The Buddha of Brewer Street (7 page)

‘We can’t go back, not to the way things were. But Tibet is more than just mountains and monasteries. It is a faith, a way of life.’

‘And of death?’

‘Think of our exile as an opportunity. A chance to send down new roots, to find new strength. And think of my death as a new beginning, not just for me but for all our people.’

‘A new beginning? For that we need an army!’

‘Perhaps there is another way. A way in which Chinese and Tibetan can be brought together, not in confrontation, but in reconciliation.’

‘Reconciliation? How?’ demanded Gompo, as ever sceptical.

‘Reconciliation … through reincarnation!’

The Lama had laughed, a deep booming drum of hope. And cautiously the cats had begun to creep back …

Now, as Kunga stared into the shadows of the cave, where the Dalai Lama had taken himself to meditate and to die, he struggled hard to recapture the Lama’s optimism. Beside him Lobsang began to shiver.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Kunga encouraged, placing an arm around the boy’s shoulders.

‘It is the end.’ Lobsang’s voice was mournful.

‘It is also a beginning. The body is like a set of clothes. When it gets old, you discard it for a fresh one. That’s all he has done, decided to discard his body. But not the spirit. That lives on. And will find a new body.’

‘When?’

‘Soon.’

‘Where?’

Kunga gave a low sigh. ‘Ah, now that is the mystery.’

The light was fading fast, Kunga trimmed the butter lamps. The last of the gentle breeze had vanished with the light, the flames did not flicker. Everything was still.

‘It is almost over, I sense it. Time for you to go, little friend.’

‘I’d like to stay. Please? To help you.’ A quieter voice. ‘To help him.’

And so they had settled for the night, Kunga sitting before the cave, and Lobsang close before him, wrapped in the monk’s thick robe, waiting for the Dalai Lama to die.

Kunga had been determined to stay awake and vigilant, but he couldn’t help himself. He fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. It was Lobsang who woke first.

‘He’s moved,’ the boy whispered, tugging at the monk’s robe.

Kunga brushed the night from his eyes and stared. The sun was beginning to light the sky, deepening the shade within the cave, and for a moment his tired eyes struggled to adjust.

‘He has moved,’ Lobsang insisted. ‘That must mean he’s still alive, mustn’t it?’

It is given to few in the world of Buddhist mysteries to know when the spirit has finally departed; Kunga was one of the few. He shook his head. ‘No. It is over. He is gone.’

The Dalai Lama was dead.

But the boy was right, the body had moved. In death the face had turned as though looking out across the world below. Towards the west. It was a sign.

And Kunga felt a strange sensation in his hand. When his hands had been pulverized by the rifle butt of the Chinese soldier, a large fragment of the clay statue had buried itself deep into the flesh of his palm, leaving a vivid scar that had never fully healed. On the day the Lama had taken himself to his cave, the scar had begun to burn, the first sensation other than constant pain he had felt in forty years, a sensation that had grown more fierce with every passing day. Now it felt as though it was on fire. He rubbed the palm against his chest, but it burned still more fiercely. The outline of the scar had grown red, like a map drawn on the parchment of his skin. A map of what, he had no idea. But he knew it was another sign.

The book and the black eye arrived in his office together, both being carried by Mickey.

‘What the hell have you been up to?’ Goodfellowe growled, seeing the mark that not even a copious sponging of Clinique concealer had been able to hide. Then, remembering his manners: ‘You all right?’

‘Just a little accident.’

‘Accident? What accident?’

‘The truth?’

‘Of course the bloody truth.’

‘Stage diving.’

His silence betokened utter ignorance.

‘Stage diving,’ she repeated. ‘You know, when you try to get up on stage?’

‘You’ve been auditioning for
Pygmalion,’
he announced triumphantly. ‘And you fell off the casting couch?’

She looked at him waspishly, the slight bump above her left eye giving her an uncharacteristic scowl. ‘Bugger off.’

‘Whoops, sorry,’ he said, not meaning it.

‘Stage diving,’ she repeated, trying again. ‘The stage in question was at the LSE. A university bash. Def Leppard were playing.’

‘Deaf who …?’

She rolled her eyes in despair. ‘They’re a band. Heavy metal. The sort of music with megatons of bass that makes your skull vibrate. The sort that needs tight leather pants just to keep you in.’

‘I wonder why I haven’t heard of them,’ he muttered, all sarcasm.

‘So the idea is that you work up a rush of blood, jump up onto the stage and try to grab a piece of them.’

‘What on earth is the point?’

‘Not much. They’re ancient, about your age. Most stage divers wouldn’t have a clue what to do if we actually caught them. But we don’t. The purpose of the exercise is for the roadies – their road crew – to grab hold of you and throw you back into the crowd. Or rather, onto the crowd, since everyone’s packed so tight in front of the stage that all they can do is pass you back over their heads. Which means hundreds and hundreds of deliciously sweaty hands tossing you around and passing all over your body.’

‘But why would people want to do that?’

She groaned. ‘Take a wild guess, Goodfellowe.’

The impression began to form, and he had the grace to look momentarily stunned.

‘But last night they must’ve been down on numbers.’ She shrugged. ‘They dropped me.’

He studied her, studied her body, very closely, imagining the hands. His hands. He gathered his flustered thoughts. ‘Two suggestions. First, don’t spread that around this place. Wouldn’t do you any good. Or me, for that matter. Say you ran into a filing cabinet; that’s the standard parliamentary excuse for a black eye.’

‘And second?’

‘When I say I want the truth …’ He winced. ‘I’m not sure I always mean it.’

She smiled sweetly. ‘I guess you were young once.’

‘Don’t bet on it. Anyway, enough of your off-duty diversions. What work have we got?’

She handed him a book that was floating on top of the usual pile of daily letters. ‘Came this morning. From the Dalai Lama.’

‘You’re not the only one full of surprises,’ he offered as he inspected the book. It was an elderly edition of the writings of Sun Tzu, the Chinese military strategist who had written about the art of warfare more than two thousand years before (although he lived so long ago that scholars debated endlessly about whether he truly wrote the works, or if he even existed). The thick paper was brittle and discoloured with age, the cover of cheap card and scuffed. With great care Goodfellowe opened the book, at random, concerned lest the pages should fall apart in his hands.

‘If you rely on Government to put out the fire, by the time the bucket arrives there is nothing left but ashes,’ he read.

He smiled wryly. ‘Two thousand years and nothing’s changed.’

‘At least in those days the Government could afford a bucket.’

‘But I don’t understand. Why is a Tibetan man of peace passing on the musings of a Chinese warlord?’

‘There’s a letter in the back.’

It was written in a bold hand.

‘My dear Thomas Goodfellowe, I have been interested in military strategy since I played with lead soldiers in the Potala Palace as a child. In those days I always won! We Tibetans were once a warrior race, but now we must fight our battles by other means. Sun Tzu often shows how. I thought he might interest you. Especially since the future has a Chinese face.’

That phrase again. It was dated and signed in Tibetan script that meandered like an ancient river in flood across the page.

‘Bit like the bloody
Times
crossword, isn’t it?’ Mickey interjected. ‘“The future has a Chinese face.” Does that mean he’s given up?’

Goodfellowe stared at the letter. ‘No, of course he hasn’t given up. Can’t have given up. This is all about continuing to fight the battle, but by other means.’

‘What other means?’

He shook his head. ‘Dunno.’ He placed the book in a desk drawer and turned to the pile of correspondence. ‘And since he’s not a constituent I don’t suppose we’re ever going to have the time to find out. His battles aren’t our battles. They weren’t when I was a Minister, and can’t be now I’ve no more influence than yesterday’s weather forecast.’

Goodfellowe was wrong, of course. He would come to realize that, as soon as he discovered the letter was probably the very last thing the Dalai Lama had written in this life.

Mo could scarcely contain his frustration. He had rushed into the Ambassador’s office, perhaps a trifle enthusiastically but only in order to pass on the good news. Yet he had been forced to stand, humiliated, before her desk while the ancient warrior prattled on about courtesy and youth. It wasn’t as if she had been busy with anything of importance, merely rearranging the clutter of family photographs that dominated her desk.

‘A private secretary should know when privacy is meant to be respected. If they want to remain a private secretary, that is.’

She was constantly changing around those photographs, a daily ritual, like some old woman throwing fortune sticks in the temple. Faded sepia prints of her mother and father, revolutionaries who had met on the Long March, six thousand miles through central China to the caves of Shaanxi. Also one grandmother. Two aunts who had died on that march. Sisters. And of course her only daughter. A sickness her family had, only producing girls. The shame of the Lins.

‘Doors are meant for knocking on, not kicking down,’ Madame Lin lectured.

Mo hung his head, less in respect than in an attempt to hide the flush on his cheek. Listen to her! Kicking down doors? But that’s what the new China was about. The Ambassador was an old woman in an outdated world who had been left behind by the changes that were gripping their country. Sure there was corruption. And chaos. Hadn’t there always been? But now there was also something new. Opportunity. Open doors. Even if occasionally those doors needed a little forcing.

He took a deep breath. ‘Ambassador, I apologize.’

She waved her hand impatiently, leaving Mo unclear as to whether she was waving away his presence or his offence. He seized the moment.

‘But there is wonderful news that I wished you to have.’ His tone grew more eager. ‘The renegade Lama is dead.’

She became thoughtful, then grew unsettled, almost concerned. He had expected her to respond to the news, but not in this manner.

‘I thought you would wish to celebrate,’ he added, suddenly uncertain.

‘Then your presence is even less appropriate than I thought, Private Secretary.’ She always used his formal title when slapping him down. The deep frown was back, creasing her forehead.

‘I don’t understand, Ambassador.’

‘The first perceptive thing you’ve said all day.’

She was unusually brittle this morning. More bowel trouble, perhaps. Best to pacify. He bowed. ‘It would be an honour if you would explain.’

How he hated this vast office at the heart of the Embassy. They might just as well have been back in old Beijing rather than at the centre of a thriving Western capital. When the new Ambassador had arrived it had been an opportunity to bring the place to life with some of the new colour and fashions that were coming out of Shanghai and Hong Kong, but the old woman had turned it into something fit only for the scrapbook of a dowager empress – heavy rosewood chairs complete with antimacassars, dark lacquer screens, heavy rugs, oppressive potted plants. No imagination. All imported from home, even the musty smell, which seemed to have been borrowed from some dank winter’s day in central Beijing.

Madame Lin walked across the room to stand silhouetted against the window, where she lit a cigarette and took the smoke down to the bottom of her lungs.

‘So the Lama is dead,’ she repeated.

‘Gone. Wiped away,’ Mo enthused.

‘No, that’s where you are wrong. Simply because he was an enemy you underestimate him.’

‘But there is nothing left to underestimate.’ He struggled to hide his exasperation, and was not altogether successful.

‘In life he was significant. Yet in death he is a still greater uncertainty. And we have enough uncertainty in China today to satisfy even the keenest sceptic. Which is why young men like you are in such a hurry, Mo.’

Her tone was chiding and he wasn’t entirely sure what she was getting at. Time to get back to the matter in hand. ‘You are suggesting he is more of a threat to us dead?’

‘While he lived we knew where he was, what he was up to. Our eyes were always upon him. But how can we follow him now?’

‘You can’t believe in the absurdity of rebirth?’ Mo was aghast. His training at the Foreign Affairs Institute in Beijing had been most specific on the point.

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what millions of Tibetans think, and they believe he will come back to lead them. A new Lama. Like a Messiah. While they are waiting they will make trouble. And when he returns, whoever he may be, they’ll make even more trouble. The wind blows cold from those mountains.’

‘Then we must remain alert, Ambassador.’

She turned on him. ‘The question, Mo, is whether you will remain at all.’

‘Ambassador?’

‘You take me for a fool. That I cannot tolerate.’

He began to protest. She cut him short.

‘You steal antiques and artefacts from the Embassy, Mo. My Embassy.’

Thick cigarette smoke hung in the air, creating an atmosphere that was suddenly clinging and intensely claustrophobic. ‘Ambassador, I can assure you …’

‘You can assure me of nothing. I know, Mo. About how you’ve been moving antiques around the Embassy. To hide them. Sending them off to your cousin in Amsterdam and having them copied. Then selling the original, and returning the fake to the Embassy.’

She was by the fireplace now, with Mo still protesting.

‘Not true. Not true …’