Stony-faced soldiers in olive drab stood blocking the roads, their AK-47s held before them, spike bayonets fixed.
Squirrelly discovered this when Lobsang reached in and shook her awake.
"Bunji. The hour of reckoning has come."
"The what?" Squirrelly said dreamily.
"The climax."
"Oh, I love climaxes," Squirrelly said, turning over and crushing her face against a pillow. "Did I come?"
A strong hand reached in and pulled her out by her hair. She stood in her slippered feet, her maroon lama's cap squashed down on her head.
Squirrelly lifted the lamb's-fleece fringe off her forehead so she could see.
She saw Kula, looking grim.
"Is that any way to treat a lama?" she said.
"We will face the Chinese together."
Squirrelly looked in the direction of the Mongol's sideways glance. She saw three tanks and the soldiers.
"What do I do?" she whispered.
"You will know," said Kula.
An official-looking man in a green uniform advanced, flanked by two soldiers in PLA olive drab.
"I am PSB man. Public Security Bureau," he said. "You are Squirrelly Chicane?"
"I have a visa."
"I will see your visa."
Squirrelly dug it out of her purse.
The PSB man looked at it carefully and said, "I must search your belongings for contraband."
"All I have," said Squirrelly, smiling her best curl-their-toes smile, "are what you see here. My palanquin and a few close personal friends." She waved airily in the direction of her train, whose numbers seemed to reach back to the horizon.
"Do they have entry visa?"
"Permission was given for the Bunji to be accompanied by her retinue," Lobsang pointed out.
"All these?"
"Hey, I'm planning a really big production," Squirrelly said quickly. "I need crew to scout locations, set up liaisons and research local costumes and exteriors. By the way, do you happen to know where we can find some really good Tibetan sound stages?"
The PSB man looked at her with the bland expression of someone who understood little and feared to lose face. "I will examine belongings now," he said.
Squirrelly waved him to her palanquin, where her few belongings were. "Feel free."
Soldiers rushed up and used their spike bayonets to poke among the cushions. Finding nothing, they started spearing them and hurling them away.
"Hey! Be careful! That's my best palanquin"
She was ignored. Behind them the train of the Bunji Lama stood somberly and spun their prayer wheels.
Surreptitiously Squirrelly signaled them to spin faster.
The prayer wheels cranked in agitation, varicolored tassels becoming blurs.
Squirrelly smiled. This was great. Look at that backdrop. The wedgewood sky. The cast of extras. It was the perfect panoramic wide-angle-lens shot. This wouldn't be just another Squirrelly Chicane movie. This was going to be an epic. Maybe the last of the epics. She could already smell the box-office dollars.
Suddenly the PSB official flung her purse to ground. He was holding her roach clip. It squeezed the burned-down butt of her last reefer. Digging farther, he came upon her stash of bhang.
"Contraband!" he barked.
"Oh, give me a break," Squirrelly snapped. "It's less than an ounce. Personal use. Savvy?"
The PSB shouted something in Mandarin and waved for the skirmish line of soldiers to advance.
"What did he say?" Squirrelly asked Kula.
Kula gripped his bone-handled knife and hissed, "He has ordered our arrest."
"Arrest?"
"We are to be taken to prison."
"Prison?"
Windburned eyes narrowing, Kula unsheathed his silver dagger.
Squirrelly knocked it from his hand. "Are you crazy?" she spat. "Put that thing away."
"We will not be taken by Chinese," Kula said through tight teeth.
"Don't go Klingon on me. Don't you see this is perfect? The misunderstood and cruelly persecuted Bunji Lama is summarily hauled off to prison. That's our second act!"
Chapter 21
On the outskirts of the frontier town of Zhangmu, just inside Tibet, Remo Williams stood by the side of the NepaleseTibetan Friendship Highway waiting for an Isuzu WuShiLing to come by.
So far, all he had seen were the clunky old green Jiefeng trucks. He was starting to think he'd have to settle for a Dongfeng, which, according to the hitchhikers' guidebook he'd picked up in Hong Kong, was not as roomy as a WuShiLing, but definitely faster than a Jiefeng.