Like all experts in Tao-shu, master and disciple used their physical power as a form of exercise to temper character and soul, never to harm another living being. Respect for every form of life, the basis of Buddhism, was their creed. They believed that any living creature could, in a previous life, have been their mother, and therefore must be treated with love and kindness. Anyway, as the lama always said, it doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe, only what you do. They could not hunt a bird to eat it, far less kill a man, even in self-defense. They must see the enemy as a teacher who gives them opportunity to control their passions and learn something about themselves. The prospect of attacking a fellow being had never presented itself until now.
“How can I shoot my arrow against other humans and have a pure heart, master?”
“That is permitted only if there is no alternative, and if one has the certainty that the cause is just, Dil Bahadur.”
“It seems to me, master, that in this case that certainty exists.”
“May all living beings have good fortune; let none experience suffering,” master and student recited together, wishing with all their hearts not to find themselves forced to use any of their deadly martial knowledge.
Alexander, for his part, had the temperament of a peacemaker. In all his sixteen years of living he had never found it necessary to fight, and in fact he didn’t know how. Besides, he had nothing he could use to defend himself. His only tool was the jackknife his grandmother had given him to replace the Swiss Army knife he’d given the witch man Walimai in the Amazon. It was a good tool, but as a weapon it was ridiculous.
Nadia sighed. She didn’t understand weapons, but she had met the men of the Sect of the Scorpion, who were famous for their brutality and their skill with knives. Those men lived for crime and war, and were trained to kill. What could a pair of peaceful Buddhist monks and a young American tourist do against a band of renegades? She told them good-bye and with great anxiety watched them leave. Her friend Jaguar went in the lead, with Borobá riding his neck and clutching his ears; the prince followed, and the huge lama brought up the rear.
“I hope I will see you alive again,” Nadia murmured as they disappeared among the tall rocks that protected the small grotto.
Once the three men began the descent toward the cave of the Blue Warriors, they could move faster. They were almost running. Despite the brilliant sun, it was cold. The air was so clear that they could see the distant valleys, and from so high among the mountains, the view was dazzling. They were surrounded by snowy peaks, but below lay hill after hill covered with glorious vegetation, and terraces of green rice paddies cut from the hillsides. Scattered in the distance they could see the white stupas of the monasteries, small villages with their houses of clay, wood, stone, and straw, pagodalike roofs and twisting streets, all blending into nature like an extension of the terrain. There time was measured by seasons, and the rhythm of life was slow and unchanging.
Had they carried binoculars, they would have seen prayer flags fluttering everywhere, large images of Buddha painted on the rocks, lines of monks hurrying toward the temples, buffaloes pulling plows, women on the way to market in their necklaces of turquoise and silver, children playing with balls made from rags. It was nearly impossible to imagine that this small nation, so peaceful and so beautiful, preserved intact for centuries, was now menaced by a band of assassins.
Alexander and Dil Bahadur hurried a little faster, thinking of the girls they must rescue before their foreheads were branded with a red-hot iron, or something worse happened to them. They didn’t know what dangers awaited in the course of the rescue, but they were sure they would be considerable. Tensing, in contrast, was not overly concerned. The captive girls were just the first part of his mission; the second part preoccupied him much more: saving the king.
In the meantime, despite General Myar Kunglung’s efforts to keep the news secret, word had spread in Tunkhala that the king had vanished. They had been waiting for him at the television station because he was going to address the country, but he had not appeared. Now no one knew where to find him. It was the first time in the history of the nation that such a thing had happened. The king’s older son, the one who had won the archery tournaments during the festival, was taking his father’s place for the time being. If the king did not show up within a few days, the general and the high lamas would have to seek out Dil Bahadur so that he could fulfill the destiny for which he’d been preparing for more than twelve years. Naturally, everyone hoped that would not be necessary.
Rumors were circulating that the king was in a monastery in the mountains, where he had retired to meditate; that he had traveled to Europe with the foreign woman named Judit Kinski; that he was in Nepal with the Dalai Lama; and a thousand other speculations. None of them, however, aligned with the sovereign’s serene and pragmatic nature. Neither was it possible that he could travel incognito, and in any case, the weekly airplane wasn’t scheduled until Friday. The monarch would never abandon his responsibilities, especially when the country was in crisis over the kidnapped girls. The conclusion of the general and the rest of the inhabitants of the Forbidden Kingdom was that something of grave consequence must have happened to him.
Myar Kunglung abandoned the search for the girls and returned to the capital. Kate refused to be left behind, and so learned some of the confidential details. At the gate to the palace she found the guide Wandgi sitting beside a column awaiting news of his daughter, Pema. The man threw his arms around the journalist, weeping. He seemed like a different person, as if he had aged twenty years in the last two days. Kate quickly freed herself, because she did not like emotional demonstrations, and as consolation offered him a swig of vodka-spiked tea from her ever-present canteen. Wandgi took the drink out of courtesy but when he had a taste of the foul liquid, he quickly spewed it out. Kate grabbed him by one arm and forced him to follow the general with her, so he could translate. Myar Kunglung’s English was about at the level of Hollywood’s Tarzan.
They learned that the king had spent the afternoon and part of the night in the hall of the Great Buddha in the heart of the palace, accompanied by Tschewang, his leopard. Only once did he interrupt his meditation: when he took a brief stroll through the garden and drank a cup of jasmine tea brought to him by a monk. The monk informed the general that his majesty always prayed several hours before consulting the Golden Dragon. At midnight, he said, he had brought him another cup of tea. By then most of the candles had burned out, and in the shadowy room he could see that the king was no longer there.
“You didn’t find out where he was?” Kate asked through Wandgi.
“I supposed he had gone to consult the Golden Dragon,” the monk replied.
“And the leopard?”
“He was chained in one corner. His majesty cannot take him to the Chamber of the Golden Dragon. Sometimes he leaves him in the Buddha Hall, and other times he leaves him in the care of the guards at the Magnificent Door.”
“Where is that?” Kate wanted to know, but instead of an answer she received a scandalized look from the monk and a glare from the general. It was clear that this information was not provided to outsiders, but Kate was not easily put off.
The general explained that very few people knew the location of the Magnificent Door. The men who guarded it were blindfolded and led there by one of the ancient monks who served in the palace and were trusted with the secret. That door was the threshold to a sacred part of the palace that no one except the monarch could enter. On the other side began the obstacles and deadly traps that protected the Sacred Passageway. Unless a person knew where to step, he would meet a horrible death.
“Would it be possible to speak with Judit Kinski, the European woman who is a guest at the palace?” the writer persisted.
When a servant went to look for her, he discovered that she had disappeared as well. Her bed had been slept in, and her clothes and personal effects were still in the room—with the exception of the leath
er purse she always had slung over one shoulder. The thought that the king and the expert in tulips had run off to some amorous rendezvous flashed through Kate’s mind but was immediately discarded as absurd. Such behavior did not fit the character of either of the two, and besides, there was no need to run off to be together.
“We must look for the king,” said Kate.
“Possibly that idea had already occurred to us, Grandmother,” General Kunglung muttered, clenching his teeth.
The general sent for a nun who could guide them to the lower floors of the palace. He was forced to tolerate Kate and Wandgi’s tagging along because the writer was clinging to his arm like a leech and wouldn’t let go. This was the rudest woman he had ever seen, the general thought.
They followed the nun down two stories, passing through a hundred interconnecting rooms, and finally came to the hall that contained the Magnificent Door. They didn’t have a chance to admire it, because, to their horror, they found two guards outfitted in the uniform of the royal house lying facedown in pools of their own blood. One was dead, but the other was still alive. With his last breath he told them that the Blue Warriors, led by a white foreigner, had rushed into the Sacred Passageway. Not only had they managed to get in alive and make their way back out again, but worse, they had kidnapped the king and stolen the Golden Dragon.
Myar Kunglung had spent forty years in the armed forces but he had never confronted a situation as perilous as this. His soldiers occupied themselves with war games and marching in parades, but until that moment, violence had been unknown in his country. He had never found himself in the position of needing to use his weapons, and none of his soldiers knew true danger. The notion that their ruler had been kidnapped in his own palace was inconceivable to him. The general’s strongest emotion at that moment, greater even than fear or anger, was shame. He had failed in his duty; he had been incapable of protecting his beloved king.
Kate no longer had anything to do in the palace. She took her leave of the wretched general, and set off at a gallop in the direction of the hotel, dragging Wandgi in her wake. She needed to make plans with her grandson.
“Possibly the American boy has rented a horse, and perhaps he has left. I believe he is not back yet,” the owner of the hotel informed her with big smiles and bows.
“When was that? Did he go alone?” she asked, worried.
“Possibly he left yesterday, and it may be that he had a monkey with him,” said the man, striving to be at his most amiable with the foreign grandmother.
“Borobá!” exclaimed Kate, guessing immediately that Alexander had gone to look for Nadia.
“I should never have brought those children to this country!” she added in the middle of a coughing fit, dropping onto a chair in a daze.
Without a word, the hotel owner poured a glass of vodka and placed it in her hands.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Golden Dragon
THAT NIGHT THE KING HAD MEDITATED for hours before the Great Buddha, as he always did before going to the Sacred Passageway. His ability to understand the enlightenment he would receive from the statue depended upon the state of his spirit. He had to have a pure heart, free of desire, fear, expectation, memories, or negative intent, and as open as the lotus flower. He prayed fervently, because he knew that his mind and his heart were vulnerable. He felt that his hold on the reins of his kingdom, and on those of his own psyche, was dangerously weak.
The king had been very young when he ascended to the throne after the early death of his father, at a time when he had not completed his training with the lamas. There were things he had never learned, and he had not developed his paranormal abilities as he should have. He could not see peoples’ auras or read their thoughts; he had not experienced astral journeys, and he did not know how to heal with the power of his mind, although he could do such things as stop his breathing and will himself to die. He had compensated for deficiencies in his preparation and for his psychic limitations with common sense and continual spiritual practice. He was a generous man with no personal ambition, dedicated wholly to the well-being of his kingdom. He surrounded himself with loyal followers who helped him make fair decisions, and he maintained an efficient information network in order to keep up with what was going on in his country and in the world. He ruled with humility, because he felt unfit to play the role of king. He hoped to retire to a monastery when his son Dil Bahadur ascended to the throne, but after he met Judit Kinski he had doubted even his religious calling. For the first time since the death of his wife, he was attracted to a woman. He was very confused, and in his prayers he asked simply that he be able to carry out his destiny, whatever it might be, without harm to others.
As a youth, the monarch had learned the code for deciphering the messages of the Golden Dragon; what he lacked was the intuition of the third eye, which was also required. He could interpret only part of what the statue communicated. Every time he consulted it, he lamented his own limitations. His consolation was that his son Dil Bahadur would be much better prepared to govern the nation than he had been.
“This is my karma in this incarnation: to be king, though I am not deserving of it,” he used to murmur sadly.
That night, after several hours of intense meditation, he felt that his mind was clear and his heart open. He bowed deeply before the Great Buddha, touching his forehead to the floor; he asked for inspiration, and rose. His knees and back hurt after such a long period of immobility. He chained his faithful Tschewang to a ring that was set in the wall, drank the last sip of his now cold jasmine tea, picked up a candle, and left the hall. His bare feet slipped noiselessly across the polished stone floor. Along the way he came across several servants silently cleaning the palace.
By order of General Myar Kunglung, most of the guards had been called out to reinforce the kingdom’s sparse military and police forces while they looked for the missing girls. The king barely noticed their absence, the palace was a very secure place. The guards fulfilled a decorative function during the day, but as they were generally not needed, only a handful remained at night. The security of the royal family had never been threatened.
The thousand rooms of the palace were interconnected by a multitude of doors. Some rooms had four exits, others, that were hexagonal in shape, had six. It was so easy to get lost that on the three upper floors of the ancient edifice the architects had carved signs on the doors as guides; on the lower floors, however, to which only a few monks and nuns, selected guards, and the royal family had access, there were no signs. And as the floors were below ground level and, additionally, without windows, there were no points of reference.
These underground rooms, ventilated through an ingenious system of pipes, had absorbed a strange odor over the centuries: a combination of dampness, grease from the lamps, and several kinds of incense, which the monks lighted to frighten away rats and evil spirits. Some rooms were used to store public administration parchments, statues, and furniture; others were depositories of medicines, provisions, or the antiquated weapons no one used anymore, but most were empty. Walls were covered with paintings of religious scenes, dragons, devils, long texts in Sanskrit, descriptions of the horrible punishments evil souls suffer in the Beyond. The ceilings were painted as well, but soot from the lamps had turned them black.
As the king progressed deeper into the palace, he lighted lamps from the flame of his candle, thinking that the time had come to install electricity throughout the building; at present, it was available in only one wing of an upper floor, the one the royal family occupied. He opened doors and walked through rooms without hesitation; he knew the way by heart.
Soon he came to a rectangular room, larger and with higher ceilings than the others; it was lighted with a double row of gold lamps, and at the far end was a spectacular door of bronze and silver, incrusted with jade. Two young guards, attired in the age-old uniform of royal heralds, with plumed blue silk headgear and lances adorned with colorful ribbons, were standing watch on eithe
r side of the door. They looked tired; they had been on duty several hours in the solitude and sepulchral silence of this chamber. When they saw the king, they fell to their knees, touched their heads to the floor, and stayed in that position until he gave them his blessing and told them to get to their feet. Then they turned their faces to the wall, as demanded by protocol, so they couldn’t watch as the sovereign opened the door.
The king twirled several of the many jade medallions that embellished the door, and pushed. The door swung heavily on its hinges. He stepped inside the room and the massive door closed behind him. From that moment, the security system that had protected the Golden Dragon for almost eighteen hundred years was automatically activated.
Hidden among the gigantic ferns in the park around the palace, Tex Armadillo followed every step the king took through the subterranean rooms of the palace, as clearly as if he were dogging his heels. Thanks to modern technology, he could see the king perfectly on the small screen of his laptop. The monarch had no suspicion that he was wearing a tiny, high-precision camera on his chest, which allowed the American to observe as the king avoided the series of obstacles and disarmed the security mechanisms that protected the Golden Dragon. At the same time, he was plotting the coordinates of the route the king was following, outlining with the help of a Global Positioning System an exact map that he could follow later. Tex couldn’t help smiling as he thought of the genius of the Specialist, who left nothing to chance. The apparatus he was using, much more sensitive, precise, and with broader capabilities than any currently in use, had been developed in the United States for military purposes, and was not available to the general public. The Specialist, however, could obtain anything; that was what contacts and money were for.
Crouching among the plants and sculptures of the garden were the twelve fiercest Blue Warriors of the sect, all under Armadillo’s command. The remaining members were carrying out the other half of the plan in the mountains, where they were preparing the escape with the statue and where they held the kidnapped girls. That distraction, too, was the product of the Machiavellian mind of the Specialist. Because the police and soldiers were busy looking for the girls, the intruders were able to get into the palace without meeting resistance.