The Cloud Maker

Chapter 39

At the base of an enormous cliff, Captain Zhu stood with a thick-weave blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was early-morning and a heavy mist hung in the cold air. He had taken the blanket off one of the yaks and the lingering smell seemed to seep through every pore of his skin, worsening his already foul mood.

Five hundred yards from where he stood, the patrol’s tents were arranged in a semi-circle around a low fire. Thin wisps of smoke smouldered up from the wood and wet heather crackling feebly. The whole camp was still. It was their third day in the same position.

Zhu stared at the cliff-face, the same thoughts circling over and over in his mind. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it.

When they had first begun interrogating the villagers, none of them had said a word. But as the women were forced to stand on the banks of the stream in the sweltering heat of the midday sun, the weaker of them soon collapsed. One woman, skeletal from illness, eventually pointed to the cliff-face as she sagged to her knees, insisting that was the way the Westerners had gone.

Every day, Zhu had walked underneath the exact same spot, wondering how they could have climbed it. The rock was sheer, reaching up hundreds of feet into the sky. Only the summit was lost in a thick band of cloud that seemed to hang over the mountainside interminably. He shook his head, eyes slowly tracing up and down the overhanging rock. He was missing something, he was sure of it. There had to be an easier way.

His eyes followed the line of a deep-set crack that ran from the summit right down to the base. There was something about it that drew his attention. He stood motionless for several minutes, just staring at it with his eyes blurring in and out of focus. Eventually he turned away from the cliff and lit a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs in frustration.

Why were the Westerners here exactly? What was so special about this place? The border and the route to India were over eighty kilometres south of Menkom.

Perhaps he’d been wrong and they weren’t trying to get the boy across the border after all. What if India had never been their destination and there was something here, something beyond these mountains, that they were trying to reach? That was the only possible explanation. Unless… unless Falkus had been leading him astray from the very beginning and they’d been wasting their time staring up at that cliff-face.

Zhu turned suddenly, stalking across the scrub and heather back to camp.

Emerging from the fly-sheet of his tent, René stepped out unsteadily into the fresh air. He looked across the valley, enjoying the misty quiet of the morning before yawning heavily. His hand went down the front of his trousers, rearranging himself, as he turned back to the inners of his tent and pulled on a thick knitted jumper that was fractionally too short for him, exposing a patch of hairy midriff.

As René took in the glorious mountain panorama, he caught sight of Zhu striding purposefully towards him. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was anyone else at camp, but everything was still. The captain obviously wanted him.

‘Oh, shit.’

René shook his head and moved slowly towards the fire, poking one of his tea bags into the bottom of a plastic cup. He couldn’t stand it when there were only the two of them in camp. Everything about the captain made his skin crawl.

Each morning the routine was always the same. While two pairs of soldiers scouted in each direction along the cliffs, the others usually left before dawn and set up target practice in one of the fields below the village. René would lie in his sleeping bag, listening to the crack of their QBZ-95 rifles echo across the valley, the sound muted by the damp heather. They would come back a few hours later, tossing the splintered wooden targets on the fire, each one with a fist-sized chunk blown out of the centre by the tight grouping of 5.56mm rounds.

The only other person who stayed in camp was Chen, but he seemed to spend the majority of his time inside his tent, fly-sheet zipped shut, tapping away on a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 laptop. The computer was lightweight with a magnesium alloy cover and a waterproof screen — standard issue for the elite patrols in the field. Chen had it hooked up to an Inmarsat BGAN system, folding open the halves of the satellite dish like an upended briefcase on a rock by his tent. Above the dish, a long string of solar panels dangled from the top of his tent, the sheets of dull blue silicon absorbing what little energy there was from the clouded sky. Occasionally, Chen’s broad face would emerge and he would minutely adjust the solar panels to better catch the sun before sinking back inside his tent for the remainder of the afternoon.

This often left René and Zhu alone by the fire, and despite the open space René still felt flashes of the same claustrophobia he had suffered in the police cell. But this morning was different. He could tell by Zhu’s stride that he wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. Something was about to give.

The captain arrived by the fire, his eyes as black and lifeless as a shark.

‘They were never heading for the Indian border, were they?’

René looked up in surprise.

‘What? No, I never said they were. They were heading back to Makalu to do some climbing.’

‘So why stop here? Why didn’t they head towards Makalu?’

The pitch of Zhu’s voice had risen alarmingly.

‘Look, I know as much as you do,’ René said defensively. ‘They told the yak herders to come this way instead and Menkom’s the last place they were seen. That’s all I know.’

As he said the village’s name, René’s eyes instinctively switched up the valley towards the blackened houses on the far ridge. Husks were all that remained; broken beams, twisted and collapsed, black from ash. They had seen smoke rising from them for three days now, while the villagers limped their way back along the path to find what shelter they could in the lower fields.

‘That’s all I know,’ he repeated, pouring some boiling water into his cup and trying to avoid eye contact.

‘We’ll see,’ Zhu said quietly. ‘We’ll see how much you really know.’

Over René’s shoulder, Zhu noticed two soldiers making their way back along the cliff edge from their patrol. As they came closer, he recognised the sergeant from the SOF group and Xie, that idiot private they had brought with them from Lhasa.

‘If you don’t provide us with answers then all you are is dead weight,’ Zhu continued, his eyes running over René’s bulbous stomach. ‘And I have no use for dead weight. It gets cut away.’

The word ‘cut’ came out in a hiss. As Zhu signalled to the soldiers, René’s mind started reeling with fear. What did he mean, ‘cut away’? He felt his mouth go dry as the soldiers started hurrying towards them. He had seen enough already to realise that Captain Zhu had neither morals nor conscience. Ever since Zhu had first walked into his restaurant, René had been living with the terrifying realisation that this man could do whatever he wanted to him and nobody on earth would be able to stop him.

Zhu gave a few curt orders in Mandarin and without warning the two soldiers rushed towards René, grabbing him by the front of his woollen jumper. Xie was first, his ruddy cheeks and square neck only inches from his face, but René’s eyes were immediately drawn past him to the shoulder strap of the sergeant’s rucksack. Taped across the webbing, he could see the outline of a large survival knife, its metal handle faded and scratched from use. Each soldier had one and despite only being able to see an impression of the blade through the sheath, he knew enough about the sergeant to bet that it was razor-sharp.

René felt his stomach clench tight.

‘You have until tomorrow morning to find out where they went,’ he heard Zhu say from behind him. ‘After that, you are of no further use to me.’

Xie shunted René forward so that he stumbled, tripping over one of the guy ropes. A moment later he was dragged out of the camp towards the long line of the cliff edge.

Zhu ignored the Westerner’s shouts, his mind already elsewhere. Time was ticking away and he still had no results. One month. That’s what he had said to the Director General of the PSB. One month. Yet that time was already nearly up and he knew that Beijing would be waiting impatiently for his next report.

There was a rustling of fabric and Chen’s massive frame slowly unfolded itself from his tent. Reaching back inside, he grabbed his laptop, disconnecting one of the wires as he pulled it out into the open.

‘Sir, I have found something that might be of interest.’

Zhu’s eyes turned towards him.

‘I’ve just downloaded a new email that concerns a report from Cambridge, England.’

Zhu remained silent, an air of hostility surrounding his entire body. Chen cleared his throat, looking back to the computer screen as if for support.

‘The report was from four weeks ago but I am afraid I hadn’t seen it as my security clearance was temporarily revoked… after the incident… with the boy.’

Zhu waited, his patience straining.

‘I have been going back through all my files and found that the report concerns one of the men we are looking for — Luca Matthews. He purportedly spoke to an old informant about something called a beyul. The report was filed by a…’ he paused, double-checking the screen ‘…a Professor Tang.’

Zhu stared at him, his eyes suddenly alive.

‘Read the report again.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He read the brief in full, including dates and times.

‘I’ve checked twice, sir, and couldn’t find any reference to the word beyul in any of our files.’

‘That’s because it’s classified,’ Zhu snapped distractedly. He turned back towards the cliff, feeling a sudden surge of excitement. He’d been right all along. There was something up there — but could it really be one of the fabled beyuls? Surely the last of them had been destroyed over thirty years ago? The Cultural Revolution had put paid to all that. They’d combed every river gorge, every mountain summit.

Could there really be any left?

‘Get Beijing on the line immediately. I want full satellite imagery for everything above this cliff-face. Get them to divert a satellite if necessary. And I want full-spectrum coverage to cut straight through this cloud.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Lieutenant, ensure that no one in the bureau hears of this. Instruct the technician to delete all reference to the search once it has been emailed to you.’

Chen looked momentarily puzzled, but then quickly turned back to his tent.

After a moment, Zhu heard him rummaging through the mess of clothing and cables to retrieve one of their two GSM 900 satellite phones.

He stood for a moment, staring up at the sheer side of mountain, his eyes tracing up and down the great lines of the rock. If there really was a beyul up there, he was sure that’s where the Gelugpas would have hidden the boy. It made perfect sense. But the discovery had to remain his, and his alone. He wasn’t about to let anyone else at the bureau claim credit for such a monumental finding. The beyul would be his and that cliff was now the only thing standing between him and the final hiding place of the Panchen Lama.

Come tomorrow morning, he would start to send the soldiers up there two at a time, whether they could climb or not.