It had taken months for the man, a Dutchman named William Hartog, to receive the necessary visas to enter Tibet as a health researcher looking for alternate types of medicine and in particular at the effects of AMS — acute mountain sickness — which affected so many tourists, afflicting them with everything from acute headache to dizziness and on occasion death if the AMS victim was not kept warm enough. His company, Royal Dutch Apothecary, was, he said, looking more closely now at the holistic medical systems practiced by the Tibetans, including the nomads who inhabited the enormous plateau at a height of fourteen thousand feet, the plateau stretching from the Kunlun Range to the north southward to the Himalayas. In between there was desert and occasional grassland and salt lakes.
Hartog was interested in various herbal remedies, golden needle acupuncture, and in particular moxabustion, in which small tufts of moxa incense were burned atop a needle so that the warmth could travel down and affect the nerve point. He was also looking for plants that could not only be used to prevent and/or reduce the effects of mountain sickness but could prove curative for a plethora of Western afflictions and diseases. Hartog’s curiosity was equally aroused by the Tibetans’ insistence on there being a balance between wind, bile, and phlegm, that is, the three humors that the Tibetans believe must be in balance if disease is not to gain the upper hand.
Hartog had already watched the fine and intricate art of pulse diagnosis in which various pulses provide a readout, as it were, of the various parts of the sick body. By paying homage to the Tibetan medicines — now called Chinese medicines ever since China had invaded the country of two million in 1950—Hartog was more respected by the locals and was not especially harassed by any of the 120,000 PLA troops stationed throughout Tibet or, as the Chinese preferred to call it, the “autonomous region.” He had become fairly well known in the markets and often advised a PLA member to try this or that remedy for any proffered illness, but always he would take the medicine himself to show good faith. Hartog was one of those patient explorers. He took the time to make copious notes and photographs of the various herbs.
But underneath, Hartog’s pulse wasn’t steady, for he was a very frustrated agent of MOSSAD who, because of Chinese sales of ICBMs to Muslim countries, wanted to know all they could about the missiles ever since the Swedish seismologist had recorded an underground nuclear explosion near the Xinjiang border with Tibet. There was a strong suspicion that, following the B-52 destruction of Chinese ICBM sites on the roof of the world earlier in the war, a new site was now in Tibet. The savings in fuel, launching from fourteen thousand feet above sea level, for example, was enormous. But where the site was, neither satellite nor other ELINT — electronic intelligence — had discovered, much of the movement up the Lhasa Road from the province of Qinghai past Lake Nam having been done either at night or under heavy cloud cover.
The only way, MOSSAD decided, was to get humint— human intelligence gained by someone whose human senses and initiative might prove more successful. After all, an infrared blur could, as General Cheng well knew, come from a hot thermos and yet register on the satellite film as a hot jet motor. Hartog’s job was to pinpoint the Chinese ICBM sites in Tibet.
It was lunchtime, and snow was falling again. It would be melted quickly by the sun, but with the sudden drop of temperature so typical in Lhasa, Hartog headed for the taxi stand across from the market, heading east along Xingfu then left, up Linkuo Lu to the telecommunications office where he sent a cable to Amsterdam asking for more money that he could change into Foreign Exchange Certificates. It was a signal that he had found out nothing about the ICBM sites. The amount he asked for told them the number of weeks he could remain under his visa.
After exiting the communications center he took a rickety cab south and went along Xingfu Xilu to the Lhasa Holiday Inn. Before going into the hotel where he’d registered for three days, Hartog visited the Xinhua Bookstore next door, and there he bought a cassette of Tibetan music, along with some postcards. Coming out, walking back toward the hotel, he heard the usual hissing and “Change marney?”
“No,” he said sternly, without being rude. He suspected that at least one of them might be a Public Security Bureau man — from the foreign sector. If you changed money with them you’d get a good rate and a night in jail for doing it, and then you would be in real trouble.
In the Lhasa Holiday Inn he felt guilty for wasting time and spending it in such comfortable surroundings and knew that soon he would have to risk going off the beaten track for a while and stop along the way at the various army camps where for a few yuan they were known to put you up for a night. The question would be, however, whether it was an ordinary base camp or a special secret camp that served the hidden ICBM sites, wherever they were. He wouldn’t know until the date section in his Rolex watch-cum-Geiger counter began advancing rapidly and noiselessly. And it hadn’t happened yet.
Well, he decided, he might spend only two nights at the Holiday Inn, then he’d rough it, and he knew it would be rough. For a start there would be the wild packs of dogs around Lhasa that were known for their ferocity, and he decided the best idea would be to travel along with the Chang Tang nomads who had survived the wildest parts of Tibet, a place of stark mountains and even starker plains in the north for over a thousand years.
While shaving before going down to the dining room, he put the Tibetan music cassette in his Walkman and played it through the two small square speakers. He thought it terribly discordant. He thought too about ICBM sites, of where they might have been moved to after the crushing B-52 raid against their old sites in Turpan. He thought also of how it wasn’t really in Israel’s interests to go poking around fourteen thousand feet or so above sea level looking for them. But in part MOSSAD’s mission was a payback due the Americans for their rapid help with the Patriots in the Iraqi War and a sign of good faith between Israel and the United States that he knew would be reciprocated if Tel Aviv needed it.
He rode down in the elevator with a PLA major whose satchel was marked “Major Mah, Camp Nam.” Lake Nam, where the camp was situated, was northeast of Lhasa and, if he remembered correctly, was a huge bird sanctuary. Hartog and the major smiled at each other, the major saying something about the weather. Hartog agreed. As they pulled up at the second floor he glanced from habit at his watch. The date had advanced ten days. Like the Russians, the Chinese, for all their newfound expertise, were still notoriously lackadaisical about safety parameters. Hartog made a show of patting his vest pocket for his wallet as if he’d forgotten it and at the ground floor stayed on the elevator and went back to his room. He had to work fast so as not to arouse any possible suspicion by the PLA officer. He pulled the toilet chain and went to work.
When he arrived down in the lobby ten minutes later, he dropped off a postcard to Amsterdam, his forehead glistening in sweat. The Chinese officer looked up from one of the dining room tables and motioned for the Dutchman to come over. Smiling, Hartog produced his wallet from his vest pocket. “Under the bed,” he said.
“Good,” the officer said, pleased he had found it. “Would you care to join me for dinner?”
“Yes,” the Dutchman answered, noticing a large bottle of Tsing Tao beer already emptied. He immediately ordered another two and talked about how changeable the weather was in Lhasa.
“You have been here long?” the officer asked.
“Only two days in Lhasa — two weeks in Tib— the autonomous region.” He had almost said “Tibet.” The officer was starting on his second large bottle of beer, and loosened his belt.
Hartog inquired of the major whether his camp, near Lake Nam northeast of Lhasa, was one of those that would put up trekkers for a night at a modest cost. “Yes, you could stay at our camp,” the major said. “Ten yuan.”
It was high by Chinese standards, but for Hartog a god-sent opportunity.
“I might take up your offer,” Hartog said, adding, however, that it “depends which way I go — east along the Zangbo or back past Lake Nam.”
“Well if you go back past the lake ask for Captain Ling. He’s my executive officer.”
“Thank you, but I may go east along the Zangbo.”
“There would be less rain than back north along Nam.”
“I’ll see,” Hartog said noncommittally, raising his glass for yet another toast “First I want to go and see the Potala Palace.”
“Ah,” the major said, looking around. “I understand everyone loves to go to the Potala.” He wasn’t too drunk, but nevertheless he couldn’t help employing the official Chinese tone of disdain for the Buddhist monastery.
On that note they said good-bye, and at the desk Hartog gave the clerk a Tibetan folk music cassette for the next morning’s post and sent a fax to Amsterdam, struck at once by the irony of being so close electronically to the
