Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (6 page)

“How are your sisters?”

“Andrea won't come into my room because she's freaked out by the snakeskin, but Nicole is my slave if I let her touch it. She's offered to trade me everything she has in the world for that python, but I will never give it to anyone.”

“I hope
not
. And how's your mother doing?”

“Much better. You can tell because she's gone back to her painting. You know what? Walimai, the shaman, told me I have the power to heal, and that I must use it well. I've about decided that I'm not going to be a musician, the way I'd planned; I'm going to be a doctor instead. How does that sound to you?” Alex asked.

“I suppose you think you cured your mother,” his grandmother laughed.

“I didn't do it, it was the ‘water of health' and the medicinal plants I brought back from the Amazon.”

“And the chemotherapy, and the radiation . . .” she interrupted.

“We won't ever know what cured her, Kate. Other patients who received the same treatment in the same hospital have died, but my mother is in full remission. I know cancer is very treacherous, and can come back at any moment, but I think that the plants the shaman Walimai gave me, and also the miraculous water, will keep her well.”

“You paid a big price to get them,” Kate commented.

“I did come close to getting killed when . . .”

“Oh that was nothing, I was talking about leaving your grandfather's flute behind,” she cut in.

“Your concern for me is very moving, Kate,” Alexander joked.

“Oh, well! Too late now. I suppose I should ask about your family.”

“It's your family, too, and as far as I know, you don't have any other. But if you're interested, I am
pleased to inform you that we are gradually getting back to a normal family life. Mother's hair is growing back—curly and gray. Although she looked prettier when she was bald,” Kate's grandson said.

“I'm happy that Lisa is getting well. I like her. She's a good painter,” Kate Cold admitted.

“And a good mother . . .”

There was a pause of several seconds on the line before Alexander could gather the courage to mention the reason for his call. He explained that he had saved some money; for several months he had given music lessons and worked in a pizzeria. His intention had been to replace the things he'd destroyed in his room, but he'd changed his mind.

“I don't have time to listen to your financial plans. Get to the point. What do you want from me?” his grandmother said gruffly.

“My vacation starts tomorrow . . .”

“And?”

“I was thinking that if I paid my way, maybe you'd take me with you on your next trip. Didn't you tell me you were going to the Himalayas?”

Another glacial silence followed the question. Kate Cold was making an enormous effort to contain the satisfaction that swept over her: everything was going according to plan. If she had invited her grandson, he would have offered a list of objections, as he had when the trip to the Amazon had come up, but this way the idea came from him. She was so sure that Alexander would be going that she had prepared a surprise for him.

“Are you there, Kate?” Alexander asked timidly.

“Of course. Where would I be?”

“Will you think about it, at least?”

“So. I thought that young people today were devoted to smoking grass and looking for dates over the Internet . . .” she grumbled.

“That comes a little later, Kate. I'm sixteen, and
my budget won't stretch far enough even for a virtual date.” Alexander laughed, and added, “I think I proved to you that I'm a good travel companion. I won't get in your way, and I can be of help. You're getting a little old to go by yourself. . . .”

“Watch what you're saying, pipsqueak!”

“I meant, well . . . I can carry your luggage, for example. And I can take photos.”

“You think that
International Geographic
would publish your snapshots? Timothy Bruce and Joel González will be coming, the same photographers who went with us to the Amazon.”

“Is González all right?”

“His broken ribs healed, but he's jumpy about everything and anything. Timothy looks after him like a mother.”

“And I'll look after you like a mother, Kate. You might get trampled by a herd of yaks in the Himalayas. And the air's very thin, you could have a heart attack,” her grandson pleaded.

“I do not intend to give Leblanc the pleasure of seeing me die before he does.” Kate gritted her teeth, and added, “But I see that you know a little about the region.”

“You can't imagine how much I've been reading about it. Can I go with you? Please!”

“All right, but I'm not going to sit and wait for you. We'll meet at John F. Kennedy Airport next Thursday, where we'll take a night flight to London and fly from there to New Delhi. Do you have that?”

“I'll be there, I promise!”

“Bring warm clothing. The higher we climb, the colder it will get. I'm sure you'll have occasion to do a little mountaineering, so you can also bring your climbing gear.”

“Thanks, thank you, Grandmother!” Alex exclaimed, jubilant.

“If you call me Grandmother one more time,
I'm not going to take you anywhere!” Kate replied. She hung up the phone and brayed with laughter like a hyena.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Collector

T
HIRTY BLOCKS AWAY FROM
Kate Cold's tiny apartment, on the top floor of a skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan, the second wealthiest man in the world, who had made his fortune by stealing the ideas of his employees and his partners in the field of computers, was talking by telephone with someone in Hong Kong. The two had never seen one another, nor would they ever.

The multibillionaire called himself the Collector, and the person in Hong Kong was simply the Specialist. The former did not know the identity of the latter. Among other security precautions, both had filters on their telephones to disguise their voices, and a device to prevent having their telephone numbers traced. That conversation would not be heard anywhere else. Not even the FBI, with the most sophisticated espionage systems in the world, would be able to learn what the secret transaction between those two parties consisted of.

The Specialist accomplished things—for a price. The Specialist could assassinate the president of Colombia, put a bomb on an airplane, make off with the royal crown of England, kidnap the pope, or replace the
Mona Lisa
in the Louvre with a fake. The Specialist didn't have to advertise, because there was never a lack of work; on the contrary, clients often had
to wait months on a list before their turn came. The mode of operation was always the same: the client deposited a certain six-figure fee—nonrefundable—and waited patiently as his personal data were being painstakingly verified by the criminal organization.

After a brief time, the client received a visit from an agent, usually someone with an innocent appearance, perhaps a student seeking information for a thesis, or a priest representing a charitable institution. The agent would interview the client regarding the details of the mission, and would then disappear. On the first visit, the price was never mentioned; it was understood that if the client needed to ask what the service would cost, he would never be able to pay. Later the deal would be sealed with a personal telephone call from the Specialist. The call could originate from any place in the world.

The Collector was forty-two. He was a man of medium stature and ordinary appearance; he wore thick eyeglasses, his shoulders were bowed, and he was balding prematurely, all of which made him seem much older. He dressed carelessly; his sparse hair always seemed greasy, and he had the bad habit of picking his nose when he was deep in thought, which was most of the time. He had been an only child, plagued with complexes and bad health; he had no friends and was so brilliant that he was bored in school. His schoolmates despised him because he got the best grades in class without trying, and his teachers liked him no better because he was pompous and always knew more than they did. He had begun his career when he was fifteen, building computers in his father's garage. By the time he was twenty-three, he was a millionaire and, owing to his intelligence and his absolute lack of scruples, at thirty he had more money in his personal accounts than the entire budget for
the United Nations.

As a boy, like almost everyone, he'd collected postage stamps and coins; in his teens he collected racecars, medieval castles, golf courses, banks, and beauty queens; now, in early maturity, he'd started a collection of “rare objects.” He kept them hidden in armored vaults spread across five continents, so that in case of some disaster not all of his precious collection would be destroyed. The drawback to that method was that it did not allow him to stroll among his treasures and enjoy them all at the same time; he had to hop onto his jet and travel from place to place to see them, but in truth he didn't have to do that too frequently. It was enough to know they existed, that they were safe, and that they were his. He wasn't motivated by artistic appreciation of his booty, only clear and simple greed.

Among other items of incalculable value, the Collector possessed the oldest manuscript known to man, the authentic funeral mask of Tutankhamen (the museum example being a copy), the brain of Einstein cut into sections and floating in a formaldehyde solution, Averroes' original texts written in his own hand, a human skin completely covered with tattoos from neck to feet, rocks from the moon, a nuclear bomb, the sword of Charlemagne, the secret diary of Napoleon Bonaparte, several of St. Cecilia's bones, and the formula for Coca-Cola.

Now the multibillionaire meant to acquire one of the rarest treasures in the world, a prize that few knew existed and to which only one living person had access. It was a golden dragon encrusted with precious stones, and for eighteen hundred years it had been seen only by the crowned monarchs of a small sovereign kingdom that lay in the mountains and valleys of the Himalayas. The dragon was wrapped in mystery and protected by
a curse, as well as by ancient and complex security. It was not mentioned in any book or tourist guide, though many people had heard of it, and there was a description of it in the British Museum. There was also a drawing on an ancient parchment that a Chinese general discovered in a monastery at the time China invaded Tibet. That brutal military occupation forced more than a million Tibetans to flee, among them the Dalai Lama, the supreme spiritual leader of Buddhism.

Before 1950, the hereditary prince of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon had been given special instruction between the ages of six and twenty in the Tibetan monastery where the parchments describing the dragon and its uses had been guarded for centuries. It was part of the prince's training to study them. According to the legend, the dragon was not merely a valuable statue, it was a miraculous device for telling the future, which only the crowned monarch could use in solving problems of his kingdom. The dragon could make predictions as varied as changes in climate, which anticipated the yield of the harvests, to the militaristic intentions of neighboring countries. Thanks to that valuable information, and to the wisdom of its rulers, the tiny kingdom had been able to enjoy peace and prosperity and maintain its fierce independence.

For the Collector, the fact that the statue was made of gold was irrelevant, for he had all the gold he wanted. What interested him were the dragon's magical properties. He had paid a fortune to the Chinese general for the stolen parchment, and then had it translated; he knew that the statue was worthless without instructions. The multibillionaire's tiny ratlike eyes glittered behind his thick glasses when he contemplated how he would be able to control the world economy once he had that object in his hands.
He would know the ups and downs of the stock market before they happened, and could act before his competitors and multiply his billions. It annoyed him greatly to be the
second
richest man in the world.

The Collector had learned that during the Chinese invasion, at the time the monastery was destroyed and several of the monks murdered, the hereditary prince of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, Prince Dil Bahadur's father, had escaped through mountain passes disguised as a peasant. He had managed to reach Nepal and from there, always incognito, traveled back to his country.

The Tibetan lamas had not been able to complete the prince's preparation, but his father, the king, had personally continued his education. He had not, however, been able to provide his son the same high mental and spiritual training he himself had received. When the Chinese attacked the monastery, the monks had not as yet opened his mind to the ability to see auras and thus judge an individual's character and intentions. Nor had he been trained in the art of telepathy that allowed him to read thoughts. His father could not teach him those things, but at least when he died his son would be prepared to occupy the throne with dignity. The new king possessed a deep knowledge of the teachings of Buddha, and with time proved to have a commendable combination of the authority needed to govern, the practicality required for meting out justice, and the spirituality that safeguarded him from the corruption of power.

Dil Bahadur's father was just twenty when he ascended to the throne, and many thought he would not be capable of ruling as other monarchs of that kingdom had before him. From the beginning, nevertheless, the new king gave evidence of maturity and wisdom. The Collector
knew that this monarch had been on the throne for more than forty years, and that his government had been characterized by peace and well-being.

The sovereign of the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon did not welcome outside influences, especially those from the West, which he considered materialistic and decadent, a culture that posed grave dangers to the values that had always prevailed in his nation. The official state religion was Buddhism, and the king was determined to keep things that way. Every year he commissioned a survey to measure the index of national contentment, its focus not on the numbers of problems, since many problems are inescapable, but on the level of compassion and spirituality among his kingdom's inhabitants. The government discouraged tourism and admitted only a small number of qualified visitors each year. As a result, tourist agencies referred to the country as the Forbidden Kingdom.