hand in response. The sergeant nodded briefly, then straightened up, walking back to his own tent, grateful to be out of the cold.

Chen remained absolutely still, letting the open tent door flap in the wind. He had been in the exact same position for nearly an hour, staring down at the rucksack by his feet. Eventually, he closed his eyes, feeling the nervous weight press down on his chest, stifling his breathing.

He had no choice. He was going to have to tell the captain.

After they had first made camp, Chen had unfolded his laptop and pressed the start button. Nothing happened. He rubbed his hands over the cold metal before pushing the button again, craning his head down to listen for the soft whir of the hard drive booting up. Nothing. With a growing sense of dread, he’d swivelled the computer over in his hands and immediately realised what was wrong.

The battery was missing. Someone had deliberately removed it.

He’d immediately looked in the bag for the spare, but it had been taken too. Then he realised something else was missing. The map. He had carefully folded it inside the screen of the laptop.

Falkus . . . It had to be him. Chen had left the pelican case with all the communication equipment by the entrance to his tent the previous evening. Even the small rectangular batteries for the GSM 900 satellite phones had been pulled out from the protective foam casing and were gone.

Chen had frantically tried to find a way of rewiring the solar panels to link directly into the power adaptor. He knew it wouldn’t work, but tried anyway, cutting back the plastic coating on the wires with the razor edge of his survival knife and twisting the metal fibres together. The panels only had the power to trickle charge the batteries and without a single flicker of power he had eventually given up, leaving a tangled heap of wires at his feet.

There was no other choice. He was going to have to tell the captain he no longer had the map.

Chen inhaled slowly, steadying his breathing. When they had studied the maps together at Menkom, he remembered the monastery as being due east from the cliff edge. But due east led them straight into this impassable avalanche of rocks, and even if they did manage to find a way through, the gulley behind looked impossibly steep. Had he made a mistake? Was the monastery really on another bearing altogether?

If only he had the damn’ maps!

Eventually Chen rocked forward on to his knees. He slowly manoeuvred his massive frame round inside the tent and laced up his snow-covered boots.

As he stepped out into the wind, he shivered from the sudden change in temperature. His right hand instinctively went up to the top pocket of his winter jacket, resting on the photos of his family that he knew were carefully tucked inside. Tilting his chin up defiantly, he took a deep breath.

He was an officer of the PSB, not some common villager. Zhu would have to treat him by the book.

He trudged forward purposefully, passing the line of tents, but as he drew closer to Zhu’s, his pace slowed further with every stride. The wind tugged at his hair. Once again he felt a shiver run down his spine.

This time, however, it had nothing to do with the cold.

Chapter 44

Rega sat in the dark of his chambers, thumbing through the string of jade prayer beads. They passed over the back of his hand with an endless clack, clack, clack.

In the far corner, a small fire burned in the hearth, but did little to warm the remainder of the room. Drang stood close by, slowly working some heavy leather bellows. With each gust of air the fire crackled to life, the embers flaring white and sending shadows dancing on the high, vaulted ceiling.

Placing the bellows back on their stand, Drang sat back down at a small table and continued to thumb through a giant leather-bound book, his ugly face creased in concentration. The book was filled with ornate designs, some sketched in black ink, others outlined in ornate gold leaf. The pages crackled as he turned them. Rega’s head twitched towards him with impatience.

‘Well?’

‘Not yet, Father,’ said Drang, flicking over another page, and studying the next symbol.

A blackened metal kettle hung from a chain above the centre of the fire, slowly twisting in the heat. As it turned, some of the water boiled over the edges, sloshing onto the coals with a hiss.

A muscle twitched in Rega’s face. Since the messenger had told him that Menkom was burning, the old memories had begun to resurface again.

Five decades had passed, but he remembered that night in every detail; the intoxicating heat of the burning rooftops, the panic as he stumbled blind through rhododendron bushes, headlong into the night. Despite so many years and the peace he had found at Geltang, the same feeling of absolute terror washed over him. And only now, with the threat before him once again, did he finally realise that the terror had never left. It had always been with him, behind every waking thought and deed.

And now the Chinese were here again. The messenger had reported towers of smoke rising into the sky from the village at the bottom of the cliff-face, before spotting a small military encampment in the valley directly below. It could be no mere coincidence. The Westerners had led them there, straight to their gates.

The single consolation was that they still had to discover the way up the rock face and then pass through the Kooms, and without the Kalak Tantra, surely that was not possible?

But the Chinese weren’t the only threat. The Westerners were already within their walls. And now it appeared that the Abbot had welcomed them with open arms, allowing them to wander through the monastery at will and discover its secrets. This had to stop. The old fool’s misplaced belief in them would be the ruin of them all.

Surely now, with the enemy pressing in on them, the Abbot would finally see sense? He would understand the need for action.

Action. Rega’s lips moved as he mulled the word over in his mind. That is what they truly needed – action.

For years now he had believed that Geltang itself had to change. It had to evolve and understand the true nature of the modern world and fight for what it held dear. Every other religion had shed blood for its belief, yet still they persisted in their passive ways. Even as their lights were snuffed out one by one by the Chinese.

Tibet had always been in the balance, the Chinese only maintaining control through fear and isolation. In every village and town, the hatred ran deep; a tinderbox requiring only the slightest spark. For fifty years, Beijing had sat like a cancerous plague across their land, robbing every last vestige of pride and identity from their people.

And while the people suffered, while their monasteries were razed to the ground and their leader fled into exile, Geltang had done nothing but remain hidden, sulking in the shadows of the Himalayas. Decades of inaction had left them unsure and fragmented, the Abbot nothing more than a slave to the old ways.

Yet the truth was plain to see. They were the single power that could unify the tribes of Tibet. Under Geltang, there could be a call to arms, a focus for the revolution. The treasure that they had held for so long would give them the legitimacy they required. Now, they just had to fight.