There was no mistaking Ko's office. Its entrance consisted of a garish imitation of French doors, with red plastic grilles set over sheets of clear plastic. On one of the chairs near the entrance was a pile of American magazines, and above it hung a poster of a towering building, a nighttime skyline, over which was written New York, New York, in English. On the opposite wall was a banner, which Shan assumed held a political slogan until he glanced at it, then read it twice. Get Rich with the Brigade.
The office was empty. Shan rushed past a secretary station into a large room with a gleaming desk made of chromed metal and glass. There was nothing on the desk but a red telephone and a photograph of a red sports car.
Lokesh, at the large plate glass window behind the desk, made a quiet chuckling sound. Shan pulled the Tibetan back from the center of the glass and peered around the edge. The window opened onto the center of the compound, a yard framed on three sides by buildings. A baseball game was being played. Vehicles had been pulled to the side, and at least two dozen spectators sat on the hoods and roofs of the vehicles to watch the spectacle. Ko was there, running about the way Deacon had at the nadam field, directing the players to stand a certain way, showing them how to hold the wooden bat.
Shan stepped back to his search as the batter hit the ball and the onlookers cheered again. The enterprising Ko did not appear to be involved in the details of his enterprises. The two drawers in the narrow table under the window held paper clips and pencils. Bookshelves held an assortment of mementos and books on management, including several in English. Thriving on Chaos, one said. The momentos were mostly familiar political tokens. A bust of Mao tse Tung. A piece of wood into which the words Persist Unswervingly had been carved, an abbreviation for a favorite motto of a past decade. Two cigarette lighters mounted in polished stone with brass plates noting Party conferences. Several pen and pencil sets. And a string of dingy plastic beads. Shan picked them up. A mala. Remembering that the demon who killed Alta had taken the boy's rosary, Shan put the beads in his pocket.
There were no lists of boys' names with calculation of bounties. There were no notes on Lau. On the wall was a photograph of Ko standing under a banner announcing the Poverty Eradication Scheme, shaking hands with a nearly bald man with a thin, hatchet-like face. Shan studied the man. On his suit coat was a large pin in the shape of the Chinese flag, with a battle tank underneath it. A memento for retired soldiers.
Shan wandered back to the secretary's desk. On it was a large envelope, return address Brigade headquarters in Urumqi, with Ko's name scrawled on it. Below Ko's name was a note. I wish all my managers understood the new Chinese economy as well as you, comrade. This will be our model project to explain what a market economy with Chinese characteristics really is. It was signed Rongqi.
Inside the envelope Shan found a glossy label bearing an image of mountains and the Potala in Lhasa, the traditional home of the Dalai Lama, now converted by Beijing to a tourist shrine. Superimposed over the image was the word Oracle, with a trademark symbol. Fresh from the sacred spring, it said underneath and then, at the bottom, ten ounces. On the side panels were more marketing words. Healing. Fortifying. Better Dreams. Taste the magic of Tibet.
Shan stared at it in confusion at first, but then he read the cover note again, and his throat went dry. The oracle lake at the Raven's Nest. The Poverty Eradication Scheme. Rongqi's hatred of the Tibetans. The assimilation of lost minorities into the economic process. The subversion of the Yakde Lama. Ko and his general had found the perfect project. The model for their new economy. Distribute the sacred waters of the Raven's Nest to the newly affluent Chinese of the eastern cities. Rongqi was a man who evolved with the economy, but not all the way. He would have his vengeance on the Yakde Lama, paying rich rewards for the boy's death and also for the Jade Basket, even annoint his own Yakde Lama, then he would rub his victory in the faces of the lama's survivors.
Shan's hand trembled as he lifted the simulated label that covered a series of index cards. Suggested marketing slogans, someone had ambitiously penned on the first card. Print image: sexy woman in a nightshirt, it said. Caption: "Psst! I've got a Tibetan sex secret for you!" The second said, Print image: Monk raising a bottle with a big smile. Caption: "In Tibet we say, lha gyal lo! Victory to the gods. Now I say Victory to you!"
There was more, but Shan could not bear to read them.
Suddenly horns blared from the vehicles at the baseball game. Shan dropped the envelope and pushed Lokesh toward the door. "Don't run," he said urgently. Don't look Tibetan, he almost said. He grabbed a heavy coat hanging on the back of the door and a baseball bat leaning in the corner. He threw the coat at Lokesh, who slipped it on, pulling its hood over his head. They walked down the hall, past the smiling janitor watching the desk, Shan in the lead with the bat on his shoulder. The woman waved goodbye. As they reached the door a group of men entered, a tall big-shouldered one in the center boisterously speaking of the game they had just played. Shan glanced at him and quickly looked away, then slowed to listen to the man's deep voice again. As he passed the man and exited the building Shan realized he had seen him before, wearing a white shirt that glared in the night, standing on the road in the Kunlun mountains.
Twenty minutes later they were in the cellar of the Maos' restaurant, Lokesh grinning as he offered the coat to the Mao's wardrobe. He paused to point out the gloves and hat in the pocket and the rich lining inside, synthetic fur in the pattern of a leopard. Shan smiled at his friend, feeling in debt to the deities who protected the old Tibetan, then began explaining to the Maos what he had learned. Wangtu, slumped in a chair in the corner, sat up and listened.
Moments later Lokesh called out in a somber tone. Shan turned and looked at him with a puzzled expression. The coat was reversible. Lokesh had put it on, leopard skin out, brown gloves on, a brown balaclava over his face, showing only eyes and mouth. He was holding the baseball bat, not as a batter would, but in one hand, raised over his shoulder. In his other hand was a long thin object which Fat Mao took for inspection. The Uighur pressed a button on its side and with a loud click a long blade appeared. A switchblade.
Shan gasped and stood as he realized what Lokesh had discovered. The demon in leopard form that had attacked the boy with the dropkas. The demon without a face. The demon had paws, and a shiny stick like a man's arm, the woman had said, without the fingers. He looked at the bat, wide at the top and ending like a wrist at the bottom. Jowa groaned loudly and turned to Shan with a look of shocked understanding. The boy had met the demon in mere leopard form. But Shan had to deal with the demon in Ko form.
Shan turned to Wangtu and studied the sullen Kazakh. "You have to make it happen," he said with a glance to Fat Mao, "you have to get the lie to Xu." He quickly explained what he had to do, then called the prosecutor's office from the pay phone at the post office, three blocks away, with Ox Mao listening. He asked for Miss Loshi and left a message with the secretary saying he was going to the town square, where he wanted to meet Prosecutor Xu with important information about Director Ko. A minute later Ox Mao left with a message to give to the bald man in the lobby, as Fat Mao gave hurried instructions to the others.
The sirens started five minutes later as the knobs converged on the square. Had Loshi bothered to call Ko first, Shan wondered, or had she contacted Bao directly? Ox Mao was behind the Ministry palace by then, watching the Red Flag limousine. Swallow Mao, the shy Uighur woman, stood in an alley a block away, where she could see Ox Mao. Jowa sat on a bench on the street opposite Shan, where he could see Swallow Mao. The signal came quickly. Jowa dropped the paper he was reading and raised both arms as if stretching. Shan stood, walking slowly, until he saw the shadow of the big car in the alley and stepped in front of it.
No one spoke as he climbed inside. The bald man drove fast, out of town, as Xu looked out the window, her eyes restlessly surveying the streets. Five minutes later they pulled onto a rocky track and climbed to the top of a small hill. They were at the edge of t
he desert, looking west toward the late afternoon sun. Xu silently walked to the edge of the knoll and down the other side. Shan followed, and found a short set of wooden stairs in severe disrepair. At the bottom Prosecutor Xu sat on a decrepit bench, beside a sign that leaned against the wooden post it had apparently fallen from. It had the flowing script of the Turkic language, but no Chinese.
"The old Muslim cemetery," she said, looking out over row upon row of identical sunbaked tombs, long cylindrical mounds of mud and cement, curving to a slight point along the top ridge. The scene gave the impression of scores of columns from a temple that had been toppled in symmetrical rows. Here and there were small beehive shapes of baked mud, the home, Shan suspected, of cremated remains and several large beehives, where bodies were buried sitting upright with their knees folded against their chests.
He quickly explained about the evidence linking Ko to the attack on the dropka boy.
"Circumstantial," she said.
"Ko must have been in a Brigade truck in Tibet with others that day, just like the next night when we saw them. It shouldn't be hard to find some of those who were with him. You could interrogate them. Get statements. It's one of your specialities, I hear."
She did not rise to his bait. "Bao found Lau's body," she said instead. Shan's head snapped up. "Or said he did. So we called, said an autopsy should be done. He said the Bureau already did one, confirming drowning was the cause. Body was cremated in Kotian."
"The body?"
"He had a body. But he didn't know my office uses the crematorium in Kotian too. We called, and the technician said the job had been delayed, that they were just about to start. I said we needed one last check of the woman's identity, and he called back five minutes later, all upset. Wasn't a woman at all. It was a young man, and he hadn't drowned, he had been shot twice in the chest. Mistakes happen I said, just put him away in the morgue. We'll be in touch."
"Lieutenant Sui." Shan spoke toward the graves, as if their occupants deserved to know.
The prosecutor nodded. "It's a strange sort of coverup. If Bao shot Sui he would have been more careful, there would have been no body. He's cleaning up someone else's mess. Someone he won't prosecute."
"Ko. Ko shot Sui. I met a witness. Bao found out, and Ko gave him his car to quiet him. Now they're business partners, thanks to Rongqi. Bao is protecting Ko, at least for now."
"Ridiculous. Bao and Ko, they're totally different. Never been friends. I've known them ever since they arrived in Yoktian."
"I saw a banner for the Poverty Eradication Scheme," Shan said. "Unify for Economic Success. I think Rongqi created a bond between them, a mutual interest."
"Like finding your boy lama?" Xu asked in a skeptical tone. "You're talking about the Brigade, one of the biggest companies in China, and the Public Security Bureau."
"No. Not the Bureau, just two renegade officers. Sui hid what he was doing from Bao. Sui killed Lau and got a lead on Ko in trying to find the boy. Ko killed him, because Sui was getting too close to the big prize. Then, later, when Bao discovered what had happened, he stepped into Sui's role. Unify to maximize the bounties. They can collect more if they work together. Rongqi increased the prize, too much to ignore for someone like Bao, stuck in Yoktian on a knob's salary. Creating a false record in the Lau investigation, that would be nothing for someone who kills boys for money," Shan sighed wearily. "Arrest them both. You'll be a hero."
Xu grimaced. "There's still no hard evidence."
"A body in the morgue is a good start. And there's a witness to Sui's murder, hiding in the mountains." Shan studied her. "You just mean there is no political explanation."
Xu was silent, looking out over the field of tombs. The wind blew sand in drifts along the rows of graves.
"Corruption is political," Shan suggested. "Bring down Rongqi, and you can get out of Xinjiang."
She made her grimace again. "I need books. I need ledgers. I need evidence. Offering economic incentives with private money, that's no crime."
"Offering a bounty to kill a boy is."
Xu shook her head. "One word from Rongqi to a boot squad and we can all wind up in lao gai. You don't possibly think I could touch the general."
Shan stared at her. Her eyes remained as hard as pebbles but she would not meet his gaze. "I think you can. I think you're just scared."
"Sure. Next he'll have a bounty on uncooperative prosecutors."
"No. You're not scared of Rongqi. I think there is only one thing that truly scares you." She looked at him. "I think you're scared of becoming me."
The sound that Xu made seemed to start as a laugh, but ended more as a whimper.
"It's possible to stand up to them," he continued. "But if you do, it's also possible to end like me." He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as if speaking of some strange lower life form, not of himself.
She stood and abruptly walked away, down a row of tombs. The wind picked up as the sun began to sink behind the mountains. It shifted and filled with the acrid smell of the ephedra bushes that grew along the desert fringe. It was cool, almost cold, a sign of a shift in seasons.
He followed, but not all the way to her, stopping six feet away to bend at a grave. He began clearing away the dead leaves that had gathered against its wall. One of the traditions lost to most modern Chinese was Chen Ming, the festival when one swept the graves of ancestors and placed a branch of willow over the door to ward off evil spirits. When the government outlawed graves, it had effectively outlawed the festival day. Once Shan had found his father trying to fasten a tiny willow twig to the frame of their door, and his father had made an awkward joke about it and walked away. But in the night the twig had appeared over the door.
"You are going to get a report of a crime in the next few hours," he said in a loud voice as he worked. "Bao arranged it. Someone will say another boy has been attacked, maybe even killed. In the mountains. The kind of call the prosecutor's office must respond to. You will need to go immediately, or in the morning, early."
Xu gave no sign of having heard. She wandered away. A few minutes later she appeared on the other side of the tomb where Shan worked. "You mean a trap?"
"A distraction, I think. Because tomorrow morning is when Bao and Ko plan to catch the last boy. The one with the Jade Basket. It's timed perfectly for the general's visit. The big prize at last, presented to him when he arrives."
"He's here," Xu reported. "Came this afternoon, staying at a special Brigade guesthouse. Has boot squad bodyguards."
Shan sighed. "Perfect. Arrest them all."
"Lunacy," she shot back. "You've lost all sense of the bond between the government and its citizens." The words came out forced and hollow.
Shan just stared at her.
"You've been in Tibet too long," she accused him.
"I read something on the bond between the government and its people," he replied. "It's called the Lotus Book."
The words had a strange effect on the prosecutor. Xu seemed to stop breathing for a moment. She looked out over the tombs. "It's not like that," she said after a long time, in a taut voice.
"When you're in prison," he said quietly, speaking toward the horizon, "you always wake up without making a sound. People learn to have nightmares with silent screams, because of what the guards do if there is noise." The woman looking at him now was not the prosecutor. It was someone he had never seen before. The stone in her face seemed to have shattered. "But one day I woke up to the sound of a beautiful bell. Not loud, but true and harmonious, resonating to my bones, a perfect sound. Later I asked a lama who rang the bell. The lama said there was no bell, but at dawn he had watched a single drop of water drop from the roof into my tin cup. He said it was just the way my soul needed it to sound."
"I don't understand," Xu whispered, toward the graves.
"It's only that it changes you, Tibet. It makes you see things, or hear things differently. It marks you, it burns things into your soul." He looked at her. "Or sometimes burns through yo
ur soul."
Xu turned to put the sunset wind in her face. "In that book," she started, as if trying to explain something.
"Know this," Shan interrupted, for he would not deceive her. "I read nothing about you in the book." But he remembered the strange look on her face when she had stared at the Kunlun, and how Tibetans worried her.
She seemed relieved for a moment and turned toward the stairs. But when she reached them she sat on the bench again. He worked on the grave a few more minutes, until it was clean, and still she just sat, staring over the weed-bound tombs.
Shan walked out of the graveyard and stepped past her. He was on the first stair when she spoke. "There're three hundred forty-seven graves here," she said, in her whisper again. "I counted them once."
He sat on the stairs. A large bird soared over the graveyard and roosted on a far tomb. An owl. Keeper of the dead.
"I was only sixteen," she blurted out, almost a sob. "We made a truck convoy from Shanghai, gathering more and more cadres as we went. They elected me officer. I never asked for it, but they said I could recite more of the Chairman's verses than the others in my unit. We traveled for weeks. We broke down fences to liberate livestock. We burned schools to liberate children. We burned libraries to liberate knowledge."
The Red Guard, Shan realized. She was talking about the Red Guard and the Cultural Revolution.
"When we got to Tibet they assigned me a district and a quota. Ten percent of all citizens were declared bad elements, and I had to identify my ten percent and submit them to struggle sessions, public criticism, violent criticism. Sometimes fatal criticism. Gompas had to be eliminated. The reactionaries had to be punished. Fourteen times our unit forced children to shoot their parents." She paused and surveyed the graves again as if she were thinking of counting once more. "We were only children ourselves. Sometimes they stripped lamas naked and made them dance in the town square."
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