The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  "I don't like it," Tan said. "A witness who hides is useless. How will he testify? He will have to come with us, to the trial. They will ask why he speaks up now, so late." He studied the dark landscape, then looked suspiciously at Shan. "If it is a cultist, they will say he is an accomplice."

  Shan continued staring into the heather. "A group of monks were watching the bridge," he explained. "They were trying to cause it to collapse."

  Tan muttered a low curse. "By watching it?" he asked bitterly. He looked back at his car, as though he might leave, then followed Shan slowly into the clearing.

  "By shouting at it," Shan said. How could he explain the rite of the shards? How could he explain the broken pots above the bridge or at Yerpa, where Trinle and the others trained in the old ritual of thunder? How could he explain the ancient belief that a perfect sound was the most destructive force of nature? "Not a shout, really. Creating sound waves. It was what scared Sergeant Feng that night he fired his pistol. Like a clap of-"

  He stopped. In the gathering light he saw a gray shape thirty feet away at the end of the clearing, a large rock that was gradually becoming the shape of a man sitting on the earth. It was Gendun.

  They stopped six feet away. "This is a priest of a nearby gompa," Shan explained to Tan, then turned to the old monk. "Can you explain where you were the night of the prosecutor's murder?"

  "Above the bridge," Gendun said in a firm, quiet voice, as though he were saying prayers. "In the rocks, chanting."

  "Why?"

  "In the sixteenth century there was a Mongolian invasion. Priests of my gompa stopped it from reaching Lhadrung by causing an avalanche to fall on the army."

  Tan glared furiously at Shan, but before he could turn away Gendun continued. "This bridge. It does not belong here. It is destined to fall away."

  He was interrupted by the sound of a heavy truck speeding on the gravel road behind them. As it skidded to a stop Li Aidang jumped out, clad in military fatigues. He took ten steps into the clearing, then snapped out an order. Half a dozen uniformed knobs began leaping from the truck. The major appeared in the headlights, a small automatic gun hanging from his shoulder. The troops formed in a single line along the road, in front of Li.

  A strange serenity settled over Gendun, a distant look. He paid no attention to the knobs, but studied the mountains as if trying to remember them for future reference. He could not control his next incarnation. He might rekindle on the floor of a desert hut thousands of miles away.

  "The sun had been down maybe an hour when the headlights of a car appeared," he suddenly continued. "It stopped near the bridge and turned out its lights. Then there were voices. Two men, I think, and a woman laughing. I think she was intoxicated."

  "A woman?" Shan asked. "There was a woman with Prosecutor Jao?"

  "No. This was the first car."

  The silence before dawn was like no other. It seemed to hold the troops in a spell. Gendun's words were loud and clear. An owl's call eerily echoed from the gorge.

  "Then she screamed. A death scream."

  The words snapped Li out of his trance. He stepped into the clearing and moved toward Gendun. Shan stepped in front of him.

  "Do not attempt to interfere with the Ministry of Justice," Li snarled. "This man is a conspirator. He admits he was there. He will join Sungpo in the dock."

  "We are still conducting an investigation," Shan protested.

  "No," Li said fiercely. "It is over. The Ministry will open its trial in three hours. I am scheduled to deliver the prosecution report."

  "I don't think so," Tan said, so quietly Shan was not sure if he heard correctly.

  Li ignored him and began to gesture for the knobs.

  "There will be no trial without the prisoner," Tan continued.

  "What are you saying?" Li snapped.

  "I had him removed from the guardhouse. At midnight last night."

  "Impossible. He had Public Security Guards."

  "They were called away. Replaced with some of my aides. Seems there was some confusion about orders."

  "You have no authority!" Li barked.

  "Until Beijing decides otherwise, I am the senior official in this county." Tan paused and cocked his head toward the hillside.

  It was a droning sound that distracted him, as though of frogs, a sound of nature that had not been there before. But then it seemed much closer. In the rising light another priest became visible at the edge of the clearing, ten feet from Gendun. It was Trinle. He was in the lotus position, chanting a mantra in a low nasal tone. Li smirked and approached Trinle, the new object of his furor. Then there was an echoing sound from the opposite side of the clearing. Shan stepped in that direction and discerned another red robe in the brush. Li took another angry step toward Trinle and paused. A third voice joined in, and a fourth, all in the same rhythm, the same tone. The sound seemed to be coming from nowhere, and everywhere.

  "Seize them!" Li cried. But the knobs stood, transfixed, staring into the brush.

  The day was breaking rapidly now, and Shan could see the robes along the edge of the clearing well enough to count them. Six. Ten. No, more. Fifteen. He recognized several of the faces. Some were purbas. Some were from the mountain, protectors of the gomchen.

  Li turned and pulled a truncheon from the belt of a soldier. He walked along the perimeter with a ravenous glare, waving the club. He stopped at the rear of the circle and pounded it against Trinle's back. Trinle did not react. Li shouted in fury for the major, who moved forward with uncertain steps and stopped ten feet from Trinle. Li moved to his side and seemed about to grab his gun.

  Shan willed himself to step between them and Trinle. There was new movement at the side of the circle. Sergeant Feng appeared, with the lug wrench from the truck. It was over, Shan realized. That he had lost was no surprise. But that the 404th, and Yerpa, would be lost was unbearable. He ached for it to at least be over quickly. It would be fitting, he absently thought, if the bullet came from Sergeant Feng.

  "Back away," he heard Feng growl. But the sergeant was not speaking to him. Feng turned and stood beside Shan, facing Li and the major. The mantra continued.

  "You old pig," Li sneered at Feng. "You're finished as a soldier."

  "My job is to watch over Comrade Shan," Feng grunted, and braced his feet as though preparing for an attack.

  The mantra seemed to swell as it filled the brittle silence again. The major stepped back to his men and ordered them to pull the truncheons from their belts.

  Tan materialized at Shan's side. His face was taut. He glanced at Shan with a strangely sad expression, then turned to face Li. "These people," he said, with a gesture that encompassed the circle, "are under my protection."

  Li stared at Tan. "Your protection is worthless, Colonel," he snarled. "We are conducting an investigation of you. Corruption in the performance of duties. We revoke your authority."

  Tan's hand moved to his holster. The major reached for his machine gun.

  Suddenly there was a new sound above the chanting, the hissing of air brakes. They turned, aghast, to see a long shiny bus pulling to a halt. Windows were being pulled down.

  "Martha!" someone called in English. "They're doing morning services. Get the damned film changed."

  The tourists came out, single file, clicking their cameras, rolling video of the monks, of Shan, of Li and the knobs.

  Shan looked into the bus. The man at the wheel was familiar, a face from the marketplace. With him, wearing a trim business suit with a tie, was Miss Taring of the Bureau of Religious Affairs. She began speaking about Buddhist rites, and the closeness of the Buddhists to the forces of nature.

  She climbed out and offered to use an American couple's camera to take photos of them with the Chinese soldiers.

  The major studied her for a moment, then quickly herded his men into the truck. Li stepped backward. "It doesn't matter," he spat under his breath, "we have already won." He waved to the Americans with an affected smile and climbed in
the front of the truck with the major. In moments they were gone. Then, as abruptly as it had arrived, the bus, too, moved on.

  Tan sat down in front of Gendun. Instantly the mantra stopped. Trinle appeared and knelt at Gendun's side.

  "Tell me about the woman," Tan said.

  "She seemed very happy. Then- there is nothing so terrible as the scream of someone unprepared for death. Afterward there were other voices, not hers. That's all."

  "Nothing else?"

  "Not until the second car. It drove up an hour later. Two doors slammed. There were shouts, a man called out for someone."

  "Calling a name?"

  "The man from below called 'Are you there?' He said he knew where the flower came from. He said, 'What do you mean I won't need the X-ray machine?' The man above said, 'Esteemed Comrade, I know where you should look.' The man below," Gendun continued, "said he would make a trade, for more evidence."

  Shan and the colonel shared a glance. Esteemed Comrade.

  "Then he moved up the slope. The voices were much lower, and faded as they climbed. Then there was another sound. Not a shout. A loud groan. Then ten, fifteen minutes later the lights of the car went on. I saw him, maybe a hundred feet from the car. The man in the car got out and ran down the road."

  "You said you saw him in the lights."

  "Yes."

  "You recognized him?" Shan asked.

  "Of course. I had seen him before, in the festivals."

  "You were not scared?"

  "I have nothing to fear of a protecting demon."

  They reduced Gendun's testimony to a written statement, which Tan authenticated with his own chop. He did not ask Gendun to remain behind as the monks began to rise and fade into the heather.

  "The next morning," Shan asked as Gendun moved to join his companions. "Was there anything unusual?"

  "I left before the work crews arrived, as I had been warned. There was only the one thing."

  "What thing?"

  "The noise. It surprised me, how early they started. Before dawn. The sound of heavy equipment. Not here. Further away. I could only hear it, as though it came from above."

  ***

  They made a solemn procession into the boron mine an hour later, Tan's car in front, the truck of soldiers summoned by Tan's radio, and finally, Shan and Sergeant Feng. They drove straight to the equipment shed, where they selected a heavy tractor with a digging bucket and the mine's bulldozer. The machines were already moving onto the dike by the time the first figures emerged from the buildings.

  Rebecca Fowler ran toward them, then stopped and sent Kincaid back for his camera as soon as she recognized Tan. The colonel motioned for her to stop, then deployed soldiers to cut off access to the dike.

  "How dare you!" Fowler exploded as soon as she was in earshot. "I'll call Beijing! I'll call the U.S.!"

  "Interfere and I'll close the mine," Tan said impassively.

  "Damned MFCs!" Kincaid barked, and began snapping photographs of Tan, of the license plates of the vehicles, of the machines and the guards. He paused as he saw Shan. He took another photo, then lowered the camera and stared at Shan uncertainly.

  The tractor dug into the dike where it crossed the gorge, where it was the deepest, where Shan remembered seeing equipment in the satellite photos taken just before the dike was completed, where one final gap had remained just before the murder. It was twenty minutes before the bucket struck metal, another twenty minutes before they had confirmed that the car they had found was a Red Flag limousine and hooked it to the bulldozer.

  The machine churned against the turf, ripping it apart, until it found traction. The engine heaved and for a moment everything seemed to stop. As the car slowly pulled free of the mud, there was an extraordinary sound, unlike any Shan had ever heard, a ripping, unworldly groan that shook his spine.

  The bulldozer did not stop until it had dragged the car nearly to the head of the dike.

  Shan looked inside and saw a briefcase.

  "Open it," Tan said impatiently.

  The door swung open easily, emitting an almost overwhelming smell of decay. Inside the case were Jao's tickets, a thick file, and a satellite photo, cropped down to the poppy fields.

  The trunk was jammed. Tan grabbed a crowbar from the bulldozer and popped the lid open. Inside, shrunken within a colorful floral dress, was a young woman. Her mouth was drawn into a hideous grin. Her lifeless eyes seemed to stare right at Shan. Lying on her breast was a dried flower. A red poppy.

  A horrifed moan escaped Tan. He turned and hurled the crowbar into the lake. He turned back, his face drained of color. "Comrade Shan," he said, "meet Miss Lihua."

  ***

  Rebecca Fowler stood paralyzed, staring in mute horror into the trunk as Tan moved to the radio in his car. It seemed as though she was drying up as Shan watched, as though any minute she would crumble and blow away in the wind. For a moment he thought she would faint. Then she caught Tan's stare, and the resentment brought her strength back. She began barking orders for the bulldozer to move the car off the dike, for the machines to start filling the gaping hole, for dump trucks to be filled with gravel, then ran toward the hole, shouting for Kincaid.

  By the time Shan joined her, she was on her knees. Water was rapidly seeping through the weakened dam. With small, frantic groans she shoved dirt into the hole. The tractor arrived beside her and began pushing dirt with its bucket. A trickle appeared on the side of the hole. As the tractor edged closer the dirt under it began to shift. Fowler screamed, leapt up, and pulled the driver away just as the wall disintegrated and the machine lurched into the hole. The back wall held for the few seconds it took for the hole to fill with water, then it, too, was gone. The tractor was washed into the gorge and the pond broke through.

  They watched helplessly as the water hurled down the Dragon Throat, ripping boulders from the sides, collapsing the banks, gathering speed as it dropped under the old suspension bridge toward the plain below in a maelstrom of rock, water, and gravel. Shan became aware of Tan standing beside him. He had binoculars. He was watching his bridge.

  But they did not need the lenses to see the wall of water slam into the concrete pillars. The bridge seemed to totter for a moment, like a fragile toy, then it lurched upward and was gone.

  Shan remembered the sound of the dike surrendering the car, the shudder of the earth, the wrenching, sucking, squeezing scream of the mud that had shaken his spine.

  All it would take, Je had said, was one perfect sound.

  ***

  Kincaid, who had darted past the disinterred limousine to join Fowler, now stood by the open trunk, his jaw open, his eyes disbelieving. "Jesus," he moaned with a cracking voice. "Oh Jesus." He bent as though he needed to touch her, then stopped and slowly straightened. As though guided by some sixth sense he turned to stare at the road leading down to the mine. Following his gaze, Shan saw a new vehicle appear, a bright red Land Rover.

  Even from thirty feet away Shan could sense Kincaid's body tighten. "Damn you!" the man screamed, and began running toward the road, bending to grab stones which he hurled in the direction of the still distant vehicle. "Come and see her, you bastards!"

  The red truck halted, then began backing up the ridge and disappeared.

  Tan had also noticed. He was back on his radio.

  Luntok appeared, carrying a blanket to the limousine. The ragyapa were never afraid of the dead. He reverently covered the woman in the trunk then turned and stared at his friend Kincaid. But there was something new in his eyes.

  Rebecca Fowler took a step toward the ragyapa engineer. "Whose work crew was responsible for the final fill on this dam?" she asked him in a strained voice. Luntok did not reply but kept staring at Kincaid.

  The expression on Kincaid's face hardened momentarily into defiance as he glared back at Luntok. But when he looked at Fowler and Shan, standing together near the car, confusion seemed to overcome him. He bolted toward the office building.

  Fowler's sigh was almo
st a sob. "If my mine was hiding someone's evidence," she said, "we could be deported, couldn't we?"

  Shan did not reply, and watched as she slowly followed Kincaid. Five minutes later Shan found her in the computer room, her head in her hands, staring into a cup of tea. Kincaid was there, playing slow, sad notes on his harmonica, one hand urgently scrolling text on the screen of the satellite console.

  "It's over," Shan said as he sat across from her.

  "Damned straight. I'll lose my job. I'll lose my reputation. I'll be lucky if they give me airfare home." Everything about Rebecca Fowler, her voice, her face, her very being, seemed to have been hollowed out.

  "It wasn't your fault. The army will rebuild your dam. The Ministry of Geology will receive an official explanation. This is Party business. They will clean it up quietly."

  "I don't even know what to report home."

  "An accident. An act of nature."

  Fowler looked up. "That poor woman. We knew her. Tyler took her hiking sometimes."

  "I saw her in the photo on the wall." Shan nodded. "But I believe she knew what Prosecutor Jao knew. If Jao had to die, so did she."

  "Someone said she was on leave."

  "Someone lied." He remembered how excited Tan had been when he had established contact with Lihua by fax. The faxes had indeed come from Hong Kong. Shan had seen the telephone transmission codes. The source had even been identified as the local Ministry of Justice office. Someone had lied in Hong Kong. Li, who had reported taking her to the airport the night she died, had lied in Lhadrung.

  "The satellite photos and the water permits," Fowler said. "It was somehow about them."

  "I'm afraid so."

  Fowler buried her head in her hands again. "You mean I started it all?"

  "No. What you started was the end of it all."

  "The end of Jao. The end of Lihua." Her voice was desolate.

  "No. Jao was already marked for murder. They probably would have eventually found a way for Miss Lihua to disappear."

  Fowler looked up with a haunted expression.