Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [177]
“Sucandra!”
“Yes. Padma also was there, and some other men you have seen at the embassy house. Most of them had been prisoners of the Chinese at earlier times, so they knew the Chinese routines, and helped plan the rescue.”
“But how did they find you in the first place?” Frank said.
“Tibet has had spies in Beijing for a long time. There is a military element in Tibet, people who keep a low profile because of the Dalai Lama’s insistence on nonviolence. Not everyone agrees with that. And so, there were people who started the hunt for me right after I was taken by the Chinese, and eventually they found an informant and discovered where I was being held.”
“And then they did some kind of…?”
“Yes. There are still Tibetan men who took part in the rebellion that your CIA backed, before Nixon went to China. They have experience in entering China to perform operations, and they were happy to have another opportunity, and to train a new generation. There are those who say that the Dalai Lama’s ban on violence only allows the world to forget us. They want to fight, and they think it would bring more attention to our cause. So the chance to do something was precious. When these old commandos told me about my rescue, which they did many times, they were very pleased with themselves. Apparently they watched the place, and spied on it to learn the routines, and rented a house nearby, and dug a tunnel into our compound. On the night of my rescue they came up from below and filled the air of the house with that gas that the Russians used during that hostage crisis in a theater, applying the correct amount, as the Russians did not, Sucandra said. So when they rescued me they looked like insects, but they spoke Tibetan, which I had not heard since my parents were taken away. So I trusted them. Really I understood right away what was happening, and I wanted to escape. I put on a mask and led them out of there! They had to slow me down!”
He chuckled briefly, but with the same shadowed expression as before—grim, or pained. Anna had spoken from the very start of a look she had seen on Drepung’s face that pierced her, but Charlie had not seen it until now.
“So,” he said, “you are the Panchen Lama. Holy shit.”
“Yes.”
“So that’s why you’ve been laying low in the embassy and all. Office boy or receptionist or whatnot.”
“Yes, that’s right. And indeed you must not tell anyone.”
“Oh no, we won’t.”
“So your real name is…”
“Gedhun Choekyi Nyima.”
“And Drepung?”
“Drepung is the name of one of the big monasteries in Tibet. It is not actually a person’s name. But I like it.”
They drifted downriver for a while.
“So let me get this straight!” Charlie said. “Everything you guys told us when you came here was wrong! You, the office boy, are actually the head man. Your supposed head man turned out to have been a minor servant, like a press secretary. And your monk regents are some kind of a gay couple.”
“Well, that’s about right,” Drepung said. “Although I don’t think of Padma and Sucandra as a gay couple.”
Frank said, “I don’t mean to stereotype anyone, but I lived in the room next to them for a few months, and, you know, they are definitely what-have-you. Companions.”
“Yes, of course. They shared a prison cell for ten years. They are very close. But…” Drepung shrugged. He was thinking about other things. Again the tightened mouth, with its undercurrent of anger. And of course it would be there—how could it not? Once Drepung had said to Charlie that his parents were no longer living; presumably, then, he had reason to believe that the Chinese had killed them. Perhaps the search for him had made this clear. Charlie