Thomas frowned. “Reactionary Tibetans then. The first victim lingered. A cloth was stuffed in his mouth to silence him.”
Shan nodded solemnly, wondering about the boy who coldly took photos of dismembered men for a school project. “What exactly did you do,” he asked, “after your first visit?”
“I went back for one of Heinz’s guns. When I returned there were dogs circling about the rocks. I fired the rifle and they ran.”
Shan stared at the boy in disbelief. “Another approach,” he observed in a steady voice, “might have been to wait in hiding with your camera, in case the murderer returned to dispose of the bodies.” If Thomas had scared away the dogs, then certainly he would have spooked the murderer.
“But then my portfolio would have been incomplete,” Thomas pointed out. “I still had to lift the fingerprints and evaluate the angle and force of the cutting instrument. The dogs would have destroyed evidence and contaminated the crime scene.”
“And your conclusion about the instrument used to cut off the hands?”
“It had to go through bone and ligament. A surgical bone saw would fit.”
It wasn’t so much an investigation, Shan told himself, as a word game. Sound bites from famous detective shows I have watched. “I’m old-fashioned,” he said. “How about something that fits the context, like a small ax? It would account for the wound in the back and the severed hands.”
Thomas nodded, making more notes.
There were four more photos of the dead men. The young one had worn denim pants and a sweatshirt; the older man, a T-shirt and sweatpants. The other eight photos were all of bloodstain patterns.
“Why were you really imprisoned?” Thomas asked. “I saw a movie once where an investigator was sent to prison to infiltrate a criminal ring. Did you kill anyone in prison? A good policeman doesn’t need a gun. I have a book about the ten ways to kill with your hands.”
Shan clenched his jaw. As unlikely an ally as Thomas might seem, Shan needed the boy. “I saw many people die in prison.”
Thomas hesitated, then nodded. “Of course, if it was true, you would deny it. The best ones never break their cover.”
“I can see you have a brilliant career ahead of you in Beijing.”
“Would you write a letter of recommendation for me?”
The charade was getting out of hand. “Your family has imprisoned me,” Shan pointed out.
“But I unlocked the door,” Thomas declared.
Shan pushed open the door to the large sitting room with a finger. He stepped into the empty room, then eyed the door that led outside. He returned to Thomas and leaned on the table beside him. “Where is your evidence? Your samples?”
“I sent them to Beijing, to a friend in a lab.”
Shan paced around the room. The adjoining office was empty. “Why did you cross to the other side of the mountain? Why go to the trouble, when you have all this?”
“This is my uncles’ stuff. I’m my own man. I do my own thing. They wouldn’t approve but I’ve made friends of some of the miners. They are always looking to trade things.”
“What do they have that you could want?”
“Gold, of course. I can get them little comforts. A can of peaches, a bag of raisins, a toothbrush, a razor. Vodka and brandy. The closest store is fifty miles away. Everyone is in business, right? Uncle Heinz says we all participate in the global economy, no matter where we live.”
Thomas’s particular home in the global economy, Shan realized, was a storehouse replenished regularly by the People’s Liberation Army. “How often do you go to Drango village?”
“That dump where the farmers live? Never.”
“Then how often do you see Chodron?”
“That old yak? He stays in his wallow on the far side.”
Shan considered the boy’s words. He said he never went to the village but he had admitted that he knew who Chodron was. Shan picked up the camera and asked Thomas to show him how to scroll through the photos, pausing at the last, a tiny one of the man sometimes called the saint, sitting between the blood-drawn images. He leaned over the boy, speaking in a low, urgent voice, Thomas nodding assent to his secret assignment. When they finished, Shan scolled through the photos one more time. “Did you look for identification on the bodies?”
“Everything was covered in blood. I brought plastic gloves when I returned but-”
His answer was cut off by an angry exclamation from the dining room. Kohler stood near the door, glaring. Thomas colored, then without another word trotted toward Kohler, who led him into the kitchen.
Shan darted toward the entry, then hesitated and slipped into Gao’s office instead. He spent a moment surveying the framed photos, ashamed at the quiver of fear that some of the familiar faces sent down his spine. Lingering at the back of several photos, looking like a tourist who had wandered into the scene, was a younger Kohler.
On the desk were recent letters, most sent by fax, from addresses in Beijing. He glanced at the small gray fax machine at the side of the desk that had received the letters. It meant there was a telephone wire strung from the base below, but it also might mean there was no reliable electronic mail connecting Gao’s little palace to the outside world. He quickly scanned the faxed messages for their originators. The Academy of Scientists, arranging a speaking date for a conference in January. The Special Science Section of the State Council, one of the unofficial, private little committees that advised Beijing’s top echelon. The director of civilian personnel for regional military bases, asking for staffing recommendations. The Party Council on Scientific Policy, seeking review of a secret research paper.
Beside the correspondence was a rolled-up newspaper. On closer examination Shan saw that it was not simply rolled but taped tightly to form a cylindrical package. One end had been sealed with tape, the other was cut open. Shan upended the tube, dumping out a hard object wrapped in the coarse toilet tissue used in most Tibetan homes. A second later he held it in his hand. Despite Gao’s assurance to the contrary, someone had come from the other side, from Drango. The gold beetle glistened more brightly in the sunlight shining through Gao’s office window than it had in the light of the butter lamps in the stable. He recalled Gendun’s punishment and Chodron’s obsession with sending the beetle back to where it belonged. Shan looked up at the nearest photo of Gao, a portrait in which his breast gleamed with the medals bestowed on civilians who performed vital services for the state. Shan had found the home of the mountain deity.
He pushed the golden beetle back into the tube and headed for the door to the outside. With a surge of relief he felt the knob turn. The door opened. But as he stepped outside Kohler looked up from a nearby rock where he sat smoking a cigarette.
“Do you have any notion how quickly our garbage disposal system works?” he asked. “One call, and a squad of soldiers appear. Then our garbage disappears forever.”
Shan looked longingly at the cliffs above, the route back to his world. “But you and Dr. Gao don’t like to reduce yourselves to that level.”
Kohler grinned. “Something like that. And you present such an interesting opportunity for us.”
“If you are looking for kitchen help, I am always dropping things.”
“Comrade, you are going to have Gao rolling on the floor,”
Kohler said and gestured Shan back into the house.
Four hours later he sat with Kohler on the square stone-walled roof of the high tower. The room under the roof in which Kohler had locked him was the most agreeable of prisons. Though a windowless chamber, it contained an actual bed and linens. Before locking him in, the German had explained that he and Thomas had similar rooms on the levels below.
Kohler had invited Shan to the roof to watch the sunset with a bottle and two glasses, and was now holding the fifth glass of pepper vodka he had consumed. Shan had sipped from the first glass of the pungent liquid when Kohler pressed it on him, then clandestinely tipped the contents over the side, only to have t
he glass refilled.
“We’re all outlaws of a sort,” Kohler said, his eyes reflecting the purple light of the dusk. “How could any sane man not be, in this world we have created?”
“Have you been away from home long?” Shan probed.
“Home? What’s home? My homeland was declared redundant. Mergers and acquisitions, they call it. Someone in Bonn or maybe Washington decided to make a takeover offer so good it couldn’t be refused. Presto, no country. Just a bunch of branch offices reporting to what had once been our biggest competitor. Entire towns were discontinued. I got a letter from my sister, who once headed a school. She scrubs floors in Frankfurt now. But she has her own car and a mountain of debt so she is happy as a pig in mud.” He saluted the sunset with his vodka glass. “Lha fucking gyal lo.
“I never really had a home there anyway. I came to Beijing as a doctoral student on a special exchange program for physicists. Dr. Gao took me on as a special assistant. The first year we communicated by drawing equations on chalkboards. By the time I understood Mandarin I was already living in a spare room of his house, though we spent damned little time sleeping in those days. I could go home and be a cog in a wheel of Moscow’s science machine or stay and live out every scientist’s fantasy. Unlimited resources. Billions and billions. Unlimited glory.”
“At least within certain bureaus in Beijing,” Shan submitted.
Kohler saluted him with a clumsy sweep of his glass. “Once wars were won by the side that could best afford to keep sending men to the slaughter, which for centuries made China the mightiest nation on earth. Every man with a beard who rode out of the West was smothered by a hundred Chinese. “Now it’s a game of cards. Small men at a big table play guessing games about what equations the other side’s big men have written on secret chalkboards.” Kohler burst into laughter, then drained his glass again.
“If you have a chalkboard,” Shan said, “I would guess it’s full of questions about two murders that took place on the western side of the mountain. You betray your concern by holding me.”
“What we worry about is the inexplicable. Death happens all the time on the other side of the mountain, it’s to be expected. It’s like the Wild West over there. You know, American cowboys,” he said, using the English words. “But you, Inspector Shan, are inexplicable. Why do you appear at this moment? That worries us. We had another escaped prisoner once. He was found looking in the windows. He begged us not to call the army. He offered to be our slave, offered to go back over to the other side and bring us gold. Thomas guessed you must be a secret agent of some kind. I laughed.” Kohler examined Shan for a moment. “What explains a man like you?”
Shan became aware of music rising from below, a confused mixture of sounds that he eventually distilled into muted rock and roll overlaying the more distant tones of Beethoven. “That other prisoner. What happened to him?”
“He was annoying. Too nervous. Too talkative. I arranged for him to disappear.” Kohler poured himself another glass of his medicine. “But you, you are like a monk. You are focused, quiet. You have secrets. We have learned to be very careful about gray men with secrets.”
“I am nothing but what you see before you. My gray clothes are rags.”
Kohler drained his glass again.
The sun had disappeared over the ridge. The purple sky became streaked with silver. The narrow cleft had long since disappeared into shadow but not before Shan had fixed in his mind’s eye its location and a line of outcroppings that led straight to it.
“This Rapaki you spoke of earlier. Does he live in a cave?” Shan asked abruptly.
“Who?”
“The hermit no one wishes to discuss.”
“He’s harmless. Forget him. He’s just a goat with a robe. You might glimpse him in the distance before he scampers away.”
“Forgetting things. That seems to be the house specialty here.”
Shan refilled the two glasses, toasted the German, stealthily dumped his over the side, and refilled Kohler’s again. Kohler held the glass under his nostrils for a moment. “A good retirement requires discarding the last moment and living in the next.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Sounds painless,” Kohler retorted. His head began to roll. He had to exert himself to keep it upright.
“I’m sorry we won’t have more time to get better acquainted,” Shan said. Kohler did not protest when Shan took the glass from his hand and set it on the wall.
“I have hidden the fucking key,” the German mumbled, though he seemed unable to move. “You will stay until the dragon decides to eat you.” Then he passed out.
Shan arranged Kohler as comfortably as possible, taking the precaution of removing the man’s shoelaces and using them to tie his hands to the arms of his chair before Shan descended to his bedroom. Kohler had proudly pointed out the nearby linen closet. Shan did a quick calculation, then removed ten sheets from the closet, quickly returned to the roof, and began knotting them together. One of the many things his years in Tibet had cured him of was his fear of heights.
Chapter Four
Shan was nearly in sight of Drango village the next morning when he heard an angry shout. He flattened against an outcropping, wondering if, against all odds, Kohler had had him followed by a squad of soldiers. He bore the bruises of a night passage through the ravine, having crossed the flimsy ladder bridge just before the moon hid behind clouds and then spent a restless few hours in a hole in the jumbled rocks, certain every tumbling stone was the sound of pursuing boots.
A string of curses in Mandarin erupted from the far side of the outcropping. He studied the trail behind him, then cautiously stepped around the rock, freezing momentarily before his foot came down on a freshly erected cairn. Eight inches high, it had been carefully constructed inside one of the pans used by miners for working streams, a sprig of fresh heather inserted in its center. It still smelled. It had been made of manure dropped from a mule or horse, and carefully placed in the middle of the trail above Drango. Peering around the rock Shan saw a middle-aged Chinese man berating a mule stacked high with cargo, trying to coerce it to turn down a fork in the trail. He grabbed a handful of the sweetgrass that grew in the cracks in the rocks at his feet and stepped around the far end of the outcropping. The animal’s head snapped up and the mule leaned toward the grass in Shan’s hand.
“It’s my beast,” the man growled. He raised his makeshift staff, a crooked but sturdy juniper limb, as if to hit Shan.
“But it’s Tibetan,” Shan said. “Tibetans have a custom of sharing part of the load when they travel.”
A pick and shovel were lashed to the top of the mule’s panniers. The man’s hand went to a knife in his belt. His grin was aimed past Shan’s shoulder. The hairs on the back of Shan’s neck rose as he slowly turned. A large dog sat on a slab of rock six feet away, fangs bared, ready to pounce.
“No bark,” the miner declared, showing his own yellowed teeth. “All bite.”
Shan let the mule eat the grass, then kneeled, facing the dog. “Why do you leave the mountain halfway through the season?” he asked the miner, who did not reply.
Shan spoke to the dog in Tibetan, as Lokesh did when meeting an unfamiliar animal, asking it how it felt, praising its obvious strength. A belief in reincarnation made for interesting relationships with animals. The dog’s fangs disappeared. It cocked its head and stepped forward, tentatively licking Shan’s hand.
“You’re no miner,” the stranger said. “And you’re not one of those damned farmers either.”
Shan pulled up his sleeve and displayed his tattoo. After so many years he had learned that though for many it was a cause for alarm, for others it was an icebreaker.
The tautness left the man’s face. He studied Shan, then extracted a small gleaming nugget from a pouch at his belt. “This is yours if you help me down the mountain to the road. Three days’ work. I’ve twisted my ankle.”
“I can’t,” Shan replied. “But I can wrap your ank
le if you have some cloth so it will be easier for you to walk on it.”
“Under the shovel,” the miner said. “There’s an old piece of canvas.”
Shan did not miss the worried glance the man cast up the trail. Was he being followed? “Sit and unlace the boot,” Shan advised as he pointed to a nearby rock, then he retrieved the cloth. In five minutes he was expertly wrapping the swollen ankle. When he finished the man uttered a satisfied grunt and extracted a much smaller piece of gold.
Shan raised his palm to decline payment. “Just tell me what has frightened you.”
“I don’t fear a damned thing. It’s the way of things this summer. My old grandmother knew, after all the famines and wars she saw. Sometimes death stalks a land, she said, and there’s nothing man can do to stop it. If you aren’t smart enough to come in out of a hailstorm, don’t complain when your skull gets cracked. They closed my factory. Everyone says move to a big city to make money. I don’t want a big city.” The miner shrugged, watched a passing cloud for a moment. “I’ve got family I want to see again.”
The man lit a cigarette. “Two years ago an old friend from the army shows up. He asks me to hide him from the police for a few days while he waits for a ride to Hong Kong. In return he tells me the biggest secret in Tibet. After the snow melts, he says, load up a mule with supplies and follow this secret map to a place called Sleeping Dragon Mountain. Pick up gold from the ground and it’s yours. Last year I came, and it was good. I got enough to pay off my debts. This year started the same but then it got ugly. My camp was looted, half the gear stolen. A miner not far from me woke up in the night to find all the trees in his camp on fire. Another miner’s mule was killed by a painted stick stuffed down its throat.”
Shan looked up with sudden interest.
“Two weeks ago someone killed my other dog and stuffed a claim stick in its mouth.” The miner blew a plume of smoke toward the sky.
“Why? What do they want?”
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