The Ninth Buddha

I “And if she is poor?”

“Then she will have to stay with him.”

, “Even if he beats her?”

He nodded.

A “Even if he beats her.”

She paused.

“I think your people may be very unhappy,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Sometimes I think they are.”

Chindamani sighed.

“I don’t understand why such a simple thing should cause such unhappiness.” She paused.

“Do I make you happy? Are you happy when you lie with me?”

He nodded. She was beautiful.

“How could I not be happy? I wish for nothing else.”

“But if I ceased to please you?”

“You will never cease to please me.”

“Never is very long.”

“Even so.”

She sat, watching him, lifting her lower lip with little white teeth, breathing the perfumed air.

“Does my body please you?” she asked.

“I never slept with a man before you. I find everything about you wonderful. But you have known other women. Does my body please you in bed?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Very much.”

She stood and unbuttoned the white gown and let it fall to her feet. She was naked. Only coils of incense smoke veiled her. It was the first time he had seen her naked: each time they had made love ‘ on their journey, it had been in the darkness of their unlit tent.

“Does this please you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Yes.”

Afterwards she seemed sad and a little withdrawn. She had grown serious again, just as he had seen her before, after her talks with the abbot.

She stood and went to a door that led on to a small terrace.

Opening it, she stepped outside. She wore her white gown: the night air was cold. He joined her and took her hand.

She looked out at the darkness. The stars seemed so far away, the darkness so near, so immediate.

“Don’t think I can be yours forever,” she said.

“You must not think that ‘ He said nothing. Below them, he could see lights in the valley, little lights that twinkled as if the sky had fallen.

“What must I think, then?” he finally asked.

She turned, and he saw tears in her eyes.

“That I am dying, that I am dead, that I have been reborn where nothing can ever come to me not you, not the Lady Tara, not even the darkness.”

“Please,” he said.

“Don’t speak to me in riddles. You know I don’t understand. When you speak like this, you frighten me.” He paused and shivered.

“You say we’re all reborn. Very well, if you’re planning on dying and coming back, why can’t I do the same?

What’s to stop me?”

Her cheeks flushed angrily.

“What do you know of it?” she snapped.

“Do you think it’s easy?

In places like this, men spend their whole lives preparing for death.

They study it like a text that has to be memorized. They know its face as if it were the face of a loved one; the sound of its voice, the feel of its breath, the touch of its fingers. And still, at the very last moment, their thoughts are corrupted and they fail. Do you think you can make death so easy?”

He took her face in his hands. The tears on her cheeks were cold and frosted.

“Yes,” he said.

“I love you. That’s enough. Wherever you go, I’ll follow you. I swear.”

She bowed her head and put her arms around his waist. In the darkness outside, an owl swooped low across a frosted field in search of mice.

They set off the next day on ponies supplied by the abbot of Gharoling. He had wanted to send a monk with them as guide, but Chindamani had vetoed his suggestion for reasons not altogether clear to Christopher. He, for his part, was entirely happy to be alone with her. Her downcast mood of the previous evening had passed, and she smiled at him often while they packed the ponies with the provisions they would need.

The abbot accompanied them to the gates of the monastery, Christopher sensed in his manner a calmness and a self-possession he had not encountered previously in a lama. It was as if every gesture he made, every word he spoke was intended to convey the simplest of messages: that everything is transient, and even the greatest concerns will soon pass into insignificance.

“Travel in easy stages,” he advised them.

“Rest when you are tired. Do not drive your animals hard. Be easy with yourselves and the road will be easy with you.”

They thanked him and turned to leave. As they passed through the gates and started down the hill, a small processions of monks wound its way past them, carrying what seemed to be a human figure wrapped in a white sheet.

“What’s happening?” Christopher asked.

“Is it a burial?”

Chindamani nodded, sober again.

“It’s the hermit,” she said.

“They found him dead last night. He had not taken the food they left him for six days.” She paused.

“He died on the day after we arrived.”

The monks passed by reciting a slow dirge, heading towards a secluded area high on the hillside, where the gomchen’s emaciated remains would be cut into food for vultures. A cloud passed over the sky and threw a shadow across the valley of Gharoling.

Tibet moved past beneath their feet, a carpet of grass and barren soil and rock that sometimes erupted in patterns of broken ice or bright mountain rivulets. At times they rode, at others they walked, leading their ponies by their bridles. They had named the animals Pip and Squeak, after the little dog and penguin whose adventures William followed every day in the Daily Mirror. To Chindamani, who had never seen a cartoon or a newspaper, much less a penguin, the names were little more than pee-ling eccentricities.

The ponies were indifferent to names, English or Tibetan, and simply got on with the job of plodding along the road. That was what life was about, after all: plodding and eating and sleeping.

It was not all that different for the two humans, except that they at least could choose when to move and when to halt, when to eat and when to sleep. They avoided all major towns, preferring not to draw official attention to Christopher’s presence. The abbot of Gharoling had given Chindamani a letter bearing his seal, and this they used from time to time to secure them lodging. They stayed in tasam houses caravanserais where they could find fodder for their animals and shelter for themselves or in small monasteries where Chindamani’s letter secured them more than just a bed for the night.

Wherever she went, Chindamani was received with respect, even reverence. Christopher was an appendage to her holiness as the incarnation of Tara and a lifetime’s inexperience of the world outside Dorje-la made it impossible for her to act as though she were an ordinary mortal. With Christopher she could be herself or at least, that part of herself that she reserved from others but to everyone else she showed only her incarnation al face.

They travelled ever northwards and a little to the east, heading for the Great Wall and the border with Inner Mongolia. They passed to the west of Shigatse, following the course of the Tsangpo.

On their right, at the foot of Mount Dromari lay the red walls and golden roofs of Tashilhunpo Monastery, the seat of the Panchen Lama. On Chindamani’s instructions, they hurried past, eager to leave Tashilhunpo behind.

Six days later, they passed through Yanbanchen, where a road struck east for Lhasa and Peak Potala. Just outside the town, an official stopped them- and began to question Christopher. But Chindamani interrupted him sharply. The abbot’s letter was again produced and the official wilted visibly. They did not stop again until Pip and Squeak were about to drop and Yanbanchen was far behind.

After Shigatse, the going was hard: steep ridges, dark ravines and furious mountain streams blocked their path again and again.

They found numerous villages and monasteries, but the mountains through which they rode were bare and forbidding, cleft by narrow gorges whose walls towered above them, blotting out the sunlight.

Each day the world was reborn for Chindamani. The simplest things held her attention as though they were miracles. And in their fashion they were, for her at least. She had come from a world of un melting snow and ice into a land of changes, where sun and shadows played complicated games with grass and rocks and shimmering lakes, and where sudden openings in the hills revealed clear vistas stretching for mile after unexpected mile. She had never seen so clearly or so far.

She saw men and women as though for the first time. So many faces, so many styles of dress, so many occupations: she had never guessed that such variety existed.

“Is the whole world like this, Ka-ris?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Every part of it is different. This is only a little part.”

Her eyes grew large.

“And where you came from ... is it not like this?”

He shook his head again. How could he explain? He thought of the London underground, of motor cars and trains and the tall chimneys of factories. Of the multitudes on the streets and in the omnibuses, tumbling like bees in a hive after a thousand different honeys, each without taste or savour. Of churches hung with military flags and cluttered with dead soldiers’ monuments. Of polluted streams and scarred hillsides and black palls of smoke choking the sky. She would consider all those a lurid kind of madness. And yet beneath them there lay a deeper malaise that he thought she would be unable to understand. But when he thought again, he suspected she would understand it only too well.

“There’s a place called Scotland,” he said.

“I went there once for a holiday with my aunt Tabitha. To a place called the Kyle of Lochalsh. This is very like it.”

She smiled.

“Perhaps we can go there together some day,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Perhaps.”

Several times a whole day would pass when they rode together in silence, neither speaking, each wrapped in thought. Spring winds blew across empty plains almost without respite, forcing them to bend across the necks of the ponies, blinded and chilled to the bone. They passed frozen lakes and rivers in which patches of ice still lay, thick and scarred by the winds.

There were mists, white and cold and clinging, through which they and their ponies passed like ghosts. Chindamani’s black hair gleamed with bright droplets of half-frozen air. Christopher watched her ride ahead of him, a dim figure passing from visibility to invisibility and back again. The edges of their world were blurred. Nothing was defined: not speech, not thought, not memory. They walked or rode in a silence of their own making, apart from the world, travellers without a destination, voyagers through a timeless, formless space.

Everywhere they saw signs of faith, reminders of the presence of the gods: prayer-flags and chortens, long mam-walls, and once, two pilgrims making their way across the freezing ground, prostrating themselves full length time after time.

“Where are they going?” Christopher asked.

“To thejokhang,” she said.

“The great temple at Lhasa. They are going there to pay respect to Jovo Rinpoche.”

Christopher looked puzzled.

“It’s a great statue of the Lord Buddha when he was a child,” she explained.

“It’s the holiest image in the whole of Tibet. People come from all parts of the world to visit it. Some travel hundreds of miles, measuring the ground by their own bodies just like these two. It takes months, even years. Sometimes they die before they reach the holy city. It’s a very good way to die.”

“Why do they do it?” he asked.

“To wipe out bad karma they have acquired in previous lives. To acquire good karma for their next life. So that they may be reborn in a condition nearer to the Buddha nate. That is all any of us can do.”

He looked at her.

“Is our journey worth any merit?” he asked.

She nodded, serious.

“Yes,” she replied.

“He is the Maidari Buddha. Our aim is to find him and bring him to his people. We are his tools: you will see.”

“Do you really think we’ll find him again?”

She looked at him a long time before replying.

“What do you think?” she said finally.

Christopher said nothing. But as they rode on, he wondered what sort of karma he would acquire if he rescued the boy from Zamyatin only to put him on the throne of Mongolia as a British puppet.

They caught their first whiff of Zamyatin at a small village near Nagchu Dzong, about one hundred and sixty miles from Lhasa.

The nemo at their rest-house there remembered a man and two boys who had come through about ten days before. They had been travelling by pony, hard. Zamyatin had been forced to risk visiting the rest-house in order to obtain much-needed provisions and fresh ponies.

“They came here with three of the scraggiest animals I’ve ever seen,” the woman said.

“All but dead they were. They’d driven them into the ground, riding them hell for leather, I could tell. It was the Mongol’s doing, I could see that. He was desperate to move on. Nervous he was, jittery, but I could tell he wasn’t the sort to argue with. The children were worn out, poor things. I said they should rest, but he swore at me and said he’d have none of it.

They had to be up and going; not even time to take tea.”

She scowled at the memory of such impolite ness

“I sold them new ponies, but I wouldn’t give much for the ones they

left. They’ll fatten up in time, no doubt; but one’s no use for riding

any longer he’s broken-winded and fit for the butcher. I

asked five hundred trangkas for the two I sold them, and he paid it over without so much as a whimper. That’s forty Hang in Chinese money. I said to my husband he must be up to no good I was half of a mind to send someone after them, to see were the little boys all right. But my husband said we’d best not interfere, and maybe he was right.”

“Did either of the boys try to get your attention at all?” asked Chindamani.

“Well, now you mention it, I think one of them did. I think he wanted to speak to me. But the man would have none of it and whisked him out of the room as quick as a flash.”

“Didn’t you try to do something? Protest to him?”

The nemo looked at Chindamani hard.

“If you’d seen him you’d understand. I’d no wish to cross him.

Perhaps I should have done, I don’t rightly know. But if you’d been in my shoes, if you’d seen him .. . But then, perhaps you have, my lady.”

Chindamani said nothing.

“Were the ponies you sold them healthy? Strong enough to take them far?”

The old nemo looked offended.

“Of course they were. Do you think I would sell anything but a sound animal? Would I cheat, would I pass off a sprained horse as fit for the road?”

He fancied she would, and for an inflated price as well.

“I meant no offence,” he apologized.

“But you had seen what happened to the beasts they came on. Perhaps you were reluctant to let your best animals into his hands.”

Somewhat mollified but only somewhat she snorted.

“I might have thought that,” she said.

“But he looked over all the ponies I had and chose three for himself. They were the best in my stable and worth a pretty penny too. He’ll do for them what he did for the others. But they’ll get him a distance. They’ll be twenty shasas or more away by now.”

A shasa was a full day’s march, between ten and twenty miles.

At Zamyatin’s rate of progress, they’d very likely be thirty full shasas ahead of them.

“They’re beyond our reach now, Ka-ris,” said Chindamani in a crestfallen voice.

“They’ll get to Urga before we do, that’s all,” he said. But he felt disadvantaged by his rival’s easy lead.

“We’ll catch up with them there, not before. Slow and steady does it. They still have a long way to go. There won’t always be fresh ponies when they need them. And they have to face the Gobi desert or go round it.”

“And so have we,” she said.

Dispirited at first, they continued their journey. They rode a little faster, rested less often, rose earlier to set off before dawn each morning. At least, Christopher reasoned, they were thus far on the right track. Zamyatin and the boys had passed this way; however much they deviated from the road, they would ultimately return to it there was only one destination for all of them.

They travelled across the broad steppe regions to the east of Chang Tang, the great central plateau of Tibet. Beyond the northern reaches of the Yangtse River, they passed into Amdo.

Always north-east, always towards Mongolia.

Each day, they passed small nomad encampments low black tents quite distinct from the round Mongol yurts of the north.

Shepherds grazed small herds of yaks in the valleys: they watched Christopher and Chindamani ride by, then turned back to their endless vigil.

Ten days after leaving Nagchu Dzong, they reached the southern shores of Koko Nor, the great lake that stands guard over the north-east border of Tibet. A few miles further and they would enter China’s Kansu province.

Christopher was nervous. The Chinese were on edge, feeling the pinch in Mongolia and toying with Tibet as a possible recompense should the former territory slip out of their hands again. If he were caught by Chinese guards and identified as an Englishman crossing into Kansu, he doubted very much if his captors would observe the diplomatic niceties. In all probability, his head would soon adorn a sharp, pointed stick on the battlements of Sining-fu.

These were the days of the great war-lords. China was torn by civil war, and no central authority was capable of returning the country to normal. The Manchus had gone, the Republic was little more than a name, and in the provinces chaos and bloodshed reigned. Armies of peasants marched and fought and were wiped out. And in their place, new armies were raised up. It was one of Death’s finest hours.

The steppe sloped down gently to the dark waters of the lake.

Thin waves moved across its surface, making Christopher think of home and the sea. To the north, the mountains of the Tsun-ula range stretched east and west out of sight. On several peaks, white caps of snow nestled against the sky.

In the centre of the lake lay a rocky island on which a small temple stood, cut off from the world now that the winter ice had melted. Chindamani sat still in her saddle for a long time, gazing out at the little temple, watching the dark waters tremble against the rock on which it stood, listening to the waves falling lifeless to the shore. A stiff breeze came down from the mountains suddenly and flattened the waves. Clouds scudded across the sky.

“Let’s ride on,” said Christopher.

But still she sat, unmoving, gazing out at the island. The breeze moved her hair, raising it like a dark prayer-flag, then lowering it again. She did not seem to notice. Then, abruptly, she shivered and looked round at him.

“I have been here before,” she said. She looked out at the temple once more.

“And I shall come here again.”

That afternoon, they stumbled across Zamyatin’s trail again.

Leaving the lake behind them, they turned east towards Sining-fu.

In spite of the risks, Christopher had decided to head for the town in order to obtain provisions and a guide to cross the Gobi: any other course of action would be suicide. A little before the Haddaulan Pass, they came upon a small encampment of black yak-hair tents.

It was strangely quiet. No dogs rushed out to snarl and snap about their heels, as was normal at nomad camps. No smoke rose from a dung fire. No children squealed. Nothing moved. Christopher took his revolver from his belt and cocked it. Bandits were a common feature of life here. Bandits and sudden death.

He saw the first body or what remained of it -just outside the nearest of the four tents. The vultures had picked it clean, leaving white bones and strips of tattered clothing. A black rifle one of the long, forked variety carried by all Tanguts and Mongols in the region lay near the bones.

A second skeleton stood out stark and white against the earth a few yards away, and beside it a third, that of a child of perhaps five or six. The breeze played with the hair on their skulls, lifting and dropping it nervously. A thin cloud of dust blew forlornly between the silent tents and disappeared.

There was a sudden flapping sound, loud and terrifying in the stillness. Christopher swung round and saw a single vulture lift itself up awkwardly from the ground and stumble into the air.

There was an indistinct bundle of clothing where it had been feeding. The banquet had not yet ended. As at any meal, there were late arrivals.

They found half a dozen skeletons outside the tents and almost twenty cadavers inside. The ones under cover had not been picked clean, and the cold Tibetan air had so far kept decomposition at bay. The bodies were mainly those of women and children, but several men lay among them. It was immediately apparent how they had died a single bullet, usually in the forehead or temple.

Why would bandits have done this? Christopher wondered. Had China’s civil war spilled over into Amdo?

The girl was hiding behind a large chest in the fourth tent. They found her by chance, when Christopher went to pick up a piece of cloth with which to cover one of the bodies. She was ten or eleven years old, shivering with cold, dirty, hungry, and terrified.

Since his presence seemed only to exacerbate the child’s terror, Christopher left her with Chindamani and went outside. Even in the clean air, a stench of death seemed to hang over everything.

He wondered if his nostrils would ever be free of the smell.

He found the remains of several ponies just beyond the tents.

They had clearly been tethered together and most had died of hunger only a day or two earlier. One was still alive: he put it out of its misery with a single shot. When that was done, he walked away from the tents for a while.

At the head of the valley, there was a cairn built from loosely piled flat slates. It was an obo, built to propitiate the local gods.

Pieces of cloth fluttered from it, the offerings of travellers. The slates themselves were inscribed in Tibetan characters and propped against one another at all angles, with four laid flat across the top as a sort of roof. Christopher made out the man trie formula of om mam pad me hum inscribed again and again across the dark green stone. He had an urge to tear down the stones, to smash the obo and scatter the pieces. What use were gods if they slept?

When he got back to the little camp, Chindamani had succeeded in calming the girl. She was still distressed, but outright terror had begun to give way to grief, an unstaunchable torrent that filled the tiny tent. This time, she did not react to Christopher, so he sat by Chindamani while she soothed and comforted the child.

A little later, the girl fell into a heavy sleep, the first she had known for days. They decided it would be better for her if she did not waken in the camp or near it. Christopher lifted her carefully and put her on Pip, flat across the panniers the pony carried. A nomad child, she would be accustomed from birth to sleeping on the move.

Before leaving, they brought the remaining corpses out of the tents and exposed them for the vultures. Chindamani recited prayers in a quiet voice, then they rode on before the girl should awaken and have her grief renewed or redoubled by the sight of the open burial.

They spent that night in the broad valley just beyond the pass.

The child woke briefly once. She ate a little, then returned to sleep.

They took turns to stand guard over their tiny camp. It was a cold night, and the stars kept watch with them until dawn.

In the morning, over breakfast, the girl told them what had happened. Her name was Chodron and she thought she was ten years old. The victims at the camp-site had been her family father, mother, brothers, sisters, grandmother and grandfather, two uncles, two aunts, and six cousins.

Several days earlier Christopher guessed about a week a Mongol had come riding into their camp. He had been accompanied by two boys a Tangut or Tibetan and one that she said looked like Christopher. The boys wore fine clothes that had been caked in mud and dirt, but they looked unhappy. She had come out of her tent with her mother to see the strangers.

The man had demanded a change of ponies, offering to exchange those on which he and the boys rode for better mounts, along with a sum in cash. Her uncle had refused the offer with the coming of spring, the men all needed their ponies and could ill afford to be left with two worn-out animals. In any case, the man’s manner had been brusque and peremptory, and she had sensed that her uncle had refused out of dislike for the stranger as much as anything.

There had been angry words, she remembered, then someone had fired a shot. She could not be sure whether her uncle or the Mongol had fired first. But the stranger’s rapid-firing pistol had made light work of men armed with single-shot muskets.

She could neither explain nor remember with any clarity the massacre that had followed; nor had Chindamani or Christopher any wish to make her relive those insane moments. Her mother had somehow contrived to hide her in the chest behind which they had found her hiding, and she had escaped the notice of the Mongol. There had been no room in the chest for her mother, no room for anyone but her.

Christopher described Zamyatin to her, though he knew what her answer would be. She shivered and said it was the same man, no other. He asked about the boys, and she said they had seemed pale and unhappy, but unhurt.

On the following day, they continued east towards Sining-fu. At Tsagan-tokko, a small village of clay houses, they enquired about Zamyatin. Neither he nor the boys had been seen there.

They had just passed out of sight of the village when they heard the sound of hoofbeats behind them. A Mongol horseman came cantering towards them and drew up alongside. He was a big man, dressed in furs and equipped with a breech-loading rifle slung across his shoulders.

“They tell me you are looking for a Burial riding with two boys,” he said.

Christopher nodded.

“I saw them five days ago,” the horseman said.

“I was riding in the Tsun-ula, the mountains north of Koko-nor. We spoke briefly.

I asked the man where they were headed.

“We must be in Kanchow ten days from now,” he told me. When I asked him why, he said he had to meet someone there. That’s all. The Tibetan boy tried to say something to me, but the man told him to be quiet.”

“Is it possible,” Christopher asked, ‘to make it to Kanchow that quickly? Won’t they have to go through the Nan-shan mountains?”

The Mongol nodded.

“Yes,” he said.

“But they can make it if there are no delays. All the passes are open.

I told him the best route to take.”

He shifted awkwardly in his saddle.

“The Tibetan boy,” he said.

“He was pale, frightened. I dreamed of him that night. He came to me smiling. He wore the robes of a buddha. There was light all round him.” He paused.

“Who is he?”

he asked.

Chindamani answered in a low voice, with an authority Christopher had never heard in it before.

“He is the Maidri Buddha,” she said.

The horseman looked at her intently, but said nothing. Half a minute passed like that, then he smiled broadly, wheeled his horse round, and set off at a gallop in the direction of Tsagan-tokko.

They crossed into China quietly on a long afternoon in April, like cattle thieves or scouts sent ahead by an invader, unseen, unsuspected, unchallenged. There was no true border here, no moment when one might say “This is Tibet’ and then, in an instant, “This is China’. Just a gradual shift, a change of tone, a series of dimly perceived modulations in the landscape and the faces. The nomadic world of Amdo began to fade, and in its place a new terrain slowly asserted itself: a world of valleys and high, fortified villages, of narrow gorges and fast waterways, of gilded temples, ornamental gates, and narrow, fluted pagodas that rose above dull walls of beaten clay.

The people of the margins and the salt-lakes of the Tsaidam basin fur-clad and dirty and scarred by constant winds gradually made way for the inhabitants of the settled regions that lay within the confines of the Great Wall. Traders and artisans, peasant farmers and hong-merchants eager to return to Canton or Peking. The chief difference or so it seemed to Christopher lay in their eyes. The nomads and the men who came with the long camel-trains down from the Mongolian steppes or the regions beyond Urumchi had a far-away look:

they saw vast distances and open horizons unencumbered by city walls a world that was never the same from one day to the next. But the Han Chinese of Kansu dwelt in a world of narrower horizons, and in their eyes Christopher could see the walls and doors and mental bars that hemmed them in.

Mandarins with sallow faces and tired eyes, many still wearing their hair in the Manchu style, with long pigtails behind and their foreheads uncovered in front, rode past in the company of Hui Muslim soldiers on their way to Sining-fu and, beyond it, the provincial capital of Lanchow. But none of them challenged Christopher or his companions. To the casual eye, Christopher seemed of no interest merely a nomad who had travelled far with his wife and child for reasons that could be of no possible interest to Chinese officials. His face had grown dirty and his hair unkempt, and all traces of foreignness had been burned out of him by the wind and ice and snow.

Sining-fu received them with indifference. Three travellers more or less meant nothing to the town or its inhabitants. All along the top of the square wall that enclosed the city, soldiers walked on a narrow street, keeping watch over the countryside around and across the mosaic of roofs below, a jumble of red pan tiles and dragon arabesques. But no-one noticed the three newcomers among so many.

They walked down the main street that lay through the centre of the town, passing on right and left they amens of local officialdom, small painted houses guarded by stone lions and dragons, each bearing a sign in Chinese lettering to indicate its function. At every step they were jostled by passers-by: Mongols leading hairy Bactrian camels as they went from shop to shop trading yak-hair or fur for pots and pans and kitchen knives; mules with huge blocks of Shansi coal; carts carrying Chinese girls in bright red coats, their hair well greased and their tiny feet crippled forever by a lifetime’s binding.

In a side-street, near one of the large trading houses, they found a small deng where they could stay for the night. The inn was dirtier and more cramped than most, but it was out of the way and attracted the sort of clientele who knew better than to show too much interest in their fellow guests. They cajoled the nemo, a small, reserved woman in her mid-forties, to provide them with a room to themselves. She was reluctant at first, but Chodron seemed so tired and sad that she gave them the room for her sake.

It was early evening by the time they settled down. The nemo provided food and a tripod brazier on which to cook it all at a price. Chodron fell asleep soon after they had eaten. Chindamani and Christopher stayed awake a little longer, talking. They would have made love, but with Chodron around they felt inhibited. At last they slept, in one another’s arms, not safe, but alone Christopher was wakened in the middle of the night by the sound of knocking on the door. At first he thought he had been mistaken, but the knock came again, a little louder this time.

Chindamani stirred but did not waken.

He got up and walked to the door. The wooden floor was cold against his bare feet. In the distance, someone coughed. And coughed and coughed again and fell silent, breathless. It was utterly dark.

He opened the door and squinted. A man was standing in the doorway holding a lantern.

The stranger’s arm got in the way of the light and cast a shadow over his face.

“Yes?” said Christopher sleepily.

“What do you want?” He spoke in Tibetan, hoping the man would understand.

“Hello, Christopher,” said the stranger. The words were English, the voice icily familiar.

The stranger moved his arm and the light fell on his face. Simon Winterpole had travelled a long way. But he had not changed a bit.

Christopher stepped into the passage and closed the door behind him. Winterpole was dressed in European clothes, dapper as ever, a vision from a world Christopher had thought he had left behind for good.

“Don’t stand there staring at me, Christopher. For God’s sake, I’m not a ghost.”

“I’m sorry,” said Christopher.

“I hadn’t .. . You’re the last person I expected to see. How on earth did you get here? How did you find me?”

“Good Lord, you don’t imagine you’re invisible do you?” The light wobbled as Winterpole moved his arm, shadows scuttled with crab-like dexterity across his face.

“You were seen near Lhasa a few weeks ago. After that, we had tabs kept on you all the way here. You wouldn’t believe the things we can do. I came up from Peking last week in order to be here when you came. I knew you’d have to pass through Sining-fu. You and I have things to talk about; things to do.”

“You’re mistaken. We don’t have anything to talk about. Not any more.

Enough is enough. I’m not working for you any longer.

I’m not working for anyone.”

“Don’t be tiresome, Christopher. We went through all this before. When I came up to Hexham. Surely you haven’t forgotten.”

“No,” said Christoper in a tight voice.

“I haven’t forgotten. I told you then I no longer belonged to you. You helped me get on the track of my son, and I’m grateful. But I came here to find him, that’s all. I don’t want you meddling in things that don’t concern you. Stay out of this, Winterpole. It has nothing to do with you.”

Down the corridor, the coughing recommenced.

“But I’m afraid it does,” Winterpole objected.

“Listen, we can’t talk here. There’s a room we can use downstairs. Come and hear me out. I’ve travelled a long way to speak with you. Do me that favour. Please.”

It was useless to resist, just as it had been useless that night in Hexham. The dark current that had reached out for him then surged beneath Christopher once more, drawing him out further into the depths of a cold and lightless ocean.

The room to which Winterpole took Christopher was low ceilinged and lit by tallow candles. Two groups of four men sat at low tables playing mak-jong for small stakes. The small ivory tiles stood in neatly assembled ranks in front of each player wind tiles and dragon tiles, flower tiles and character tiles. A few other men were smoking opium through long-stemmed pipes tipped with old silver. The soft brown sap melted and bubbled as they applied hot coals held in long iron tongs. They glanced up as the two strangers entered, eyeing them with the air of men who live by suspicion.

It took Winterpole less than a minute to clear the room of them.

He had come equipped with a letter bearing the chop of Ma Ch’i, the Dao T’ai of Sining-fu, a Hui Muslim whose cousin, Ma Hungk’uei, was the warlord currently in control of Kansu province.

Christopher knew that Winterpole was not above using his influence to have a man flogged or tortured or even beheaded if it suited his purpose. And tonight it might just suit.

“I know you found Zamyatin,” Winterpole commenced once the door of the room had closed on them.

“And I know about the Tibetan boy he is spiriting away to Urga.”

“You knew before you sent me, didn’t you?” said Christopher.

Winterpole nodded.

“Yes. Not everything. But a little, yes. We had to be sure: our sources weren’t reliable. We thought it would be a mistake to tell you too much in case it made you look for the wrong things.

“Of course, we probably wouldn’t have done anything much about the reports we had received if it hadn’t been for Zamyatin kidnapping your boy. I still don’t understand what the point of that was. Were you able to find out anything?”

Christopher stared at him. Not “Did you find your son?” Not “Is he well?” But “Were you able to find out anything?” Information that was all that interested Winterpole. Anything else was superfluous.

“Yes,” said Christopher, “I found out something.” But how could he begin to explain it to a man like Winterpole.

“Well? What was he up to? How did your boy come into his schemes?”

“As a pawn that’s all you need to know. William was part of a deal Zamyatin made. What he really wanted was the Tibetan boy.

His name is Sarndup. Dorje Samdup Rinpoche.”

“And who is he precisely? Some sort of incarnation, is he? Is that what Zamyatin’s up to?”

“Yes.” Christopher signed.

“The boy is the Maidari Buddha.

That means he can be proclaimed ruler of Mongolia in place of the present Khutukhtu. That’s what Zamyatin’s gone to Mongolia for.

To make the boy a god.”

Winterpole was silent. He seemed to be weighing up what Christopher had told him, fitting it into some scheme of his own.

“I see,” he said.

“It all makes sense now. All we have to do is find Zamyatin.”

“That’s easier said than done. I’ve lost them Zamyatin, William, Samdup. They’re half-way to Urga by now. Before anyone can catch up with them, Zamyatin will have a cordon of Red soldiers round Samdup and a ringside ticket for the coronation in his own pocket.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it.”

“No? Listen. I lost them at Hadda-ulan, all three of them.

Zamyatin had made a rendezvous with someone in Kanchow about three days ago. He’s well on his way to Urga by now. Or .” He hesitated.

“Yes,” prompted Winterpole casually.

“Or he’s on his way to Moscow.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Winterpole.

“I’d already heard about Zamyatin’s rendezvous. He’s made contact with a man called Udinskii - a Russian and a fellow-Bolshevik who was until recently involved in the fur and wool trade at Urga He worked for a Danish-American company called Andersen and Myer Udinskii was waiting for him in Kanchow for over a month He’s to be Zamyatin’s courier to Urga. He has a motor-truck, a strong one capable of making the journey across the Gobi in a matter of days.

They’ll be in Urga any day now, I expect. Or at least .. ‘ Winterpole paused, as though the well of his omniscience had suddenly dried up “At least?” repeated Christopher.

“He’ll probably not try to go straight to the city. Things have changed in Mongolia since all this started. The Chinese have been pushed out. The man in charge now is a White Russian general called von Ungern Sternberg. Baron Roman von Ungern Sternberg, to be precise Now, there’s a mouthful for you.

“Ungern was pushed out of Siberia last year by the Bolsheviks.

He and his men were almost the last of the Whites. They made for Mongolia, picking up reinforcements on the way. At the start of February, they took control of Urga. Ungern rescued the Living Buddha from the Chinese and put him back on the throne. But the real ruler is Ungern himself.

“So, you see, Zamyatm can’t just turn up in Urga, with or without some incarnation. Von Ungern Sternberg isn’t the sort of man to make a deal with the Bolsheviks. And Mongolia is turning into the sort of place sensible people steer clear of. If Zamyatin has any sense, he’ll go somewhere else. What do you think? Has he got any sense?”

Christopher leaned across the table.

“For God’s sake, this isn’t a game of chess! Zamyatin thinks he can conquer Asia with this child. Don’t you see? Sense doesn’t enter into any of it. The stakes are too high.”

“Then he’ll go to Urga. In that case, he’ll have to be bloody careful. Ungern’s busy killing everyone in sight: Russians, Jews, runaway Chinese. And now any White armies that are left in Siberia are moving south to join him. Kazagrandi is in Uliassutai;

Kazantzev has taken Kobdo; Kaigorodov has been reported in Altai; and in the West Bakitch has joined up with Dutov and Annenkov. It’s a madhouse, Christopher. Ungern Sternberg believes he’s a reincarnation of the Mongolian god of war. He’s convinced half the population of the country of that fact. That means he’s answerable to no-one.”

Winterpole paused to take a cigarette-box from his coat pocket.

He opened it and offered a cigarette to Christopher.

“No thank you.”

Winterpole took one for himself and lit it.

“So, you see,” he continued, ‘that with Ungern in control of Urga, neither Zamyatin nor Udinskii can risk heading there directly. So I think they’ll make for somewhere outside the city to dump the motor and Udinskii. That’ll leave Zamyatin free to do the rest of the journey with just the two boys for company.”

Christopher felt a chill go through him. Wouldn’t it be even more convenient for the Russian to dump William as well?

“Why are you here, Winterpole?”

“To keep an eye on you, of course.”

“That’s very touching. And I suppose you intend keeping an eye on Zamyatin as well, while you’re at it.”

Winterpole blew out a thin jet of smoke.

“Yes, of course. He has to be stopped. And you, I imagine, would still like to find your son. You’ve done very well so far, but it’s time to get a move on. I want to get to Urga before Zamyatin does.”

“And exactly how do you propose to do that?”

“The same way as Zamyatin. By motor car. I have one waiting at the Dao T’ai’s. I bought it from some Danes in Kalgan. It’s a Fiat, specially built for country like this. We can do the journey to Urga faster than Udinskii and his truck.”

“And when we get there? What then?”

“We sit tight and wait for Zamyatin to make his move. Ungern will co-operate with us. Zamyatin in exchange for your son. And the Tibetan boy, of course. Ungern’s position is precarious: a promise of British help isn’t something he can turn down. I’ll send him an official telegraph tomorrow, through the normal diplomatic channels. He’ll be told to expect us, to offer us protection.

Zamyatin’s been outfoxed, Christopher. He’s walking straight into a trap.”

Christopher looked at Winterpole as though he were far, far away. His dress, his cigarettes, his self-importance were all products of another world. He was a schemer, but he knew precious little of the world his schemes were made for.

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” said Christopher.

True to his word, Winterpole sent a telegram early the next morning. It was a complicated procedure the message had to be routed to Peking through Lanchow, then forwarded to Urga, where it would be received at Ungern Sternberg’s splendid new telegraph office. Even at the best of times, there were unavoidable delays, errors in transmission, and, as often as not, cut lines. And these were not the best of times not in China, not in Mongolia.

If Winterpole had waited another day, he would have been told that the telegraph lines between Yenan and Peking had been cut by rebel troops and that his message would be delayed ‘indefinitely’. But less than an hour after dispatching the telegram, he was back with Christopher, urging that they be up and going.

They sat in the downstairs room of the rest-house as before.

“I’m not certain that I want to come with you,” said Christopher.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you. Zamyatin doesn’t interest you. As you say, he’s walking into a trap. All you had to do was send your telegram to this man Ungern Sternberg and go home. But you want to go to Urga in person. You want the boy for yourself. You want to turn him to your advantage.”

Winterpole took a white linen handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose carefully. With equal care, he folded the handkerchief as before and replaced it in his pocket.

“To our advantage, Christopher.”

“Not to mine.”

“You want to find your son, don’t you? You want to take him home?”

Christopher said nothing.

“Yes, of course you do. Then come to Urga with me. And bring the Tibetan girl. You can’t leave her here.”

Christopher guessed what Winterpole had in mind. With Chindamani on

his side, he could hope to exert the necessary influence

over Samdup. But he was right, of course. Christopher was not going to give UP his last chance to save William.

“Who is von Ungern Sternberg?” Christopher asked.

Winterpole shrugged.

“That’s not an easy question to answer I’ve had men working on him for over a year now, and all I get are conflicting reports in triplicate. One for me, one for “C”, and one for some nameless clerk in archives who makes fifty more of them for half the files in Whitehall. But we still know next to nothing about him.”

He halted, thinking, his expression serious.

“What we do know, however .. .” He paused “Well, let’s just say it’s far from pleasant. Von Ungern Sternberg is what I believe the psychologists call a psychopath. He appears to have no notion of right and wrong.

“But .. .” He paused again.

“He is the man of the moment. The right man in the right place. God knows, we don’t always choose our friends well. But as often as not we have no choice.

“Ungern is the sort of man who could only rise to the top at a time like this. He was bred for it; it’s in his blood and bad enough blood it is. His family are one of the four leading clans on the Baltic coast the Uxkulls, the Tiesenhausens, the Rosens, and the Ungern Sternbergs: “The Four of the Fist.”

“The Ungerns are descended from an old line of Otsei knights who went on some sort of crusade against the Russians in the twelfth century.

They made Riga their stronghold. A rough lot:

always picking a fight with someone, always coming home with their pockets stuffed with loot. Bullies, pirates, raiders, robber barons: they made toughness into an art. And now the last of the line a madman who thinks he’s the Mongolian god of war and acts accordingly.”

“How old a man is he?” asked Christopher.

“About your age. He was born in 1887 He started out in the Russian

navy graduated from the naval cadet school at St. Petersburg. But he

doesn’t seem to have liked naval life a lot, in spite of having pirates

for ancestors. Either that or the navy didn’t like him. Anyway, he

resigned his commission, went east, and ended up with the Argun

Cossacks in Transbaikalia. Had a great time, so they say falconing,

duelling, hunting. But in the end,

even the Cossacks chucked him out: too many brawls, too much insubordination.

“After that he became a bandit for a while. Then the war broke out and he saw his chance for some action. He wrote to the Tzar personally, asking to be allowed to re-enlist. Back came the go ahead and off he went to join up with the Nerchinsk Cossacks under Wrangel. He wasn’t popular, though. By all accounts his fellow officers kept their distance. Still, Ungern could fight, there was never any question of that. He got all the decorations going, all the way up to the St. George’s Cross. He was so heavily decorated, they had to make him a major-general. Then the revolution broke out.”

Winterpole paused and licked his lips. His fingers played idly with ivory mahjong tiles that had been left on the table, arranging them in little groups of two and three. They made tiny clicking sounds, faintly irritating.

“As soon as Ungern saw which way the wind was blowing, he cleared off from the German front and made his way to Transbaikalia, where he joined up under Ataman Semenov. It wasn’t long before he was made a full general and put in charge of the region round Dauria.”

Winterpole’s eyes had grown deeply serious. The small movements of his fingers ceased. The tiles sat untouched on the table.

“I visited Dauria once,” he said.

“Did you know that?”

Christopher shook his head. Just a fraction.

“It was in the winter of early 1920. Our troops had pulled out of Siberia. The White generals were finished. Kolchak, Wrangel, Kornilov: all dead or in exile. Only the Japanese had stayed behind, in Vladivostock. They were backing Semenov, sending him ar.-is and money and sweet promises of political recognition.

“I was sent to visit him at his headquarters in Chita, to see if I could discover just where his loyalties lay. That was the easiest mission of my life. It took me no time at all to discover that Semenov was loyal to Semenov. And Semenov’s men were loyal to themselves.

“I’ve never seen men more brutalized. Perhaps they thought they were already dead and had no more care to be human, I don’t know. They who red and gambled and drank not the way soldiers do on leave or before a battle, but constantly, feverishly. And the officers were worse than the men. More vicious, in the true sense.

They didn’t just stick to beer or spirits. Most of the time, it was morphine or cocaine or opium. And they couldn’t stop killing. I think the drugs drove them to it. It had become a habit with them.

No-one stopped them, no-one invoked penalties. They had become a law to themselves. They killed anyone they liked, it didn’t matter.

As long as they didn’t kill one of their own kind, no-one would interfere.”

He paused once more, and the fingers of one hand began again to play with a tile. His eyes seemed haunted by memories still not remote enough in time to have lost their shadows.

“As you’re aware, the International Express from Siberia to Manchuria runs through Transbaikalia. I was taken for a journey along the railway, to see how Semenov was keeping communications open in the region under his control. The whole country along the Transbaikalian sector was dotted with what Semenov called his “Killing Stations”. People would be plucked off trains Jews, suspected Bolsheviks, commissars, rich merchants. They were taken straight to one of these stations. None of them ever returned to finish their journeys. If ever an enquiry were made, the official answer would always be:

“Missing en route.” And in those days, who asked such questions anyway?”

He hesitated briefly, then began again.

“Once .. .” and here his eyes grew large with memory “Once I saw the strangest, most awful thing on the horizon. It seemed to go on forever: an endless line of trains, all jammed together. Miles of them, miles and miles of carriages and locomotives, all joined together like a giant serpent. A sea monster, but long enough to swallow a navy.

“The first locomotive had run out of fuel and water and then frozen to the tracks. The metal had been soldered together by the cold. Then a second train had come up behind and tried to push the first, but without success. And it had frozen too. And all this time, no-one was getting word through about what was going on, so they kept on sending trains. Train after train.

“We went up close. It was freezing, I remember; everything was frost, bleak white frost that lay hard on the metal of the trains, turning them white. They were full of bodies, the bodies of all the passengers who’d frozen to death there, afraid to leave the security of their compartments, not knowing what had happened, waiting for help to be sent out from Moscow. They told me that forty-five thousand people froze to death in those carriages. I don’t know if that’s true. But I saw a lot of bodies. All preserved, all beautifully preserved.”

He stammered.

“I ... I saw a beautiful woman in one carriage, dressed in sable, with frost clinging to her hair like lace. She hadn’t changed, not really. She’d grown pale as ice and stiff with frost, but her features were still perfect. Beautiful she’d become a sort of doll, white and sad and untouchable, like Pierrot in a mask. I wanted to break a window and go inside to look at her more closely. I wanted to kiss her, just to taste the ice on her lips. I thought I could thaw her, I thought my warmth could bring her back to life. She was so still, so very still.”

He grew silent, lost in the pain of memory, walking alongside the frozen tracks of the Trans-Siberian Express, watching pale faces in the gathering dusk, and wooden cattle-trucks crammed with the dead.

Christopher left him like that, brooding, and returned to the room upstairs. It would soon be time to leave. He had no choice.

He had never had a choice.

Mongolia

They left later that morning. Chodron stayed in Sining-fu with the family who ran the rest-house in which they had lodged: the nemo had taken a fancy to her and, on hearing her story, expressed a wish to take her in. For her part, the child had been overjoyed: the excitement of Sining-fu, the first town of any size she had ever seen, and the luxury of living in a house instead of a tent were, for the moment, compensations of a sort for the losses she had sustained. She readily agreed to stay, and neither Chindamani nor Christopher could recommend a better solution.

But Chindamani had found it hard to part from the little girl.

Apart from her old nurse Sonam, she had never known female companionship; and Chodron’s loneliness had reminded her acutely of her own as a child. Perhaps the laws dictating that a child be taken from its parents at an early age merely to live out another phase in the cycle of incarnation were in their way as brutal as the violence that had made Chodron an orphan.

The car was a sturdy little Fiat which Winterpole had obtained at a price from the Dao T’ai. It had been modified for the desert and used up until then by the Dao T’ai for brief hunting expeditions into the Gobi. There were enough cans of petrol for a journey to Siberia and back, water, food, and tents. Winterpole was to drive while Christopher navigated with the help of charts that came courtesy of the British Embassy in Peking.

They skirted the eastern fringes of the Nan Shan mountains, travelling north from Sining-fu, then veering slightly east. Late that afternoon they passed through the Great Wall near Wuwei.

Here, the Wall was little more than a symbol: low mud ramparts, broken and eroded by man and time alike. But for all the insignificance of mud and cracked stone, Christopher felt they had passed more than a token barrier.

Once, they passed a long train of astonished camels For a moment, the air held a smell of spices, then they were past and the desert was all about them again. Ahead of them, the Ala Shan stretched out into a blue haze on the horizon. Beyond it, the Gobi proper shifted beneath a shimmering sun. Inside the car, it was unbearably hot.

“You were telling me about Dauria,” Christopher reminded Winterpole.

“About Ungern Sternberg and Dauria.” He was sitting in the rear with Chindamani, who had taken much coaxing to ride in the machine. She was still torn between terror and wonder at the speed with which the motor car travelled.

Winterpole glanced up, like a man suddenly woken from a deep sleep.

“Dauria? Why yes, of course. Dauria.” He looked out of the window, at the desert rushing past, at the sand piling up on all sides, pale and sterile.

“I want you to understand what it was like, Christopher. I want you to know what you’ll be going into. Believe me, if I thought we had any choice, I’d see Ungern in hell before I made a deal with him. But it’s him or Zamyatin now.”

He paused. Something was making him reluctant to say more about what he had seen.

“I went there afterwards,” he said.

“After I’d seen Semenov, I went to visit von Ungern Sternberg in Dauria. Semenov suggested it himself; he thought I might be impressed. I don’t know what he expected really. They didn’t understand us. Still don’t.

“I arrived late one afternoon, just as the sun was setting. We came down into a vast plain through a narrow circle of sandy hills. The plain was devoid of life as far as we could see. Nothing grew, nothing moved there was just a collection of dirty huts, like a leper colony in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never felt so great a loss of the sense of place, of definition, boundaries. It was as though we were nowhere at all, as if we were at the centre of a great emptiness.

“There was a little Russian church with a spire, more in the western than the Byzantine style. It might have been quite pretty once, I don’t know; but it had lost all its tiles and paint .. . and something else. Whatever it is that makes a church a church how can I explain? And down in the middle of the plain was Ungern’s headquarters. A small fortress built from red bricks. From where I first saw it, it looked very much like a slaughterhouse a slaughterhouse someone had daubed all over with blood. And there was wind blowing through it all, an empty sort of wind.”

He paused briefly, seeing the red walls of Dauria again, hearing the empty wind whistle across the plain. Outside the car, the sands of the desert swayed past, faded, hazy, a waterless mirage shimmering in the late afternoon light.

“That was where I first met Ungern. I won’t forget it. The way he looked at me when I walked in ... The way he waited for me.”

He shuddered.

“Ordinarily, I’d hit a man who looked at me like that. But I didn’t hit him. I knew better than that. I tried to stare him out, but .. . Anyway, you’ll meet him soon enough. Be very careful when you do. He can shift from complete affability to the purest sadism or rage in a matter of seconds. I saw it myself.

“He always carries a sort of riding crop made of bamboo.

Extremely thin and flexible, but with rough edges. One of his staff officers came in. A youngish man, probably not long out of military academy, but already showing marked signs of the dissipation I’d already seen in Chita. He reported something Ungern obviously didn’t like to hear. The baron flew into a rage and hit him full across the face with the cane. It cut the man’s cheek open, right along the bone. He almost fainted, but Ungern made him stand and finish his report. He was quivering with rage Ungern, I mean. But the second the boy left, he began talking to me as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. From what I know now, I suppose nothing had.”

Winterpole looked out of the window to his left. In the west, the sun was setting, blood-red in a haze of sand. Behind them, the dust laid a long plume across the desert.

“Something else happened while I was there,” he went on.

“They brought in an old man, a Jew. His son had been executed on Ungern’s orders the day before, for no reason I was able to ascertain.

The old man had come to ask for the body. That’s all. He wanted to give his son a Jewish burial, not leave him to be eaten by the dogs the way they do in those parts. He made no complaint. He didn’t criticize. But whether it was his face or his manner or his being Jewish or something else, he infuriated the baron.

“Ungern called two of his aides and had them take the old man outside. He told me to come out and watch, to see how he punished traitors. I saw I would have to obey: being a foreigner was no guarantee of immunity there.

“They took the old man and put him in a tall wooden box. There was a hole in the side of it, and they had the old man put his arm through it. It was freezing, well below zero: we were all dressed in warm furs, but it still felt cold, bitterly cold.

“They tied the old man’s arm so he couldn’t get it back inside the box. Then they poured water over it until it was soaking. It didn’t take long to freeze. Three hours later, they came back. The arm had frozen solid, like a lump of ice. Ungern just walked up and snapped it off. I watched him do it. As if he were snapping off a rotten twig. It made a cracking sound, like an old branch. It didn’t even bleed.”

He paused. It was growing dark suddenly. He switched on the headlights of the car, long white cones that stabbed into the darkness far ahead, catching insects in their beams, creating narrow worlds in which small creatures stirred for brief moments before being swept away again into the blackness.

“The old man died, of course. He died that night in great pain, and by morning the dogs had eaten what was left of him, along with his son.”

Winterpole looked up. All the aplomb, all the casual affectation had drained away to leave him empty and bereft, like a shell far away from the heart of the sea.

“So now you know,” he said.

“Now you know who we’re dealing with. Who our friends are.” His eyes filled with a sense of horror.

“He’s all we have here, Christopher. He’s all that stands between us and the Bolsheviks.”

There was silence. The car drove on through the dark waste, a brightly lit warning of times yet to come. The desert was coming awake. Between them, Winterpole and Ungern Sternberg and Zamyatin would bring the benefits of their cold civilization into the wilderness. If it did not blossom, they would not despair: they had time: they would water it with blood.

“Do we need friends like that?” asked Christopher. He failed to see the necessity. He failed to understand how such a frail barrier could stand between two philosophies.

“It’s hard for you to understand, Christopher. You weren’t in Europe during the war. You didn’t see what we did to one another.

We lost our heads. We became animals. When the war ended, it was the general opinion that the beastliness had ended with it. As if that could ever be.

“The war to end wars” that’s what we called it. But how can war end?

It’s part of us, it’s in our blood.

“If the Bolsheviks spread their creed any further, there’ll be another war, one worse than the last. My job is to prevent that, at any cost. Our people back home have just won a war, and peace has never seemed so good to them. They want it to go on forever:

poppies in the fields, photographs of Uncle Arthur wearing his medals on the mantelpiece, the flag unfurling day after day in a stiff breeze, the home fires burning all winter long. And I’m afraid for them. They’re about to be overtaken by Zamyatin and History, and they don’t even know it. That’s why Ungern Sternberg is necessary. Regrettable, but necessary, I assure you.”

He cleared his throat.

“He won’t last long, don’t worry. Men like him serve a purpose in times like these. He cleared the Chinese out of the way and did a good job of it. There would have been an incident if we’d done the same Diplomatic rows. Reparations.

“He’ll hold off the Bolsheviks until we can organize something better, something more permanent. Then we’ll put our own man on the throne in his place. The Tibetan boy, perhaps. We’ll supply arms and advisers, monetary reserves. We’ll put up telegraphs and open banks and start trade flowing. It’ll all work out in the end you’ll see. Believe me, people in very high places have discussed this thing. Very high places indeed. Discussed it inside and out.

It’s for the best. You’ll see. All for the best.”

The roaring of the engines filled the world. In front, the darkness was forced aside only to fall in again behind them, thick and unappeased.

Chindamani turned and spoke to Christopher.

“It’s like magic,” she said.

“Lamps that can turn the darkness to daylight. Boxes that can run faster than wind-stallions. You never told me about any of this, that your people could do such wonderful things.”

“No,” said Christopher, staring into the darkness.

“I didn’t tell you. Everything we do is magic. One day we’ll turn the whole world into fairyland. Wait and see.”

They halted that night in the centre of a vast depression one hundred and eighty miles north of Sining-fu. A large moon gave them light out of a cloistered sky, turning the sand to silver and the hollow in which they rested to a giant, polished bowl. Without the sun, the sands had given up their heat. They lit a fire with charcoal bought in Sining-fu and ate in silence, shivering.

Christopher was unable to explain his worries properly to Chindamani. He told her they would be in Urga in a matter of days. Brought up to believe in miracles, and entranced by the magical pulse of the motor vehicle that had already carried her so far into this ice less and snowless land, she believed him.

He told her what he knew of Ungern Sternberg, not to frighten, but to warn her. He said the Russian had kept a pack of wolves in Dauria so Winterpole had told him and that he had fed his victims to them on occasion. But she had never seen a wolf or even heard one calling in the stillness of the night, and thought he was telling her tales like those she had once delighted Samdup with in his lab rang when winter was at its height.

She missed the boy terribly and was afraid for him, the more so now that the distance between them was growing shorter every day. Some superstitious fear had been aroused in her that she might somehow cayse his death. More realistically, she had seen what Zamyatin was capable of, that the killing of children was not beyond the bounds of possibility for such a man.

Her relationship with Christopher gave her growing cause for uncertainty. She had found she loved him in ways that constantly surprised and delighted her. His eyes, his hands, the foreign roughness of his beard, the odd ways he used Tibetan words, the tenderness of his fingers, the lightness of his breath against her wet skin all filled her at different times with alien and undefinable pleasure and a simple contentment at being with him. When she shared his bed, she experienced an intensity of joy that nothing in her experience had prepared her for. She had always regarded sensual pleasure as a thing reserved for ordinary mortals or for gods: since she was neither, it had been remote from her until now.

For the first time, she understood the meaning of temptation: its power, its subtlety, its intimacy. She would have given lifetimes to have him enter her just one more time or to feel his lips on her breasts or even merely to lie naked with him in the darkness. On their first night in the desert, he came to her urgently, with a desperation she had never known in him before. At the moment when she felt him enter her, she understood something vital: love did not diminish. It increased daily until nothing could contain it except itself.

And she wondered again how she would manage when the moment came for her to leave him and go back to the shadows where she belonged.

It took them another two days to complete the crossing of the Gobi and a low range of mountains just beyond. The car broke down five times, and each time Winterpole swore it was the end. But he cursed and tinkered, tinkered and cursed until something happened, the car bowed to the inevitable, and they were on their way again. Christopher was astonished by this display of manual dexterity in a man of Winterpole’s apparent indolence. Cars, it appeared, were Winterpole’s passion. He said he preferred them to people, and Christopher believed him.

At last the desert was behind them and they were driving on the open plains. Grass stretched ahead of them as far as the eye could see. This was nomad country, a world of white felt yurts and prancing horses, of gently sloping meadows and winding streams where vast herds of sheep and goats and cows grazed in a tranquil silence. They passed a small herd of white horses wearing talismans wrapped in bags of felt across their broad chests sacred animals belonging to a nearby monastery. Dogs rushed out to bark at the car as they passed small encampments, then they were out of reach, gliding into the blue horizon in top gear. Their spirits lifted.

“Urga’s only about one hundred and fifty miles away now,” said Winterpole.

“We’ll be there tomorrow with any luck.”

That afternoon, they came upon masses of purple and white pasque-flowers in a vast expanse of waving grass. Suddenly, winter seemed impossibly far away, and the deep snows of Tibet nothing but a mirage. Wherever they looked, a coloured carpet stretched to the horizon. At Christopher’s request, Winterpole stopped the car and they got out.

He watched as Chindamani bent down in wonder and cupped her hands about the head of a purple flower.

“Smell it,” he said.

But the smell was already everywhere, filling the air all about them, rich and strange and unbearably fragrant, like a woman’s perfume, warmed by the bright sun.

“I told you there were flowers in Mongolia,” she whispered. A thin breeze came down from the north and lifted her hair. The grass and the pasque-flowers waved: it was a great ocean, shoreless and moving to unseen music.

“Are they worth your coming here?” he asked.

She stood up and smiled, ravished by the sight of so much greenery. It was ordinary to him, just a meadow filled with flowers.

But to her it was the world turned upside down.

She laughed suddenly and began to run, weaving among the scattered flowers like a child on its first picnic. Christopher tried to picture her at home in Northumberland, in an English summer, running down to the river at Carfax across trim, delicate lawns:

but her moving form called for something else, something that would tear that prim and tidy world to pieces.

Suddenly she stopped running. She did not scream or cry out, but Christopher knew at once that something was wrong, badly wrong. She was standing stock-still, her body rigid, her hands clenched, staring at something just out of his range of vision.

“Stay here,” Chru top her ordered Winterpole, taking command at once.

“Get your revolver from the car. It may be nothing, but we can’t afford to take chances. Keep the engine running.”

He ran towards her, praying she was all right, that it was only something startling she had seen, something unexpected, like a running fawn. But her silence alarmed him more than a cry or call for help would have done.

He could not make out what the objects were at first. Chindamani was standing at the top of a gentle slope that ran down towards a small river. In either direction, as far as the eye could see, the slope was covered by round objects that looked at first sight like the stems of plants topped by gourds or small melons.

But as he drew alongside Chindamani, he saw what she saw.

Stakes had been cut from a nearby forest and planted all along the banks of the river and as high as the slopes on either side. On each stake, like a grotesque offering of some sort, a human head had been impaled.

Christopher guessed the heads had been there for perhaps a month. Some were little more than bone, others had shrivelled like the heads of mummies, parched and old and leathery. On several, he could see the caps of Chinese soldiers. It was impossible to guess how many there were. He imagined them stretching on for mile after mile until the river reached the sea. As it was, he could not see the end of them, whichever way he looked.

He took Chindamani by the shoulders and led her away from the river. As they turned, his eyes caught sight of a stake at the top of the slope. It was one of several to which a board had been nailed. Christopher went across and examined it.

It bore writing in Chinese and Russian characters. He read the

Russian, but it made no sense to him:

One hundred and thirty days yet and it is finished. I am Death. I am the Destroyer of Worlds. Roman van Ungem Sternberg.

He recognized the last two sentences as quotations from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad Gita. But the first sentence remained mysterious. It read like something from the Apocalypse.

But he was sure he had never read it in St. John’s Revelation.

He looked back again at the grim trophies, at the tokens of Ungern’s carnage. Then he glanced at the river. It was peaceful and unsullied now, free of its winter ice and flowing once more to the sea. But he imagined it a month ago, filled with the headless corpses of ten thousand Chinese soldiers slaughtered by von Ungern Sternberg and his men.

The Saviour of Mongolia had come at last and was at work among men.

They heard the first shots about an hour before sunset. It was the day after their discovery of the field of heads. Each time they passed by clumps of flowers after that, Chindamani turned her face away.

“O Rose, thou art sick,” Christopher whispered beneath his breath; but the worm that had entered the bud of Chindamani’s life was far from invisible.

“Stop the car!” he cried. Another shot rang out, somewhere in the distance, carried to them by a slight echo.

Winterpole braked hard, slewing the car round on its tracks, and killed the engine. A profound silence rushed into the world.

Somewhere a bird sang, a quirky, warbling note. Then there was a sharp crack, followed by a second, then silence again.

“What the devil’s going on?” demanded Winterpole.

“Shut up,” said Christopher. He was trying to guess the direction from which the shots had come. They were gunshots, he could not have mistaken them.

Two more reports sounded nearby. There was something careful, something methodical about the shooting that Christopher did not like. It was not the seasons for woodcocks, and Mongols did not hunt birds with guns.

“Winterpole,” he said, ‘stay in the car with Chindamani. Keep your pistol ready and use it if you have to if anyone comes, frighten him off. Even if he looks harmless. We can’t afford to take chances. I’m going to check out those shots.”

“Why don’t we just drive on?” queried Winterpole.

“Drive on into what?” Christopher retorted.

“Before I go any further, I want to know just what they ‘re shooting out there birds or people. I doubt very much if it’s the first, and if it’s the second I want to know who’s doing the shooting and who’s being shot at.

I’m relying on you to keep Chindamani safe. You’re a man of action now, Winterpole. It’s time you got your lily-white hands a little dirty.”

“At least call me Simon, old boy. Do me that courtesy.”

Christopher said nothing. He reached down and found his pistol, the one he had brought from Dorje-la, Tsarong Rinpoche’s pistol.

They had been driving along the edge of a vast pine forest, which lay to their right. Christopher was sure the shots had come from there. His suspicion was confirmed when another two rang out in quick succession as he got out of the car. Making allowance for the trees, he guessed they had come from a spot about half a mile away.

“Be careful, Ka-ris To-feh,” Chindamani said in her quietest voice, addressing herself to him alone, in their private universe.

“I’m frightened for you please take care.”

He bent and kissed her cheek.

The trees swallowed him up instantly. He was like a diver entering the sea, plunging out of the sunshine into a green world fingered by narrow shafts of broken light that struggled past murky shadows. His footsteps died away into a thick carpet of pine needles.

Everywhere, fallen cones lay in profusion. Silence reigned like a mad king over an unpeopled kingdom, determined and murderous, eager to lay waste. His breathing was the only sound, raw and melancholy, vexed by the heavy scent of pine resin and dead undergrowth. If there were birds here, they were hidden away, voiceless and wingless, watching from secret branches. If there were other animals, they licked their teeth in dark burrows deep beneath the earth.

The forest went on, breeding itself with a green intensity on every side. He was enveloped in a lacework of boughs and low hanging branches. He cocked his pistol nervously. This must be near the spot from which the shots had come.

Nearby, a man’s voice sounded, barking out what seemed to be words of command. A brief silence followed, then two more shots shook the trees. He thought they came from a clump of trees to his left. A murmur of voices came indistinctly from that direction, but he could not make out what they were saying, or even what language they spoke.

He slipped into the close-set thicket and made for the voices.

The trees concealed him but they also concealed whoever was responsible for the shooting. Perhaps it was rabbits. Perhaps they were shooting rabbits. But nothing ran through the undergrowth.

If he had been a rabbit, Christopher might have bolted at the next shot and run straight into the clearing. But he froze and pressed himself against the trunk of a tree. Out in the clearing just beyond where he stood, night was being summoned into the world.

The last sunlight was being drained from the sky. It clung hopelessly to the branches of the trees, thinning, loosening, breaking apart. Soon it would be dark. It would have been better if it had been dark.

In a ring that stretched all round the clearing, stood about twenty men in dirty white uniforms. On their head they wore scarlet forage caps bearing a death’s-head symbol above crossed shin-bones: the uniform of Annenkov’s now-defunct Siberian units.

In their hands, they held 8mm Mannlicher rifles pointed inwards to the centre of the clearing. They had come a long way from home, and the road back was closed. They were living their apocalypse here in the Mongolian wilderness. Some of them had been fighting since 1914. Seven years, and it still had not ended.

In the centre of the clearing, along a low depression from which undergrowth had been meticulously cleared, about forty bodies lay tumbled in a ragged heap. They were dressed in grey uniforms with red triangles on their sleeves; most had astrakhan caps bearing red stars; a few wore helmet-shaped felt caps with a hammer and sickle device. Near the bodies stood another dozen men, dressed in the same basic uniform and lined up for the same fate.

But Christopher’s eyes were focused on one man alone. By the side of the heap of victims stood a small White officer. He was dressed in a tattered grey Mongol overcoat and an old green Cossack cap with a visor. His right hand was held in a black sling that looked as though it had been there since the man’s childhood if he had ever had a childhood. But on his shoulder he sported a general’s epaulet. And in his left hand he held a heavy service revolver. As Christopher watched, he turned and faced the next prisoner in line.

“Kak vas ha familia? What’s your family name?” he asked. His voice carried in the stillness, hoarse and menacing.

The condemned man shivered in the departing sunlight. In his eyes Christopher saw only an utter hopelessness of the spirit, as though life had drained away long before the bullet entered him.

He was young, a mere boy.

“Arakcheyev,” the boy replied. How old was he? Fifteen? Sixteen?

His voice was toneless; for him, identity meant nothing any longer.

“Itnya otchestvo? Christian name and patronymic?”

“Yuri Nikolayevitch.”

The general turned his head a fraction and barked a command at a second officer standing nearby. This third man was dressed in a soiled white uniform, a lieutenant fresh out of military academy.

In his hand, he held a large book in which he was writing.

“Write them down!” ordered the general.

The lieutenant wrote the names in the book, in their proper order, all according to form. No court, no tribunal, no sentence but death, but a record must be kept of the dead. When the new Tzar sat on his throne and thrilled his people with the glamour of his return, he would find all in order. A million dead. Two million.

Twenty million. But all in order: a graveyard with numbered plots and arrows pointing to the exit.

“From?”

“Gorki.”

“Rank?”

“Corporal.”

“Unit?”

“Second Squadron of the Communist Interior Defence.”

“Age?”

The boy hesitated.

“Eighteen,” he said. But it was a lie. They both knew that.

“You admit to being a Bolshevik?”

The boy paused again. For a moment, he saw something like hope. Would a denial not be enough? Then he looked into the general’s eyes and all hope faded.

“Yes.”

“And a traitor to the Tzar and Holy Russia?”

“Not a traitor,” protested the boy.

“I have been loyal to Russia. I have served the Russian people.”

“Write “Traitor”.” The general paused and looked at the boy.

“Have you anything further to say?”

The boy remained silent. He was shaking, trying to control himself. The light was going out of the world. In just another moment he would see the day ending. Suddenly he wanted very much to see the last of the light. It was unbearable to have it snatched away from him by an executioner’s bullet. But he could not bring himself to say anything, not even to ask for another minute of light.

“Very well,” the general said. Some made last speeches, others remained silent. It made no difference. He and his men were impervious to both.

“In the name of the princess Anastasia, Tzarina of all the Russias; in the name of the blessed Tikhon, Patriarch of our Holy Mother Church; in the name of Baron Roman von Ungern Sternberg, Protector of Khalka and Supreme Commander of Russian forces in the East: I sentence you, Yuri Nikolayevitch Arakcheyev, to death. May your soul find mercy with God.”

He raised the pistol to the boy’s trembling head. His victim’s eyes were open, staring, lusting after the dying light. He fired and the boy jerked and toppled backwards on to the heap of corpses.

The general bent down, saw he was still moving, and fired again.

The boy became still. It was growing dark.

“Light torches!” shouted the general.

In a matter of moments, lights flared in the circle round the clearing. Every other man held a torch high in the air. The red flames flickered against white uniforms and long bayonets, and in the centre of the clearing, arms and legs and heads would be singled out momentarily before slipping back into a merciful darkness.

Christopher watched transfixed. Who was his enemy? That was what he wanted to know.

The killings went on. One by one, the prisoners would be led up, questioned, and inevitably shot, usually twice in quick succession. It was a nightmare that repeated and repeated itself.

The last prisoner to be questioned was a thin, stooping man with iron-rimmed glasses, a commissar of the Cheka who had been caught with the military unit whose surviving members had just been executed. The others had been soldiers, but here, thought Christopher, was a real revolutionary. His face was white and drawn, plainly visible in the light of a nearby torch.

Even before the general had a chance to pronounce his death sentence, the man stretched out a hand. With his eyes, he held his executioner fixed, willing him to pass over the gun. A minute passed, two minutes, during which neither man spoke. It was clear what the prisoner wanted. And at last the general gave way.

Using his single hand, he emptied the chamber of his revolver of all but a single bullet, reclosed it, and handed it to the commissar.

Even at such an ideological distance, they understood one another.

All round the clearing, rifles were raised and pointed directly at the prisoner.

But he had no intention of attempting a clumsy escape. He raised the pistol to his head, slowly and deliberately, while all the time his eyes held those of the little general. There was a look of terrible disdain on his face, disdain less for what the general and his men were doing than for what they were, or what they had become.

Watching from the trees, Christopher felt it like an icy blast, the power of this man’s contempt. In a moral sense, he had already escaped his captors. He made no speech, he called down no retribution. It was enough, watching him, to know that the whites were defeated. It was only a matter of time. He held the gun firm against his temple, so that it would not slip. A single motion and all would be well again. He pulled the trigger, and the gun fell to the ground.

The silence that followed was terrible. Whatever pleasure these men had had in their day’s work, whatever triumph they had felt meting out death in such measured handfuls all had been wiped out in a moment by one man’s gesture. The general bent down and picked up his pistol from the ground. His hand shook as he retrieved it and replaced it in its holster.

Christopher stood up slowly, eyes still fixed on the clearing, on the white uniforms of the living, the blood-stained forms of the dead. He turned to go, worried that he might not be able to find his way back through the trees in the dark.

A voice came out of the night, a soft voice speaking in Russian.

“Just drop your gun, tovarisch. We have you covered from all sides.”

He did as he was told. His gun made almost no sound as it fell to the floor of the dark forest.

Behind them, the sky was reddening, as though dawn were breaking in the south. From edge to edge of the horizon, hell was creeping on silent feet across a black sky. It was midnight. The little general Rezukhin was his name had ordered his men to set fire to the forest with their torches. The previous day, he and his unit of forty men had been ambushed passing through the forest on their way back to Urga from a six-day reconnaissance.

Half of them had been killed before they succeeded in luring their attackers out into the open and gaining the upper hand.

Now, Rezukhin had decided that the forest represented a danger to any White troops passing its edge: his solution was to burn it to the ground. But it seemed to Christopher that the general’s reasons for setting mile after mile of trees alight were not military at all.

The general and his men were no longer soldiers fighting a war.

They had lost their war long ago. Now they were actors in an apocalyptic drama, half out of their minds with drugs and alcohol and disease, half-crazed by bloodshed and destruction.

Here in Mongolia, they dragged out a phantom existence, banished forever from wives and family and sweethearts. They thought of themselves as the damned and lived accordingly. They had no fear and no morality, no expectations, no hopes, no reason to do anything but kill and loot and wreak a sort of vengeance on a world that had turned its back on them. They were the men of the brave new age now dawning. And they would spawn a brood vaster and more mysterious in its savagery than any that had ridden these same steppes with Genghis or Hulagu Khan.

Christopher rode with Chindamani. Winterpole was just behind.

They were at the head of Rezukhin’s column, near the general himself. Their car had been commandeered and driven off at speed to Urga by a Russian mechanic.

At first, Winterpole had argued with Rezukhin that he and Christopher were British agents sent to assist von Ungern Stern berg. But the general had only laughed and, when Winterpole persisted, told him sharply to shut up or be shot. Even Winterpole had known when to pipe down. But now he fumed and brooded, believing desperately that Ungern needed him and that he would discipline Rezukhin for discourtesy towards a representative of a friendly power.

Winterpole was a man of the world, but his worldliness, though vast, was of the wrong sort. The sins and vices of polite society, however interesting, are not those of the barracks or the open steppe. Where Winterpole came from, there were rules and conventions, even for the darkest of crimes; how otherwise could men of consequence be distinguished from common criminals? But here no code existed at all: here, desperation swept aside all the niceties and made brutish insanity of everything it touched. It was a fire raging in a doomed forest, out of control and consuming all it touched.

They camped late that night, well away from the blazing forest. A wall of fire shimmered on the horizon still, creeping with the prevailing wind across an unassuming backdrop of night sky. The three prisoners were kept together in a single tent under heavy guard. They slept fitfully or lay awake listening to the sounds of the darkness: birds calling, remote and tuneless; men calling out in their sleep; the crackling of camp fires lit to stave off the penetrating cold. The guards discouraged them from talking together when they woke, though they refrained from using any real violence against them. All that night, Christopher held Chindamani without speaking. She was silent in his arms, preoccupied with some private sadness, sleepless and dreamless.

Throughout the next day they rode on in gloomy silence, strung out across the empty plain like a broken necklace of cheap glass.

One man died of wounds sustained in the skirmish at the forest.

They left him on the grass, naked and pitifully pale. His horse came with them now, bearing an empty saddle.

By the second night, the men had started to grow restless.

Suffused with killing and the infant joy of setting alight a forest merely to lay black ashes on the scene of their crimes, they had ridden until then in a state of morbid contentment, their flagging spirits buoyed up by an infusion of vanity.

But during the second day’s riding, and certainly after the death of the wounded man, a terrible ennui had begun to fix its grip on them. They shifted in their saddles mile after mile, itching to be back in Urga or off on another hunt for Bolshevik infiltrators.

Someone rode out from the road to a nomad encampment and returned with a plentiful supply of han chi a local drink.

That evening, han chi Was passed round after supper and the men’s mood changed. They sang old songs, Russian songs about girls with flaxen hair and birches waving in the mists of autumn, and as they sang they grew sentimental and even maudlin.

The older men regaled their juniors with pathetic tales of valour that had grown tarnished from overmuch recounting. As the night progressed, stories of bravery gave way to accounts of bawdy excess. New songs replaced those of the early evening. In a spot set apart from the rest of the camp, Rezukhin sat by a solitary fire, his black sling invisible against the night, smoking hashish from a private supply kept in his saddlebag.

It was just after midnight when they decided to come for Chindamani. The fires had died down and clouds had come up from the south to cover the moon. Perhaps the han chi rendered them incautious, perhaps the darkness gave them a sense of security in what they planned. Rezukhin had ordered the woman off limits in spite of everything, he knew enough to cover himself against the possibility that the Englishmen might indeed prove of value to Ungern Sternberg. But he had gone to sleep in his tent and would be oblivious to anything that went on.

Some of the men had been watching her furtively all that day, but no-one had approached her or tried to speak to her. It had been years since any of them had had anything to do with a woman who was not a prostitute or the near equivalent. But, coarsened as they had become, in some part of them they retained memories, however dim, of the social conventions that had formed their upbringing. Some of them still had wives or sweethearts at home.

And Chindamani, unconsciously perhaps, but with unmistakable clarity, set up a barrier between herself and the men around her which, however imperceptible, served to restrict their activities to sidelong glances.

That had all changed with the onset of night and the powerful effects of the han chi From sentimentality they passed to self-pity and from self-pity to regret. It was not long before regret had wakened in them feelings of resentment against Germans, Bolsheviks, and anyone else responsible for the loss of Russia and its privileges. And out of resentment was born a curious and unreasonable lust, not merely physical but shaped out of the greed and bitterness that lay in the depths of wounded psyches.

Chindamani was to be their victim, not merely because she was the only woman there, but because she represented too many conflicting opposites for them to cope with. She reminded them at once of the women they had left behind in their homes in Moscow or St. Petersburg and of the eastern women they had known since then. She was physically attractive in a way that only their lost sweethearts had been, yet untouchable, a Madonna-like figure who inflamed them while making them feel like children or priests, castrated, pure, yet seething with impurities. They could not bear the contradictions.

Four of them came to the tent where she and the others had at last fallen into an uneasy sleep. Only a single guard was left, half asleep himself and a little drunk on han chi that some friends had brought for him.

They kicked Chindamani awake, and before she had time to protest, hauled her roughly to her feet. She could tell at once that they were in no mood to be reasoned with, and at once gave up the attempt to struggle. Christopher woke at once, but one of the men grabbed him, holding a gun at his head.

“One word out of you, tovarisch, and I’ll send your brains to Urga before the rest of you. Pommaete?”

Christopher nodded and sank back. He had not understood much, but he got the general idea. Behind the man with the gun, the guard was watching him, his rifle poised. Winterpole came awake, unable at first to comprehend what was happening.

Chindamani turned as they dragged her to the entrance and spoke rapidly to Christopher in Tibetan.

“Ka-ris To-feh! Find him! Tell him I love him! If you can, hide him!

It’s not time yet! Tell him it isn’t time!”

One of the men clamped a heavy hand over her mouth. They wanted her out of the tent, away from the light of the oil-lamp.

They did not want light for what they were going to do. The fourth man let go of Christopher, holstered the gun, and followed the others. The guard remained, intently watching his charges.

A terrible silence formed round them. They knew what was happening, what would happen when the men had finished with her. They heard coarse shouts, then a laugh, raucous and prolonged. Then the laugh was cut short and a group of men cheered.

Someone began to sing a song, not a melancholy dirge about maidens or birches, but a coarse drinking song of German origin which Hebe something-or-other, but transposed into Russian, witless, brash, more sordid than usual out here in the wilderness. It was a song that needed a tavern and the smell of sour beer.

Christopher threw his bedclothes back and made as if to stand.

The guard levelled his rifle at him nervously. A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back down to the ground.

“For God’s sake, Christopher, don’t be such a bloody fool!” It was Winterpole’s voice, hissing in the semi-darkness like a snake.

“They’re raping her!” Christopher shouted back.

“Don’t you understand? Those bastards are raping her!”

“It doesn’t matter, Christopher, really it doesn’t. She’s just a darkie. Don’t get things out of proportion. She isn’t important, you know that. Don’t get yourself killed for her sake.”

Christopher sat up again, but Winterpole got in front of him and fastened his hand on his arm even more tightly.

“There are plenty like her, Christopher, plenty. They breed like rabbits, these Asiatics. You can have as many as you like once this is all over. The best, the very best, I swear. Lovely women, I guarantee it. Just don’t let this one get to you. Try to behave like a professional for once. It’s part of their way of life here, they expect it. You can’t stop it. They’ll kill you if you try to interfere. So just stay out of it.”

Christopher hit him harder than he had ever hit anyone. The blow caught Winterpole full on the jaw and sent him sprawling back on to the floor. Christopher started to get to his feet, but Winterpole, groaning from the blow, somehow managed to twist round and make a grab for Christopher’s legs, toppling him.

That was when the guard made his mistake. He moved across to separate the struggling men, using his right hand while he held his rifle awkwardly in the other. Perhaps he thought he was invulnerable since he carried the gun. Perhaps he imagined the combatants were more interested in one another than in him. On both counts, he was wrong.

As the guard reached for Winterpole, Christopher lunged for his left arm, swinging it back hard against the shoulder. He heard a bone give with a snap and the guard scream in pain. The rifle dropped from paralysed fingers. The guard had sufficient presence of mind to throw himself round on Christopher as he scrabbled on the floor for the weapon. But Christopher was impatient now and out of control.

As the guard rounded on him, he heard a scream outside, a woman’s scream. Instinctively, he recoiled from his opponent’s grip, straightened, and lunged upwards with his knee, catching the man hard in the groin.

Christopher reached for the abandoned Mannlicher. It had been rendered clumsy by the long bayonet at its end. He heard Chindamani cry out again, a tight scream followed by a sob. They were hurting her. Without pausing, he turned and made for the entrance.

“Christopher!”

It was Winterpole, shouting urgently.

“He’s got a pistol, Christopher! I can’t get to him!”

The guard had struggled to his feet in spite of the pain and was fumbling with a pistol in his side-holster.

Christopher swung round. The man held the pistol in his right hand, trembling. He was swaying, dizzy with pain, unable to take aim. Christopher did not want to fire it would bring attention in his direction too soon. He swung the rifle round, feeling it move like a spear in his hand. Men had fought a war with weapons like this, in cold trenches, over rusted wire, yet he had never so much as handled one before. He felt primitive, a sort of god, cold metal in his hands. The man had steadied and was pointing the pistol at his chest. It was heavy, black and diabolical.

Christopher lunged, images of parade grounds in his mind. He had seen men stabbing bags of straw, shouting as they did so. The revolver fired, a sudden light, and a sound of roaring filling the world. He felt the rifle grow heavy, felt something cumbrous move at the end of the long spike, felt the rifle jerk in his hands, heard the revolver fire again, felt himself fall forward into the heaviness.

The bayonet twisted and there was a sound of screaming.

Christopher realized he had closed his eyes. He opened them and saw the guard beside him, vomiting blood, rearing against the long spike in his stomach like a fish made passionate against death on the angler’s gaff. He closed his eyes again and turned the blade once more, drawing away, empty, entranced, striving to escape the tearing of flesh. There was a softer cry and a silence and a pulling away, and suddenly he was adrift in the supremacy of life over death.

“There is no death. There is no death,” he kept repeating, but he opened his eyes and saw the guard on the floor, entering another world. The bullets had not touched Christopher. He was unhurt, but blood from the guard had splashed on his hands and the bayonet he held was dark and wet.

“You bloody fool!” screeched Winterpole from his corner of the tent.

“You’ve ruined us!”

Christopher ignored him and ran out, clutching the rifle.

A fire had been brought back to life about twenty yards away, a red fire that threw tremendous sparks out to tease the darkness. A semicircle of men stood near it, their faces lit like carnival masks, inflamed and bestial. They were cheering as though watching a cockfight. They seemed not to have heard the gunshots, or perhaps they had decided mutually to ignore them in order to concentrate on more immediate concerns.

Christopher raced towards them, pulling back the bolt on the rifle, gauging the distance and the positions of the men round the fire. Coming from the darkness across soft ground, he was at an advantage.

There was a cry and the circle parted a fraction.

Through the gap, Christopher could see one of the four men who had come for Chindamani. He crouched above her, half-naked, pawing her breasts, breathing heavily. Christopher stooped, took aim, and fired a single shot that left the man with only half a head.

The camp filled instantly with silence. Only Chindamani’s sobbing could be heard, and the voice of a hunting owl drifting on the darkness.

“Chindamani,” said Christopher calmly. Hysteria would not help them now. A cool head and a steady hand were what was needed.

“Push him aside, stand up, and come here to me,” he told her,

praying they had not disabled her or that fear had not frozen her into immobility.

For what seemed an age, she lay there, sobs racking her, the dead man’s blood wet on her naked skin like a baptism into all that life was really about. The men were unarmed, uncertain of how many guns their former prisoners might have trained on them.

They could not see into the darkness and knew they presented good targets against the light of the fire. Someone shouted in a harsh voice.

Tut that bloody fire out before he shoots somebody else!”

But nobody stirred. No-one wanted to be the one to move and be singled out for the next shot.

She lifted herself slowly, thrusting the dead assailant away from her with loathing.

“Ignore them,” Christopher said.

“They won’t hurt you. Walk towards me slowly.”

She began to move, arranging her torn clothes about her to conceal her nakedness. He willed her to him, steadying her faltering footsteps with words of encouragement. She reached the circle of men and started to walk through.

One man reached out to snatch at her, intending to use her body as a shield for his own escape. Christopher shot him through the throat, a single shot. The others fell back warily. The way lay open for her.

She was at his side, trembling as she touched him. Her hand clutched at his arm fiercely, hurting him, her fingers digging into his flesh. She said nothing. He felt a rage in him that neither the darkness nor the lust of killing could stifle. He would feel it always, from that moment: it would never leave him, though it would lessen in magnitude.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

“The horses are behind us. I’m going to keep these bastards pinned down here: can you get to the horses?”

She nodded, choking back the last of the sobs.

They inched back slowly across the rough ground, heading for the area behind the tents where the horses had been hitched for the night to tent-pegs. The sound of the animals came to them out of the darkness, whinnying softly and stamping their feet, restless on account of the shooting.

“Find two horses you think we can handle,” Christopher instructed her.

“Untie them. Don’t worry about saddles, we’ll have to go bareback. Untie the others as well, but leave one for Winterpole, in case he makes it.”

She slipped away from him, her confidence returning. Someone had thrown water on the fire and he could no longer see clearly what was happening in the camp.

A voice came out of the darkness, soft and familiar.

“The rifle, Mr. Wylam. Throw it away from you as far as you are able. I am aiming at your back and the range is negligible, so please behave like a reasonable man.”

Christopher stiffened. He recognized the voice: Rezukhin. A long sigh escaped him. He had forgotten that the general’s tent was next to the temporary paddock. With a groan, he threw his rifle down as ordered, several yards away.

“Christopher! What is it?” Chindamani called from the darkness.

“Stay back!” he shouted.

“Take the nearest horse and ride. Don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for anyone! Just ride as fast as you can!”

“Keep quiet, Mr. Wylam,” Rezukhin’s voice came again.

“But first tell the girl that if she so much as moves a muscle I’ll shoot her where she stands. Is that understood? I can see her perfectly clearly from where I’m standing. And I see very well in the dark, I assure you.”

Christopher called again.

“Stay where you are, Chindamani. Don’t move. He says he’ll shoot you, and I believe he means it. But get ready for a chance to make a break for it.”

He would have to make a chance for her, distract Rezukhin long enough to let her make it to the horse.

“I can’t go without you, Christopher!” she called back.

“I won’t leave you here!”

“You’ve got to! For his sake. For my sake. When the moment comes,” he pleaded.

“Stop babbling!” Rezukhin barked. He was frightened and unsure of what was happening. Was the camp under attack? Had his prisoners allowed a band of Red infiltrators to slip past his guards?

Christopher wondered how good Rezukhin’s aim was at this distance. The range was short, but he sensed that the general had originally been right-handed and that there were limits to how well he could use his left.

“Your men raped her, Rezukhin!” he called out.

“You promised us a safe passage to Urga. You told your boys to keep their hands off us but see what happened when your back was turned.”

“I told you to keep quiet. If my men need a woman, I don’t interfere. They endure enough privations. You have no privileges here, no rights as far as I’m concerned, you and the other man with you are nothing but spies. Which means I can have you taken out and shot.”

“The way you shot those poor bastards in the forest? Without a trial? Judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one? I thought you were a soldier. I thought we were on the same side. But I appear to have been mistaken.”

“This is Mongolia, Mr. Wylam, this is a world apart. We are under martial law here. That law empowers me to condemn a man to death and to have him executed on the spot if the situation demands it. In this place, it is situations that compel us to our actions, not men or their morality.”

Rezukhin steadied the pistol, holding it firmly in line with Christopher’s chest. It was heavy, but his hand did not waver.

“And frankly, Mr. Wylam,” he went on, “I think the present situation calls for action. For condemnation and execution. You have killed at least one of my men, possibly more. You have endangered the lives of my entire unit. You are attempting to escape from military custody. It will be a pleasure to deal with you as you deserve. Come closer. I want to see you.”

“Ka-ris To-feh!”

Chindamani had found the right horse, a small gelding she had ridden since leaving the forest. She slipped its rope and pulled herself on to its smooth back.

“Run!” she cried.

“It’s too dark, he’ll miss you!”

It took Christopher less than a second to decide. He turned and broke into a run, praying he was right about Rezukhin’s aim.

The general swung the barrel of his gun round, panning after Christopher’s running figure. He saw the girl on the horse, anticipated the direction in which the Englishman would run.

Christopher had forgotten the rifle. It lay where he had tossed it, half-hidden by grass, invisible in the darkness. His foot caught on it, twisting his ankle and pitching him forward heavily on to his face.

Rezukhin saw the Englishman fall. He smiled with satisfaction:

Wylam would never make it to the horse now. He glanced forward at the girl sitting on its back, calling desperately to the man on the ground. She would be better out of the way: women only bred discontent, their presence invariably led to brawls and breaches of discipline. Witness tonight’s episode.

He raised the pistol, aimed at her, and fired.

Chindamani dropped from the horse with a startled cry, like a bird plummeting wingless out of the night sky. Rezukhin smiled and walked forward. He might as well finish the Englishman off as well.

Christopher scrabbled for the rifle, but he had lost it again in the darkness. He heard a gun being cocked, a soft click like a small door closing. He looked up to see Rezukhin standing over him, a stunted shadow etched against the sky.

Rezukhin’s finger tightened on the trigger. Christopher caught his breath. He would call her name whatever happened, not even a bullet would deny him that. He closed his eyes. There was a roar and a second roar that followed instantly, like doors slamming in a great temple. He let his breath go urgently, calling into the blackness, against the roaring, calling her name.

There was no pain. He found that strange. Someone was shouting at him. He found that stranger.

“Get up for God’s sake, Christopher! The whole camp will be on our backs in a minute!”

It was Winterpole, leaning over him, helping him to his feet.

“I’m .. .”

“You’re all right, man. The first shot you heard was mine.

Rezukhin’s was aimed somewhere in the direction of Jupiter.”

“Chindamani!”

“She’s all right too. Rezukhin’s shot grazed her arm and made her lose her balance. She’s not much of a horsewoman. Come on, we’ve no time to lose.”

Christopher hear ds shouts from the direction of the main camp.

Someone fired wildly in their direction. It would still be touch and go. He dashed with Winterpole to the horses. Chindamani had remounted her pony and sat clutching its mane. In one hand, she held the leading ropes of two medium-sized mounts.

“Be careful,” she said.

“The shooting has made the horses restless.”

“Let’s get those other horses loose first,” Christopher suggested, uprooting the peg holding the animal next to him. Winterpole followed suit. Closer now, the shouting had grown in volume and violence. A shot rang out and they heard a bullet whistle past.

“Hurry!” Christopher shouted.

Suddenly, a figure appeared out of the darkness, brandishing a sabre and shouting incoherently. Winterpole turned, drew his pistol and fired. The man crumpled, choking loudly.

“Get on with it!” cried Christopher.

The animals were loose now.

“Let’s go!” shouted Winterpole.

But Rezukhin’s soldiers were already on them. A burst of indiscriminate firing came out of the darkness, narrowly missing them, the bullets passing audibly just over their heads.

They took a horse each and mounted. Winterpole raised his pistol and fired four times in quick succession over the heads of the remaining animals. There was a frenzied whinnying and snorting, then they bolted. Their own horses rushed off along with the rest in a thunder of hoofs. Behind them, inarticulate shouts and loud gunfire chased them into the darkness. Someone started firing from their flank.

“Keep your heads down!” shouted Winterpole. But they were racing now, holding desperately to the naked backs of their mounts, feeling the darkness rush past in a roar of horses’ hoofs and frightened snorting.

Slowly, the un ridden horses outdistanced them, and bit by bit their own mounts slowed as the panic left them.

“Are we all together?” shouted Christopher as soon as the pace of their flight had steadied to a canter.

“Chindamani! Are you all right?”

Her voice came back to him, frightened but controlled.

“I’m here, Ka-ris To-feh. I’m all right, don’t worry about me.”

He rode across to her.

“Hold on,” he called to Winterpole.

“I want to move Chindamani to my horse.” He needed to be beside her, after what had happened.

They stopped and he helped her mount in front of him. They led her horse behind, its rope held in Christopher’s hand.

“Winterpole! What about you?” he shouted once they had got under way again.

Winterpole was fine. He had done his bit. There was no need to apologize now for anything: they were quits.

They rode on at a steady pace. Rezukhin’s men could not catch them now, without horses, in the darkness. But Christopher wished there was more light, that the moon would put in an appearance, however briefly. The sky was thick with clouds, through which not even the faintest glimmer of light escaped. They had no conception of the direction in which they were headed, nor could they easily measure how far they travelled. Time seemed to pass to a different measure, desperately slow and unrelenting. Only the horses were indifferent.

From time to time, one or another would fall into a fitful sleep, only to waken soon after, jolted by a change in the horse’s rhythm or a cry out of the darkness.

For a long time Chindamani did not sleep. Christopher held her about the waist, steadying her against the swaying of the horse, but he sensed that she did not wish to talk. Perhaps she would never be able to discuss the events of that night; but he wanted her to know that he would be there if she wanted to. A few times he felt her body quivering, not from cold though the night was icy but from unwanted memories suddenly crowding in on her.

A little before dawn, he felt her grow more relaxed and realized she had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep. Though desperately fatigued himself, he struggled to keep awake in order to prevent her slipping. The horses were walking now.

Dawn, when it finally came, was torn between splendour and drabness. On the edge of the horizon, directly ahead of them, a pale and insignificant light suddenly erupted in jets of red and gold only to be swallowed up lazily by sordid banks of tattered cloud. It was not a dawn in which to look for auguries. It promised neither peace nor war, but something infinitely more grotesque than either.

With the light, it was possible to make out the sort of country they were in, a barren scrubland, devoid of any interesting features or signs of life. It seemed to stretch behind and ahead of them forever. They were strung out across it, Winterpole far in front, followed by Christopher and Chindamani with their two horses.

Christopher called at the top of his voice to Winterpole, telling him to stop. It was time they halted and rested properly. At first Winterpole paid no need, then he raised a tired hand to show he had heard, reined in his horse, and slipped awkwardly to the ground. He waited for them to catch up with him, his arms folded across his chest, relaxed and apparently un flustered by their adventures. They did not hurry to reach him nor, when they did, did Christopher find anything to say to him. He dismounted and helped Chindamani to the ground. She yawned and held on to him tightly, shivering in the dawn breeze.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Christopher. He turned and spoke to Winterpole in English.

“Do you know where we are?”

Winterpole smiled.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said.

“I overheard some of them talking last night, before all the trouble started. I got a rough idea which way we were travelling.”

He turned and pointed.

“Do you see those mountains ahead of us?”

Christopher nodded.

“That’s the Bogdo Ula range. Urga is on the other side.”

“I’m tired.”

They had been walking for days now, but Zamyatm showed no signs of slacking off. Samdup had begun to wonder if he was human at all.

“Won’t you have another chocolate?” the Buriat said, holding out a large beribboned box to the boy. God knows where or how the man obtained the thing, but it had appeared one evening at Uliassutai, a burning temptation to a child who had scarcely tasted sugar in his life. The box bore the legend “Debauve & Gallais’, and had clearly originated in their little shop near the top of the Rue des Saints-Peres, whence it had travelled to St. Petersburg in the halcyon days before crowns and chocolates were together interdicted. But by what circuitous route the box now in far from pristine condition had come to the steppes of western Mongolia or how it had in the end fallen into Zamyatin’s egalitarian hands as an offering for his little god-prince, it was impossible to know.

Samdup shook his head and walked on in silence. He was not to be drawn so easily from his tiredness. It had not been petulance that led him to complain. The boy really was tired and needed more than battered chocolates to fortify his spirits or his body against the rig ours of another day. He hated Zamyatin with a raw and pitiless loathing, and longed to be rid of him. Yet a mutual dependence had grown up between man and boy, such that Samdup had little comfort in the thought of their parting.

Zamyatin fell back a little to where William was trailing along behind on his pony. They had agreed that he should have the remaining pony since he was in such poor shape. The bite he had received in the tunnels beneath Dorje-la had swollen out of all proportion. In the past week, it had become red and angry, the skin over it drawn taut like the skin of a drum. The boy suffered constant pain from it now and could scarcely sleep at night. At each of their recent halts, he had been examined by Mongol doctors, but all they had been able to do was to prepare herbal concoctions, which William drank without effect.

“Have a chocolate, William,” Zamyatin urged, holding the box up to him. But the boy did not even look down or show that he had heard. He was not eating properly, and Zamyatin was growing worried.

Strictly speaking, he should have dumped the English boy weeks ago. Tibet was still a long way in the future, and he was not sure how useful William would prove anyway. But something in the boy’s situation had awakened what little conscience there was in Zamyatin. He identified with him and in some respects regretted having taken him from his home. All the more now that he was sure the boy would not survive much longer unless he received proper medical attention.

The two boys had formed a strangely intense friendship in spite of their inability to understand one another’s language. William had taught Samdup a little English and learned some Tibetan in return, but they had only words without grammar or syntax. They communicated in some manner that transcended or side-stepped language. William would let only Samdup tend to him when his neck was particularly bad. And Samdup would go nowhere unless William was by his side. They had become like brothers.

Zamyatin tried without success to win the favour of one or the other.

He knew that, if William accepted him, Samdup would come round in time. Without Samdup, Zamyatin would lose all purpose in being here. True, there were communist cells at Urga and elsewhere now, with which he could liaise. But he knew that another Comintern agent, Sorokovikov, was already in the country and that he had organized the existing revolutionary group into the Mongol People’s Party under the leadership of a man called Sukebator. Udinskii had told him that a delegation from the MPP had visited the head of the People’s Section of the East for the Party’s Siberian Bureau in Irkutsk. That had been last August.

After that, a Mongol-Tibetan section of Comintern had been founded. The first Mongolian Party Congress had been held in Russian Khiakhta in March. Puzorin, commander of the Soviet of the Fifth Army, was already mobilizing his men.

So events had overtaken Zamyatin while he had been tucked away in his little monastery in the Himalayas. He could feel the reins of power slipping out of his grasp before he had even learned to move them through his fingers with any real dexterity. More than ever, everything hinged on the boy. Ungern’s defeat, the Khutukhtu’s overthrow, and Zamyatin’s elevation to the vice regency of the East. Others might move cells and parties and armies, but what could they achieve in the end without the underpinning only a Saviour-child could give them?

Already his expedition had met with success, as he had anticipated. The riot at Uliassutai had been a mere beginning. He had met with the Sain Noyon Khan and one of the princes from his aim ak a man called Damdinsuren, and had presented them to the boy. It had gone exactly as planned both men, together with the lamas in their entourage had recognized Samdup as the new Khutukhtu and promised their support, moral and military both.

They had given him letters to other princes, to the Tushetu and Setsen Khans, and to the heads of several key monasteries.

Somehow he could not explain it, did not wholly admire or admit it even to himself- the boy exerted some sort of charm over everyone he met. He played the part, but there was more to it than that. Perhaps it was simply that Samdup had throughout his life been little else but a god, so that he behaved as a god might be expected. And the boy did not have to act: he really believed he was the Maidari Buddha. But the Mongols, like the Tibetans, were accustomed to little boys who deported themselves as god lings yet they responded to Samdup with genuine respect.

Mongolia then was divided into several large provinces or aimaks, each of which was further divided into several ho shun Zamyatin calculated that he had already perhaps ten ho shun solidly behind him or, to be precise, behind the boy, which was the same thing as far as he was concerned. There would be more riots, and next time he would see to it that the participants were armed.

The main thing was to keep the boys on the move. Word would be out by now, and if what he had heard about Ungern Stern berg was even partly true, the baron would stop at nothing to crush the rebellion breeding beneath his nose. Every night, Zamyatin and the boys stayed at the juris of a different clan, moving in a broken pattern across the country, never keeping to a straight line, never staying in one place long enough to make tracing them easy.

Tomorrow they would start for Urga. The Sain Noyon Khan

would organize a series of uprisings in the west and north while Zamyatin and his young Pretender took horses to the capital. By the time they arrived there, Ungern’s attention would be focused elsewhere. They would make their way into the city with the assistance of a few sympathizers. Zamyatin would make contact with Sukebator and the other revolutionaries, explain what was happening, and put himself in charge.

Up ahead, Samdup had stopped and sat down by the side of the track.

Zamyatin went up to him slowly, holding the rein of William’s pony.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“My feet hurt,” Samdup said.

“What do you want me to do about it?” snapped Zamyatin. His own feet hurt.

“We’ve still got miles to go. Do you want to spend the night out here with the wolves?”

But he liked the boy. He really did. He liked both of them. It was just that he did not know how to show it. He had never known.

No-one had ever told him.

Urga

Urga lay in the sunshine uneasily, trapped in a hollow between dark hills. Sunlight had entered it in proper measure, scattered from a cloudless and smiling sky, but no sooner did it touch its narrow lanes and fetid alleyways than it lost whatever lustre it had possessed and became a grey and sickly thing. The city’s rooftops were golden and the spires on its temple tipped with sunlight and precious stones, but shadows hung over them and the sound of great trumpets echoed round them with a mournful and desperate flatness.

Mountains enclosed a melancholy plain across which the city stretched

for mile after mile, in three separate sections: Mai-maich’eng, the

Chinese trading city, to the east, its stores and warehouses deserted

and empty; Gandan, the grey city of the lamas, with its temples and

colleges for the study of theology and medicine, to the west; and in

the centre, Ta Khure, where the Living Buddha dwelt behind thick walls

of dull red and white, among rooms full of holy relics and a thousand

ticking clocks, each set to a different hour and minute. Time passed

in those chambers to a morbid creeping sound, like ice moving down a

mountain slope

In slow procession, pilgrims walked or crawled in circles about their god, while trumpets played and gongs shivered and the voices of ten thousand dreaming priests shimmered and echoed in the hollow air. All was as it had been, nothing was changed, nothing was altered except for the actors and their faces. They wore ancient robes and spoke ancient lines, turning and bowing and lighting the proper incense in the proper places, as generations of actors had done before them, as they themselves had no doubt done in former lifetimes. Precise, mannered, without a syllable altered or a gesture changed. And in the Buddha’s chambers, clocks ticked and rang out in the stillness.

In the centre, brooding, dressed in scarlet, his eyes heavy from sleepless nights, Roman von Ungern Sternberg sat among the warm tents of his troops, planning the stages of a small apocalypse.

He drank small cups of Chinese tea and smoked dark-scented cigarettes, but all the time his mind was on other things.

He stood up and went to the door of hisjwrt. It was situated in the courtyard of an abandoned hong that had once belonged to the great Shansi house of Ta Sheng K’uei. The Buriat regiment under Sukharev was stationed here by Ungern’s choice; nearby were the Chahar and Tatar regiments commanded by Bair Gur and Rezukhin. But Rezukhin had gone south with a Russian detachment two weeks ago and still had not returned.

The city filled his nostrils with its peculiar smell, a rich, sour smell that was a blend of holiness and corruption, sanctity mixed with greed and simple, raw humanity. He had not chosen Urga a malign Fate had chosen him for it and sent him there to serve its purposes.

Stubbing out a half-finished cigarette on the door-post, he lit another. His nicotine-stained fingers trembled slightly. It was late afternoon, time to receive the reports that had come in at lunchtime. The combined sounds of men and horses conveyed to him a sense of ease and normality. They did not know what burdens he carried on their behalf, what worries and anxieties he bore for their sake. But when the time came, they would ride out of Urga in his train, like a host of riders out of hell, destroying all that lay in their path. He could already see the dust rising above their horses’ fetlocks and hear the sound of their galloping. He had come to long for that moment as a lover for his wedding-night. Mongolia was to be his bride: he would tear her to pieces in order to possess her.

He turned and went back into the vurf. Colonel Sepailov had just

finished his third glass of han chi

“Have some more, Colonel.”

Ungern poured another measure into the colonel’s empty glass and watched him throw back the powerful drink as if it were milk.

If the colonel drank much more of this stuff, he would cease to be of much use, and that would be a pity. Ungern could only really trust two of his staff now Sepailov was one and the other was Burdokovskii, whom the men had nicknamed the Teapot. They were his eyes and ears and when there was dirty work to do, his hands as well. There was often dirty work to be done. Sepailov would have to cut down.

“Start at the beginning again,” Ungern said, ‘and tell me the story just as you had it from Jahantsi.” He lit another cigarette, blowing smoke carelessly in Sepailov’s eyes.

The Khutukhtu Jahantsi was Chairman of the Mongolian Council of Ministers. A sinecure really, but Jahantsi was astute enough to make his position count for something even in these times. He had spoken to Sepailov that morning and asked him to pass on information to the Baron. It gave an impression of intermediacy, even though all concerned knew such things were mere formalities: the Baron was in control for the moment.

“Jahantsi says something is going on at Uliassutai. Two riders came yesterday using tiaras with your name. They were given horses at every staging-post.”

“Who gave authority for the tiaras to be written?”

“Kazantsev, or so they said.”

“Very well, Kazantsev. And?”

“There was a riot.”

“A riot? You’re sure? Not justv.. . a disturbance?”

Sepailov shook his head. His skull was curiously shaped, flattened on top, a little like a saddle: in a deformed world, he was a prince.

“People were killed, General. A group of about ninety Mongols attacked a detachment from the Uliassutai garrison. They had to be beaten back.”

“Were they carrying weapons?”

“No. No, that’s the curious thing. They were all unarmed. One of the riders .. .”

He hesitated.

Ungern sucked on his cigarette. Smoke hung around him like a noxious halo.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“Go on.”

“He ... he told Jahantsi they chose to be unarmed. They had access to arms but chose not to carry them. They believed they were immune to bullets. So they rushed a group of armed soldiers, waving talismans and chanting slogans of some sort.”

“Slogans? Bolshevik slogans?”

Sepailov shook his head.

“No, religious slogans. That sort of thing’s more in your line of country than mine, sir. But I expect they were the sort of chants I hear them mumbling when I go past the temples here. Mumbojumbo, sir.”

Ungern nodded, a little impatiently. He believed in the chanting.

It wasn’t mumbo-jumbo. Nervously, he drew on his cigarette. He was up to eighty a day now. What would happen when his supplies dried up?

“No doubt,” he said.

“You say some people were killed. Were any shots fired?”

“Yes, sir, a few. It seems young Schwitters was the officer in charge.

Do you remember him? He .. .”

“Yes, I remember. Get on with it!”

“Sorry, sir. As I was saying, Lieutenant Schwitters was commanding officer. It seems he panicked and ordered a volley over their heads. When that didn’t work, he had his men shoot into the crowd. They killed about twenty of them, no-one’s really sure how many. Then they charged in, using their rifle butts. That did the trick. They cleared off double quick. But .. .”

“Yes? Yes?”

“Jahantsi thinks .. . He thinks it’s just a start, sir.”

“A start? What makes him think that? Has he any reason to think that?”

“The rioters were shouting about some child, sir. Some sort of Buddha, Jahantsi said. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about it’s all gobbledegook to me, begging your pardon, sir. But it seems they expected this child to be some sort of leader.

So Jahantsi says, and he should know, I suppose.

“The child, well, he’s supposed to be some sort of Saviour they’ve been expecting. You know how it is. Jahantsi says there have been rumours about this child from other parts of the country. I asked him if...”

Sepailov’s voice trailed away into silence. Von Ungern Sternberg had grown rigid in his seat, his hands feverishly tight against the arms of his leather-upholstered chair. He wore a red Mongolian coat of silk above black Russian breeches and leather boots: a general learning to be a god. His face made Sepailov think of icons he had worshipped as a child. It was a thin, ascetic face, arid and Byzantine, waiting for ochre and crimson and gold leaf to transubstantiate it. All the fine, exhausted tensions of saintliness, yet without so much as a trace of anything holy. He had always been untidy, but recently Sepailov had noticed a greater disorder in him, less physical than mental. Ungern was breaking down. He was full of prophecies and dreams and undercurrents of a mad divinity. But basically, he was breaking down.

“Where does this child come from?” He snapped out the question angrily.

“Jahantsi thinks .. .”

“Yes?” Ungern stubbed out his cigarette, half-finished, and lit another.

“He thinks he may have come from Tibet. In fact, he’s almost certain. I think he knows more than he’s saying. Someone told him there’s a man with him, with the boy.”

“A man? A Tibetan?”

Sepailov shook his head.

“Jahantsi thinks he may be Mongolian or ...”

He hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Or Russian. A Buriat. So Jahantsi says.

“And there may be a second boy. A European child, so the rumours go.

There’s talk that he’s some sort of incarnation as well.”

“The first boy, the Tibetan did Jahantsi say who he thought he was? Who he claims to be?”

“Only some sort of Saviour, sir. A Buddha. You’d have to ask Jahantsi himself.”

Ungern Sternberg’s features were set hard. A long vein in his forehead throbbed, pulse by pulse. Sepailov could not look him in the eyes.

“What sort of Buddha? Didn’t Jahantsi say? Come on, man!

What did he say?”

“I ... I ...” Sepailov stammered. How many men he had killed with his bare hands, but Ungern could make him stammer like a schoolboy still.

“Well?”

“I can’t remember, sir. Something .. . something beginning with “M”, I think.”

“Maidari? Was that it? The Maidari Buddha? Come on!”

“Yes. Yes, I think that’s it, sir. I’m sure it is. But you’ll have to ask Jahantsi. He knows.”

“Very well. Tell Jahantsi I want to see him. Right away. Make sure he understands. I don’t care if he’s in Council or what he’s doing, just get him here. And tell him I want to see the Bogdo Khan tonight.”

“The Khutukhtu?”

“Yes, the Khutukhtu. In private. In his palace. Tonight.”

“Very well.” Sepailov rose to go.

“Sit down,” snapped Ungern.

“I haven’t finished yet.”

Sepailov sat hurriedly.

“I’m sorry, I .. .”

“Send a message to Kazantsev. Go to the radio station yourself and send the message in person. Make sure they bring Kazantsev to the other end.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell him to initiate a search for these boys and the man with them.

He’s to put every man on it he can spare. Make sure he understands.

Good men. Mongols, Tibetans, Burials. No Russians.

Understand?”

“Yes, sir. Is that the whole message, sir?”

“No. Tell him I want the boys killed. Keep the man alive if possible. But kill the boys. I don’t care if he has to kill every youngster between here and Uliassutai, just as long as he makes sure the boys are dead. The Tibetan child above all. Make your instructions clear. You can go.”

Sepailov rose again, saluted, and turned.

“And Sepailov ...”

“Yes, sir?”

“Tell Kazantsev I want the head. He’s to send the boy’s head to me. Be sure about that. He can stuff it with straw or anything he likes. But I want the head.”

“Yes, sir. The head. Very good, sir. I’ll tell him.” This was more like it. Heads he could understand. Heads he could relate to. All this other mumbo-jumbo just made him bilious. He would tell Kazantsev about the head.

Sepailov lifted the flap of the yurt and went outside. His hands were shaking. He hadn’t seen Ungern as angry in months. He took a deep breath and walked away. The thought of heads had made him restless. He hoped there would be an execution before bed-time.

“Will he come?”

“Yes,” said Chindamani.

“He will come.”

“Why?”

“Because I have asked him to. He cannot refuse me.”

Christopher got up from his seat and went to the window. He and Chindamani were sitting in a faded downstairs room belonging to Urga’s old Russian consulate building, roughly midway between Ta Khure and Mai-mai-ch’eng. The consulate consisted of a large, two-storey building built from wood and plaster, topped by an iron roof. Immediately beside it stood the house chapel, with a small cupola.

The consul and his staff had fled months ago, leaving behind a priest, two dogs, a caretaker, and the old Russian cemetery a wasteland of rubble, unmarked graves, and inconstant weeds.

They had met the priest, Father Anton, on their way to the city.

Winterpole had engaged him in conversation, regaling him with stories of his meetings with Father John Sergiev of Kronstadt, the famed spiritual healer at the naval base guarding St. Petersburg.

They found that they had friends and books in common, although Christopher suspected that much of Winterpole’s familiarity with Russian Orthodoxy was little more than bluff. Bluff or not, it was enough to secure them the friendship of the old priest.

He brought them to share his rather primitive quarters at the consulate. He himself lived in an icon-lined room in the west wing of the ground floor, but he gave them rooms on the first floor, more luxurious apartments that had belonged to the departed diplomats.

The building had been looted shortly after the consul and his people left, and the rooms were all but devoid of furniture or trappings. But Father Anton had access to meagre stores in a little cellar. He brought them a battered samovar and plates, musty bedding, and lamps with oil. For all its roughness, their situation seemed a special comfort to them, luxury after so much hardship.

There was black tea for the samovar and charcoal to burn in an iron stove at night when it grew cold, and in the mornings sunlight would lie like warm oil on their sheets.

Winterpole was upstairs writing some sort of report, though God knows how he intended to transmit it to anyone. Christopher and Chindamani were waiting for a man to arrive from the city, a monk to whom Chindamani had sent a message via the caretaker on the previous day. Tsering had originally been a trapa at Dorjela, but a few years earlier he had travelled to Urga to study at the mampa tat sang the medical college of Urga.

“Can he be trusted?” Christopher asked.

“Yes, Ka-ris To-feh, he can be trusted. More than Wan Ta-po upstairs.”

She still found the name “Winterpole’ unpronounceable.

“What is his name?”

“Tsering. Tsering Gyaltsen. There were two brothers at Dorjela, Tsering and Tsewong. Tsewong was at Dorje-la until a little time before you came.”

Christopher looked round at her. In the yard outside, yellow dust was blowing in all directions.

“I’ve heard of Tsewong before,” he said.

“At Kalimpong, in India.”

Gently, he explained to her what he knew of the circumstances of Tsewong’s death. But he did not mention the silver cross that Martin Cormac had found hidden on him.

Just as he finished, there was a knock on the door. Christopher opened it to find the caretaker waiting for him.

“The man you ask for here,” he said in stilted Tibetan.

“He ask you come outside. Not come in.”

Chindamani joined Christopher and together they stepped out of the room. In the passage, crows flew in and out through broken windows. One of the two dogs, a great fawn creature with a spotted back, ran backwards and forwards, growling aimlessly. In his palace of icons, Father Anton sang in a cracked voice, antiphonal refrains to a Palestinian virgin.

A young lama was standing awkwardly by the outer door. Dust blew in through a window and swirled around his feet. He moved from one leg to the other restlessly, unable to keep still. Tsering was narrow-faced and intellectual looking, thin and ascetic like all monks, yet honed to it by more than prayer or fasting.

Chindamani greeted him formally. He flushed and bowed deeply, then advanced and presented her with a khata scarf, which she accepted with a smile.

“I have no scarf to give you in return,” she said.

“It is enough for me to be in your presence again,” he said, keeping his head bowed.

“And I am very pleased to see you,” she replied.

“Do you have a scarf to give my friend Ka-ris To-feh? He is the son of the Dorje Lama. You must treat him with respect.”

The young man lifted his head and produced a second scarf, which he proceeded to place in Christopher’s outstretched arms.

Chindamani passed the scarf she had just been given to Christopher, and he laid it in his turn on Tsering’s wrists. The monk bowed even more deeply and remained standing, waiting for permission to move.

“Please come inside and talk with us,” said Chindamani.

“I would prefer to stay here,” Tsering said.

“Very well. Let us stay here. Have you done what I asked you to do?”

The lama nodded. His head moved on a stalk of a neck like a bird snapping for seeds. He was dressed in the usual drab weeds of a lama, but lacked the downtrodden, resigned look so many of them presented to the world. Whatever the source of his asceticism, it had little to do with disgust for life.

A yellow robe is no guarantee against humanity. The words came unbidden into Christopher’s head. Hadn’t that been what Martin Cormac said, referring to this man’s brother?

“What have you discovered?” she asked.

“First, I have something to show you, with your permission,” the monk said.

He indicated something lying on the ground a few yards from his feet. It was a small leather bag stitched roughly with cord. He picked it up and handed it to Christopher without saying a word.

He felt it in his hand, slightly spherical, somewhat uneven, and quite heavy.

“Open it,” he said. Christopher did as asked, unfastening the clumsy knots tying the neck. The leather fell away, revealing the small head of a child, the face twisted and smeared with blood.

Mercifully, the eyes were closed, but Christopher almost dropped the gruesome object in shock.

Chindamani came to Christopher’s side and looked.

“Is it Samdup?” Christopher asked, uncertain whether or not he recognized the dead face.

Chindamani shook her head.

“No,” she whispered.

“It is not Samdup.”

She turned to Tsering.

“Where did you get this?”

“The Russian general Ungern Sternberg has filled a room with heads like this. All boys of Dorje Samdup Rinpoche’s age. He knows he is here. He is looking for him.”

Christopher replaced the head in the bag and retied the cords that held it. He wondered where to put it. For a moment, he felt more absurd than horrified.

“Can you help us find him before he does?” she asked.

“I think so. One of my friends at the mampa tat sang belongs to a revolutionary club started a few years ago by a man called Sukebator. This friend confides in me because I am a Tibetan and because he thinks I hold more liberal views than most. For several days now, he has been excited about something, although he won’t say exactly what it is.

“However, he did tell me something that seemed important.

“Ungern is collecting heads,” he said.

“He’s looking for a boy, a khubilgan, but he won’t find him. The boy is safe, but Ungern won’t know until it’s too late.” He told me where the heads had been thrown, and I managed to take the one I showed you. There was no guard, they had just been thrown into the room to rot. I brought it to you as proof that my friend’s story is true.”

“What is a khubilgan?” asked Christopher.

“It’s the Mongol term for a trulka,” Tsering said. His voice had a fresh quality to it, its rhythms less stilted than those Christopher had observed in other Tibetan monks.

“There’s no difference really.

But my friend said “khubilgan gegen”, meaning an enlightened incarnation, so I knew he was referring to someone of very high rank. Someone like the Maidari Buddha.”

“And did your friend tell you where this boy is being kept?”

Tsering shook his head.

“No. But I believe I know where this revolutionary club meets.

There is a large yurt just off one of the smaller alleyways in Ta Khure. I’ve seen my friend near there several times. If that is their centre, they may be holding the Lord Samdup there.”

Christopher pondered. It sounded as if Tsering was right and that the boy was here in Urga, waiting for Zamyatin to make his move.

“Did your friend say anything about another child, another incarnation?

A pee-ling incarnation?”

“I do not understand. Do you mean a trulku like the Dorje Lama?”

“Yes. He is the Dorje Lama’s grandson. He is my son.”

The lama shook his head again.

“No,” he said.

“He mentioned only a khubilgan. I think he meant a Tibetan. He said nothing about a. pee-ling trulku. I’m sorry.”

Chindamani took his hand and held it tightly.

“He will be there, Ka-ris, I’m sure of it. Please don’t worry.”

He pressed her hand in return.

“I know,” he said.

“But I’m becoming anxious now that we’re so close.”

He turned to Tsering.

“When can we take a look at what’s going on in this part?”

“It must be soon. We don’t have much time.”

“Why not?”

“The Lady Chindamani will explain.”

Christopher looked at her, puzzled.

Chindamani’s face grew serious. She bit her lip gently.

“It’s a prophecy, Ka-ris. The Maidari Buddha must appear on the Festival of Parinirvana.”

“Parinirvana?”

“The final entry of the Lord Buddha into nirvana, the state of heavenly bliss. The festival commemorates the day of his earthly death.”

“What does this prophecy say?”

She looked at Tsering, then back at Christopher.

“It says that the Buddha of the new age must appear on the day the last Buddha passed out of this world. They are one person.

The Buddha who entered nirvana must now return from bliss for the salvation of men. It says that he will return to earth in the Maidari Temple at Urga.”

“And if he fails to appear there on that day?”

She hesitated.

“He will have to die in order to be reborn yet again,” she said.

“If he is not proclaimed, he will return to the state of nirvana, where he will choose a new human vehicle for his next incarnation.”

“But if Samdup doesn’t appear this year, why can’t he do so next year?

Or the year after?”

She shook her head. A crow flew past her in a cloud of dust, its wings black and tattered.

“It must be this year,” she said. Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

“Do you remember,” she continued, ‘when you were in Dorje-la, your father told you of another prophecy?

“When Dorjela is ruled by a.pee-ling, the world shall be ruled from Dorje-la.”

He nodded. He remembered.

“Did your father tell you of another verse?”

Christopher thought.

“Yes,” he said.

“It referred to the son of a pee-ling’s son. He thought it referred to William.”

She smiled at him.

“I think he was right,” she said.

“The verse reads: “In the year that the son of a pee-ling’s son comes to the Land of Snows, in that year shall Maidari appear. He shall be the last abbot of Dorje-la, and the greatest.” Now do you understand? Now do you see why it must be this year?”

Christopher was silent. He stared at her, at a long bar of dust flecked sunlight that straddled her face, at a wisp of hair that fell, black as an omen, across her cheek. Behind her, the thin monk stood among the shadows, his eyes fixed on Christopher. He felt like a plaything, passed from hand to hand, chased hither and thither by forces beyond his reckoning.

“When is this Festival?” he asked.

“You said it would be soon.

Are we in time?”

Her eyes held his. At the end of the passage, a crow cawed and flapped its wings.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“It begins at dawn tomorrow.”

It was dark when they reached Ta Khure. An uneasy darkness, edged with fear. In the streets, corpses lay exposed for the dogs, pillows beneath their heads, prayer-books in their cold hands, waiting. It was the custom.

On Tsering’s advice, they had walked from the consulate rather than draw attention to themselves by riding. Winterpole had not wanted to come at first, but Christopher had insisted he accompany them. He did not trust him on his own.

Gradually, the walls of the sacred city had enfolded them as they made their way through the tangled maze of silent alleyways towards the centre. The temples were full of chanting and the flickering of lamps. Everywhere, monks were preparing themselves for tomorrow’s festival. In the larger streets, pilgrims still walked or hobbled or crawled towards the Khutukhtu’s winter palace.

It was not clear to them how Tsering found his way through the dark lanes of the Khure without a light; but he seemed not to falter, as though possessed of eyes akin to those of an owl or a cat.

The festival moon had not yet risen, and the faint light of the stars made little impression in the cramped and narrow alleys down which they wound their slow and uncertain way.

Tsering and Christopher went in front, with Chindamani and Winterpole watching their rear. On their way to Ta Khure, Christopher explained to the monk the circumstances of his brother’s death. He kept from him the fact that Tsewong had been a Christian convert, that he had died wearing a silver crucifix that had once belonged to Christopher’s father. Not to the abbot of Dorjela, thought Christopher, but to my father, who really died all those years ago in the snows beyond the Nathu-la.

“I don’t know why he killed himself,” Christopher admitted.

“He left no message, no clues. Perhaps the missionary with whom he stayed would know. But he denied all knowledge of your brother.”

“Yes,” said Tsering.

“That is what I expected: that he would deny him in the end.”

“I don’t understand. You speak as if you knew him. As if you knew Carpenter.”

Tsering nodded, a dim shape in the gathering dusk.

“I knew him, yes. He once came to Dorje-la. Didn’t you know that?

About six years ago, a year or so before I left Tibet to study here.

Perhaps he came again the Lady Chindamani would know.”

“I’ve never spoken about him to her. Why did he come to Dorjela?”

The monk paused, slackening his pace.

“He had heard I do not know where that the abbot of Dorjela was a pee-ling, that he had once been a Christian. Perhaps he thought the abbot was still a Christian, that he was some sort of missionary like himself- I don’t know. Anyway, he came to us at the height of summer, asking to be granted admission to the gompa.

He stayed for several weeks: his journey had been bitter, and he was tired and feverish. When he had rested and taken herbs, he was allowed to visit the Dorje Lama. They were together for a day.

Then Kah-pin-the returned and said he wished to leave. The abbot appointed my brother as a guide, to lead him back through the passes to Sikkim.”

He walked more slowly now, watching the darkness form gently about his words, calm nightfall envelop his memories of his brother.

“When he returned,” he resumed, “Tsewong and I were together a long time, talking. He said that the pee-ling teacher had converted him to his faith, that he had become a Christian.” He paused and looked at Christopher.

“After that, he was never easy in his mind.

It was always a burden to him, this foreign faith, this thing of a dying god and a world redeemed in blood. He had never been happy with the life of a monk, but his new beliefs did not seem to bring him happiness either. He struggled with them, as though the pity of it all devoured him from outside. Once, I think he told the abbot of his dilemma, but he would never tell me what passed between them.”

Christopher felt the silver crucifix against his chest. He guessed how deeply his father must have understood Tsewong’s position.

They walked on into the thickening darkness. Winterpole changed places with Christopher, allowing him to walk behind with Chindamani.

Chindamani kept close to Christopher, her hand in his, seeking security or warmth or something he, in his present nervousness, felt scarcely able to give. Once her lips found his briefly in the darkness as they stopped at a narrow intersection redolent with the scent of some hidden blossom. He did not know whether she had explained the nature of their relationship to Tsering; but before it grew dark he had seen that the monk still observed all the proper tokens of respect for the Ta.ra.-trulku with whom he walked.

For his own part, Christopher was finding it easier to treat Chindamani as an ordinary woman. He thought of her now with less awe than previously. Away from Dorje-la, the goddess in her was stifled somewhat. Or perhaps that is the wrong expression.

The open plains and nervous vistas of Mongolia seemed to have swept away something of the air of naive self-sufficiency that had been nourished in her by the narrow walls and shadowy, painted chambers of the monastery.

They found the enclosure with little difficulty, though Christopher could not see how it differed externally from any of the others.

Urga was in reality little more than a nomad settlement that had grown huge and permanent. Many of its temples were tent-temples that could be dismantled and moved when occasion demanded.

And the majority of dwellings were gers, circular juris of thick felt erected on thin birch lattices.

The wall was not difficult to climb: it had been designed for privacy rather than as a protection against robbers. Even in troubled times like these, theft was uncommon. They slipped over, clinging to the shadows, watching and listening for a sign of life.

Christopher carried a pistol he had found at the consulate. He held it ready, but prayed that he would not have to use it. He wanted to find Samdup and, if he was there, William, and take them out quietly, with the minimum of fuss. Zamyatin could wait. Without Samdup, Christopher suspected, he was nothing.

In front of them, barely visible, were two gers, one small and one larger than average. They loomed out of the darkness, white, dome-shaped structures that seemed somehow confined by the walls around them.

“Which one?” Christopher whispered to Tsering.

“The large one. The smaller ger will be used for storing fuel and provisions. The boy may be in the large ger or the wooden house to the rear, I’ve no way of telling. Let’s try the ger first.”

They started forward, bending low and moving on tip-toe towards the ger. The ground was hard-packed clay, firm and resilient, smothering their footsteps. No sounds came from the tent.

In the distance, dogs were barking madly as they circled the city in search of food: there was no shortage.

Suddenly, Tsering stiffened and halted, crouching lower than before. He motioned to Christopher and Chindamani to get down.

At the south-east corner of the tent, where the door was situated, they could make out the dim figure of a man. He was leaning on something that could have been a rifle, and seemed to be keeping watch.

“Go round the back,” Tsering hissed.

“Wait for me there.”

He moved off into the darkness without a sound.

“You two go,” whispered Winterpole.

“I’ll go with the monk, keep him covered while he carries out a reconnaissance.”

Winterpole vanished after Tsering. Christopher and Chindamani slipped round the curved side of the tent. It was even darker here. They crouched down, listening intently.

No more than five minutes passed before Tsering returned, although it seemed much longer.

“There’s only one guard,” he whispered.

“We can get in through the bottom of the yurt it’s only held down by blocks of wood for the winter.”

He bent down and began to remove pieces of wood from the khayaa, the bottom layer of thick felt that formed the rim of thejurt.

Christopher started to help him.

“Where’s Winterpole?” he asked.

Tsering looked at him.

“Isn’t he here?” he asked.

“No, he went with you, to keep you covered.”

Tsering put the block of wood he had been holding to the ground.

“He didn’t come with me,” he said.

“I thought he stayed with you.”

They looked round, but Winterpole was nowhere to be seen.

“I don’t like it,” Christopher said to Chindamani.

“I knew he wasn’t to be trusted. Where do you think he has gone?”

“He could be anywhere. But I think we should be quick here.”

She bent down and helped them remove the last of the wooden blocks. It was the work of moments to lift a section of the khayaa.

A dim light came from inside the yurt

Christopher went in first, holding his pistol ready. Tsering and Chindamani followed. Neither of them was armed.

The interior of thejMrt was conventional in design, with a central hearth in which a large fire was lit. In front of the fire lay carpets and a triangular arrangement of cushions. Cabinets and chests stood along the walls, and to the right of the door was an elaborate Buddhist altar, stacked with images and other ornaments. Only a few lights provided any illumination.

Christopher crept forward on hands and knees. At first the yurt seemed empty, then he made out the shape of two small figures seated on cushions near the door. His heart gave a leap as he recognized William and, beside him, Samdup. A Mongol guard had been placed to watch over the two children. His back was towards Christopher, and he appeared to have dozed off”. The barrel of a rifle jutted out above his left shoulder.

Christopher continued to creep forward. Suddenly, he froze.

William had caught sight of him. Desperately, Christopher motioned to the boy to keep still. But William could not contain his excitement. He reached a hand out to Samdup and pointed eagerly in Christopher’s direction.

What Christopher feared happened. The guard’s attention was drawn by the boy’s sudden activity. He stood and, turning, caught sight of Christopher and his companions.

The guard shouted and raised his rifle. He fired too hastily, without taking proper aim. The shot missed Christopher by inches, giving him time to move into a crouching position. As the guard aimed for his second shot, Christopher fired. The man staggered, dropped his rifle, and fell back on to the altar, sending its contents crashing in all directions.

The door-flap opened suddenly and the guard who had been keeping watch

at the entrance came running in. Christopher fired before the

newcomer’s eyes had time to adjust to the light inside

“Quickly!” he shouted, running towards the boys.

“We’ve got to get out of here before someone comes.”

But in spite of his sense of urgency, he had to stop to hold William and assure himself that his son was still alive. Chindamani came running up behind him, taking Samdup into her arms and lifting him into the air.

There was a sound of voices outside. Christopher put William down and ran to the doorway.

“Come on,” he said, reaching for William’s hand.

“Let’s go!”

But William looked up at him, tears in his eyes.

“I can’t!” he cried.

“Look!”

Christopher looked down at the spot to which William was pointing. There was an iron shackle on the boy’s ankle, to which a chain had been attached. The chain was pegged fast to a heavy chest a few feet away. Samdup had been chained in the same way.

Christopher let out a cry of rage. He bent down and picked up the guard’s rifle, lifting it as a hammer to break the chain away from the chest.

At that moment, there was a sound of running feet outside. The door-flap was raised and several men came in. They were all armed. The last one held the flap up. A moment later, Nikolai Zamyatin stepped into thejwf.

Christopher dropped the rifle and his pistol. Zamyatin smiled.

“You’re just in time for the party,” he said.

“The festival begins in a few hours’ time. I have a celebration planned.”

He had coughed up blood so many times recently, the sight of yet more in the bowl scarcely frightened him. It made him angry more than anything, angry yet impotent, for it was his own body that was in a state of rebellion, and he could hardly order himself taken out and shot. He intended to die on the battlefield, even if he had to drag himself there on his hands and knees; but each time he expectorated blood now, a tiny stab of doubt entered his mind.

Perhaps the thing that was eating his lungs away would finally cheat him of the hero’s death he craved. There was no glory in spitting this pink fluid into a steel bowl.

The boy had slipped through his net. From reports now being received, it was clear that he and the man with whom he was travelling had made their way clear across the vast plains between Uliassutai and Urga, and that, in all probability, they were already here, within the city, indistinguishable among its multitudes, secret, hidden, walking down darkened alleyways in the dead of night.

He had been sent heads, dozens of tiny heads, enough to fill ten copper chests and more, but still the boy had escaped him. The heads had arrived daily, sewn up in sacks of leather or hessian, the blood on them dried and sticky, and on their heels reports had come of sightings further east or talk of the boy’s presence in scattered yurts far from the beaten track. The boy had eluded his best efforts to hunt him down, and now he was making ready to challenge him here, at the heart of his kingdom. It was time he saw the Khutukhtu again. Time he warned him of the consequences if the boy could not be found in the next forty-eight hours.

He hastily covered the bowl with a cloth as the sound of feet approached the door of his yurt. He heard the guard come to attention, then a voice tell him to stand at ease. The door-flap opened and two men entered: Sepailov and a European in a white suit. Why couldn’t Sepailov deal with these men on his own? He knew he needed no permission to have a man flogged, or for that matter, hanged.

Sepailov saluted rather sloppily, Ungern thought. The colonel’s uniform was soiled and torn in places. For that alone he should be shot, Ungern decided. He hated the Russians, above all the military men. All he wanted was to wage war with his Burials and Chahars, his Tartars and Kalmaks. The rest could go to hell for all he cared. They were just passengers, and some of them weren’t even paying their fare.

“Yes, Colonel Sepailov?” he said.

“Who is this man? Why are you bringing him to me?”

Sepailov swallowed hard. He noticed the bowl on the table, near a pile of papers he had given the baron earlier for his signature.

Ungern thought no-one but himself and the camp physician knew of his ailment. But Sepailov knew. And he also knew that when Ungern had been coughing blood his behaviour became even more erratic than normal.

Winterpole did not wait for the colonel to make his introduction.

“My name is Major Simon Winterpole of British Military Intelligence. You may remember that we met rather more than a year ago, General, when I visited you at Dauria. I was on an official mission to Ataman Semenov at the time. We were providing assistance to your people in our mutual struggle against the Bolsheviks.”

“You will have to forgive me, Major, but I do not remember you. Life was very busy at Dauria. I saw dozens of people every day. There were representatives from several foreign powers. Now, perhaps you could explain to me just what an agent of British Military Intelligence is doing in Urga. Without permission.”

“But I sent a telegram to you almost two weeks ago. You must have known to expect me.”

Ungern shook his head.

“No, sir, I have received no telegram from you or from anyone else associated with British Intelligence.”

He reached inside his tunic and drew out a silver cigarette case.

The family monogram had worn down badly, he noticed. Perhaps it was just as well; he would certainly have no children. He took out a cigarette and lit it quickly, seeking to disguise the tremor in his hand.

“I see.” Winterpole began to wonder if he had done the right thing in coming to Ungern directly.

“Well? I’m waiting for your explanation. I am a busy man, Major. At present, all I know about you is that you are a self confessed spy who has been operating in an area under my jurisdiction for an unspecified period. I think you have some explaining to do.”

“I assure you, General, that I am not here on an espionage mission. My own position within Military Intelligence is entirely administrative.”

Ungern exhaled a snake of scented grey smoke.

“Meaning that you get others to do your dirty work for you.”

“Meaning that I am authorized to enter into negotiations with representatives of foreign powers. Meaning that I have come to Mongolia with the express purpose of making you an offer of financial and military assistance on behalf of the British Crown.”

The general half raised an eyebrow.

“Indeed? I take it you carry with you credentials.”

“Of course.” Winterpole started to reach inside his jacket.

“They will not be necessary for the moment, Major. Now, I would like to know how you come to pay me a visit in such a hasty manner. This is not normal procedure, as I am sure you are aware.”

Winterpole gave what he hoped looked like a smile.

“I came here tonight in order to bring you information. Information that I believe is important to you. Concerning a boy. Two boys to be precise.”

He saw he had hit the mark. Ungern’s flimsy composure visibly cracked.

He started as though the Englishman had raised a hand to strike him.

“Go on,” he said. With a shaking hand, he stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

“I know where you may find the boys .. . if you are quick. I can lead you to them tonight. If you are lucky, you will also be able to lay your hands on Comintern’s principal agent in this region. And perhaps more than a few of his Mongol confederates.”

Ungern held his breath very still. If the Englishman was telling the truth .. .

“And you,” he said, ‘what would you want in return for this information?”

“Your co-operation. In return for military and financial help.

Great Britain will recognize you or anyone you choose to appoint as the Mongolian head of state. We are willing to establish you here on the borders of Russia in readiness for the day when you are ready to go back to claim your own. Tonight’s information is merely a start, a token of intent, no more. Take it or leave it, it’s your choice.”

“Where are these boys?”

“In Ta Khure. They’re being kept in a compound two streets away from the Tokchin temple. There’s a large yurt what I believe the Mongols call a “twelve-Mana”. And a summer-house behind it.”

Ungern looked past Winterpole.

“Do you know it, Sepailov?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve been keeping an eye on it for a little while now.

It sounds very likely to me.”

“Good. Send a detachment of men round there straight away.

They’re to take everyone alive if possible, except for the two boys.

Have them shot on the spot, I don’t want anyone having second thoughts.

You’d best send Russians for this job.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll see to it at once.” He saluted and turned to the Colonel.

Sepailov turned back again.

“Before you leave, have this man taken out and shot. Do it yourself if you have time.”

Winterpole spluttered, then drew himself erect.

“May I ask what is the meaning of this? I’m a representative of His Majesty’s government. I have diplomatic immunity. Your behaviour is most improper, General.”

Ungern stood up and leaned across the desk. Winterpole blustered to a halt. He had joined his army of glass, and found-Tiimself as brittle and vulgar at heart as any of them. When glass breaks, it shatters, it does not splinter like wood.

“You are not a diplomat, Major. You are, by your own admission, an intelligence agent. Whether you are a spy or an administrator of spies, it is not for me to judge. My task here is to eliminate three groups: Bolsheviks, Jews, and foreign agents.”

“For God’s sake, General. We’re on the same side!”

“Not any longer,” Ungern told him.

“What do you mean “not any longer”?”

“Just that. Your government has just entered into a trade agreement with the Soviets’ it was signed in March. Surely you cannot pretend you did not know.”

“I assure you, I .. .”

“Your Mr. Lloyd George signed it alongside Krasin, the Soviet representative, on the sixteenth of March. The Russian Trade Delegation has already been granted permanent status in London.

The next step will be diplomatic recognition. Do you tell me you were ignorant of this?”

“I left London long before that. No-one thought to tell me. There must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake. You are, are you not, one of the two men responsible for the deaths of General Rezukhin and seven of his unit at a camp five days south of here? Wrere you not originally arrested by the General for spying on the execution of a party of Bolshevik infiltrators?”

Winterpole tried to stand, but his legs had lost their strength.

He felt Sepailov’s powerful hands on his shoulders, pinning him down.

He was beginning to break. In a moment he would shatter and be gone.

Ungern stepped out from behind the desk.

“Please don’t take too long, Colonel I want that boy dead by midnight.”

He went to the door and stepped outside. Sepailov put one hand on Winterpole’s windpipe.

“Relax, Major,” he said in a whisper.

“It won’t hurt if you don’t fight against it.”

Sometimes the ticking of the clocks soothed him. At others, it depressed him, and he sought out the silent chambers of his palace, where time seemed to stand still. Tonight, it brought him neither pain nor pleasure, and he realized that he was growing old. He was fifty-one, but he felt older and sadder than that.

Tomorrow, he would have to play the god again for the multitudes already assembling outside in the darkness to receive his festal benediction. A long cord of red silk stretched from his throne through the length of the palace, across the perimeter wall, and into the wide street outside. For the entire morning, he would have to sit holding the cord in one hand while pilgrims gathered in the mud and refuse to touch its other end. They believed that a blessing would pass down the cord from him to them, wiping away their sins, cancelling all the bad karma they had accumulated. It was a farce; but it was the only farce he knew.

He had been blind for seven years now. The doctors said it was because he drank so much, but he set little store by their dictums and went on drinking regardless. At least it consoled him in his blindness. He loved maygolo, a sweet aniseed brandy that the Chinese traders had sold in small round bottles; and French cognac, whenever Ungern could get a shipment through, which wasn’t often; and above all the boro-darasu wine that they used to send him from Peking. They gave him a kind of sight, or at least a shimmering in the blackness.

For all that, he resented his blindness. It meant he could no longer enjoy all the beautiful things he had gathered about him over the years. The world was such a place, he thought, such a place; and he had seen so little of it. Locked up in monasteries and palaces all his life, he could not go to the world; but he had brought the world to himself.

His secretaries were in bed. His wife was amusing herself with a new lover, in her own palace outside the walls of Ta Khure: he would cover her breasts with oil and her thighs with essence of sandalwood. His monk-attendants were busy praying in readiness for the Festival tomorrow. Alone, he walked through the silent rooms and corridors of his private residence, touching his past with regretful fingers.

It was all here: plate after plate of Sevres porcelain, from which he had never eaten, silvered with a fine patina of dust; pianos that he had never learnt to play, cracked and out of tune now; clocks of every description, their hands set at every conceivable hour;

albums of ivory and malachite, of mother-of-pearl and silver, of onyx, agate, jade, and ornately tooled Russian leather, of blue and red and purple velvet, crammed with fading photographs of the dead and the living; liqueur stands, champagne tweezers, gold and silver and glass candlesticks for which there had been no candles in years; cigar-cases, card-cases, spectacle-cases of tortoise-shell and gold and silver filigree; telescopes through which he had once gazed at the stars, abandoned and dust-covered now. Dreams and fancies to keep a god happy and a man possessed. He ran a stubby ringer over a set of Japanese wind-chimes. They tinkled in the still air like flakes of falling ice.

As the sound faded, it was replaced by another. Footsteps, heavy footsteps. He had expected no-one at this hour. Least of all here, in his private quarters, which no-one entered without his permission. The footsteps grew in volume, muffled by the thick kin cob carpet that covered every inch of floor. His visitors were not pilgrims seeking a private audience: pilgrims would have come on silent feet or on their hands and knees. The footsteps halted, still several feet away from him. He turned to face them.

“Your holiness,” a voice said, “I beg your pardon for this intrusion, but I have brought someone to speak to you. Please listen to what he has to say.”

He recognized the voice. It was Bodo, a high-ranking lama who had once served briefly as one of his secretaries. What on earth could he be doing here? Before he had time to respond, someone else spoke. He could not be certain, but he thought he had heard this voice before as well.

“You are the khubilgan of the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu, the Bogdo Khan, known by the reign-title “Exalted by AH”?”

He nodded. He was sure the voice was familiar.

“Who else did you think I would be?” he asked.

“Then I am authorized to tell you, on behalf of the Provisional Government of the Mongolian People and the Central Committee of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, that you are hereby placed under house arrest and will be confined to these quarters until such time as it has been decided what is to become of you. Do you understand?”

He nodded again.

“Yes,” he replied.

“I understand perfectly. I recognize your voice, but I cannot remember your name. Who are you?” He thought the man had sounded nervous, as though something was wrong.

“My name is Nikolai Zamyatin, a Burial representative of Comintern. We met last year when I came here to negotiate with you concerning your possible role in the coming revolution. You denied me then. You shall not deny me this time.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I remember you. You talked about giving power to the people. But then I had no power to give: the Chinese held it all. And now you have taken away whatever power I might have gained. Who will be the new ruler here? You?”

“The people will rule themselves,” Zamyatin said.

“Yes,” he replied.

“But who will rule the people?”

“We’re wasting time! I’ve already instructed your secretaries to prepare your study. There are papers you must sign.”

He did not move.

“You are early,” he said.

“I was not expecting you until tomorrow.

I understood you intended to have me arrested after the ceremonies in the Tsokchin. Has something happened to make you change your plans?”

There was perfect silence. He imagined the Burial staring al him. There was a note of increased nervousness in the voice when it resumed.

“How did you obtain that information?”

“I know everything,” he answered.

“Didn’t anyone tell you?” He smiled evenly. Strangely, he was not afraid. After all, this had happened before. And this time at least his caplors were Mongols.

It was a pity they had come tonight, though. That had rather upset his plans.

Someone stepped up to him and took his arm.

“Come with me, my Lord.” It was Bodo. He could sense the embarrassment in his voice. Bodo would not last long, he thought.

He would be one of the first to fall when they brought out the guillotines. A pity, he mused; I should like to have seen a guillotine in operation. He loved mechanical things. And he had heard that guillotines were particularly efficient. Perhaps he could purchase one and have it sent out. It might entertain him for a while. And then he remembered he was blind.

They began to walk, arm in arm, down the corridor. He could hear the footsteps of more than one person in front. When the strangers had first entered, he had guessed there were about eight of them. One was a woman, he thought. And two of them children.

In less than a minute, they reached his study. Bodo helped him find his chair, though he could have done so perfectly well without assistance. Someone else opened his drinks cupboard and took out a glass and bottle.

“I would prefer some port,” he said.

“The decanter on the top shelf He had first been introduced to the drink twelve years earlier by an English explorer called Barnaby or Farnaby or something.

Barnaby had sent him several cases of what he called ‘vintage tawny’ through the Chinese am ban who had kept a couple for himself. He was down to his last case or two now, but with care they should last some time. In fact, it was quite likely that they would outlast him.

The port arrived on his desk and he took a tiny sip. He kept it for special occasions. This, he fancied, was as special an occasion as he was likely to experience for some time. The problem was, how to get Ungern here to share it. He had planned everything for tomorrow, and now here they were already, stamping over his carpets, opening his bottles, sampling his wine, and, for all he knew, redistributing his wealth.

“What exactly is it you wish me to sign?” First the Chinese, then Ungern, a saviour turned monster, and now a home-grown menace. They all wanted him to sign something. Two years ago, Hsti Shu-tseng had given him thirty-six hours in which to sign a list of eight articles relinquishing sovereignty to the Republican government in Peking. He had refused; and his ministers had been forced to sign instead. In the end, it amounted to the same thing:

he had no real power, only what others chose to give him.

The Buriat answered him.

“This is a document in which you acknowledge the sins you have committed during your reign as Khutukhtu. In it, you state that, as a result of these sins, you have ceased to be a khubilgan and that the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu has incarnated in another body.

You accept that this is so and freely permit the reins of power to pass into the hands of the true incarnation, who is to rule in your stead, assisted by the people’s government led by Sukebator. The new Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu and the people’s government in their turn acknowledge the help rendered to them by the People’s Soviet of Russia and seek to establish a special relationship with that country. You yourself shall become a private citizen, living in your summer residence and relinquishing your other properties and your Shabi fiefdom.

“We shall deprive you of nothing but your title and your power.

You may continue to drink. You may have as many women and boys as you like. You may keep all your toys and baubles, although you may not add to them. The state will repossess them on your death.”

And how soon would that be? he wondered. There must be a way to get Ungern here. Let them sort it out among themselves.

What had all this to do with him? He knew now who one of the children must be, of course. He had expected as much. But who was the second child?

“And if I refuse to sign?”

“You have no choice, you know that. But if you co-operate, it will make life considerably easier for you: a comfortable home, a generous allowance, gratification of worldly desire. In a way, I envy you.”

“Do you?” he said.

“Perhaps you will change places with me, then. Your eyesight for my blindness, your power for my comfort, your humanity for my divinity and my drunkenness.”

The Buriat said nothing. He had not expected him to.

“So,” he said, ‘what else do you want me to do? What other papers are there for me to sign?”

“You can help us prevent bloodshed,” said the stranger.

“Your soldiers are still loyal to you. Most of them are disaffected with von Ungern Sternberg the Khalkha Mongols, some of the Burials, the Tibetans, the Chinese you gave an amnesty to. He tries to buy them with booty, but they owe an allegiance of faith to you. Tell them to lay down their arms or to join the People’s Army. The baron will have nothing left but his Russians and the handful of Japanese he brought to Urga in February. I have a decree here in your name, instructing all Buddhist troops to stand down and await further instructions from you or one of your representatives.

It only wants your signature and your seal.”

And if there is bloodshed, he thought, whose body will be first on the gibbet?

“You have a khubilgan of your own,” he said.

“Let him sign the decree. Let him rally the faithful.”

“You know that will take time. We don’t have time. We must act now if lives are to be saved.”

Whose lives? he asked himself. Mongol lives? Or the lives of Soviet troops? He knew Red forces were already moving into the north of the country.

“That is none of my concern. But if you will permit me, I want to speak to my Minister of War.”

He reached out a hand and lifted the telephone. Dandinsuren would understand. He would send Ungern. And then he could sit and listen as they bickered for power.

The receiver was dead. He should have guessed.

“I’m sorry,” said the Buriat.

“Your telephone has been temporarily disconnected. You’ll have to make your own decisions tonight.”

He leaned back in his chair, defeated for the moment.

“Bring the boy to me,” he said.

“I want to speak with him. I want to touch him.”

There was a pause, then Zamyatin spoke quickly in bad Tibetan.

A woman answered him, but he overrode her objections. There was a shuffling sound. Someone was standing by his chair. He reached out a hand and touched a face, a child’s face.

“Come closer, boy,” he said, speaking in Tibetan.

“I can’t feel you properly. I can’t see you, so I must touch you.

Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”

But the boy remained rigid, standing just within reach, yet holding back from him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Are you afraid of me? Is that it?”

He could feel his own heart racing. It was curious, but now they were so close, he realized witrflTstart that he himself was afraid of the boy. It seemed a sort of blasphemy for them to be here together, two bodies incarnating a single godhead. In the recesses of his mind, an image formed and became clear: an endless row of shining mirrors, repeating a single figure until it grew quite dim in the distance. He understood himself better than he had ever done before: he was a mirror, and he suddenly felt fragile, like glass bending in candlelight. With the slightest touch he would shatter and fall into tiny silver pieces.

“Yes,” said the boy. His voice trembled, but it was a finely modulated voice. He was sure the boy was pretty and that his cheeks would be soft to the touch. What if they should sleep together? Would that hold the mirrors firm?

“What is there to be afraid of?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the boy.

“But .. .”

“Yes?”

“But Tobchen told me you would try to have me killed. If you knew of me.”

He moved a finger along the slanting ridge of the boy’s cheek. It always cheered him to hear Tibetan spoken.

“Who is this Tobchen?”

“He was my tutor. And my best friend. Except for Chindamani.

He was an old man. He died while we were trying to get to Gharoling.

That was a long time ago.”

“I see,” he said.

“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry he told you I would try to kill you. Why would he want to say that?”

“Because you are my other body. Because only one of us can be Khutukhtu. They want to make me Khutukhtu in your place.”

Such soft down on the child’s face. Old Tobchen had been right, of course. He would have the boy killed if it helped him keep his throne. But the thought frightened him. If he smashed one mirror, what would happen to the images in all the others?

“Perhaps,” he murmured, “I could be your tutor. And we could become friends. I have a palace full of toys. You could stay here:

you would never grow bored or tired.” Or old, he thought.

The boy ventured a little closer.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“They say I am now called the Jebtsundamba Khutukhtu. But I find it hard to say.”

He snatched his hand away. How perverse to be caressing his own cheeks! His hand felt cold and empty.

“Do you have another name? A Tibetan name?”

“Dorje Samdup Rinpoche.”

“Dorje Samdup Rinpoche? When I was brought here first, many years ago, my name was Losang Shedub Tenpi Donme. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? I was ten years old. How old are you, Samdup?”

“Ten, sir.”

His heart froze. Perhaps it was true, after all Perhaps a death of some sort had occurred, perhaps he had truly been reborn while still in the flesh.

“Who is the other child with you? I heard the footsteps of a second child.”

“He is a pee-ling,” replied the boy.

“His name is Wil-yarn. His grandfather is the abbot of Dorje-la. One of the men with us is his father.”

“His father is a Bolshevik?”

“No. They’ve taken him prisoner. He came to rescue Wil-yarn and me tonight.”

“I see. And who is the woman you were talking with?”

“Her name is Chindamani. She used to be with me in Dorje-la Gompa, where I lived.”

“Was she your maid?”

“No,” the boy said.

“She is the Tara trulku of Dorje-la. She’s my closest friend.”

He reached out an unseeing hand. The boy had long hair that made his fingers blush to touch it.

“Do you think she would speak with me?” he asked.

The boy was silent. Then the woman’s voice answered, quite near. She had been standing beside the boy.

“Yes,” she said.

“What do you want to say to me?”

“I want your advice,” he said.

“My advice? Or the advice of the Lady Tara?”

“The Lady Tara’s help,” he said.

“I want to know what I should do. Should I sign these papers? What is the right thing?”

She did not answer straight away.

“I think,” she said at last, ‘that the Lady Tara would tell you not to sign. You are still Khutukhtu. It is not for these people to decide who shall and who shall not be an incarnation.”

“Do you believe I am an incarnation?”

“No,” she replied.

“Was I ever one?”

“Perhaps,” she answered.

“Before the child was born.”

“Then what would you advise me to do?”

She was silent.

“I cannot advise. I am only a woman.”

He shrugged.

“And I am only a man. You have said so yourself. Advise me what to do. As one human being to another.”

She was long in answering. When she spoke, her voice was dull and flat with defeat.

“You must sign the papers. You have no choice. If you don’t, they will kill you. They already have the boy. They have all they need.”

He said nothing. She was right. They would kill him, and what would that achieve? He turned and faced the Burial.

“Are you still here, Za-abughai?” he asked. He meant Zamyatin.

“Yes. I’m waiting for your decision.”