Yeshe moved beside him now, as if willing himself to take as much risk as Shan.
"They didn't start reconstruction at Khartok until after you left," Shan pointed out. "The chandzoe, he treated you like his hero. Like he owed you. As if Khartok received favors after you left."
"I promised my mother I would be a monk," Yeshe said to the stars. "I was the oldest son. It was the tradition for Tibetan families, until Beijing came. The oldest son would have the honor of serving in a gompa. But I wasn't a good monk. The abbot said I had to reduce my ego. He gave me work in the villages, to see the suffering of the people. Twice a week I drove a truck to bring sick children to the gompa."
A nighthawk called out on the slope behind them.
"He was just lying there, by the road. I thought I could save him. I thought I should push him over to get the pebbles out so he could breathe. I tried. But he was already dead."
"You mean you discovered the body of the Director of Religious Affairs."
"I never understood why he was up there all alone," Yeshe whispered.
"And Dilgo of your gompa was executed for it." Shan remembered the missing sheets from the files. Witness statements.
"When I turned him over it was there. I recognized it immediately."
"You mean the rosary belonging to Dilgo?"
Yeshe didn't respond.
"So you were a witness against him."
"I told the truth. I found a dead Chinese. He had Dilgo's rosary under him."
It was such a perfect parable. Antisocial cultist condemned by the testimony of a member of the new society, who happened to belong to his own gompa. Proof of how evil the old order was and how virtuous the new could be. "They sent you to the university as your reward."
"How could I refuse? How often does a monk get offered university? How often does any Tibetan get offered university? They said it wasn't a reward. They said my actions had simply demonstrated that I belonged in university, that I was a leader who should have been there all along."
"Who gave it to you?"
"Prosecutor Jao. Religious Affairs. Public Security. They all signed the paper."
It meant nothing about who killed Jao, or who might be trying to manipulate Yeshe again. Granting such rewards was all in the course of business in administering Chinese justice. Someone might have used Yeshe, knowing he had a pattern of driving on the route. Or his involvement might have been entirely coincidental. What mattered was that Yeshe had proved himself susceptible, and someone else was seeking to influence him in the same manner now. Not Zhong. Warden Zhong was just a conduit, just cooperating to secure Yeshe's labor for another year.
"I said it first," Yeshe offered, as if it was an urgent afterthought.
"First?"
"I gave the statement long before they offered the university to me."
"I know."
"They said it was for being a good citizen." He was whispering again. "Only thing is," he added forlornly, "I don't know what it means anymore- to be a good citizen."
As they watched the stars, the pain seemed to drift out of their silence.
"After we saw Religious Affairs," Yeshe said, "after Miss Taring said artifacts were still being discovered and put in the museums, I wondered. What if someone had found a second rosary like Dilgo's? What if I had lied and didn't know it?"
Shan put his hand on Yeshe's arm and eased him back from the edge of the cliff. "Then you need to find out."
"Why?"
"For Dilgo."
They sat on a boulder and let the silence wash over them again.
"Do you think it's true what they say?" Yeshe asked.
"What is true?"
"That Jao's ghost is staying here, seeking vengeance."
"I don't know." Shan looked out into the night. "If my soul were set adrift," he said slowly, "I'd never look back."
They spoke no more. Shan had no idea how long they sat. It could have been ten minutes, or thirty. A shooting star arced across the sky. Then, just as abruptly, there was a loud sound, a wrenching, haunting half-moan, half-scream like he had never heard before. It came from below them, and seemed to pierce the skin around his spine. It was not the sound of a human.
Suddenly there were three gunshots, then dead silence.
Chapter Ten
The two soldiers came for him as in a dream, seizing him as he slept in the dark, dragging him out of his bunk and putting on manacles. They did not speak as they shoved him into the car. They did not answer his questions, except to slap him viciously after the third one. Shan willed his body upright, fighting the pain, reminding himself what to look for. They were not Public Security, but infantry. Soldiers had more rules to follow. He was in a staff car, not a truck. They would not shoot him in a car. They were going out into the valley, not into the mountains where disposals were made. He leaned against the window, letting the glass hold the weight of his head, and watched where they were taking him.
It was the crossroads below the Dragon Claws, where Colonel Tan stood silhouetted against a dull gray sky. The two escorts dragged him toward Tan, released his wrists and moved back to the car, where they stood and lit cigarettes. One man muttered something. The other laughed.
"He said you would do this," Tan said. "Zhong said you would mock me. Try to use me."
"You'll have to be more specific," Shan muttered through a cloud of pain. "I only had three hours' sleep."
"Stirring up the separatists. Conspiring to breach public security. Leading soldiers into ambush."
Shan became aware of a dull rasping sound. Beyond Tan's car he saw a familiar gray truck. The rear hatch door was open, revealing the two booted feet of a sleeping figure.
"Is that what Sergeant Feng told you?" Shan's jaw felt numb. "That he was ambushed?" He touched his lip. His fingers came away smeared with blood.
"He had orders to call when he returned last night. Woke me up. Completely frantic. Asked for reinforcements. Says to give you to Public Security." Tan glanced to the north. A column of trucks was approaching.
"Perhaps he didn't tell you how he shot one of the tires," Shan said. "Or how he climbed onto the roof of the truck and wouldn't come down? Or that I had to drive back because he was too hysterical?"
The convoy overtook them. Shan recognized it at once, although there were twice as many trucks as usual. The extras were filled with knobs. He watched in despair. They would go to the South Claw. The knobs would set up their machine guns. The prisoners would walk up the slope and sit, working their makeshift rosaries, waiting.
As the dust of the column settled Shan saw that two of the trucks had stopped. A dozen bone-hard commandos leapt from one truck and formed two lines at the rear of the second. A Tibetan prisoner was thrown out of the shadows and landed between the lines, groaning in pain. Others began to climb out. Shan realized Tan was not looking at the prisoners, but at him.
The prisoners, fifteen in all, were marched twenty feet into the heather and ordered to form a line. Two knob officers appeared from behind the truck with submachine guns and took up positions on the road, facing the monks.
"No!" Shan moaned. "You can't-"
"I have the authority," Tan said with a chill. "Their strike is an act of treason."
Shan stumbled forward. It was just another of his nightmares, he told himself. He would wake up any moment in his bunk. He fell to his knee. A piece of gravel painfully pierced his skin. He was awake. "They did nothing," he groaned.
"You will stop your masquerade. I will have a prosecutor's report on the murderer Sungpo. In one week."
The prisoners began a mantra. They fixed their eyes over the heads of the executioners, staring toward the mountains.
Tan still did not move his gaze from Shan.
Shan's tongue seemed unable to move. He fought a rising nausea. "I will not help to kill an innocent man," he said in a cracking voice. He shook his head, hard, to clear the pain, and looked up at Tan with new strength. "If that is what you want, I request to join thes
e prisoners."
Tan did not reply.
The officers cocked their weapons. Shan sprang forward. Someone grabbed him from behind and held him as they fired. The roar of the weapons echoed down the valley.
When the smoke cleared, three of the prisoners were on their knees, sobbing. The others were still staring into the distance, chanting their mantra.
The knobs had used blanks.
"You breached security at the South Claw!" Tan barked. "Who authorized you to enter a restricted zone?"
Shan met Tan's gaze now. "The murder scene is now off-limits to your murder investigator?"
"You said you were going to the monastery of Sungpo." Tan narrowed his eyes. "A prosecutor's report against the accused. Do you understand me?"
"Cruelty is never to be understood. It is to be endured." Shan closed his eyes. He felt something new rising. Anger. "Li Aidang would doubtless like my notes. I am going to tell one of these Public Security officers I need to speak to Li. Then I am going to climb into this truck"- he indicated the prisoners' vehicle-"and return to my work unit."
Tan lit one of his American cigarettes and moved silently around Feng's vehicle. He paused at the right rear, where the hubcap was missing and a mismatched tire was on the wheel. "Tell me about it," he growled as he returned to Shan.
Shan watched the prisoners being loaded as he spoke. "I was on the ridge, trying to understand what happened that night. Perhaps the hour was important, the hour he was killed. I wanted to know. There was a strange sound, like a large animal, then shots from the truck. I ran down. Sergeant Feng said there was a demon."
"Your demon Tamdin," Tan said tersely.
"He was hysterical. He said the demon was close, that he heard it speak. I was afraid for him. I asked for his gun."
Tan sneered. "And just like that, Sergeant Feng surrendered it to you."
"I returned it to him later, at the barracks."
"I don't believe you."
Shan fumbled in his pockets. "I kept the remaining bullets, to be safe." He dropped five cartridges into Tan's hand.
Tan stared at the bullets so long his cigarette burned to his fingers. He flinched and angrily threw the butt to the ground, then studied the dust of the convoy. "Everything's going to hell," he muttered, so low Shan was not certain he had heard correctly.
When he looked up there something new in his eyes, something Shan had not seen before. The barest glimpse of uncertainty. "It's all about the same thing, isn't it? The 404th strike and the trial of Sungpo. There's going to be a bloodbath and I am powerless to stop it."
Shan looked at him in surprise. "Do you want to stop it? Do you have the will to stop it?"
"What do you think I-" Tan began, but stopped as he looked down at the bullets. "Feng was scared. He and I served together for many years. He came to Lhadrung because I was here. I never saw him scared." Tan clenched his hand around the bullets and looked up. "Jao understood. In criticism sessions he used to say my only mistake was to think the old causes would have the same old effects in Tibet."
"Old causes have not done well here."
Tan gazed at the line of prisoners and sighed. "I am going to tell Zhong to allow them to be fed. To let the Buddhist charity in to feed them once a day."
Shan looked at him in disbelief, then slowly nodded. "It would be the right thing to do."
"Americans are coming," Tan said absently, then looked back at Shan. "You're bleeding."
Shan wiped the blood from his lip again. "It's nothing."
Tan extended a handkerchief.
Shan looked at it incredulously.
"I never told them to hit you."
Shan accepted it and held it to his lip, watching as Sergeant Feng appeared at the rear of the truck, stretching and yawning. Catching sight of Tan, Feng leaned back as if to hide, then straightened and solemnly marched to the colonel.
He looked awkwardly from Shan to Tan. "Request reassignment sir," he said, dropping his eyes to his boots.
"On what grounds?" Tan asked gruffly.
"On the grounds that I'm an old fool. I failed to remain vigilant in my duty. Sir."
"Comrade Shan," Tan said, "did Sergeant Feng lose vigilance at anytime last night?"
"No, Colonel," Shan observed. "His only fault perhaps was being too vigilant."
Tan began to return the bullets to Feng, then reconsidered and handed the bullets to Shan, who handed them to Feng. "Return to duty, Sergeant," Tan ordered.
Sergeant Feng accepted the bullets sheepishly. "Should've known," he muttered. "Can't shoot a demon." He saluted the colonel and wheeled about.
Tan looked again at the dust of the convoy. "There's too little time."
"Then help me. There's too much to do. I have to try to speak to Sungpo again. But I also have to find Jao's driver. Help me. He's the key to everything."
***
"Not a bowl touched. Not a kernel," the guard announced as Shan entered the cell block. There was a strange pride in his voice, as though his prisoner's starvation was a personal victory of some kind. "Nothing but tea."
Sungpo did not seem to have moved since Shan had seen him three days earlier. He sat erect and alert, wearing his thousand-mile stare.
"My assistant," Shan said, looking around the cellhouse. "I thought he would be here."
"He's with the other one."
"You have a new prisoner?"
The man shook his head. "Climbed the fence. Lucky bastard. Ten minutes earlier, ten minutes later, the perimeter patrol would have shot him down."
"An escapee?"
"No. That's the joke. He was trying to get in. Had to be taught that citizens may not freely enter military installations."
Shan found Yeshe in the building next door. He was wringing out a towel in a basin of blood-tinged water. Shan watched for a moment, noticing something different in Yeshe's face. He looked calmer somehow. It wasn't peace of mind he had found, but maybe a new deliberation.
Shan followed Yeshe into the interrogation room. At first he did not recognize the figure sitting on the table. One side of his face looked like a melon that had fallen off a speeding truck.
"Plenty hot good, eh?" the man said, raising one of his big pawlike hands in greeting. "He sent for me. I found him."
It was Jigme.
"What do you mean he sent for you?"
"You came, didn't you?"
"How could you be here so soon? You drove?"
His battered eyes somehow were able to twinkle. "I fly through the air. Like the old ones. The spell of the arrow."
"I've heard of it," Shan said. "I also remember seeing logging trucks on the road out of your valley."
Jigme tried to laugh but the sound emerged as a hoarse, hacking cough.
Shan and Yeshe pulled him to his feet and, one at each shoulder, half dragged, half carried him out of the building. They were stopped on the stairs by a furious officer.
"These prisoners belong to Public Security!" the officer roared.
"This man is part of my investigation," Shan said matter-of-factly and turned his back on the officer. Once inside the cell block, Jigme pulled himself away and straightened his clothing. He limped down the corridor alone and dropped to his knees with a cry of delight as he reached the last cell.
The guard at the cell door rose in protest. Shan cut him off with a gesture to open the cell.
Sungpo acknowledged Jigme with a nod which lit Jigme's bruised face. The gompa orphan closed the door behind him and surveyed the untouched bowls of rice. "Everything okay now," he said with a grateful smile to Shan.
"We need to speak with him."
Jigme seemed to think Shan had made an excellent joke. "Sure," he grinned. "Two years, one month, and eighteen days."
"He doesn't have that long."
Jigme soured and moved back to Sungpo with one of the bowls of rice. With small, affectionate strokes of his hand he began brushing the straw off Sungpo's robe.
"We have to speak with him," Shan repeated.<
br />
"You think he's scared to throw off a face?" Jigme shouted, suddenly defiant. "You people from the north, you're a fly on his shoulder." Shan saw a tear rolling down Jigme's cheek as he spoke. "He's a great man. A living Buddha. He'll die easy, no bother. He'll throw off a face and laugh at all of us in the next life."
***
They sat in an unused stall at the rear of the market and watched the sorcerer's shop. No one entered, no one exited. The market began to fill with vendors' carts piled high with spring greens, the early leaves of mustard and other plants that elsewhere on the planet would have been considered weeds.
Feng, still nervous from the night before, rubbed his palm over the handle of his pistol.
"I need fifty fen," Shan said.
"Who doesn't?" Feng cracked.
"For food. You have expense money."
"Not hungry."
"We had no breakfast. You did."
The announcement seemed to pain Feng, and Shan wondered if he was still stinging from the discovery of his nickname. Feng's eyes moved back and forth from Shan to Yeshe. "One of you stays here."
Yeshe, taking the cue, leaned back against the wall as though settling in.
Shan extended his hand and took the money.
Feng made a vague gesture toward the stalls in front of them. "Five minutes."
Shan lingered at a vendor selling writing supplies, then found a woman selling momos. He bought two for Yeshe, then moved to the first stall and quickly bought two sheets of rice paper, a writing brush, and a small ink stick.
"The first charm was requested a few days ago," a voice from behind suddenly declared.
Shan began to turn. An elbow pushed into his back. "Don't look," the man said.
Shan recognized the voice. It was the purba with the scarred face. He saw tattered felt boots behind him. The man was dressed as a herder.
"They're always looking for a chance," the purba said over Shan's shoulder. "Witches like Khorda, he'll take their money. They have steady money. Business is always good for their kind."
"I don't understand."
"This one, she works in a bookstore. Asked for the Tamdin charms about a week ago. Yesterday she asked for one against dogbite."
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