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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Pop goes the weasel
>> Honolulu
Until her call interrupted his workout that morning, Kamasami Khan had no idea that his friend Bodhicita Guzman was dating a Chinese banker. Her confession was a shock, a slap in the face really, but soon he realized she wasn't confessing anything. She was reporting key intelligence, and spoke in quick, clipped phrases. Yup, she had been hanging around with a Chinese guy.
"Name's Fon Du, Bank of Lhasa ... shares an estate with several other bank employees in Kahala ... I wondered why they're all so young and buff ... and work a lot of nights for bankers ... When they heard the news this morning about the lama's return, it got them all riled up ... like they could hardly wait to get to work and do something about it ... When he heard the Dalai Lama's coming too ... Khan, he looked ready to kill ... "
"Why do you call me now?"
"You know how they say love is blind? I just got my eyes back."
"You must not show it."
"I left him with a kiss."
"Good. We have suspected the bank was a front of some kind. You may be able to prove it. Do nothing different, except perhaps to seem to fall more in love with him."
At the Bank of Lhasa offices on Bishop Street, meanwhile, Fon Du was on the encrypted satellite phone to his Te-Wu superiors in Beijing. They, too, were shocked. Those sneaky, conniving Tibetan Buddhists had flown this boy completely under their radar. When he was identified as a so-called lama 16 years ago at the age of 2 and spirited off to a monastery in the Himalayas of India, Te-Wu's Honolulu detail missed it.
There were many members of Te-Wu posing as monks and nuns at monasteries in Tibet, Mongolia, India and Nepal, and reported from time to time about certain reincarnates appearing.
But none heard anything about the first reincarnation of Lama Jey Tsong Khapa, the most influential lama in 1,400 years of Tibetan Buddhism. And now he was suddenly 18 years old and returning to Hawaii to be introduced by the Dalai Lama!
Fon Du knew what must be done even before receiving his marching orders from Beijing. The boy must be removed before he could emulate the first Lama Jey Tsong Khapa and start a movement.
You don't think of secret agents preparing to kill as being susceptible to a happy skippy heart. But Fon Du had one. Making love with Bodhicita this morning had been spectacular, and he could hardly wait to see her again in the evening. He'd set a personal record, six months without another woman.
Perhaps it was time to pop the question.
He loved colorful Americanisms, and how flexible they were. He'd pop the question -- after he popped the young lama.
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com