Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “Of course not,” Amah Jiejie agreed, then asked the dates of the emails. “Major Xun was away that week, at a Party conference.”

  “But not the warden of the 404th,” Shan suggested.

  “Not the warden,” Amah Jiejie confirmed, then rose as the phone on her desk rang. Shan followed her out of the conference room. When she put down the receiver she looked as if she might weep. “There’s a car waiting, Shan. They need you at the hospital,” she announced in a brittle voice.

  * * *

  Ko lay unconscious on a hospital gurney outside the surgical chamber when Shan arrived. Dr. Anwei was shouting orders to nurses. Shan ran to his son’s side. Blood matted Ko’s hair and had dried on his fingers. His prison tunic was torn in several places, and each tear adhered to his flesh with caked blood. A nurse was using scissors to cut his clothing away.

  A man was shouting Ko’s name in a frantic voice. Only when a nurse began patting his shoulder, did Shan realize the cries were his own. Someone clamped an insistent hand around his arm as he leaned over and tried to shake his son awake.

  “He was already unconscious when we found him,” Tan explained to Shan as he pulled Shan away. “He had been thrown into a closet with a bunch of brooms and mops. The mop heads were soaked with his blood. The doctor says if he can stabilize Ko, he should recover,” Tan explained. “He was beaten so severely his skin was torn open in several places. No bullet wounds but a shallow stab wound on his upper arm where he defended against a blade. He lost a lot of blood. Anwei will close up the wounds and start transfusions. If we hadn’t found him…” the colonel didn’t finish the sentence.

  “The broom handles and walls were streaked with blood where he had tried to pull himself up,” Tan added as he pulled a phone from his pocket. “This is the doctor’s. I told him to take a photo of the back of the closet door.”

  Ko had drawn something on the door in his own blood, in case he would not live to deliver the message himself. It appeared to be two words, one over the other. Shan studied them, not comprehending, realizing his son would have drawn them while in great pain, in the dark.

  “I can make no sense of it,” Tan admitted. “It doesn’t even look like Mandarin.”

  Shan realized he too had been looking at the image the wrong way. “It’s not,” he said. “I almost forgot that he’s been studying Tibetan. Writing in Tibetan would make sure the guards or the warden wouldn’t understand it.” Gradually Shan was able to piece together the rough curving lines. The first word seemed to be Tara, the second was Namdol. The name of a goddess and the name of the hail chaser.

  “Is Zhu back?” Shan asked, his voice cracking.

  Tan nodded. “Zhu and his men will guard your son’s room. No one but you, me, or the medical staff to go in.”

  Ko suddenly stirred, responding to the voices. He reached out and grabbed his father’s hand, futilely trying to pull himself up. As Shan bent over him, he whispered three words. “Safety in Serenity,” he gasped, and passed out.

  “I don’t understand,” Tan said as they watched Ko being wheeled into the surgical unit.

  “It’s the name of the campaign at Larung Gar that Jiao headed,” Shan said. “I think that team became the Amban Council when they moved here.”

  Shan nodded his gratitude as he stared at the doors of the surgery unit, then reconsidered. “Guards, yes. But I want Zhu with me, in civilian clothes. I’m going back to the mountain. And you need to go kowtow to the Commissar.”

  Tan’s abrupt reaction was unexpected. Shan saw the hardening of the soldier sensing the approach of combat, but there was also an unfamiliar edge of worry. “No,” the colonel replied. “You don’t know the bastard. A cobra in an old man’s body. I’ve stayed away from him for years.”

  “You have to go. He’s the only one who can give you cover.”

  “Cover for what?”

  “For what needs to be done at the Five Claws.”

  “Cover? They won’t give us cover, they’ll just give us two six-foot holes in the ground.”

  “Then they get away with everything, the murders, the stealing, the lying. And the taking of your county.”

  Tan shook his head, then lit a cigarette and weighed Shan’s words. “I’ll make the arrangements,” he declared at last. “But I’m not going alone. The old snake only has venom enough to kill one of us.”

  * * *

  Shan had called to send Choden out on patrol in a distant sector of the township before the helicopter left for Yangkar the next afternoon. The warden of the 404th had made repeated inquiries about Ko, insisting to the doctors that his prisoner be returned to the prison infirmary. After the third such call, Tan had muttered a curse and shaken Ko’s shoulder.

  “Why?” he demanded, ignoring the doctor’s protest. “Why is the warden so angry at you?”

  Ko, clearly sedated, offered a weak, groggy smile. “He didn’t like his death chart.”

  Tan shot an accusatory glance at Shan.

  “But Ko,” Shan pointed out, “a death chart is done after death, for those conducting the rituals.”

  Ko smiled again and asked for some water. It took several minutes to get the full story from his son. First, he reported, Major Xun had arrived for a meeting with the warden and a young Public Security officer, also attended by a tall haughty-looking man who arrived in a car from the Five Claws project. Shan shot Tan a knowing glance. Ko had seen a meeting of the Amban Council. Afterward all the prisoners from Larung Gar were put into solitary confinement.

  The next day one of Ko’s barrack mates who worked as a kitchen trusty reported to Ko that he had seen the warden sneak out of the back of the administration building and try to burn a rolled-up piece of paper by a toolshed. When it wouldn’t burn he retrieved a shovel and buried it, then backed away as if frightened of it. That evening Ko switched places with one of the trusty prisoners who conducted grounds cleanup and retrieved the buried item.

  “It was like a Tibetan deity painting,” Ko explained, “with symbols I didn’t recognize, so I asked one of the old lamas. It made him uneasy too, said I mustn’t have it, that someone was playing a bad joke on the warden, because the warden was still alive.” One of the new inmates overheard and ratted me out to the warden, to get extra privileges. They dragged me out of my bed at dawn and threw me into solitary.

  “They took the chart, but not before I memorized much of it. At the top was the warden’s name in Mandarin, then it said he died on October 1 of last year.” Ko looked up at his father. “That’s the day the old lama from Larung Gar died,” he reminded Shan. It also was the day, Shan knew, that the ancient holy stones had been demolished at the Five Claws. “Then below was nothing but Tibetan, mostly images of gods and symbols, with an invocation of the Mother Protectress on the left and on the right the name Namdol. At the bottom were three inverted V’s like hills or mountains, then an arrow pointing to an image of the gate of the 404th.”

  His son had described what did indeed sound like a death chart, though death charts were done after the death of the subject to direct those who conducted the complex, often personalized rites to properly ease the transition of the departed soul. But this had not been done to comfort a soul, it had been done to torment a soul. And Ko had nearly been killed for discovering it. Questions leapt to Shan’s tongue, but then he saw Ko was losing consciousness again. His son’s eyes fluttered open. “It’s all about the goat,” he said, then passed out again.

  It was Tan’s suggestion that a more secure location be found for Ko’s recovery. The doctor had reluctantly agreed, but only when Ko was strong enough to stand after receiving more blood. Hours later Ko had unsteadily risen then saluted the doctor before shuffling around the room despite his obvious pain. Shan had taken the opportunity to ask him why he had spoken of a goat. Ko had winced as he shrugged. “I tried to speak with one of those prisoners from Larung Gar about it. I showed him the death chart, then he saw guards coming to separate us, and that’s all he said, like it was
the most important thing of all. ‘It is all about the goat.’ But there wasn’t even a goat on the chart.”

  While confirming arrangements for the helicopter, Amah Jiejie reminded the colonel that she would be away the next day, for she had agreed to go up into the mountains with Metok’s widow. “She is convinced going up to her husband’s shrine will help her deal with her grief so she and her daughter can get on with their lives. She wants to leave offerings and said she would bring food so we can have lunch afterward.” Tan reluctantly agreed to loan her one of the cars in his pool, only after warning her of the dangerous roads in the mountains.

  As they landed by the highway turnoff for Yangkar, Yara and her grandfather waited with Shan’s car. They cast nervous glances as Lieutenant Zhu climbed out, carrying two heavy backpacks, but accepted his help in loading Ko into the back and did not object when he joined them in the car. An hour later Ko was lying on a cot in the farmhouse compound, smiling weakly as Yara settled blankets over him and her grandmother pushed a cup of buttered tea into his hand. Shan had already explained that he would have to leave so he and Zhu could be in the mountains above the Five Claws before nightfall, but he made Yara promise she would bring their friend the old Tibetan doctor to examine Ko later that day.

  “Meng?” he had asked Yara.

  “She had to go to Lhasa,” Yara explained. “Seems like she has some sort of regular business there.”

  “Tell her…” Once more Shan felt inadequate when speaking of his lover and mother of his child.

  “Tell her when she’s back we’ll take Kami on a picnic up on a mountain meadow,” he said, and rushed away.

  As Shan drove, Zhu examined his maps, quickly grasping the significance of the markings that Lhakpa and Shan had added. “So many pilgrim paths,” Zhu said. “All converging on the mountain. It must be like one of those sacred mountains.”

  Shan took a moment to realize the army officer was speaking of sacred mountains in eastern China. Scores of thousands of Chinese still climbed them every year despite the government’s effort to discourage anything that hinted of religion.

  “It smells like a horse blanket,” Zhu protested after Shan parked the car, holding out the tattered coat Shan gave him. The lieutenant looked back down the long gravel road they had just traversed as if thinking of bolting back down it.

  “No doubt,” Shan said. “When I said come in civilian clothes, I didn’t mean your new wardrobe from Hong Kong. We’re going into Tibet.”

  Zhu hesitated. “We’re already in Tibet, Inspector.”

  Shan pointed to the truck, the road, and the highway visible in the distance. “That’s China,” he said, then pointed in the opposite direction toward the wild, rugged mountains above them where a line of chortens stood like defiant sentinels. “That’s Tibet.” He handed Zhu a wide-brimmed hat. “They will be watching. If you move like a soldier or carry yourself like someone from the city, they will lose themselves in the stone forests.”

  Zhu unzipped his new red nylon jacket and reluctantly tossed it in the back of Shan’s car, which they were leaving under some trees a half mile below Ice Ball Alley. He choked off a protest as Shan rubbed dirt on his heavy backpack.

  “And no guns,” Shan said. “It’s not our way.”

  “I’m a soldier,” Zhu protested. “You said I was deploying against Public Security.”

  “No guns,” Shan insisted. “And what I said was that you were to be our invisible defense against the knob patrols. They are using electronic devices.”

  Zhu grinned and hefted his pack. “Good. A field exercise,” he said, then unzipped the top compartment of his pack and set his pistol under the seat of the car.

  They pressed hard, with Shan setting a grueling pace. Zhu remained silent when Shan knelt at the first pilgrim shrine but followed Shan’s action in emptying his canteen and filling it from the pilgrim spring. At the next shrine he copied Shan in placing a stone on top of the old lichen-covered cairn. At the third he joined Shan in kneeling.

  As they walked on Zhu whispered something that caused Shan to turn. “Chaosheng,” Zhu said more loudly. “My grandmother always wanted to take me with her on her chaosheng journeys.”

  Shan hadn’t heard the Chinese word for years. It meant paying respect to the holy mountain.

  “Sometimes I went with my parents to the nearest shrine mountains for a weekend, but never with my grandmother. She would travel for a week or two at a time and sleep on top of the sacred mountain when she got there.”

  “On your next leave maybe you can go with her.”

  Something seemed to rattle in the soldier’s throat. “She died while I was in officer’s training. I couldn’t even get back for her funeral. My father took his annual leave so he could scatter her ashes on the top of her favorite mountain.”

  Shan was about to offer words of comfort when Zhu quickened his pace and pulled away. He did not speak until they reached the shrine before the final steep switchback climb up to the Talons.

  “Aren’t we supposed to have incense?” Zhu asked as he laid a rock on the final cairn. “My father would light incense when he prayed.”

  Shan searched his pockets, finding a single cone of incense. “I only have the one,” he said, and dropped it into Zhu’s hand.

  The lieutenant stared at it. “I didn’t mean that I…” he began, staring at the cone with a troubled expression, then he stuffed it in his pocket and began to climb.

  When they reached the camp at the Talons rock formation, Jaya was alone, watching over a kettle of soup. There was no sign of Lhakpa or his four-legged niece. Ko’s words still nagged Shan. It’s all about the goat.

  Jaya greeted Shan and eyed Zhu uncertainly. “You brought the army!” she accused Shan after a moment.

  “Why would you think that?” Zhu asked.

  She pointed to his military boots.

  “Maybe I got them at the Shoe Factory,” Zhu suggested.

  Jaya bent over the pack he had dropped by the fire and brushed away the grime, revealing the small insignia of the People’s Liberation Army. She glared at Zhu.

  Shan stepped between them. “Yes, Zhu is a soldier. He’s been helping me unmask Metok’s killers. He went to Hong Kong and found proof that the case against Metok was fabricated. Now he is going to help you with Public Security.”

  Jaya winced at the announcement.

  “Help distract Public Security,” Zhu explained.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Jaya shot back. “They have already arrested over a dozen herders, men and women who knew nothing about what was going on here. No one can defeat them. We just run and hide. And now they have placed those devices on the trails, like they use along the border to detect people crossing over into Nepal.”

  “Sound and motion detectors?” Zhu asked. “Excellent. Just like we use, only the army has more advanced hardware.” He lifted a small laptop computer out of his pack, then quickly set up a small collapsible solar panel and an antenna then began tapping the keyboard. “Just another field exercise,” he murmured as he watched the screen. “Confuse the enemy force. Improvise and evade. I’ve never been beaten.” After a few moments he motioned to several blinking lights on what Shan recognized as a map of the surrounding landscape. “Six devices, all within a mile of here. When they pick up sounds or repetitive movement, they will send a team to investigate.”

  “And then we will have to leave the mountain,” Jaya said, despair in her voice.

  “Except they don’t expect Shan and me,” Zhu said with a grin and dumped out the remaining contents of his pack. As Jaya saw the small devices, her eyes went round. She knelt and began examining the little black boxes, firing excited questions at Zhu.

  Neither the lieutenant nor Jaya noticed as Shan backed away. He watched the shadows around the camp, and seeing no sign of a watcher, slipped through the felt flaps in front of the rock face.

  Only the nearest of the makeshift shelves still held artifacts. Shan paused over them, studying an exquisit
ely detailed brass figure of six-armed Dorje Phurba, the deification of the ritual dagger, adorned with snakes and skulls. It was many centuries old and very rare. It had not been on the shelves when he had passed them days earlier. Several new objects, not artifacts, leaned against the rearmost shelves. Shan saw a bow and arrow, a bent scimitar, a heavy blue maul, and a sword. Gekho’s weapons had been retrieved from the valley.

  He ventured past the little cave that served as the hail chaser’s quarters, noting the dented helmet lying on a folded blanket, then onto the narrow but well-trodden trail down which the nurse had disappeared on his last visit. He gasped as he realized that the ground had fallen away and he was treading a foot-wide path that clung to the side of the mountain above a chasm several hundred feet deep. His heart pounding, he stared straight ahead and after ten uneasy minutes reached a small tree-lined flat on the other side. The track seemed to follow the scent of burning juniper and incense, and he soon found himself facing a narrow cleft in the wall of the mountain. He followed it into a high-walled cavern that was lit by sunlight leaking through a crack at the top. The chamber was lined with two long altars that seemed to point to a smaller tunnel. Incense burned in bronze pots on the altars, and in a larger brazier juniper smoldered. Someone seemed to be desperately calling the gods.

  Shan sensed a vibration in the air, and he recalled the hail chaser’s words about hearing the mountain speak, then he realized the sounds were mantras. He followed the sounds down the tunnel and emerged into a spacious chamber whose walls had been squared and plastered in an earlier age. Although the plaster was cracked and falling away in several places, he could make out the primitive, faded images of protector demons painted on them. In the dim light of several butter lamps, he made out four middle-aged Tibetan women sitting in pairs on worn carpets at the opposite side of the chamber. One woman broke off with a surprised cry as she spotted him, but the others continued the cadence of the prayers, though they watched him with alarmed expressions. He exposed his gau and put one hand on it, and they seemed to relax as he offered a respectful nod. The first pair was reciting the Bardo, the death rites. The other two were invoking the aid of the Mother Protector. One of that pair stared pointedly toward a dark patch in the far wall and, following her gaze, Shan discovered another tunnel.