Chapter 14

While Craig and Jorani were showing Tsepak the corridors and explaining about them, the police emergency response squad under a Senior Sergeant was arriving at the tea house they had recently departed from. The ten men on the squad were surprised to find everyone for 50 feet (15 meters) or so around their men frozen in place and unable to move. They were also unresponsive to their commands.

They had been alerted to this problem when someone well away from the scene, whose cell phone still worked, had alerted their headquarters. Over the next fifteen minutes, they watched as those on the outskirts of the crowd slowly began to revive. It required longer for their men at the center of the area to return to consciousness. They questioned those on the fringes of the crowd as they became aware again but learned little or nothing from them other than that their cell phones and electronic watches no longer worked.

When the 4 policemen and the 2 soldiers who were the center of the affected area regained consciousness, they appeared to be confused about what had happened, and why the emergency response squad was there.

“What happened?” the Senior Sergeant demanded when they could talk again.

“We stopped three people. Two of them may have been pilgrims as they didn’t speak Chinese or Tibetan. Their guide spoke to them in English. The woman said something in a language that I had never heard, and the man then held out some papers. That’s the last thing that I remember,” the Corporal in charge of the detail told him.

“Where are they?” the Senior Sergeant demanded.

“They are right...! Right here,” the surprised Corporal told him, pointing to the empty space directly in front of him.

“When we arrived, we found everyone around you for 15 meters or so unable to move or do anything. How did that happen?” the unhappy Sergeant demanded. The Corporal had no answer to his question. It was right after that when they realized that all of their electronic equipment no longer worked, and that they had lost all of the data on the people they had stopped and questioned that day. They and their bosses were very unhappy about that, and the fact that no explanation could be found for why all of those people had been stopped from moving for well over forty minutes.

Also, that afternoon, the Shangxiao (the equivalent of a full Colonel) in charge of the Intelligence and Security Department reported to General Wang the results of his Team’s investigation of the missile site’s destruction.

“I sent my best and most experienced Team out to investigate the destruction of the Missile Site near Lake Manasarovar. I needed to send a second larger Team to interview those who were on the pilgrimages around the Lake and also those on the pilgrimages around Mount Kailash. Both Teams have submitted their reports and I have reviewed them. The results are not good, sir,” the Shangxiao told him.

“What did they learn?” the impatient General demanded in a loud voice.

“The first Team could find no explosive residue anywhere on the site, other than that from our missiles when they exploded and from their fuel when it went off. There was also no residue on any of the bodies or the buildings to indicate what had been used to demolish and burn them so badly. They had the Snow Wolf Team expand their search area. They still found no evidence of those who carried out the attack.

“The second Team questioned those in charge of the pilgrimage around the Lake. They reported that only one man in the past two weeks had been lost or wandered off the trail they used, and he was an older man and had been located in half an hour.

“They then moved to the last stop on the pilgrimage around Mount Kailash. They checked all of those coming off the tour. Two men said that they had heard thunder near the Mountain on the night in question. They thought that the gods were angry about something. One elderly man told them that he had seen two Dragons flying in the valley between the mountains that night. He described them as large, scaled Dragons with horns. The guides told our people that he had been hallucinating from lack of oxygen. That no one else had seen any Dragons, and there were no Dragons,” the Shangxiao finished.

“That’s it! That’s all that your people found?” a very upset General demanded.

“Sir, they couldn’t find what wasn’t there. There was nothing to indicate who or what had destroyed the Missile Site,” the Shangxiao insisted. The General remained very unhappy at this lack of evidence until he had a thought.

“Could this attack have been carried out by an aircraft?” he asked.

“Given the lack of evidence on the ground, I would say that is a reasonable conclusion,” the Shangxiao admitted with a sigh of relief. The General grabbed his phone and started issuing orders.

In the morning, I heated the stove again and Jorani prepared breakfast for us. By 9:00, we were ready to leave and passed through the Nesting ward to return to the corridors in Red Mountain. From there, I transferred us to a back street that we had seen yesterday during our trip to the market. From there after recovering, Tsepak led us through a number of streets to the vicinity of the government warehouse, where the food for the high-ranking Chinese in charge of the government here was stored. It was located a couple of blocks north of the Potala Palace and a block or so east of it. It wouldn’t be difficult to transfer things from it to the corridors in Red Mountain.

The area around the warehouse wasn’t the usual crowded together series of buildings that was standard in most of Lhasa and other places that we had seen. The area around it had been cleared of everything for 50 feet (15 meters) all around it, giving those on guard there a clear view of anyone approaching it. The parking and unloading area behind the warehouse was even wider to accommodate the trucks delivering merchandise.

We spent time observing the building from all four sides, but from back where the other buildings were and making sure that no one saw us by using an obfuscation spell and not the invisibility spell as it requires too much energy to hide three from view for long.

“Do you see why you can’t get in there?” Tsepak asked after we had been studying the building for a while. “There are even more guards outside at night,” he added.

“I don’t see or sense anything that would prevent us from getting in there. Yes, night would be the best time because the employees won’t be there then,” I told him to a disbelieving look from him, but Jorani agreed with me.

“There is nothing that would keep us out,” she told him. “There’s no Magic of any kind.” Tsepak looked at us like we were crazy.

“Okay, say you can get in there. How do you plan on getting things out of there?” he asked, as if he had won an argument.

“There are ways,” I told him but went no further. He just shook his head, not believing what I had said.

Once we had finished studying the warehouse, Tsepak insisted that he needed to go to report to his superiors what he had done and where he had been all of this time.

“You may not tell them about the corridors or the Nest,” I reminded him and checked the spell that I had used last night to prevent him from disclosing the facts about them. It was still in perfect condition and would last for years.

After we had moved away from the warehouse, he left us after we gave him a final message.

“We need to speak to Dukhor when you can arrange it. Tell him that we will meet him at the previous place when he can be there,” I told him. He agreed to pass-on the message.

In the meantime, we had things to do. I had studied the maps that Tsepak had provided last night and noted where the various government facilities were located. We would visit some of them and check them out to see what was required to cause them trouble or to shut them down. We would go there using new glamours of important Chinese whom we had seen in our travels. This should prevent us from being stopped by the many police out on the streets today.

“They definitely don’t have enough to keep them busy,” Jorani observed on seeing the many police squads.

The Tibetan Autonomous Region Government, and the Lhasa Municipal Government were both located in large impressive modern buildings that required a lot of electricity for their lights, heat, and the electronic equipment in them. The Chengguan District government building was smaller, but still used a lot of electricity. All three buildings were within a couple of blocks of each other and not far from the Lhasa River. We also visited the post office, the Tibetan television studios located not far from the Potala Palace, and the Department of Communications building that morning. We had plans for all of them.

That afternoon, we rested at the Nest, as tonight would be a busy one. That evening after firing up the new stove, Jorani made us a large dinner for the busy night ahead of us. At ten that night, we went to the corridors, where I transferred us to one of the vantage points from where we had watched the warehouse, and I had left a marker. There were lights on the outside of the building and many more soldiers and police walking guard around it.

“Let me go first in case I have trouble when I appear in there,” I told Jorani. She wasn’t happy about that but agreed. I did a line-of-sight transfer into the warehouse and appeared in one of the aisles. Immediately, I transferred back to her, and we both transferred into the warehouse in the same aisle.

It was very dark in the warehouse, as there were only a few exit lights on. We had brought our flashlights, however.

“We need to locate the power box for the overhead lights and turn them on,” I told Jorani. A quick search near the office located the power box for the lights, and we turned them on. Since the warehouse had no windows and the insulated doors were a tight fit because of the cold winters, there were no light leaks to give us away.

The building was filled with pallets of food in distinct groupings. The pallets of rice held a dozen 110-pound (50 Kg) bags of rice. This presented a problem as the pallets weighed 1320 pounds (600 Kg).

“How are we going to transfer these pallets of rice to the corridors? It would be exhausting doing it a bag at a time using Magic,” she said. I quickly realized there was a simpler way. A temporary portal would allow us to use the pallet jacks here to move the rice and other things on pallets to the large shops in the corridors.

“I’ll cast the spell for a temporary portal a couple of feet back from the first large roll-up door to one of the large shops. You cast a second one to another shop in front of the second door, and we’ll use the pallet jacks to move the rice and other things,” I told her. These were the most open areas in the warehouse because everything came in through this area.

We moved a dozen pallets of rice, six pallets with boxes of various fresh vegetables and fruit plus four pallets of canned meats and other delicacies.

“These aren’t things that the poor would need, but they could be sold to the supermarkets and possibly to the shadier street market stores for either money or more food for the poor and elderly,” I told her when she looked at the expensive items. “We only made a slight dent in what was stored here tonight and will need to return for more – possibly several more times,” I told her as we finished.

We each went through our temporary portals to the corridors after returning the pallet jacks to their original locations and turning out the lights. We then canceled the temporary portals. No one knew that we had been there, but I was sure that those working there would realize that they had been robbed in the morning. After checking everything, we returned to the Nest for a good night’s sleep.