Murder on the Silk Road

by Stefanie Matteson

  “What are you looking for?” asked Marsha.

  “Something to pry this open with.”

  “How about a corkscrew? I think I’ve still got the one that we used to open the bottle of wine on the train.” Shining her flashlight into her purse, she rummaged around for a second and then pulled out the corkscrew. “Voila!” she said, holding it up with a flourish.

  “You are your father’s daughter,” said Charlotte. One thing that you could always count on with Jack: he was prepared for any contingency. He was the kind of person who always carried emergency flares in the trunk of his car.

  “Trained from the get, as Dogie would say,” said Marsha. “And if that doesn’t work, we can try this,” she added, pulling out the awl she’d been using to chip the rock away from the dinosaur metatarsal.

  “Very good show,” said Charlotte.

  “Being an amateur paleontologist can come in handy.”

  “Actually, I think we’ll need both.” Taking the corkscrew, Charlotte stuck the tip into the crack at her side of the opening and directed Marsha to do the same with the awl on the other. “When I say three, we’ll both pry at the same time.” Then she counted: “One, two, three.”

  The slab of sandstone sealing the opening came away more easily than she would have thought. She had expected it to be thick, like a concrete block, but it was only about two inches deep. After setting it gently down on the floor, they shined their flashlights in the cavity.

  “Whatever was here is gone now,” said Marsha.

  It was only an empty hole, but it was a deep one—three feet or more. It reminded Charlotte of a safe-deposit box. What would one store in a hole the size of a safe-deposit box? Jewelry, but there was no jewelry at Dunhuang; cash and securities, ditto; and … documents! Documents, and, by extension, manuscripts.

  “What is it?” asked Marsha.

  “In Victor’s lecture on Cave 17, he talked about how, when the Chinese authorities learned that Wang had sold the manuscripts to Stein, they demanded that he ship the remaining manuscripts to Beijing. But he distrusted them, and only handed over some of the remaining manuscripts.”

  “Rightfully so,” said Marsha. “Few of those manuscripts ever made it to Beijing. They were pilfered by petty bureaucrats along the way.”

  “According to Victor, the monk sold some of the remaining manuscripts to Stein on his next expedition. But he intimated that some of the manuscripts in Wang’s nest egg may still be hidden away in the caves.”

  “And you think they might have been hidden here!” said Marsha. Her glance shifted to the empty cavity.

  “Wang might have drawn up the list of hexagrams as a guide to where he had hidden the manuscripts he’d held back. He might have been afraid of forgetting which caves he had hidden them in. With four hundred and ninety-two caves, that wouldn’t be hard to do.”

  “Then he commissioned the paintings to go with the list of hiding places.”

  “The only trouble is, I can’t figure out why a Buddhist monk would use hexagrams from the I Ching as the key to his list. It seems more likely that he would have used Buddhist scriptures.”

  “He wasn’t a Buddhist monk; he was a Taoist monk, and he made his living telling fortunes from the I Ching.”

  Charlotte raised an eyebrow.

  “Fortune-telling was traditionally a Taoist enterprise,” Marsha explained. “Taoist fortune tellers were in big demand because the fortune-telling trade in this area had been in the hands of the Mongolians for centuries, and the Chinese had nowhere to go for native Chinese fortunes.”

  Charlotte sat down on the edge of the dais, and leaned her head back against the shin of one of the fierce-faced guardian-warrior statues. “Well, I’ll be hot-damned, to use one of Dogie’s expressions.”

  “Hot-damned and halfway to hell,” Marsha extrapolated.

  “The other question is, If there were manuscripts in this cubbyhole, where are they now? I would bet that whoever has them is Peter’s murderer.” It was the race for the plunder of Central Asia all over again.

  “And maybe Larry’s as well,” added Marsha.

  “What do you say to checking out the other caves on the list? I’d like to see if they all have cubbyholes. And if they do, if they’re all empty. Maybe we can find one that hasn’t been opened up yet. Did Emily give you the keys to all of the caves?”

  “I think so,” Marsha said. Removing the key ring from her pocket, she examined the numbers on the keys. “Each key opens a block of caves. Yes,” she said finally, “it looks like they’re all here.”

  After replacing the slab blocking the hole, they headed across the cliff face for the first cave on the list, which was Cave 114.

  “Are these manuscripts very valuable?” Charlotte asked as they made their way along a narrow walkway five stories up to the next cave, which was located about fifty feet to the south and two levels down. “Like, are we talking thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or what?”

  “Depends on what it is. The majority of the Dunhuang manuscripts are copies of Buddhist sutras, which are pretty common. They’re surprisingly inexpensive because there are so many of them. A handwritten Tang sutra might be worth, say, six or seven thousand dollars.”

  “But there must be some that are worth more.”

  “Of course, Look at the Diamond Sutra, the earliest printed book. It’s unique. I couldn’t even begin to say what it would be worth, but it must be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It’s not inconceivable that Wang’s nest egg could contain something equally valuable.”

  “And how would someone dispose of them?”

  “It wouldn’t be hard. As I said, most of the manuscripts that Wang sent to Beijing were pilfered along the way, and others were given away to local officials. Then there are the manuscripts that Wang sold to the Russians and the Japanese. No one knows what happened to the manuscripts that Wang sold to the Japanese. They haven’t been seen since World War Two.”

  “Then what you’re saying is that Peter, or his confederate, could claim that the manuscripts had come from one of these mysterious sources.”

  “Yes. He could claim that he’d bought them from a small antiquities dealer who didn’t recognize their true worth. As a matter of fact, Dunhuang manuscripts come up for sale pretty regularly in dealers’ catalogues. Hong Kong dealers, usually. But they could turn up anywhere.”

  “Victor said one had turned up in a Finnish rare-book dealer’s catalogue just last year,” said Charlotte. “And who buys them, museums?”

  “Sometimes, although museums are reluctant to buy manuscripts that don’t have a verifiable provenance. The major market is private collectors. There’s a big market for early Chinese manuscripts in Japan and Taiwan. I’ve even been told the Shah of Iran was a big collector of early Chinese manuscripts.”

  Charlotte suddenly remembered Larry’s interest in Asian art, and wondered if it extended to early Chinese manuscripts. And if so, if he could have been involved in the manuscript theft. For some reason, she thought of his Oriental rugs: roll the manuscripts up in them, and ship them home.

  But on closer examination, the idea of Larry as an art smuggler struck her as absurd. If he had wanted early Chinese manuscripts, he could simply have bought them, just as he bought everything else.

  After crossing the cliff face on a series of verandas, and descending several levels, they came to the cave they were looking for, which was just north of the Cave of Unequaled Height. Pulling out her ring of keys, Marsha picked out the correct one, and unlocked the door.

  “It feels good, doesn’t it?” said Marsha as they entered.

  The coolness of the cave was a welcome relief from the sweltering heat outside. Charlotte could now see why the caves were closed at midday.

  The layout was identical to Cave 323: an antechamber with a narrow doorway leading to an inner chamber. Here they were looking for a picture of a fox crossing the ice, which the I Ching described as a symbol for cauti
on.

  This time it took only a minute to find the painting. Like the other one, it was located behind the central pillar, near the ground. Again there was the outline of a cubbyhole in the plaster, and again they used the corkscrew and awl to pry out the slab that sealed the opening.

  “Dammit,” said Marsha, as the slab came away, and her flashlight revealed the empty interior. Replacing the slab, they headed out for the second cave on the list. “Onward with our treasure hunt,” said Marsha.

  The second cave yielded the same result, as did the third, fourth, and sixth. But with the seventh cave, they got lucky. There was a cubbyhole in the wall under the painting—in this case, a painting of a goat butting against a hedge, the symbol for being stuck in a predicament—but it hadn’t been opened.

  Taking out her awl, Marsha prepared to start prying it open.

  “No,” said Charlotte, laying a restraining hand on her arm. “If the murderer was working in the fifth cave two nights ago, I would guess that he was working in the sixth cave last night, and that he’ll be working in this cave tonight.” It suddenly struck her that Peter’s murderer had probably been removing manuscripts from the sixth cave on the list at about the same time that someone else had been returning the stolen temple banner to the secret library. How odd, she thought—two thieves passing in the night.

  “Do you want to come back tonight?” asked Marsha.

  “You bet I do,” she replied.

  Darkness came late in Dunhuang: the sun didn’t set until after ten. Once it was completely dark, Charlotte and Marsha took up their observation posts. They had talked about stationing themselves on the cliff face, but finally decided that they would have a better view from the base of the cliff. Although the moon hadn’t yet risen, they didn’t want to risk being spotted, and whoever was removing the manuscripts from the caves would have to climb up the cliff to the cave and come back down, anyway. Working on the assumption that whoever they were looking for would be coming from the direction of the guest house, they picked a spot about twenty yards to the south of the cave, at the southern end of the cave complex. As their observation post they chose a ledge on the bank of the irrigation channel that ran along the base of the cliff. The spot was concealed from sight not only by the bank of the channel, but also by the twisted bases of a small clump of poplars. It was very still. The only sounds were the occasional croak of a frog and the hoot of an owl. Occasionally the wind would rise, setting the wind chimes tinkling and rustling the branches of the poplars and willows.

  It was an ideal location, except for the comfort factor. After fifteen minutes of crouching in the mud, they were ready to start looking for another spot. They were also getting cold. Although the daytime temperature here was in the nineties or above, it dropped quickly when the sun set, and their wet feet made it seem colder than it was. They were discussing the possibility of moving when Charlotte heard a footfall on the plank bridge spanning the irrigation channel to the north. Turning to Marsha, she raised a finger to her lips and nodded in the direction of the sound. At first they couldn’t see anything. But as their eyes adjusted, they could make out the silhouette of a man of medium height and build against the whitewashed surfaces of the stairways and verandas. He was carrying a dark-colored laundry bag. After stopping briefly at another cave—it looked like Cave 291, the third cave on Wang’s list—he proceeded to Cave 294, a few caves away. He paused for a second to unlock the door—they could see the beam of his flashlight play fleetingly on the lock—and then slipped inside.

  “Did you get to see who it was?” whispered Marsha.

  Charlotte shook her head. Their decision to set up their observation post to the south of the cave had been a bad one. The face of their quarry had always been turned in the other direction.

  “I didn’t either. Maybe we’ll be able to see him when he comes out.”

  Charlotte figured it would take him about half an hour to open up the cubbyhole and close it again. It had taken her and Marsha only ten or fifteen minutes in Cave 323, but there the seal had already been broken.

  They waited patiently, no longer cold now that their vigil had yielded results. After a few more minutes, Charlotte checked her watch. Twenty-five minutes had elapsed. She was just changing her position to get more comfortable when she felt the nudge of Marsha’s elbow in her ribs.

  “Look,” she whispered.

  The figure had emerged from the cave, but instead of going back the way he had come, he headed down the cliff on the series of staircases and verandas to the north of the cave.

  Turning to Charlotte, Marsha mouthed the words, Where’s he going?

  Charlotte shrugged.

  Five minutes later, he reached the base of the cliff about twenty yards to their north. Now that he was closer, they could see that his laundry bag was heavy with the weight of its contents.

  “The manuscripts,” said Charlotte.

  As they watched, he disappeared into the row of poplars lining the avenue at the base of the cliff. A few seconds later, they spotted him crossing another bridge over the irrigation channel to their north.

  “Come on,” said Charlotte.

  Leading the way, Charlotte followed the footpath that ran along the bank of the irrigation channel. A few minutes later, they had reached the bridge, where they turned right onto a dusty dirt lane.

  Though they couldn’t see their quarry, they assumed that he must have taken this lane, which wound through a settlement of small peasant houses of sun-dried brick hidden away among the old orchards, each with a plot of cabbages, a farmyard with a chicken coop and a pigpen, and a grape trellis covering a courtyard. At the edge of the oasis, the lane ran into a bridge that crossed the stream bed, and then joined the highway that led into Dunhuang town. But the highway was empty. For a moment, they thought they had lost their man. Had he entered one of the peasant houses? they wondered.

  But then they spotted him.

  As they looked on from the cover of the trees, he clambered up the terraces on the other side of the road. Here, he paused for a moment to take out his flashlight before setting out past the series of reliquary stupas overlooking the road toward the base of the Mountain of the Three Dangers.

  “He’s going out into the desert!” whispered Marsha.

  Charlotte was really baffled now. Who was this person—they still hadn’t gotten a look at his face—what did he have in his laundry bag, and where the hell was he going? “Come on,” she whispered, waving her arm. “We’re going to see what this guy is up to.”

  Marsha looked at her with a skeptical expression, but she followed as Charlotte set out toward the open desert.

  Once they got used to it, it wasn’t difficult to find their way. Though there wasn’t a moon, the starlight alone provided enough illumination. It seemed to infuse the air with a glowing transparency that turned the dull brown plain to shining silver and left little shadow puddles under every stone.

  The flashlight was easy to follow, a pinprick of light in the clear desert air. After a few minutes, their quarry’s destination became clear. “He’s heading toward Larry’s camp!” said Charlotte, as he came to the track that led out to the camp, and then turned left.

  “Either there or the dinosaur quarry,” said Marsha.

  But they were both wrong. Leaving the track at the spot where the pilgrims’ path broke off, he wound his way up the mountain trail toward the stupa that marked the spot where Lo-tsun had seen his vision of a thousand Buddhas in a cloud of glory. At the stupa, the light disappeared.

  “What do you think he’s doing?” asked Marsha. They had paused to wait where they were. They didn’t want to get too close.

  “The stupas are memorials to important monks, right?” asked Charlotte.

  Marsha nodded.

  “Question: Are they just giant memorial stones, or are they burial chambers for the monks? What I’m asking is, is there a chamber inside the stupa where the monk was buried?”

  “Of course!” said Marsha. �
��That’s where he went. Not a burial chamber, but a reliquary chamber. For objects associated with the monk and related to his teachings, and so on. Usually there’s a statue of the monk, too.”

  “How big is the chamber?”

  “Small. But big enough to stand up in. About like the secret library. In fact, some scholars think the secret library was a reliquary chamber that was later turned into a storage room for manuscripts.”

  “I think we’ve found where the murderer is storing the manuscripts or art objects or whatever it is that he’s been removing from the cubbyholes.”

  “I think that’s a very good bet.”

  The stupa’s proximity to Larry’s camp gave Charlotte a thought. It may have been absurd to think of Larry as an art smuggler, but it wasn’t at all absurd to think of him as an innocent bystander. Seeing a light in the middle of the night, he wanders over to investigate. The murderer concocts some explanation, and then sneaks back to his camp later on to kill him. It was a theory, anyway—the only one so far that explained both deaths.

  Spreading out their sweaters on the gravel, they sat down and waited. They said little. They didn’t want to risk being overheard, but it was more than that: it was as if the big empty spaces demanded silence. Suddenly Charlotte understood those gaping holes in Bert’s conversation.

  Lying back, she was amazed at how close the stars looked. They didn’t twinkle in the sky like distant lights, as the stars at home did, but hung low like glowing orbs that you could almost reach out and touch. Instead of a murky gray blotch, the Milky Way was a shower of phosphorescent pinpricks of light that lit up the heavens like a swath of daisies in a field of green.

  It seemed like hours before the figure emerged from the stupa, though it was only forty-five minutes. As they watched, he made his way by flashlight back down the winding path, and then headed back along the track to the guest house. When he came to the pair of stupas framing the Cave of Unequaled Height, about halfway back to the oasis, he switched off his flashlight.

  They waited until he had reached the guest house, and then continued their trek up to the stupa—sans flashlights, to avoid being seen. Ten minutes later, they had reached their destination.