Seeker's Curse. Alex Archer

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      A S THEY WALKED along the base of the brightly lit hill their arms had become interlinked. Annja felt disinclined to disengage, somehow.

      “I’ve started to have the dreams again,” Pan said. “You know, the ones from my childhood. About actually being an ancient Macedonian general.”

      “I can see why it might come out again now, with the ancient Macedonia-Nepal connection coming to the fore. Although it’s still an interesting coincidence, given what I found out about that earlier Pantheras today,” Annja said.

      “Interesting. Yes.”

      They walked a while along an old stone retaining wall. The traffic was sparse. Flute music played from somewhere.

      “I have to leave soon,” Annja said. “I hope you and your superiors are all right with that.”

      “Well, much as I might regret the fact of your going, our investigations have turned up no evidence your involvement in the case is other than you have described. Which is perhaps unwise enough in its nature that I should be rather relieved to see you go.”

      “Really? You’ll regret my going away?”

      “Well…you make life interesting, let us say.” He laughed softly.

      She laughed, too. But she felt an unexpected pang that she would soon have to say goodbye to the handsome police officer.

      Pantheras Katramados was clearly as strong in character as in body, but without the blustering machismo so common in Mediterranean cultures. Rather he had the confidence that comes from being truly competent and knowing it, overlaid with wry good humor. His interests were as broad and deep as Annja’s own, and his wit as quick. They found much to talk about. Much to laugh about. He reminded her, in many ways, of her dear friend Bart McGilley.

      “Where will you go now?” he asked.

      “Nepal. It’s where my real job begins.” She had been getting polite e-mails from the Japan Buddhist Federation hoping she would soon be able to go to Nepal. Apparently the political situation there was rapidly deteriorating. Whether full-scale civil war was in the offing Annja couldn’t tell from the news online, but lawlessness was clearly rising in the countryside.

      He stopped and turned to face her. “Don’t let your guard down.”

      “Bajraktari won’t have any reason to suspect where I’ve gone,” she said.

      “He has contacts in Nepal, quite obviously,” Pan said. “Don’t get complacent.”

      Annja grinned. “Thanks. But I think I can promise you, that’s one thing I’m not. ”

      He took her in his arms and kissed her. Almost despite herself she responded.

      Too soon he broke away. His face looked troubled.

      “Was it that bad?” she asked shakily.

      “As an experience? Certainly not,” he said. “As a thing for a policeman on a case to do—perhaps.”

      He turned and walked quickly away. She made no move to follow. She felt a combination of sadness and relief.

      And she couldn’t help wondering how much of his interest in her was really romantic—and how much was special-forces cop?

       7

      “Lumbini is a foremost shrine of Buddhism,” said the smiling man in the saffron robe. He walked beside Annja along a paved path next to a square pool sunk into worn gray stone. “Here Siddhartha Gautama was born to Queen Mayadeva. The fig tree you see before us closely resembles the one under which he later received enlightenment, thus becoming the Buddha.”

      His smile widened. “Or rather, the most famous Buddha. Others have come before and since.”

      “Really?” Annja said.

      “Oh, yes.”

      The morning sky was bright blue, with a wash of thin white clouds away off to the west over northern India. In south Nepal the sun shone unimpeded from the east. It was surprisingly warm. The long sleeves and pants she wore out of respect for her host weren’t optimally comfortable.

      Away to the north, blue with distance, the low wall of the Himalayas rose from the horizon. Annja felt a minor thrill at knowing she’d soon be among those legendary stratosphere-scraping peaks.

      The lama Omprakash was a stout man whose round body seemed to taper directly to the shaved crown of his head. Though his broad face was un-lined he claimed to be in his eighties.

      “I thought the Buddha was born in India,” Annja said. The sacred site lay just across the Indian border, although Annja had reached it by flying into Kathmandu in the east of the country, then taking a feeder flight on an alarming Russian-built two-prop plane to Sunauli, the town nearest Lumbini. A taxi had brought her the rest of the way. Though high up near the foothills of the Himalayas, the surroundings were a wide, well-forested river valley just greening into spring. The valley of the Upper Ganges, in fact.

      “The distinctions were not so clearly drawn in those days,” Omprakash said. His name, he told her, meant “Sacred Light.” “Certainly this land was claimed by the great Maurya king, Ashoka. Some believe it was he who brought the doctrine of Buddhism to Nepal. Great proselytizer that he was, that is not so. He did make a pilgrimage here in 249 B.C ., after he had reclaimed north India from the successors of Alexander of Macedonia.”

      Ah, she thought, that name. She didn’t press. She was here to listen. It was easy enough. Omprakash was a pleasant old gentleman who spoke beautiful English, with a liquid Hindi accent and a perpetual twinkle in his anthracite eyes. The Japan Buddhist Federation had sent her specifically to speak to the rotund monk. She badly needed background. This was way off the map of her previous studies and experience. She had decided to let the old man tell her whatever he wanted, and try to soak it up as best she could.

      “King Ashoka did erect here a sandstone pillar to signify the great spiritual significance of the spot,” Omprakash said.

      “I take it it’s that one there?” Annja said, pointing across the pool past the temple.

      “The very one!” the monk exclaimed, beaming as if he had built it.

      “But my good friends in Tokyo desired that I should tell you a particular tale,” Omprakash said. “It is said that shortly after Gautama’s death one of his disciples decided to exalt the Enlightened One in the heights СКАЧАТЬ