“I want him stopped,” Bing muttered to Shan.
“He is speaking to the ghosts, asking them to tell us the truth.
Surely the citizens of your bold new world have nothing to fear from old world ghosts. Or is it you who are scared of ghosts, Captain Bing?”
“What do you want?”
“The man who died last year. What exactly happened?”
“He was found with a chisel in his back and a bloody patch on his head where he had fallen against some rocks. A shopkeeper from Guangzhou had come here with him, his partner. But they were always arguing with each other, and with the rest of us. We confirmed it was his partner’s chisel.”
“We?”
“Hubei and I.”
“And the killer?”
“No one knows how he died. All we found was his skeleton.”
“Wearing his old ring. A skeleton with jewelry. Even the dead adapt here.”
“That’s when we organized ourselves. Signed articles governing Little Moscow, so it would be a safe harbor, a place to keep supplies.”
“And that’s when they elected you to lead them,” Shan pointed out.
“The murder made it clear that someone had to do it. I had government experience. It was my duty to accept the nomination.”
“Supply and demand again,” Shan pointed out. “After all these years, a need for protection arose, and the perfect candidate was there to fill it.”
Outside, Hostene was speaking in his tribal tongue, holding the bag of pollen up to the sky. “There are still some who consider him a killer,” Bing ventured.
“Where’s the body of the man who was killed last year?”
“I don’t know. We left him under some rocks. But when the wolves get hungry enough-” Bing finished with a shrug.
“You’re saying you haven’t been back to the grave?”
“I had no reason to go there.”
Shan considered Bing’s calculated lack of interest. He decided not to ask the question that leapt to his tongue. Instead he said, “When I go to Tashtul town, where will I find the gold agency?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Where does one go to sell gold? Officially, only the government buys gold.”
Bing replied, “You’re not actually going to Tashtul.”
“A fascinating idea, though. The miners disperse all over China come autumn, they have black markets all over China to go to. But you and Chodron, you need to convert the share of gold paid to you by the miners somewhere much closer. It’s against the law to exchange it without involving the government. The Ministry of Mines is the flaw in your business model. It restricts the upside potential of your enterprise. The worst possible partner in a conspiracy is a bureaucrat. You’d be surprised how quickly such officials can be made to sing. Investigators love to start with bureaucrats because they harbor no delusions about the criminal justice system. And this year,” he added, “some of the miners have already converted some of their gold into cash, in the middle of the summer. As if there were a new gold dealer nearby. Or a bank.”
Bing glared at him, then shrugged. “You have no way off this mountain. If you try to go to Tashtul, Chodron will make sure you’re never seen again.” He pushed the canvas flap aside, his anger building, as Hostene began sprinkling pollen on the miners’ heads. Bing cursed under his breath and hastened back to the square.
Shan found Hubei packing a sack with mining equipment near his lean-to.
“That last day Thomas was here, before I arrived, what was he speaking about? Who was he speaking with?”
“Everyone.” Hubei did not stop his packing, but did not hesitate to answer. “Anyone who came along. One moment he was hawking his wares, the next bragging that he knew how to catch criminals.”
“What did he say about catching criminals?”
“Forensics, he called it. He claimed he could tell what made a wound by examining the blood spatter, could tell if a man was dead or alive when he was stabbed or shot by whether blood had flowed out of the body. Bones. Bullets. Fingerprints.”
“What about bones?”
The miner tied off the top of the pack. “Fractures. A skull fracture from a fall made a long crack. A skull fracture from a hammer might knock out a circle of bone. A leg fracture from a car accident was different from one where the leg was held down and smashed.” The miner raised the pack onto his back.
Thomas had spoken of how a victim’s bones could betray a murderer, and then Abigail had seen Bing tossing old bones from a cliff.
“Did you help bury the man who died last year?” When the man did not reply Shan blocked his exit from the shelter. “Did he still have his hands?”
Hubei lowered the pack and rubbed a hand over his face. “There was no need for the others to know about that. We rolled the body in a blanket before they could look.”
“Which means you know his partner was not the murderer.”
Hubei glanced toward the square, where Bing was putting Hostene’s ritual instruments back into his pack even as Hostene continued dispensing pollen. “Maybe there are different murderers. New people came to the mountain this year. Last year, we softened the man’s partner up with a couple of shovel handles, enough to scare him off the mountain. We borrowed his ring before he left,” he admitted.
Shan nodded at the confirmation of his suspicion. “By my count that makes ten hands that have been severed and taken away. How many do you suppose this killer needs? An even dozen? A score? You’re a brave man, going back to your claim alone. Be sure to get some of that pollen sprinkled on your head before you leave.”
Hubei winced, rubbing at the tattooed numbers on his forearm, the nervous reaction of a former prisoner. Hubei was wise in the ways of the world. He, at least, understood that they were on the brink of disaster. His hand went to his belt. For the first time Shan saw an old military knife tucked in his waist.
“You aren’t going mining,” Shan observed.
“No one is to get past the claim Bing posted down the trail. Between patrols I’ll push some rocks around and pan the streams.”
“The problem with being in the middle of a war, Hubei, is that everyone eventually has to choose a side.”
“I’m on the side of my family,” Hubei said. “You should get out of the way. Leave the mountain, Shan, and the war ends.”
Shan said, “I’m not leaving until the murderer is caught.”
For a moment Hubei looked as if he meant to argue with Shan. Then his attention focused on the town square of Little Moscow, which had gone very quiet except for a voice chanting in Navajo. “He’s had a message.”
“Bing?”
Hubei nodded once more. “From that damned woman. He says she came to him yesterday when he was alone working his claim, asking him to give a note to her uncle. We should’ve stopped her the first day she arrived, and sent her away from the mountain. She’s nothing but bad luck.”
“He knows we are looking for her. Why didn’t he give the message to me?”
“A man like Bing doesn’t share secrets. He uses secrets.”
“He told you. He told Chodron.”
“Me, because he doesn’t read English. Only me,” the miner added pointedly.
Shan didn’t wait for Bing to return to his makeshift house. He quickly slipped inside the shelter of rock and canvas, and began searching, starting at the entry from which he surveyed the entire chamber before examining each chink in the rock wall. When he finished with the wall, he searched under the pallet on the floor, then moved to the jacket hanging on a peg. The note was there, in an inside pocket sealed with a zipper. It was written on a page torn out of a journal, the same thick unlined paper she’d used for her note at Gao’s house. It was the same handwriting. “I am safe, Abigail had written, and on the way to Tashtul town. After what happened to Thomas I cannot bear to stay here. I have research to do in Lhasa and will wait for you there at the hotel we stayed at before.”
He put the paper into
his own pocket and walked down the nearest of the little alley ravines to the square. Hostene was pacing around the circle of men still, blowing pollen onto them. No one was ridiculing the Navajo now. These were men who would take a blessing any way they could. Even Bing stood and let Hostene scatter the yellow spores on him, as did a new arrival who stood at the rear, watching with a curious, uneasy expression. Yangke had found them.
Shan retreated to consider Abigail’s note. Bing was keeping her departure a secret even from his patron and partner, Chodron.
A sound came from behind him, a soft, summoning whistle from the shadows. He glanced back to confirm no one in the square had noticed. He did not see the heavy loading boom over his head or the flicker of movement until it was too late. The loop of rope, expertly thrown, cleared his shoulders and was tightened around his waist, pulling him off his feet as it was raised by the overhead pulley, suspending him six feet in the air, his arms pinned to his sides. A man came out of the shadows holding a pole. He wore a hooded black sweatshirt, the hood drawn so low that the man’s face was obscured, even when he began to beat Shan.
By the time Shan tried to call out, he had no breath left with which to speak. His assailant concentrated on his ribs and abdomen, delivering no bone-breaking blows but inflicting maximum pain. The pole, Shan noted, was of juniper. A sacred wood should not be used for such a profane task, he thought.
And then he must have lost consciousness. He was aware only that he was in a storm, with the wind howling, men shouting in fear, deafening thunder and darkness directly overhead. With painful effort he twisted to look upward. If lightning was going to strike him he wanted to see it coming. Despite his pain and the swirling dust, he could see the great black thing. The dragon deity, the thunder maker, the mountain shaker? Then a pebble stung his cheek, awakening him. The dust was scoured away by a downdraft, the shape of the thing outlined by daylight. It was a different breed of demon entirely. It was an army helicopter.
Hands reached up. Knife blades cut the rope that bound him. Orders were shouted, by Bing, by someone in a uniform. Shan was on Hostene’s blanket. Someone was washing his face with a wet cloth, a man with a yellow-streaked face was handing him tea. His shirt was being unbuttoned. Fingers pressed against the pulse in his wrist. He passed out.
Shan lay in a swirling, confused place of memory and fear, in a bed of a remote Public Security ward. The hospital was in the desert, and sand crept into everything, even the cold rice they served him three times a day. He was in a special section reserved for Party luminaries, staffed with special doctors trained in interrogation. They experimented on him, using sodium barbitol, injections of iodine solution, and electric wires and small needles.
“I can’t find a pulse. Just like him, the son of a bitch.”
“Look, he’s vomiting.”
“Excellent. Better than a pulse.”
They tied him naked to a chair and two bald men entered, one with a single long syringe, the other holding a short piece of bamboo.
“No ribs broken,” they confirmed before starting in again.
His handlers were artists. They took pride in never breaking a bone. He could feel the needle that went into his bicep but could not raise his arm to react to it, could only sense the heat oozing up into his shoulder.
All at once he was awake, heart pounding, no longer in his prison of five years earlier but propped against a rock in the central square of Little Moscow. Gao was loading a syringe from a small clear bottle. Over the professor’s shoulder stood a soldier holding a medical kit, nervously eyeing the miners.
“Who was it?” Hostene asked. “Could you see them?”
Shan, unable to speak, shook his head. He leaned and retched, emptying his stomach, then retched again, and again, until nothing came up.
Gao hovered over him with the syringe. Shan held up his hand. “What is it?”
“A painkiller.”
“No,” Shan groaned and, with Hostene’s help, he sat and surveyed the assembly. Bing was calm but the miners looked terrified.
From the lip of the ravine a ladder of small chain links and steel bars hung from the door of the helicopter that had landed. “You’re late,” he said to Gao.
“I’m sorry. The storm delayed me.”
“For the first time in years I was actually happy to see a helicopter.”
Shan pulled Abigail’s note out of his pocket, handed it to Hostene, and fixed Bing with a level stare. “When did she leave?”
Bing’s eyes flashed as he recognized the paper in Hostene’s hand. Before answering he snapped at the gathered miners, ordering them to disperse. Then he said, “I found her wandering, lost, that morning when Thomas was killed. I sent her on her way with a map on a fast mule. She was hysterical. She said she had been knocked unconscious and awakened to find Thomas lying dead beside her.”
“You didn’t try to stop her?”
“Good riddance as far as I could see. I told her how to find the herders’ camps at the base of the first range. They will set her on the right trail to town. She could reach town by this afternoon.”
“And from there?”
“There’s a bus to Lhasa from Tashtul twice a day.”
Shan turned to Gao. “Who else came with you?”
“The pilot, who’s an old friend, and his mechanic, who knows better than to ask questions.”
Shan stood up and took a step, fighting dizziness, then faced Bing again. “I want four gold nuggets. Say half an ounce each.”
“Fuck you.”
“For two men who need to be given a big incentive not to talk.”
Bing eyed Gao, who listened with a curious expression. “It’s a crime to bribe a soldier.”
“Haven’t you heard?” Shan asked. “In the new world order there are no bribes, only business expenses. A reasonable item for your municipal budget. Call it emergency repairs.”
Bing cursed and stepped into the shadows of his shelter. Shan took a step toward the ladder but doubled over in pain. Hostene dropped the gear he was gathering and rushed to Shan’s side. Shan’s raised palm stopped him.
“Go,” Shan said, “climb the ladder. We’ll bring the packs.”
“We?” Gao asked. “You’re in no condition to travel.”
Shan found a familiar face watching uncertainly from the edge of the clearing and gestured toward him. “Yangke will come with us.”
The young Tibetan glanced nervously around the clearing, drawing an unhappy glare from Bing, then gathered up the remainder of the gear and went to the ladder. Shan took three steps before he had to stop, his head swimming.
Bing blocked his way. “No way,” he said.
“There is a way,” Shan said. “Send Hubei with us. You don’t need him to watch the trails once we’ve left.”
Bing stared without expression at his deputy, then slowly nodded. Hubei began retreating into the shadows, then froze as Bing beckoned him. Hubei came forward reluctantly and Bing bent to murmur in his ear, then extracted a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to him. His deputy brightened as he stuffed the pages into his own pocket.
Shan waited for Hubei to climb the ladder, then followed shakily. Gao leaned forward, syringe at the ready. But Shan grabbed the syringe and with an unsteady hand emptied out half its contents before jabbing it into his own arm. Then he headed to the ladder and began climbing.
Once they were on their way Gao asked for the gold nuggets Bing had surrendered to Shan.
“A bribe from you?” Shan said. “Not credible. It needs to come from an unrepentant criminal.” He palmed the nuggets and went forward into the cockpit.
Five minutes later he settled into a small nest of military blankets built for him by Hostene as the machine roared to life and began to rise. Hubei had already found another pile of blankets at the rear of the hold and appeared to be sleeping.
“Where is the pain?” Hostene asked.
With a forced grin Shan pointed to the bottom of a foot.
&nbs
p; “There is the only place it doesn’t hurt. He was no expert. Professionals go for the soles of the feet.”
The landscape began to roll past the narrow portholes.
Yangke rose to sit beside Shan. “I have no papers,” he said anxiously. It was a crime in itself to be without citizen registration papers. They were the first thing police asked for when they encountered strangers.
“Nor do I. Nor does Hostene for that matter, not for this region. We won’t stay in town long. Just overnight.”
“It will take us days to make our way back on foot.”
“I gave the pilots two nuggets today, one for each of them. They get the second installment when they pick us up in the morning.” Together, the little yellow rocks represented at least half a year’s pay for the officer, far more for the soldier.
“Why do you think I can help with-”
“You know Chodron,” Shan interjected. “We need to find Abigail. But we also need to track Chodron’s connections in town.” He glanced at their companions. Gao had put on a set of headphones that allowed him to speak to the pilot. Hostene was looking out a window on the opposite side of the ship, as if searching for a woman on a mule. “But first we need to talk about your partnership with Tashi.”
Yangke’s face clouded. He began fidgeting with a cargo strap that hung along the side of the fuselage. “Tashi is dead.”
“If you don’t wish to speak of Tashi, then how about the explosion at the old mine?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Chodron keeps very thorough records. Careful records of the miners, careful records of his village administration. But there is no record of your stealing anything from him. By my calculations, the day he locked the canque around your neck was the day after the old mine blew up. Tashi and you were friends. Tashi knew the miners.”
Yangke absently ran his finger around the rim of the porthole. “He said he could get me to India, to start a new life. He knows. . he knew a monastery in the south I could join. Otherwise, without his help, it takes a lot of money to cross the border when you have neither papers nor passport. I’m an outcast monk. What do I know about making money?”
Prayer of the Dragon is-5 Page 24
