for a moment and then nodded. “One negative attitude can foster dissention among many others. Negative energy is a virus we cannot have spread through our organization at this critical time. I’ll take care of it.”
“What will you do?”
Brady knew that Jennings would bring Carla around. He’d heard the stories of Jennings’s reprimands of employees who didn’t perform up to his expectations. Brady was happy that Jennings relished that role. Every organization needed a disciplinarian, but Brady was too beloved to fulfill that role himself.
“Simple.” Jennings tucked his reading glasses into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’m going to fire her.”
CHAPTER 11
PUNAKHA, BHUTAN
HOW OFTEN DOES A PERSON face a moment when he knows his life is going to change forever?
This question played in Grant’s mind as he gazed up at the decorative windows of the six-story, whitewashed-stone utse tower. The low morning sun cast a long shadow of the tower across the flagstones, like a giant sundial representing to Grant the time to grasp his destiny. He thought about the answer to the two-thousand-year-old mystery that might be revealed in the tower above him. He thought about the draft of his dissertation stored in his laptop, which was in the small backpack slung across his shoulders. He thought about the redemption this discovery would bring to him. He mentally reviewed the checklist he’d been writing the past week—documenting the find, emailing the photos and text to Professor Billingsly, arranging for the professional translations ...
Then he caught up with the mental movie he’d been replaying in his head all morning. Kinley had taught him to monitor what the monk called the cycles of unproductive thinking he claimed Grant was prone to, the repetitive rehashing of future events in his mind. Grant released the breath he held tightly in his chest. The brisk breeze tossed his hair just as it swayed the naked branches of the tree in the center of the courtyard beside him. He continued to breathe, and he relaxed. But then other thoughts intruded: What if all this buildup was for nothing? What if the Issa texts were not as old as Kinley said? What if Notovich’s critics were right? What if the story of Issa was nothing more than a legend spun by the creative mind of some Indian writer centuries earlier?
The footsteps behind him saved Grant from continuing that line of thought. His breath quickened when he saw Kinley and Kristin hurrying toward him. Dressed for the cool autumn day, she wore a red fleece over jeans with various multicolored patches that she’d obviously sewn on herself. Her camera was slung over her shoulder. Kinley strode with his hands clasped behind his back, while Jigme followed a step behind.
“So we’re really doing this?” Grant whispered to Kinley.
“We cannot allow religious isolationism to govern our actions. But you do understand that what we are doing carries certain risks?”
Grant tried not to imagine what a Bhutanese jail cell looked like. But then they weren’t planning on taking anything other than pictures. Surely they couldn’t go to jail for that? He nodded. “This is too important not to try.”
Kinley smiled. “Exactly what I would have said at your age.”
“How are you going to get us up there?”
“Lama Dorji left for a neighboring monastery early this morning. We must hurry before he returns.” He turned to Jigme. “Dawa will be sitting inside by the door to the stairs. Please occupy his attention.”
A few minutes later, Jigme exited the utse with another monk who appeared to be in his late sixties. After they disappeared around the side of the building, Kinley hustled Grant and Kristin to the stone steps at the foot of the tower’s entrance.
“What do you guys have against putting your doors on the ground floor?” Grant asked under his breath.
Kristin took his free left arm, wrapped it around her shoulder, and assisted him up the steps. Grant was proud of the milestone he’d reached that morning—graduating to a single crutch—but he didn’t protest the help. He felt the same thrill he’d experienced the day before just by putting his arm around her.
They entered the building through a set of bronze-coated doors. Kinley surveyed the courtyard behind them and then closed the heavy doors with a thud. Inside, Grant noted that as in the other temples in the dzong, a worn wooden floor stretched from one mural-covered stone wall to the other. A single chair stood by a closed door.
Grant nodded to the door. “Top floor?”
Kinley nodded. “The sixth.”
Grant started for the stairs while Kristin rushed to keep up with him. When he reached the sixth-floor landing, sweat dripped from his hairline. Kinley brushed by Grant, materialized a ring of keys from under his robe, and unlocked a set of carved doors at the end of the short hallway. The double doors creaked loudly, causing Grant and Kristin both to wince. Grant entered the shadowy room last, stooping to avoid cracking his head on the low frame. Kinley then parted a beige curtain from the room’s single window, allowing the sun to pour in.
In the weeks he’d spent imagining the library, Grant expected it to be grander. The room measured twenty by thirty feet and had the musty odor of a closed space that hadn’t felt fresh air in years. Dusty Tibetan-style books, narrow and long like the ones he’d seen the students use in the temple, were randomly stacked on crooked shelves and in various piles on the floor throughout the room. He looked around with the eager expression of a miner prospecting for gold in an undiscovered mountain vein.
“Let me see,” Kinley said, stepping over several piles of books. “Twenty-two years ago, I was the assistant librarian in the dzong. That’s when I first discovered the texts about Issa.” The monk ran a finger along one of the shelves, wiping up a line of dust. “Not much has changed.” He disappeared around a bookcase at the far end of the room, mumbling to himself.
“How can we help?” Kristin whispered.
“Oh, no help. Around here somewhere,” he replied from the other side of the bookcase. “This library doesn’t get used much. We keep the current texts downstairs.”
The sound of books crashing to the ground startled Grant. “Are you okay?”
“Found it.” Kinley reappeared carrying by iron handles a simple pine box the size of a small suitcase. He placed the box on a laminate table that looked like it had been salvaged from a 1970s garage sale but which sat on an exquisitely handwoven carpet.
Grant and Kristin took two of the four wooden chairs around the table. Grant noticed that Kristin sat cross-legged in the chair like she had on the knee wall the previous day. While Grant gazed at the simple box, she reached across him and touched it, as if trying to glean its contents from the texture of the wood. Grant eyed her slender fingers and short but manicured nails as they traced the grain of the wood. As alluring as she was, her need to touch everything reminded him again that she was too much a free spirit.
When Kinley lifted the lid of the box, which had neither lock nor latch, Grant held his breath. He rose from his chair and peered into the open container.
Grant’s first reaction was surprise—more Tibetan-style books, seven, stacked on each other. Eighteen inches long by three or four inches wide, the books were individually wrapped in silk cloths of various faded colors. He recalled Notovitch’s
