Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  The third sheet was from months earlier. It was the official instruction from the Party’s Disciplinary Board accepting Colonel’s Tan recommendation that Lieutenant Huan Yi be transferred from Lhadrung and suspended from the promotion lists for three years.

  “Huan’s been busy,” Zhu observed. “Another man would have kept his head down after being disciplined so severely, probably would have asked for transfer back east to put it all behind him. But Tan gave him a break.”

  “A break?”

  Zhu pointed to the bottom of the last page. “Right there, over the colonel’s signature. It says that Huan should be transferred to the Lhasa regional headquarters to give him investigative experience. Awfully forgiving of the colonel.”

  Shan heard the questioning tone in Zhu’s voice and stared at the typewritten words. Everything but the last sentence sounded like Tan’s heavy hand. But it was more likely that Tan would have recommended traffic duty in some smog-laden eastern city than a berth in Lhasa that would have given Huan more power than he would have had in the local district office.

  “Funny thing about that death sentence for Metok,” Zhu added. “I saw a television show where a detective said you had to check every single fact. So I checked about the location of the provincial governor on the date that death order was signed. He wasn’t in Tibet, he was at a Party conference in Fujian Province, at some beach resort a couple thousand miles away.”

  Shan offered an approving nod for Zhu’s diligence. “There’s a missing piece,” he said. “How did Huan go from prosecuting the weather wizard to targeting an engineer at the hydro project for corruption? Why would they have assigned him the lead on such a significant case so soon after being disciplined?”

  “They wouldn’t,” Zhu said. “It would only be if he initiated the case, if he brought in the complaint and evidence.”

  “Meaning he had a connection to the Five Claws project before he prosecuted Metok.”

  Zhu considered his words then reached into the canvas case at his feet, used for carrying orders and maps in the field, and extracted a copy of the weather wizard’s prosecution file. Shan sipped at his tea and watched the earnest young officer, wondering if he fully grasped the danger of working for Shan. “The hail chaser was a zealot,” Zhu suggested. “The Tibetan Yankay Namdol was engaged in feudalistic behavior that was an affront to the motherland.” The lieutenant saw Shan’s confused glance. “It was what Huan wrote, his words from his report.”

  “Not enough,” Shan said. “Perhaps he knew the managers of the Five Claws project? I mean from somewhere before, somewhere in the east,” he added, meaning outside Tibet. A deep foreboding was falling like a shadow over Shan. Powerful, unseen forces were at work, the kind of forces that had once condemned Shan to the gulag, the kind of forces that had killed four people with impunity. If the Commissar was behind the conspiracy there could be no hope for justice. The Commissar was the demon deity of the Party. He didn’t trouble himself with meetings or conference calls to resolve differences, he just sent thugs in dark suits to silence opposition. “Do you have family, Zhu?” Shan asked.

  “Only my parents, no one else.” It was a familiar story. After two generations Beijing’s one-child policy had transformed a society which for millennia had been built around large families by eliminating siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins. “They’re old, had me later in life. They’ve moved into one of those homes for the elderly.” He shrugged and for a moment Shan saw the awkward boy who still lived inside the young soldier. “I met a girl in Lhadrung. I’m thinking of asking her out.”

  “Good. Go back and ask her out. I’ll tell the colonel about the great job you have done and tell him you are ready for a new assignment.”

  Zhu seemed offended. “You think I’m frightened?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t think you are, but you should be.”

  Zhu seemed about to argue, then calmed and drank his tea. “You have family too.”

  “A son,” Shan said, though if Ko were ever released he knew he would have a daughter-in-law soon thereafter. He acknowledged Zhu’s point. “I’m an old warrior scarred from many such battles. We are going into dangerous terrain.”

  “I’m a mountain commando, not some military clerk,” Zhu reminded him. “That’s what I do, fight in high-risk terrain.”

  Shan shook his head. “You won’t see them coming until it is too late. Go back to Lhadrung. There’s work you can do there. Locate that Institute crate from the train and find out what’s inside.”

  Zhu grinned. “It never went to Lhadrung. It was picked up by an Institute worker with four knob guards and taken to the Public Security office here in Lhasa, even though it was marked for the Lhadrung depot. The fools didn’t know that there were shipping papers taped to the back of the crate. The colonel told me to quietly remove them when we unloaded the military cargo. It was military cargo too.”

  “The Institute had military goods?”

  “It was not the first time. They don’t know that everything that gets loaded into the secure compartment goes through the hands of an army quartermaster back in Xining. I made a call. They had shipped military-grade explosives a few weeks ago. This time it was one of the army’s battlefield surveillance drones, one with four propellers and a video camera with a two-mile range.”

  Shan recalled the rock fields around the top of the valley of the Five Claws. They provided perfect cover for someone worried about pursuit on the ground but anyone hiding in them would be conspicuous from above. The deputy director was raising the stakes in his fight against indigenous intruders.

  “Then return to Lhadrung and check out that officer in Hong Kong who gave the statements against Metok. See if he had any connection to Huan.”

  Zhu gave a reluctant nod of his head, and Shan watched the lieutenant wind his way through the thinning crowd on the square then called for another pot of tea. He was exhausted and had the long drive back to Yangkar ahead of him. Being in the city only made him appreciate his simple life in the remote town even more, and he pushed down the sense that he was on a path that would drive him out of the town forever. The more he asserted Tan’s authority, the more the gentle Tibetans of Yangkar would resent him. The more he resisted Tan’s efforts to make him one of the colonel’s key deputies, the more likely it was that Tan would recall him back to Lhadrung, which, like Lhasa, was rapidly becoming one more soulless Chinese enclave.

  He noticed the little jar of toothpicks on the table and extracted one, then with his pen drew the numerals one through six in a circle on his napkin. He held the toothpick a few inches over the circle and dropped it four times, pausing each time to record on the corner of his napkin an inch-long line, a line divided in two segments, or a line divided into three segments, depending on which number it fell on. Together the four lines, stacked over each other in sequence, would combine to create a tetragram, used in Tao te Ching meditations.

  He worked slowly, ritualistically, and created a tetragram of a solid line on top, then a second solid line, a line of two segments and a line of three segments. In the chart his uncle had made him memorize as a boy it signified Chapter Six of the Tao te Ching, called Perceiving the Subtle. He smiled as he silently mouthed the long-remembered words. The mystery of the valley is immortal, they said. Its gateway is the source of heaven and earth. To the old master of the Tao the valley meant human perception but sometimes, his uncle had taught him, you just had to take the words for what they were. He knew of a valley that brimmed with mystery, and he knew he had been avoiding the peril of its gateway for too long.

  He had one more stop to make before leaving Lhasa. He bought a sweatshirt with a cartoon of a smiling yak over the words Gem of China, and a visored cap that he pulled low over his face as he crossed the bridge to Jamalinka. He was beginning to understand Professor Gangfen’s appreciation of the island community. It was a world of many layers. If you could ignore the obvious shell of hedonism—probably difficult for many visitors—the
re were many other rich and varied realities. In the eyes of the dancers, the prostitutes, the pimps, the hawkers of cheap goods, and the barkeepers he often saw shades of shame and desperation but also flickers of defiant, independent spirits who had found an unexpected oasis shielded from the world outside. He had read that many cities of China and Europe had once had enclaves of sanctuary where warrants and legal process could not be served, and the hand of the law was suspended. Had places like Jamalinka become the modern equivalent of such sanctuaries?

  Once again he watched the apartment on the darkened side street for several minutes before climbing the stairs. Tink answered on his first knock, as if expecting him, then quickly closed and locked the door behind him.

  Cato Pike sat at the table, staring at a glass of amber liquor in his hand.

  “I think we might track the car that was in the reported accident,” Shan said. “I wondered if perhaps your daughter sent you a photo that would have had the car in it. There would be records from the office that administers the university projects and I could—” He stopped mid-sentence as Cao Li stepped out of the shadows of the hallway. The Chinese student froze then took a stumbling step toward the door.

  “Hold on,” Pike said to Cao, and swallowed what was left in his glass. Shan could smell the strong liquor from several feet away, an acrid Japanese whiskey. “Inspector Shan isn’t here to arrest anyone. He wants justice for the professor just like you do,” he added, then turned to Shan. “I wasn’t exactly shocked when Cao led me back here,” the American said, and reached into a pocket to extract a photo. It showed a blond woman wearing a broad smile as she listened to an older Chinese man who was pointing to a statue of diety on the steps of the Potala. “The professor and my daughter,” Pike explained. “I had been wondering who the photographer was until I met Cao.” He nodded at the Chinese student “There’s still a lot he hasn’t told us, but we are making progress,” he said, then poured another glass and saluted Cao with it.

  Tink, gazing at Pike with a worried expression, turned to Shan. “We had the same idea. Cao knew the car well,” she said as she lifted a steaming kettle from the stove and filled a teapot.

  Shan accepted a cup of the green tea and sat across from Pike, whose dark expression was beginning to worry him as well.

  “There’s a big police lot south of the city,” Tink continued, “an impoundment lot where they take cars that are towed. I convinced a friend to park her car illegally. We waited a couple hours after the tow truck came and went to claim it. I waited on the street while she and Cao went in.”

  Cao sat at the table with his steaming cup. “I drove the professor in it many times,” he said in a tight voice. “I would know it anywhere. It had a scrape on the right side where I drove too close to a boulder two months ago. In the back seat were two of our hard hats with the university emblem. The only damage was a dented fender where it had been rammed. Black paint had rubbed onto the fender.”

  “Black,” Tink said, “like the color of knob cars. They did it, just to show it was damaged.”

  Cao spoke in a forlorn whisper now. “It didn’t tumble down a mountain slope. It didn’t explode in flames. They lied. They all lied.”

  Pike was looking at Shan now. He showed no effects of the alcohol. His eyes no longer burned with rage. They were more like the cold, calculating eyes of a predator beginning a hunt. Until now he had only suspicions of foul play—even the shipment of animal ashes might have been a mistake, however unlikely—but now he had proof.

  “Give me some time,” Shan said to the American. “These are things of my world, not yours.”

  “Things of your world,” Pike repeated, making it sound like an accusation.

  Shan turned to Tink and Cao. “You don’t understand the dangers,” he said.

  Tink replied with a peeved grin and rose to open a closet door. “When we went today I was a redhead, my friend a brunette.” The inside of the door held over a dozen hooks, on which wigs of various lengths, colors, and styles hung. “I learned a long time ago that if I dress the right way, no one looks at my face,” she quipped, and pushed out her chest.

  Cao looked away, embarrassed.

  “Why were you coming to town today?” Shan asked the student.

  Cao nodded. “To see a friend of Professor Gangfen’s. He was helping us, the professor and me. And Natalie,” he added with an awkward glance at Pike.

  “Helping?” Shan asked.

  “There’s a place in the north where the professor and Natalie were when they went missing. His friend was helping us collect data we needed to stop the … to help preserve a vitally important archaeological site.”

  Shan’s eyes found Pike’s. The American cursed and drained his cup of whiskey.

  “You mean the Five Claws project,” Shan said. “And the friend was Metok Rentzig.”

  Cao seemed bewildered. “I had something to leave at his apartment, from the professor’s records. I knew the professor would want our efforts to continue.”

  “Metok is dead.”

  Cao’s countenance went rigid. His hand shook so hard tea spilled from his cup, but he seemed not to notice the burning liquid on his fingers. “How?” he asked.

  “A Public Security bullet in the head. Someone wanted him dead and they accused him of corruption.”

  Pike leaned over and poured whiskey in Cao’s tea. The student took a long swallow. “Then I’m the only one left,” he murmured.

  “The only one?” Shan asked.

  “The only one who can make the case the professor and Natalie were trying to build with Metok’s help.”

  “You were going to leave Metok something about the Five Claws?”

  Cao nodded, and extracted an envelope from inside his shirt which he pushed across to Shan. It held a dozen square photographs taken with an instant camera. The lighting of the images was so bad Shan struggled to make sense of them. “Better to start with this,” Cao said as he extracted a folded paper from his wallet. It was a photocopy of six more photographs on the same page. Two of them showed a rectangular field filled with scores of upright stones, evenly spaced in over a dozen long rows. Judging by the horses grazing at one side, the field of raised stones must have been perhaps three hundred feet long and sixty or seventy wide. None of the stones were over five feet high.

  Three of the remaining photos were of marks on stone walls that might have been primitive renderings in yellow ochre of animals or supernatural beings. The last was another ochre image on a wall but this one was clearly identifiable. It was a Christian cross.

  “A Tibetan herder took the professor and me to the valley two years ago,” Cao explained. “The local people have many names for it. Valley of the Gods, Holy Home, Gekho’s Roost, for the earth god who was said to reside there.” He pointed to the photo of the rectangle of standing stones. “There have been over a dozen of these fields identified in Tibet, mostly in the western regions. They were erected more than three thousand years ago and seemed to have had a religious purpose. As far as we could tell it was the best preserved of all the stone fields, sort of Tibet’s Stonehenge. The same grids of pillars are seen in Siberia and in the Scythian culture in central Asia. It would take years of study to understand it. We were going to take some days off from the Green Army dig to take more photos and begin to formulate plans for closer analysis.

  “But the first thing they did, as a dramatic gesture for what they called their project launch day, was to bulldoze the field. By the end of the day it was leveled and scraped so no trace was left.”

  “The stone wall images are from the cavern?” Shan asked.

  Cao nodded. “The local people said that on the spring equinox the shadow of the central row of pillars at sunrise pointed to the mouth of the cavern. The earliest images on the walls were carved petroglyphs made with iron tools. The others are of ochre paint, some probably dating back two thousand years and more.”

  “And this one, much more recent,” Shan said, pointing to the cross.


  “There was a Jesuit explorer, Father Ippolito Desideri, who visited Tibet in the early eighteenth century. He was intensely curious about Tibet and its origins, wrote that it was the best evidence of the complexity of the human soul he had ever found. He spoke of being taken on a tour of religious sites by some lamas, some of the sites secret and ancient. We think it is likely that the valley was one of the sites he visited. When the professor first visited the valley, he said it was one of the most important archaeological sites in Tibet, perhaps in all of central Asia. I could have spent the rest of my career studying it. Now it is all gone.”

  “Natalie was in the cave,” Pike stated.

  Cao glanced up at the American then quickly away. “Yes. She was going to help make the case to the United Nations cultural office to preserve it, to focus international attention on it. She was going to take our report back to America.”

  “Who knew that?” Shan asked.

  Cao shrugged. “At first only me, Natalie, the professor, and Metok. Later Metok included a friend of his, another engineer named Sun Lunshi.” Cao seemed not to notice the glance exchanged by Shan and Pike. He was the only one of the five still alive. “We wanted to work up a more scientific profile at the site before we introduced it to others. It was remarkable for the way it showed the evolution of religious dialogue, from the very early animists to the Bon, the Buddhist, and Christian, all existing harmoniously in the same place. I remember the professor saying it was like a convergence of different paths of the human spirit. He called it the Rosetta stone of the soul.”