Military Orders Page 4

  A bookshelf was against another wall in the room, and on top was a line of small photographs. Harel looked at these - his parents, Sue’s parents, her three older sisters and their families, and more. Harel’s heart jumped when he saw one of himself and Matt as kids, both grinning furiously into the camera, both shining with optimism. How could anyone guess that just thirty-or-so years later Harel would be gazing down at a carpet drenched in his younger brother’s blood?

  For an instant he felt nearly overwhelmed by his sense of grief. By this enormous loss. By the unfairness of it all. But then his sorrow metamorphosed into anger. He wanted to slam a fist against the wall. But then as quickly as his rage had risen it subsided. And suddenly he was struck with a sense of futility. We weren’t made for this world, of that he had no doubt. Life was short and brutal. Enjoy it while you can. Harel loved his work. Matt had enjoyed his. Now Matt was dead, and one day Harel would be too.

  His discussions at the police station and now his visit to this apartment had shown him that he was probably not going to solve the mystery of who killed Matt. In any case, what did it even matter? Nothing would bring him back. He was in Heaven.

  Yet his parents and Sue were counting on him for answers.

  He had one contact in this town - a former student named Peter Brosenan, now studying to be a Tibetan Buddhist monk. When Matt and Sue announced their intention of moving to this town, Harel had contacted Peter, who became a useful source of local knowledge for the couple. Harel had phoned him again just a couple of days earlier, to alert him of his impending arrival to investigate Matt’s death.

  Now, without asking his escort, he picked up the phone in the bedroom and dialed. Peter quickly answered.

  “Peter, it’s your former professor, Rafa Harel. I’ve made it. I’m here in Dharamsala.”

  “Professor Harel. I’m very happy to hear from you.” He spoke in a soft, enquiring voice.

  “I was worried you might be meditating or something.”

  “Yes, often I have the phone switched off for quite a few hours at a time. Even days at a time. But right now I’m free. As free as you can be when you’re living in a Tibetan Buddhist temple. When did you arrive?”

  “Just a couple of hours ago. It’s likely to be a flying visit. Only a couple of days, probably.”

  “I’m very sorry about Matt. I hadn’t heard until you called from California a couple of days ago.”

  “Yes, it’s bad. Very bad. I’m actually in Matt’s apartment right now. A police officer brought me here. But I’m really not finding out anything. I’m hoping you might have a few clues.”

  Harel waited, but the man had nothing further to say. “The police are saying he was smuggling artworks. They found a statue from a Dorje Shugden temple in his house. They think he stole it. I just cannot believe that.”

  Again there was a long pause. Harel wondered if the man was still on the line. But then he spoke. “Professor Harel,” he said, his voice grim. “I think I need to meet you. I think I’m responsible for your brother’s death.”

  Chapter 6

  Kangra Valley, Northern India

  Spiritual purity. We need spiritual purity.

  The Buddhist monk Tenzin tried again to focus on the picture above his bed of a white lotus flower. It is the lotus that rises from the mud and filth of the swamp to blossom with a shining and pure radiance. So too can people’s hearts transcend all desires and attachments, to shine with the virtues of the Buddha. Spiritual purity.

  But the young man could not relax. The message he had just received from the Rinpoche reverberated in his brain. What did it mean?

  He knew that the Rinpoche had an impressive intelligence-gathering operation in Dharamsala. In particular, the Rinpoche seemed to know before just about anyone else what was happening in the search for the new Dalai Lama. The message must have some connection.

  This was supposed to be a time of silent meditation. Tenzin’s room, in the monks’ quarters at the back of the Manjushri Meditation Temple, was spartan. He enjoyed just enough space for a mattress on the wooden floor, a desk for his computer, a stool, a chest of drawers and some shelves. Again he tried to focus. He stared at the lotus and tried to allow it to encompass him, to infiltrate his entire being, to draw him in.

  But that message lingered, a throbbing irritant like a pebble stuck in a shoe.

  He stood and looked out the window, onto a vista of trees and bushes. He liked this temple, down in the Kangra Valley, isolated, away from the chaos of Dharamsala. But it wasn’t the location that was the attraction. Rather, it was the teaching.

  He turned his gaze to the vivid picture pinned to the wall next to the lotus - the dharma protector Dorje Shugden, surrounded by flames, his sword slicing through the air. The teachings at this temple were the pure teachings of the Buddha, the four noble truths, the noble eight-fold path, the five precepts, all undiluted by the corruption that inevitably followed the Dalai Lama’s compromise with the West. It was little wonder that the Dalai Lama had banned Dorje Shugden worship.

  Still standing, he closed his eyes and prayed aloud to Dorje Shugden. The words came in a rush.

  I plead with you from the bottom of my heart, Oh Mighty Being,

  Please may the teachings of our dear founder bloom and spread,

  May all the wonderful teachers enjoy long lives,

  And may all the dharma communities be loyal to the teachings of the dharma.

  Please continue to be with me at all times, as if you were my shadow,

  And keep me in your continuous care and protection.

  Eradicate all evil that surrounds me,

  Make my life blessed, with all my wishes granted.

  May I study and act with strength and discipline,

  And may I help bring harmony

  Among all the communities who are following the pure teachings of Buddha,

  And who continue to uphold moral discipline with their pure minds,

  Please help our noble teachings to prosper like a full moon.

  But he had recited this prayer so often that the words came without reflection. His brain was still focussed on the message.

  Perhaps physical exercise would help. When he first came to the temple he learned that he was expected to perform one hundred thousand prostrations before he could start any serious training. Many novices never got beyond the prostration stage.

  And a prostration was not a simple bow. It involved falling to the knees, then pushing out the palms and lying flat on the ground, face down and full stretch. Then you stood up again. And then you did it all again, and again and again.

  For ten minutes he moved up and down on the hard floor. It was exerting work, even for a young man such as himself, healthy and strong. Certainly it cleared the mind. But as soon as he stopped the concerns came back.

  He so envied those monks who spent years doing prostrations, helping to accumulate merit so that they could rise to a higher level after death and reincarnation.

  But still he thought of the Rinpoche’s message. It was a simple communication: the elder brother of the Christian had arrived that afternoon in Dharamsala.

  Why was he here? Was it just to investigate the Christian’s death, as he told the police? Or was it for the same purpose as the Christian? Or even some other purpose? Was there some connection with the search for the Dalai Lama’s successor, which was all that people were talking about nowadays?

  He knew that he would need to wait for instructions.

  Chapter 7

  Dharamsala, Northern India

  Harel lay on his bed. He needed a power nap, but was restless. The rush of activity since arriving in Dharamsala had made sleep an impossibility.

  What on earth did Peter mean when he suggested he might have been responsible for Matt’s death? Could this be the key to the mystery, the information he could take back to his parents and to Matt’s widow, to put their minds at ease? But if Peter knew something important why had he not gone to the police? Why co
nfess only now? Well, Harel was meeting him for dinner in a couple of hours at six o’clock, so he would find out soon enough.

  His hotel, Chonor House, was predictably plush. Harel’s bedroom featured hand-knitted carpets and hand-crafted wooden furniture. The walls were decorated with ornate paintings of Tibetan Opera figures - beautiful women and wise men dressed in flowing, multi-colored robes. From the balcony he could look out over the lush greenery of the Kangra Valley. He wondered where the hippies were staying. Probably in some twenty-dollars-a-night hovel with insects, faulty lavatories and an indifferent power supply. Living like missionaries, in other words.

  Harel knew what he needed to do. He took a map and an umbrella, walked out of the hotel and set off along a winding road fringed with tall pines. The rain had stopped, but grey clouds were gathering, the humidity was rising and more heavy showers were surely on the way. He passed a couple of laughing monks who were also ready for the weather. Beneath their red and saffron robes they both wore what looked like Doc Martens construction worker boots.

  He thought about Matt. Usually it was the older son who was the conformist and the younger who was the rebel, but somehow in his family it was the reverse. Matt was a dreamer, but he was also the solid, steady one. The rock. The rock on which many churches would certainly have been built, had he lived.

  Rafa Harel, by contrast, was - well, he was just too clever. That was his problem. Not only highly intelligent, but quick and articulate. And, also, well aware of all his gifts. Even as a young child he had the habit of correcting all the mistakes of his friends and his parents’ friends. He could tie his Sunday School teachers in knots with his questions. Where did God come from? Why did God create humans? If God created everything, did He create Satan? If Jesus was without sin why did he have to be baptized? His parents were forever apologizing to friends, in between rebuking him.

  At times he resented what seemed like part of a continuing pattern of undue favoritism to his brother. For a start, why did his brother get a cool New Testament name like Matthew - Matt - while he had the ridiculous Old Testament Jeremiah, which shortened into the cartoonish Jerry? Thankfully his art-loving mother had insisted on a stylish middle name, Raphael, which was now his preferred designation for himself.

  He had been walking for at least ten minutes, along a narrow road with no pavement, and seemed to be moving deeper into a forest. He feared that he had taken a wrong turning, when there it was before him, an old church, a beautiful stone building, redolent of an English village. He knew from his guidebooks that this was the famous St John in the Wilderness Anglican Church, built more than one hundred and sixty years earlier. It was in a setting of Himalayan cedars. At least a dozen Westerners were here, walking around and taking photographs.

  Harel walked through high wooden doors to the interior. It was cool, almost cold. Lines of wooden pews faced an altar and stained glass windows. What an amazing scene - a real old English church, high up in the mountains of northern India.

  Harel sat at a pew. And he prayed. And then he did something that he seldom ever did; something he hadn’t done, probably, in many years. He started crying. It wasn’t a scream. It wasn’t even what you would call weeping. Just tears flowing gently from his eyes. He placed his arms on the pew in front and leaned forward, head in his arms.

  He thought of the photos he had seen that afternoon in Matt’s apartment. He reflected that people used to say how noble it was to die on the mission field. But Matt was only thirty-five. He had a wife and child, and a second child due anytime soon. And the newspapers back home would be telling all his friends and their father’s congregation that he’d been murdered because he was trying to smuggle artworks out of India.

  For several minutes the tears ran down his cheeks. Then he heard a commotion behind him. He sat up and turned. A large and noisy group of Asian tourists had arrived, and were starting to walk through the church, cameras flashing. He recognized their language as Japanese. He stood and walked to a middle-aged lady.

  “Konnichiwa, ogenki desu ka?” Hello, how are you? He gave a slight bow.

  The lady responded automatically with a deeper bow. “Hai, genki desu. Maa, nihongo ojozu desu ne?” I’m fine. Your Japanese is very good, isn’t it?

  Harel smiled. He knew that any Westerner lacking in self-esteem need only learn a few sentences in Japanese, memorize a couple of karaoke ballads in the language, then head for Tokyo. Walk into the nearest bar, recite your sentences and sing your songs and you’ll be praised to the skies. They had a whole language of honorifics just for flattering people. Though during his years in Japan Harel knew that his own self-esteem was already sufficiently robust that it needed no reinforcement.

  A small knot of the tourists had gathered, attracted by the novelty of a Westerner in a church in India speaking fluent Japanese. Harel took out a card and presented it to the lady. She looked at his name with bewilderment. The Japanese struggled with the “l” and “r” and they pronounced “f” as if they were blowing out a candle. His name, Rafa Harel, often came out sounding something like “lover hurray.”

  “Have you lived in Japan?” asked a man who appeared to be the middle-aged lady’s husband.

  “I was there for eight years.”

  “Eight years. That’s why your Japanese is so good. What did you do there?”

  “I arrived as a Christian missionary…” Harel knew this was a real conversation stopper. Most Japanese knew little about Christianity missionary work and weren’t interested in learning. How many Americans knew about or were interested in Buddhist mission work in the US? “But then I quit and went to university to study art.”

  “Japanese art?”

  “At first. Then all Asian art. Then I began to specialize in spiritual art.”

  “Sugoi,” said the lady. Incredible. She walked away.

  Harel now watched as the tourist guide, a young Indian lady with long, black hair, designer glasses and excellent Japanese, herded her charges into a bunch in front of the church for a group photo, below the stained glass. Then he walked back outside.

  He wandered around the church precincts, and came across a gravestone for the Earl of Elgin, who served as British Viceroy and Governor General of India in the early 1860s. He gazed at the handsome stone and he reflected on how this church had once reflected a proudly British and defiantly Christian culture.

  It was a culture that had brought modernity to India, with massive new infrastructure, individual rights, the rule of law and an end to superstition and barbaric customs. Like that of suttee, whereby widows were burned to death on their late husband’s funeral pyre. But now Buddhism had taken over this town, with its astrologers and magic and dharma protectors, and Christianity seemed weak and in retreat, and lacking confidence in its own heritage.

  In fact, as he thought about it, it seemed that the church in the West was in danger of becoming little more than a relic. Missionaries were heroes of the past, like cowboys or knights. But what use was there for them now? The main attraction of Christianity for many people seemed to be its colossal heritage of great art and music, along with many church buildings, both magnificent and quaint, that tourists from Japan and elsewhere could visit and photograph.

  And that made him think again - what on earth was Matt really doing in Dharamsala?

  Chapter 8

  Dharamsala, Northern India

  The Momo Palace was apparently Dharamsala’s premier outlet for momo, a local delicacy that was a kind of steamed dumpling stuffed with meat or vegetables. Peter had designated this as the dinner meeting place. It was in one of the narrow alleys, next to a bookstore featuring a prominent display of copies of “Tintin in Tibet.”

  It was only six o’clock, but the place was jumping, with a dozen tables virtually all occupied by a cosmopolitan mix of locals, Westerners and several monks. A couple of elderly, red-faced waitresses in baggy black trousers took orders. Harel entered and spotted Peter alone at a small table near the back, beside a tabl
e with an old television set that was broadcasting a soccer game with the sound turned down. Behind him on the wall were a picture of the late Dalai Lama and a calendar from an Indian gas station.

  “Peter,” said Harel in a loud voice, to make himself heard above the din. Peter looked up. He stood, and they shook hands.

  “Professor Harel. Very nice to see you again.”

  “I’m not your professor any longer. Please call me Rafa.” He looked at his former student, tall and skinny and wearing the traditional monk’s red and yellow robes. He was going bald and his thin face was lined and his eyes were heavy, though Harel knew he could not be more than thirty years of age. He projected an image of having spent long hours reading ancient manuscripts by candlelight. He had the stature of a beanpole, and in this garb, with his arms exposed, he resembled a castaway stranded on a desert island. “And what do I call you? Your holiness?”

  A flicker of a smiled passed across Peter’s wan face. “Call me Peter. I actually do have another name, but that’s for use in the temple.”

  “Peter. Sure.” He sat. “You always were the idealistic one. But in a quiet and serious way. I picked you as getting a back-office job with a progressive politician. Or with some environmental group. I certainly didn’t see you as a monk in a Tibetan temple.”

  “Neither did my parents.” Another thin smile. “It’s funny where fate takes you.”

  Harel raised his eyebrows in silent agreement. “Peter, I’m going to leave the ordering of the food to you,” he said. “But I’m going to pay. I’m guessing the disparity in wage rates between Californian professors and Tibetan monks is quite immense.”