The Forbidden Temple (16 page)

Picking up one of the two wooden boxes that lay to either side of the fire, Luca prised open the top. Both boxes had a few broken slats
from days of being strapped to the yaks, but the supplies were still carefully packed within.

‘At least they left the food and our gear.’

‘Yeah,’ said Bill. ‘But we’re stuffed if we don’t find a route up from here. There’s no way we can carry on with everything ourselves. How many days’ food do you think we have left?’

Luca shifted the boxes to one side and looked from bag to bag again, his frown deepening. ‘I don’t know, but we can’t afford to waste any more time. We’ve got to find a way up that rock-face. I’ll go up this morning and see whether there’s anything that will work. Are you okay staying here and sorting through the gear?’

Bill nodded. Twenty minutes later he was building up the fire as Luca tightened the laces on his climbing boots and, without another word, left in the direction of the mountains, his shoulders hunched with fresh determination.

He spent most of the day pacing up and down the base, scanning every inch of the mountains’ curving flanks. There was something about the cliff-face that was bothering him. No matter which angle he viewed it from, he couldn’t quite visualise the way ahead. The cliff itself was a vertical drop of about eight hundred metres with long, ragged cracks running down its entire length. It was solid granite and would hold their protection well, but it was the route itself that looked almost impossible. It was a maze of overhangs and long sections of perfectly smooth rock.

From time to time his vision blurred and for a few moments it would seem as if the rock itself was changing shape. But then he would blink again and it would change back, so that he was left looking at smooth, unpassable sections of rock.

By the time he got back to camp it was late afternoon and his eyes were aching.

There was no sign of Bill. A small fire made from clods of dried yak dung smouldered away by the tent and neat coils of rope were
laid out over the fly-sheet. Resting on one of the bags were bundles of nuts and friends, while the carabineers had been clipped by size on to slings.

Luca grabbed the battered kettle and shook it, feeling water slosh around inside before balancing it on the corner of the fire. For a moment he looked back at the mountains, his eyes searching for a route. There must be a way through. There just must be.

As he was taking the first sip of his coffee, he heard a commotion coming from over the ridge. With his mug still in his hand, he walked up the path to the first of the village shacks.

Bill was standing there, a rucksack open at his feet and about twenty villagers huddled around him. They had obviously dragged themselves from their huts and stood, some swaying from weakness, with their hands outstretched. Shaking his head, Luca threw his coffee onto the ground and sprinted the remaining distance.

‘Luca,’ Bill exclaimed, his cheek flushing with guilt.

Luca took in the emaciated figures crowded around him. ‘Tell me you haven’t . . . ?’

‘I couldn’t stand by and let it happen.’

Luca began to say something then fell silent, shaking his head in disbelief. He couldn’t exactly get the antibiotics back again. The damage had been done.

‘Great,’ he said sourly. ‘Really fucking great.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bill said again. ‘I spent all day trying to stop myself but I just couldn’t stand the idea of us sitting healthily in our camp . . .’

Luca looked at the villagers gathered around them with their hopeful smiles. They held their medicine carefully in the palms of their hands, nodding their heads and giving thanks to these strange newcomers and their gift of healing.

‘But we only had a few courses,’ he sighed. ‘What the hell are you giving the rest of these guys?’

Bill gave a sheepish shrug and looked away.

‘Just a few painkillers. Everyone saw me give the antibiotics out, so I had to give them something. It’s all I could think of and . . . well, it won’t do them any harm.’

As he spoke, another hand stretched out from the crowd. Bill dutifully doled out two small white pills, finishing the bottle, when a movement from the far side of the village caught Luca’s eye. A figure was striding towards them.

The figure was tall, with two straight curtains of very dark hair framing its face. In contrast to the shuffling forms of the villagers, the woman moved with the vigour of full health, the hem of her dirt-stained tunic billowing out behind her.

‘Who the hell . . .?’ Luca murmured as she approached the edge of the crowd.

She stopped and even beneath the grey scarf that was tied like a surgeon’s mask across her face, the men could tell that she was furious. Strong dark eyebrows were angled low over green eyes that blazed with hostility. She stared from Bill to Luca, then back again. Around them, the crowd fell silent.

Raising her right arm, the woman yanked the scarf down to the neckline of her tunic revealing high cheekbones that cut down to lips pressed together in disdain.

‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ she asked in English and with only the lightest trace of an accent. Jerking her chin up, she gestured to the bottle Bill was holding.

‘Give me that.’

Bill’s mouth dropped open in surprise as he handed over the empty plastic bottle.

‘You speak English.’

Ignoring him, she glanced at the bottle’s label before looking up again, eyes shining with anger.

‘Nurofen,’ she said. ‘You have got to be kidding me. Have you any idea how irresponsible that is?’

‘I just thought . . .’

‘No. You didn’t think,’ the woman cut in. ‘This village is riddled with cholera, and here you are handing out painkillers! Don’t you understand, these people actually believe your Western drugs will cure them? All you’re doing is abusing their ignorance.’

‘Hold on a second,’ Luca interrupted, pulling himself together. ‘Bill’s already handed out all our courses of antibiotics – stuff we now don’t have for ourselves. He couldn’t handle disappointing the others so had to give them something.’

The woman gave him a scornful glance. Then, turning to the assembled group of villagers, she spoke quickly in Tibetan, her voice low and emphatic. After a few moments the villagers began to look from her to Bill and Luca, their faces uncertain. As she continued speaking, they started to shake their heads and back off a pace or two, jealously guarding the white pills.

‘Of course they don’t believe me, why would they?’ the woman said, exhaling in frustration. ‘You’ve given them hope, and that’s the first they’ve had of it in a long time. But why do I get the feeling you won’t be around to pick up the pieces when they realise the drugs don’t work?’

‘Look, we didn’t mean any harm,’ Bill protested, his hands raised defensively.

‘That’s what you all say . . .’ she began, then drifted into silence, shaking her head in disgust. She let the empty bottle fall from her hand and Luca and Bill watched as it rolled a few centimetres on the ground before sticking on a patch of mud. Pulling the scarf back across her mouth, she gave them a final, withering glance before heading back towards the far end of the village. As she left, the crowd started to disperse, a few people staring down at the empty bottle before retreating to the wooden stoops of their homes.

‘Jesus,’ Luca said, his eyes wide. ‘Where the hell did she come from?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Bill, ‘but now I really do feel like an idiot.’

Luca turned to see his friend staring down at the empty bottle, his shoulders slumped.

‘You were only trying to help. Don’t take it to heart. At least a couple of them will be saved by the antibiotics.’

‘Yeah, but . . .’

As Bill raised his head, the beginnings of a smile crept across Luca’s face.

‘I’ll tell you one thing, though. We’re sure as shit not getting a dinner date out of this.’

Slowly Bill’s expression eased, the tension starting to drain from his face. He glanced back at the hut the woman had entered.

‘Who do you think she is? I mean, she barely even had an accent.’

‘Beats me,’ said Luca. ‘Maybe she’s an aid worker or something. She looked more Nepalese than Tibetan to me. Wherever she’s from, I get the feeling she wasn’t too impressed.’

‘Yeah, well, I was only trying to help,’ Bill muttered. Straightening his shoulders, he turned back towards their campsite.

After a final, curious glance towards the woman’s hut, Luca followed.

‘WHO IS IT?’

There was no reply, only repeated knocking, mechanical and incessant.

‘For the love of God, stop that infernal racket!’

With more than his characteristic lack of agility, René lumbered across the empty restaurant in the direction of the front door. He winced as he blundered through a shaft of sunlight, breaking through from the curtains, and gingerly rubbed his temples.

With years of experiencing biblically proportioned hangovers, he knew that an ice pack and a stiff dose of Paracetamol should just about see him through the day. Both, however, were kept in the kitchen which lay in the opposite direction from which he was currently headed. Reason enough for him to ignore the interruption altogether. Only the interminable knocking had galvanised him into any sort of action.

As he unbolted and swung open the door, René mustered what remained of his strength.

‘What the hell do you think . . . ?’

He stopped abruptly, eyes slowly focussing on the silent figures in front of him. Three silhouettes stood in line on his doorstep, haloed by the harsh morning light. René squinted at them, feeling his headache double in size. Without a word, the leading two soldiers pushed past him and into the restaurant.

‘An unexpected pleasure,’ René said, stumbling back a couple of paces.

A third man stepped over the threshold. He was smaller than the other two. As he walked further into the room, René could see his face was delicate, almost feminine, with no trace of stubble. Only the harsh line of his thin lips offset the fragility of his features.

Captain Zhu looked René up and down, his eyes hardening in disgust. He took in the checked shirt that had been hastily pulled on before René answered the door, displaying stains from the previous evening’s festivities. Above its collar, René’s jowly cheeks were blurred by a couple of days’ worth of stubble and his hair was still flattened by his pillow.

Zhu pulled a chair out from under a table and seated himself. Across the room, the two other soldiers were standing to attention. One of them, the massive one with the thickset neck and shoulders, moved a step closer. René recognised them from the other night. He’d sent them the wrong food.

Swallowing a couple of times, René tried to get some moisture back into his mouth.

‘Foreign Office visa and permits,’ demanded Chen in his broken English.

‘For Christ’s sake, I’ve been in Lhasa for eight years,’ René protested, folding his arms across his barrel chest.

‘Foreign Office visa and permits,’ Chen repeated tonelessly.

‘OK, OK. Keep your shirt on.’

René backed away towards the stairs, and, bracing himself for the pain he was about to inflict on his own head, shouted up for one of his staff to come down with the necessary paperwork. A moment or two later a Tibetan girl came cautiously down the wooden steps. She was tall and gangly and, like most teenagers who have only recently developed out of childhood, awkward with her height. Her shoulder-length hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, framing a shy face set with large, brown eyes. As she handed a file over to her
employer, she darted nervous glances at the restaurant’s unwelcome visitors.

‘Thanks, Anu,’ René said quietly, noticing that the seated soldier was following her every move. ‘Why don’t you go back up to the office and wait for me there?’

He turned to Chen.

‘You’ll find all the necessary permits in here. Knock yourself out.’

Chen frowned as he tried to understand what was meant by this last phrase. René smiled. Using slang was one of his favourite ways of confusing officials. Chen skimmed through the paperwork, then laid the file down on the table.

‘We need all paperwork,’ he said, tripping over the pronunciation. ‘All permit issued.’

‘You’re investigating me? Why?’ René said, surprise outweighing his annoyance. There was silence and he stared past Chen’s sizeable frame, directing his question to the seated officer beyond. Despite his silence, there was air of authority about him. From the sidelong glances this huge brute in front of René was directing at the man, it seemed that even he was scared of him. One thing René knew about living in Lhasa was that you always had to speak to the man in charge.

‘Look, I had a full investigation by the CMA only four months ago,’ he said to Zhu, in a more reasonable tone. ‘All the permits I issue are above board. You can just get the report off them.’

Zhu slowly raised himself to his feet and lit a cigarette with his left hand.

‘But we are not the CMA,’ he said in his precise English. ‘And from the dossier we already have on you, Mr Falkus, it would appear that you would do well to give us your full co-operation. You wouldn’t want to be deported over something so trivial as a wrongly issued permit, now would you?’

‘Deported?’ René challenged. ‘What the hell are you talking about? No one’s deporting me.’

Zhu gave the briefest of smiles, it flickered on and off like a lighter running low on fuel.

‘Well, let us start by reviewing the permits for the two Westerners who were recently travelling to Nepal.’

He motioned to Chen who opened a file he had been holding and read out the names,

‘Luca Matthews. Bill Taylor.’

‘How do you say in your country?’ Zhu said, glancing back at René. ‘Ring any bells?’

For a moment René was caught by surprise, then his expression darkened and he glowered at the other man with undisguised hatred. He was just about to shout a protest, trying to bluff his way out of the situation, when he suddenly stopped, catching himself before a word had escaped his lips. He’d suddenly realised what the epaulettes on the officer’s jacket actually signified.