The Lord of Death is-6

by Eliot Pattison

  The woman studied him a moment then hurried away to the office at the back of the main chamber. The moment she disappeared he opened the book to the photograph with Commander Wu and, with a shamed glance toward the office, ripped it out and stuffed it inside his shirt. A moment later the woman reappeared, sifting through several sheets of paper as she walked that were identical to the one Shan had signed. The entries for the past four weeks included over three dozen names, several German, some Japanese, another French. Only one person had visited multiple times. Megan Ross had started doing research nearly a month earlier, and had been at the library the day before she died.

  Chapter Twelve

  As he hurried down the steep ladder stair into the dim old gompa rooms Shan nearly tripped on a limp form at the bottom. Gyalo lay in a heap, more dead than alive. Shan quickly lit more lamps from the one he carried and knelt at the old man’s side. The tips of his fingers were scratched and bloody. He had been clawing at the hatch above, Shan realized, like a wild animal trapped in a cage.

  The old Tibetan did not acknowledge him, but did not resist as Shan half dragged, half carried him back to his pallet. His breath was harsh and raspy. His shirt clung to his body in patches of red where several wounds had reopened. Shan worked silently, stripping off the shirt, washing the wounds, gently pushing back the hand that now tried to stop him, ignoring the whispered curses in Chinese and Tibetan, gradually becoming aware that the curses had been replaced with a rambling soliloquy made up of snippets of drinking songs, lonely shepherds’ ballads, and mantras to the Tibetan gods.

  When he finished and Gyalo was wearing one of Shan’s old shirts, Shan sat a few feet away on the floor and listened, watching the flame of the nearest lamp, until he himself slipped into a mantra, the prayer for the Compassionate Buddha. He did not know when the cadence of the old man’s words changed, but became aware that Gyalo was sitting upright against the wall, chanting in unison with him, staring at the same flame. Shan lowered his voice. Gyalo kept up the chant, pausing several times to look into the shadows and interject louder words of gratitude to Rinpoche. The old Tibetan, Shan realized, was back in a temple of his youth, chanting with the novice monks as they took lessons from a lama.

  After several minutes Gyalo’s eyes flickered. As he looked up and focused on Shan his words faltered, his face flushed with embarassment and he grew silent.

  Shan extended the photo he had taken from the library, holding it a few inches from the Tibetan’s face.

  Gyalo seemed to take a long time to grasp what he was looking at. Then a shuddering moan rose from his throat. His shoulders sank, his chest sagged.

  “They were here,” Shan said. “The Hammer and Lightning Brigade lived in your gompa before they destroyed it. But what did they do in the mountains?”

  “They died.” Gyalo spoke in such a low whisper Shan was not sure he had heard correctly. “They whimpered like children and died.” The Tibetan pulled the photo from Shan’s hand and held it closer to the lamp, his eyes growing round.

  “These were the ones,” Shan said, “the ones who-” he painfully searched for words-“who took away your robe.”

  Before he could react Gyalo began ripping the photo. By the time Shan had seized it he had torn off a long strip, two inches down the left side. The Tibetan jerked free, then slowly turned and set the strip upright in a little chink in the rock wall that had been made to hold a small deity figure. Emotions filled the old man’s face as he gazed at the strip, emotions Shan had never seen there, emotions he could not name.

  Shan lifted the lamp and held it close, seeing that a single figure was framed in the strip Gyalo had claimed, that of a sturdy, plain looking Chinese girl wearing a military tunic.

  It took a moment for Shan to understand, then he looked away in shame. Gyalo had saved the image of the Chinese wife who had been forced upon him to break him as a monk.

  Constable Jin had his feet up on his desk, staring so intently at a dog-eared Western travel magazine in his lap that he did not even notice Shan until he put his hand on Jin’s telephone. He muttered a quick curse, dropping his legs to the floor.

  “I need to make a private call,” Shan declared.

  “You can’t just-”

  “Someone tried to kill Gyalo. His son is convinced it was Public Security.”

  Jin shrugged. “Two officials have been murdered.”

  “It wasn’t the knobs. Whoever did it never asked a question about the killings. They had no interest in detaining him. They left him for dead in the pit, then rifled through his old things. Things from the first uprising.”

  The constable dropped the magazine onto his desk, opened to a photo of young men and women surfing along a white-sand beach lined with palm trees. “One of those Western climbers read this article to me at base camp,” Jin announced, gazing at the photo. “It says some of the experts imagine the water is snow and they are riding down a mountainside. I could do that,” Jin declared in an oddly dreamy tone. “I know how to sled.”

  Shan closed the magazine.

  Jin seemed not to notice. “I have a cousin who was able to get across the border without getting shot. He got a job in Thailand, in a restaurant. He says they do this there, this water riding.”

  “Surfing.”

  “This surfing. He says he could get me a job too if I ever got permission to leave the country.”

  Shan covered the magazine with his hand. “Like you said, two officials have been murdered. Why aren’t you in the field?”

  “I asked Tsipon about getting a visa to live in Thailand, or India maybe,” Jin continued in a hollow voice. “He just laughed. He said no one in law enforcement gets permission to emigrate, because we know too many secrets about the government. Tell me it isn’t true.”

  “You collaborated with the American Megan Ross,” Shan declared, pushing the tone of a government prosecutor into his words. “You divulged that the mountain road was being closed for the minister, that she was going to drive alone in a car ahead of the prison bus. We could probably find a witness who will recall seeing you give her a ride to the hotel the night before.”

  The blood seemed to be draining from Jin’s face.

  “Revealing a secret vital to state security- to a foreigner no less.”

  “It wasn’t exactly. .” Jin murmured. “I didn’t. .” He looked forlornly at the magazine.

  “In this country,” Shan continued, “law enforcement officials who breach state security have been executed. When Megan Ross comes down off her mountain you’d better start running.” If he couldn’t use the American’s death to find the truth then maybe he too should start pretending she was alive.

  “I can arrest you, Shan. I can ship you away.”

  Shan smiled and stopped pressing. He didn’t want Jin paralyzed, just focused on their mutual problem.

  “Gyalo was attacked by two men in black clothes. Hoods over their heads. Strangers. Who were they?”

  “Public Security does things differently since the last uprising. They still don’t mind hauling off an entire village or gompa. But if they have to deal with an individual Tibetan, they do it in private, in the shadows.”

  “Why would they want to punish Gyalo?”

  Jin seemed to see an offer of hope in Shan’s words. “Last week, after Wu was murdered, he got really drunk, stinking drunk. I walked in to see him strutting along the top of the bar like a soldier, pretending to be shot, and dying, again and again as customers tossed coins. I tried to get him to stop, because I knew soldiers were coming into town soon. He laughed when I pulled him down, said he wouldn’t want to be a soldier in the mountains now, with all the ghosts coming out.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “He said the only demons that ever frightened the Chinese were the ones from forty years ago, the ones who had been dead all these years. He said soon they would be swarming down out of the mountains, riding on the backs of yetis.”

  Shan caught the scent of smoke on Jin, saw for the
first time soot stains on the shoulder of his tunic. “You haven’t said where you’ve been.”

  “There was a fire. Nothing big. That cottage Tsipon loans to foreign climbers. We saved the structure, but most of the gear was lost.”

  “Whose gear?”

  “Tsipon’s new American customers used it when they stayed in town.”

  Shan stepped to the window. He knew the little one-room cottage behind Tsipon’s depot, had helped clean it several times. He leaned toward the glass to glimpse the large building at the southern edge of town. There was indeed a thin column of smoke rising behind it.

  “Who did it?”

  “We are allowed to report only so many crimes, so we’re calling it an accident. Those climbers get sloppy, keeping matches and fuel canisters together.”

  “Who did it?” Shan pressed.

  “I told you. No one. But there’s one funny thing. When they saw it everyone came running out of the warehouse to help. Except Kypo. He ran to one of the cars and sped away.”

  “Toward Tumkot?”

  “Just being a good son.”

  “What does this have to do with Ama Apte?”

  “Nothing. Like I said, we’re calling it an accident.”

  Shan leaned over the constable. “Why,” he said slowly, insistently, “would you connect it to the astrologer?”

  “She has a thing about certain foreigners. An American writer was here a couple years ago, researching Western connections to the region over the past century. There are some great stories about the spies the British sent across the border dressed as monks or pilgrims.”

  “And?”

  “I caught her putting dirt in the writer’s gas tank.”

  Shan considered Jin’s words a moment. “But you let her go.”

  “Damned right. She threatened to tell my fortune.”

  As Shan’s gaze fixed on a basket of shiny metallic objects on the desk Jin rose and looked anxiously toward the door. “You said you had a call to make.”

  Shan lifted a steel carabiner, one of half a dozen in the basket. “What are you finding in the hills?”

  “Nothing.”

  “The snaplinks were supposed to lead you to the monks.”

  Jin shrugged. “The American woman apparently hands them out to children like candy. Snaplinks with prayer beads attached.”

  “Beads?”

  “Every link she leaves has a bracelet of prayer beads strung through it. Like she’s some kind of itinerant nun.”

  Jin took a hesitant step toward the door.

  “Everything’s changed, Jin. Publicly they will call it a criminal conspiracy. Behind closed doors, where it counts, it will be termed another uprising. More gompas will be closed. Monks will be considered a threat to border security. You can’t suppose they will keep local Tibetans in law enforcement. You’ll be sweeping streets in Shogo. That’s assuming Cao doesn’t find out the entire crime hinged on your leaking a state secret to Ross.”

  The constable’s desolate gaze told Shan that Jin understood perfectly. The Tibetan cast a longing glance toward the glossy image of surfers on the white-sand beach, then he shut the door. “I saw two men in dark sweatshirts that day, coming down the trail, hoods over their heads,” he said. “They were running down the trail, toward the murders. Big men, strong, smelling of onions. At first I thought they were Public Security,” he said with apology in his voice. “If I had seen them in the marketplace that’s what I would have thought.”

  “But there was no need for undercover guards on the trail.”

  “I couldn’t see their faces.”

  “And they ran toward the murders. Which means that, if they weren’t knobs, they were probably accomplices.”

  Jin winced, opened the door.

  Shan picked up the phone receiver.

  Jin’s face clouded. “There are other phones.”

  “I am reasonably certain Public Security isn’t listening to this one.”

  Jin cast Shan a sour look, and fled.

  Shan lifted the phone and dialed. The satellite phones used by the trekking companies typically took a long time to connect. But after a few seconds there was a short ringing sound and Yates’s voice came through.

  “You need to be more careful with your matches,” Shan began, speaking in English.

  “I wasn’t anywhere near that cottage,” the American growled. “Now I’ve got nowhere to sleep but up here. It’s like someone wants to drive me away.”

  “Did Megan Ross keep her gear there?”

  “Sure, some of it. It’s where she was staying, until she went to the hotel the night before,” the American added.

  “We need to move those extra porters,” Shan said. “Give them some heavy mountain clothes and meet me on the base camp road.”

  The American took a moment to grasp Shan’s meaning. “They’re gone. They pushed the boxes out at the back and sneaked away. Like they were suddenly afraid of me. Whoever helped them wants me out of China.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re allowed to burn trash in a barrel behind the compound. As I was burning a Public Security officer came up, took pictures.”

  “What exactly were you burning?”

  “Nothing but trash I thought. But in a box I was about to burn they found a monk’s robe. They took me inside to search my room here. Under my cot they found a box of carabiners with a strand of prayer beads inside each one. One of the knobs fingered his baton.

  If there hadn’t been a lot of foreign witnesses I’d probably have a broken skull now.”

  “I need to see you.”

  “I’ve got equipment being staged from base camp today. Tomorrow morning I could meet you in town.”

  “Not tomorrow. Not in town. Tumkot village, in an hour.”

  Shan was climbing into the old Jiefang truck at Tsipon’s depot when two of the warehouse workers rounded the corner, sootstained and carrying buckets. He paused, waited for them to enter the building, then slipped around the corner. Although the cottage was intact, smoke still wafted out of the gap in the open door. He glanced over his shoulder to confirm no one was watching then darted inside. Smoke hung heavy over the ceiling. The acrid scent of burned nylon and plastic mingled with the stench of singed down. The remains of what had been a bed under the window on the wall opposite the door was heaped with smoldering clothes, charred magazines and papers. Tsipon, always wary of strangers on his property, had probably sent away the fire crew prematurely. If given enough oxygen, the bed would probably burst into flame.

  Shan found a T-shirt on the floor, pressed it to his mouth and nose, and searched the ruin of the room. A nylon pack, mostly melted into a blue plastic lump. Several novels in English. Three long metal poles, the trekking sticks favored by foreign trekkers. Clothes strewn everywhere, some clearly belonging to a woman. A small chest of drawers under a window on the side wall, the drawers all hanging open. Two empty duffel bags. Four cardboard boxes, sealed, labeled YATES EVEREST EXPEDITION. He returned to the entry and considered the scene. Before the fire someone had been searching, looking for something that belonged to the Americans. He considered where he would hide something in such a simple open space, then moved along the walls looking behind the few pieces of furniture, under the drawers. Nearly gagging on the smoke, he cracked the window on the side wall and studied the ceiling as the smoke was drawn away. He stepped on a chair, then on the chest of drawers by a window on the side wall, studying the angled roof and its beams. Finally he spotted a dark patch in the shadow of the corner nearest the door. He grabbed one of the trekking sticks and probed, feeling resistance, jerking the stick sideways to dislodge a small gray backpack.

  Urgently Shan searched the zipped compartments, discovering at last a compact notebook festooned with pencil drawings of flowers, mountains, and birds. He was opening the inside cover as the glass on the back window shattered. Three small metal canisters were thrown in quick succession onto the bed. The sudden rush of oxygen ignited the b
ed’s smoldering contents as the door was slammed shut from the outside.

  Shan, still standing on the little chest, kicked out the window as the far side of the room burst into flame. He was halfway through the opening when the first of the fuel canisters exploded.

  He found himself on the ground ten feet from the building, face in the dirt, his ears ringing, his fingers aching from their white-knuckled grip on the American’s notebook. The bungalow was already a ball of fire. If he had not been at the window, in a position to kick it out, the first explosion would have knocked him out, the second and third would have killed him.

  With what seemed to be a great effort he climbed to his feet, stuffed the notebook inside his shirt, and was staggering away as the first of the workers ran around the corner of the warehouse.

  “The fool Tsipon ordered the fire crew away,” the man groused, and started yelling for buckets of water.

  Shan, knowing his hidden assailant would be powerless to act with so many witnesses, could not resist a look inside the notebook. He scanned the early pages before putting the old truck into gear. The American woman’s name was printed in neat letters on the inside cover, which otherwise was covered with a list of mountains flanked by small sketches of monks and prayer wheels. Most pages contained diary-style entries and random technical notes about climbing, some outlined in boxes, some written sideways or even upside down. They were flanked by more images in pencil, mostly of Tibetan scenes or objects though some, like a moose and a cow wearing a large bell, were from other continents. But it was the diary entries that interested Shan. They began with a date three years before, written in Katmandu, then quickly shifted to entries from the southern base camp on the Nepal side of Everest. There were sketches of climbing routes, maps showing advance camps, lines of poetry, transcription of haiku, even names of sherpas with comments on their skills, a single line in large black letters that said, Wherever there are humans you’ll find flies and Buddhas.

  As he pulled out of the parking lot his mind was racing faster than the fire truck rushing toward the warehouse. One of the first names mentioned on Megan Ross’s list of sherpas was that of Tenzin Nuru.