Year Of The Tiger

6

The wind from the steppes moved down into the hollow, touching Chavasse with icy fingers. He shivered and pulled his sheepskin shuba up about his face with one hand.

The pain in his shoulder had lapsed into a slow, dull ache, the raw flesh anesthetized by the bitter cold, and he had a splitting headache and a slight feeling of nausea. Probably something to do with the fact that he hadn’t had sufficient time to become acclimatised to the altitude.

He sat with his back propped against one of the wheels of the jeep and a few feet away, a spirit stove flared in the wind in front of a small pup tent. The two Chinese soldiers crouched beside it. One of them held his burp gun across his knees and smoked a cigarette while the other heated coffee in an aluminum pan.

Chavasse wondered about Joro. At least he’d managed to get away in one piece, so something had been salvaged from the mess, but for the moment, he could look for no help in that direction. Without arms and alone, the Tibetan could accomplish nothing. If he managed to contact some of his men, that would be another story.

The tent flap opened and the man in the Tyrolean hat and hunting jacket crawled out carrying a first-aid box.

He crouched down beside Chavasse and grinned sympathetically. “How do you feel?”

Chavasse shrugged. “I’ll survive, if that’s what you mean.”

The man produced a packet of cigarettes. “Try one of these. It might help.”

He was about thirty-five, tall and well-built, and the match flared in his cupped hands to reveal a strong, sensitive face and mobile mouth.

Chavasse drew smoke deep into his lungs and coughed as it caught at the back of his throat. “Russian!” he exclaimed, holding the cigarette up, and suddenly things became a little clearer.

“But certainly.” The man smiled. “Andrei Sergeievich Kurbsky at your service.”

“I hope you won’t be offended if I don’t return the compliment.”

“Perfectly understandable.” Kurbsky laughed good-naturedly. “Rather bad luck for you, our happening along when we did.”

“Come to think of it, what are you doing out here at night anyway?” Chavasse demanded. “I understood this was a bad security area.”

“I was on my way to Changu. Our engine broke down and by the time we’d diagnosed the trouble, it was dark so I decided to camp here for the night. It was quite a surprise when you flew in. Almost as great as when I heard you cry a warning to your comrade in English.”

“I must be getting old.” Chavasse sighed. “So it was your light we saw?”

Kurbsky nodded. “You interrupted my supper. Of course, I turned off the spirit stove as soon as you appeared. You obviously intended to land, and I didn’t want to discourage you.”

“And we thought it was a herdsman’s fire,” Chavasse told him bitterly.

“The fortunes of war, my friend.” Kurbsky opened the first-aid box. “And now, if you’re ready, I’ll see what state you’re in.”

“It’s only a scratch,” Chavasse said. “The bullet ploughed a furrow across my shoulder, that’s all.”

The Russian examined the wound and then expertly bandaged it with a field dressing.

“You seem to know your stuff,” Chavasse told him.

Kurbsky grinned. “I was a war correspondent in Korea. A hard school.”

“And what are you doing in Tibet?” Chavasse said. “Seeing firsthand how well the grateful peasants are responding to the new regime?” “Something like that.” Kurbsky shrugged. “I have what you might describe as a roving commission. I’m a staff writer for Pravda, but my work appears in newspapers and magazines all over the Soviet Union.”

“I’ll bet it does.”

“This little adventure will make most interesting reading,” Kurbsky continued. “The mysterious Englishman, if that is what you are, landing guns by night disguised as a Tibetan. It’s a great pity you couldn’t have been an American. That would have made it even more sensational.”

The flame of the spirit lamp, flickering in the wind, danced across Kurbsky’s face and there was a glint of humour in his eyes. An involuntary smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and Chavasse sighed. It was hard not to like a man like this.

“What happens now?”

“Some coffee, a little supper and sleep if you can manage it.”

“And tomorrow?”

Kurbsky sighed. “Tomorrow we go on to Changu and Colonel Li, the military commander in this area.” He leaned forward, and his good-humoured face was solemn. “If you take my advice, I would tell him what he wants to know, without any foolish heroics. They tell me he is a hard man.”

For a moment, there was a silence between them, and then Kurbsky slapped his thigh. “And now, some supper.”

He made a sign and one of the soldiers brought coffee and a tin of assorted biscuits.

“Don’t tell me the army of the People’s Republic is going soft on me,” Chavasse commented.

Kurbsky shook his head. “My own private stock, I assure you. I always find that a few little luxuries make all the difference on a trip like this in rough country.”

Chavasse swallowed some of the coffee. It was good and he grunted his approval. “Taking a leaf out of the old empire-builder’s book, eh? Dinner jackets on safari in darkest Africa and all that sort of thing.”

“Thank God for the English,” Kurbsky said solemnly. “At least they gave the world respectability.”

“At any time a most dubious virtue,” Chavasse said, and they both laughed.

“How is London these days?” Kurbsky asked.

For a moment Chavasse hesitated, and then he shrugged. After all, why not? “When I left there was a steady drizzle blowing in from the river, bringing with it all the signs of a typical English winter; there wasn’t a leaf in sight in Regent’s Park, and five nuclear disarmers had chained themselves to the railings outside 10 Downing Street.”

Kurbsky sighed. “Only in London! I was there last year, you know. I managed to catch Gielgud in The Cherry Orchard one evening. A memorable performance – for an Englishman playing Chekhov, of course. Afterwards we had supper at Hélène Cordet’s Saddle Room.”

“For a Russian abroad, you certainly visit the right places,” Chavasse told him.

Kurbsky shrugged. “It’s a necessary function of my work to mix with all classes and to try to see something of every facet of your society. How else are we to understand you?”

“The sentiment does you credit,” Chavasse told him. “Although I can’t say it’s one I’ve frequently encountered among Russian journalists.”

“Then you have obviously been mixing in the wrong circles,” Kurbsky said politely.

One of the soldiers brought more coffee. When he had moved back to the fire, Chavasse said, “One thing puzzles me. I thought things were strained between Moscow and Peking. How come the Chinese are letting you run loose in their most closely guarded province?”

“We have our differences from time to time. Nothing more than that.”

Chavasse shook his head. “Don’t kid yourself. You people like to make cracks about American political immaturity, but at least they had the good sense to realize before the rest of the world who the real enemy of peace was. China’s your problem as well as ours. Even Khrushchev’s got the brains to see that.”

“Politics and religion,” Kurbsky sighed, and shook his head. “Even friends quarrel about such matters. I think it is time we turned in.”

In spite of the quilted sleeping bag which Kurbsky gave him, Chavasse was cold. His head was splitting and he was again conscious of that slight feeling of nausea.

He looked out through the tent flap and concentrated on the flame of the spirit stove, trying to will himself to sleep. One soldier had wrapped himself in a sheepskin rug beside the stove and the other paced up and down on guard, his rubber boots drubbing over the frozen ground.

Chavasse thought about Kurbsky, remembering some of the things the Russian had said and the way laughter had glinted constantly in the grey eyes. A man hard to dislike. In other circumstances, they might even have been friends.

He dozed off and awakened again only an hour later, his teeth chattering and his face beaded with sweat. Kurbsky was kneeling beside him, a cup in one hand.

Chavasse tried to sit up and the Russian pushed him back. “There is nothing to worry about. You have a touch of the mountain sickness, that’s all. Swallow this pill. It will help.”

Chavasse took the pill with shaking fingers and washed it down with cold coffee from the cup which Kurbsky held to his lips.

He folded his arms inside the sleeping bag to keep them from shaking and managed a smile. “I feel as if I’ve got malaria.”

Kurbsky shook his head. “In the morning, you’ll feel much better.”

He went outside, leaving Chavasse staring up through the darkness and reflecting that you learned something new every day of your life. The last Russian with whom he’d had any direct physical contact had been an agent of SMERSH just before Khrushchev had disbanded that pleasant organization. It hardly seemed possible that he and Kurbsky had belonged to the same nation.

But there was no real answer – no answer at all – and he closed his eyes. Whatever was in the pill, it was certainly doing the trick. His headache was gone and a delicious warmth was seeping slowly throughout his entire body. He pulled the hood of the sleeping bag around his head and, almost immediately, drifted into sleep.

The morning sky was incredibly blue, but the wind was cold and standing by the jeep watching the two soldiers strike camp, Chavasse felt ten years older and drained of all his strength.

Even Kurbsky looked different, his eyes solemn, his face lined with fatigue as if he had slept badly. When they were ready, he turned to Chavasse almost apologetically and made a slight gesture towards the jeep. Chavasse climbed into the rear and sat on one of the spare seats under the swivel gun.

The rolling steppes stretched before them, the short golden grass beaded with frost as the wheels drummed over the frozen ground.

Within half an hour, they came to the great highway which the Chinese had built in 1957 to facilitate troop movements from Sinkiang to Yarkand when they had been faced with an uprising among the Khambas.

“Something of an achievement, wouldn’t you say?” Kurbsky asked.

“Depends on your point of view,” Chavasse said. “I wonder how many thousands of Tibetans died building it.”

A shadow crossed Kurbsky’s face. He barked a quick order in Chinese and the jeep moved forward across the steppes, leaving the road, desolate and somehow alien, behind them.

He seemed disinclined to engage in any further conversation, so Chavasse leaned back in his seat and examined the countryside. To one side of them, the Aksai Chin Plateau lifted into the blue sky; before them, the steppes seemed to roll on forever.

Within half an hour they had come down onto a broad hard-packed plain of sand and gravel, and the driver put his foot down flat against the boards.

The jeep raced across the plain and as the cold wind lashed his face, Chavasse began to feel some spark of life, of real vitality, returning to him. The driver changed down as they came to the end of the plain and slowed to negotiate a gently swelling hill. As they went over the top, Chavasse saw a monastery in the valley beneath them.

The shock was almost physical and as they went down the hill, excitement and hope stirred inside him. He turned to Kurbsky and said casually, “Are you stopping here?”

Kurbsky nodded briefly. “I don’t see why not. I’m doing a series on Buddhism and this is one of the few monasteries still functioning in this part of Tibet. A couple of hours won’t make much difference.”

For one insane moment, Chavasse almost blurted out his thoughts, for this could only be one place – the monastery of Yalung Gompa, according to Joro the centre of resistance for the entire area. It was the last place on earth for a Russian and two Chinese soldiers to be visiting, and yet fate had laid out the path for Kurbsky and there could be no turning back. With something strangely like regret in his heart, Chavasse sat back and waited.

The lamasery consisted of several flat-roofed buildings painted in ochre and built into the side of the valley. The whole place was surrounded by a high wall, and great double gates stood open to the courtyard inside.

Flocks of yaks and small Tibetan horses grazed beneath the walls and the black skin tents of the herdsmen clustered beside a stream.

It was a peaceful scene and smoke from the cooking fires, carried to them on the wind, was pungent in the nostrils, taking Chavasse back by some trick of memory to the campfires of boyhood.

A crowd of fifty or sixty people stood by the gate peering into the courtyard, and suddenly the air was filled with an unearthly, deep booming sound that reverberated between the walls of the valley.

Kurbsky pointed excitedly. “See, there on the highest roof. A monk is blowing a radong. They can signal with them for miles, I understand.”

The crowd by the gate turned towards them. They were mainly herdsmen, hardly mountaineers in sheepskin shubas, some with broad knives in their belts. They looked distinctly unfriendly and the Chinese soldier at the machine gun cocked it quickly and checked the magazine. The jeep slowed as the driver changed gear and the crowd parted to let them through.

For a moment, every other consideration was driven from Chavasse’s mind at the sight of the magnificent spectacle which was taking place in the courtyard.

A group of lamas in brilliant traditional costumes were in the middle of enacting some religious ceremony. In their silken robes of blue, red and green and wearing huge masks with hideous demons’ faces painted on them, they whirled together in an intricate and deadly pattern, wielding great swords above their heads.

“What luck!” Kurbsky exclaimed excitedly. “I’ve heard of this ceremony. It’s something few travellers ever see. The Downfall of the King of Hell.”

He opened his knapsack, took out a camera and started to take photos as fast as he was able. For Chavasse, there was a terrible fascination in sitting there, waiting for something to happen, and suddenly he felt curiously light-headed and there was that faint feeling of nausea again.

The demons spun in ever-faster circles, leaping into the air, their aprons of human bones swinging out until they were parallel to the ground. The music from the conches and the drums became even more frenzied and the soldier at the machine gun leaned negligently forward, his mouth agape with wonder.

And then Chavasse realized that the demons had gradually encircled the jeep, that they were moving closer and closer, tightening the circle every moment, and that the crowd who had stood outside had now moved in through the gate.

Kurbsky and his men had noticed nothing. Once, the Russian cursed and hastily reloaded the camera, then continued to take pictures as fast as he could.

Chavasse had been keeping an eye on one man who seemed to be leading the others in their dance. His robe was scarlet, his mask scarlet and white with dark horsehair tails.

The sword in his hand spun in a glittering circle of steel as he revolved, and suddenly he was very close. His right arm swung from behind his left shoulder in one terrible, backhanded blow. The soldier at the machine gun staggered against Chavasse, his head half-severed from his body, and toppled over the side.

There was a moment of utter stillness during which the whole world seemed to stop breathing, and then the crowd roared and moved in. Everything seemed to move away from Chavasse as the demon wrenched off his mask and Joro glared up at him, his face cold and hard, the face of a killer.

The driver screamed once as hands reached for him, dragging him from behind the wheel, and Kurbsky stood there, his face frozen with horror, the camera still half-raised. He threw one terrible, agonized glance at Chavasse and then was pulled backwards out of his seat.

For a brief moment, he managed to get to his feet, covered in dust, blood on his face, and then they swarmed over him like a great sea, blotting him from sight.

Chavasse found himself scrambling over the side down into the crowd, his mouth open in a soundless scream as he tried to claw his way through the living wall towards the Russian.

Faces turned towards him, blind with fury and passion, lips drawn back from decaying teeth. As hands clawed at his clothing, he smashed a fist into someone’s mouth and then a searing pain flooded through his head and he plunged into darkness.