Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “When I lived in Beijing, I was surprised to see images of Peter Pan,” the man said. “I realized that the yearning for eternal youth is universal. That’s why places like Jamalinka exist, little pockets of Neverland to capture an instant of youth. It took me a lot longer to realize that just a smile from a beautiful young woman often does the job as well as an hour in her bed. Tink has a magical smile. I told her she should charge for her smiles. Tinker Bell, the fairy of eternal youth. And she cooks!”

  “I’ve never met a Chinese woman named after Tinker Bell.”

  “My invention, but she likes it.”

  “Being knocked unconscious seems to dilute some of the magic,” Shan observed.

  The American gave a short laugh and pointed to a club on the table, with a towel wrapped around it fastened with duct tape. “We soften the blow so there’s no permanent damge. You need to learn that there are rules in places like Jamalinka. A lot of rules. Don’t follow a girl home, that’s one of the important ones. Don’t trespass into her apartment. Don’t trespass and start taking off your clothes. I helped you avoid greater unpleasantries. It was a light tap, in just the right spot to take you out for five minutes. I’ll find you an aspirin. Tink’s noodles are first rate.”

  “I wasn’t taking off my clothes,” Shan explained. “I was reaching into my pocket, Mr. Pike.”

  The American stiffened and muttered a low curse in English. Shan did not resist as he reached into Shan’s pocket and opened the leather folder. He stared at Shan for several long breaths. “This can get complicated, Inspector,” he said. “How about if I just leave and Tink gives you a rubdown?”

  “I am very sorry about your daughter,” Shan said.

  He didn’t see the blow coming, just felt the explosion of pain as Pike slapped him. It felt like he had been hit by a piece of lumber. “And I’m very sorry about all your damned lies,” the American said in a defiant tone. “Is that why you are here? Scared I’m going to rewrite the story? This isn’t over. And you’ve got nothing on me.”

  Shan tried to rub the numbness from his cheek with his shoulder. “There’s the matter of the dead man on the train,” he suggested.

  Pike’s eyes sparked, then he went very quiet. “Not on me. The fool attacked me. He smashed the controls on that cargo chamber door. He could have gotten out the rear door when the train stopped up in the mountains and run back on board the same as me if he wanted. I even called out to him to come with me. I’m sorry his bad judgment killed him. I only wanted to speak with him.”

  “Somewhat urgently, I take it, considering that you flew from Lhasa just to take a train back to Lhasa.”

  “I don’t talk with Chinese police,” Pike growled. “Chinese police are the problem, not the cure.”

  “You have me confused with Public Security,” Shan said.

  “Right. Special investigator for the governor of Lhadrung, who must be a Party boss. Which makes you worse than Public Security. You can operate totally in the dark. One of those secret watchers who throws citizens into prison for just muttering the Chairman’s name in a cynical tone.”

  “The Chairman is a tyrant who is turning my country into a massive internment camp.”

  The words stopped Pike for a moment. A bitter smile crossed his face. “That’s what happens when you install security cameras every fifty feet. What was the number I heard recently? The People’s frigging Republic has five hundred million cameras, with more every day. Boggles the mind.” He turned toward the woman. “I have to pack,” he said to her in a disappointed tone. “I can’t come back now.”

  The woman wasn’t listening. She stepped toward Shan and picked up the table lamp. Shan tensed, thinking she was going to hit him with it, but she just leaned in with the lamp, looking at the top of his wrist then his neck. “A convict,” she declared.

  “No way, kiddo,” Pike said. “Not with that badge.”

  She was good, and experienced with life in Chinese prisons. The little pairs of discolored spots on his hands and neck had faded. No one had noticed them for years. “Here, here, and there,” she said, pointing to three of the pairs. “From where a guard turns a cattle prod to maximum charge and presses it into your skin.” She pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and pointed to similar pairs of dots near her shoulder. “On women they usually apply it to places that don’t show.”

  Shan shuddered as Pike produced a pocketknife and unfolded its long blade. He sliced the duct tape on his arm and turned it over. “Jesus bloody Christ,” he muttered as he saw the tattooed numbers, then pushed the blade close to Shan’s throat. “Recite that number,” he ordered Shan, then cursed again as Shan did so without hesitation. “What’s your game?” he asked. “You’re no cop.”

  “I keep telling my boss that, but he won’t listen,” Shan said. “I’m from Lhadrung. Colonel Tan, the governor of Lhadrung, makes his own rules.”

  Pike seemed to recognize the county name. “Not even in that gulag wilderness do convicts get badges.”

  “I was an inspector in Beijing. I investigated the wrong people and they sent me to a prison in Lhadrung because the death rate is so high there. But the governor had a problem. I helped him, unofficially, and to show his gratitude he pulled me out of the hard labor camp. Some days I wish I were still in that prison.”

  The American laughed. “If you think that I would believe that—”

  The Chinese woman held up a hand to silence the American. She rose, stepped into the kitchen, and returned with a bottle of grain alcohol and a cloth. Shan watched in puzzlement as she soaked a corner of the cloth in the alcohol. Then she gazed at him in challenge and he understood. He extended his arm. First, she stretched his skin around the tattoo then rubbed the cloth vigorously over the numbers. If the tattoo were recently done, the skin would be reddened around the numbers. If, on the other hand, it was temporary, the numbers would smear.

  “It’s real,” she announced in surprise.

  The American studied Shan in silence for several breaths. “Which makes you the strangest Chinese I’ve ever met.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Pike hesitated, then pressed the blade to the squarish lump on Shan’s chest. “A gau?”

  “It wasn’t really Colonel Tan who saved me. It was some old lamas. And I’m trying to avoid Public Security as much as you are.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they don’t want me looking into the deaths of Natalie Pike and Professor Gangfen.”

  Pike studied him in silence again. Shan had never seen eyes like his. The intelligence that burned in them was as deep as their sadness, but there was also something fierce and untamed. He had a strange sense that he was looking at a reincarnation of one of the warrior priests who once roamed Tibet, accountable only to Buddha.

  With a quick motion, the American cut Shan’s other arm free. “Now I insist that you have some noodles with us.”

  Shan did not mention that an army lieutenant was expecting him, and when he asked Pike why he was using the apartment the American just motioned to the table and said, “Eat.”

  The Chinese bar dancer was surprisingly adept in the kitchen, where she worked with an athletic energy, and served her noodles with a stir-fry of vegetables. It was the best meal Shan had had in weeks. As he finished his bowl he realized Pike was staring at him again.

  “Why is an investigator from faraway Lhadrung interested in my train ride?”

  “Colonel Tan is responsible for the regional military depot in Lhadrung. The cargo on that train was bound for his depot.”

  “Not everything. I have enough sense not to interfere with the People’s Liberation Army.”

  “You were there because of Sun Lunshi.”

  “He was a friend of a friend of my daughter’s. I needed to have a quiet conversation with him. I located his office but when I started to go in, Public Security arrived. He suddenly took off for Golmud, like he was fleeing. I decided to find out why.”

  “Did he know who you were?�
�

  “When I caught up with him and told him, I didn’t expect him to get so upset. That’s when he ran into that cargo car. He smashed the controls to keep me out, but I slipped through just as the door closed. He trapped us both in there, which suited my purposes just fine.”

  “What was in the crate?”

  “I don’t know. I was just there to talk. And I don’t think he was going to check any cargo. When I caught up with him, he was looking in the staff berths, calling out for the doctor. Guess he was already feeling sick. I would have helped, but he wasn’t inclined to talk. Just laid into me like a banshee.” Pike fell silent then repeated his own question. “Why is an investigator from faraway Lhadrung interested in my train ride?”

  “Be grateful that I am, and only me. The Lhasa police would have called it a homicide if we had given them jurisdiction. Witnesses would have recalled you chasing Sun through the train, making you their prime suspect. You don’t exactly blend in here. It wouldn’t take them long to find you.”

  “Again, you don’t answer my question, Inspector Shan.”

  “I am not investigating what happened on your train ride. I am investigating the execution of a Tibetan named Metok Rentzig.”

  Pike’s eyes narrowed. “He’s dead?” The American’s knuckles wrapped around his teacup and began to turn white. “I had the impression that investigations are commonly done before an execution, not after.”

  “This is Tibet. We are never constrained by the patterns observed elsewhere in the world.”

  “I don’t know anything about a civil engineer named Metok.”

  “Professor Gangfen knew Metok. And I didn’t tell you he was an engineer.” He returned Pike’s unblinking stare. “Metok was a friend of your daughter’s?” Shan realized that although Tink had carried away the dishes, she wasn’t washing them, she was at the window, watching the street. “The dead man on the train had a card for the bar where Tink works, with a clue to this address handwritten on it. He was coming here. Accompanying that crate was a convenient cover for him. Or maybe the crate being there was just a coincidence. Why did you want to speak with him? Was this the professor’s apartment?”

  Pike did not reply.

  “Your daughter died three weeks ago,” Shan observed. “I would have thought there would be arrangements needed at home. Usually takes two or three weeks to have remains shipped back across the Pacific.”

  “Let’s just say I wanted to understand how she died. She was my only daughter.”

  “You mean going to her place of death would bring closure.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then why stalk someone from the Institute? Why hide in this apartment? And why,” he added in afterthought, “did the distinguished professor have an apartment among the brothels of Jamalinka?”

  “It’s all those millions of cameras,” Pike said. “This is Tibet’s Vegas Strip.”

  “Sorry?”

  “All the bright neon. In other cities like Kashgar where Public Security worries about unrest they can spot any individual they seek in about ten minutes because the cameras are everywhere, and everyone has been required to submit to facial recognition scans. But in Lhasa there is an oasis, a black hole if you will. They watch the streets in and out of Jamalinka but inside the district the cameras are blinded by the brilliant lights. And it wasn’t his apartment, just an operating base, you might say, an oasis. Tink keeps a lot of interesting friends.”

  Shan weighed the words. “You make it sound as if Professor Gangfen had something to hide.”

  “Of course he did. His independence. What freedom-loving man wouldn’t want to evade the big brothers constantly watching on their cameras? In another few years, half of China’s population will be watching the other half.”

  “He was just an archaeologist.”

  “In China archaeology is such a politically hot topic that anyone true to the science has to engage in subterfuge,” Pike replied. “Beijing goes into violent spasms if anyone suggests there has ever been a drop of non-Chinese blood within the boundaries of its current empire. Natalie wrote me about him and about Tink. Gangfen had two sets of records, one for his university that were well scrubbed to support the case that China had long-established roots in Tibet.”

  Shan knew well how Beijing aggressively suppressed any suggestion of outside influence whether in modern times or centuries earlier. “And another set, kept here, that were not so politically correct,” he suggested.

  Pike nodded. “He found a spirited, educated woman who lived at the edge of society, on her own terms, and who could keep her own apartment without questions being raised about how she might afford it. Tink is a courtesan, you might say, and courtesans are always given lots of latitude in their private lives.” Tink turned from the window long enough to wrinkle her nose good-naturedly.

  “You seem to grasp the realities of modern China very well, Mr. Pike,” Shan said.

  “I left the army for a higher calling with the American government. They sent me to Beijing for two years. Then later I spent a year in Shanghai, in private security, you might say.”

  “I don’t imagine you would make a good paper pusher.”

  “Someone tried to make me one a long time ago. Didn’t work out. Bureaucrats have to obsess over every little detail. I just spend my life on the important things,” Pike added with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

  “Was your daughter engaged in something illegal, Mr. Pike? Or just something important?”

  “I just met you, Shan. And I’ve never met a man from Beijing I could trust.”

  “Five years in hard labor scoured Beijing from my soul. I am from Tibet.”

  “But I have never met an investigator anywhere in China who was interested in truly investigating and damned few who could even accomplish what I would call a true investigation.”

  “I was sent to prison for truly investigating.”

  When Pike just fixed him with another of his intense, stabbing stares, Shan added, “Spoken like someone with experience in law enforcement.”

  “A dozen years with the FBI, including in Beijing. Didn’t suit my temperament, but gave me perspective, you might say. I quit, became a professor.”

  “And here you are, hiding with a sex worker in the black hole of Lhasa.”

  “Careful how you speak about Tink. Only a dancer and masseuse, nothing more. And all work is great if greatly pursued. I tend to think of her more as someone of diverse skills and interests, kind of a Renaissance woman.”

  Shan looked at his watch. “I have to go.”

  “I’m not convinced I can let you.”

  “I’ll be missed.”

  “Somehow I suspect that Jamalinka is the last place anyone would look for you.”

  Shan nodded his agreement. “If you are going to kill me, I’d prefer that you take my body somewhere else.”

  Pike grinned. “Nothing so dramatic. But maybe I should bind you to that chair again and let Tink tend you for a couple days. Or I have a syringe with some magic medicine that would keep you unconscious for the rest of the week. Might be easier.”

  Shan sighed. “Can I have a piece of paper, please?”

  Tink tossed him a small notepad, and he wrote down two rows of numbers and pushed it toward Pike. “This is my fatal combination. The first is my lao gai number, my inmate registration, which you can verify by my tattoo. The second is my badge number. Officially a former hard labor prisoner is banned from holding a law enforcement badge. The badge was granted by the county governor, so I am protected anywhere in Lhadrung. Outside of Lhadrung I am not, but no one understands my particular circumstances. There are officers in Lhasa who would arrest me in an instant if they knew that history. Public Security knows how to find me, at the constable station in Yangkar. Take the numbers. You can destroy me with them.”

  Pike exchanged a long glance with Tink, then folded the paper into his pocket.

  “If you knew about Metok and Sun Lunshi, then you knew a
bout the Five Claws project,” Shan ventured.

  “Natalie mentioned it in a letter, although she only used that term once. She called it the Roost for some reason and said it was the most exciting place she had ever visited, professionally speaking.”

  “I believe your daughter was killed there when a cave was imploded, not in a car accident. I think those who did it knew she and the professor were inside. Metok knew it as well, and they didn’t trust him to keep quiet. So they arranged his execution.”

  Pike’s gaze grew more intense, then the fire in his eyes turned to melancholy. Shan stood and thanked Tink for the meal. He was almost at the door when the American spoke.

  “You asked why I was here so soon after Natalie’s death,” he said to Shan’s back. “They sent me her ashes. We had a memorial service.” Shan turned. “But it was all so abrupt, so neatly wrapped up with a press report that explained the terrible car accident when Professor Gangfen drove off the mountain road. But something nagged at me. I dug out an old letter she had written that mentioned she was serving as the professor’s driver, among other enjoyable things, because like a lot of Chinese who live in cities, Gangfen didn’t drive. I dug up the ashes and had a friend in the FBI test them. I had buried a sheep.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “It was 1720 when the horde of Dzungar Mongols descended upon Tibet, slaughtering and looting all the way to Lhasa,” Shan’s guide said. Shan and Cato Pike were standing in the middle of the archaeology excavation that had brought Natalie Pike to Tibet. Their escort, the junior professor who had taken over after Professor Gangfen’s death, gestured to several students who were guiding a small machine on wheels over the flat terrain. “Ground radar,” the balding man explained. “The most efficient way to find anomalies under the surface.”

  Their guide had seemed worried when Shan had shown his badge, but Shan soon realized the junior professor’s awkwardness was more about being with the father of the American who had died while working on their project. “Anomalies?” Shan asked.

  “Building foundations,” he said with a nervous glance at Pike. “Cavities that were dug out and refilled, which could mean culverts, wells, latrine pits, defensive entrenchments. We love latrine pits. Nothing like a latrine pit to inform about daily life!”