High Priestess

The prologue depicts the poisoning of Gedun Tsering, the forty-sixth Bunji Lama, by regents seeking a compliant successor. To keep them from controlling another child, he invents a false prophecy of a flame-haired next incarnation who will not remember the former life; he privately believes his reincarnation cycle has ended. A red-haired infant is born at the moment he dies, but the prologue does not establish that the fabricated prophecy is true. Sixty years later, Lobsang Drom joins Kula, emissary of Boldbator Khan, to find the next Bunji. Remo and Chiun join their search for payment; Chiun uses a television program as an oracle to identify actress Squirrelly Chicane.

They and the Tibetan visitors accept Squirrelly as the new Bunji, while Remo and Chiun privately seek the promised gold. A Chinese assassination attempt at Squirrelly’s Malibu party is stopped by Remo and Chiun. The unnamed sitting President asks CURE director Harold W. Smith to protect Squirrelly at his wife’s urging, but Smith declines because he considers it outside CURE’s mandate. The First Lady’s influence and Squirrelly’s trip raise tensions with China. Smith later sends Remo to Tibet when he judges the Chinese occupation a larger strategic threat. Squirrelly meets the Dalai Lama in India, who accepts her as Bunji after she presents the artifact identified as her Oscar and urges nonviolence; she declares war.

At dinner, a food taster dies from poisoned food. The Tibetan cook says a Chinese man coerced him to look away while the man poisoned Squirrelly’s bowl; Kula kills the cook after the confession. At the border Wangdi Chung says he failed to poison the Bunji, but the source does not establish whether he means the same plot or another attempt; Chinese guards shoot him after his warning about the procession. The procession passes the checkpoint and enters Tibet. Remo enters by truck, joins resistance figures whose title Bumba Fun passes among different people, and fights PLA forces as villagers call him Gonpo Jigme. Chiun reaches Lhasa, frees Squirrelly and the others from Drapchi Prison, and guides them through the Potala’s hidden passage.

Squirrelly claims the Lion Throne. Remo’s resistance group advances on Lhasa, while an avalanche sweeps down as Squirrelly starts singing, burying Chinese forces; she claims credit, while its cause remains unestablished; Chiun still decides they must leave. At Gonggar Airport the child Tashi and Squirrelly face each other as spiritual rivals. The Chinese security minister detonates a bomb hidden in the Tashi’s prayer wheel; both figures vanish, and the narrative describes red rain as witnesses argue over whose drops they capture. Remo and Chiun escape in a turboprop with Kula. In Massachusetts Chiun explains that he traveled to repay an inherited Sinanju debt for a past Master’s mistaken killing of a child, and offers his contested explanation that Gonpo is Shiva and that Shiva’s spirit rode Remo.

The epilogue depicts Squirrelly’s apparent rebirth as Dra Drang’s red-haired son; he remembers the former life and plans to become the Bunji before pursuing a film career. The source leaves the supernatural explanation disputed by Remo, while the epilogue presents the rebirth as lived experience.