guard, his rubber boots drubbing over the frozen ground.
Chavasse thought about Kurbsky, remembering some of the things the Russian had said and the way laughter had glinted constantly in the grey eyes. A man hard to dislike. In other circumstances, they might even have been friends.
He dozed off and awakened again only an hour later, his teeth chattering and his face beaded with sweat. Kurbsky was kneeling beside him, a cup in one hand.
Chavasse tried to sit up and the Russian pushed him back. “There is nothing to worry about. You have a touch of the mountain sickness, that’s all. Swallow this pill. It will help.”
Chavasse took the pill with shaking fingers and washed it down with cold coffee from the cup which Kurbsky held to his lips.
He folded his arms inside the sleeping bag to keep them from shaking and managed a smile. “I feel as if I’ve got malaria.”
Kurbsky shook his head. “In the morning, you’ll feel much better.”
He went outside, leaving Chavasse staring up through the darkness and reflecting that you learned something new every day of your life. The last Russian with whom he’d had any direct physical contact had been an agent of SMERSH just before Khrushchev had disbanded that pleasant organization. It hardly seemed possible that he and Kurbsky had belonged to the same nation.
But there was no real answer – no answer at all – and he closed his eyes. Whatever was in the pill, it was certainly doing the trick. His headache was gone and a delicious warmth was seeping slowly throughout his entire body. He pulled the hood of the sleeping bag around his head and, almost immediately, drifted into sleep.
The morning sky was incredibly blue, but the wind was cold and standing by the jeep watching the two soldiers strike camp, Chavasse felt ten years older and drained of all his strength.
Even Kurbsky looked different, his eyes solemn, his face lined with fatigue as if he had slept badly. When they were ready, he turned to Chavasse almost apologetically and made a slight gesture towards the jeep. Chavasse climbed into the rear and sat on one of the spare seats under the swivel gun.
The rolling steppes stretched before them, the short golden grass beaded with frost as the wheels drummed over the frozen ground.
Within half an hour, they came to the great highway which the Chinese had built in 1957 to facilitate troop movements from Sinkiang to Yarkand when they had been faced with an uprising among the Khambas.
“Something of an achievement, wouldn’t you say?” Kurbsky asked.
“Depends on your point of view,” Chavasse said. “I wonder how many thousands of Tibetans died building it.”
A shadow crossed Kurbsky’s face. He barked a quick order in Chinese and the jeep moved forward across the steppes, leaving the road, desolate and somehow alien, behind them.
He seemed disinclined to engage in any further conversation, so Chavasse leaned back in his seat and examined the countryside. To one side of them, the Aksai Chin Plateau lifted into the blue sky; before them, the steppes seemed to roll on forever.
Within half an hour they had come down onto a broad hard-packed plain of sand and gravel, and the driver put his foot down flat against the boards.
The jeep raced across the plain and as the cold wind lashed his face, Chavasse began to feel some spark of life, of real vitality, returning to him. The driver changed down as they came to the end of the plain and slowed to negotiate a gently swelling hill. As they went over the top, Chavasse saw a monastery in the valley beneath them.
The shock was almost physical and as they went down the hill, excitement and hope stirred inside him. He turned to Kurbsky and said casually, “Are you stopping here?”
Kurbsky nodded briefly. “I don’t see why not. I’m doing a series on Buddhism and this is one of the few monasteries still functioning in this part of Tibet. A couple of hours won’t make much difference.”
For one insane moment, Chavasse almost blurted out his thoughts, for this could only be one place – the monastery of Yalung Gompa, according to Joro the centre of resistance for the entire area. It was the last place on earth for a Russian and two Chinese soldiers to be visiting, and yet fate had laid out the path for Kurbsky and there could be no turning back. With something strangely like regret in his heart, Chavasse sat back and waited.
The lamasery consisted of several flat-roofed buildings painted in ochre and built into the side of the valley. The whole place was surrounded by a high wall, and great double gates stood open to the courtyard inside.
Flocks of yaks and small Tibetan horses grazed beneath the walls and the black skin tents of the herdsmen clustered beside a stream.
It was a peaceful scene and smoke from the cooking fires, carried to them on the wind, was pungent in the nostrils, taking Chavasse back by some trick of memory to the campfires of boyhood.
A crowd of fifty or sixty people stood by the gate peering into the courtyard, and suddenly the air was filled with an unearthly, deep booming sound that reverberated between the walls of the valley.
Kurbsky pointed excitedly. “See, there on the highest roof. A monk is blowing a
The crowd by the gate turned towards them. They were mainly herdsmen, hardly mountaineers in sheepskin
For a moment, every other consideration was driven from Chavasse’s mind at the sight of the magnificent spectacle which was taking place in the courtyard.
A group of lamas in brilliant traditional costumes were in the middle of enacting some religious ceremony. In their silken robes of blue, red and green and wearing huge masks with hideous demons’ faces painted on them, they whirled together in an intricate and deadly pattern, wielding great swords above their heads.
“What luck!” Kurbsky exclaimed excitedly. “I’ve heard of this ceremony. It’s something few travellers ever see. The Downfall of the King of Hell.”
He opened his knapsack, took out a camera and started to take photos as fast as he was able. For Chavasse, there was a terrible fascination in sitting there, waiting for something to happen, and suddenly he felt curiously light-headed and there was that faint feeling of nausea again.
The demons spun in ever-faster circles, leaping into the air, their aprons of human bones swinging out until they were parallel to the ground. The music from the conches and the drums became even more frenzied and the soldier at the machine gun leaned negligently forward, his mouth agape with wonder.
And then Chavasse realized that the demons had gradually encircled the jeep, that they were moving closer and closer, tightening the circle every moment, and that the crowd who had stood outside had now moved in through the gate.
Kurbsky and his men had noticed nothing. Once, the Russian cursed and hastily reloaded the camera, then continued to take pictures as fast as he could.
Chavasse had been keeping an eye on one man who seemed to be leading the others in their dance. His robe was scarlet, his mask scarlet and white with dark horsehair tails.
The sword in his hand spun in a glittering circle of steel as he revolved, and suddenly he was very close. His right arm swung from behind his left shoulder in one terrible, backhanded blow. The soldier at the machine gun staggered against Chavasse, his head half-severed from his body, and toppled over the side.
There was a moment of utter stillness during which the whole world seemed to stop breathing, and then the crowd roared and moved in. Everything seemed to move away from Chavasse as the demon wrenched off his mask and Joro glared up at him, his face cold and hard, the face of a killer.
The driver screamed once as hands reached for him, dragging him from behind the wheel, and Kurbsky stood there, his face frozen with horror, the camera still half-raised. He threw one terrible, agonized glance at Chavasse and then was pulled backwards out of his seat.
For a brief moment, he managed to get to his feet, covered in dust, blood on his face, and then they swarmed over him like a great sea, blotting him from sight.
Chavasse found himself scrambling over the side down into the crowd, his mouth open in a soundless scream as he tried to claw his way through the living wall towards the Russian.
