"Sissies," said Kula. "They wear red yarn in their hair and think they are like Mongols," he added for Squirrelly's benefit.
Squirrelly said, "Actually they sound kinda neat."
"It is the destiny of the Bunji Lama to claim the Lion Throne," Chiun interrupted. "Nothing must hinder this."
"Yes. Yes. The Lion Throne. Point me to it!"
"There," said Chiun, pointing toward Red Mountain.
In the darkness it was a sprawling white shape in the moonlight with many windows, but only one lit.
"What is it?"
Lobsang said, "Do you not recognize the Potala Palace, Bunji? The scat of your temporal power."
Squirrelly made an unhappy face. "No-should I?"
"It was said by your last body that you would not recognize the trappings of that previous life," Chiun reminded her.
Squirrelly squinted at the titanic shape. "Is that a trapping? Looks kinda big for a trapping."
"We will go to the Potala Palace," said Chiun.
There were soldiers abroad in the night. PLA regulars. PSB watchers. Plain-clothed Chinese. Tibetan collaborators.
They moved through the alleys of Lhasa, unseen. The people of the city slept fitfully. From time to time a jeep whirled past, showing haste but no urgency.
"The alarm has not yet been sounded," Chiun observed.
"Maybe we should sound it," Squirrelly said hopefully.
"What is this?" Chiun demanded.
"Look, we just busted out of prison with all the excitement of a cookout. Unless you're into splatter films. Which I'm not and wouldn't be caught dead in. Now we're moving toward the third act already, and the second act has been strictly wham-bam thank-you ma'am."
Chiun and Kula looked at her in the darkness.
"Don't you see?" Squirrelly said desperately. "Once I plant my tush on the Lion Throne, it's all over but the withdrawal. We can have a really pow Mass Saigon kind of finish."
The others looked blank.
"Look, I still haven't made up my mind if this is a movie or a musical, so bear with me. Okay?"
"Okay," said Kula, nodding uncertainly.
"If I grab the throne without a fight, it'll fall as flat as Ishtar. There's not enough struggle."
"The Tibetans have struggled for forty years. Is that not struggle enough?" wondered Kula.
"That's their struggle. I'm talking about my struggle. That's what this is about. My struggle. The Bunji Lama stands for strugglehood. Let them mount their own production if they want to glorify their personal frigging struggles."
A helicopter rattled overhead, and they fell silent until it had passed. Kula pointed his rifle muzzles upward and tracked it like a human antiaircraft gun. He did not fire. A warning fingernail prodding the small of his back clarified the decision for him.
Squirrelly continued. "But if the Chinese get wind that we're loose, what will they do?"
"Seek us."
"Exactly," Squirrelly said, clapping her hands. She was getting through to them. Obviously they weren't up on their film lore. "They seek us," she said. "We run. We hide and, after a good rousing struggle, we defeat them and I claim the Lion Throne. Me, Squirrelly Chicane, the sixty and sexellent Bunji Lama."
"How will we defeat them? We are outnumbered." Squirrelly leaned closer and dropped her voice conspiratorially. "I don't know. But when we get to that part, do me a huge favor?"
"Yes," said Kula.
"No," said Chiun.
"Let me do the rescuing. I have to save myself. That's absolutely mandatory. The heroine can't be saved by supporting characters in the climax. It just doesn't work. Look at The Rocketeer. They went to all that trouble to build up the hero, and in the end Howard Hughes pulls his fat out of the fire for him. Word of mouth got around, and people stayed away in droves."
"I have another solution," said Chiun.
"What?" asked Squirrelly.
"You will take a nap."
"Nap?"
And the Master of Sinanju reached up with two long-nailed fingers and claimed the Bunji Lama's consciousness with a careful tweak of a nerve the gods had placed in her neck for just this hour.
Kula caught the collapsing Squirrelly Chicane and laid her across his broad shoulder. "It is good that you did that, Master. For the strain had caused her to descend into unintelligible babbling."
"Her babbling was perfectly understandable," said Chiun, starting off. "That is why I found it necessary to grant her the gift of sleep."
"You understand her words?"
"Yes."
"Explain them to me, then."
"No," said Chiun, who only wanted to get the Bunji Lama to the safety of the Potala before the alarm was sounded in truth.
After that their true difficulties would begin.
Chapter 31
Remo knew he had made a mistake in bringing down the PLA helicopter gunship when he spotted a thin brown serpent of dust against the mountainous horizon.
The Nepal-Lhasa Highway was an undulating ribbon before him. He was trapped on it. There were no off ramps in Tibet. And here on one of the innumerable mountain passes there was only narrow road and vertical rock.