The Forbidden Temple (10 page)

‘Because there’s nothing worse than coming back from a long day at the office and being asked if you’re all right, over and over again,’ Bill snapped. He closed his eyes and sank a little deeper in the sofa, wiggling his toes in his socks. ‘It’s exhausting.’

Cathy took a deep breath. ‘Then why don’t you seem to notice when Ella and Hal are talking to you? Or me, for that matter.’ She hesitated, biting her lip, and continued, ‘I know it can be a bit of an anti-climax after these trips, but you’ve always seemed so pleased to see us before. This time . . . well, it’s like we’re barely here.’

‘That’s not true,’ protested Bill. ‘Of course I’m happy to be back with you and the kids.’

There was a brief silence. The TV flickered mutely, announcing the beginning of the seven o’clock news. Bill reached for the volume on the remote, then gave a yelp as Cathy jumped up and snatched it from him. The picture shrank to a dot as she flicked the power switch.

‘Enough, Bill. Something happened up that mountain, and seeing as I’m the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with, I think I have a right to know about it.’

Bill sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked up, wincing to see her expression.

‘Look, I haven’t wanted to talk about this because I know what you think about Luca sometimes, and, well, he’s . . . my friend.’ Bill paused for a moment and slowly shook his head. ‘But since he hasn’t even called me or made any attempt to set things right . . .’

‘What did he do?’ Cathy interrupted, her voice steely.

Bill sighed and looked down at his large hands for a moment before speaking. ‘You know when I got altitude sickness? I think Luca was planning on leaving me up there.’

Cathy’s eyes widened. ‘What? He
what
?’

Bill flapped his hands as if trying to put out a fire. ‘Look, it didn’t happen so don’t make a big thing out of it. But he said something about going for the summit and leaving me on the ledge. You know, it’s hard to be sure what the hell
did
happen up there. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.’ Then he turned his head, looking back towards the blank television screen. ‘The strange thing is that part of me wishes he had gone for the summit. Then I wouldn’t have to feel so damn’ guilty, like the whole thing is unfinished business because I got ill.’

‘Jesus, I always knew he was selfish but I never thought he’d go
that
far. The man ought to be locked up!’

‘Come on, Cath, you know you can’t judge what happens up there from the safety of our living room. It was just the heat of the moment and funny things can happen to your brain at altitude.
Besides, he didn’t actually do it. And he was the one who got me down.’

‘But this isn’t a one-off. Luca has a track record. Everybody knows he walked past those people dying on Everest.’

Bill looked up accusingly. ‘That’s just what the bloody tabloids said, Cath, and you know it. Luca was trying to get the hell off the mountain. He didn’t even know those guys were up there.’

‘That’s what he told you.’

‘Yeah, that’s what he told me, and I believe him. I know Luca’s always had a hard side to him, but he’d never go that far.’

Cathy looked over at her husband. Bill looked pale and strained. He had dropped a few pounds, and there were shadows under his eyes from the restless nights he’d been having. Moving to sit down beside him, she leaned forward impulsively to give him a hug. As she rested her chin on his shoulder, her glance strayed to the framed photo of Luca and Bill standing at the summit of the Eiger. Their goggles were up around their foreheads and grins split their faces. It had been a speed ascent of the north face and the whole climb had gone without a hitch.

‘Well, at least you know you’ll never climb with him again.’

Bill remained silent.

Cathy pulled back and looked him in the eye. ‘Bill, please tell me you aren’t going to climb with him again? Look, we all know what Luca is like. The kids love him, and he’s sweet with me. Probably, underneath it all, his heart is in the right place. But in the end, Luca is out there for Luca. That’s not someone you can rely on.’

A lock of hair had escaped her ponytail. She pushed it back impatiently.

‘Besides, we have a deal, right? Some good, uninterrupted family time.’ She reached for his hand, her voice growing more determined. ‘Right, my love?’

The phone rang, making them both jump. Bill let go of her hand
with a strained smile, crossing the room to pick up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Yes . . . Oh, it’s you.’

He turned so that his broad back was to his wife. Cathy felt her heart begin to thump.

‘Fine, and you?’

There was a long silence before Bill spoke again.

‘Right. Well, that’s good of you, maybe some time later this week.’ He paused again and listened for a few minutes. ‘I see. OK, well, how about twenty minutes then? The Windsor Castle.’

He put down the receiver and turned back to face Cathy. She felt her heart sink as she saw the new light that had appeared in his eyes.

‘Talk of the devil. Luca wants to speak to me, face to face. To apologise.’ Bill started walking towards the door, picking his jacket off the coat-hook as he passed. ‘I said I’d meet him for a quick pint.’

Cathy looked down at her hands, realising they had started to tremble. ‘Don’t go,’ she said quietly.

Bill was in the middle of sliding his arm into his jacket. He looked round at her in surprise.

‘Why on earth not? We need to sort this out.’

‘Because I don’t believe for a minute he’d be apologising unless he’s got something else up his sleeve. And I can’t bear the thought of him persuading you to go on another trip. I just can’t bear it.’

‘My love, I’m going for a pint with the man. That’s it.’ Walking over to the sofa, he kissed her briefly.

‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ he said. ‘In plenty of time to help put the kids to bed.’

Three hours later, Cathy lay curled up in bed, pretending to sleep. As Bill crept into the bedroom she smelled the smoke from the pub on his clothes, heard the unevenness to his tread.

‘Cathy,’ he whispered as he sat down on the edge of the mattress, pulling off his boots. ‘Cathy love, are you awake?’

Even before he reached out to switch on the bedside lamp, she heard it in his voice. He was going away again.

Every instinct screamed inside of her. This time something bad would come of it.

TWO DUST-STREAKED JEEPS
cut through the north-east outskirts of Lhasa, moving fast. After turning down a long, pitted cement drive, they halted in front of the complex’s iron gates and security passes were handed over. A moment later there was a clunking sound as old electric motors fired up and the massive gates slowly pulled back on their hinges.

Past the long line of garrison buildings, the jeeps rounded a smaller, prefabricated block and came to a halt once more. As the engines died, Second Lieutenant Chen quickly stepped out, squinting against the streaming wind. He stood for a moment in silence, surveying the drab, military buildings and the desolate landscape. Then he jumped slightly as he noticed Captain Zhu had appeared by his shoulder.

‘Drapchi Prison, sir,’ Chen shouted above the noise of the wind.

‘What are these outer buildings?’ Zhu asked, seemingly indifferent to the dust blowing across his face.

‘The northern five are for ordinary criminals. The other two house the re-education centres.’

Zhu nodded, then turned and started walking towards the door of the smaller building. Within a couple of strides Chen had caught up with him, but was careful not to get too close. He towered above the captain, taking one stride for each of his two, and was very aware of how his size could upset his superiors. It had happened before, when he had first graduated from the Academy. After everything he had
heard about Zhu’s reputation, he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

As they crossed the few remaining yards, Chen averted his gaze from Drapchi’s windswept exterior. It had always been a hellish place, but he knew that the external appearance was nothing compared to what lay directly beneath. Mile upon mile of subterranean passages, built during the 1960s by the prisoners themselves, stretched out across the entire complex. There were hundreds of cells, each one an exact replica of the next and all kept in perpetual darkness. Electric lighting was only permitted in the interrogation rooms.

But it wasn’t so much the dark that got to Chen, nor even the occasional sound of a prisoner’s screams. It was the smell. He had never experienced anything like it. It was as if the stench of panicked humans had been rubbed into every one of the bare concrete walls.

Despite the heat Chen shivered slightly, thinking back to his dreadful mistake over the boy. When he’d first heard the news, he was terrified what they would do to him, but by some miracle he’d been allowed to stay on the mission. He didn’t doubt, however, that his life was hanging by a thread. Beijing wasn’t famous for second chances, let alone third.

A guard with a pale, bloated face was there to meet them at the entrance. He carried a flashlight, and his blinking eyes seemed pained by the daylight. He gestured them inside and down a wide, circular staircase with an iron-bar security door at the bottom. After he’d signalled into a room beyond, the door was buzzed open and their slow procession began down the first of many corridors.

Chen could feel that the temperature had already dropped. In only a few metres the heat and wind from outside had been replaced by a chill that seemed to seep through from the sheer weight of the concrete all around them. As the guard marched off down the corridor, his flashlight cut a narrow beam of light across the walls and floor. Every few steps they passed the silhouette of a cell door or an interlocking corridor, before it faded back again into the shadows.

As the guard turned, shining his light round to check on them all, Chen suddenly caught sight of Zhu. His features were bleached white by the beam. He had a handkerchief pressed to his nose, but Chen could see the top half of it was wrinkled in disgust. Obviously the smell was getting to him too.

They were approaching the yellow glow of a ceiling light and the corridor widened into a room. At first it was hard to see much, then various shapes began to take form. Towards the back of the room was a heavy wooden bench with thick strapping and several buckets of water lined up on top of it. Further to the left was a rickety metal chair with a figure slumped forward in it, his shaven head almost touching his knees and his face concealed from view.

As the guard switched off his flashlight, a second figure stepped out from the shadows. He was small and gaunt looking, with wide eyes that stared vacantly ahead. He was wearing a cheap plastic cooking apron and long rubber gloves that stretched past his elbows like medieval gauntlets. Approaching the guard, he handed him a clipboard and, without even registering the others, walked past into the dark corridor and was gone.

The guard swivelled the clipboard round and read the name of the prisoner aloud.

‘Jigme Sangpo. A monk from Tashilhunpo Monastery,’ he said, his voice as wavering as his eyes.

The figure in the chair did not lift its head.

Zhu stepped forward into the room, his left arm outstretched for the clipboard.

‘I know who he is, idiot.’

Tilting the pages towards the light, he scanned the notes that had been kept during the prisoner’s interrogation. It had been going on for just over three days, with successively stronger tortures being introduced every few hours. They had got nothing from the early phases, but as Zhu had already guessed from seeing the water and the plastic gloves, the electro-shock treatment had brought better results.

He moved closer to the figure on the chair. He crouched down and slowly tilted the man’s face up from his knees. There were jagged burn marks lacerating his cheeks, stretching right across his face from where the copper wire had been attached. As their eyes met, Zhu could see that the prisoner’s were dull and bloodshot from long hours of pain. He had both his arms folded into his lap, with his hands resting over his groin. That was where they would have done the most damage, Zhu thought, especially to a monk.

After so many hours, all the monk had said was that ‘two climbers had been brought in from Nepal’ to move the Panchen Lama. That was it. Nothing more.

Zhu looked into his eyes, searching for the slightest trace of emotion. That must be all he knew. No one could resist this kind of treatment, and he had already held out for an impressive length of time. Once broken, it was rare for a prisoner to hold back. They usually said anything to get the electric shocks to stop.

‘You must not feel bad about what you have told us,’ he whispered, moving close but careful not to touch the monk. ‘You have done your duty and we are grateful for it.’

The prisoner stared blankly at this new apparition before him, his mind clouded by the hours of pain and endless questions. In the half-light, the man’s black pupils seemed to expand, obscuring any trace of the true colour of his eyes. Those black circles were boring into him. He could smell the man’s aftershave and the subtle aroma of his freshly washed face.

‘You have done well,’ he said.

Tears welled up in the corners of the monk’s eyes, streaking through the dirt on his cheeks. He had betrayed the boy, betrayed his entire religion. His single consolation was that he only knew a couple of the minor details of the escape, and so had had little to tell. But however little it was, the fact remained – he had told the Chinese.

Captain Zhu stood up, his eyes moving from Chen to the guard.

‘Move him up to the day cells in the main complex.’

‘But, sir, political prisoners are . . .’

The guard’s voice broke off as he saw the expression on the visitor’s face darken. For a moment Zhu remained quiet, allowing silence to fill the room. The guard straightened up, wishing he had kept his mouth shut and growing more and more uncomfortable as the moments passed.

Eventually Zhu handed him back the clipboard.

‘This is no ordinary monk but one of the High Lamas of the Gelugpa sect,’ he said, in an icy voice. ‘You will treat him with the respect he deserves. Now, see to it that he is washed and has a good meal.’