Tuan seemed disappointed, and he made a fluttering gesture with his hand that seemed to dismiss Shan's suggestion. "After living in Tibet so many years you should know better," he said in a mocking tone. "When you get selected for a government bullet in your skull it doesn't have to be because you deserve it. It's because you were always supposed to die that way." A smug smile appeared on his face, as if he were very pleased with his wit. "It makes things so much easier for Public Security here."
Shan returned his frigid stare. "The Tibetans also say that nothing happens in life that does not affect everything else."
One side of Tuan's mouth opened, exposing a tooth, with a silent snarl. He threw a pencil onto the desk. "The next few minutes will be the most important of your life. I will leave, and send a guard to stand at the door outside. If you try to run he will catch you and we will do things to your feet so you never run again. When the festivities are concluded we can begin anew here, but I will bring others to help. You're not stupid. If you write the right confession before I return, I may decide to keep it and let you live, give you a job after all." He pulled a piece of blank paper from the top drawer. Tuan's tone was not cruel, but casual. He frowned at Shan, then stepped away, closing the office door behind him.
Shan stared at the door a moment, trying to understand the strange man. Nothing in his words had given Shan reason to change his view that Tuan was the killer. But Shan had changed his view. It had been in Tuan's tone, his manner, the lack of anger or passion in his voice. He was too casual, too distracted, too weak, to be the one who stabbed Chao and Drakte. But, as the Tiger had suggested, Tuan could have laid a trap, could have stood by with his thin smile and ordered one of his men to do it.
Shan stirred from his thoughts and darted to the front window. Chairman Khodrak was shaking hands with Tenzin again, for the photographers. He ran to the window on the opposite side of the room, overlooking the courtyard between the buildings, and opened the sash. Nothing moved except the fluttering flags. The rope bearing the miniature Chinese flags was tied to an iron hook above the window. He pulled the rope, and pulled again, harder. He leaned out the window, pulling with both hands. The rope broke free of its fastening on the opposite building.
The sound of boots came from the corridor. He paused, ran to the wall behind the desk, grabbed the single page that now sat in the facsimile machine, ripped away the photograph of the serene cottage, then rushed back to the window. Stuffing the papers into his shirt he grabbed the now dangling line of flags and climbed out. A moment later he was on the ground.
The next instant Tenzin and his guard appeared around the corner of the building, moving toward the door of the second building. Shan stepped in behind them. As they reached the door two soldiers of the People's Liberation Army appeared in front of them and reached out for Tenzin, pulling him between them.
"Religious Affairs matter," the guard grunted.
"Not anymore," one of the soldiers snapped. "This man is wanted for breach of military security. Orders of Colonel Lin."
The guard looked back out the door as if hoping to see reinforcements. "Director Tuan has custody. Religious Affairs-"
"I said Colonel Lin," the soldier said, and offered a sympathetic shrug. "We all just take orders, comrade. Take it up with your Director," and turning, pushed Tenzin toward the stairs.
The guard hesitantly retreated, confusion obvious on his face. He turned and examined Shan suspiciously.
"Look at that," Shan said in an impatient tone, and pointed to the downed line of flags. "And on May Day." The guard glanced back inside, then at Shan and the broken line of flags, then muttered something under his breath and walked away.
A moment later Shan met Tenzin and the two purbas in uniform at the kitchen door and rushed them toward the meditation cells. Inside the old building, Shan helped Tenzin quickly trade his robe for the clothes of a dropka, then helped him into the hidden chamber as the purbas disappeared in the direction of the rear wall.
Winslow appeared to be asleep, but Lokesh was wide awake, squeezing Nyma's hand affectionately, like an old uncle reunited with his family as they studied one of the ancient manuscripts. He looked up at Shan with his crooked grin, and Shan set his finger to his lips for fear the old man might cry out.
As Tenzin sat beside him Shan quietly explained that in a moment Khodrak and his men would discover that the holding room was empty. But when the knobs began to search the grounds, someone would call their attention to a strange scene on the ridge above, four men in army uniforms herding a man in a maroon robe up the ridge.
Tuan and Khodrak could not protest too loudly, for fear of being discredited in front of the officials form Lhasa. Even if Tuan pursued with his white shirts, he would arrive too late to find any trace of them on the far side of the ridge, for horses awaited the disguised purbas, which would quickly take them out of sight. He could not spread a wider alarm, because Tenzin was back where he was officially meant to be, in the custody of the army.
Then, as Khodrak and Tuan reeled in confusion Lhandro would announce the people of the region would pay homage to the gompa and its important visitors by staging their own celebration. The Tibetans' long delayed spring festival would begin.
A whistle blew, and a moment later Shan heard boots pounding the earth outside. He settled back against the old wall. Once monks had hidden in here from Mongol invaders he told himself, bringing their most important thangkas and scriptures inside. The thought of the peche still lying on the shelves where they had been secreted, probably fifty years before, somehow comforted him. Treasures could still be hidden, and the arrogance of those who sought to usurp them could still be used as a weapon against them.
Shan watched the festival parade in his mind, as Lhandro had described it. In the front would be adorned yaks, all the yaks in the camp, which the dropka had finished decorating the night before. In the very front, festooned with red yarn and braids would be Jampa, led by Gyalo, the monk Khodrak had declared dead to Buddha, in a festival mask. Dropka in their traditional finery, some of it handed down for generations, would follow, some with hand drums and damyen, the traditional string instrument from the changtang. Then there would be dancers, adorned with some of the elaborate headdresses that had been used in cham dances, the dances traditionally performed to depict important historic or symbolic events. Finally, for good measure, children would lead their favorite sheep and dogs in the procession. It would be loud and chaotic, which was exactly what Shan and his friends had hoped for.
No one spoke. The boots pounded by again and receded. A voice droned over the loudspeaker, then there was a sound of another voice, loud but not amplified. Lhandro's. There was silence, then the sound of animals. The procession was circling the compound, past the dining hall and lhakang, past the medical station and the prayer wheel. Shan leaned forward, straining to hear. There was a beat that could have been drums, then another louder beat, and Tenzin touched his arm. Someone was tapping the wall outside. He slid clear of the secret door and it swung open. Somo, her face taut with anxiety, helped them out of the chamber.
Outside, as yaks in ornate harnesses streamed past, Lhandro and several others stepped into the doorway to block the view inside, calling out good-naturedly to their friends in the procession. "Lha gyal lo! Lha gyal lo!" The words echoed through the compound.
"Lha gyal lo!" a cracking voice cried behind him. He turned to see Nyma trying to put her hand over Lokesh's mouth.
They carried Lokesh out into the corridor, where Winslow was waiting, bent at the waist, his elbows on his thighs. Somo and Nyma positioned Lokesh onto the American's back then tied him in place with loops of heavy twine around Winslow's chest and waist. Lokesh began to laugh hoarsely. "My spirit horse has arrived," he exclaimed.
As the American stood, Somo draped a blanket around them, covering Winslow up to his chest, fastening the blanket with pins, then suddenly the dancers were there, six of them. Two in costumes of skeleton creatures, the others with hea
ddresses of protector demons. Two of the costumes were made for two men, customarily with one on the other's shoulders, with four arms ending with hands with long claws. The dancers pressed about the doorway and paused as though resting, then slowly continued. But as they did one of the big creatures stopped in front of the door and Lhandro and Somo pulled off the headdress, revealing two of the dropka Shan had seen at the purbas' truck the day before. In less than a minute they had the costume sleeves over Winslow's and Lokesh's arms, the headdress itself balanced on Lokesh's shoulders. Winslow toppled forward out of the building, then found his legs and began dancing down the street. They could hear Lokesh call out his praises for the gods as they walked. Shan turned to see Tenzin being fitted into one of the skeleton costumes just as someone pulled the mask of an angry yak over his own head. Nyma picked up a long narrow bundle wrapped in the jacket she had been wearing. It was one of the peche she and Lokesh had been studying, Shan realized. She cast a knowing look toward Shan, then closed the secret door. They would leave the other peche inside, in the shelter of the fragrant closet.
He could barely see where he was going as he took a step forward, and discovered gratefully that someone was leading him outside, toward the other dancers. In a moment Shan was mimicking the jig of the others, moving three steps forward and one back then one sideways, slowly proceeding toward the gate
Sheep bleated behind him, and the normally moribund monks of Norbu began calling out encouragement for the children in the procession. When they reached the benches by the gate Shan saw that Winslow was slowing. If he fell and the mask dislodged all would be lost.
But they were nearly out, nearly at the gate. Shan stepped closed to Winslow to support him if necessary.
"Again." Padme's voice called over the speaker. "Our distinguished visitors have asked for the dancers again!" Much of the assembly cheered. Shan's heart sank.
He watched Winslow turn, the skull face seeming to stare directly at Shan. Then, following the lead of the Tibetans, as several monks snapped photographs, Shan, Winslow, and the abbot of Sangchi danced for the Bureau of Religious Affairs.
Thirty minutes later they pulled off the masks in the shelter of the tent by the purbas' truck. Winslow, sweat pouring from his face, looked numb with exhaustion but Lokesh could not stop grinning. He kept waving his arms as he had in the costume, laughing, as Somo and Nyma helped him off the American's back.
Only when Winslow straightened did he seem to notice that his clothes had been torn in the scuffle with the doctor. He lifted the remnants of his shirt pocket, which hung loose, ripped along both sides and examined them with a puzzled expression. "Did I have a card in there?" he asked in a hollow voice.
Shan replied with a slow shrug.
Winslow shrugged back. "To hell with them. We showed the bastards." He made a twirling gesture with his hand at his shoulder, like throwing a rope.
The purbas moved in urgent silence as the final element of the plan unfolded. The decorated yaks milled about the gate. The children played among the benches with the dogs. The dropka with the drums and damyen sat near the podium and played more music while the purbas wrapped Lokesh in a blanket and carried him into the truck, followed closely by Tenzin and Shan. Five minutes later they were pulling onto the road out of Norbu.
Abruptly, behind them a truck in the compound began honking its horn as if it were urgently trying to part the crowd and leave the gompa. Their own truck accelerated.
"They wouldn't chase the army in a truck, not across the ridges," Lhandro said in a despairing voice as the sound of the horn grew closer. "They must be coming for us."
"Somo! Where's Somo!" one of the purbas cried out.
As one of the white howler trucks sped out of the gompa yard Shan's heart sank. He threw a blanket over Tenzin and Lokesh, and watched as the truck overtook them.
But the vehicle did not stop. Five of Tuan's howlers sat inside, impatiently waving them aside as the white truck sped past.
As their old truck slowly rumbled back onto the road a hand appeared on the back gate and Somo swung inside, her face a strange mask of pride and fear.
"I didn't understand why they gave up so easy, why they didn't at least chase after those soldiers," she said anxiously. "So I stayed close to the speaker's platform. Padme ran out with a facsimile, stood by as the officials read it with Khodrak. At first Khodrak just stood there, saying words that no one wearing a robe should ever say. Then he changed, and smiled; said the army would learn now, that perhaps the abbot of Sangchi had been a prisoner they had stole from the army, but now the army had a prisoner who was his by right. He had proof from the old Tibetan books. It would be a grander victory even than discovering the fugitive abbot, he said. There is no one else in all of Tibet who better represents the old oppressive ways, he said." Somo cast a sorrowful look at Shan, then Tenzin. "What a lesson we can make at Yapchi, Khodrak said. What a victory will be ours."
It could mean only one thing. They had left the ancient medicine lama on the mountain with Lin. But Lin's soldiers had finally found their colonel, and now Lin had made good on his vow. He had arrested Jokar.
Chapter Seventeen
The mixing ledge was deserted when they reached it the next morning.
"The soldiers," Somo said forlornly as she walked through the empty chambers with a butter lamp. "They were searching with helicopters. Lin must have signaled them. It's how they must have found Jokar Rinpoche."
Lhandro's parents and Anya as well, Shan thought bitterly. They were all gone. "It means we can't stay," he said. "We need to go back to the water cave." Winslow, Tenzin, and the other purbas had carried Lokesh on a litter to Larkin's cave. Shan, Somo, and Nyma had pushed on with Lhandro to the little plateau.
The meager possessions of those who had been hiding at the mixing ledge were spread around the chambers, undisturbed, as though they had been forced out with no time to pack. The Yapchi headman knelt by his father's empty pallet with a mournful expression. His parents would not survive imprisonment for long. He had left them in a joyful state, communing with the medicine lama, but they had been wrenched away, into a violent, soulless world, a world they would never comprehend. Lhandro touched the corner of the framed photograph, sitting at the head of the pallet, and a small choking sound escaped his throat. His fingers trembled. "Some of the dropka," he said, "call helicopters 'sky demons.'" A sky demon had landed and consumed his parents. It happened that way sometimes. Helicopters came without warning and snatched away someone, who would never be seen again. In ancient days, a dropka once told Shan, sky demons did the same thing, but with lightning.
Lhandro stared at the photograph and opened his mouth, as if to ask why. It wasn't that his parents might be dead that hurt the most, Shan knew, but that it was so incomplete. Lhandro would never know whether to offer death rites, would not know when or where to mourn, or whether to seek them in some prison.
"All we wanted was our deity," Lhandro whispered to the photograph. He collapsed onto his knees beside the pallet, before the Dalai Lama, and began a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha.
Shan studied the room and the pallet. "Why," he asked slowly, "would soldiers leave the photograph like that?"
Somo looked at him, and then back at the image of the Dalai Lama. It was the kind of thing the soldiers hated, the kind of thing they would have thrown against a wall or ground into the earth with a boot heel.
Lhandro looked up in confusion. Somo knelt, studying the contents of the chamber with wary eyes, then shot up as Nyma called in alarm from the doorway.
Two figures approached along the western slope, walking slowly, stopping sometimes to survey the landscape below. Somo gestured the others back behind the rocks until it was clear the approaching figures were Tibetans, both clad in dropka chubas, one, the taller of the two, wearing a derby. With his binoculars Shan saw they were holding hands. Then the strangers stopped and sat on a flat rock two hundred yards away.
Somo sighed. "We can ask those herde
rs if they saw something. But now we have to pack up anything that was left behind. No evidence should be left. If they come back, if they decide this is a purba hiding place, they will destroy it with explosives," she declared grimly, and stepped back inside, Shan and the others following closely.
Five minutes later Shan froze. Strangely, he thought he heard laughter. He looked at Somo, who had stopped, too. They rose from the bundles of blankets they were tying and warily moved outside.
Anya was there, wearing an oversized chuba, kicking an apple like a soccer ball as someone with their back to them tried to block her. It was the man in the chuba and derby who had been walking with her. Kicking the apple, Anya gave a surprised grin and waved at Shan as he stepped forward, then the man turned. Somo gasped. It was Lin.
The colonel froze. The apple rolled past him. Impossible as it seemed, for a moment Shan thought he saw playfulness on Lin's face. But his features instantly hardened and the fragment of a smile left on his face chilled into a scowl.
"Still on the run," Lin said gruffly as Anya ran to Nyma and embraced her. "I knew you wouldn't get far."
"I have a teacher," Shan explained in an even voice, "who says one of my problems is that I never run away." He studied Lin. The heavy chuba, which he now recognized as belonging to Lhandro's father, hung over his army pants. His army shirt had been replaced with a red one, like many of the dropka wore. His eyes were clear, his legs obviously steady. "But sometimes in Tibet," Shan added, "it can be hard to understand what running away means."
"I showed Aku Lin where the pink flowers called lamb's nose were blooming," Anya said, and she stepped in front of Lin as though to protect him. "We found some greens we can cook."
Aku Lin. She had called him Uncle Lin. Shan stared at the girl, and back at Lin, then at Somo. Their presence meant a helicopter had not come. "How long have you been here?" he asked. "Alone like this?"
Bone Mountain is-3 Page 49