Golden Buddha

43

“MR. Seng,” Cabrillo said, “excellent job so far.”

A cold wind was blowing from the north. It bore the scent of forests and glaciers, aviation fuel and gunpowder. Cabrillo zipped the leather jacket he was wearing tighter around his neck, then reached in his rear pocket and removed a carefully folded white handkerchief and dabbed his nose, which was running.

“Thank you, sir,” Seng said. “Here’s the most current situation report. Murphy and the contract pilot managed to get the charges placed and cause the avalanche at the pass. Any Chinese armor is now effectively immobilized. Even if they decided to ignore the Russian advance and try to return to Lhasa now, their only route would cost them at least forty-eight hours of transit time, and that is if the weather holds.”

“Problems with that operation?” Cabrillo asked.

“The contract pilot, one Gurt Guenther, was hit by small-arms fire,” Seng said. “The extent of his injuries is unknown.”

“You’ve dispatched backup?”

“A relief helicopter with Kasim aboard is en route,” Seng said, “but they made it to the fuel stop and managed to land, so Guenther might not be too critical. The way it stands now is that if Murphy’s team can fly themselves out, we can call back Kasim.”

“Good,” Cabrillo said. “We might just need him here.”

“Speaking of the weather,” Seng said, “we are going to catch a late spring storm this afternoon, then it will clear for tomorrow and the next few days. The estimate is two to three inches of snow, and for the temperature to go below freezing before a slow warming trend.”

“The weather has the same impact on us as on the Chinese,” Cabrillo said, “but it is a possible advantage for the Dungkar forces. We’ll score it in Tibet’s favor.”

From far in the east came the sound of an approaching helicopter. Cabrillo stared in the distance and tried to make out which type it was.

“That’s one of ours, sir,” Seng said. “It contains Reyes, King and Legchog Zhuren.”

“Excellent.”

The two men started walking closer to the terminal. Zhuren would end up there soon enough.

“We have managed to field an attack helicopter liberated from the Chinese and piloted by Mr. Adams. Also a cargo plane we modified into a gunship with Gunderson at the controls, as well as the rental Bells and the Predator.”

“An excellent air armada for the newly resurrected Tibetan military,” Cabrillo said.

“Everything else in the plan has taken place at the correct time,” Seng said, “but there is one problem that has arisen. I discovered it when questioning a captured Chinese lieutenant.”

“What?” Cabrillo asked.

“Because the Chinese troops in Tibet have always been outnumbered,” Seng said, “if they were overrun—and I mean a Broken Arrow situation, no hope at all—the plan called for them to gas the Tibetan rebels with an airborne paralyzing agent.”

“The drums must be marked with some symbols,” Cabrillo said. “We’ll just call Washington and receive recommendations for how to disable it.”

“That’s the problem,” Seng said loudly over the sound of the helicopter hovering to land. “The lieutenant doesn’t know where it was stored. He only knows it exists.”

Cabrillo reached into his coat pocket and removed a Cuban cigar. Biting off the end, he spit the plug to the side, then reached for a Zippo lighter with the other hand and did a single-hand light. He puffed the cigar to life before speaking.

“I have a feeling, Mr. Seng, it’s going to be a long day.”

MURPHY was angry. Gampo had left him alone in the tent with a weak and bleeding Gurt. If this was the way the feared Dungkar reacted to blood, they’d lose this war before it ever started. The Oregon was sending help, but even at the fastest cruising speed the Bell could fly, that would be hours away. Gurt, his friend and fellow warrior, was growing weaker by the minute. His skin was an ugly gray and he was drifting in and out of consciousness.

Just then the flap of the tent was pulled back and Gampo entered.

He was carrying a handful of long-bladed grass clippings in one hand and what looked like a wet dirt clod in the other, and under his chin was a chunk of meat from some unspecified beast.

“Where the hell did you go?” Murphy said.

“Stir the fire in the stove,” Gampo said quietly, setting down the grass and mud, “then add these to the fire,” he added, removing a leather pouch with powdered minerals inside. “We need a good amount of smoke inside the tent. Once you have that done,” he said, pointing to the meat, “cook that in with the tea and make me a meat broth.”

Murphy stared at Gampo as if he were crazy.

But the Tibetan was already busy cleaning and bandaging Gurt’s wound, so Murphy did as he was told. Two minutes later, the tent was filled with a smoke that smelled somewhat like cinnamon cloves washed in lemon. Three more minutes and Gampo stood upright and stared at Murphy. Then he motioned to help him prop Gurt up. The grass and mud had dried into a pair of oblong bandages front and rear. They adhered to his skin like plaster of paris laced with glue. Gurt’s eyes began to flicker open and he drew a few deep breaths.

“Give him the broth of the bear,” Gampo said. “I’ll go gas up your flying ship.”

JUST across the border of Russia and Mongolia, General Alexander Kernetsikov was breathing deeply of the diesel-smoke-tinged air. After leaving Novosibirsk, his tank column had blown through the Altai Region like a top-fueler down a drag strip. Kernetsikov was riding in the lead tank with his head out of a forward hatch. He was wearing a helmet with a headset so he could communicate with his other officers, and a uniform with enough ribbons to decorate a Christmas tree. In his mouth was an unlit Cuban cigar. In his hand was a GPS that he was using to track the column’s speed.

The distance to the Tibet border was five hundred miles. They were traveling at thirty-five miles per hour.

Kernetsikov stared overhead as a flight of fighters crisscrossed high in the air above. Then he called his intelligence officer over the radio to learn what was new. The weather was due to change to snow sometime in the next few hours. Other than that, all was the same.

IN Macau, Sung Rhee was reaching the end of his patience.

Marcus Friday had learned that his plane had been found and had ordered it to return to pick him up and fly him out of the city. Stanley Ho was still angry about the theft of his priceless Buddha. The later discovery that the one Friday had recovered was fake just added to his rage.

After the Chinese navy had realized that the cargo ship they had illegally stopped on the high seas had nothing to do with the incident in Macau, they had broadened their circle of observation and tracked the Oregon to Vietnam.

Po had made a few calls to a friend he knew in the Da Nang police department and learned that a C-130 had left Da Nang for Bhutan. A few more calls and some wired bribes had led him to a rumor that the group that had stolen the statue was on their way to Tibet.

Po was a Chinese police officer and Tibet was a Chinese region, so Po had decided to follow the trail. Flying from Macau to Chengdu, he had arrived on the last flight in Gonggar yesterday evening. By the time he’d arrived at the office of the Public Security Bureau, Tibet’s police force, it was closed. So he’d checked into a hotel and waited for morning.

This morning was chaotic in Lhasa, but he’d managed to meet with the chief of police and requisitioned half a dozen men to help his investigation before the street fighting escalated. By now, he’d figured out which of the band members had been the ringleader. The memory of Cabrillo’s face on the tape from the single security camera that had worked had burned a hole in his brain that only death or insanity would erase.

Po set out to see if he could find his target—he had no idea of the impending war.

As Po and the other policemen loaded into a large six-passenger truck to scour Lhasa, the Chinese military officers were beginning to realize the gravity of the situation. They started to assemble to exert control over the city and crush the rebel forces.

The Dungkar started their plan in motion as well.

TIME was of the essence and Cabrillo had none to spare. For a man that had been yanked from sleep, bound and transported south to the airport under guard, Legchog Zhuren was surprisingly belligerent. Cabrillo had first tried to appeal to Zhuren’s sense of goodness, asking him just to explain the procedure for the poison gas and where the stockpiles were located, but Zhuren had spit in his face and puffed up his chest.

It was obvious that goodness was not a quality Zhuren cherished.

“Tape him,” Cabrillo said.

Up until this second, Cabrillo had tried to show respect by allowing Zhuren to simply sit in the chair in front of him—now it was time to learn what he needed, and for that the Chinese leader would need to be secured. Seng and Gannon wrapped his arms and legs with duct tape and secured him to the chair.

“Prepare the juice,” Cabrillo said to Huxley.

“What are you—” Zhuren started to say.

“I asked you nice,” Cabrillo said, “to help me save both the Chinese in Tibet as well as the Tibetan nationals. You didn’t seem to want to cooperate. We have a little serum that will help to loosen your tongue. Trust me, you’ll tell us everything, from your first conscious memory to the last time you had sex. The only problem is this:

We cannot always get the dosage right. Too much and we erase your memory like a wet cloth across a chalkboard. Usually we gradually increase the dosage to try and avoid that—but you’re a prick, so I think we’ll bypass that step.”

“You’re lying,” Zhuren said in a voice showing fear.

“Ms. Huxley,” Cabrillo said, “twenty cc’s in the lieutenant’s arm, please.”

Huxley walked over to where the Chinese army lieutenant was still bound to his chair. She squirted some of the liquid in the air until she had the correct amount, then with her other hand wiped an alcohol swab across his upper arm, then plunged the needle into a vein. Cabrillo watched the second hand of his watch as fifteen seconds passed.

“Name and where you were born, please,” Cabrillo said.

The lieutenant rattled off the information like his tongue was on fire.

“What is the total troop strength inside Lhasa?”

“There were eighty-four hundred approximate troops,” the lieutenant said. “Just over six thousand were sent north toward Mongolia. That leaves around twenty-four hundred. Of those, some two hundred fifty were sick or injured. The remaining troops are Company S, Company L—”

“That’s enough,” Cabrillo said.

“I don’t mind,” the lieutenant said, smiling. “We have the following armor. Four T-59—”

“That’s fine,” Cabrillo said.

Zhuren stared at the lieutenant in horror.

“Ms. Huxley,” Cabrillo said slowly. “Prepare one hundred cc’s.”

Zhuren started talking and it was nearly a half hour before he finished.

Cabrillo was scanning the notes of Zhuren’s disclosures. He turned to Seng, pointed out a spot on the map, and then examined a satellite photograph of the area.

“I want to lead this one myself,” he said slowly. “I’ll need a dozen men, air cover and some way to destroy the gas.”

“Sir, I inventoried the hangar,” Gannon said. “There were a pair of fuel-air cluster bombs in the ordnance room.”

“That should do it,” Cabrillo said.

STANLEY Ho might own a mansion in Macau and bear all the earmarks of legitimacy, but the fact was that he was really only one step away from street-level thug. Once he realized that Winston Spenser had screwed him on the Golden Buddha, his every waking minute since had been used in scheming to settle the score. It was not just that Spenser had ripped him off—that was one thing. It was the fact that he had dealt with Spenser so many times in the past. That Spenser had smiled in his face, then stabbed him in the back. To Ho, that meant that Spenser had been toying with him, that all the art dealer’s good-natured ass-kissing and pandering had been merely a prelude to the big screw. Ho had been treated like a dupe—and he hated that most of all.

Ho had personally gone down to the Macau immigration office to bribe the clerk. That had given him a list of everyone who had exited the country the day after the robbery. With that in hand, it had just been a case of eliminating all the improbabilities until Ho had gotten down to just three people. Then he had sent three men hired from the local triad leader to Singapore, Los Angeles, and Asunción, Paraguay. The first two had been washes; the parties had been observed and disqualified and the men were called back. Ho was starting to think that maybe he’d need to expand the search, that he had somehow eliminated Spenser from the first cut by accident. He was beginning to think this would take longer than he’d planned.

Just then his fax started printing and a picture came across.

Ho was staring at the photograph when his telephone rang.

“Yes or no?” a voice with a rough Chinese accent asked.

Ho stared a second longer, then smiled. “His hands and his head,” he said quietly. “Pack them in ice and overnight them.”

The telephone went dead in his ear.

PARAGUAY in general and Asunción in particular is more European feeling than South American. The massive stone buildings and extensive parks with fountains scream Vienna, not Rio. Spenser tossed some feed purchased from a machine nearby toward the pigeons, then wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

The fact is, a man who commits a crime is never free—even if it seems he pulled it off.

The abiding knowledge of his infraction is never far from his mind and it weighs on his psyche, and holding it inside only makes it worse. Only the sociopath feels no remorse—the events happened to another, if they ever happened at all.

Spenser brushed the last of the feed from his hand, watched as the birds fought over the morsels, then stood up. It was late afternoon. He decided to return to his anonymous hotel and nap before going out for a late dinner. Tomorrow he would start looking for a house to rent and begin to rebuild his life. Tonight, his plan was to eat, sleep and try to forget.

The art dealer was not a stupid man. He knew Ho would scour the earth for him.

Right now, however, Spenser was just trying to put that all out of his mind. He had a few days at least, he thought, before the trail here might be detected, if it ever was. That would give him time to move out of the capital into the countryside. There, he would eventually make friends who could help warn him if people started poking around. And hide him, if they came too close.

At this instant in time, however, his guard was down and he was weary. Tomorrow he could worry—tonight he would have a fine Argentine steak and an entire bottle of red wine. Crossing through the park, he started down the cobblestone street leading up the hill toward the hotel.

The sidewalk was deserted; most people were taking their midday break. That gave him comfort. He was humming “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” as he strolled along. Halfway up the block, he saw the awning leading to the street from his hotel.

Spenser was still humming when a side door onto the sidewalk swung open and a garrote was slipped over his head and he gagged over his verse.

With lightning speed the triad killed and dragged Spenser inside a garden at the rear of a home facing the street. The occupants of the home were out of town, but that was of little matter to the killer—had they been unfortunate enough to be home, he would have killed them too.

Four days passed before the remains of Spenser’s body were found. It was minus the hands and the head, but the arms had been carefully folded across his chest and the Canadian passport tucked into his belt.