“So,” asked the DL as they strode south down Highway 21, through the pines of the Kangra Valley. “Where exactly were you headed?”
The Dalai Lama and a small knot of aides had been walking for an hour with Lopsak Tuseng, who was sweating even in February chill. He was shoulder to shoulder with the living incarnation of the Boddhisatva of compassion—with God, more or less, whose picture had been on every altar he’d seen in his 31 years. Lopsak was dressed in fake monk’s robes, and very much wishing he was back at the catering hall in Dharamsala preparing momo for a wedding feast, his usual job. But the DL didn’t sound angry, and he found himself not just talking but pouring his words out.
“Your Holiness, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what I was doing. They told me it was a scene for a music video. I . . . like music. I like to rap. Do you know rap? Snoop Dogg.”
“I know Dog G from Taiwan. I made a video with him. Socially conscious. The Beastie Boys organized five concerts to benefit Tibet—Adam Yauch. Run DMC played. Do you know Run DMC?”
“You like old school? I like old school. Mos Def? Do you know . . .” Lopsak shut up, suddenly aware that he was talking hip hop with His Holiness. “Honestly, I have no idea where we’re going,” he said. “I wasn’t planning to go anywhere. The guy told me to walk a mile or so over the pass, and he’d be filming me from a drone. And by the time I got there, there was that crowd of kids, and they wanted to know where you were, and I got scared and said you were already ahead down the road, and I was just following, and—and then you showed up. Where are we going?”
“We seem to be walking towards Mandi, so I guess that’s where we’re going first,” said the DL.
“Your holiness, I’ve caused enough trouble, I should go . . . I have my work. I am so sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry. I’m glad to be walking. Perhaps I should have done this many years ago. It feels good—as if we’re going somewhere, even if we’re not sure where. And you do look like me. At dusk anyway, you can carry this flag and no one will know.”
“Why are you—why was I—carrying a Chinese flag?” Lopsak asked. “I didn’t even know it was a Chinese flag. I only know the Tibetan flag, and the Indian one with the wheel. But I thought China was the enemy.”
“Not the enemy exactly,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get across for many years. We know we can’t separate from China. China had Buddhism before Tibet—they are our elder brothers in the dharma. Since 1974 we’ve said—over and over—that we seek a Middle Way, not separation from China but a way to preserve our culture, our religion, our landscape. I’ve said it, but the Chinese people haven’t heard it. Their government calls me a splittist, they say we’re terrorists. Words cannot reach them. But maybe a flag can. I’m carrying it—and you will carry it at dusk—to show them we mean what we say. That we are willing to be part of China. If we carry it to the border maybe they will let us across.”
“Then why are we walking to Mandi? The border’s the other way.”
“Because that’s the direction where you started walking,” the DL said with a grin. “But it was the right choice. It will take a while for it to sink in what we’re doing. It will take a while for people to figure it out. Luckily, India is a very big country, and you can walk for a long time without coming to anywhere else.”
***
It was a smoggy day in Beijing—a ‘red alert’ day, with half the city’s schools closed, and the odd-even license plate regimen in effect. So the 332 bus was especially crowded as it plied its route, headed for the terminus at the Summer Palace. It rumbled past the Chinese Medicine Hospital, and next to it the anonymous, well-guarded compound of the Ministry of State Security, its rooftop whiskered with antennae and pocked with satellite dishes.
The day was so dark, even at mid-afternoon, that there was no need to close the shades in the fourth-floor conference room, where a young officer stood by a flat-screen monitor hanging on the wall. His laser pointer jiggled its red beam on the fuzzy image. “We can see him from the drone—his party, anyway. They’re walking toward the town of Mandi, and they’ll get there in two hours time.”
“How well guarded is he?” asked one of the two men seated at a table, watching the fuzzy image.
“That’s the thing, Colonel,” said the man with the pointer. “So far he’s not guarded at all. His usual Indian security detail is still scrambling to find him; he knew they wouldn’t let him walk, so no one told them he was leaving the meditation retreat. They’ll catch up by tonight, but for now it’s just a few monks.”
“And we have someone . . . on the scene?” asked the other, older man, who’d watched the presentation impassively.
“We do, sir. As you know, the Tibetan Youth Congress has been impatient with the splittist DL for many years. They think he’s not . . . splittist enough. We have people in most of their cells, including the one based in Mandi. He’s too easily tied to us for him to do the job, but there are young men in his group he can agitate. And he has a gun to give them.”
“Minister Hua,” said the colonel sitting by his side. “This is a chance. By tomorrow the world’s press corps will start arriving. The flight manifests for Chandrigarh show the BBC correspondent from Delhi is already en route. Someone has begun to spread the word. But tonight it’s still confused. If a Tibetan shoots him, we’re not to blame. It’s a free shot.”
“We’ve spent two decades waiting him out, waiting for him to die peacefully. It’s been working,” said the older man. “We’re used to it. Our policy is based on it. Tibet is half-filled with Han Chinese already. He’s an impotent man. No world leader will receive him any more—we’re rich, and so he’s an embarrassment. And now he’s just going for a walk, like an old man with nothing to do.”
“All that is true, Minister,” said the colonel. “If you’d asked me until today, I’d have said everything was going according to plan; nothing new has happened in years. But this is . . . new. We don’t know what it means, except that it feels like he’s not playing the same game any more. It’s the kind of thing that, if it happened here, we’d stop immediately, before it could snowball.”
“And if we did . . . deal with him. What would happen in Tibet?”
“Tibet is locked down. There would be reactions, yes. Some more monks would set themselves on fire. But the military is confident nothing would spread too far. Especially because it would be another Tibetan who’d done it. It would confuse them. And it takes care of the one unknown in our strategy, which is what happens when he dies of old age. That’s . . . unpredictable. “
“This is unpredictable too,” said the minister, his chin in his hands, his thumbs kneading his jowls. He sat for two, three minutes, as another bus rumbled by in the gloom outside. “Make certain no one can tie it to us. Not to China, and not to—us,” he said, gesturing at the walls of the building.
Intrigue on an International scale! We're liking this! (Just finished Radio Free Vermont last night ; -)