The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense Read Online Free PDF Page A

your browser now so we can go?”
    Every PC bought in China came with preinstalled Web-blocking software to ensure no one could visit the BBC, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, and blogger sites. The government claimed that the effort was instituted to ban pornography, but everyone knew it was to stop the public from getting news about democracy, Tibet or members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Surfing politically subversive or pornographic websites was a crime, as was taking advantage of any of the ways around the internet policing.
    Ways that Cali had become expert at. While she erased her history, Xie closed his eyes and traveled inside his mind to find a place of stillness and silently intoned a mantra that he’d learned when he was just six years old.
    Om mani padme hum.
    He did this slowly, four times, and the bustle of the internet café disappeared for the few seconds Xie allowed himself. He was more shaken up by the footage than he could afford to show Cali or—worse—anyone else who might be watching.
    Cali touched his arm and brought him back to the present. “How much more tragic is this going to get before the international agencies step in?”
    “They can’t step in. There are too many financial ramifications. They all owe us too much money. China holds everyone hostage.” Xie sounded rational. He felt anything but. The travesty playing itself out in his homeland was exacerbating daily. It was time to get involved. He had no choice. Not any longer. No more hiding. No matter how hard the path ahead would be. No matter how dangerous.
    Through the window, he spied a group of police in blue drab headed their way. There were regular crackdowns and searches for subversives, and he didn’t want to get caught in one. “Let’s go,” he said, standing.
    “Already in the last six days, a hundred and three monks have set themselves on fire.”
    “I know, Cali. I know. Let’s go.”
    “A hundred and three monks,” she repeated, not being able to process the number.
    He grabbed her arm. “We have to go.”
    As they walked out the door, the four policemen he’d seen from the window crossed the street and headed toward the café. Safely clear of the threat, Cali asked the question that Xie had been thinking but wouldn’t voice. “How is any of this going to help that poor little boy? Will anyone ever find him? Why crack down on Order Number Five now? Didn’t they know it would just stir up more trouble? And how could they be so obvious about how they handled it? How dangerous can one little boy be?”
    “When it’s a little boy like Kim? Very dangerous.”
    Order Number Five was a regulation that came into effect in 2007 and gave the government the right to regulate the reincarnation of living Buddhas by requiring everyone to register in order to be reincarnated.
    Approving incarnations was not the endgame. Disallowing incarnations that interfered with China’s oppression of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism was. The order required that “living Buddha permits” be registered with the state and at the same time banned any incarnations from taking place in certain delineated regions. Not surprisingly, the two most holy cities in Tibet, Xingjiang and Lhasa, were on that list.
    Xie remembered his grandfather telling him about hearing the news when the present Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and head of state, had been identified in 1937. The toddler had been only two years old when he was found by a search party looking for the reincarnation of the thirteenth Lama, Thubten Gyatso, who had been Dalai from 1879, when he was three, until he died in 1933.
    Their first clue as to the whereabouts of the child came to light when the head of the embalmed lama’s body turned. The corpse that had faced south was suddenly facing northeast.
    Next a senior lama saw a vision of buildings and letters in the reflection of a sacred lake. These hints led them to a specific monastery in the Amdo region