Kingdom (3 page)

As for poor old Anton, the rugged, sixty-year-old Argentine–American, everyone just hoped that he was off on one of his periodic jaunts and that sooner or later he would reappear. It was Anton who had first inspired Nancy to become a journalist, but despite her enormous admiration for him, she didn’t know him well. She had always loved his stories, and whenever she picked up a copy of the paper she always searched for them first, but the truth was she had only ever had the chance to meet him on a couple of occasions. He was rarely in the office, and when he was, Dan Fischer treated him like royalty and hardly let anyone else get near to him. On the couple of occasions when she had got to speak to him he had always been so kind and encouraging – and so modest – but she had been tantalized rather than satisfied by their meetings. She hoped that he would walk back into the Delhi office before too long, no doubt with a few more prize-winning tales under his belt, and this time she would be the first to get to hear them.

But it was true that there were voices of disquiet. Some of Anton’s close friends, the other old stagers back in the New York office, were getting steadily more and more worried that something else might have happened. Normally someone would get a call, or a postcard, or something, but this time they had received no word at all. Anton had been a fine mountaineer in his youth, they said, and he was also a stubborn man. It wasn’t too hard to imagine that he could have overextended himself on a climb somewhere, no doubt underequipped, relying on his notorious intelligence and strength. He was an old-school correspondent; he spoke several Asian languages and he had a huge knowledge of India and China and Tibet. On countless occasions he had turned down promotions and pay rises to continue to do what he loved: being out in the field on his own, chasing stories and taking risks that reporters half his age would shy away from. He was a legend, that was for certain, and maybe this was why everyone was so unwilling to contemplate the worst.

And now Nancy almost jumped out of her skin. The knocking had suddenly become much louder. An Indian voice was shouting her name through the letterbox. She tossed the phone onto the bed and stood up. Fumbling in her suitcase, she found a pair of khaki trousers and a clean shirt, which she slipped on. She grabbed a hairband and tied her thick shoulder-length brown hair into a loose ponytail. Glancing in a mirror, she noticed that she looked tired but that was hardly surprising, she thought.

Stepping into the hall, she suddenly had a view of the main sitting room. She’d been too worn out to look around when she arrived, but what she saw now amazed her. The room was overflowing with antique stone statues and figurines. Literally every surface of every table – and there were lots of antique tables of every size and shape – was crammed with carved statues. Some were huge life-size stone sculptures of Buddha’s head, others were meticulous little carvings of merchants from the Silk Road mounted on camel back. The overall effect was astounding; it was like looking into a storeroom at Sotheby’s. Clearly, Anton Herzog had been a connoisseur . . .

‘Miss Kelly. If you are there can you please open the door?’

The voice was loud and impatient. She knelt down at the letterbox and saw a pair of brown eyes staring back at her through the slit.

‘Yes?’

‘This is the police. My name is Captain Hundalani. Please open the door.’

The eyes disappeared as Captain Hundalani stood up.

‘Er . . . Yes . . .’

Nancy clicked open the three locks and opened the door a crack, and then seeing that two of the three Indian men in the hall were wearing police uniforms she swung the door open and let them in. The third man was wearing an impeccable dark suit. Captain Hundalani was in his early thirties, clean-shaven except for a neatly trimmed moustache. Neither he nor the policemen were smiling. The Captain said, ‘Miss Kelly, we are sorry to disturb you. However our business is urgent.’

‘Er . . . OK,’ said Nancy. ‘Come in. Perhaps in here’ – and she gestured towards the sitting room. ‘Have a seat, wherever you like. It’s not my apartment . . . It belongs to Mr Herzog, my colleague at the
Herald Tribune
. Or rather he lives here . . . Really it’s the company’s apartment. But Mr Herzog’s away . . .’

Captain Hundalani cut in. His voice was cold and emotionless.

‘Yes. We know all that, Miss Kelly. That is precisely the reason that we are here . . . Please, you will find it is best if you wait until we have explained.’

There was an unmistakable air of menace to his voice, Nancy thought. But she couldn’t imagine what the problem was. She could hardly be in trouble for not registering with the police; she had only been in town for a few hours. With a feeling of panic rising in her belly she found a silk-covered chair, of an age and beauty she hardly had time to consider, and sat down. Mr Hundalani and the two policemen were still standing, glowering at her.

‘We’d like you to come with us, Miss Kelly . . . To answer a few questions . . .’

There was not even a flicker of friendship on Captain Hundalani’s face. A wave of adrenalin washed over her.

‘What? Why? I’ve only been in India for a few hours. I only just woke. Surely I am allowed to change my clothes and have a shower before I register.’

Her voice sounded small and weak – she could hear herself speaking almost as if she wasn’t saying the words herself. And then, suddenly, to her absolute horror and astonishment, it dawned on her what was really going on.

‘Am I under arrest?’

Captain Hundalani paused for a second, choosing his words carefully.

‘No, Miss Kelly. Not if you come with us.’

Her throat was dry:

‘What are you talking about? I’ve been here only a few hours, and I’ve been asleep for most of those. How can I possibly have done anything illegal?’

‘Our investigation concerns your colleague Mr Anton Herzog. It concerns his real reasons for being in India and Tibet.’

‘I’m sure that’s a very compelling subject, Anton’s a fascinating man. But I don’t see how I can help you. I’ve never been to India and I haven’t seen him in months. I’m here to replace him, not to answer for his misdemeanours, whatever they were.’ She looked nervously up and down the room, at the massed statues and antiques, all of them testifying to the personality of the absent Herzog. ‘Anyway, you can’t just march in here and take me away . . . Let me call the office; I need a lawyer.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that one of the policemen had placed his hand on the handcuffs that hung from his belt. Nancy could hardly believe what was happening, and what was most terrifying was that there seemed to be absolutely nothing she could do.

Paralysed by the course of events, she stood there as the policeman unhooked the handcuffs from his belt and then slipped them around her wrists.

‘But I haven’t done anything, I need a lawyer,’ she repeated feebly, aware that she sounded just like a young child, unable to comprehend the logic by which her guilt had been arrived at, too naive to understand the transgressions she had committed. And then Captain Hundalani smiled: a cold smile, insincere and condescending.

He didn’t even bother to argue.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible Miss Kelly. Now, if you have decided to cooperate, perhaps we can leave? Things will be much easier if we all remain friends.’

‘Stop this at once.’

A loud voice with a Beijing accent rang out across the courtyard. Dorgen Trungpa’s eyes opened in amazement, as if a god had spoken.

All heads turned from the naked girl to the monastery gates. There, between the broken gates, stood a tall, handsome, northern Chinese man, wearing a standard army-issue rain cape and the peaked cap of an officer. Behind him down the track other human shapes were visible, moving in the rain. Now that he had everyone’s attention, the northerner spoke again – directly to the army officer.

‘Order your men to stop vandalizing the monastery at once – and give the girl back her clothes. What do you think you are doing? The Cultural Revolution finished decades ago. And let the boy go.’

Dorgen Trungpa could hardly believe his ears. It was as if a guardian angel had materialized out of the jungle. A shadow of outrage passed across the army officer’s face. ‘How dare you march in here, barking orders? I am the senior officer in Pemako region. Who the hell do you think you are? Explain yourself or I’ll have you shot at once.’

The northerner strode across the courtyard and as he approached, it became clear who he was from the insignia on his cap badge and the knee-length polished black leather boots that flashed under his raincoat as he walked. He was a Colonel in the notorious Public Security Bureau, or PSB as it was known, the Chinese equivalent of the CIA and the FBI all rolled in to one. Even the faithful supporters of the Communist Party lived in fear of the PSB. They were the thought police of the Chinese government, the guard dogs of the revolution.

The soldiers in the courtyard stiffened noticeably as they recognized the northerner’s rank and affiliation. When he reached the centre of the courtyard he drew a letter from his pocket and held it out with a straight arm to the stunned army officer. The envelope was sealed shut with a single red star, wax seal.

‘I am Colonel Wei Jen of the PSB. Orders from General Te of Southern Command in Chongqing. I am now the senior officer in Pemako, and henceforth all army units south of the Su La pass are under my command. And that includes you.’

The army officer stared in disbelief at Colonel Jen and then, like a petulant child, he snatched the envelope from the Colonel’s grasp and tore it open. For a minute he studied the orders and then he turned back to his men with a look of angry humiliation on his face.

‘Give the woman her clothes and assemble by the gates . . . And let the monk go.’

Dorgen Trungpa was roughly pushed forward. Released, he ran over to the body of the Abbot and flung himself onto the old man, weeping. Colonel Jen smiled at the army officer and nodded his approval.

‘Good. These superstitious old monks are a tourist attraction and nothing more. The old Tibet is dead and gone – we can afford to be lenient on the last remaining savages.’

Colonel Jen slapped the army officer on the back and continued, not wanting the man to lose any more face than he had already done.

‘In Lhasa, the capital, there are now twice as many Chinese as there are Tibetans. We do not need to persecute their absurd beliefs any longer – the young people are more interested in mobile phones than prayer wheels. The good sense of communism has replaced the foolish religion of the monks.’

Then he turned to survey the collection of bedraggled soldiers:

‘Now, where are the rest of your men? I will need them all to report here in the courtyard at dusk. I want to organize a search party. Have them bring provisions for ten days. But first, treat this monk’s injuries. And get rid of this corpse. When that’s done I want to question the boy. Have him cleaned up and then bring him to me. I will set up my headquarters here, in the monastery’s library . . .’

He glanced at the heavens in disgust. ‘. . . Surely at least that will be dry. And get a generator in here and some lights.’

With that, the Colonel marched briskly towards the door to the prayer hall and disappeared into the gloom.

The steel door slammed shut behind Nancy Kelly and she was led down a long, poorly lit brick corridor. As her footsteps echoed along the walls a feeling of dread engulfed her. It seemed that they would be questioning her about Anton Herzog. They were suspicious; or Herzog had already been condemned and simply had to be found. Either way, she was certain they had got the wrong woman for their interrogation. She would throw no light on their case. Despite worshipping Herzog as a journalist, she knew nothing about the man. She could picture him in her mind’s eye holding court in the newsroom, back on one of his rare visits, mesmerizing all around him with his extraordinary tales. But as to his private life, the real personality behind the glittering façade, his motivations, his politics, she knew absolutely nothing, and her feeling of absolute ignorance only compounded her fear. She began to feel that she was falling into a nightmare world, that like Alice in Wonderland she was entering a realm where, precisely because she didn’t know what she was being accused of, she would never be able to clear her name.

But what choice had she had? From Captain Hundalani’s terse, hostile manner, it was quite clear that she was in very deep already, although her exact legal status was academic right now: she was being taken away against her will, without any chance to talk to a lawyer, and that was all that mattered. For all she knew she was about to disappear into some hellhole jail and no one would ever know . . . Perhaps that was exactly what had happened to Anton Herzog . . . Maybe he had been languishing for the past few months in an overcrowded stinking cell somewhere in the Delhi Central Prison, riddled with disease and wondering why no one had bothered to find him.

The corridor led to another corridor and then down some steps, through several doors and finally into a part of the police station that more resembled a normal office building than a penitentiary. The Sikh policeman knocked on a nondescript door and then opened it and motioned to her to go in.

Behind a desk sat a middle-aged, bland-looking Indian man. His nondescript face was featureless to the point of being completely forgettable. From nowhere, Nancy suddenly remembered something that one of her CIA contacts had once said while they were having coffee on Times Square, that all the best Intelligence operatives look like nobodies, like bank clerks, or people you see in a doctor’s waiting room. ‘They are so completely ordinary that they never ever stand out in a crowd; in fact even when they are on their own you don’t notice them. They are our most prized assets; you can look right at them but your mind simply blanks them out.’

It was only the man’s eyes that were in any way exceptional. There was a coldness about them that ran completely against the grain of his otherwise banal exterior. His voice surprised her. He snapped an order and there was an impatience and irritation to it that she hadn’t expected.