26

LUCKY CAT WAVING

Embassy of China, Hattisar Sadak, 615, Kathmandu, Nepal

October 16, 2014

There was no power outage at the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu the night of October 15, and no night for that matter. Behind the compound’s bare-brick and razor-wire cordon, on-site power generators had illuminated the complex so brightly in the dark city that it resembled a remote moon-base with white Toyota Land Cruisers continually coming and going like rovers.

The Kumari Jatra festival had only been under routine Chinese Ministry of State Security surveillance. Designated a Hindu event, its sudden turn to Tibetan matters had taken everyone by surprise. The immolation instantly activated a “Xizang Code 2”—the mandated response directive for any splittist activity relating to the Tibetan Autonomous Region in that zone. The presence of Senior General Haiyang of the Western Theater Command within the delegation attending the festival automatically gave him golden grade supervisory powers.

All in-city security, intelligence, and military staff had been immediately mustered at the Hattisar facility while preliminary notification of the action was sent to Beijing and Lhasa, and representatives of the Nepali law enforcement and military were summoned for “consultation.” Section 17—the regional cyber management operation run from Hattisar and otherwise known as “Lucky Cat”—had the immediate tasks of assembling a multi-angle timeline video of the incident that identified all key participants, and manifesting a complete media suppression protocol.

Although the complex’s air-conditioning had been designed to easily accommodate all the equipment and bodies that could fill the windowless command room, the senior general was sweating profusely as he stood in front of the immense plasma wall that displayed a hybrid satellite image of Kathmandu. “Do you understand that this is a disgrace?” he was shouting at the senior MSS officer in Kathmandu.

In response, Captain Zhang, no shrinking violet himself, was trying to explain that the Kumari festival was not related to Tibetan Buddhism and that there had been no warning of a possible demonstration from any of his team’s many sources in the city.

Nothing the captain said made any difference. The senior general’s demands continued. “I need to know everyone that was involved. Who they are? Who assisted them? I want pictures. I want names,” he shouted.

“Our team will soon have them,” Captain Zhang replied, pointing the senior general to the back of the room where, within a wall of monitors, Section 17’s most senior analysts were absorbed in their work, headphones filled with the chants and screams of the crowd, the whistles and sirens of the Nepalese police; fingers racing over keyboards and blurring across touchpads to extract particular image streams. On a shelf silently overlooking their digital industry was the model of a shiny plastic cat, left arm slowly waving backward and forward. The fake feline’s golden smile was fixed at the horror of the images flashing across the screens below, just as it had been when the team had successfully infiltrated the International Campaign for Tibet and the Central Tibet Administration in India from the shelter of the Hattisar facility after proving their ability against Indian defense companies in Operation Pyro the year before.

“Well tell them to get on with it!” the senior general shouted at Zhang. “I want to see it all!”

“You will, Senior General. And when you do, you will be amazed at 17’s capabilities.”

Across the city Sangeev Gupta arrived at Henrietta’s apartment to start work at 9 a.m. as usual. The studious Indian who had assisted her for over ten years entered quietly with his own key, a recent privilege, to meet Henrietta, who was sat in her living room hidden behind the wide pages of Kantipur, one of the biggest selling Nepali newspapers. On her side table were others: the Annapurna Post; Gorkhapatra; as well as her usual morning reading, the Kathmandu Times and the international edition of the Daily Telegraph. Only the latter two were always delivered to her door, so Gupta didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to quickly deduce that Henrietta had already been down to the hole-in-the-wall newsagents that faced her apartment building. He knew also that Henrietta had been going to the Kumari Jatra with Sir Jack so could only conclude that she was trying to understand what she had witnessed just like everyone else in Kathmandu that morning. He said his habitual, “Good morning, ma’am,” and then, from his satchel, added his Indian newspaper, the Hindustan Times, to the pile.

From behind the newsprint he heard Henrietta reply, “Good morning to you too, Sangeev. What are your country’s papers saying about last night’s event? There’s a lot of space given to the story in these, but little by way of fact.”

“It is the same. No one seems to know much beyond the horrible photographs,” Gupta answered. “One editor says it is a direct result of the increasing Chinese presence in Nepal. Something that you know makes us Indians nervous.”

“It makes us all nervous, Sangeev,” Henrietta said. She closed the Kantipur broadsheet and reached for the Indian newspaper. Seeing her face, seemingly more lined and shadow-darkened than normal, Gupta thought Henrietta looked tired, as if she had been up all night, but without further comment—he knew better than that—he went over to his small desk area to get to work.

There, he found a stack of handwritten notes and amended pages next to the laptop that had finally replaced the faithful Compaq PC on which, for years, he had assembled her climbing records. Only after Henrietta had studied the article in the Hindustan Times, did she say, “Sangeev, I need to be out and about this morning and then lunch with Sir Jack. You won’t be able to call me as I’ll be leaving my phone here—needs a charge after last night’s power cut. On your desk you’ll find my notes about the Huang Makalu meeting. If you could type them up for me but don’t print or file them. I’ll do that later. Can you also find out when the Snowdonia Ascents team is due back from Shishapangma and what hotel they will be staying at. I want to see the English mountain guide Neil Quinn and confirm their summits on that mountain as soon as possible. Thank you. Back anon.”

A few minutes later Gupta watched Henrietta head toward the door with her trusty handbag. He glanced at his watch and then he went to the kitchen for some water. As he took the bottle of filtered water from the fridge, he noticed the silhouette of a moth flat against the white ceiling above his head. It made him think of the design on the burning man’s sign. He shuddered as he tried to not see again the immolation in his mind’s eye.

“But it was a suicide not a murder,” Detective Jitendra Thanel of the Kathmandu Police said to Senior General Haiyang. “There is nothing to investigate.”

“Take my advice, Detective,” the senior general replied aggressively. “If you value your career, you will treat last night’s outrage as if it had been an assassination of your prime minister. I expect to know exactly who in this stinking city of yours was involved and I have every assurance from your own minister of home affairs that this is going to happen.”

Captain Zhang entered and said something into the senior general’s ear, to which he replied, “At last.”

Haiyang looked again at the Nepalese detective and said brusquely, “You. You will come with me.”

Thanel followed the senior general into the operations room telling himself that the Chinese general could rant and rage all he wanted, but this was Kathmandu not Beijing.

The sight that met Thanel instantly contradicted his private thought. The operations center was enormous, full of people, desks, and equipment. The room was dominated by a plasma wall filled with a satellite image that seemed to show every roof tile, every paving stone, every pigeon of Thanel’s sprawling city. The scale and quality of the image was unlike anything the detective or his underfunded department could dream of.

At the senior general’s signal the image quickly changed into an accelerated image of Durbar Square filling for the Kumari Jatra. People queued and clustered like worker ants. Multiple overlays of video image from ground level showed brief close-up detail from every angle before shrinking to a red indicator spot to pinpoint the source’s location and vantage point. To both sides of the main screen, a continuous cascade of digital information listed the background to every video in the composite: the operator identity and known records if it was taken from a personal cellphone, or camera location and supervising organization if it was from CCTV or security within the square’s many temples and historic buildings. A time bar running below the main display calibrated the display to the hundredth of a second.

The screen seemed to be feeding on all the digital data in Kathmandu with absolute freedom. As the whole room watched the immolation unfold once more, Thanel was further amazed to see that as night closed in on the proceedings, the quality of the image and the detail of the master image barely faltered, shifting only to a faintly silver-green tone from the enhanced night-vision software being applied. Also the sheer quantity of information being flagged within the display was astounding. Any person in close proximity to the act of immolation was momentarily scanned the microsecond they entered the action within tight white cross-hairs. If the facial recognition technology made a connection, that face was immediately expanded and known profile information appeared in a data box alongside the composite reconstruction.

When the reconstruction finally finished, ten data boxes of personal information grew to block the screen with a wall of Tibetan faces. Senior General Haiyang stared at them in silence then asked, “So which one of these was the man who burned himself?”

“None of them, Senior General Sir,” Captain Zhang replied.

“Why do you not have that information?”

“The man’s face was covered and although the material burned away, the action of the flames was such that our facial recognition could not get a positive fix against any data records we have.”

“But surely you have seen the body since?” Haiyang demanded impatiently.

“No, Senior General Sir. In the confusion afterward the body appears to have disappeared.”

“What do you mean it disappeared? Haven’t you got it on camera?”

“Only that it was aided and moved by a number of people identified and clearly led by this man.”

One of the ten data boxes expanded to show an elderly but still strong Tibetan face.

“Do you know this man?” Haiyang demanded of Thanel.

Thanel thought about lying, but the man’s name and personal details were already clearly displayed.

“Yes, that is Temba Chering. He is an important man in the Tibetan and Sherpa communities of Kathmandu, a successful businessman with many operations, hotels, and restaurants, mostly in the Bhoudhanath district, the center of Tibetan culture in the city, as well as other businesses in the tourist areas.” The detective did however omit the detail that Chering was seen throughout the city as either Robin Hood or Al Capone depending on which side of him you fell. Regular “donations” from Chering to help the detective support his large family on something more than his lowly police salary meant that Thanel was highly motivated to work hard on promoting the first viewpoint, as were many of his local colleagues.

“He is a good man. Gives a lot to this city and to his people . . .”

“What about these other people then?” Zhang asked as Temba Chering’s data box reduced and the nine others reshuffled to fill the screen. “These men were identified as present or within close proximity of the burning man, both during the immolation and soon after. Their data says they are splittist agitators that reside in Kathmandu.”

“I don’t think I know any of them,” Thanel obfuscated.

“Stop!” a voice commanded from behind them all.

A black-suited man walked around to place himself in front of the screen. He said nothing more.

“Who the hell are you?” Haiyang shouted at the man, imperiously pushing out his uniformed chest as if to emphasize his rank. The arrival’s face showed no flicker of emotion beyond the tip of his tongue briefly moistening his almost nonexistent lips before he spoke again.

“Obviously I am someone that knows more about what has happened here despite all your technical bullshit, Senior General Haiyang. I am Lieutenant Yen-Tsun Lai, MSSP special division Xizang. I have been tracking the man who burned himself within our territories.”

Yama passed a document to Haiyang.

“From now, this is my operation by order of the Xizang Dragon Committee with Beijing sanction. You will supply me with all the support I require.”

The senior general opened his mouth to contest the matter but after he had read the document, said instead, “So who was this man that you were following?”

Yama looked at Detective Thanel. “A ghost, Senior General, in many senses of the word. That is all I need to say to you. My operation now; my need to know, not yours.”

“Well, your search is finished,” Captain Zhang interjected. “There is no way that man could have survived what he did to himself.”

“The man was at his end, but if I know anything about Tibetans it is that to them, every end is just a beginning—however high the flames they hide behind. Run the video again.”

The group, now led by Yama, studied the reconstruction again and again but each time the conclusion regarding the identified participants remained the same and no new information emerged. As a final pass was concluding, Captain Zhang was called from the room.

Zhang soon returned carrying a large black trash bag and said, “Two of my agents retrieved this from the small covered alley near to where they found an empty gasoline container. It may be unrelated, but they thought we should see it as it is Tibetan.”

Zhang offered the opened plastic bag to Yama who reached in. His hand reemerged clutching a thick mass of red wool from which hung a painted wooden mask. Yama raised it up to look at it as if lifting a severed head by the scalp while he ordered one of the Lucky Cat crew to scan it. The technician stepped forward and photographed the mask’s scowling multi-eyed blue face from every angle with a tablet computer. Each shot immediately displayed on the plasma screen then they all merged to become a single 3D model of the mask that began to revolve.

“What does it symbolize?” Haiyang asked Yama.

“It is a mask of Palden Lhamo, the protectress spirit of Tibet. They say she resides in a holy lake in an area that I recently visited to see . . .” He stopped speaking and continued his realization in silence. “Run a new search for that mask in the crowd.”

The technician began to work quickly on his tablet screen. Once more the visual reconstruction began to reassemble the immense crowds in the Durbar Square in accelerated stop-motion until it suddenly froze. The image refocused, closed in, and then the video reversed a little to show a hunched and hooded figure almost submerged within the tight crowd stoop to put on the same mask, then rise back up to push through the people nearest and stop before another person. Although partially obscured by the crowd there was a definite meeting between them before the masked figure moved quickly away and, lowering the mask, seemed to follow it down into the crowd and disappear.

“The biometric identifiers confirm the masked figure to be the person who immolated,” the technician said, his fingers tapping and swiping furiously at his small control screen. “Tell me about the other one,” Yama demanded.

The Lucky Cat technician refocused on the encounter, sampling, freezing, expanding until a new image and data box filled the screen.

“Do you know that gweilo?” Haiyang immediately demanded of Thanel.

“Yes, that lady is very well known in Kathmandu. She is Henrietta Richards, a British person that has lived here for the past forty years. For a long time she worked at their embassy.”

“So she is a British spy,” Yama said.

Thanel had heard the rumors but, in current company, he suddenly felt protective toward the venerable Englishwoman. “No. And she retired from the embassy many years ago.”

“The leopard doesn’t lose its spots even when it gets old. Show me her involvement again,” Yama said to the technician before looking back at Thanel and saying, “and you, keep talking. Why is she so well known?”

“She is famous in Kathmandu as a historian of our mountains and those who climb them. She also does a lot of good work for our people, particularly the Sherpa.”

The encounter between Henrietta and the masked figure was rerun multiple times, blown up and slowed down from every image and angle to scrutinize every detail. As much as possible, her journey from the car that had delivered her to the square to her arrival at the Royal Palace was given the same treatment. A parallel profile was run on Sir Jack Graham, and the Gurkha, Sergeant Rambhadur when it was seen that they were accompanying her.

“You say she’s retired yet she travels with the English ambassador,” Yama said to Thanel, giving him a cold inquisitive stare before asking, “Is she a Buddhist?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Thanel said looking at the plasma wall now filled with an expanded image of Henrietta Richards holding a Tibetan prayer wheel and a set of prayer beads as she entered the Gaddi Baithak. Another appeared next to it of her clutching only her handbag as she left the car.

“So probably not her trinkets then?” Yama said, more to himself than Thanel. “Replay the encounter between them again.”