Cargo 069

When the strange transaction was completed, the unmercenary Tibetan strongly ignoring dollars and yuans again leaned toward the buyer’s ear:

“Give it to Dmitry” and handed him a medallion.

“What Dmitry?” Valka the Sailor goggled his eyes in amazement.

“Your Dmitry, of course…” was the reply.

Vangyal picked up his stall and stepped toward the patio exit.

No, he neither came out nor jumped out! As the members of the extrasensory trio told each other, the Tibetan simply dissolved into the air!

They have just seen a man and suddenly he’s been gone!..

Then, the three carefully examined the scroll in the hotel’s lobby. To tell the truth, they did not understand anything in these strange letters. The group got something although no one ever offered them any secrets. And then all of a sudden – the manuscript!.. As you know, in an empty field, a beetle is meat. Maybe the scroll has a special secret meaning?

The scout tourists truly admired the amulet. It was made of bronze and shaped as a circle that symbolized infinity. The circle of eight and a half centimeters had an embossed image of Buddha in the lotus position. The circle was attached to an elegant chain to wear the amulet on the neck.

After returning to Moscow, they submitted a detailed report to the superiors. The scroll was delivered to the Institute of Oriental Studies where it was properly translated. The text of the Tibetan sages gave much in understanding the problem. But still, there was something behind the scenes.

The whole trick was that the percipient could enter the recipient’s consciousness but could not control the latter. This was a significant gap and its elimination gave a wide field for parapsychological activities. If you learn how to run the show, it would be possible to change the past, and hence the future, within some reasonable scope. And these were two tasks that were not just relevant but really global…

Colonel Burlak ordered to transfer the Tibetan amulet to his rightful owner: “Tibetan Vangyal obviously meant our Lieutenant Colonel.”

From then on Dmitry always wore the amulet around his neck, close to the chest. Sveta expressed an exceptional female interest in this “strange little thing”. But her husband scaled back her curiosity saying that the amulet was designed to protect its owner.

Bystrov unconsciously and even instinctively wiped the tiny head of the amulet Buddha and… saw a man in an orange robe on the “inner screen”.

“As a genie from the Aladdin fairy tale…” Dmitry thought.

“I’m not a genie,” said the man wearing a Buddhist monk’s robe. “I’m the one who your friends know as Vangyal.”

“Do you… really exist?..” was Bystrov’s internal message.

“You bet!” The monk laughed. “And it wasn’t accidental that you rubbed Buddha’s forehead. This is your ancestral amulet.”

“Ancestral?..”

“Well, yes. You wore it when you were a monk, my best student in a past life.”

“Will I see you?” Dmitry asked with concealed hope. He was vaguely recalling a man from his former incarnation who was closer to him than his own father.

“Yes, in the Ganden Monastery…” was the answer.

And the figure of Vangyal began to melt.

What was it? Who was there, right now, in his, Bystrov’s, consciousness? And was this meeting real? Or was it just his imagination? “Did I really find… my former guru whose existence I suspected a long time ago?”

Some day there will be an answer to these questions. No, not “someday”, but quite soon: Dmitry and Victor Kotov will fly to China tomorrow.

Bystrov was in his office thinking about the tricks of fortune. It turned out that there was quite an interesting combination in Dmitry’s life: he was currently an officer of the Chief Intelligence Directorate and… a Buddhist monk in the past! This resembled being a communist with a party card and a cross on your chest in Soviet times.

He forced himself to calm down, then turned on the computer and began to look through the information concerning Tibet.

And that’s what he found out.

The whole house was immersed into travel arrangements.

Sveta Bystrova, who accustomed to her father’s trips from the early age, did not pester her husband with those stupid women’s questions and assumptions. She understood the clear “He has to” and the optimistic “Dima will cope with any dangers, as usual…” And she did not worry much rejecting completely the eternal feminine fears. Only Svetlana’s eyes expressed her deep suppressed fear for her husband.

A strong family is a reliable rear!

Chapter 10

Friends did not stay long in Beijing.

After spending a night at the airport hotel, they boarded the Boeing early in the morning. Soon the plane landed in the legendary Lhasa.

Bystrov and Kotov stayed in the same hotel, where Valka the Sailor and his comrades stayed a month ago, and took a double room.