Sixty Days and Counting (47 page)

“I want to put this to use,” Phil said. “We’ve gotten a good start on the climate problem, but there are other problems just as bad. So I want to push the process, and I’m willing to try all kinds of things to make it happen.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “I’ll think about some things to try.” By God I will!

He watched Phil squeeze Diane’s hand. Test the limits, make an experiment in politics, in history itself. Just how far would Phil go? And how far could he get?

E
VERYONE WAS A LITTLE SHAKEN
in those first few days after Phil got shot, although as it became clear he would recover, people tended to return from out of that briefly glimpsed bad alternative history to default mode, to the world they had inhabited before, without any lingering sense that things could be different. Because they weren’t different, and it was too hard to imagine what things would be like without Phil Chase there. So it was just something that had almost happened and on they went.

But not everyone. To Frank’s surprise, one of those who seemed to have been shaken the most was Edgardo. In the immediate aftermath his saturnine face had been set in a murderous expression all the time, and the first time they went out for a run afterward, with Kenzo and a couple of guys from the OMB they had met in the White House men’s locker room, he had run around the Mall twice without saying anything at all, a thing of such rarity that Kenzo and Frank looked at each other, uneasy, even a little frightened.

“What’s up Edgardo?” Kenzo finally said. “Cat got your tongue?”

“You people are idiots. You are always killing your best leaders. You might as well be some banana republic in Latin America! You’re just as bad as all the juntas you set up down there, I suppose it has to be that way. The good ones you kill and the bad ones you give all your money to. Call them good and kiss their ass.”

“Geez. Remember, this time the guy only wounded him. And it was a crazy guy.”

“It always is. They are easy to find here. Pick anyone.”

“Well, gee. Maybe we should change the subject. Have you thought of a new bestseller to write?”

For a long time Edgardo had entertained them on their runs with accounts of the nonfiction books he would write for the bestseller list, popularizing recent findings in the sciences. “Come on,” Kenzo encouraged him, “what was that last one?
Why We Fuck Up
?”

“That would be too long to write,” Edgardo said. “That is the
Encyclopaedia Britannica,
at the least.”

The OMB guys floated back within earshot. “Edgardo, are you talking politics again?”

“Am I talking politics? What kind of a redundancy is that, when are any of us not talking politics? When you talk, you’re talking politics.”

“I didn’t know that. I don’t think of it that way.”

“It makes no difference what you think. It’s all politics. You people in this country don’t even know how good you’ve had it, to be able to just talk politics all this time rather than shoot it. So you do these kinds of things and don’t even notice how dangerous it is. Someday you will unleash the furies of
la violencia
down on your idiot heads, and only then will you know what you have lost.”

Phil started sending to Congress a new volley of legislation, all kinds of bills that pressured members of Congress to either vote for his programs or be revealed as obstacles, which would then initiate high-profile midterm election campaigns to remove them from office. It was not that the public would necessarily notice but that the party pols would and then they would direct the attack on obstacle representatives. So there was a lot of leverage there and the balance of the parties in the House of Representatives was close enough that Phil was already getting a lot of things through. If these got any momentum and results then by the time the midterm elections came it might be possible to build a solid majority and then accelerate even further. So: judicial appointments, executive actions, all were intensified and coordinated in a single larger campaign, coordinated by Roy and the brain trust. Fuel-mileage efficiency standards of seventy and eighty miles a gallon. A doubling of the gas tax. A return to progressive tax rates. An end to all corporate loopholes and offshoring of profits. Heavy financial support for the World Health Organization’s population stabilization efforts. AIDS and malaria eradication funds. Gun control legislation to give the NRA nightmares. It became clear that his team had taken over the tactic called, ironically enough, flooding, which had been used to such effect by the criminals who had hijacked the presidency at the start of the century. It was like a flurry in boxing, the hits just kept on coming, at a pace of three or four a week, so that in the scramble the opposition could not react adequately, not to any individual slaps nor to the general deluge. Right-wing pundits were wondering if Chase had arranged to get shot to gain this advantage, why had the gunman used a twenty-two, where was the evidence he had actually been shot anyway, could they stick a minicam down the hole? No? Wasn’t that suspicious?

But in the committees and on the floor of Congress the hammering went on. Roy said to Charlie, “The media is to legislation as professional wrestling is to Olympic wrestling. The real moves are hard to see. We’ve got them on the run, so come on what’s your latest?” The need for a constant stream of good initiatives was getting such that Roy was now hectoring the brain trust to think faster.

“This is just a start,” Phil would say at the end of his press conferences, waving away any questions that implied he had suddenly become more radical. “All this had to be done. No one denies that, except for special interests with some kind of horrid financial stake in things staying the same. We the people intend to overturn those destructive tendencies, so grab this tiger by the tail and hold on tight!”

A
FEW SATURDAYS LATER,
the three kayakers went out on the Potomac again, putting in just downstream from Great Falls.

The overflow channels on the Maryland side had been so torn by cavitation in the great flood that things had been forever changed there, and one new channel of the falls dropped down stepped layers in the gneiss in a very regular way. This channel had been diverted and a few adjustments made with concrete and dynamite to make it even more regular, leaving it stepped so that kayakers could with a hard push paddle up it, one level at a time, catching a rest on the flats before ascending the drops. “Some people make it all the way up to above the falls, and then ride the big drops back down again.”

“Some people,” Charlie said, looking over at Drepung and rolling his eyes. “Don’t you do that, Frank?”

“I don’t,” Frank said. “I can’t get to the top of the Fish Ladder. It’s hard. I’ve gotten around two-thirds of the way up it, so far.”

They rounded the bend leading into Mather Gorge, and the falls came in sight. The air was filled with an immediate low roar, and with clouds of mist. The surface of the river hissed with breaking bubbles.

The lowest rung of the Fish Ladder by itself turned out to be more than Charlie and Drepung wanted to attempt, but Frank shot at the bottom drop at full speed, hit the white flow and fought up to the first flat, then waved at them to give it a try. They did, but found themselves stalling and then sliding backwards down the white-water rapids, plunging in and struggling to stay upright.

Frank shot down the first drop and paddled over to them.

“You have to accelerate up the drop,” he explained.

“By just paddling faster?” asked Drepung.

“Yes, very fast and sharp. You have to dig hard.”

“Okay. And if it catches you and throws you back anyway, do you try to go backwards, or turn sideways on the way down?”

“I turn sideways, for sure.”

“Okay.”

Drepung and Charlie gave the lowest flume a few more tries, learning to turn as they stalled, which was in itself quite a trick; and near the end of an hour they both made it up to the first level patch of water, there to hoot loudly against the roar, turn, gulp, and take the fast slide back down to the foamy sheet of fizzing brown water. Yow! While they were doing this, Frank ascended six of the ten rungs of the chute, then turned and bounced down drop by drop, rejoining them red-faced and sweating.

After that they floated back downstream toward their put-in, looking over at the Virginia side to spot climbers on the dark walls of Mather Gorge. Frank got interested in a woman climbing solo on Juliet’s Balcony, and led them over to watch her climb for a while. Charlie and Drepung reminisced about their one climbing lesson on these walls as if it had been an expedition to Denali or Everest.

While paddling lazily back across the river, Frank said, “Hey, Drepung, I’ve got a question I’ve been meaning to ask you—that day at the MCI Center, what was that with you putting a scarf around the Dalai Lama’s neck, before he gave his talk?”

“Yeah, what was that about?” Charlie chimed in.

Drepung paddled on for a while.

“Well, you know,” he said at last, looking away from the other two, so that he was squinting into the sunlight squiggling over the river. “Everyone needs someone to bless them, even the Dalai Lama. And Khembalung is a very important place in Tibetan Buddhism.”

Frank and Charlie gave each other a look. “We knew that, but like just how important?” Charlie asked.

“Well, it is one of the power spots, for sure. Like the Potala, in Lhasa.”

“So the Potala has the Dalai Lama, and Khembalung has you?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“So how does the Panchen Lama fit into that?” Charlie asked. “What’s his power spot?”

“Beijing,” Frank said.

Charlie laughed. “It was somewhere down in Amda, right?”

Drepung said, “No, not always.”

Charlie said, “But he’s the one who was said to be on somewhat equal terms with the Dalai Lama, right? I read that—that the two of them represented the two main sects, and helped to pick each other when they were finding new ones. Kind of a back-and-forth thing.”

“Yes,” Drepung said.

“And so, but there’s a third one? I mean is that what you’re saying?”

“No. There are only the two of us.”

Drepung looked over at them.

Charlie and Frank stared back at him, mouths hanging open. They glanced at each other to confirm they were both getting the same message.

“So!” Charlie said. “
You
are the Panchen Lama, that’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“But—but…”

“I thought the new Panchen Lama was kidnapped by the Chinese,” Frank said.

“Yes.”

“But what are you saying!” Charlie cried. “You escaped?”

“I was rescued.”

Frank and Charlie paddled themselves into positions on either side of Drepung’s kayak, both facing him from close quarters. They laid their paddles over the kayaks to secure themselves as a loose raft, and as they slowly drifted downstream together, Drepung told them his story.

“Do you remember what I told you, Charlie, about the death of the Panchen Lama in 1986?”

Charlie nodded, and Drepung quickly recapped for Frank:

“The last Panchen Lama was a collaborator with the Chinese for most of his life. He lived in Beijing and was a part of Mao’s government, and he approved the conquest of Tibet. But this meant that the Tibetan people lost their feeling for him. While to the Chinese he was always just a tool. Eventually, their treatment of Tibet became so harsh that the Panchen Lama also protested, privately and then publicly, and so he spent his last years under house arrest.

“So, when he died, the world heard of it, and the Chinese told the monastery at Tashilhunpo to locate the new Panchen Lama, which they did. But they secretly contacted the Dalai Lama, to get his help with the final identification. At that point the Dalai Lama publicly identified one of the children, living near Tashilhunpo, thinking that because this boy lived under Chinese control, the Chinese would accept the designation. That way the Panchen Lama, although under Chinese control, would continue to be chosen in part by the Dalai Lama, as had always been true.”

“And that was you,” Charlie said.

“Yes. That was me. But the Chinese were not happy at this situation, and I was taken away by them. And another boy was identified by them as the true Panchen Lama.”

Drepung shook his head as he thought of this other boy, then went on: “Both of us were taken into custody, and raised in secrecy. No one knew where we were kept.”

“You weren’t with the other boy?”

“No. I was with my parents, though. We all lived in a big house together, with a garden. But then when I was eight, my parents were taken away. I never saw them again. I was brought up by Chinese teachers. It was lonely. It’s a hard time to remember. But then, when I was ten, one night I was awakened from sleep by some men in gas masks. One had his hand over my mouth as they woke me, to be sure I would not cry out. They looked like insects, but one spoke to me in Tibetan, and told me they were there to rescue me. That was Sucandra.”

“Sucandra!”

“Yes. Padma also was there, and some other men you have seen at the embassy house. Most of them had been prisoners of the Chinese at earlier times, so they knew the Chinese routines, and helped plan the rescue.”

“But how did they find you in the first place?” Frank said.

“Tibet has had spies in Beijing for a long time. There is a military element in Tibet, people who keep a low profile because of the Dalai Lama’s insistence on nonviolence. Not everyone agrees with that. And so, there were people who started the hunt for me right after I was taken by the Chinese, and eventually they found an informant and discovered where I was being held.”

“And then they did some kind of…?”

“Yes. There are still Tibetan men who took part in the rebellion that your CIA backed, before Nixon went to China. They have experience in entering China to perform operations, and they were happy to have another opportunity, and to train a new generation. There are those who say that the Dalai Lama’s ban on violence only allows the world to forget us. They want to fight, and they think it would bring more attention to our cause. So the chance to do something was precious. When these old commandos told me about my rescue, which they did many times, they were very pleased with themselves. Apparently they watched the place, and spied on it to learn the routines, and rented a house nearby, and dug a tunnel into our compound. On the night of my rescue they came up from below and filled the air of the house with that gas that the Russians used during that hostage crisis in a theater, applying the correct amount, as the Russians did not, Sucandra said. So when they rescued me they looked like insects, but they spoke Tibetan, which I had not heard since my parents were taken away. So I trusted them. Really I understood right away what was happening, and I wanted to escape. I put on a mask and led them out of there! They had to slow me down!”