The scent of a woman

» East-West Center

The attack on the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa was hardest on Bodhicita Guzman, the lama's eternal consort, who was dressed for his meeting with Hawaii's religious leaders in her Sister Mary Miraculoso disguise, gray habit and more-salt-than-pepper wig.

What made it hard was that she knew it was coming, having been told by her former lover Fon Du that Te-Wu would strike with an agent dressed as a Muslim imam. Although she told herself that she wouldn't, she screamed and started to cry when he shouted "Polytheist!" and charged Jey with a plastic knife. She gasped when a very large, very brown, very beautiful, very naked woman stepped between the lama and the one-man jihad. She watched in wonder as a local Chinese woman in gauzy white robes stepped forward and somehow stopped him in his tracks and made him drop the knife.

Bodhicita was quickly herded outside to the plaza with the others. It was a madhouse, reporters and police investigators trying to learn what exactly happened inside.

TV reporter Mina Minimoto thrust a microphone in her face and said "Sister, can you tell us what you saw inside?" Bodhicita put a hand in front of her face, waved the reporter off, and fled into the crowd.

She was barely noticed by a man the edge of the crowd, near where the lama's white limo waited. He wore a large, floppy straw hat, blue palaka shirt, faded jeans and sandals. His own disguise. Normally Fon Du was prone to Armani suits. Today his disguise may have saved him from being picked up with four of his agents. They were to have created a disturbance outside, clearing the way for two agents dressed as a rabbi and an imam after they killed the lama.

So he was relieved to see them coming outside with dozens of others, actually pausing to chat with other religious leaders about their mission of inter-Semitic peace. Something happened inside, but what? He was dying to know, but also liked the idea that others wanted the troublesome lama dead.

At last Fon Du made eye contact with Le Nip, the imam, motioned for them to meet him away from the crowd, further down the road.

Fon Du was in a hurry, time and opportunities were running out if they were to remove the young lama before he returned to the Himalayas, where the damn Tibetan Buddhists could hide him and move him about. But the going was slow, the crowd was thick and everyone seemed to be moving in a different direction.

Suddenly he was bumping into the nun in gray habit with more-salt-than-pepper hair. Just that nudge, something about her felt familiar. Impossible.

Then he smelled a familiar aroma, and he knew.

Unknown to her, Bodhicita's pheromones had just betrayed her.