Kingdom (23 page)

‘So, you can get us into Pemako?’

The Tibetan blew two huge plumes of smoke through his nostrils, and watched them drift across the dumpling bowls.

‘Sure. If you really want to go to that hellhole. Lorry to Pome and then walk over the Su La from the Bhaka gompa. I can get you to Pome but you’re on your own from there.’

Now Gunn broke into Tibetan again. After listening for a few moments, Jack looked at Nancy and smiled.

‘Gunn is concerned about whether you are fit enough to get over the Su La. It’s a reasonable question, as if you fail then we might all die.’

Nancy turned to the Tibetan. He nodded at her; he didn’t seem at all abashed.

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ she said flatly. But Gunn continued to stare at her, assessing her, she supposed. Then he said:

‘Why do you want to go to Pemako anyway, Miss Kelly?’

The question surprised her. She didn’t know what to say and before she could formulate an answer, Jack butted in.

‘We’re looking for Anton Herzog – he went into Pemako and hasn’t come back out.’ He shrugged across at Nancy. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Kelly, but I am not telling lies to Gunn, or any of my other friends in Tibet. Besides, Gunn knows Anton.’

Now Gunn took a drag on his cigarette, and looked from Jack to Nancy.

‘So you’re a friend of Anton’s?’ he asked her.

‘Not a friend, a concerned colleague. We both work for the
International Herald Tribune
.’

‘And why do you want to find him?’

‘Because he’s lost.’

‘Many people are lost, Ms Kelly. Why him?’

‘I have to confess that my motives are quite complicated,’ said Nancy. If the guy was going to take a major risk for her, she too should be as honest as possible. Besides, if she wasn’t, Jack would be anyway, it seemed. ‘That is, perhaps I am not entirely sure of them myself. But throughout this I have had a strong sense that Anton Herzog is in terrible danger. He is a danger to himself, perhaps. I think he is lost both physically, but also there is something else, something worse: I can’t really explain it. He needs help.’

‘That wasn’t what you said to me in Delhi,’ said Jack. Now he was staring hard at her.

‘Well, I’ve been thinking more about it since we arrived.’ She met his gaze, felt the force of his scepticism, and tried to weather it.

Then the Tibetan began to speak, and Jack turned to face him.

‘He passed through here last year – December I think. Herzog is a strange man; a powerful man. We Tibetans call him a white magician. I saw him here, in the Blue Lantern, talking to people.’

So he had been here, Nancy thought. He sat here, only three months ago. Doing what? Relaxing, before he embarked on his crazy quest. Or he was in search of leads. He would have been nervous perhaps, or maybe he was so beguiled by thoughts of what he would find that he wasn’t thinking about the risks at all. She thought of him, this man she had always regarded fundamentally – for all his brilliance – as just another journalist with the same fears and desires and professional ambitions as herself. And to think that back then she had been on the other side of the world, knowing nothing of the Thule Society or the Book of Dzyan.

‘Why don’t you wait until he comes back? Pemako is not a holiday destination,’ said Gunn.

Jack interjected drily, ‘My thoughts entirely.’

Nancy didn’t even bother to respond to Jack’s comment. Instead, her eyes fixed on the Tibetan, she replied, ‘It’s not that simple. If I just thought he was on some journey and had been delayed, then I wouldn’t bother. But as I said, I’m convinced something has gone dreadfully wrong. He sent a sort of message, I think it was a cry for help. It felt at the time like a summons. As I said before, I am not entirely sure.’

Gunn looked at her pityingly.

‘If something’s happened to Anton Herzog, I don’t see what you can do about it. I doubt very much you are as good a climber as he is, and he also speaks fluent Tibetan – and he knows how to live down there. He has studied Tantric yoga. He can go native if he needs to, reappear in a few years’ time . . .’

She brushed him off. Though she had faltered, had even recently thought of giving up the venture, she found that his pessimism was only galvanizing her again.

‘Do you know where he was going – did he tell you when you saw him?’ she asked.

Gunn paused for a moment and stroked his beard. As he did so, Nancy noticed that the back of his hand had two painful-looking scars on it, as if he had once been burned by a cigarette. The idea sprang into her head that perhaps he had been tortured at some point. By the Chinese, she assumed, and for what? What had he done to attract their attention?

Speaking slowly, Gunn answered, ‘No. I can’t remember what he said – but everyone’s pretty secretive these days. He just wanted me to help him find a lift to Pome. He was travelling with a companion . . .’

Now Jack and Nancy spoke at the same time: ‘Who?’

It had never occurred to Nancy that Herzog might not be travelling alone, or that someone else might be involved in his research. Nancy had always thought of him as a loner. Gunn Lobsang exhaled another enormous plume of cigarette smoke that entirely hid his face in the darkness of the tea house. Then he leaned close in to them and said in a hoarse whisper, ‘He was travelling with the Terton Thupten Jinpa.’

‘My God,’ whispered Jack in horror. ‘What on earth was he doing with a terton?’

Gunn Lobsang shook his head and sighed heavily.

‘I have no idea. As you know, I keep away from people like that. I think Thupten Jinpa is a Bon master, though he is supposed to belong to the Geluk order, the same as the Dalai Lama. I think he is a sorcerer.’

Nancy couldn’t contain herself any longer.

‘What the hell is a terton?’

The two men stared at her as if she was mad. Then, with a pained expression, Jack began, ‘A terton is a treasure hunter . . . He or she can find the terma. Or at least they say they can . . . They use Tantric practices, very esoteric ones, to help bring the termas back from the upper worlds . . .’

‘And you were saying that a terma is some kind of gateway to another world?’

Gunn’s eyes flicked on to Jack, and again the Tibetan muttered in his native language.

Jack waved him away with his hand and answered in English, ‘Gunn, she’s only been in town for two hours, give her a break. Besides, the Dalai Lama says it’s good to know nothing of sorcery . . . She is pure in heart – she knows nothing of the Black Bon and their magic . . .’

Angrily the Tibetan cut in, this time in English, ‘You can call it pure in heart, but you know as well as I do that there are grave risks attached to such innocence, or ignorance you could call it instead.’

Desperate not to lose the single thread that linked her to Anton Herzog, Nancy tried to mollify Gunn Lobsang.

‘Listen, I’m sorry – I don’t know much about what you talk of but I’m on a kind of pilgrimage all the same, and I heard that in Tibet pilgrims are supposed to be helped and respected.’

Gunn fell into a brooding silence. Jack spoke again, and this time Nancy felt grateful to him. He was defending her; he was trying to bring the Tibetan on board. He said, ‘Look, I said before – it’s a difficult thing to define. Let’s say a terma is sacred knowledge that has been hidden in former times so that, if dark days come, it can be rediscovered and brought back to help us. The tertons are the monks that can find the terma and bring them back to us. That’s right, isn’t it, Gunn?’

The Tibetan was still looking a little surly.

‘Yes.’

He lit another cigarette and then his eyes flashed at Nancy.

‘But there are a lot of black magicians who want to acquire the power of the terma . . . that is why people are always suspicious of those who try to seek them out.’

‘So tertons are black magicians?’ said Nancy.

‘No. Not necessarily. In the past there have been white monks who were tertons as well. Some of the greatest lamas were tertons. But nowadays, most people want the terma to remain hidden. What if they fell into the wrong hands?’

Nancy was desperately trying to follow the conversation. The correspondences with the Book of Dzyan were too obvious to ignore.

‘So the Book of Dzyan must be a terma then?’

The change in Gunn Lobsang’s expression was instantaneous and complete. Before he had been irritated and lofty, now he was thunderstruck. With his mouth ajar, he said, ‘How do you know about the Book of Dzyan?’

‘I read about it – in a newspaper article. It just sounded a bit like a terma.’

‘The Book of Dzyan would be a terma if it existed – which is highly unlikely,’ Gunn Lobsang answered, without taking his eyes off Nancy. ‘If it existed, it would be the most valuable antique in the entire world. It would be a terma containing specific knowledge from very, very ancient times – from one or two yugas ago. Knowledge of how to make the superman . . . Some lamas say that it might be a black book – but not all.’

The Black Book, thought Nancy, immediately remembering that that was the Chinese name for the Book of Dzyan.

‘You mean its covers are black?’

‘No. I mean it is evil. It is a black terma. A terma from the dark side – that only a Bon master or a black monk can bring down from the upper worlds.’

Jack Adams let out a theatrical sigh.

‘Right – I need a beer. This is getting way too heavy for my liking. Waiter, beer please! Over here.’

‘That’s all I can tell you. What Anton was actually doing with the Terton Thupten Jinpa I have no idea . . .’

Looking hard at Nancy, Gunn added, ‘But one thing I can tell you for sure is that even a sorcerer like him wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to find the Book of Dzyan.’

Nancy Kelly was not so sure. She would much rather Gunn had told her things that had contradicted all that she had learnt about the history of the Thule Gesellschaft’s involvement with Tibet, but that wasn’t to be. The gossamer-like threads that had seemed to possibly link the dark world of Second World War Europe to modern-day Tibet were turning into heavy and unbreakable chains. Although she could not yet make sense of it all, she felt as if her journey was in the grip of an unstoppable momentum.

‘Is there anyone else who might know where they were headed once they got over the Su La?’

Gunn Lobsang tilted his head and thought for a moment.

‘Here in Lhasa, I don’t think so. But once you get to the Bhaka gompa you can ask there. In fact you might be able to track down some of Anton’s sherpas when you get there . . .’

Gunn shifted on the stool then added:

‘OK, look, I’ll do this thing. I’ll take a risk on you being fit enough’ – and Nancy nodded her thanks. ‘If you want to leave today then I have to get to work. I’ll come back and pick you up once I’ve found out about who’s heading east on the Sichuan road. I think there are some Khampa lorry-drivers going to Ambo this morning. For a price they’ll take you.’

‘Thanks, my friend,’ said Jack, shaking him vigorously by the hand.

Gunn stood up and tipped his cowboy hat at them and left. The waitress arrived at the table, delivering a bottle of Snows beer for Jack. He thanked her in Tibetan, then smiled at Nancy and said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’

‘It’s a little early for me. By about nine hours . . .’

‘Suit yourself. I find it helps with the altitude sickness.’

‘So tell me Mr Jack Adams, all that stuff about tertons and termas, do you really believe it?’ said Nancy.

Jack took several long gulps from the beer bottle, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and then said, ‘It depends what you mean by believe. What do you call the ability to stop your own breathing, your own heart and even your brain activity? Do you call it magic? This is what lamas can do in advanced states of meditation. When you rig them up to Western medical equipment and monitor them for signs of life, there aren’t any. Not even on the electroencephalogram. They are clinically dead. Then, after an allotted amount of time – bang. They wake up again, open their eyes and stand up. Is that magic? Or how about the ability to levitate? Or the ability to cause someone to suffer a brain haemorrhage at one hundred yards, or the ability to become invisible? Magic? Or just physical actions that we can’t currently explain using science . . .’

‘So are you saying you think it’s real, all of it?’ ‘No, that’s not the point. I wouldn’t presume to define reality for anyone. But I don’t say it doesn’t happen: the levitation, the stopping of the life functions and all the other extraordinary things that the high lamas can achieve. I just think science can’t explain it all yet – but we will be able to one day. And as for hidden knowledge that is drawn down from higher worlds, well I don’t know any culture where artists or seers don’t rely on knowledge or skill that comes from somewhere else. So termas might be the like of that, I suppose. Who knows? I don’t dismiss the results of Tantric Buddhism – I just dispute the theory behind it. But one thing is for sure . . .’ Jack leaned across the table to make absolutely sure that no one else in the smoky tea house could hear him. In a husky whisper, his mouth close to Nancy’s ear, he said, ‘It’s all the goddamn dark side if you ask me.’

In an even quieter voice he continued, ‘And you know what? I would never say it to Gunn, but I can’t help finding myself slightly agreeing with the Chinese . . .’ He glanced quickly around the room. ‘Not with their techniques, of course, not with their violence and oppression. But the distaste – I understand their distaste and unease. The whole of Tibet is a flaming madhouse. When the Chinese first invaded, they found some truly horrifying things. About a third of the entire Tibetan population was wrapped up in this mumbo-jumbo one way or another, as priests or nuns or lamas, and the rest of the population lived in feudal bondage, doing the donkey work for this bunch of superstitious magicians. The lamas controlled the minds of the peasants just as successfully as the communists control the minds of the people.’

Jack looked nervously around the room again, leaving Nancy with the distinct impression that they would be in grave danger if anyone else heard so much as a single word of what he was saying: