"Try to hold it in, because we're blowing this Popsicle stand."
"How, Bunji?" asked Kula. "These doors are very stout."
"So? You're a big, strapping Mongrol. You're even stouter. Don't tell me you couldn't bust out if you put your mind to it."
"All things are possible," Kula admitted, "if they are predestined."
Squirrelly summoned up her best little-ol'-me Southern-belle accent. "You can do it, Kula. I know you can. Listen, you get us out of here and you can be my costar. Of course, you won't actually play yourself. Lord knows you're a hunk, but I've seen you act. Strictly wood. Maybe Richard Gere, if he bulks up, can pull it off."
"I do not understand your words, O Buddha Sent. What is it you wish me to do?"
"Get us out of here. Please. The Bunji will bless you a thousand times if you succeed."
Squirrelly listened as the big Mongol began throwing his shoulders against the ironbound door. It shook. In fact, the entire corner of the prison shook. But the door held.
"I have failed you, O Bunji. Forgive me."
"It was meant to be," said Lobsang.
"Don't sweat it," Squirrelly said. "I have a B-plan. When they let me make my call, I'll just dial the First Lady. She'll pull the strings that'll get us out of here."
But when Squirrelly later asked a passing turnkey when she would be allowed to place her phone call, the man only laughed.
"You come back here! I know my constitutional rights. I'm entitled to call my lawyer. I'm an American citizen and an Oscar winner! You hear me?"
Chapter 23
No prayer wheels spun in the hill village of Tingri as Kelsang Darlo stood on the tin roof of his humble stone house in which his family cowered. Kelsang Darlo refused to cower.
Someone had stolen a box of grenades from the hated People's Liberation Army garrison, a former monastery. It was Chushi Gangdruk. Everyone knew it was Chushi Gangdruk. But no one knew who belonged to the Chushi Gangdruk except for those who belonged.
This way, no Tibetan who was not Chushi Gangdruk could give up those who were.
So when the Chinese captain, Ran Guohua, had failed to obtain by torture the whereabouts of his missing grenades from the people of Tingri, he had not given up. He had simply waited for the thunder.
It was spring, the season for thunder and lightning and slashing rain, so Captain Guohua did not wait long.
With his soldiers surrounding him protectively, he had gone house to house, not to search this time, but to pick ten men. Good Tibetans. Men of families who would be missed.
And as the thunder grew louder and more fearsome, he made the ten innocent men climb to the roofs of their own houses to catch the lightning.
It was not the first time that good men of Tingri had been made to catch the lightning. The last time, five had done this and two had died. This time the offense was much greater. Captain Guohua understood that the stolen grenades would be used against his own troops if they were not soon found.
And so ten men were forced to stand exposed to the elements, enduring first the slashing rain. When the rain was over, all ten stood unbowed, their faces wet with a clean fresh rain that masked the shame of their tears of frustration, before the terrible lightning.
And no prayer wheels spun to entreat mercy. The Chinese had smashed them and made the people of Tingri melt down their brass for cannon shells and other violent objects. It was a sacrilege. It had been an unending sacrilege since the Iron Tiger Year so long ago.
If Lord Buddha saw to it that he should drop his body, Kelsang Darlo prayed that his wife and children would be spared further indignities. He tried to understand the soldiers, who were only doing the bidding of the captain, who in turn was only doing the bidding of the leaders in Beijing. But there had been rapes. The young women of Tingri had been offered work, paying work, to be trained as nurses for the PLA. On the first day they were raped.
Later, it was true, they were given nurse training. Those who did not take their own lives became good nurses, but very sad and silent in their duties. It was not like a Tibetan maiden not to be full of life and laughter. But this was the lot of Tibet since the Chinese had come.
A crackling bolt of lightning forked down from the blue-black northern sky. It struck two mountain peaks at once, creating a great spectacle of light.
The thunder came twenty seconds later. It made Kelsang flinch. He feared the thunder more than the lightning.
But he feared the wrath of the green soldiers of China most of all. The lightning struck blindly and without malice. Lightning did not punish. It did not ravish young women. It was only doing what Lord Buddha intended lightning to do.
Kelsang found himself praying for the lightning to strike the Chinese, and the thought made his heart sink in sadness. It was not his way to wish harm on any man. But the hardships the Chinese visited upon his people had shattered his faith.
He found himself praying to other gods-the protectors of the faith, Lhamo, Gonpo and Yama, Lord of Death. Perhaps one of them would take pity on him.
Another bolt appeared. This time to the south, behind the plateau.
Illuminated against the bolt was the figure of a man. Tall-too tall to be a Tibetan or a Chinese. The lightning struck thick and hot, and it lasted long enough to show the man clearly as he came down off the plateau.
He came bareheaded, Kelsang saw, and his clothes were thin and insufficient for the chill Tibetan night. His hands were fists and the wrists were very thick, like lengths of wood.
Kelsang looked down. Two Chinese soldiers, their faces hard under their green helmets, were pointing their assault rifles up at him.
They yelled at Kelsang to keep his head high, so the lightning would know where to strike. Unless he wished to tell the truth now.
There was no truth in Kelsang Darlo, so he lifted his head and looked to the south.
Another thunderbolt came and picked out the thick wristed shadow. Perhaps he was some hermit come down off the mountains to seek shelter from the storm. A monk, possibly. He would be a very sorry monk when the Chinese caught him, Kelsang thought.
Yet the man was coming undaunted, purposeful and proud. The way his grandfather had walked down the valley in the days when Tibetans were masters of their own land. It was good to see a man walk as if there was no fear in his heart. Tibet had been so long bereft of such men.
Who was this unafraid one? Kelsang wondered.
The next bolt struck to the west. Something exploded, and Kelsang turned. A roof smoldered. And in the pile, a black shape that had been human a moment before gave off smoke and a sweetish charcoal odor that soon came to Kelsang's nose.
Kelsang recognized the roof. It belonged to Paljor Norbu, a simple barley farmer. A good man. Perhaps his next life would be happier, Kelsang thought sadly. He had not been the same since his only daughter, a nurse, had walked off the mountain before the eyes of the entire village.
A wailing coming from under the burning roof reminded Kelsang that there were those who had still to contend with this life.
The next peal of thunder came from very far away. As did the next. East. And then north. Then east again. It seemed that the storm was changing direction. Perhaps, Kelsang thought, only one would catch the lightning this bitter night. Perhaps he would live.
The soldiers of Beijing thought so, too. They began to mutter to themselves. They still had no answers. The captain would punish them if the truth was not uncovered, and if the captain did not, surely the lost grenades themselves would inflict their own punishment at a later, unexpected time.
Then, just as Kelsang began to breathe more easily, he felt the hair at the back of his neck rise and the unmistakable warning tang of ozone filled his nostrils.
The lightning! It had found him. It was coming.
There was no time to think and no possibility of escape. In the millionth of a second it took for his senses to react to the knowledge of impending lightning, Kelsang's brain could only process the certainty of death.
He had no time feel fear or remorse or any emotion. There was only time to die.