Tournament of Shadows

Cast of Characters

Madame Blavatsky

The Russian-born founder of Theosophy and an agent of mystical influence in India. With her American consort, Colonel Olcott, the two baffled the police on three continents.

General Skobelev

The Russian warrior who rode into battle in a white uniform on an albino stallion.

William Montgomery McGovern

The young American who reached Lhasa disguised as a Tibetan coolie, to the angry annoyance of the Raj’s frontier officers.

Nicholas Roerich

Artist, mystic, Himalayan explorer and shadowy presence in American politics.

Lord Curzon and Mary Leiter

The ablest of the British Viceroys and his Vicereine, the lovely Mary Leiter of Chicago. His boldest initiative, the invasion of Tibet in 1903-04, ended in discord, prefiguring today’s impasse with China over Tibet.

His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Age seven, in his first meeting with Americans at an audience at the Potala. OSS Major Ilia Tolstoy presented a signed photograph of President Franklin Roosevelt.

The Panda Hunters

Suydam Cutting (center) flanked by Theodore Roosevelt,Jr. (left) and Kermit Roosevelt at Yunnan, China in 1925, in their Field Museum quest for the Giant Panda. The baffled Chinese assumed all three were sons of the "King of America" Theodore Roosevelt.