The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  A free man. They were such pale words to Shan. It was a concept that Americans always seemed infatuated with, but one which Shan never understood. Perhaps, he reflected, because he had never known a free man. His hand drifted to the khata and slid it off. "You are very kind. But I am needed in Lhadrung. Please, could you just return me to Jade Spring?"

  Kincaid saw the scarf in Shan's hand and shook his head in disappointment.

  "Keep it," he said admiringly, pushing the khata back. "If you're going back to Lhadrung, you're going to need it."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Colonel Tan seemed to read the messages from Miss Lihua and Madame Ko simultaneously, his eyes ranging back and forth from the one in his hand to the one on his desk. In the fax from Hong Kong, Miss Lihua reported that she was urgently trying to book flights for her return, but meanwhile wanted to confirm that Prosecutor Jao's personal seal had indeed been taken the year before. No one had been arrested for stealing the chop, although it was the sort of minor act of sabotage typical of monks and other cultural hooligans. A new seal had been fabricated, and a notice sent to alert Jao's bank.

  Madame Ko's note reported that she had made inquiries at the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing, finding a man named Deng who was responsible for the recordkeeping of water rights. Deng knew who Prosecutor Jao was; they had spoken by phone the week before Jao's death, Madame Ko explained. And Deng had an appointment to see the prosecutor during his stopover in Beijing, at a restaurant named the Bamboo Bridge.

  "So one of the monks stole Jao's chop and got the costume. Maybe Sungpo, maybe one of the other four," Tan asserted.

  "Why his personal seal?" Shan asked. "If I went to all that trouble, and wanted to sow confusion in the government, why not steal his official seal?"

  "Opportunistic. A monk saw a chance and broke into the office. An open door or window, and the first thing he found was the personal seal. He got scared and fled. Miss Lihua says it was a monk."

  "I don't think so. But that's not the point." Shan found himself gazing out the window toward the street, half expecting to see a truck of knobs arrive to arrest him. There was only the empty car of the officer he had driven to town with. The knobs in Lhasa had known who he was. But they were not coming for him. What had been their orders? Merely to scare him away from Lhasa? To eliminate him if he could somehow be snatched beyond Tan's reach?

  "What are you saying?"

  Shan turned back toward Tan. "What's important is that the Director of Religious Affairs lied about it. He told us the costumes were all accounted for. He said he checked."

  "Someone at the museum may have lied to him," Tan suggested.

  "No. Madame Ko checked this morning. No one ever called the museum about the costumes."

  "But Jao would never have ordered the costume sent back from Lhasa to Lhadrung. There would be no reason," Tan said tentatively.

  "Did you ever hear that his chop was stolen? It would be very disturbing for a prosecutor to lose his seal. Something the military governor should have known about."

  "It was only his personal seal."

  "I think his personal seal was accessible to someone here in Lhadrung, and they used it to stamp the card that was later put on the museum box."

  "You're saying Miss Lihua is lying?"

  "We need her back here, right away."

  "You saw her note. She's coming." As Tan dropped the fax on the desk, they became aware of Madame Ko standing excitedly at the door, uninvited but apparently unwilling to leave. She raised her hand and made a quick, victorious fist in midair. Tan sighed and gestured for her to enter.

  "So Jao was to meet this man Deng in Beijing. For what?" Tan asked.

  "To review water permits in Lhadrung," Madame Ko reported. "Jao wanted to know who held the rights before the Americans."

  "And Comrade Deng of the Ministry of Agriculture. He had the answer?"

  "All the records were still in the original boxes from Lhasa. That's why he was so unhappy that Jao never arrived. Said he had spent hours sorting through them."

  "For some stranger from Tibet, he did all that?"

  Madame Ko nodded. "Comrade Jao said that if they found what he expected that he would want Deng to go with him straight to the Ministry of Justice headquarters. A big case, he said. Deng would be commended to the Minister himself."

  Tan moved to the edge of his seat. "It would have been one of the agricultural collectives," Tan asserted.

  "Exactly," Madame Ko confirmed.

  "You asked him?"

  "Of course. It's part of our investigation," she said with a small conspiratorial nod to Shan.

  Tan cast an impatient glance at Shan. "And?"

  "Long Wall Farm."

  Tan asked for tea. "She acts like she just solved our mystery," he sighed as Madame Ko left the room in an excited bustle.

  "Maybe she did," Shan said.

  "This Long Wall collective is significant somehow?"

  "You recall Jin San, one of the murder victims?"

  "Jao prosecuted one of the Lhadrung Five for his murder."

  "And in the process discovered that Jin San operated a drug ring."

  "Which we eliminated."

  "Perhaps you forget that Jin San was the manager of the Long Wall collective."

  The colonel lit a cigarette, studying the ember as it burned. "I want Miss Lihua back here," he suddenly barked toward the open door. "Get her a military plane if you have to."

  He drew deeply on his cigarette and turned to Shan. "That opium operation is finished, fell apart after Jin San died. Drug sales in Lhadrung have stopped. Drug cases have disappeared at the clinic. I was officially commended."

  Shan laid out the photo maps depicting the unexplained license area, the same maps Jao had seen. "Can you read these photos?"

  Tan went to his desk and retrieved a large magnifying glass. "I told you. I commanded a missile base," he grunted.

  "Yeshe studied the maps yesterday. The new road. The mine. The extra license area to the northwest. He was confused about something. This is the license area for four consecutive months." Shan pointed to the first map. "Winter. Snow. Rocks and dirt. Indistinguishable from the rest of the terrain."

  He chose not to speak of Yeshe's other discovery. The computer disks taken by Fowler had indeed been inventories. Half the Chinese-language files had even matched the English files. But the other files had been inventories of munitions, of soldiers, even of missiles located in Tibet. Yeshe's hands had trembled when he gave them to Shan. Together they had taken them to the utility building at Jade Spring Camp and burned them in the furnace. Not for a moment had Shan considered the data on the disks to be genuine. But Yeshe and Shan both knew it made little difference. Public Security was unlikely to be concerned about such a fine point if it found the disks with a civilian. As he had watched the furnace flames, Yeshe had asked for leave to go to the 404th. Civilians were gathering, he had said.

  "Not entirely," Tan observed, and used the lens. "There's terracing. Probably very old. But you can see traces of it. Faint shadow lines."

  "Exactly. Now, a month later." Shan flipped to the next map. "The slopes are green now, faintly green. But far more so than the rest of the mountains."

  "Water. Just means the terraces still catch the water," Tan said.

  "But a month later. Look. The color is inconsistent. A blush of pink and red."

  Tan silently leaned over the map. He studied it with the lens from several angles. "In the developing process. Sometimes there are anomolies. The chemicals create false colors. Even the lens. It doesn't always react to visible light accurately."

  "I think the colors are exact." Shan set down the last map. "Six weeks ago."

  "And the colors are gone," Tan observed. "No different from the adjoining slopes. Like I said, a developing fault."

  "But the terraces are gone, too."

  Tan looked up in confusion, then leaned over the map with his lens.

  "Somebody," Shan concluded, "is
still growing Jin San's poppies."

  ***

  Shan hated helicopters. Airplanes had always struck him as contrary to the natural order; helicopters seemed simply impossible. The young army pilot who met them at Jade Spring Camp did little to relieve his anxiety. He flew a constant two hundred feet off the ground, creating a roller-coaster effect as they moved over the undulating hills of the upper valley. On Tan's command he banked sharply and began a steep ascent. Ten minutes later they had cleared the ridge and landed in a small clearing.

  The terraces were ancient but obvious, built up with rock walls and connected by a worn cart path. Their spring crop had already been harvested. The only sign of life was thin beds of weeds, rising out of the terraces through a carpet of dead poppy leaves.

  "The rocks." Tan pointed to a flat rock, then another, and another, all at regular intervals in the fields, ten feet apart. Shan kicked over the nearest. It covered a hole, three inches wide and over twenty inches deep. Tan kicked a second rock, and a third. They all covered similar holes.

  Under a high overhanging rock Tan found a stack of heavy wooden poles, eight feet long. He tried one in a hole. It fit perfectly. In the shadows under the rock Shan found the end of a rope. He pulled it without success, then called Tan. Together they heaved and a huge bundle of cloth appeared, wrapped in the rope. No, Shan quickly realized as it emerged into the light, it wasn't cloth. It was a huge military camouflage net.

  The silence was broken by a shout from above.

  "Colonel!" the pilot called as he ran down the slope. "There was a radio message. They are firing machine guns at the 404th!"

  ***

  Tan ordered the pilot to circle over the prison. There were three emergency vehicles, lights flashing, sitting at the front gate. Four groups of people could be discerned, each clustered together, like pieces of a puzzle waiting to be connected. In the prison compound sitting in a compact square were the prisoners. Shan searched for bodies, for litters of figures being carried to the ambulances, but he found none. Outside the wire in front of the mess hall were the prison guards, in their green uniforms, standing in a crescent facing the prison compound.

  A taut gray line of knobs reached around the wire, intersecting the sandbag bunkers. The fourth group was new. Shan studied it as the helicopter landed. They were Tibetans. Herders. People from town. Children, old men and women. Some were facing the compound, chanting mantras. Others were building an offering of butter torma, to be sanctified and lit to invoke the Buddha of Compassion.

  The acrid smell of chordite laced the air. As the whine of the helicopter engine faded, Shan heard children crying and heard frantic calls rising from the crowds. They were calling names, calling out to individual prisoners inside the wire. Several old men sat near the front, chanting. Shan listened for a moment. They weren't praying for the survival of the prisoners. They were praying for the enlightenment of the soldiers.

  Tan stood in silence, barely containing his fury as he studied the scene. A dozen knobs were deployed in front of the civilians, their submachine guns unslung. Shell casings lay scattered around their feet.

  "Who authorized you to fire?" Tan roared.

  They ignored him.

  "There was movement toward the dead zone," an oily voice said from behind them. "They had been warned." Shan recognized the man even before he turned. The major. "As you are aware, Colonel, the Bureau has procedures."

  Tan stared at the major with slow burning eyes, then moved angrily toward the warden, standing with the prison staff. As he did so Shan stepped as close as he dared to the fence, searching the faces of the prisoners. Hands appeared from behind him, one on each arm, and squeezed painfully. His prisoner instincts taking over, he flinched, raising his arm over his face, to prepare for a blow. When none came, he let himself be pulled away by the soldiers. The knobs, he realized, didn't recognize him as a prisoner. His hand moved to his sleeve, pulling it down to cover his tattoo.

  He stood where they deposited him, staring through the wire. There was no sign of Choje.

  The Tibetan civilians pulled away as he walked through the crowd, shunning him, refusing to let him close enough to speak. "The prisoners," he called out to the backs that were turned to him. "Are prisoners hurt?" he called out.

  "They have charms," someone shouted defiantly. "Charms against bullets."

  Suddenly a familiar figure was in front of him, looking strangely out of place. It was Sergeant Feng, wearing the old woolen shirt Shan had put on him in Kham, his face covered with grime and fatigue. When his eyes met Shan's, there was no arrogance left in them. For a passing moment Shan thought he saw pleading in them.

  "I thought you were in the mountains."

  "Been there," Feng replied soberly.

  As Shan moved toward him, Feng stepped forward, as though to block him. Shan put his hand on Feng's shoulder and pushed him aside. There was a priest on the ground behind him, saying a mantra with an old woman. He stopped and stared. It was Yeshe, he suddenly realized, wearing a red shirt that gave the impression of a robe. He had cropped his hair to the scalp.

  Yeshe grinned awkwardly when he saw Shan. He patted the woman's hand and stood.

  "I was asking about the prisoners," Shan said.

  Yeshe gazed toward the wire. "They fired over their heads. No one injured yet." There was a self-assurance in his eyes which Shan had not seen before.

  "Damn the fool!" the sergeant suddenly spat from behind them. He began running through the crowd to a cooking fire where a woman was arguing with someone. It was Jigme.

  "She won't give me anything," Jigme said as soon as he saw Shan. "I told her, it's for Je Rinpoche." He looked at Shan, then to Yeshe. "Tell her," he pleaded, "tell her I'm not Chinese."

  "You were at the mountain," Shan said. "What happened?"

  "I need to find herbs. A healer. I thought maybe here. Someone said priests would be here."

  "A healer for Je?"

  "He's very sick. Very weak. Like a leaf on a rotting stem. Soon he will just float away," Jigme said with a forlorn tone, his eyes hooded and moist, like those of a mourner. "I don't want him to go. Not Rinpoche too. Don't let him go. I beg you." He grabbed Shan's hand and squeezed it painfully tight.

  A whistle blew. The knobs snapped to attention as a government limousine appeared. Li Aidang jumped out and threw a jaunty, abbreviated salute to the major, then strode over to Tan. They spoke a moment, then Li joined the major along the line of knobs, as though inspecting a parade.

  Shan pushed Sergeant Feng aside. "Go to town," he said urgently. "Get Dr. Sung. Get her to the barracks."

  Colonel Tan stood as if waiting for Shan, silently watching the civilians.

  "Why do the lessons come so hard?" the colonel asked quietly. "Nearly fifty years and still they don't understand. They know what we have to do."

  "No," said Shan. "They know what they have to do."

  Tan showed no sign of having heard him.

  Shan turned to him, fighting the temptation to run back to the fence. "I have to go inside."

  "In front of the commandos' guns? Like hell."

  "I have no choice. These are my- we can't let them die."

  "You think I want a massacre?" Tan's face clouded. "Forty years in the army and that's how I will be remembered. For the massacre at the 404th."

  The limousine honked its horn. Tan sighed. "Li Aidang wants me to follow. We must go. I will drop you at Jade Spring. There is a reception for the American tourists. Then final planning for the Ministry delegation. A special banquet. Comrade Li apparently expects to be installed as prosecutor after the trial."

  They stopped above the turnoff to Jade Spring Camp. Two soldiers manned a new barricade across the road, restricting access to the prison and the base. On it was a sign, in English only. It said ROAD CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. Shan puzzled over it, then remembered. The American tourists.

  Before Shan climbed out of the car Li appeared at the window and dropped an envelope onto Tan's lap.

&
nbsp; "I have completed my report and the murderer's statement," he announced. "The trial is set for the day after tomorrow, ten in the morning. At the People's Stadium." He looked at Shan with a new chill in his eyes. "Ninety minutes have been scheduled. It must not interfere with lunch."

  The top page in the file was a handwritten list of names. Shan pulled it out for closer inspection. Honored guests for the event at the stadium, to be seated on the stage. Members of the visiting Ministry of Justice delegation topped the list, followed by Colonel Tan and half a dozen local officials. Shan saw Director Hu of the Ministry of Geology listed, and Major Yang of the Public Security Bureau. A shiver moved down his spine as he saw an ideogram near the bottom. No name, no title, just the inverted Y with the two bars.

  As Shan pointed to the mark, Tan saw the question in his eyes. "Just the nickname," he said with disgust. "He likes his friends to use it. Thinks it's funny."

  "Sky?"

  "Not sky. Heaven. You know, god in heaven. All the priests pay homage to him."

  Shan lifted the paper and stared at it with grim determination. The other guest on the podium was the man who had signed the confirmation on the index card bearing Jao's chop he had taken from the museum, and the same man who had signed the note to Prosecutor Jao, the note that Shan believed, but could not prove, had lured Jao to his death.

  Wen Li, Director of Religious Affairs.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sungpo was moving for the first time. He held the old man's head in his lap, wiping it with a wet rag, sometimes pausing to drop rice into his mouth, one kernel at a time.

  "We tried to get a doctor," Shan said. He felt helpless. "A town doctor." But Dr. Sung had refused. When he had called to beg her to change her mind she had offered an abundance of excuses. She had clinic hours, she said. She had surgery, she said. She wasn't authorized for a military base, she said.

  "They told you, didn't they?" he had said to her. "That it was an old lama."

  "Why would that make a difference?"