She did not speak. Their eyes locked. With her free hand she pulled a stethoscope from the bag, slung it around her neck and then, one finger at a time, peeled away the abbot's hand. He did not move but did not stop her examination.
"His heart isn't beating enough to keep a child alive," she said. "I suspect a blockage."
"Is it treatable?" Shan asked.
"Perhaps. But not here. Need to run tests at the clinic."
"Just one question," Yeshe pressed, looking at his watch. "We need to know. He is the only one who can tell us."
Sung shrugged and filled a syringe with a clear fluid. "This will wake him," she said. "At least briefly." She scrubbed Je's arm.
As she bent with needle the abbot placed his hand over the prepared patch of skin. "You have no idea of what you are doing," he said.
"He's an old man in need of help," Yeshe pleaded. "He doesn't have to die here. If he dies now, Sungpo may die, too."
"His entire life was dedicated to this moment of transition," the abbot warned. "It cannot be stopped. He has already begun to cross over. He is in a place none of us are allowed to disturb."
Dr. Sung looked at the priest as if for the first time, then slowly lowered the syringe and looked to Shan, who moved to the platform. "You're the one who asked me," she said. But her confused tone made it sound more like a question than an accusation.
"If he dies today, Sungpo will die tomorrow," Yeshe said in a desolate voice over Shan's shoulder. "It will all be for nothing. If we don't have the answer now, we will never have it."
Shan gestured toward the entrance. The doctor dropped her instruments on the pallet and followed him.
"If it is sickness we should take him back," Shan said quietly. "If it is just a natural passing-"
"What do you mean, natural?" Dr. Sung asked.
Shan looked outside, past the barbed wire to the long building where Sungpo sat. "I guess I don't know anymore."
"If I could do tests," Sung suggested, "maybe we could-"
She was interrupted by a horrified shout. They spun about. The priests were jumping to their feet. The old abbot was flogging Yeshe on the head with a ritual bell.
Yeshe stood over the pallet with tears running down his face. He had injected the syringe into Je.
Everyone was shouting. Someone demanded to know the name of Yeshe's abbot. Someone grabbed his red shirt and ripped it off his back. They were abruptly silenced by the rising of Je's arm.
The arm extended vertically, the hand rotating in a slow eerie motion, as if clutching for something just beyond its grasp.
Shan darted to Je's side and wiped his forehead with the wet rag. The old man's eyes fluttered opened and he stared at the felt roof above him. He brought the extended hand down to his face and studied it, moving the fingers with exquisite slowness, like that of a butterfly in the cold. He turned and put his fingers on Shan's face, squinting as if he could not see it well. "Which level is it, then?" he whispered in a dry croaking voice.
"Rinpoche," Yeshe said urgently. "You were the Tamdin dancer at Saskya. You kept the costume until last year. Who took it from you?" he pleaded. "Did you teach it to them? Who was it? We must learn who took the costume."
Je gave a hoarse laugh. "I knew people like you in the other place," he said with a rasping breath.
"Rinpoche. Please. Who was it?"
His eyes flickered and shut. There was a new sound, a rattle in his chest. They watched in agonized silence for several minutes.
Then the eyes opened again, very wide. "In the end," he said slowly, as though listening for something, each word punctuated by the wheezing rattle, "all it takes is one perfect sound." He closed his eyes and the rattle stopped.
"He's dead," Dr. Sung announced.
Chapter Nineteen
Yeshe stared at the body in utter desolation. The eyes of the old man at the foot of the pallet welled with tears. A voice in the back shouted out an epithet in Tibetan. The priest who had been conducting the Bardo ceremony began to speak with a chilling ferocity, a dark chant Shan had never heard before. He was glaring at Yeshe as he spoke, his invective coming faster and louder. Yeshe stared at him mutely, his face drained of color.
Shan pulled Yeshe's arm but he seemed unable to move. The attending priest, tears pouring down his cheek, was frantically searching through the hair on the crown of Je's head. If properly prepared, Je's soul would have drifted out a tiny hole thought to be on every human's crown.
"Get him a bone!" someone yelled from the rear.
"His name is Yeshe!" another shouted. "Khartok gompa."
Shan put his shoulder into Yeshe and pushed him out of the yurt. Something inside Yeshe had collapsed. He seemed suddenly feeble and senseless. Shan took his hand and led him to the cell block. Inside, Sungpo was chanting now, a new mantra, a sad mantra. Somehow he knew.
"It doesn't matter," Shan said to Yeshe, not because he believed it but because he couldn't bear for Yeshe to become still another victim.
"Above all, it matters." Yeshe was shaking now. He stepped into an empty cell and gripped the bars to steady himself. There was a fear on his face that Shan had never seen before. "What I did- it destroyed the moment of his transition. I ruined his soul. I ruined my soul," he said with chilling certainty. "And I don't even know why."
"You did it to help Sungpo. You did it to find justice for Dilgo. You did it for the truth." He hadn't told Yeshe about the coral rosary in the Lhasa museum, the duplicate of Dilgo's, the rosary that no doubt had been planted to implicate Dilgo and ensnare Yeshe in the lies. It didn't matter that Yeshe learned of the evidence, because his heart had learned of the lie long ago.
"Your justice. Your damned justice," he groaned. "Why did I believe you?" He seemed to be getting smaller, shrinking before Shan's eyes. "Maybe it's true," Yeshe said, with a realization that seemed to horrify him. "Maybe you did summon Tamdin. Maybe he's been lurking around us all the time. Maybe he used you to create the ruthlessness. He lays waste to everything, lays waste even to souls, in the search for truth."
"You can go to your gompa. You want to be a priest again, you've shown me. They will help you."
Yeshe moved to the back wall and slumped against it. When he looked up he appeared so gaunt it seemed the flesh had shriveled on his bones. His color had not returned. He was not Yeshe, but a ghost of Yeshe. "They will spit on me. They will drive me from the temples. I can never go back now. And I can't go to Sichuan. I can't be one of them anymore. I don't want to be a good Chinese," he said. "You destroyed that for me, too." He fixed Shan with haunted eyes. "What have you done to me? I took four. I might as well have jumped from a cliff." Throw him a bone, the monks had said. "For nothing."
He slowly slid down the wall to the floor. Tears were streaming down his cheek. He found his rosary and pulled it apart. The beads slowly dropped onto the floor and rolled away.
Numbed by his helplessness, Shan filled a tea mug with water and handed it to him. It fell through Yeshe's hands and shattered on the floor. Struggling to find words of comfort, Shan began picking up the pieces of porcelain, then stopped and dropped to his knees. He stared at the shards in his hands.
"No," Shan said excitedly. "Je told us exactly what we needed to know. Look!" he said, shaking Yeshe's shoulder as he held up a shard. "Do you see it?"
But Yeshe was beyond hearing him. With an aching heart Shan rose, gave Yeshe one last painful look, then darted out of the building.
***
When Sergeant Feng and Shan arrived at the market, Feng made no effort to leave the truck. Shan moved straight toward the healer's shop. But he did not enter Khorda's hut. He stood in the alley beside it. A youth in a herder's vest appeared beside him. "Wait," the youth said urgently. Moments later he returned with the scar-faced purba.
"You don't need to go to the mountain," Shan told him. "You don't need to sacrifice yourself. I found another way."
The purba looked at him skeptically.
"I need to go with the food to
day. To the 404th," Shan said.
"We don't deliver the food. It is the responsibility of the relief association."
"But sometimes you go with them. There is no time for games. I know what happens now. Sometimes you leave someone behind."
"I don't understand," the purba said stiffly.
"The camp of the 404th is built on rock. There is no tunnel. There is no hole in the wirefence. And no one is flying through the air like an arrow."
The purba surveyed the marketplace over Shan's shoulder. "Have you finished your investigation?"
"I've seen Trinle. Not at the 404th."
"Trinle is a very holy man. He is often underestimated."
"I don't underestimate him. Not now. For him the 404th is not a prison. He comes and goes on the business of Nambe gompa. He comes and goes with the purbas. There is no one else who could do it for him."
"And how would we perform this magic?"
"I don't know exactly. But it shouldn't be difficult so long as the headcount isn't changed."
The purba winced, as though he had bitten something sour. "To take the place of a prisoner would be foolhardy. It would risk immediate execution."
"Which is why it is a purba who does it."
The man did not react.
"Trinle is sick more than most," Shan said. "We have become used to it. Sometimes he stays confined to his bunk with his blanket over his head. Now I know why. Because it isn't him. I can guess how it is done. On agreed days purbas help with the food, when the relief association serves meals. One man wears prison clothes under his civilian clothes. When Trinle reaches the food tables there is a distraction. Perhaps he ducks under the tables and puts on the civilian clothes. The purba switches with him, and stays in the 404th until Trinle returns. The guards are not fastidious. They don't know every prisoner's face. As long as the headcount is the same, how could there be an escape? And as long as his face stays hidden, what other prisoners will suspect?"
The purba stared at Shan. "What exactly do you want?"
"I need to get through the dead zone. Today."
"Like you said, it is very dangerous. Someone could be killed."
"Someone has been killed. How many more does it take?"
The purba looked out over the market as though in search of the answer. "Cabbages," he announced suddenly. "Watch for cabbages," he said, and seemed to glide away.
Twenty minutes later as Feng drove through the town traffic, a cart of cabbages upturned directly in their path. As Feng moved into reverse, a second cart suddenly blocked them.
Instantly Shan jumped out. "This is what you must do. Go to Tan. Tell him he must come with you. To the 404th. Meet me at the wire with him in two hours." He turned, ignoring Sergeant Feng's weak protest, and disappeared into the crowd.
An hour later he was inside the 404th, wearing an oversized wool hat and the armband of the charity, serving out bowls of barley gruel. When half the line had filed past, a bucket of water was dropped on a guard's foot. The guard shouted. The Tibetan carrying the bucket fell backward, knocking over a prisoner. More guards ran to investigate.
In the ensuing confusion Shan ducked under the opposite end of the long table, which had been draped with a dirty piece of felt, discarded his jacket and entered the line, wearing prison clothes provided by the purbas.
Choje was not eating. Shan found him meditating in his hut, and sat in front of him. His eyes flickered open and he put his hand on Shan's cheek, as though making sure he was real. "It is a joy to see you. But you have selected a troubled moment to return."
"I needed to speak to the abbot of Nambe gompa."
"Nambe was destroyed."
"Its buildings were destroyed. Its population was imprisoned. But the gompa lives."
Choje shrugged. "It could not be allowed to die."
"Because of the promises made about Yerpa. To the Second Dalai Lama."
Choje showed no surprise. "More than a promise. A sacred duty." His lips curled into a weak smile. "It is wonderful, is it not?"
"Do the purbas know, Rinpoche?"
Choje shook his head. "They want to help all prisoners. It is the right thing to do. But they never needed to know our secret. We have a duty not to tell. It is enough for them to know that Nambe gompa lives, that by helping Trinle they keep it alive."
Shan nodded as Choje confirmed his suspicion. "I understand now why Trinle had to go, why the arrow rite finally seemed to work. You had to be certain the knobs acted in public. Once the miracle happened witnesses were sure to come, as word leaked out of the magic."
Choje looked into his hands. "We were worried, Trinle and I, that maybe what we did was a lie."
"No," Shan assured him. "It was no lie. What you have been doing is a miracle, Rinpoche."
The serene smile lit Choje's countenance again.
"You know the world will think that all this was to save one soul," Shan said.
"The soul of a Chinese prosecutor. It is not such a bad lesson, Xiao Shan."
One hundred eighty monks commit suicide to save the soul of their prosecutor, Shan considered. Anywhere else it would be the stuff of legend. But here it was just another day in Tibet.
"But you and I know it is not the real reason."
Choje bowed his hands, the fingers touching at the tips. It was an offering mudra, the flask of treasure. Choje stared at it with a distant smile and pushed his hands toward Shan. Silently Shan did as Choje desired, forming his own hands into the shape. Choje made a gesture of pouring his flask into Shan's, then drew his hands slowly apart, leaving Shan with the flask.
"There," he said. "The treasure is yours."
Shan felt his eyes well up with moisture. "No," he whispered in weak protest, and clenched his eyes, fighting the tears. They will still build the road after you die, he wanted to say. But he knew Choje's answer. It didn't matter, as long as Choje and Nambe gompa had been true.
"The thunder ritual, it is also part of Nambe's duty, isn't it?"
Choje nodded approvingly. "Your eyes have always seen far, my friend. Nambe was already centuries old when the vow was made to protect the gomchen. Nambe was the center of the ritual. It had perfected the practice. For a mortal being to make thunder requires an intense balance, the highest state of meditation. Some say it was the reason we were honored with the protection of Yerpa."
"Trinle and Gendun, they are masters of the ritual."
Choje only smiled.
They remained silent and listened to the mantras beginning outside as the monks finished eating.
"You came with a request," Choje said at last.
"Yes. I must speak to Trinle. About that night. I know he will not talk without your permission."
Choje considered Shan's words. "You are asking a great deal."
"There is still a chance, Rinpoche. A chance to save Nambe and Yerpa. You have to let me find the truth."
"There is always an end to things, Xiao Shan."
"Then if there is to be an end," Shan said, "let it end in light, not in shadow."
"They would give them drugs, you know, if they caught Trinle or Gendun. Like spells, those drugs. They would be powerless to resist the questions. They know that. If the soldiers try to take them, Trinle and Gendun will choose to die. Can you bear that burden?"
"If the soldiers try to take them," Shan replied quickly, "I, too, will choose to die." It was a simple thing, to die when the knobs finally came for you. If you ran away they would shoot. If you ran at them they would shoot. If you resisted they would shoot.
He saw Choje smiling at him and looked down. Shan's hands were still in the mudra, holding the treasure flask, as Choje began to talk.
Twenty minutes later he stood at the edge of the dead zone and took off his prison shirt. He took one step forward. The knobs shouted a warning. Three of them cocked their rifles and aimed directly at him. An officer pulled his pistol and was about to fire into the air when a hand closed around the gun and pushed it down. It was Tan.
&nb
sp; "You have less than eighteen hours," Tan growled. "You should be finishing the official report." But as they moved away from the knobs his anger faded. "The Ministry delegation. They are already with Li. They changed the schedule. The trial will be at eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
Shan looked up in alarm. "You have to delay."
"On what grounds?"
"I have a witness."
Chapter Twenty
They arrived before dawn, as Choje had instructed. Do not speak to the purbas, he had said. Do not let the knobs follow. Just be there as the sun rises, at the clearing before the new bridge.
"There was no sign of him?" Shan asked as Sergeant Feng switched off the engine. "Maybe he moved to another barracks. He has no place to go."
"Nope. He's gone. Down the road at nightfall," Feng said. "You won't see him again."
Yeshe's bag had been gone when Shan had returned to the barracks. "He didn't say anything, didn't leave anything?"
Sergeant Feng reached into his pocket. "Only this," he said, laying the ruined rosary on the dashboard, nothing but string and two marker beads. He yawned and lowered the back of his seat. "I know where he went. He asked how to get there. That chemical factory in Lhasa. They hire lots of Tibetans, with or without papers."
Shan put his head in his hands.
"We could ask patrols to pick him up, if you still need him."
"No," Shan replied grimly, and climbed out of the truck.
There was nothing, just the sliver of the moon over the black outline of the mountains. As the stars blinked out he found himself watching for Jao's ghost.
Another vehicle appeared along the road from town, and eased in behind the truck. It was Tan, driving his own car. He was wearing a pistol.
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