The Cloud Maker

Chapter 35

Captain Zhu stood at the head of the pathway, watching the trail of soldiers pass beneath him in single file.

The eight soldiers from the SOF unit in Chengdu had arrived before dawn at Gonkar airport on a special charter Ilyushin IL-76 jet. As the vast balloon tyres slowly ground to a halt and the rear of the plane lowered with a hiss of hydraulics, Zhu had watched the soldiers swiftly clamber out and on to the waiting trucks. He didn’t need the files he’d been faxed on each one of them to know they were professionals. You could see it from the way they moved.

Over two days of travelling had followed on hard, sun-baked roads. They had then left the trucks and started walking along meandering trails, the soldiers maintaining an unrelenting pace. Each carried an enormous pack, their QBZ-95 assault rifles held loosely in front of them. At the slightest noise, the butt of the rifles instinctively shifted up into their shoulders while their thumb clicked off the safety catch. They would stand perfectly still, eyes scanning their surroundings, bodies tense, as they waited for the all clear. Despite the comparatively easy terrain, it was obvious that none of them was taking anything for granted.

Zhu had commanded this kind of man before: every movement drilled into them by training, every order completed with detached professionalism. For them, the mission objectives changed, but the realities of life in the field was always the same. For hour after hour they marched along in the mountain heat, utterly indifferent to it, while the remainder of the group struggled to keep pace.

Lumbering along at the back, two hundred yards behind the last in line, was the bearish frame of René Falkus. Completely at odds with the military green of the others, he wore thick brown corduroy trousers and a pale blue shirt. A spotted red and white handkerchief was tied round his neck in a vain effort to absorb the rivulets of sweat running down from his hairline, while his chest heaved in the thin mountain air. Already the sun had seared his forehead and cheeks a painful pink and he squinted, eyes half closed, against its harsh light.

René glanced up to see Zhu standing high above the path, watching the line of men move past. For a moment their eyes met before René wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and trudged on. He settled back into his normal pace, his eyes reverting to the spot they had been trained on all day.

Three from the back of the line and marching purposefully ahead was the only member of the team who had been taken from Lhasa, aside from Chen and Zhu himself. And the moment René had stepped up into the truck, he had recognised the same shaven head and thickset neck he had seen in the interrogation room. It was the brute who had raped little Anu. And now here he was, walking along the path, only a few hundred feet ahead.

Since they’d first set out René had found it almost impossible to tear his eyes away from the man. He studied the weathered hands stuffing rations into a rucksack; the jaw moving slackly as the man chewed and spat out tobacco. Even his blank expression drew René’s gaze. And yet, each time the man looked up, René found himself avoiding eye contact, like a schoolchild with the class bully.

Later he had learned that the man’s name was Xie and that he was nothing to do with the other soldiers. He was a rank private from a conscript division, and at first René had wondered why he was here at all. He looked so disorganised and out of place, nothing more than a thuggish brawler amongst professionals. He shuffled from one task to the next, his beady eyes always fixed on the others, making poor attempts to mimic their movements.

Then it had occurred to René. Zhu had brought him along for his benefit. It was a sick way of controlling him; a daily reminder of little Anu’s rape and what else could happen if he refused to help the Chinese.

René looked up ahead to where the route narrowed and the path twisted its way around the side of a colossal mountain range. Above the foothills he could see the beginnings of a sheer-sided rock-face rising up to the snowline. Beyond it, the entire mid-section of the mountain was lost behind a thick layer of cloud.

The soldiers’ boots crunched to a halt ahead of him. René stopped, thankful for the rest, and watched as Chen walked back down the line and stopped in front of Zhu. He was holding a military issue map and a GPS in his other hand.

‘We are on the outskirts of another village, sir,’ he said.

Zhu looked up at the ridge and the smoke curling into the sky.

‘Which one?’

‘The last, Captain. It’s called Menkom.’

They both walked to the front of the line. An old monk was sitting on a mound of earth, basking in the sunshine.

‘Ask him if he has seen any Westerners pass this way,’ Zhu said, motioning for Chen to translate.

Chen spoke a few words in halting Tibetan but the old monk stayed silent, staring right through him, his prayer wheel spinning with gentle sweeps of his wrist.

‘Foreigners,’ Chen repeated again, sensing the soldiers pulling up behind him to watch what was going on. ‘Have you seen any?’

The monk didn’t answer.

Inclining his head so it was only an inch from the old man’s ear, Chen whispered in Tibetan, ‘Don’t make it hard on yourself, old man. I know you understand me.’

There was a faint crunch of gravel as someone shifted their weight from one leg to the next and then the soft, crackling sound of Zhu inhaling on his cigarette. They were all watching him. Waiting for him to do something. Still the monk didn’t answer.

Biting down on his bottom lip, Chen swung back his arm and brought the flat of his hand whipping across the old monk’s face. The slap sent him rolling back through the dirt, knocking the prayer wheel he had been holding out of his hand.

Zhu took a step forward, idly picking it up, his left hand stroking the line of beads. The old monk stared up at him from the ground, watching him finger his most sacred possession.

‘You need to be more persuasive,’ Zhu said. ‘He doesn’t seem to understand.’

For a split second Chen hesitated. Then he moved forward again, grabbing the monk by the front of his tunic and lifting him off his feet. The old man swung in his hands like a rag doll, toes paddling the air as if desperately trying to connect with the ground.

Chen stared into his eyes, willing him to say something, anything. He knew how far the captain would take this just on a whim.

‘For Christ’s sake, put him down,’ René said, pushing his way to the front of the group. Chen paused, still holding the monk in the air, while Zhu spun round, his black eyes hardening.

‘This monk wears a red robe, or what’s left of one anyway,’ said René. ‘That means he’s part of the Gelugpa sect and they often take a vow of silence. Even if he wanted to answer, from the look of him he probably lost the power of speech years ago.’

There was a pause as Chen looked at Zhu and Zhu stared at René, trying to assess whether he was telling the truth. René could feel sweat gathering in pools under his arms.

Eventually Zhu gave a brief nod and Chen released his grip on the old monk who crumpled in a heap on the ground.

‘Thank you for enlightening us,’ Zhu said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He then moved closer, whispering into René’s ear, ‘Interfere again and I will have one of the soldiers break your legs.’

René stared at the ground as Zhu flicked away his cigarette and without another word, continued up the trail towards the village. The other soldiers hoisted their packs and followed, leaving René standing next to Chen.

‘Must have been scary, huh?’

Chen turned, surprised to hear the Westerner speak to him.

‘A pacifist the same age as my grandmother. And all you’ve got is a machine gun.’

As he spoke, René looked directly into Chen’s eyes and for the briefest moment, thought he saw a trace of doubt there. He opened his mouth to say something more but Chen grabbed his shoulder, swivelling him round so he faced the village once more.

‘Back in line,’ he said in broken English, pushing René forward.

Ahead of them Zhu walked on, finally coming to a halt in the central part of the village. His eyes ranged over a few of the villagers lying emaciated and sick in their doorways, unmoved even by the sight of a Chinese patrol.

A stream of water trickled past each house, wending its way around piles of rubbish that had been left to putrify in the mud. Bottles, old bits of rope and plastic bags were scattered over the ground. A few goats and a dog sniffed through the rubbish in front of one of the larger houses. The dog was bone-thin, its ribs visible through its matted coat as it chewed on the end of a splintered bone. As Zhu watched, the dog’s jaw widened and it retched. It sniffed a couple of times, then started eating its own vomit.

Zhu approached one of the piles of rubbish, his boots squelching in the soft mud by the stream. He moved slowly, eyes scanning the ground. From his years of experience at the PSB, it was something he did automatically. Rubbish was the one thing everyone forgot to hide. A hundred yards further up he stopped, eyes settling on a small, plastic bottle partially concealed in the dirt. With the tip of his boot, he carefully flipped over the object and peered down at the writing. It was in English — an empty bottle of painkillers.

The Westerners had been here after all.

Zhu allowed himself a brief smile. Along the last stretch of the trail, he had started to worry that they had broken off earlier and headed up the mountains. The sheer walls of rock looked impassable to him, but then again, he didn’t pretend to be any kind of mountaineer. But this village was the end of the trail. They must have started climbing from here.

Pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket, Zhu dabbed his forehead. The sun was directly above them now, its glare intensified by the rarefied mountain air. Moving back a few paces towards one of the larger wooden shacks, he stood under its eaves by the front door, his eyes gradually adjusting to the shadow.

A moment later he saw Chen approaching, striding across the open ground.

‘Your orders, sir?

‘Set up camp in the lower fields away from this place,’ he said, eyes taking in the rest of the houses where a few of the villagers sat languidly on the steps. ‘The Westerners were here and somebody saw something. Line up the women by the stream for questioning. And, Lieutenant, don’t stop until you find out exactly what they know.’

‘Yes, sir. And the rest of the village?’

Zhu paused for a moment in thought, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. He was about to speak when he felt something behind him brush against his right hand. He flinched, spinning round on his heel in alarm.

Lying on the wooden doorstep of the house was a small boy in an oversized shirt that was bleached by dirt and age. He had been tucked behind a decrepit bench by the door and Zhu hadn’t even noticed him when he had first come in under the shade. While they had been speaking, he had crawled forward and stretched up to touch the nail-less fingers of Zhu’s right hand in an effort to get his attention. The boy looked up at him with pleading eyes, his scrawny body ravaged by cholera.

‘Help us,’ he breathed, his chest working up and down from the effort, making his collar bones stand out under his sunken skin. From the look on his face, it was all too obvious what he was saying. Zhu didn’t need a translation.

Zhu stared down at him, frozen by the physical contact. His eyes ran over the boy’s small hands, dirtied and grasping as they pulled on his fingers once again, touching the stretched skin on the tips where his nails had once been.

Wrenching his arm free, Zhu strode back into the harsh sunlight, his lips curled in revulsion. He frantically wiped his right hand on the side of his trousers, retreating from the child another pace.

‘Burn the village,’ he hissed, wiping his hand one last time and placing it deep in his trouser pocket. He looked across at Chen who stood bewildered by the front step of the house.

‘Burn it to the ground.’