‘I just sent word to Rome, so with luck you won’t have too much trouble on the other side of the lake. You should get moving and take advantage of this fog for as long as it lasts. Judging by the flow out of these mountains, you’ll be moving with the current, so that should help.’ Kilkenny turned to Yin. ‘Would you please express my deepest thanks to our Tibetan friends for all their help?’
As Yin spoke, Kilkenny bowed deeply to each of the men, who were pleased by the gesture. He turned to his comrades.
‘No mushy goodbyes,’ Kilkenny said. ‘I’ll meet up with you on the other side. Take care and get across that border.’
Yin stepped in front of Kilkenny, hands folded and head bowed. He lifted his head, slipped his thumbs inside the collar of his suit, and carefully drew out the hand-carved cross. He held it up for a moment of veneration before lowering it to his chest.
‘Bow your head for a blessing,’ Yin said softly.
Kilkenny clasped his hands together and lowered his head.
‘O Lord Jesus, please watch over this man as he has watched over me. Protect him from harm and guide his journey home. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Kilkenny answered.
Kilkenny lifted his head, and Yin extended a hand toward him. He grasped the small, slender hand and discovered warm steel within the grip. And in Yin’s gaze Kilkenny found an intensity and clarity reminiscent of the late Pope Leo.
‘Only God knows what lies ahead for you and me,’ Yin said, ‘and if the future differs from our hopes, I wish now to express my gratitude.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Kilkenny replied. ‘And Godspeed.’
58
Grin awoke with a start as the riffs of ‘Gimme Shelter’ poured from the computer’s speakers. He adjusted his glasses and clicked on the center of the logo to retrieve Kilkenny’s message.
ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE INITIALLY
‘Not a story problem,’ Grin howled. ‘I hate story problems.’
He dismissed this thought as quickly as it came, writing it off to his body’s natural desire for an undisturbed sleep cycle — something he had missed over the past two weeks.
Then he thought about the original quote: There’s a sucker born every minute. It was a cynical expression, to be sure, but it perfectly expressed the view of the master showman who coined it. Grin wondered what message Kilkenny was trying to send with it.
If there’s one born every minute initially, Grin thought, what happens afterward?
He wondered how time figured into this, and what was causing the initial minute to change. He quickly filled a clean page on his legal pad with every random thought that flashed into his sleep-deprived brain. His mind finally went blank, the well empty.
‘Initial minute, initial time,’ he said aloud, hoping the sound of his own voice might reignite his synapses.
‘Initial,’ Grin said again, the word becoming almost a mantra.
Then he saw the first line he’d written on the page.
There’s a sucker born every minute — P.T. Barnum
If it isn’t time, Grin mused, maybe it is initials.
He circled Barnum’s first and middle initials and brought up the map of the region where he believed Kilkenny was located. In the middle of one of the valleys that ran from Tibet in Ladakh, he saw a long thin lake shaped like a flattened letter N. On the Tibetan side, the lake was called Bangong Co, but across the border it became Pangong Tso.
P.T. Ah, Pangong Tso! He had it.
Grin picked up the phone and dialed Donoher. The Camerlengo answered before the second ring.
‘You’ve heard from Nolan?’ Donoher asked.
‘Yeah, and something’s happened. I got a very specific message pointing to a lake that straddles the border between China and India. It’s right through one of the valleys I thought he’d use.’
‘Then you were right.’
‘About the valley, yeah, but Nolan’s pointing us to the lake, or specifically the Indian side of the lake. I don’t think they’re in the air anymore — they’re traveling by water.
‘Which means they’ll be on foot once they reach India. I’ll pass the word to our people there,’ Donoher said. ‘Let me know if you hear anything else.’
59
The black plume rising against the vivid blue sky provided an unmistakable visual marker of the Harbin’s crash site. Liu squirmed impatiently in the rear seat behind the weapons operator, irritable about how the scale of the terrain made distances deceptive.
‘How much longer?’ he fussed.
‘Just a few minutes, sir,’ the pilot replied calmly. He had carried VIPs before.
As they neared the site, the plume grew from a thin reed of smoke into a thick black column. Flames licked furiously at the skeletal frame of the helicopter, liquefying soft metals and devouring anything that would burn.
Three Tibetans sat on the ground upwind of the blaze. They watched the helicopter circle, looking for a level place to land, but made no move to flee or welcome the new arrivals.
The Harbin hovered over a relatively level patch of earth, extended its landing gear, and touched down. The pilot kept the blades running in case the ground proved unstable, and Liu and Peng exited from the rear doors. Both were dressed in flight suits and helmets, and they crouched as they ran beneath the nearly invisible main rotor.
‘You there!’ Liu shouted as he approached the Tibetans. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Watching the fire,’ Norbu replied in halting Chinese.
‘Did you see what happened?’ Peng asked calmly.
‘We saw smoke and came to see what was burning. It is a very large fire.’
‘Did you see anything else, any other aircraft?’
‘We saw two. One was damaged and one was not. The men in gray put the damaged one in the fire. They did not want you to find it. They also put their dead in the fire.’
‘Please describe the men,’ Peng asked. ‘How many and what did they look like?’
‘There were two men. An elder, Chinese like you, and a tall foreigner.’
‘No others?’ Liu demanded.
‘They are dead.’
‘What happened after they burned their dead?’ Peng asked.
‘The two men flew away on a strange machine.’
‘Where did they go?’
Norbu and the others pointed west, in the direction of the village of Rutog.
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’ Liu said angrily.
‘The old one was a holy man,’ Norbu explained.
‘You spoke with these men?’
‘Yes.’
Liu stepped away in a rage, trying to gather his thoughts. He pointed at the burning wreckage. ‘That was a military helicopter. Its job is to defend China against foreign aggression. When you discovered a foreigner here, in China, next to a destroyed Chinese helicopter, did you not think this foreigner might have been the cause?’
‘We did not see what happened,’ Norbu replied calmly. ‘We do not know the cause of the accident.’
‘Thick-headed fools!’ Liu shouted. ‘The foreigner shot it down!’
Liu pulled out his pistol and shot Norbu in the head. Norbu’s brothers tried to flee but were shot before they could scramble to their feet.
‘Why did you do that?’ Peng asked, stunned by Liu’s brutality.
‘They were criminals,’ Liu replied as he replaced the spent rounds in his pistol.
‘These men had done nothing.’
‘They abetted foreign invaders and a fugitive enemy of the state. Their inaction was both criminal and unpatriotic.’
‘But that’s a matter for the courts to decide.’