Sung turned with a victorious glare. "A Public Security truck came this morning. Took it all. Had a coffin ready. Left on a military flight out of Gonggar."
"Obstruction of judicial process is a serious charge."
"Not when Public Security requests it. I asked for it in writing."
"Didn't it strike you as odd? Didn't you remember that this investigation is under the direct authority of Colonel Tan?"
Sung looked at him with alarm. "Prosecutor Li forwarded the order," she explained in a worried tone.
"Prosecutor? There is no new prosecutor. Not yet."
"What was I supposed to do? Wire the chairman's office for confirmation?"
"Who signed it?"
"A major in the Bureau."
Shan wrung his hands in frustration. "Doesn't this major have a name? Doesn't anyone ever ask him why?"
"Comrade, the one thing you never do with Public Security is ask questions."
Shan took a step toward the door and turned. "I need to borrow a phone," he said. "Long distance lines."
She asked no questions, but escorted him to an empty office in the rear of the building. As she left, a figure appeared at the door. Yeshe's anguish was still evident but there was a glint of determination in his eyes.
"When they sent me back from university," he announced as he stepped into the room, "I knew who put the Dalai Lama's photo on the wall. It wasn't even a Tibetan, it was a Chinese friend of mine who did it. For a joke, a prank." He dropped into a chair. "They sent me back to labor camp because I was supposed to have been capable of it. But I wasn't. Never would I have had the courage."
Shan put his hand on Yeshe's shoulder. "It is a mistake to think of courage as something you show to others. True courage is only something you show to yourself."
"You have to know who you are to be able to recognize that kind of courage," Yeshe said into his hands.
"I think you know."
"I don't."
"I think the man who stood up to the major and saved Balti's life knew who he was."
"Now, back here, it feels like I was just performing. I don't know if it was me."
"Performing for whom?"
"I don't know." Yeshe looked up and met Shan's eyes. "Maybe for you," he said quietly.
Shan shut his eyes. Strangely, the words made him think of his son, the son who was so remote that he was never an image in Shan's mind, only a concept. The son who probably assumed Shan was dead. The son who would always despise him, dead or alive, as a failure. The son who would never utter such words to him.
"No," he said, returning Yeshe's stare. Not me, he wanted to say. There is no room on my back for another burden. "You did it because you want to find the truth. You did it because you want to become a Tibetan again."
Yeshe's eyes did not flicker. He gave no sign of having heard Shan's words.
Shan transcribed the numbers from Jao's secret file. "If these are phone numbers I need to know where," he said and extended the slip.
Yeshe sighed, and studied the paper. "We could do this at the 404th. Or the barracks."
"No. We couldn't," Shan said curtly. The Bureau would not be listening to the lines from some forgotten office of a forgotten clinic. "As far as the operator knows, you're just a clerk in the clinic. Trying to track someone due to a sudden death. Try Lhasa. Try Shigatse, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou. New York. Just find out." He pulled out the American business card found with Jao's body. "Then find out about this."
As Yeshe raised the receiver Shan left the room and moved to a window in the corridor. He could see Sergeant Feng in the truck outside, sleeping. He turned. The Tibetan orderly was nearby again, at an open door now, watching Shan as he mopped. Another orderly appeared at the opposite end of the corridor, pushing a wheelchair. The first one stopped and caught Shan's eye, then motioned urgently toward the open door. As Shan moved hesitantly toward him, he heard a metallic rattle behind him. The second orderly was approaching at a trot.
"Inside," the first orderly instructed.
It was a darkened closet. In the dim light he saw a broom and cleaning supplies. An arm suddenly wrapped around Shan's chest and a cloth stinking of a strong chemical was clamped over his mouth. Something hard struck him behind the knees. The wheelchair. The last thing he remembered was the sound of bells.
***
He woke on the floor of a cavern, a bitter taste in his mouth. Chloroform. The cavern was crammed with small gold and bronze statues of Buddha and hundreds of manuscripts stacked on shelves. By the dim light of butter lamps he saw two figures with hair cropped to the scalp. One of them stooped and began wiping Shan's face with a damp cloth. It was one of the orderlies. On his wrist hung a rosary with tiny bells tied to it. A match flared. The cave brightened as he straightened and the other one uncovered a kerosene lantern.
There was a low rumble, as of thunder. In the rising light Shan saw a door in a wooden frame. It wasn't a cave. It was a room carved out of the living rock, and the thunder was the sound of traffic passing overhead.
"Why are you so concerned about the costume of Tamdin?" the figure with the lantern asked abruptly. It was the illegal monk from the marketplace, the purba with the scarred face. "You asked Director Wen of the Religious Affairs Bureau about the costumes in the museum."
"Because the murderer wanted to be seen as Tamdin," Shan said, rubbing away a pain in his temple. "Maybe he felt he was carrying out the wishes of Tamdin."
The man frowned. "And you think that someone has the costume?"
"I know someone has it."
"Or did someone plant artifacts to make you think that?"
Shan weighed the possibility. "No, he has been seen. Someone wearing the costume was seen by Prosecutor Jao's driver. He wasn't lying. And not just at Jao's murder. At some of the other murders, too. Maybe all of them."
The purba held the light near Shan's face. "Are you saying there has been only one murderer all along?"
"Two, I think, but acting together."
"But showing that one of them was dressed in a religious costume will just make them think it was Buddhists."
"Unless we prove otherwise."
The purba gave an incredulous grunt. "Any minute the knobs could open fire on the 404th, and you spend your time on demons."
"If you know of a better way to save them, please tell me."
"If it continues, Lhadrung will be lost. It will become a militarized zone."
Shan's mouth went dry. "What are you going to do?"
"Maybe," the purba suggested, "we give them the fifth one."
"The fifth one?"
"The last of the Lhadrung Five. Put him in prison again. Maybe then their conspiracy has to be over. There will be no one else to blame."
It was a very Tibetan solution. Shan saw something new in the purba's eyes. Sadness. "Just like that," Shan said, "the last of the Five asks to go to prison."
"I've been thinking. He could go to the mountain and conduct Bardo rites, get rid of the jungpo. The 404th could stop its strike and return to work."
"Public Security would be furious," Shan acknowledged. "Whoever conducted the rites would be sentenced to the 404th."
"Exactly." The purba shrugged. "There are other solutions. The people are angry."
The words frightened Shan. "Choje, at the 404th, he said once that those who try too hard to commit perfect goodness are in the greatest danger of creating perfect badness."
"I don't know what that means."
"It means that much evil can be done in the name of virtue. Because to many virtue is a relative thing."
The purba looked into the flame of the lantern. "I don't believe virtue is a relative thing."
"No. I don't suppose you do."
The man sighed. "I didn't say we would use violence. I said the people are angry." He picked up one of the small bronze Buddhas and pressed his hands around it. "The night the prosecutor died," he announced, "a messenger came to the restaurant where he ate. A young man. Well
-dressed. Chinese. Wearing a hat. He had a piece of paper for Jao. One of the waiters spoke to the prosecutor, who immediately rose and spoke with this man. And the man gave something to Jao. A flower. An old red flower, all dried up. Jao became very excited. He took the paper and flower, then gave money to the man. The man left. The prosecutor talked with his driver then returned to dinner with the American."
"How do you know this?"
"You said you needed to know about what Prosecutor Jao did that night. Workers in the restaurant remembered."
Shan recalled the Tibetan staff at the restaurant, cowering in the corner, afraid of him. "I must know who sent the message."
"We do not know. But there was something about the messenger's eyes. One of them wasn't straight. One of the waiters recognized the man, he was a witness at the murder trial of the monk Dilgo."
"Dilgo of the Lhadrung Five?"
The scar-faced man nodded.
"Would he recognize him again?"
"Certainly. But perhaps we could just give you his name."
Shan's head jerked up. "You know his name?"
"As soon as I heard the description I knew. I was at the trial. It was a man named Meng Lau. A soldier."
"The same man who now claims to have seen Sungpo," Shan gasped. He stood excitedly, as if to go. The purba moved back to reveal a new figure in the shadows, who stepped in front of him to block his exit. "Not yet, please," the figure said. It was a woman. A nun.
"You don't understand. If I am not back-"
The nun just smiled, then took his hand and led him down a short corridor to a second chamber. It must have been a gompa, Shan realized, the subterranean shrine of an ancient, forgotten gompa. It made sense. Once every Tibetan town had been built around a central gompa. The second room was brightly lit with four lanterns hanging from beams.
A small man was bent over a rough-hewn table, writing in a large book. He looked up, removed a pair of frail wire-rimmed glasses, and blinked several times. "My friend!" he squealed with delight, leaping off his stool to embrace Shan.
"Lokesh? Is it you?" Shan's heart leapt as he held the man at arm's length and studied him.
"My spirit soared when they said you might come," the old man said with a huge smile.
Shan had never seen Lokesh in anything but prison garb. He gazed at him with a flood of emotion. It was like finding a long-lost uncle. "You've put on weight."
The old man laughed and embraced Shan again. "Tsampa," he said. "All the tsampa I want." Shan saw a familiar tin mug on the table, half-filled with roasted barley. It was one of the mugs used at the 404th. Old habits died hard.
"But your wife. I thought you went to Shigatse with her."
The old man smiled. "I did. Funny thing, two days after I got home, my wife's time came."
Shan stared at him in disbelief. "I am-" I am what, he considered. Heartbroken? Furious? Paralyzed by the helplessness of it all? "I am sorry," he said.
Lokesh shrugged. "A priest told me that when a soul gets ripe, it will just pop off the tree like an apple. I was able to be with her at her time. Thanks to you." He put his arms around Shan again, stepped back and pulled a small ornamental box from around his neck. It was an old gau, the container for Lokesh's charms. He placed its strap over Shan's head.
"I can't."
Lokesh put his finger to his lips. "Of course you can." He looked at the nun. "There is no time to argue."
The nun was looking back into the shadows, where they had left the scar-faced purba. Her eyes were wet when she turned to Shan. "You have to help, you have to stop him."
Shan was confused. "He said he would not commit violence."
The nun bit her lip. "Only on himself."
"Himself?"
"He wants to go to the mountain, to do the prohibited rites and turn himself over to the knobs." Her hand clamped around his arm as he stared back into the shadows of the underground labyrinth, comprehending at last. The scar-faced purba was the fifth, the last of the Lhadrung Five, and the next to be accused of murder if the conspiracy continued.
Lokesh gently pulled the nun's hand away and moved Shan toward the table. "The 404th is troubled again. We need your wisdom once more, Xiao Shan."
Shan followed Lokesh's gaze to the book on the table. It had the dimensions of an oversized dictionary, and was bound with wood and cloth. It was a manuscript, with entries in several hands, even several languages. Tibetan mostly, but also Mandarin, English, and French.
The nun looked up with deep, sad eyes. "There are eleven copies of this in Tibet," she said quietly. "Several more in Nepal and India. Even one in Beijing." She moved to the side and gestured for Shan to sit at the table. "It is called the Lotus Book."
"Here, my friend," Lokesh said excitedly as he turned to the front pages of the book. "It was such a wonderful time to be alive in those days. I have read these pages fifty times and still sometimes I weep with joy at the memories they preserve."
The pages were not uniform. Some were lists, some were like encyclopedia entries. The very first word in the book was a date. 1949, the year before the Communists began to liberate Tibet.
"It is a catalog of what was here before the destruction," Shan spoke in awe. It wasn't just lists of gompas and other holy places, it also held descriptions of the numbers and names of monks and nuns, even the dimensions of buildings. For many sites, first-hand narratives by survivors had been transcribed, telling of life at the place. Lokesh had been writing when Shan entered the room.
"The first half, yes," the nun said, then opened the pages to a silk marker where another list began.
It was an inventory of people, a list of individual names. Shan felt a choking sensation as he read. "These are all Chinese names."
"Yes," Lokesh said, suddenly more sober. "Chinese," he whispered, then his arms slackened and he fell still as if he had suddenly lost his strength.
The nun bent over the book and turned to the back, where the most recent transcriptions had been made. One by one, she pointed out names to Shan as he stared in a mixture of horror and disbelief. Lin Ziang was there, the murdered Director of Religious Affairs, as was Xong De, the deceased Director of Mines, and Jin San, the former head of the Long Wall collective. All victims of the Lhadrung Five.
Forty minutes later they returned him in the wheelchair, blindfolded, creaking down corridors hewn from the stone, then onto the smooth floors of the clinic, turning so many times he could not possibly have retraced the route. Suddenly, with the sound of the bells again, the scarf that had covered his eyes was untied and he was in the front corridor, alone.
Yeshe was still on the phone, arguing with someone. He hung up when he saw Shan. "I tried every combination. Nothing seems to work." He handed the paper back to Shan. "I wrote down other possiblities. Page numbers. Coordinates. Specimen numbers. Product numbers. Then I thought to call about his travel plans. There's a travel office for government officials in Lhasa. I called to confirm what they said about his trip."
"And?"
"He was going to Dalian, all right, with a one-day stopover in Beijing first. But no other arrangements for Beijing. No Ministry of Justice car to pick him up."
Shan gave a slow nod of approval.
"When you didn't return I went on to other things. I called that woman at Religious Affairs. Miss Taring. She told me she would check the audits of artifacts herself and to call back. When I did, she said one was missing."
"A missing audit report?"
Yeshe nodded meaningfully. "For the audit done at Saskya gompa fourteen months ago. Shipment records show everything went to the museum in Lhasa. But there was no accounting in her records for what was actually found. A breakdown in procedures."
"I wonder."
Yeshe seemed to puzzle over Shan's reaction, then offered more news. "And I tried that Shanghai office."
"The American firm?"
"Right. They didn't know Prosecutor Jao. But when I mentioned Lhadrung they remembered a request from the clinic
here. Said there was some correspondence."
"And?"
"Lots of static, then the line went dead." He paused and pulled a sheet of paper from under the blotter. "So I went to the office here. Said I had to check their chronological files. Found this, from six weeks ago." He handed Shan the paper.
It was a letter from Dr. Sung to the Shanghai office, asking if the firm would provide a portable X-ray unit on approval, to be returned in thirty days if found not to be compatible with the clinic's needs.
Shan folded the paper into his notebook. He moved toward the exit, and broke into a trot.
***
Madame Ko led them to a restaurant beside the county office building. "Best to wait," she said, gesturing to an empty table near the rear, beside a door guarded by a waiter holding a tray in arms folded across his chest.
Sergeant Feng ordered noodles; Yeshe, cabbage soup. Shan sipped tea impatiently, then after ten minutes stood and moved to the door. Madame Ko intercepted him, pulling him back. "No interruptions," she scolded, then saw the determination in his eyes. "Let me," she sighed, and slipped behind the door. Moments later half a dozen army officers began to file out, and she opened the door for Shan.
The room stank of cigarettes, onions, and fried meat. Tan sat alone at a round table, smoking as the staff cleared away dishes. "Perfect," he said, exhaling sharply through his nostrils. "You know how I spent the morning? Being lectured by Public Security. They may decide to report a breakdown in civil discipline. They note my abuse of investigation procedures. They have recorded that security at Jade Spring Camp has been breached twice in the last fifteen years. Both times this week. They say one of my cell blocks has been turned into a damned gompa. They hinted about an espionage investigation. What do you know about that?" He drew on the cigarette again and exhaled slowly, watching Shan through the cloud of smoke. "They say their units at the 404th will begin final procedures tomorrow."
Shan tried to conceal the shudder that moved down his spine. "Prosecutor Jao was killed by someone he knew," he announced. "A colleague. A friend."
Tan lit another cigarette from the butt of the first and stared silently at Shan. "You have proof finally?"
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