The Forbidden Temple (6 page)

Twenty minutes later, Luca was leaning over the issue desk with a distinctly less attractive woman. She wore bracelets that jangled each time she flicked through the long line of reference cards, and an overpowering perfume that hung in the air between them like a cloud. But despite it all, she obviously knew her stuff.

‘OK, so that’s seven books that cover the region,’ she said briskly. ‘Five of them we have here, the other two you’ll have to call up from the basement.’ She gave Luca a disparaging glance, taking in his suntan and faded sweatshirt. ‘Would it be simpler if I ordered them for you myself? I’ll get you a photocopying card while I’m at it.’

Finding a spare desk, Luca was soon hunched over a pile of books in the hushed, cavernous reading room. The librarian had cross-referenced nearby villages and landmarks, pulling out any books by or about explorers who had ventured anywhere near the region in the last hundred years.

For the next few hours he worked steadily through them, occasionally making notes in the small Moleskine pad that he and Bill always took with them on expeditions.

It proved to be frustrating work. None of the explorers had got much farther than the Indian border and Luca had skimmed through three of the books, his pen poised, before one scruffy-looking volume began to show more promise.

In his introduction, the author, Frederick Bailey, a British officer serving in India at the beginning of the twentieth century, described how he had decided to enter Tibet illegally, heading north over the Himalayas in search of a ‘mighty river gorge’. On first inspection of the hand-drawn map at the front of the book, Luca immediately realised that Bailey’s seemingly random route put him about fifty kilometres east of Makalu.

The prose was typically Edwardian, slightly pompous and emotionally stilted, but within a few pages Luca had been sucked into Bailey’s account. In 1913 he and another officer called Morshead had worked their way up and across the Indo-Tibetan border to reach a fabled waterfall in the heart of a river gorge. The journey sounded difficult as well as clandestine. There were jungles with trees a hundred feet high, mountain passes and murderous Abor tribesmen to negotiate. Luca was amused at the classic British stoicism and how they kept stiffening their upper lip to ‘muddle their way through’.

After escaping from one village under a hail of arrows and spears, the pair recouped in the dense jungle. Morshead had been hit no less than eleven times, with Bailey’s only further comment on this being a terse:
‘What a sanguine reminder it was of how hard it is to kill a man in sound health.’

Luca’s smile faded suddenly. God, what had happened to explorers nowadays? One dose of malaria, or a toe lost to frostbite, and they called in the helicopters. In the old days, explorers would disappear from the face of the earth for years. And they literally did disappear. They weren’t calling in every five minutes from a satellite phone or updating their website with the latest news. These men
struck off into the wilderness, alone and utterly cut off from the rest of the world. They pioneered the trails. They drew the maps.

Somehow life today had become so tepid. It took such an effort to actually get away from anything familiar that escape itself became the point of the expedition, rather than any discovery that might arise from it.

Something was catching the corner of his eye. Luca looked up to see that his mobile was flashing silently on the desk. Picking it up, he saw that it was his father calling. With a sigh, he put it down again. He must have heard the news that he was back – either that or it was a lucky guess. Then again, his father always did have a sixth sense for that kind of thing.

Turning his phone face downwards, Luca exhaled before looking down at the book again.

Despite a tantalising reference to ‘that vast, unmapped region east of Makalu’, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary about the mountains Bailey and his companion had gone hiking through. A few pages later, Luca was skimming through the explorers’ experiences with a more benign tribe, the Monpa, when he nearly missed a brief diary extract:

Luca looked up from the page, his mouth suddenly dry. These were
his
mountains. They had to be.

So what did Bailey mean that they had been ‘made invisible by a great sorcerer’?

One thing Luca knew about Tibetans was that they loved anything supernatural. To them, gods literally roamed the heights and demons lived in the valleys. Almost every occurrence, even simple things such as bad weather or failing crops, was explained as an act of magic and sorcery.

Luca looked up through one of the long windows at the moody English sky. White clouds shrouded the tops of the city’s spires. Cloud . . . that was it! Within this context, the chief’s assertions about a great sorcerer having cast a spell over the mountains made perfect sense.
The clouds themselves had rendered the centre of the mountain ring invisible, just as they had on the satellite map.

Standing up, Luca shuffled the books into a neat stack and then made his way over to the photocopying machine.

There was more to this than he had first thought. He could feel it.

TWO MONKS STOOD
on the roof of Tashilhunpo Monastery, their heads bowed in sorrow.

Usually the rarified mountain light reflected off the golden rooftops, making it unbearably hot and bright. But today was different. Dark cloud had rolled in from the east, blanketing the sky and threatening rain.

Below them, the city of Shigatse stretched across the plains. Squat, white houses sprawled out from the central hub of the monastery in chaotic tentacles, blurred together by the grey light. The people on the streets moved with a heavy listlessness brought on by the humidity. Rain was uncommon this high on the plateau and it was as if the whole city was holding its breath, waiting for the skies to finally break.

‘Jigme, we must always remember our duty and never give up hope,’ said the taller of the monks, resting a consoling hand on his shoulder. ‘The Gelugpas from Lhasa will have some idea of how to proceed.’

‘How to proceed?’ echoed the other monk bitterly. ‘The eleventh Panchen Lama has been murdered before he even reached Shigatse. And he was just a boy. Just a boy! Now nothing will stop the Chinese . . .’

He brought his hands to his mouth, as if the words themselves could somehow inflict further damage. Above them, the first specks
of rain hit the ramparts of the monastery roof, congealing in the layers of dust.

‘It is inevitable,’ admitted the taller monk. ‘The Chinese will install their own candidate and crown him on the first day of June in the solar calendar, at the Linka Festival. But still, we must trust in the will of Buddha and never give up hope.’

As the rain began to quicken, both monks remained where they stood. Drops splashed on to their heavy robes and shaved heads, beading down the sides of their faces like tears. Both felt too exhausted to move, as if the rain somehow reflected the way the whole world was feeling.

It had all happened so suddenly. They had both presumed since the death of their former leader that it would take years for his reincarnation to be found. Yet, without their even knowing that the search had officially begun, news had come through that the young boy had been murdered, shot before he had even stepped out of his village.

With the Dalai Lama in permanent exile in Dharamsala, the Panchen Lama, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, was the practical ruler of the country. It was under his decree that the Tibetan people were governed and the rule of law maintained. Now the same question ran through both men’s minds as it had done all morning: how could Tibet protect itself from the Chinese if their next leader was to be one of them?

A soft rumbling announced a motorcade of vehicles pulling into the monastery’s main entrance. Three stretch saloon Mercedes with blacked-out windows slowly eased their way across the drive’s ancient flagstones. They crunched to a halt before the main entrance. As soon as they caught sight of the cars, the two monks turned soundlessly and hurried down the spiral staircase that led from the roof into the courtyard below.

They arrived, breathless, just as the last of a large group of dignitaries exited the cars.

‘We are honoured by your visit,’ said the taller monk, bowing low. ‘You bring solace in difficult times.’

He stepped back as a very old man in a vast yellow hat and red robes moved ahead of his entourage, a wooden cane gripped in his hand. The Head Lama of the Gelugpa sect briefly nodded a greeting to them both before allowing himself to be ushered into the main hall of Tashilhunpo Monastery, where a multitude of novices were preparing tea and refreshments on a long wooden table.

‘Get rid of these people,’ he said, glancing around at the bustling young monks. ‘What I have to say is for your ears alone.’

‘Of course, your Holiness,’ said the shorter of the monks, shooting a sideways glance at his companion. Snapping his fingers several times, the commotion in the room quickly died. The novices disappeared through the hall’s many exits. When the last door had been shut quietly behind them the old Lama leaned forward, his neck craned under the weight of his immense yellow hat.

‘Come closer,’ he breathed.

The two monks moved forward obediently, sinking down on one knee so that their heads were almost touching.

‘All is not as it seems,’ the old Lama whispered, his eyes fixed warily on the main door to the hall. ‘We got to the village first and moved the boy.’

Both kneeling men lifted their heads and stared directly at the old monk, their faces brimming with a mixture of scepticism and wonder. Then, as he slowly nodded in affirmation, tears of relief welled up in their eyes.

‘But who was it who was killed?’

‘It was the boy’s younger brother. An innocent,’ the old man replied. ‘We pray for him in his next life.’

As both men went to stand up, the Lama’s arms shot out, pressing them back down on to their knees with surprising strength.

‘You are the custodians of this temple until he returns. I have known both of you since birth and understand that you would never betray the truth.’ His piercing eyes dwelled on each of them for a moment. ‘We must act as if the boy is lost and ensure the Chinese
believe they have had their victory. But when the time is right, you must both be ready to receive him in Shigaste and return him to his rightful place.’

‘But where is he?’

A smile flashed across the Lama’s wizened face.

‘He is finally beyond their reach.’

DRIVING INTO GUILDFORD
city centre, Luca looked up through the windscreen at the leaden sky. It was the dead colour that only ever seemed to settle across the damp Surrey countryside. The sun lacked the strength to differentiate between the buildings and sky, so that the drab concrete buildings bled into the skyline like a half-finished painting.

Pulling into the car park in the battered white Toyota Land Cruiser he had inherited when he was seventeen, Luca felt a familiar sense of claustrophobia wash over him. It was always the same whenever he looked up at this particular office block, a feeling that had failed to diminish over the years. He stepped out of the car, slipping on his suit jacket and folding the collar up against the drizzle. Fumbling for a moment with the top button of his white shirt, he adjusted his tie, hating the feeling of constraint. It felt as if there were two hands encircling his neck, waiting to squeeze.

He signed in with reception, taking the lift up to the eighth floor where his father’s company was based. The soft draught of the air conditioning greeted him as he walked through the heavy, glass-panelled doors and into the reception.

It had only been two and a half weeks since he had felt a fresh mountain wind across his face every time he stepped out of the tent, but already it seemed half a century ago. By this time in the morning – 8.30 a.m. – he would have been up for hours, watching the morning
sun filter across the snow-clad peaks. But here in England he felt he was sealed away from the outside world – as if nature were something to be feared and carefully excluded.

‘Hi, Luca.’

He looked up to see one of the office juniors standing by the entrance to the kitchen. He was holding a small plastic cup brimming with some viscous brown liquid that could equally have been coffee or tea.

‘Your father sent me to tell you he wants to see you.’

‘Already?’ Luca said, his voice dropping into a mutter. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

Stepping into his own glass-walled office, he began leafing through the stack of papers on his desk, shunting them into two piles. Almost all of them were out of date orders for the four-wheel-drive vehicles the company exported around the world. Cold-calling and making sales came easily to Luca; it was the paperwork he detested so much.

After tapping on his door, Luca stepped inside his father’s office to see him seated behind his large, leather-topped desk, speaking on the phone. He was bending forward, peering down at a document, so that the thinning hair combed carefully across the crown of his head was clearly visible. When he looked up, Luca saw eyes of the same grey as his own, but dark-ringed from age and years of working late. He nodded briefly at his son and raised a finger, gesturing for Luca to keep quiet as he continued his call.