Bones of the Earth

by Eliot Pattison

  “Of course we do. We had to think like Public Security. Watch when your subject least expects it. Intercept emails. Emails sent over many weeks, with glowing reports of progress. Never a mention of all the accidents, and wholesale lies about foundations being poured and the control room being almost complete. Sounded like an entirely different project when I read them. There was even one about a parade of grateful Tibetans showering you and the director with flowers on May Day. I doubt even Beijing believed that one.”

  “Shut up!” Huan shouted. “You are finished! No one will listen to you! You will all be gone! You’re as good as dead already!”

  Shan ignored him and kept speaking to Jiao. “I didn’t mean to confuse you,” he said. “The evidence won’t be presented by me or the colonel. We have collected all the proof of your crimes in one file, so it reads like a story. All except that of your murder of Tara in Larung Gar. We’ll keep that among us. The proof will be presented by another old relic. He was most unhappy to find you had forged his chop and used it on several critical documents. And to usurp the name of the amban—that was sacrilege. Just how accurate is the Commissar with his crossbow?”

  Jiao went very still.

  Huan stepped closer to Lhakpa, aiming the gun at his head now. “Give us the phone!” he screeched.

  Jiao ignored the Public Security officer. “The Commissar understands the need to cut corners from time to time, in the interest of the motherland.”

  “Too late. He probably would have taken a bribe if you had offered one.” Shan shrugged. “But you hurt his feelings. You may not believe in the mountain god, Comrade Jiao, but the Commissar is a god of the Party. As old as the hills but revered almost as much as the Great Helmsman. There is no one in Beijing who will not take his call, no one who will not accede to his wishes.”

  “How could you have known about the signatures?” Jiao growled.

  “The governor wasn’t even in Tibet when he supposedly signed Metok’s death warrant. And why would the Commissar put his chop on it when the project wasn’t his?” Shan asked. “Major Xun didn’t realize that when he started stealing glances at Colonel Tan’s mail that the colonel’s assistant would start stealing glances at his. You were using faxes because the email service was unreliable. You probably shredded yours. Xun did not.”

  Shan’s gaze shifted to Major Xun. “Amah Jiejie found them in a file taped to the bottom of a drawer in your desk. What was your phrasing? Oh yes, ‘The smelly old ass won’t know the difference.’ I thought you meant the colonel at first but then you replied that he was half-blind anyway. We were confused about that until we intercepted the earlier emails. Your arrogance blinded you to the fact that the Commissar and Colonel Tan are old compatriots. The Commissar didn’t know he had signed off on switching twenty million to your control, not to mention a diversion of heavy equipment from his highway project. Twenty million is a lot. You probably do have secret accounts in Hong Kong, come to think of it. And imagine when we confront those contractors who worked at the dam when they were supposed to be on other projects. They will be scrambling all over each other to make confessions, hoping for leniency. Beijing’s enforcement policy against corruption is very effective. You know how it works. First one in gets immunity, everyone else a bullet. Or maybe they will just go with murder charges, that might be more politically palatable.” He shifted his gaze to Xun. “Of course, things will go more quickly for you, Major. A military court doesn’t get bogged down in bureaucracy. How long do you suppose, Colonel, before a bullet is reserved for Xun’s head?”

  “Did you kill Jampa?” Tan demanded of his chief of staff.

  “Not exactly.” Xun sneered. “He was still alive when I left him in that alley. He didn’t resist, just started one of those damned mantras.”

  “Less than a month,” Tan replied to Shan. “And I will reserve for myself the honor of pulling that particular trigger.”

  “Then there is the warden at the 404th,” Shan added. “He will sing for his life when we tell him that you have all confessed.”

  “Never!” Huan shouted. “This changes nothing! We will just advance our plans. None of you leaves the mountain alive!” He stepped toward Tan, who fixed him with a cool, level gaze. “Including you, old man. Xun will step into your office. I will become head of Public Security in Lhadrung County. We will have plenty of time to clean up all the loose ends, like that old hag of a secretary you have.” He raised the pistol at Tan, ten feet away. Tan reacted only with a taunting grin. Huan fired.

  Tan shuddered and clamped his hand over his upper arm. Blood oozed out around his fingers. Huan laughed and raised his gun again but as he fired, a figure speeding out of the trees crashed into him. The pistol fired twice as Huan and his assailant hit the ground.

  “Ko!” With a wrench of his gut Shan realized his son had deflected the shot that was meant to kill Tan. The two men wrestled on the ground. Blood spurted from the tangle of limbs. The gun fired again, and Huan went limp.

  Shan ran to his son, but Tan was there first, pressing his palm against a bloody spot on Ko’s upper chest as he lifted him to examine his back. “A clean shot, out the shoulder,” the colonel explained as Shan desperately confirmed his son’s pulse remained strong. “Nowhere near a vital organ. That’s good. Not much blood coming out of his mouth. Looks like it only grazed his lung, mostly through muscle. A battlefield wound, not a death blow.” The colonel stared at Ko, who had passed out, and Shan realized the colonel was almost as stunned as Shan. The prisoner of the 404th had saved the life of the tyrant of the Lhadrung gulag.

  Jaya reached down and with Tan’s help carried Ko into the camp, where she leaned him up against a tree then draped a blanket over his legs as she began tearing off the bottom of her shirt to bind the wound. Tan stripped off his own tunic and took off his shirt for her to use. Lhakpa lit a stick of incense and stuck it in the ground beside Ko.

  Jiao gave an exaggerated sigh as he gazed at Huan’s body. “Always too excitable,” he declared, and made a gesture to Xun, who silently dragged the dead Public Security officer to the edge of the cliff and pushed the body over.

  “You should go now,” Shan said to the remaining conspirators.

  “We are not finished,” Xun spat, raising his own gun.

  “You can still make that plane,” Shan pointed out.

  “Or what?” Xun sneered. “You’ll try another cheap trick and call it the magic of the mountain god?”

  “Cheap?” Shan replied.

  As Xun looked over Shan’s shoulder the color drained from his face. He seemed to shudder, and then stepped backward. Natalie Pike, supported by Jaya, had stepped out of the shadows.

  “Impossible!” Xun gasped. “I laid the final charges myself! She’s dead! She has to be dead!”

  “This is Tibet,” Shan said. “The dead always live again.”

  The American woman, the bandage still covering her eye, said nothing and extended the cell phone Xun so desperately sought. As Cato Pike emerged from the shadows, Shan’s heart sank. He had left Pike alone with his daughter, giving him the chance to retrieve his pistol where he had dropped it on the cave floor.

  But then Shan saw he was not holding the pistol, but instead had the blue sledgehammer that had been adapted as a ritual weapon. As the American took a step toward Xun, the major raised his pistol. Shan inched forward.

  Tara the goat appeared beside Pike. She cocked her head at Xun, then gave a bleat as if in recognition. She lowered her head and charged the man who had killed the human Tara. Xun, clearly frightened of the small animal, shot twice at her as he retreated, missing both times. She gained speed to ram him but then suddenly skidded to a stop. Xun was gone.

  “Pull me up!” the major shouted in a voice that held more anger than fear. He had fallen over the edge but had grabbed the thin ledge of rock that extended outward from the cliff. “Damn you, pull me up!” Xun dangled over the void, cursing and calling Jiao’s name. Jiao took a hesitant step toward him then halted a
s he saw Pike striding forward with a treacherous grin. Pike’s gaze lingered for a moment on Xun’s pistol, lying on the ledge a few feet away, then the American turned to Shan. “What did you say this was called, Professor?”

  “The Earth-Shattering Maul,” Shan replied.

  “Right.” Pike looked at his daughter, then at Shan, before he swung the maul high over his head and slammed it onto the ledge rock. The thin lip of the ledge made a cracking noise but remained intact.

  “Pull me up, you fools!” Xun shouted. “I will sign a confession!”

  The words stopped Jiao, who had been slowly moving toward the major.

  The cracking sound continued. “Wolchen Gekho, Sangwa Dragchen!” Pike shouted, invoking the old names for the fierce mountain deity, and slammed the god’s maul onto the rock again. One of Xun’s hands reached up over the edge, clawing for purchase, then the outer two feet of the ledge cap broke away and he was gone.

  Pike looked back at his companions with a solemn expression. “Earth-shattering,” he declared, then shouldered the maul and faced Jiao.

  The pistol was in the deputy director’s hand, but he slowly lowered it as he stared at the empty space where Xun had been.

  “You should go, Jiao,” Shan said again. “Catch that plane. Get out of China. Lose yourself somewhere. India might be easiest, or Vietnam. We will give you a twenty-four-hour head start. If you are lucky, you might even evade the men that the Commissar will send.” He looked at Tan, who still sat beside Ko, and then Lhakpa. Both just returned his gaze with grim expressions. Neither objected. Huan and Xun had been the killers. Jiao had been the mastermind, the dreamer, like so many in China’s recent history, who inspired the killers. Shan gestured to Lieutenant Zhu, who had appeared by the Talons.

  “The cleanup crew is being recalled,” Shan said to Zhu, “back to their army duties. Have one of your men escort Deputy Director Jiao back to his quarters to pack his bags, then to the airport. He has urgent business elsewhere.” Zhu whistled and one of his commandos stepped out of the shadows behind him.

  Jiao gazed forlornly at the soldier, then back at Shan, shaking his head. “You’re nobody,” he said, his voice cracking. “I was going to fire you when I moved to Yangkar.”

  “You’re nobody,” Shan echoed. With a dazed expression Jiao followed the soldier out of the camp.

  Tan signaled for Zhu to wait, then scribbled a note. “See that the warden of the 404th gets this. He is to report to me first thing tomorrow. And radio for my helicopter. Tell them to bring Dr. Anwei. He has two patients for the hospital.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The foundation for the control building on the upper slope had been laid, and a small arbor laced with flowers erected over a podium in its center. The ceremony for the chiseling of the pass, as the deputy director had described it in the invitations sent out weeks earlier, had been designed by Jiao long before his disappearance. The scene looked as if it had been staged for a Party poster. Young Tibetan women in colorful traditional garb and freshly scrubbed workers in helmets stood on either side of a four-foot-high model of a transmission tower. A public-address system played favorite hymns of the proletariat. The Commissar, wearing a once-stylish Mao suit, sat in a place of honor in the front row of chairs, tended by two of his nurses.

  The director had protested loudly when Shan and the colonel had visited his office to report that they had sent Jiao away. His complaints had quickly faded, however, as Shan had begun explaining the conspiracy of the Amban Council.

  “I didn’t know,” Ren had mumbled at first, but soon he was feverishly disassociating himself from the deputy director, calling Jiao “that arrogant young cub from Beijing.” He clutched his belly when Tan sternly described the misuse of army resources, and for a moment Shan thought he was going to be sick. “These issues were all about operations,” Ren nervously pointed out. “He was in charge of operations, not me.”

  “Except” Tan said, “you were the director. Surely you knew something. The chain of command always bears responsibility.”

  “This is a national project!” Ren cried. “We abbreviated procedures, yes, but for the good of the nation. Jiao had the full support of the bosses in Beijing!”

  “Did you know that Xun and Huan blew up the cavern to kill the people inside?”

  “Of course not! The demolition seemed the correct thing to do, from the engineering perspective.”

  “They arranged the death of one of your engineers,” Tan pointed out.

  “Metok was executed for corruption. A Public Security matter. There’s always a few bad apples on such big projects.”

  “Metok was a good man, an honest man, killed by dishonest criminals,” Shan stated.

  “It would seem logical to add you as a suspect to that investigation,” Tan suggested.

  Ren was a man of few strengths, but one of them was recognizing the subtleties in the words of powerful men. He seemed to collect himself and squared his shoulders. “It would be a blow to the integrity of the government to have the head of the project accused as well,” he ventured. “Perhaps we could find another way. For the good of the people.”

  “I can see you are a man of sound practical judgment,” Tan replied in a wooden voice. Shan had had difficulty talking him out of offering Ren up on a skewer to Beijing. The Amban Council had all been dealt with, the warden having been demoted and sent to a desert outpost. The Tibetans who had been detained by Huan had all been released from the Shoe Factory and transported back to their mountain homes. Tan had even reluctantly accepted Shan’s recommendation that each family be given a mule out of the prison stables. The Larung Gar prisoners at the 404th had also been given their freedom, and made a tearful reunion with Lhakpa, who had waited outside the gate for them.

  Now, as his ceremony began, Director Ren motioned for his companions to stand as a banner was unfurled on two long stakes held by workers. Modern Tibet is a Chinese Tibet, it read, only in Chinese characters. Gathered all around them were Tibetans, from the work crews and from the surrounding countryside. Ren gave a short, tentative speech, followed by words from managers from each of the companies involved in the glorious endeavor. As they spoke, Ren looked forlornly at the little detonator switch mounted on the podium. Chiseling the pass, imploding the overhanging cliff walls, was to be the final step in preparing the dam foundations.

  Colonel Tan sat on one of the folding chairs near the director, with Shan on one side and the aged Commissar on the other, nurses hovering behind him. Shan ventured a glance over his shoulder. On a ledge above them were more spectators, including Cato Pike, Jaya, Lhakpa, and the hail chaser who, true to reputation, was doing one of his strange dances, shaking a bundle of twigs toward the narrow mountain pass. A murmur went through the crowd as they saw him, and workers pointed upward to a long line of prayer flags fluttering down from the sky toward the opposite slope.

  As the last of the speeches ended, Director Ren rose and placed his hand over the switch. “I present to you the culmination of all our work,” he announced, then hesitated. He fumbled in his pockets, then withdrew the little blue tsa tsa of the mountain god which Shan had given him. He positioned it on the podium, facing the mountain, and pushed the switch.

  The massive four-hundred-foot-high ridge of jutting rock that was the final impediment to shaping the dam seemed to shudder as the buried charges detonated. It began to slide down the face of the mountain. Then suddenly there were more detonations, much larger, spewing rock fragments high over the valley, and a line of smoke and dust appeared along the upper slope opposite them. The entire face of the mountain bulged, groaned, and began to slide into the valley. The Commissar cackled with glee and clapped his hands. Director Ren stared stricken, clutching the podium as if he were in danger of falling.

  Lhakpa and his friends had already known about the hidden fissures that had been part of the ancient shrine complex, but the seismic maps Sun Lunshi had died for had allowed Yeshe the demolition expert to lay more charges m
uch deeper and higher than he could otherwise have done.

  The ground under their platform began to shake. Two of the honored guests fell as they tried to step off the foundation. The slope along the foot of the valley began to collapse, then the destruction was lost in a massive cloud of dust. Tan turned and nodded to Zhu, who raised a hand to his chin and spoke into a small transmitter.

  Less than a minute later Tan’s helicopter landed on the road above them and a soldier ran to the colonel with an envelope. The colonel solemnly read the contents then handed the yellowed paper to the Commissar, who read it, nodding. Propped up by his nurses, he stood and stepped to Director Ren, who still stood as if paralyzed, staring at the vast cloud of dust.

  “A damned shame, Ren,” the Commissar declared in a dry, amused voice, then handed the paper to the director. “Beijing should have known better than to ignore us. We could have told them. Damned shame,” he repeated and looked back at Tan with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.

  The challenge in their plan had been to find a way to detonate the fissures without having it blamed on the Tibetans. Cato Pike had at first refused to leave his daughter’s side, just as Shan would not leave Ko’s, but after two days the doctor had declared his patients out of danger. Ko would have an impaired but functioning lung and Natalie Pike, with therapy, was expected to regain full use of her limbs. Dr. Anwei was not as sanguine about her eye but was hopeful that doctors in America could find a treatment. Both patients had urged their fathers to go rest, and Cato Pike and Shan had joined Tan and Amah Jiejie at a dinner where Pike and Tan had finished a bottle of vodka, during which the American had learned of Tan’s own bitter attitudes about Beijing. It had been near the end, when Tan had poured fiery bai jin whiskey for all, that Pike had offered the suggestion that would put all the blame on Beijing.

  It was, Shan had to admit, a brilliant strategy. The fabricated note, dated nearly forty years before, was a report from a quartermaster that addressed the problem of excess and aging munitions left from prior hostilities. He recommended that they be dropped into a fissure in a distant uninhabited place called by the Tibetans the Valley of the Gods. Amah Jiejie had artfully affixed old stamps reflecting its authenticity and had verified that the quartermaster had conveniently died years earlier. The finishing touch had been Pike’s inspiration as well. They had baked the paper in Amah Jiejie’s oven to age it, with Tan hovering over the oven with ebullient anticipation, clapping the American on the back as they waited. The unexpected explosion had not been the work of Tibetans, it had resulted from the arrogance of Jiao and his patrons in Beijing, who could now readily blame the fugitive deputy director for the catastrophe.