means take it. If you want to pack something besides Top Ramen, I’ll give you another thousand dollars to do so.” Rominy was alarmed at how Jake was burning through her money, even if it was necessary to hire such people and get the rugged trip over with. But then the cash didn’t seem real anyway. It felt more like they’d robbed Summit Bank than withdrawn money from it.
But she made a sudden decision. That night, when he was asleep, she was going to peel off $5,000 of their bankroll for emergencies and keep it in her own pack.
And not tell him.
Shouldn’t she trust a man she was sleeping with?
She did, mostly. But she wanted some things for herself, like the khata scarf from the cabin, tucked near her heart like a good luck charm.
“You must really want to see those mountains,” Mackenzie said.
“We’re tourists in a hurry, Sam.”
“Gotcha.” He looked from one to the other. “You’re not really Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, are you?”
“We’re whoever we tell you we are.”
“Listen, I don’t care, but I don’t want to squirrel my deal with the government. I mean the guiding is supposed to go to Tibetans, but I kind of grandfathered in and get the Yank jobs no one else wants. You’re not spooks, are you? And no guns, right? I don’t want to see the inside of a Chinese prison.”
“Tourists, Sam. Just like our visas say.”
“Awesome. Well.” He looked at them uncertainly, then shrugged and stood. “A thousand bucks for supplies? You like beer? I could bring some beer along.”
“Bring whatever it takes. But we need two axes, two shovels, a pry bar, and two thousand feet of climbing line. If you can just rent some of it, great.”
“Rent for how long?”
“Three weeks, I thought you said.”
“There’s something at these coordinates, right?”
“We hope. By the way, does your iPhone work here?”
“I don’t hold it to keep my ear warm. The Chinese have much better reception than the States. They’re leaving us in the dust, man. We bicker, they build. This country is so smart, it’s scary.”
“India, too.”
“Everyone has their turn in the sun.”
“Can we leave first thing tomorrow?”
Sam squinted again. “When’s first thing?”
“Eight.”
He frowned. “Sounds good. But maybe nine would work better. Ten if I have trouble rounding up supplies. I’ll meet you in the courtyard. And the money…”
Barrow counted six thousand in American hundreds into Sam’s hand, the guide’s eyes going wide. He stuffed the wad in his pants, glancing around the restaurant to see if anyone else was watching.
“The other five when you get us there and back,” Jake said. “And a bonus if we find what we’re looking for. A report to the Chinese police if you screw us.”
Sam saluted. “You got it, bwana.”
39
Lhasa, Tibet
September 11, Present Day
M ackenzie didn’t show until eleven, a delay that left Jake fuming. Their guide explained he’d been assembling supplies enough for Armageddon, “or at least for the absence of convenience stores in northern Tibet.”
The odometer on the faded white Land Cruiser indicated 83,418 hard-won miles, but Sam assured them the rig was indestructible. “Taliban seal of approval, man.” Its storage area had been expanded by putting down half the backseat, and it was crammed with jerry cans of gasoline, camping equipment, food, water, beer, a spotting scope, a camera, two board games, a Frisbee, and coils of brightly colored climbing rope. Inserted into the pile were the digging and prying tools Jake had asked for.
“As we drink down the beer, we’ll buy more jerry cans with gasoline. There’s a station about four hundred miles from here, and then we’ll turn off into the backcountry. I tried Google-earthing where you want to go, but that part of the world is pretty fuzzy. As near as I could tell, there’s nothing there.”
“That’s exactly what we’re hoping you’d see,” Jake said. “It will explain why we’re the first to see it.”
Sam cocked his head. “I like your logic, man.”
They inched through stop-and-go traffic to get out of Lhasa and then broke out onto the main highway, Mackenzie demonstrating an apparent belief in the assurance of reincarnation by recklessly passing crawling trucks on narrow, twisting roads. He did seem to handle the four-wheel-drive vehicle well, and popped in a CD of bemusing Buddhist folk pop. He enjoyed telling them more about Tibet.
“What you got is the most religious country on earth ruled by the least religious country. The spiritual versus the material. The next life versus this one. So there’s tension, man, and more machine guns than Scarface whenever Chinese pooh-bahs fly in for a visit. It’s too bad, you know? What’s cool about Tibet is that they’re not like everybody else, that they had this theocracy and their own laid-back spiritual thing. And now comes China, which is desperate to keep its billion-zillion contented by giving them the Western good life. You want the story of the twenty-first century? We’re driving through it.”
“Can’t they coexist somehow?” Rominy asked.
“That’s what the Chinese say. And they do, to a degree. The Commies have allowed the monasteries to reopen after decades of suppression because Tibet is a great tourist draw, not just for Westerners but for the rising Chinese middle class. But is South Dakota run under the precepts of the Sioux nation? The dominant culture dominates. So I don’t see an end to the tension anytime soon. The Chinese are just waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, and with him the last hopes of Tibetan independence.”
“But hasn’t some of the change been good for Tibet?” asked Jake. “Roads, power, water, manufacturing?”
“I suppose. I don’t know if it’s made anyone any happier.”
Jake looked out the window. “You can’t stop progress.”
“You can bitch about it, though.”
Sam Mackenzie thought his clients were more than a little eccentric. What was the pretend marriage gig in this day and age? But he was accustomed to getting the oddball Americans the Tibetan guides didn’t want and heading off to oddball places the Tibetans didn’t want to go. The Tibetans had families to come home to, and Sam just had himself. Weirdness was his business.
What he didn’t like was complicated baloney. “Now that we’re out of town and set to camp together for three weeks, who are you really, Mr. Anderson? Shouldn’t we level with each other?”
Jake considered. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt. I’m Jake Barrow, a newspaper reporter from Seattle. And that’s Rominy… Pickett, who’s been helping solve an old mystery concerning her family. It’s a genealogical quest. Where we’re going has meaning to her.”
Sam looked in the rearview mirror. “You have family that came to Tibet, Lilith? I mean, Rominy?”
She glanced up from some old papers she was studying. “I guess so. I’m sort of here for my roots.”
Interesting. Most of Sam’s clients came to check off another global experience on their bucket list, bagging enough Buddhas to fuel entertaining dinner party conversation back home. Digital SLR with full-motion capability, sunglasses propped on hair, SPF 50 sunscreen, sacred strings tied around wrist, a tantric tattoo or two, altimeter, iPod, Kindle, pedometer, compass watch good to one hundred meters underwater, boots with more pieces to their assembly than the space shuttle, down, fleece, Gore-Tex, and a determination to rough it, once they got over their disbelief there wasn’t a power outlet and a Porta-Potty round every bend. Those tourists were okay. They came, they looked, they paid.
