Golden Buddha (3 page)

The two men walked toward and through the gate on the yellow wall.

The Chikyah Kenpo was holding a large, jeweled, curved sword. Sliding it into a leather scabbard on his belt, he turned to his master. “Stay close.”

Then, followed by a cadre of Kusun Depon, they passed through the outer gate and slipped into the crowd. The procession quickly made its way along a worn dirt path. Pairs of Kusun Depon stepped to the rear and waited to see if anyone followed. After seeing no one, they moved forward to the next pair of guards, who remained until the coast was clear. Hopscotching their way along the path, the guards made sure the rear was covered. To the front, pairs of warriors assessed any danger ahead. Finding it clear, they continued their progression. A handcart containing the icon followed the procession, pulled by a large monk. Hands firmly on the poles, the monk raced along like a rickshaw driver late for an appointment.

Everyone was trotting and the sound made by their feet was like muffled clapping.

The sound of water came with the smell of wet moss. It was a tributary of the Kyichu River. After the party made their way across a series of stepping-stones, they continued quickly ahead.

 

A
LONG
the far bank of the Kyichu River, Overholt stared at the radium dial on his watch, then shuffled his feet. Several dozen Kusun Depon who had been dispatched hours earlier were tending to the horses and mules that would speed the escape. They stared at the blond-haired American with neither malice nor fear, only resignation.

Several large ferryboats had brought them all across the water, and now the boats were tied up again on the far shore, awaiting the arrival of the Dalai Lama. Overholt caught a quick flash of light from the far bank, signaling it was safe to cross. In the moonlight, he could see the boats quickly being loaded, then minutes later heard the sound of the oars slapping the water.

The lead boat slid onto the pebbled beach and the Dalai Lama climbed over the side.

“Langston,” he said, “did you leave the capital undetected?”

“Yes, Your Holiness.”

“All your men with you?”

Overholt pointed to the seven men that made up his command. They stood off to the side with several footlockers of equipment. Reaching the opposite shore, the Chikyah Kenpo climbed from the boat and assembled the lead troops onto horses. Long spears draped with silk banners were placed in the troops' hands. Earlier, their steeds had been covered with ceremonial blankets and adornments. Then, like the honk of a goose on his way south, a sound of a muted trumpet filled the air. It was time to leave.

Overholt and his men were helped onto horses and lined up following the Dalai Lama. By the time the sun rose the next morning, they were miles from Lhasa.

 

T
WO
days into the journey, across the sixteen-thousand-foot Che-La Pass and over the Tsangpo River, the group stopped for the night at the monastery at Ra-Me. Messengers racing on horseback caught up with the party and brought news that the Chinese had shelled Norbulingka and machine-gunned the helpless crowd. Thousands had been killed. The news cast a pall over the Dalai Lama.

Overholt had reported their progress by radio and felt relieved there had been no need to call for help. The route had been expertly chosen to avoid any conflict with the Chinese. He and his men were exhausted, but the hardy Nepalese pushed on without pause. The town of Lhuntse Dzong was behind them, as was the village of Jhora.

Karpo Pass, the border with India, was less than a day's ride.

And then it began to snow. A blizzard with howling winds and low clouds hunkered down over Mangmang, the last Tibetan town before the Indian border. The Dalai Lama, already exhausted by the journey and stressed by the knowledge that many of his countrymen lay dead and dying, took ill. His last night in his country was torment.

To ease his journey, he was placed on the back of an animal called a dzomo, which was a cross between a yak and a horse. As the dzomo climbed the side of Karpo Pass, the Dalai Lama paused to glance at his beloved Tibetan soil one last time.

Overholt pulled closer on his horse. He waited until the Dalai Lama glanced his way. “My country never forgets,” he said, “and someday we will bring you back home.”

The Dalai Lama nodded, then patted the dzomo's neck and steered it into exile. To the rear of the column, the monk pulling the cart containing the priceless artifact braced his legs as he crested the pass and started down the grade. The six-hundred-pound weight, so heavy on the climb up the pass, now wanted to run free. He dug in his heels.

E
IGHT
in the evening. From out of the south, like a dark insect crawling over a wrinkled blue tablecloth, a tired old cargo ship pushed her way through the Caribbean swells toward the entrance of Santiago Harbor on the isle of Cuba. The exhaust from her single funnel drifted in a blue haze under an easterly breeze as the sun settled below the western horizon and became a ponderous orange ball magnified by the earth's atmosphere.

She was one of the last tramp steamers, a cargo ship that traveled the sea anonymously to the exotic and far-flung ports of the world. There were few left in operation. They did not follow a regular shipping route. Their schedules depended on the demands of their cargo and its owners, so their destinations changed from port to port. They coasted in, unloaded their freight and sailed away like wraiths in the night.

Two miles from shore, a small boat slapped over the rolling sea, approached the ship and swung around on a parallel course. The pilot closed on the rust-streaked hull as a boarding ladder was thrown down from an open hatch.

The pilot, a man in his fifties with brown skin and thick gray hair, stared up at the ancient ship. Her black paint was faded and badly needed to be chipped away and repainted. Streams of rust flowed from every opening in the hull. The huge anchor, pulled tightly in its hawsehole, was completely covered by corrosion. The pilot read the letters, barely discernible on the upper bow. The weary old freighter was named
Oregon
.

Jesus Morales shook his head in amazement. It was a miracle the ship hadn't been scrapped twenty years ago, he mused. She looked more like a derelict than a cargo carrier still in service. He wondered if the party bureaucrats in the Ministry of Transportation had any idea of the condition of the ship they had contracted to bring in a cargo of chemical fertilizer for the sugar and tobacco fields. He could not believe the ship had passed maritime insurance inspection.

As the ship slowed almost to a dead stop, Morales stood at the railing and the pilot boat's bumpers squeezed against the freighter's hull. Timing the crest of a wave as it lifted the boat, Morales leaped agilely from the wet deck onto the boarding ladder and climbed to the hatch. It was a function he performed as often as ten times a day. A pair of crewmen were waiting beside the hatch and helped him up on the deck. The two were both burly-looking individuals, and they did not bother to smile in greeting. One simply pointed toward the ladder leading to the bridge. Then they turned and left Morales standing alone on the deck. Watching them walk away, Morales hoped that he'd never have to meet them in a dark alley.

He paused before climbing the ladder and took a few moments to study the upper works of the ship.

From his long experience and knowledge of ships, he judged her length at 560 feet, with a 75-foot beam. Probably a gross tonnage around 11,000. Five derricks, two behind the funnel and superstructure and three on the forward deck, stood waiting to unload her cargo. He counted six holds with twelve hatches. In her prime, she would have been classed as an express cargo liner. He guessed that she had been built and launched in the early 1960s. The flag on her stern was Iranian. Not a registry Morales had seen very often.

If the
Oregon
looked shabby from the waterline, she looked downright squalid from her main deck. Rust covered every piece of deck machinery from winches to chains, but the hardware at least appeared to be in usable condition. By comparison, the derricks looked as if they hadn't been operated in years.

To add further insult, battered drums, tools and what could only be described as junked equipment were scattered around the decks. In all his years as a harbor pilot, Morales had never seen a ship in such filthy condition.

He climbed the ladder steps leading to the bridge, past bulkheads with flaking paint and portholes whose lenses were cracked and yellowed. Then he paused before finally swinging the door open. The interior of the vessel was as bad, if not worse. The wheelhouse was dirty, with the scars of cigarette burns on the counters and on what had once been a polished teak deck. Dead flies littered the windowsills, the smell assaulted his nose. And then there was the captain.

Morales was greeted by a great slob of a man with an immense stomach that sagged over his belt line. The face was scarred, and the nose so badly broken it slanted toward the left cheek. The thick black hair was plastered back with some kind of greasy cream and his beard was scruffy and stringy. The captain was a cacophony of colors. His eyes were red and his teeth yellow-brown, while his arms were covered with blue tattoos. A grimy yachtsman's cap sat perched on the back of his head and he wore dingy coveralls. The tropical heat and the humidity on the non-air-conditioned bridge made it obvious to Morales that the man had not bathed for at least a month. Any dog worth his salt would have tried to bury the man.

He extended a sweaty hand to Morales and spoke in English. “Glad to see you. I'm Captain Jed Smith.”

“Jesus Morales. Pilot for the Harbor Office of Santiago.” Morales felt uncomfortable. Smith spoke English with an American accent—not what he'd expected on a ship of Iranian registry.

Smith handed him a packet of papers. “Here's our registration and cargo manifest.”

Morales merely cast a brief glance at the documents. Officials on the docks would study them more closely. His only concern was that the ship had permission to enter the port. He handed back the packet and said, “Shall we proceed?”

Smith waved a hand toward a wooden helm that somehow seemed terribly old-fashioned for a ship built in the sixties. “She's all yours, Señor Morales. What dock do you want us to moor at?”

“There are no docks available until Thursday. You will have to anchor in the middle of the harbor until then.”

“That's four days from now. We have a schedule to meet. We can't sit around for four days waiting to unload our cargo.”

Morales shrugged. “I have no control over the harbormaster. Besides, the docks are full with ships unloading new farm machinery and automobiles, now that the embargo has been lifted. These have priority over your cargo.”

Smith threw up his hands. “All right. I guess it's not the first time we had to twiddle our thumbs waiting to unload.” He gave a broad, rotten-toothed grin. “I guess me and my crew will just have to come ashore and make friends with your Cuban women.”

The thought made Morales's skin crawl. Without further conversation, he stepped over to the helm as Smith called the engine room and ordered half speed. The pilot felt the engine's vibrations through the deck as the tired old ship began to make way again, and he aimed her bow toward the narrow entrance of Santiago Harbor, which was bordered by high bluffs that rose from the sea.

From offshore, the channel that led inside to the bellows-shaped harbor was invisible until a ship was nearly on top of it. Rising two hundred feet atop the cliffs on the right stood the old colonial fortress known as Morro Castle.

Morales noticed that Smith and the members of his mangy crew standing on the bridge seemed interested in the defenses that had been dug into the hillside when Fidel Castro had thought the United States was going to attack Cuba. They studied the gun and missile emplacements through expensive binoculars.

Morales smiled to himself. Let them look all they wanted—most of the defenses were deserted. Only two small fortresses maintained a small company of soldiers to man the missile emplacements in the unlikely event an unwelcome vessel tried to enter the harbor.

Morales threaded his way through the buoys and steered the
Oregon
deftly around the twists and turns of the channel, which soon opened into the broad, ballshaped harbor surrounded by the city of Santiago. The wheel felt strange to him, though. The odd feeling was barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. Whenever he turned the wheel, there seemed to be a short lag before the rudder responded. He made a quick but very slight turn to starboard before bringing the wheel back to port. It was definitely there, almost like an echo, a two-second delay. He did not sense sluggishness from the steering machinery, but rather a pause. It had to come from another origin. Yet when the response came, it was quick and firm. But why the hesitation?

“Your helm has an off feel to it.”

“Yeah,” Smith grunted. “It's been that way for a few days. Next port we enter with a shipyard, I'll have the spindles on the rudder looked at.”

It still made no sense to Morales, but the ship was entering the open part of the bay off the city now, and he pushed the mystery from his mind. He called the harbor officials over the ship's radio and kept them informed of his progress, and was given orders for the anchorage.

Morales pointed out the buoys to Smith that marked the mooring area and ordered the ship brought to slow speed. He then swung the stern around until the bow was facing the incoming tide before ordering all stop. The
Oregon
slowed to a halt in an open area between a Canadian container ship and a Libyan oil tanker.

“You may drop your anchor,” he said to Smith, who acknowledged with a nod as he held a loudspeaker in front of his face.

“Let go anchor!” he shouted at his crew. The command was answered a few seconds later by the rattling clatter of the chain links against the hawsehole, followed by a great splash as the anchor plunged into the water. The bow of the ship became hazy from the cloud of dust and rust that burst from the chain locker.

Morales released his grip on the worn spokes of the wheel and turned to Smith. “You will, of course, pay the pilot's fee when you turn over your documents to the harbor officials.”

“Why wait?” snorted Smith. He reached into a pocket of his coveralls and produced a wad of crinkled American hundred-dollar bills. He counted out fifteen bills, then hesitated, looked into Morales's shocked expression, and said, “Oh, what the heck, suppose we make it an even two thousand dollars.”

Without the least indecision, Morales took the bills and slipped them into his wallet.

“You are most generous, Captain Smith. I will notify the officials that the pilot's fee was paid in full.”

Smith signed the required affidavits and logged the mooring. He put a massive arm around the Cuban's shoulder. “Now about them girls. Where's a good place in Santiago to meet them?”

“The cabarets on the waterfront are where you'll find both cheap entertainment and drinks.”

“I'll tell my crew.”

“Good-bye, Captain.” Morales did not extend his hand. He already felt unclean just by being on board the ship; he could not bring himself to grip the greasy hand of the obnoxious captain. Morales's easygoing Cuban warmth had been cooled by the surroundings and he didn't want to waste another second on board the
Oregon
. Leaving the wheelhouse, he dropped down the ladder to the deck and descended to the waiting pilot boat, still stunned at experiencing the filthiest ship he had ever piloted into the harbor. Which is just what the owners of the
Oregon
wanted him to think.

If Morales had examined the ship more closely, he might have realized it was all a façade. The
Oregon
rode low in the water because of specially fitted ballast tanks, which when filled with water lowered the hull to make it look as though it were loaded with cargo. Even the engine tremors were mechanically staged. The ship's engines were whisper-silent and vibrationless.

And the coating of rust throughout the ship? It was artistically applied paint.

 

S
ATISFIED
that the pilot and his boat had pulled away from the
Oregon
, Captain Smith stepped over to a handrail mounted on the deck that did not seem to serve any particular purpose. He gripped it and pressed a button on the underside. The square section of the deck on which Smith was standing suddenly began descending until it stopped in a vast, brightly lit room filled with computers, automated controls and several large consoles containing communications and weapons-firing systems. The deck in the command center was richly carpeted, the walls were paneled in exotic woods and the furniture looked as if it had come straight from a designer's showroom. This room was the real heart of the
Oregon
.

The six people—four men and two women—neatly dressed in shorts, flowered shirts and white blouses were busy manning the various systems. One woman was scanning an array of TV monitors that covered every section of Santiago Bay, while a man zoomed a camera on the pilot boat as it turned and headed into the main channel. No one bothered to give the fat captain half a glance. Only a man dressed in khaki shorts and a green golf shirt approached him.

“All go well with the pilot?” asked Max Hanley, the ship's corporate president, who directed all operational systems, including the ship's engines.

“The pilot noticed the delay in the helm.”

Hanley grinned. “If only he'd known he was steering a dead wheel. We'll have to make some adjustments, though. You speak to him in Spanish?”

Smith smiled. “My best Yankee English. Why let him know I speak his language? That way, I could tell if he played any tricks over the radio with the harbor officials as we anchored.” Smith pulled back a sleeve of his grimy coveralls and checked a Timex watch with a badly scratched lens. “Thirty minutes until dark.”