The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

"Did you see a monk that night?"

  "The statement says so."

  The words seem to deflate Feng for a moment. Then anger grew on his face. "You damned pup!" he barked. "Answer him straight!"

  "Were you on duty that night, Private Meng?" Shan asked. "You were not on the roster."

  The soldier began to fidget with his headphones. "Sometimes we switch."

  Feng's hand came out of nowhere, slapping the soldier across the mouth. "The inspector asked you a question."

  Shan looked at Feng in surprise. The inspector.

  Meng looked at Feng vacantly, as if he were used to being hit.

  "Did you see a monk that night?" Shan asked again.

  "I think because I'm a witness for the trial I am not supposed to speak with anyone."

  Anger rose again on Feng's face, then quickly faded, though not before the soldier had seen it and stepped further back. "It's political," he muttered, and bolted away. Feng stared after him, looking no longer angry, but hurt.

  ***

  The sergeant drove moodily, roaring through the gears, barely braking at the crossroads, until they began the long climb up the North Claw toward the American mine.

  "Here," he mumbled finally, pulling a cellophane bag from his pocket. "Pumpkin seeds." He handed the bag to Shan. "Good ones, not the moldy shit from the market. Salted. Get them at the commissary."

  They chewed the seeds slowly and silently, like two old men on a Beijing park bench. Before long Feng began leaning forward, watching the shoulder of the road.

  "Chang said it would save an hour," Feng offered as he swung onto a rutted track that seemed little more than a goat path. "Back in time for evening mess this way."

  In five minutes they were following the track toward the crest of a sharp ridge. To the right, barely three feet from their tires, the path fell away over a nearly perpendicular cliff face, ending in a tumble of rocks several hundred feet below.

  "How could this reach the Americans?" Yeshe asked nervously. "We'd have to cross this chasm."

  "Take a nap," Feng grumbled. "Save your energy for all that work back at the 404th."

  "What do you mean?" Yeshe asked, alarm in his voice.

  "Like you asked, I talked to the warden's secretary. She said no one is doing the computer work. Warden said just stack it up, someone's coming in two weeks."

  "It could be someone else," Yeshe protested.

  Feng shook his head. "She asked one of the administrative officers. Said the warden's Tibetan pup was coming back."

  There was a tiny moan from the back. Shan turned to find Yeshe nearly doubled over, his head in his hands. With pain, Shan turned away. He had already told Yeshe. It was time for him to decide who he was.

  Suddenly Shan held up his hand. "There-" he said as Sergeant Feng slowed down, pointing to a set of fresh tire tracks that veered from the path and disappeared over the crest of the ridge.

  "So we're not the only ones who use the shortcut," Feng said with a tone of vindication.

  Lots of people, Shan thought- like Americans searching for old shrines.

  Shan opened the door and carefully eased around the truck, mindful of the sheer dropoff. He picked a stem of heather from the tire tracks and handed it to Feng. "Smell it. This was crushed not even an hour ago."

  "So?"

  "So I'm going to follow this fresh trail. Your road curves around that rock formation to the crest. I'll meet you on the other side."

  Feng frowned but began to inch the truck forward.

  Moving up the slope, Shan tried to piece together the geography. The skull cave was less than a mile away. Was this the Americans' back door to the skull cave? Had Fowler and Kincaid been so foolish as to return to the shrine? As he neared the top he heard a peculiar sound. Like bells, he thought. No, drums. A few feet further he realized it was rock and roll music. As he reached the crest he crouched and dropped back. There was a truck, but it was not the Americans'. It was bright red.

  Calming himself, he edged his head above the rocks. It was the big Land Rover that Hu had been driving, but the figure at the wheel, tapping in time to the music, was too tall to be Hu.

  It made no sense to park there. There was no one else to be seen, no one to wait for. There was not even much landscape to survey, for the rock outcropping cut off much of the view down the ridge.

  Slowly, unconsciously, Shan's curiosity forced him to rise. There were fresh mounds of dirt behind the rear wheels, and a huge five-foot boulder in front of the vehicle, balanced precariously close to the lip of a bank that dropped sharply down to the road. Suddenly the man inside straightened and looked intently at the track below. Their own truck was coming into view. The figure inside the Land Rover raised his fist as though in victory and gunned the motor.

  "No!" Shan screamed, and ran toward the truck. Its wheels were spinning, throwing more dirt into the air. The boulder was beginning to move.

  He launched himself through the cloud of dust, pounding violently on the driver's window. The man turned and stared dumbly. It was Lieutenant Chang.

  Shan could see him reaching for the gear shift. The truck seemed to ease back as Chang fumbled with the controls, then lurched forward. In one violent heave the boulder and the truck both flew over the bank.

  As if in slow motion Shan watched Feng stop, then jump out of their truck with Yeshe just as the boulder hurled past them and disappeared over the edge. The Land Rover, airborne, struck the bank on its side and began to roll down the precipitous slope, glass popping, metal groaning, its wheels still whirling. It hit the road in the middle of a roll and landed on the driver's side in a cloud of dust, with the front half hanging over the chasm.

  Shan, breathless, reached the road just as an arm rose through the shattered passenger's window. Chang, his forehead smeared with blood, appeared in the window and began to pull himself up. The music was still playing.

  Lieutenant Chang stopped moving and shouted for Feng, who stood ten feet away. As he did so there was a groan of metal and something gave way. Chang screamed as the vehicle sank another foot over the edge and stopped.

  Anger grew on Chang's face. "Sergeant!" he bellowed. "Get me-"

  He never finished. The Land Rover abruptly tipped and disappeared from view. They could still hear the music as it fell.

  ***

  Not a word was spoken as they backtracked down the ridge and onto the main road. Sergeant Feng's face was clouded with confusion. His hand shook on the wheel. Try as he might, Shan knew, in the end Sergeant Feng would not be able to avoid the truth. Chang had been trying to kill him, too.

  As they finally cleared the ridge above the boron mine, Shan signaled for Feng to stop. There was a shrine he had not seen on their first visit, on a ledge three hundred feet above the valley floor. Prayer flags were fluttering around a cairn of rocks. Some were just bits of colored cloth. Others were the huge banners painted with prayers that the Tibetans called horse flags.

  "I want to know about that shrine," he said to Yeshe and Feng as they parked the truck. "Find a way up there. See if you can tell who built it, and where they're coming from."

  Yeshe cocked his head toward the shrine with an intense interest and began moving toward it without looking back. Feng contemplated Shan with a sour look, then shrugged, checked the ammunition in his pistol, and jogged toward Yeshe.

  The mine office was nearly empty as Shan entered. The woman who served tea was asleep on a stool, leaning against the wall. Two men in muddy work clothes huddled over the large table. One offered a nod of acknowledgment as Shan approached. It was Luntok, the ragyapa engineer. The red door at the rear was closed again. There were voices behind it, and the low whir of electronic equipment.

  The two men were taking measurements on one of the colorful charts he had seen before. It had a blue rectangle in the center, below rows of smaller blue-green rectangles. Suddenly Shan recognized the images.

  "It's the ponds, isn't it? I have never seen such a map," he marveled. "Do you make the
m here?"

  Luntok looked up with a grin. "Better than a map. A photograph. From the sky. From a satellite."

  Shan stared dumbly. It was not that satellite photography was beyond his imagination; it was just beyond his expectations. Tibet truly existed in many different centuries at once.

  "We have to know about snow melt," Luntok explained. "About river flows. About avalanches above us. About road conditions when shipments go out. Without these, we would need survey crews in the mountains every week."

  Luntok pointed out the mine's lakes, the buildings of the camp, and a cluster of geometric shapes at the far left that was the outskirts of Lhadrung town. He outlined with his finger the big dike at the head of the Dragon Throat, then picked up the map and pointed to a second, earlier photo. "Here it is two weeks ago, just before construction was completed." Shan saw the spots of color that must have been pieces of equipment near the center of the brown dike.

  "But how do you obtain these?"

  "There is an American satellite and a French satellite. We have subscriptions. The surface of the earth is divided into sections, in a catalog. We can order up a print by section number. It gets transmitted to our console," he said, pointing his thumb toward the red door.

  "But the army-" Shan began.

  "There is a license," Luntok explained patiently. "Everything is legal."

  A license for a Western venture to operate equipment that could survey troop movements, air exercises, and army installations as easily as it could survey snow accumulations. The Americans had worked a miracle, to obtain such a permit in Tibet.

  Shan found the road leading to the mine, visible as a tiny gray line that wandered in and out of the shadows cast by the peaks. He found the road from the north, to Saskya gompa, and finally the 404th worksite. The new bridge was a narrow hyphen that intersected the serpentine grayness of the Dragon's Throat.

  Shan sat beside Luntok. "I've been to the ragyapa village," he announced. The man beside Luntok tensed, and glanced at Luntok, who kept studying the maps without reacting. The man grabbed his hat and stepped out of the building.

  "I spoke with Merak," Shan said. "Do you know Merak?"

  "It is a small community," Luntok observed tersely.

  "It must be difficult."

  "There are quotas for us now. I was allowed to attend university. I have a good job."

  "I meant for them. Seeing the people here and in town, but knowing most will never break away."

  Luntok's eyes narrowed, but he did not look up from the photo map. "The ragyapa are proud of their work. It is a sacred trust, the only religious practice that has been allowed to continue without restriction."

  "They seem well provided for. Happy children. Lots of warm clothes."

  As if Shan's comment were a cue he had been awaiting, Luntok picked up his own hat and rose. "It is considered bad luck to underpay a ragyapa," he said with a wary glance, then turned and left.

  That the ragyapa had the ability to carry out Jao's murder Shan had no doubt. Had the military supplies been a reward? If so, someone else paid them to kill Jao. Someone with control over military supplies. Shan stepped back and studied the room. The woman was snoring now. No one else was present. Shan moved to the red door and opened it.

  Computer terminals, four in all, dominated the room. A few bowls with noodles clinging to the rims, the remains of lunch, were on a large conference table. Two Chinese, dressed in Western clothes, one wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his head, sat studying glossy catalogs and sipping tea. From an expensive sound system came Western rock and roll. At a corner desk sat Tyler Kincaid, cleaning his camera.

  "Comrade Shan," said a familiar voice from the back of the room. Li Aidang rose from a sofa. "If only I had known, I would have invited you to ride with me." He gestured toward the table. "We have a luncheon meeting twice a month. The supervisory committee."

  Shan moved slowly around the room. There was an empty cassette case on top of a speaker. The Grateful Dead, it said. Perhaps, Shan considered without remorse, it was what Chang listened to as he and his truck tumbled into the abyss. Li retrieved a Coca-Cola from a small refrigerator and extended it toward him.

  There were photo maps on one wall. Photographs were fastened with pins to another: more studies of Tibetan faces, taken with the same sensitivity as those Shan had seen in Kincaid's office. Li handed Shan the soft drink.

  "I didn't realize the prosecutor's office had an interest in mining," Shan said, and set the can on the table, unopened.

  "We are the Ministry of Justice. The mine is the only foreign investment in the district. The people's government must be certain it succeeds. There are so many issues. Labor organization. Export permits. Foreign exchange permits. Work permits. Environmental permits. The Ministry must be consulted for such approvals."

  "I had no idea boron was such an important product."

  The assistant prosecutor smiled generously. "We want our American friends to stay happy. One third of the royalties stay in the district. After three years of production we will be able to build a new school. After five, maybe a new clinic."

  Shan moved to one of the computer monitors, closer to Kincaid. Numbers were scrolling across the screen.

  "You know our friend Comrade Hu," Li said, pointing to the first of the two men at the table. Hu gave him the same mock salute he had left Shan with in Tan's office. Shan had not recognized him with the hat. He studied the Director of Geology closely. Was Hu surprised to see him?

  "Comrade Inspector," Hu acknowledged in a curt tone, his little beetle eyes fixing Shan for a moment, then turning back to the catalog. The one he was reading had pictures of smiling blond couples standing in snow, wearing sweaters of brilliant colors.

  "Still giving driving lessons, Comrade Director?" Shan asked, trying to look distracted by the console.

  Hu laughed.

  Li gestured toward the second man, a well-groomed, athletic figure who stood as though to better survey Shan. "The major is from the border command." Li looked meaningfully at Shan. "His resources are sometimes useful for our project." The major, nothing more. He was so polished that he could have been lifted from the pages of the catalog, Shan thought at first. But then he turned his head toward Shan. A gutter of scar tissue ran across his left cheek; it could only have been made by a bullet. His lips curled up in greeting but his eyes remained lifeless. It was a familiar insolence. The major, Shan decided, belonged to the Public Security Bureau.

  "A fascinating facility," Shan said absently, continuing to wander about the room. "Full of surprises." He paused in front of the photographs.

  "A triumph of socialism," the major observed. His voice had a boyish tone belied by his countenance.

  Tyler Kincaid gave a slow nod toward Shan but did not speak. Half his forearm was wrapped with a large piece of gauze taped over a recent injury. A shadow of dried blood could be seen through the gauze.

  "Comrade Shan is investigating a murder," Li announced to the major. "Once he led anticorruption campaigns inBeijing. The famous Hainan Island affair was his." The Hainan Island case, in which Shan had discovered that provincial officials were purchasing shiploads of Japanese automobiles- for an island with only a hundred miles of roads- and diverting them to the black market on the mainland, had made Shan a celebrity for a few months. But that had been fifteen years earlier. Who had the assistant prosecutor been speaking to? The warden? Beijing?

  Shan studied the major, who had no interest in Li's words. There had been no challenge in his eyes, no question in his voice despite Shan's abrupt intrusion. He already knew who Shan was.

  "This is where your telephone system operates?" Shan asked Kincaid.

  The American rose, and forced a smile. "Over there," he said, indicating a speaker above a console on a small desk against the wall. "Wanna order a pizza from New York?"

  Li and the major laughed hard.

  "And the maps?"

  "Maps? We have a whole reference library. Atlases. Engin
eering journals."

  "I mean the ones from the sky."

  "Amazing, aren't they?" Li interrupted. "The first time we saw them, it seemed like a miracle. The world looks so different." He moved toward Shan and leaned toward his ear. "We must talk about our files, Comrade. The trial is only a few days away. No need for undue embarrassment."

  As Shan considered the assistant prosecutor's invitation, the door opened and Luntok appeared. He nodded to Kincaid and quickly left, leaving the door open. Kincaid stretched and made a gesture of invitation toward Shan. "Afternoon climbing classes. How about some rappelling?"

  "You're climbing with your injury?"

  "This?" the American asked good-naturedly, raising his arm. "Walking wounded. Came down on a jagged piece of quartz. Can't let it stop me. Always get back on the horse, you know."

  Li laughed again and moved back toward the sofa. Hu returned to his catalogs. The major lit a cigarette and pushed Shan out of the room with a daggerlike stare.

  Outside he found Rebecca Fowler sitting on the hood of her truck, studying the valley.

  He didn't think she had noticed him until she suddenly spoke. "I can't imagine what it must be like for you," she said.

  He was uncomfortable with her sympathy. "If I had never been sent to Tibet I would never have met Tibetans."

  She turned to him with a sad smile and reached into the deep pocket of her nylon vest. "Here," she said, producing two paperback books. "Just a couple of novels, in English. I thought you might…"

  Shan accepted them with a small bow of his head. "You are kind. I miss reading in English." The books indeed would be a treasure, except that they would be confiscated when he was returned to the 404th. He didn't have the heart to tell her.

  He leaned back on the truck, gazing at the surrounding peaks. The snowcaps were glowing in the late afternoon sun. "The soldiers are gone," he observed.

  Fowler followed his gaze over the ponds. "Not one of my better ideas. Called away for some other emergency."

  "Emergency?"

  "The major had something to do with it."