Year of the Tiger. Jack Higgins
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brightly, a glass in his hand.
‘Come and sit down.’
‘You are too kind.’ Moro sat in the chair opposite.
‘I won’t offer you one of these.’ Chavasse raised the glass. ‘It’s Bushmills Irish whiskey, the oldest in the world some say and invented by monks.’
‘How enterprising.’
‘You’re a long way from home,’ Chavasse said.
‘Not really. I left Tibet with other refugees when I was fifteen years of age. That was in nineteen seventy-five.’
‘I see. And since then?’
‘Three years with the Dalai Lama in India then he arranged for me to go to Cambridge to your old college – Trinity. You were also at the Sorbonne. I too have studied there, but Harvard eluded me.’
‘You certainly know a great deal about me,’ Chavasse told him.
‘Oh, yes,’ Moro said calmly. ‘Your father was French.’
‘Breton,’ Chavasse said. ‘There is a difference.’
‘Of course. Your mother was English. You had a unique gift for languages which explains your studies at three of the world’s greatest universities. A Ph.D. at twenty-one, you returned to Cambridge to your own college, where they made you a Fellow at twenty-three. So there you were, at an exceptionally young age, set on an academic career at a great university.’
‘And then?’ Chavasse enquired.
‘You had a colleague at Trinity whose daughter was married to a Czech. When he died, she wanted to return to England with her children. The Communists refused to let her go and the British Foreign Office wouldn’t help.’ Moro shrugged. ‘You went in on your own initiative and got them out, sustaining a slight wound from a border guard’s rifle.’
‘Ah, the foolishness of youth,’ Chavasse said.
‘Safely back at Cambridge, you were visited by Sir Ian Moncrieff, known only as the Chief in Intelligence circles, the man who controlled the Bureau, the most secret of all British Intelligence units.’
‘Where in the hell did you get all this from?’ Chavasse demanded.
‘Sources of my own,’ Moro told him. ‘Twenty years in the field for the Bureau and twenty years as Chief after Moncrieff’s death. A remarkable record.’
‘The only thing remarkable about it is that I’m still here,’ Chavasse said. ‘Now who exactly are you?’
‘As I told you, I’m from the Tibetan temple at Glen Aristoun in Scotland.’
‘I’ve heard of it,’ Chavasse told him. ‘A Buddhist community.’
‘I live and work there. I am the librarian. I have been collating information on the escape of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in March 1959.’
A great light dawned. ‘Oh, I see now,’ Chavasse said. ‘You’ve found out that I was there. That I was one of those who got him out.’
‘Yes, I know all about that, Sir Paul, heard of those adventures from the Dalai Lama’s own lips. No, it is what comes after that interests me.’
‘And what would that be?’ Chavasse asked warily.
‘In nineteen sixty-two, exactly three years after you helped the Dalai Lama to escape, you returned to Tibet to the town of Changu to effect the escape of Dr Karl Hoffner who worked as a medical missionary in the area for years.’
‘Karl Hoffner?’ Chavasse said.
‘One of the greatest mathematicians of the century,’ Moro said. ‘As great as Einstein.’ He was almost impatient now. ‘Come, Sir Paul, I know from sound sources that you undertook the mission and yet there is no record of Hoffner other than his time in Tibet. Did he die there? What happened?’
‘Why do you wish to know?’
‘For the record. The history of my country’s troubled times under Chinese rule. Please, Sir Paul, is there any reason for secrecy after thirty-three years?’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Chavasse poured another whiskey. ‘All right. Strictly off the record, of course. Flight of fancy, when you put it on the page.’
‘I agree. You can trust me.’
Chavasse sipped a little Bushmills. ‘So, where to begin?’
But where did anything begin? A long time ago, he told himself. A hell of a long time ago.
Chavasse wore a sheepskin shuba wrapped closely around him, sheepskin boots and a hat of some indeterminate fur, flaps down over his ears. He cradled a British Lee Enfield rifle in one arm and allowed the hardy mountain pony to find its own way. He thought he heard a plane at one point, but could not be sure as the sound faded rapidly.
The Land of Snows, the Tibetans called this part of the border area, and it was well named. A living nightmare of a place with passes through the mountains as high as twenty thousand feet. It was not uncommon for mules in the caravans in the old days to die of asthma and for their masters to get pulmonary edema, their lungs filling with water.
An ironic way to die, Chavasse thought, to drown while standing up. Of course, it didn’t matter these days. No more caravans to India, by Chinese decree.
It started to snow again lightly and he paused to check the ground ahead. The sky being blanketed by low swollen clouds, there was no snow glare. He had spent the previous night in a herdsman’s cave, sheltering from a sudden blizzard, and had started again at first light. Now, the pass between the peaks emptied on to a final slope that ran down towards the Indian border. In fact in the far distance there was a flicker of colour, obviously a flag, and Chavasse urged his pony forward.
The border post was quite simple. A large stone hut, no barbed wire, no defence system. Half a dozen Indian soldiers stood outside wearing white winter-combat uniforms, the hoods pulled up over their turbans. There was a jeep painted in white camouflage and the young man leaning against it, smoking a cigarette came forward and looked up at Chavasse.
‘Mr Chavasse? I am Lieutenant Piroo. We heard over the radio from Tibetan freedom fighters that you were coming.’ He smiled. ‘I’m surprised that there are any left if the reports we get of Chinese reaction are true.’
Chavasse heaved himself out of the saddle and a soldier led the pony away. ‘Oh, they’re true all right. They’re killing people by the thousands, wiping out whole villages.’ Piroo gave him a cigarette and lit it for him and Chavasse continued. ‘No, I’m afraid this time they intend to wipe out Tibetan resistance once and for all.’
‘Which is why the Dalai Lama has fled?’
‘Yes, he hopes to continue the struggle from India. Do you think Prime Minister Nehru will accept him?’
‘Oh, yes, that has been made quite clear. But come, Mr Chavasse, my boss is waiting to see you at Gela. That’s about ten miles from here.’ He smiled. ‘And only sixteen thousand feet.’
Chavasse got into the jeep and Piroo slipped behind the wheel. ‘And who might your boss be?’
‘Colonel Ram Singh. Very correct and old-school. Even went to Sandhurst.’ Piroo, in spite of the jeep sliding from side-to-side on the rough track, found another cigarette and lit it one-handed. ‘I thought the CIA were to do great things? Help the rebels and so on?’
‘They dropped in a certain amount of arms,’ Chavasse told him. ‘Mostly British