Suddenly there was a loud crack behind him, as though from a pistol. Shan spun about and froze. There, not ten feet away from him amidst the throng of Chinese shoppers and rush of bicycles, was a ragged, unkempt Tibetan with a filthy leather apron over a felt coat. His hands were thrust into the straps of wooden clogs, which he was now clapping together over his head. Someone beside Shan, a plump Chinese woman carrying a jar of yogurt, hissed an expletive at the man. "Latseng!" she added. Garbage.
But the Tibetan seemed unaware of anyone on the busy street as he left the curb. He brought the clogs down in one liquid motion and stretched himself full-length on the pavement, his arms extended in front of him. With a murmured mantra he pulled himself forward, moved back to his knees, stood, and clapped the clogs in front of him twice before clapping them over his head and repeating the process. Traditionally, Shan remembered, pilgrims did three five-mile circuits around the Potala. But he also recalled that the government had obliterated most of the pilgrim's circuit, known as the Lingkhor, constructing apartment buildings and shops squarely to block the route after monks had invited Tibetans to protest their Chinese government by creating an endless chain of pilgrims around the circuit.
Emotion overtaking him again, Shan stared helplessly at the Tibetan, who gazed fixedly ahead. Trinle had laughed heartily about the route being blocked. "The government will never be able to see what the pilgrim sees," he had said with absolute conviction. He had repeated the phrase for Shan like a mantra again and again with his huge smile until, not knowing why, Shan had laughed, too.
An angry shout rose from the street. A youth on a motorcycle was yelling for the pilgrim to get out of his path. A car pulled up behind the man and began honking its horn. The pilgrim was entering an intersection, oblivious to the traffic light. A truck approaching down the cross street added its horn to the chorus.
Pilgrims were sometimes run over by vehicles. Shan had heard guards at the 404th joke about such roadkills. The pilgrim kept moving. But there was something new in the man's eyes. He was aware of the vehicles now. He was afraid, but he would not stop.
Shan looked back to the crowd. Was someone there? No. But did he still have the rhythm of the crowd? No. He took a long look at the Sublime Fortress and stepped into the street.
He moved past the angry drivers, still pounding their horns, to stand beside the solitary pilgrim. With tiny steps he escorted the Tibetan as the man struggled through the intersection. Up on his knees. Up to his feet. Arms in front. Clap the clogs. Arms overhead. Clap the clogs. Arms down. Stop. Kneel. Drop to his belly. Extend the arms. Recite the mantra to the Buddha of Compassion. Retract the arms. Up on his knees.
People were shouting louder, infuriated at Shan now. But he did not hear their words. He watched the pilgrim with great satisfaction, and in the pilgrim saw Choje, and Trinle, and all the old yaks. An odd thought flashed through his mind. Perhaps this was the most important thing he had done in three years. Choje might have suggested that everything that happened before was so Shan could be there in that moment to protect the pilgrim.
They reached the curb and the safety of the sidewalk. Without breaking stride or diverting his eyes, the pilgrim spoke in an emotional, uncertain voice. "Tujaychay," he whispered to Shan. Thank you.
Shan watched the pilgrim move on another thirty feet before the world crept back over him. He glanced up and realized he had no hope of regaining the rhythm of the crowd. Twenty faces were watching him now, most of them resentful. There was no time left to watch and elude. He moved straight to the museum.
He entered along with a tour group, then moved in the cover of the crowds through the exhibits, willing himself not to linger at the exquisite displays of skull drums, ceremonial jade swords, altar statues, rich thangka paintings, crested hats, and prayer wheels. He paused only once, in front of a display of rare rosaries. There in the center was one of pink coral beads carved like tiny pinecones, with lapis marker beads. He stared at it sadly, then wrote down the collection inventory number and moved on.
Suddenly he was at the exhibit of costumes for demon protectors. There was Yama, the Lord of the Dead, Yamantaka, Slayer of Death, Mahakala, Supreme Protector of the Faith, Lhamo, Goddess Protector of Lhasa. And in the last case, Tamdin the Horse-headed.
The magnificent costume was there, its face a savage bulging mask of red lacquered wood, four fangs in its mouth, a ring of skulls at its neck, a tiny, ferocious, green horse head rising above its golden hair. Shan shivered as he studied it, his hand clamped on the gau around his neck that now contained the Tamdin summoning spell. The arms of the demon lay beside the mask, ending in two grotesque clawed hands, identical to the smashed one found at the American mine.
It was small comfort to confirm that the hand was indeed that of Tamdin, for the costume in the museum was intact, and in Lhasa, not in Lhadrung. There was a second costume but if it did not belong to the museum Shan had no way to trace it, no way to link it to Jao's killers.
He stared at the exhibit in deep thought, waited for the room to empty, and opened a door. A janitor's closet. He began to shut it, then paused and pulled out the broom and a bucket. He moved slowly through the building, sweeping as he watched the interior doors. Suddenly, and with a wrench of his gut, he saw someone new, a Chinese with bullet-hole eyes trying quite futilely to look interested in the exhibits. The man surveyed the room, not noticing Shan, then gave a snort of impatience and moved with a military gait into the adjoining hall. Shan stayed in the shadows and watched, to his horror, as the man conferred with two others, a young woman and a man dressed as tourists. They left the room at a trot and Shan stepped inside the first door that was not locked.
He was in a short corridor that opened into a large office chamber divided into cubicles. Most of the desks were empty. On a bench in the hall was a white technician's coat. Abandoning the bucket and broom, he put on the coat, then picked up a clipboard and pencil from the first desk.
"I lost my way," he said to the woman at the first occupied desk. "The inventory."
"Inventory?"
"Exhibits. Artifacts in storage."
"It's usually the same," she said in a superior tone.
"The same?"
"You know. Two of each piece. One on display, one in storage. In the basement. Parallel collection, the curator calls it. Makes cleaning and examination easier. One upstairs. One downstairs, arranged by their inventory number sequence."
"Of course," Shan said, with renewed hope. "I meant the organization charts. The location of artifacts."
"In notebooks. On the library table."
In the small library at the back of the corridor he found a thick black binder, its vinyl covers worn through to the cardboard at the edges. He had already located a section entitled Costumes when an older woman appeared at the door.
"What is it?" she snapped.
Shan started, then settled back into the chair before looking at her. "I'm from Beijing."
The announcement bought him another thirty seconds. He kept searching as the woman lingered at the doorway. Ceremonial headdresses. Demon dancer costumes.
"No one informed me," the woman said with a suspicious tone.
"Comrade, certainly you realize audits are not nearly so effective when advance warning is given," Shan said curtly.
"Audits?" She paused, then slowly entered and walked around the table.
As she saw Shan's clothing a sharp hiss of air escaped her lips. "We will need identification, Comrade."
Shan kept studying the books. "They said to leave it at the front desk. We have much work here." He gestured to a chair. "Perhaps you would like to help."
The woman spun about and disappeared down the hall. Tamdin, the book said, Code 4989. Set One from Shigatse gompa, 1959. Set Two from Saskya gompa, dated only fourteen months earlier. He walked quickly to the corridor and began checking the doors again. The third one opened onto descending stairs.
The basement shelves rose from the dirt floor to the ceil
ing, crammed with boxes of wood, wicker, and cardboard. They were arranged by inventory number as the girl had explained. He darted down the rows, desperately scanning the numbers at the end of each shelf. Suddenly there was a new sound, the unmistakable sound of running feet on the floor above.
He found the 3000 series, and kept running. Then the 4000. Shan pulled a box from the shelves. It held an incense burner. He began to run, and stumbled onto his knees. There were shouts upstairs. He found a shelf marked 4900. A set of golden horns extended from a box. The mask of Yama. Frantically he checked the boxes. They were on the stairs now, shouting. Another row of lights was illuminated, much brighter. Then he had it. Tamdin, the box said. Tamdin, demon costume, Saskya gompa. It was empty.
Someone yelled nearby. There was a white index card taped to the top of the box. He tore it off and ran away from the sounds of the searchers. There was a door up a shorter flight of stairs, showing daylight at the bottom.
It was locked. He rammed it with his shoulder and old wood splintered. He fell outward onto the ground. As he lay blinking in the painful sunlight someone jammed a boot into his back, then reached down and placed handcuffs on his wrists.
The first syllable of weak protest was still on his lips when a truncheon slammed into his forehead, spattering blood. "Hooligan shit," his captor spat before he spoke into a hand radio.
The blood that trickled into his eyes prevented him from seeing how many there were. They were Public Security, he had no doubt, but they seemed confused. From behind him, as he was pushed into a gray van, there were arguments about whose prisoner he was, about his destination. The first two didn't use place names. "The long bed," one of them said. "Wires," argued another. But a third man joined them. "Drabchi," he said, in the tone of an order, referring to the notorious political prison northeast of Lhasa. Prison Number One, it was formally called, where the high-ranking officials of the Tibetan government had once been held.
It was over. Sungpo would die. Shan would have new wardens. Eventually, if Tan did not abandon him, he might be returned to the 404th, with five or ten years added, but only after a Public Security interrogation and the stay in the infirmary that would follow. Who, he wondered in some remote corner of his mind, would be recruited to express the people's disappointment in his socialist development? I'm a hero, Shan would tell his captors. I lasted twelve days on the outside.
The blood was in his mouth now, and the pain of the wound began to surge through his stupor. The van was moving. A siren erupted, painfully loud. They were on a fast road, accelerating. He blacked out. Suddenly there was a shout, and he heard the sound of breaking wood and chickens squawking in terror. He felt the van slam on its brakes and heard the men in front leap out.
There were furious shouts from the front of the van. Then someone climbed into the driver's seat and the van was moving in a Uturn. The siren was cut and the vehicle made a series of a rapid turns, then it pulled to an abrupt stop. The rear doors were flung open and four hands reached in for him. He was half carried, half dragged into the back seat of a car, which instantly pulled away.
Slowly, with dreamlike motions, he wiped the blood from his eyes and pulled himself up. It was a large car, an older American sedan. The driver wore a wool cap over his head. When they pulled into the broad thoroughfare that led out of town the man dangled a small key over his shoulder. As Shan unlocked the handcuffs the man removed the cap to reveal a head of thick blond hair.
"I didn't know-" Shan began, paralyzed by confusion. He pulled out his shirttail to wipe away the blood. "Thank you," he offered in English. "Are you Jansen?"
The man shook his head and muttered to himself in a Scandinavian tongue as he drove slowly through the traffic, careful not to attract attention. "No names," he replied in the same language. "Please. No names." On the floor beside him Shan recognized the bag he had carried to Lhasa. The skull from the cave shrine.
"How could you know?" Shan asked after five minutes.
Jansen had sunk into a depressed silence. "I'm just taking you to the highway somewhere. Your friends will be on the highway, they said."
"Why?"
"Why?" Jansen pounded the steering wheel in anger. "You think I would have done it if I had known? With the knobs as thick as flies? Nobody said anything about knobs. They said for me to be there, that's all. Need to help the gentleman who brought all the information from Lhadrung." He shook his head. "Nothing like this has happened before. Help with the records, no problem. Give an old man a ride from Shigatse, no problem. But this-" He threw up a hand in frustration.
"The purbas," Shan realized. Somehow it had been the purbas. The little man he had seen on the street had not been alone. He had been a purba, Shan now understood. "But how could they know?"
"How do they know anything? Like telepathy."
The knobs had somehow known. The purbas had somehow known. Everyone seemed to know everything. Except him.
"Like telepathy," Shan repeated in a hollow voice. He looked out the window for a fleeting glance of the Potala as it faded into the distance. The precipice of existence.
"Worst they do, they deport me," Jansen muttered to himself.
Shan lay back on the seat. He found a paper towel and held it to his forehead. "There was an obstruction pushed onto the highway," Shan said, as though to himself. "A farmer's cart, I think. The knobs got out to clear the path."
"They told me you need a ride. To wait with my car. Okay, I thought. A ride. I could ask you about the skull shrine. Suddenly one of them runs by. Tosses me a key. For you, he says. Then this Public Security van races down the alley and they throw you inside. Who are you? Why does everyone want you?"
"For me, he said. Did he use my name?"
"No. Not exactly. He said for the pilgrim."
"The pilgrim?"
"The name the purbas are using for you. Tan's pilgrim."
No, Shan was tempted to say. A pilgrim moves toward enlightenment. All I move toward is darkness and confusion. But suddenly a tiny flicker of light appeared. "You said you drove an old man from Shigatse? To Lhadrung?"
Jansen nodded distractedly. He was nervously watching the rearview mirror. "His wife had just died. He sang me some of the old mourning songs."
***
Rebecca Fowler and Tyler Kincaid were waiting fifteen miles out of the city, parked at a flat stretch of highway along the Lhasa River where truckers gathered to sleep. Jansen pulled in behind a decrepit Jiefang truck, from which four young men instantly emerged and escorted Shan to the Americans. Shan turned to thank Jansen, but the Finn just nodded nervously and sped back down the road.
The Jiefang pulled out in front of Kincaid and the driver motioned for the Americans to follow.
Fowler was silent in the front seat. At first he thought she was sleeping but then he saw her hands. They were twisting the road map, their knuckles white.
"It's like free-falling," Kincaid said, with unexpected excitement in his voice. "A hundred feet a second. Your heart's in your throat. The world's flying by." He glanced back at Shan. "It's them, right?" he asked with a huge grin.
"Them?"
"In the truck. The real thing. It's gotta be purbas."
"I'm sorry." Shan felt his forehead. The blood was clotting now.
"Sorry? For this day? The whole damn day, it's been like rappelling down a mountain. You just jump off the cliff and let it happen."
"I never meant for you to be in danger," Shan said. "You should have just left."
"Hell, we made it out alive, didn't we? No sweat. Wouldn't have missed it. We got 'em good, the MFCs. You sent me to search for what isn't there. Perfect. Playing games with their minds." He filled the truck with another of his cowboy whoops.
"Dammit, Tyler," Fowler said. "Get us out of here. It's not over until we're home."
"What do you mean, 'seeking what isn't there'?" Shan asked.
"At the Ministry of Ag. Water resources office moved away in a reorganization. All the files were shipped to Beiji
ng five months ago."
Going to seek what wasn't there. Shan had forgotten the card from the archives. He pulled it from his pocket slowly, as if it would shatter if it moved too fast.
Tamdin, the card said. Saskya gompa. But there was more. On loan, with a date fourteen months earlier, the same date it had been discovered. On loan to Lhadrung town. There was a name, written hastily and smeared. But the chop at the bottom was clear. The personal chop of Jao Xengding. Below it was scrawled "Confirmed," followed by a final ideogram, the inverted, double-barred Y. The same one he had seen on the note from Jao's pocket. Sky, it meant, or heaven.
Twenty miles past the airport the Jiefang truck stopped on a sharp curve and Kincaid pulled in behind it. A man jumped out, ran to the Americans' vehicle, and whispered urgently with Kincaid, pointing to a side road ahead of the truck. The Jiefang turned around and the purba jumped on as it passed by.
Kincaid eased their vehicle into four-wheel-drive and moved onto the side road. "The knobs have road blocks on all roads out of Lhasa, at repeating intervals. They are steaming. They probably have a special reception committee waiting at the Lhadrung County checkpoint. So we have to detour."
He drove recklessly over the rough route, toward the setting sun, then abruptly stopped as the distant flickering lights of Lhadrung valley came into view. "We could go back, you know," Kincaid announced to Shan with a meaningful gaze.
"Back?"
"To Lhasa. The road blocks are checking vehicles leaving the area, not entering. We could do it. You're too valuable to go back to prison when this is over. You know so much. I can help you."
"Help me how?" Shan sensed the American's khata that still hung around his neck.
"Talk to Jansen. We'll calm him down. Hell, he'll want to pick your brain for weeks himself. He knows people who can get you out of the country."
"But Colonel Tan. And if Director Hu-" Fowler protested.
"Hell, Rebecca, they don't know Shan is with us. He just disappears. I could get that tattoo off. I've seen it done. You could be a free man."
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