on many levels with a tension between action and ideas; it offers pleasurable escape but also food for thought. Small is right on target with characters we love and those we love to hate, a taut narrative that spans 2000 years and transports the reader halfway around the world, abundant sensory detail that invites us to smell, taste, hear and feel what the characters are experiencing, and a heart-stopping pace that won’t let you relax. A very impressive debut that solidly hits the mark!”
Kathy McClelland, Director of Libraries, The Westminster Schools, Atlanta, GA
Also by Jeffrey Small:
God as the Ground of Being: Tillich and Buddhism in Dialogue
TO ALISON AND GABRIELLA.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE. I LOVE YOU BOTH.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although this novel is a contemporary work of fiction, I have based it on extensive historical research. The primary settings in India and Bhutan exist, and I have tried to capture them as accurately as possible. Russian journalist Nicholas Notovitch, whose explosive discovery in the Himalayas in 1887 serves as the basis for this story, was a historical figure. He published his findings in 1894 before being publicly condemned and silenced for the heresy he proposed.
PART ONE
THE SPARK
“In the beginning was the Tao. All things issue from it; all things return to it. Every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao. The Tao gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them.”
The Tao Te Ching, 6th century BC
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
The Gospel according to John, AD 1st century
CHAPTER 1
PUNAKHA VALLEY, BHUTAN
“THE NEXT ONE WILL BE the most dangerous.”
Most dangerous? Grant Matthews spat out the remnants of the Himalayan river water he’d just inhaled on the last rapid, a Class IV.
“You good?” Dasho, his Bhutanese guide, called to him in accented English.
“Just need to catch my breath.”
The current slowed as the Mo Chhu, the Mother River, widened. Grant balanced his paddle on top of the neoprene spray skirt that kept the icy water from entering his kayak and shook out his arms. He needed to stretch his legs too; the yellow boat barely accommodated his six-foot-two frame.
Dasho approached him with powerful strokes. “Monsoon season just passed. Chhu very fast now.”
Grant pushed his helmet back, brushed his wet hair out of his eyes, and studied the guide’s tanned face, his wide cheekbones. “So, how does a Buddhist monk become a river guide?”
When he arranged his trip to Bhutan, he’d asked his travel agent to find a tour guide familiar with the country’s many monasteries. Grant hoped to find what he’d been searching for hidden in one of them. When the agent told him that Dasho, a former monk, led tours and kayaking expeditions, he knew he’d found a kindred soul.
“Father died two years ago,” Dasho replied. “I was only son with three sisters and a mother. Left the monastery to provide for them.”
So he lost his father around the same age I did, Grant thought, estimating Dasho to be in his early twenties. He then quickly shrugged off the memory of his sophomore year in college: his once invincible father—the great reverend—and his scandalous death. He lifted the paddle off his lap and swept it through the water.
“I’m sorry.”
“No sorry.” Dasho smiled. “I could be farmer.” He pointed with his paddle across the river.
The valley rose gently from the riverbank in tiered fields planted with wheat, peppers, and beans. A lone sun-wrinkled farmer worked the plants with a wooden hoe. On a hill beyond the fields, a strand of Buddhist prayer flags fluttered on forty-foot-high poles. The snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas framed the picture in the distance.
“So you traveled through India before coming to the Land of Thunder Dragon?” Dasho asked, alluding to Druk Yul, the name the Bhutanese used for the tiny Buddhist kingdom nestled in the Himalayas between India and Tibet.
Grant nodded. “Research for my PhD.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, a rush of anxiety flooded his body. My unfinished dissertation, he thought. The members of his dissertation committee at Emory University in Atlanta, even his mentor Professor Billingsly, were skeptical when he’d first outlined his research plans five years ago. The story he proposed to track down was only a legend, they’d said, but Grant was determined to unravel the ancient mystery.
He’d just spent a week in the cold, barren moonscape of the northern Indian Himalayas near Kashmir. Several monks at the Himis monastery in Ladakh had become suspicious of his inquiries there. A hundred years earlier, similar questions had brought unwanted attention from the West to their isolated monastery with devastating consequences for the questioner. Grant planned to handle Bhutan differently.
He grinned at Dasho. “I much prefer your milder weather and lush landscapes.”
“We measure progress by gross national happiness instead of gross national product.” Dasho beamed. “And you tackle toughest river?”
“I like the challenge. Learned in college on some big water.”
“You Americans enjoy pushing everything to extreme.” Dasho chuckled.
“Ah, that’s the secret to our progress.”
Progress, he thought with a hollowness in his gut. He wasn’t making much, and he was running out of time. Bhutan had hundreds of Buddhist monasteries, and he could only afford two weeks in the country. The tenuous lead he’d received at Himis from the one monk he’d befriended didn’t specify which monastery in Bhutan might hold the treasure.
“What you are searching for was moved long ago,” the elderly monk had whispered.
“Where?” Grant had asked, glancing down the cloistered hallway to make sure no one approached.
The monk had shrugged. “Certainly to another Buddhist monastery. Probably Bhutan.”
In the two days he’d been in Bhutan,
