Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  "Your friends said you were traveling north, and came out of your way to bring Padme home. Padme said you were traveling with salt."

  Tuan wasn't asking about nagas, or Yapchi and Lhasa, none of the questions asked by Colonel Lin. Indeed, Tuan didn't seem to be interrogating him so much as testing him somehow. "It's a tradition they have," Shan said.

  "There are taxes to be paid to the salt monopoly," Tuan observed. "You could get a bounty for reporting them. I could arrange it, even have it deposited somewhere. They need never know."

  Shan forced a small conspiratorial smile which caused Tuan to raise his hand, palm outward. "You've thought of it. Excellent." He lifted the cigarette pack to his nostrils and inhaled, lit one of the cigarettes, and carefully set it in the ashtray on the table. "You could not be blamed for the companions you acquire when traveling. A man like you has the opportunity to meet all types of Tibetans."

  Shan clenched his jaw. "My companions brought an injured monk here," he reminded Tuan.

  The Director's lips curled in a thin smile as he inhaled the smoke drifting from the table. It was as if he were using the tobacco as incense. "It's an untamed land, this region. Criminal elements in hiding on every mountain. The one who killed Deputy Director Chao is out there. He must have attacked Padme."

  "You make it sound as though you know who it is."

  "Of course. It is the same war that started when the liberation army arrived. It has never really concluded, it's just less visible."

  "You mean you don't care who it is."

  Tuan shrugged and leaned toward the smoke. "Do they? They take one of us, we take one of them," the Director said in a disinterested tone, then smiled icily. "There will always be more of us than of them."

  Shan studied Tuan as the Director smoothed the long hair on the side of his head. Was Tuan so disinterested because he had already taken one Tibetan to balance his equation, because he knew he had already fatally wounded Drakte?

  "There will be an accounting soon," Tuan said. "In less than two weeks. But meanwhile someone like you, a Han among them, will be in constant danger. Let me help you."

  "I am not afraid of them." But Shan was scared of Tuan and the strange game he was playing. Tuan was going to account for Chao's murder in two weeks. He made it sound like one more item on his busy schedule.

  Tuan leaned forward. "Things are changing in this district. A Han who knows how to deal with these Tibetans could have a bright future. We can use a man like you. We'll be looking for someone to manage all the other teachers. You will need to decide soon. Glory is coming, and there will be enough to share."

  Shan almost asked him to repeat himself. Glory is coming? "Other teachers?"

  "Special knowledge is coming to Norbu. A new world is coming for the people here," Tuan said.

  Shan stared at the piece of lace. He usually recognized the special language of senior officials, but Tuan seemed to have developed a code all his own. "But for now all those doctors," Shan said tentatively. "They are frightening the people. Surely you do not need them to catch the killer."

  Tuan offered an appreciative smile. "They have orders from Lhasa. National security is at stake. A senior Cult leader has infiltrated from India."

  "We're more than four hundred miles from India."

  "He's giving them a good chase."

  "But why doctors? Why would disrupting the local people help the effort?"

  "National security," Tuan repeated.

  The Director glanced at his watch and stood. He reached into his pocket and produced a business card, extended it to Shan. "I know things. When we win, after May Day, give me a call." He tossed the cigarettes on Shan's lap and left the room without looking back.

  Shan stared after him. I know things. The words probably meant nothing, just the idle words of an arrogant bureaucrat. But they made Shan recall the terrible night at the hermitage again. He doesn't care who has to die, Drakte had said, with nearly his last breath. He kills prayer. He kills the thing he is. Tuan was the senior official responsible for religion, and he killed religion.

  Shan dropped the cigarettes on the arm of the chair, and found his friends outside waiting with the young monk under the fluttering flags.

  "What was it?" Nyma whispered nervously.

  Shan shrugged. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "He wanted to give me some cigarettes."

  The monk led them into the adjacent structure and a large whitewashed chamber, where twenty monks waited at two long plank tables. Some acknowledged their visitors with polite but restrained greetings, others looked away nervously. Gyalo was not present. An old monk, the oldest present, rose and recited the opening text from one of the early teachings, what the Tibetans called the Heart Sutra. His words, or perhaps his deep, resonant voice, had a calming effect on the assembly. But Shan could not relax. He fought the temptation to grab Lokesh and run. He could make nothing of his strange audience with Tuan. Tuan and Khodrak were going to win something, and glory would follow.

  At last Khodrak, holding his mendicant's staff like a scepter, arrived with Tuan a step behind, each of them adorned in a fox-fur hat. The two sat at a smaller table at the head of the long ones, and moments later two young monks appeared with a huge steaming pot of thugpa, noodle soup cooked with vegetables. The attendants quickly served out the soup, then distributed bowls of steaming white rice. They ate quickly, with little conversation, the monks restlessly watching both their visitors and the two men at the head table. At the end of the meal, as Chinese green tea was served, Khodrak stood to explain how Comrade Shan and his companions had saved Padme. Comrade Shan. Khodrak had turned Padme's rescue into a political parable of the selfless Han saving a troubled Tibetan.

  When they had finished, a monk led them first to retrieve their belongings, then to the gompa's guest quarters, a dormitory-style room with eight beds in one of the low single-story structures, gesturing Nyma toward a similar room on the opposite side of the hall.

  "We saw an old stable," Shan said. "We would prefer to sleep there." His friends said nothing. Lokesh moved his head in a small, tight nod.

  "They said here," the monk protested. "Surely the beds would be more comfortable."

  "Not for us," Shan said firmly. "Our bones are accustomed to sleeping on the ground."

  With a reluctant sigh the monk turned and led them to the abandoned stable, only a few paces from the cart Shan had helped fill. Beyond the cart in the deep shadows of the wall he sensed, more than saw, the big yak watching them.

  The monk pulled open the heavy timber bar laid across the door on iron straps, and handed Shan the candle lantern he had been using. They stepped into a small musty chamber with half a dozen stalls, straw covering half the floor. Above the stalls was a low, half loft, where fodder had once been stored, with a small loft door for loading the hay.

  Lokesh and Lhandro were already pulling straw together for bedding as the monk bid them a good night and pushed the door shut. In a few minutes Shan was listening to the slow, relaxed breathing of his companions, and he quickly followed them into slumber.

  He awoke just before dawn, invigorated by the night's sleep, surprised at how sound it had been. He quickly brushed the straw from his clothes and stepped to the door. Hearing what sounded like a heavy truck outside, he paused for a moment, then pushed lightly on the door for a glance into the compound. The door would not move. The truck seemed to stop and he heard the sound of heavy boots on the earth outside. He pressed his eye to a narrow slit in the door. One of the medical trucks was there, its lights flashing as if for an emergency. A whistle blew, followed by an order. Shan could not make out faces in the dim light, but with a sinking heart he saw a line of white shirts.

  There was movement behind him and Lhandro appeared. The Tibetan tried his luck with the door, to no avail. They pushed together. It did not move. The bar had been lowered into place. Someone had imprisoned them, and the guards were surrounding the stable.

  Chapter Nine

  Sha
n quickly woke the others, explaining in urgent whispers that they were prisoners. Nyma rushed to the door and pushed it, without effect, and turned with fear clenching her face. Lokesh sat on his pallet and offered a mantra to Tara, protectress of the devout, as orders were barked outside.

  Lhandro leaned his ear against the wall as Nyma used the tine of a pitchfork to pry splinters from a small crack in the old wood, trying to see outside better. "That ambulance," Nyma reported as she bent to the crack. "Maybe the doctors just wanted-" she turned back and saw Shan's confusion as he stood in the rear shadows where Tenzin had slept.

  "They took Tenzin!" Nyma cried in dismay as she rushed to his side.

  They quickly searched for any sign of the silent Tibetan, or evidence of his departure. Shan and Lhandro paced along the walls of the stable. There were no loose boards, no other doors, no ladder to the loft where the small door opened to the outside.

  "He's just a…" Nyma began forlornly, and her voice drifted off.

  A what, Shan wondered. A dung collector? None of them really knew who Tenzin was. Just a fugitive, like so many others. Sometimes, if you were not to be taken in by what Beijing was doing to Tibet, all you could do was be a fugitive, always moving, always shying away from settlements and crowds. Shan recalled the strange exchange between Khodrak and Tenzin the day before. Had Tuan and Khodrak truly known something about the man or had it just been Tuan's instincts, honed by twenty years in Public Security? Tenzin was guilty of something, and by the political accounting that governed them, Tuan and Khodrak would get credit for taking him.

  Suddenly there was a scraping sound, the sound of the bar of being dragged out of its iron straps, and the door flew open, casting such a brilliant shaft of sunlight inside that Shan and his friends threw their hands up to shield their eyes.

  Director Tuan walked in, followed by a middle-aged Han in one of the light blue uniforms. A stethoscope hung from the man's neck, a small radio protruded from one of his tunic pockets. Tuan took in Shan and his companions with a quick glance, then stepped into the shadows at the rear of the stable as the physician stood silently at the door, watching with anticipation on his face. Two younger men in the light blue uniforms hovered outside the door, as though standing by to assist the doctor. Shan stepped sideways and saw that a stretcher, collapsed, leaned on one man's shoulder. He heard, but could not see, the heavy boots again, several pairs. Soldiers seemed to be pacing anxiously somewhere near the ambulance. Someone angrily snapped an order. But he could see no soldiers, only men in white shirts with epaulettes or medical uniforms.

  A slight, small-shouldered man suddenly stepped into the doorway, silhouetted by the brilliant sunlight. Shan recognized the man's boots before he saw the man's grey uniform. A chill crept down his spine as he looked up into a face that seemed to be pounded out of corroded steel. The man might have been in his early thirties, but he had already acquired the cold machine-like demeanor which would likely stay with him for the rest of his career- the frigid, permanent sneer that Shan had seen so many times in the gulag. The man in grey was a Public Security officer, the pockmarked one Gyalo had spoken of, the one with dirty ice for eyes.

  The knob studied Shan and his companions with a cold glare. Looking at Tuan, he uttered a low growling sound. It could have been anger, or disappointment, or the rumbling, expectant sound some predators made before a long-awaited feed. The doctor looked at the knob officer with a frustrated, impatient frown and held up four fingers. Four prisoners, he must be saying, when there should be five. Not four fingers exactly, for curiously, the doctor had pushed his little finger down and held up three fingers and a thumb. The officer replied with something like a snarl, and a fist raised a few inches in the air.

  Something extraordinary was happening at Norbu gompa. It wasn't just that the gompa was in the hands of political commissars, or even that Shan and his friends had been seized. There was something else, something to do with the way the Religious Affairs officials acted like Public Security soldiers, the way they were being detained by a howler, with only the single knob officer present. Maybe the howlers were looking for Tenzin because of his work with nagas, but Public Security wanted him for something else. There was another possibility that had so frightened Shan he had not mentioned it to his companions. The knobs were desperately searching for a man with a croaking, growling voice- the notorious Tiger, whose broken voice box made a sound like no other. The knob officer had been forcing people to read to him. The only way a man could hide such a voice was to stay mute. Wheels spun in Shan's mind. Tenzin had left the hermitage the night Chao died. The government thought the purba leader Tiger was the likely murderer. Tenzin certainly knew purbas. Was their entire journey an elaborate ploy by the purbas to keep the Tiger hidden?

  Shan closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. He took a step back, to stand in front of Lokesh. Here was the way it ended, or ended again, in a dark musty stable while their captors waited for them to cower, or invite a beating by a hint of resistance. If Tuan and the knobs thought they had been harboring the Tiger, no mercy would be shown. A strange sensation surged through him, a floating distant feeling that he recognized, because he had seen it in others' eyes at execution grounds. This was how firing squads often worked when the political officers had decided against a public exhibition, putting their victims against a wall early in the day, before most people awoke. It was how they would treat the Tiger when they caught up with him. And perhaps any of those who sheltered him. Surely they wouldn't do such a thing in a gompa. But this was Khodrak's gompa, an instrument not of Buddha but of the howlers. And a doctor would have syringes that would preserve the quiet, and be even more effective than any bullet.

  He saw that everyone was looking at him, and knew he must have made a sound, a small utterance of fear. He turned slowly to Lokesh, whose eyes, assuming the cast of a prisoner, had also grown distant. He could push his friend deep into the shadows and charge the officer, maybe distract them long enough for Lokesh to escape. At least the chenyi stone was still safe in the mountains, a voice whispered in the back of his mind.

  Someone moved at Lokesh's side. Tuan stepped back into the light, looking expectantly at Shan, pausing, as if waiting for Shan to say something. But then a shadow crossed the door and another figure entered. Khodrak, holding his staff, and behind him, Padme, in a clean robe, his arm in a sling. The Chairman's eyes flared, not at Shan but at the doctor and the knob officer. No one moved. The knob and the doctor seemed confused.

  Shan studied the monk they had brought from Rapjung. Padme stood straight, in no apparent pain now. His arm was in a sling, although he had not complained to them of his arm hurting. His robe was not only spotless, it was fringed with the same narrow strip of gold thread that Khodrak and the other committeeman wore. Shan recalled the third chair at the Committee table and the way the others had called the young monk Rinpoche. It had been Padme's chair.

  "Some of the old ones can turn themselves into smoke and drift away," Padme said, casting a thin smile toward the knob officer, who replied with a sour frown and marched out the door.

  Khodrak sighed and studied the loft and its little portal. Someone tall, and strong, and lean might have climbed out. He put his hand on Tuan's arm and seemed to push. One side of the Director's mouth curled down. He relented, stepping back out of the stable followed by the doctor.

  "There is a mistake, Chairman Rinpoche," Padme said to Khodrak. He looked at Shan. "These people are our friends. Our heroes. We cannot allow them to be abused."

  Shan stared in confusion. Public Security and Religious Affairs had been about to unleash their wrath on them but Khodrak and Padme had turned them away.

  "Where is he?" Nyma cried out. "You have Tenzin. Why? You can't just-" Nyma looked from Padme to Khodrak, then to Shan, and her words choked away.

  Khodrak seemed not to hear her. "Take a moment," he said, and gestured toward the ground. Padme hitched up his robe and sat on the stable floor, cross-legged, pulling out his ros
ary. He gestured for Nyma to follow, and in a moment all of them but Khodrak were sitting in a small circle. Padme began reciting the mani mantra, waving his hand to encourage the others to join in as Khodrak paced around the outside of the circle, tapping his staff in front of him like an old beggar.

  It was a strange, unsettling ceremony. Padme stopped speaking after a moment but kept waving his hand, directing the others like a choir, Nyma and Lhandro chanting awkwardly as Lokesh and Shan uneasily watched the young monk. After perhaps two minutes, Khodrak halted and Padme abruptly rose, brushing off his robe, the words of the mantra slowly fading.

  "Will we find their friend?" Khodrak asked Padme.

  "We will find their friend," Padme replied quickly, as if reciting more of the ceremony. Then Khodrak turned and moved out the door, his staff resting on his shoulder.

  Padme turned to address Lhandro. "There are no words to express my shame," he said to the rongpa. "There was a mistake." The monk looked back at the door and nodded, then turned to Shan. "It's an old shed used for little other than storage. Someone could have mistakingly inserted the door bar, that's all," he said tentatively, as if suggesting that was how they should explain what had happened. "The medical team is overzealous. They are trained to act extremely, for the containment of disease." He stood, waiting, as the ambulance pulled away, then turned back to them. "The kitchen will give you some food for the trail," Padme suggested. "I will see to it myself." With a gesture for them to follow Padme stepped out into the sunlight.

  Tuan stood in front of a white utility vehicle beside half a dozen men in white shirts. Shan studied the seasoned faces of the men. But for their shirts he would have said they were a special Public Security squad- a boot squad, the purbas called them- one of the squads reserved for use against particularly stubborn political threats, which, to those responsible for public security in Tibet, typically meant purbas and other troublesome Buddhists.