Overholt pointed to the seven men that made up his command. They stood off to the side with several footlockers of equipment. Reaching the opposite shore, the Chikyah Kenpo climbed from the boat and assembled the lead troops onto horses. Long spears draped with silk banners were placed in the troops’ hands. Earlier, their steeds had been covered with ceremonial blankets and adornments. Then, like the honk of a goose on his way south, a sound of a muted trumpet filled the air. It was time to leave.
Overholt and his men were helped onto horses and lined up following the Dalai Lama. By the time the sun rose the next morning, they were miles from Lhasa.
TWO days into the journey, across the sixteen-thousand-foot Che-La Pass and over the Tsangpo River, the group stopped for the night at the monastery at Ra-Me. Messengers racing on horseback caught up with the party and brought news that the Chinese had shelled Norbulingka and machine-gunned the helpless crowd. Thousands had been killed. The news cast a pall over the Dalai Lama.
Overholt had reported their progress by radio and felt relieved there had been no need to call for help. The route had been expertly chosen to avoid any conflict with the Chinese. He and his men were exhausted, but the hardy Nepalese pushed on without pause. The town of Lhuntse Dzong was behind them, as was the village of Jhora.
Karpo Pass, the border with India, was less than a day’s ride.
And then it began to snow. A blizzard with howling winds and low clouds hunkered down over Mangmang, the last Tibetan town before the Indian border. The Dalai Lama, already exhausted by the journey and stressed by the knowledge that many of his countrymen lay dead and dying, took ill. His last night in his country was torment.
To ease his journey, he was placed on the back of an animal called a dzomo, which was a cross between a yak and a horse. As the dzomo climbed the side of Karpo Pass, the Dalai Lama paused to glance at his beloved Tibetan soil one last time.
Overholt pulled closer on his horse. He waited until the Dalai Lama glanced his way. “My country never forgets,” he said, “and someday we will bring you back home.”
The Dalai Lama nodded, then patted the dzomo’s neck and steered it into exile. To the rear of the column, the monk pulling the cart containing the priceless artifact braced his legs as he crested the pass and started down the grade. The six-hundred-pound weight, so heavy on the climb up the pass, now wanted to run free. He dug in his heels.
1
THE PRESENT DAY
EIGHT in the evening. From out of the south, like a dark insect crawling over a wrinkled blue tablecloth, a tired old cargo ship pushed her way through the Caribbean swells toward the entrance of Santiago Harbor on the isle of Cuba. The exhaust from her single funnel drifted in a blue haze under an easterly breeze as the sun settled below the western horizon and became a ponderous orange ball magnified by the earth’s atmosphere.
She was one of the last tramp steamers, a cargo ship that traveled the sea anonymously to the exotic and far-flung ports of the world. There were few left in operation. They did not follow a regular shipping route. Their schedules depended on the demands of their cargo and its owners, so their destinations changed from port to port. They coasted in, unloaded their freight and sailed away like wraiths in the night.
Two miles from shore, a small boat slapped over the rolling sea, approached the ship and swung around on a parallel course. The pilot closed on the rust-streaked hull as a boarding ladder was thrown down from an open hatch.
The pilot, a man in his fifties with brown skin and thick gray hair, stared up at the ancient ship. Her black paint was faded and badly needed to be chipped away and repainted. Streams of rust flowed from every opening in the hull. The huge anchor, pulled tightly in its hawsehole, was completely covered by corrosion. The pilot read the letters, barely discernible on the upper bow. The weary old freighter was named Oregon.
Jesus Morales shook his head in amazement. It was a miracle the ship hadn’t been scrapped twenty years ago, he mused. She looked more like a derelict than a cargo carrier still in service. He wondered if the party bureaucrats in the Ministry of Transportation had any idea of the condition of the ship they had contracted to bring in a cargo of chemical fertilizer for the sugar and tobacco fields. He could not believe the ship had passed maritime insurance inspection.
As the ship slowed almost to a dead stop, Morales stood at the railing and the pilot boat’s bumpers squeezed against the freighter’s hull. Timing the crest of a wave as it lifted the boat, Morales leaped agilely from the wet deck onto the boarding ladder and climbed to the hatch. It was a function he performed as often as ten times a day. A pair of crewmen were waiting beside the hatch and helped him up on the deck. The two were both burly-looking individuals, and they did not bother to smile in greeting. One simply pointed toward the ladder leading to the bridge. Then they turned and left Morales standing alone on the deck. Watching them walk away, Morales hoped that he’d never have to meet them in a dark alley.
He paused before climbing the ladder and took a few moments to study the upper works of the ship.
From his long experience and knowledge of ships, he judged her length at 560 feet, with a 75-foot beam. Probably a gross tonnage around 11,000. Five derricks, two behind the funnel and superstructure and three on the forward deck, stood waiting to unload her cargo. He counted six holds with twelve hatches. In her prime, she would have been classed as an express cargo liner. He guessed that she had been built and launched in the early 1960s. The flag on her stern was Iranian. Not a registry Morales had seen very often.
If the Oregonlooked shabby from the waterline, she looked downright squalid from her main deck. Rust covered every piece of deck machinery from winches to chains, but the hardware at least appeared to be in usable condition. By comparison, the derricks looked as if they hadn’t been operated in years.
To add further insult, battered drums, tools and what could only be described as junked equipment were scattered around the decks. In all his years as a harbor pilot, Morales had never seen a ship in such filthy condition.
He climbed the ladder steps leading to the bridge, past bulkheads with flaking paint and portholes whose lenses were cracked and yellowed. Then he paused before finally swinging the door open. The interior of the vessel was as bad, if not worse. The wheelhouse was dirty, with the scars of cigarette burns on the counters and on what had once been a polished teak deck. Dead flies littered the windowsills, the smell assaulted his nose. And then there was the captain.
Morales was greeted by a great slob of a man with an immense stomach that sagged over his belt line. The face was scarred, and the nose so badly broken it slanted toward the left cheek. The thick black hair was plastered back with some kind of greasy cream and his beard was scruffy and stringy. The captain was a cacophony of colors. His eyes were red and his teeth yellow-brown, while his arms were covered with blue tattoos. A grimy yachtsman’s cap sat perched on the back of his head and he wore dingy coveralls. The tropical heat and the humidity on the non-air-conditioned bridge made it obvious to Morales that the man had not bathed for at least a month. Any dog worth his salt would have tried to bury the man.
He extended a sweaty hand to Morales and spoke in English. “Glad to see you. I’m Captain Jed Smith.”
“Jesus Morales. Pilot for the Harbor Office of Santiago.” Morales felt uncomfortable. Smith spoke English with an American accent—not what he’d expected on a ship of Iranian registry.
Smith handed him a packet of papers. “Here’s our registration and cargo manifest.”
Morales merely cast a brief glance at the documents. Officials on the docks would study them more closely. His only concern was that the ship had permission to enter the port. He handed back the packet and said, “Shall we proceed?”