Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  "We didn't come that way," Anya announced.

  Again her words seemed to take the strangers by surprise. The man in the sunglasses studied Anya, then Shan, and looked behind them. Chemi stood there, and Tenzin stepped out of the shadows. The man in sunglasses turned to the first man, who cocked his head as if suddenly very curious. He pulled a map from his pocket and studied it intensely.

  "Which way then?" the man in the helmet asked.

  "Sometimes sheep get lost in the hills," Shan interjected, taking another step forward.

  "You have no sheep," the man observed.

  "I said they were lost," Shan shot back.

  There was a sudden mechanical clicking. The second man, with the sunglasses, was shooting photographs of them, rapidly pressing the shutter and winding as he aimed the device at each of them. An instant later a similar clicking and whirling answered the first, and Shan turned to see Winslow photographing the oil crew, answering each of the man's shots with one of his own. The man with the dark glasses lowered his camera and glared at Winslow; Winslow lowered his camera and the man saw the American's face. He straightened and stepped closer, then twisted about and ordered the rest of the work crew back, leaving only the man in the green jacket by his side.

  "I am the foreman," the man in green hesitantly announced, looking to the second man as though for a cue. "Team leader for this field study. For the Qinghai Petroleum Venture." He looked from Shan to Winslow and back again, obviously uncertain which to address. "There must have been a misunderstanding." He studied Shan's frayed clothes and decided to look at Winslow as he spoke. "You should have been warned about the blasting zone."

  "Why would you look for oil so high in the mountains?" Winslow asked in an offhand tone, taking off his hat and pushing back his hair.

  "Not oil, not here. The blasting is monitored by seismometers positioned in the mountains and in the valley where the exploration is focused. These are very complex geologic formations. We need to record the way the vibrations travel through the rock to define the geologic structure, so we can understand how large the deposit of oil is, how economic it would be to extract."

  "And?" Winslow asked, still in his disinterested tone.

  "So far the results are inconclusive. It will depend on what the drilling strikes in the valley," the geologist said with a thin smile. "Our models suggest a strike big enough to justify at least a ten-year project here."

  "Were you blasting three days ago, on the south side of the mountain? Or this morning?" Winslow demanded. "Have you been on the ridge on the far side of that big plain?"

  The foreman glanced at his companion again. "No. We do not operate outside our concession area."

  Winslow studied the two men. "Qinghai Petroleum," he observed, "has American partners."

  "Italian," the foreman replied, "French, British. And American. We work with Americans on this project."

  "So you know Melissa Larkin."

  The geologist's expression froze, and he threw a pleading glance toward the man in the sunglasses.

  "A horrible thing," the short man observed in an earnest tone. "Tragic, so far from home. So sudden." He removed his glasses and fixed Winslow with a steady gaze. There was sympathy in his words, but not in his eyes.

  "You knew her?" the American asked. "I was at Yapchi. I didn't see you."

  "Zhu Ji is Director of Special Projects for the entire company," the foreman said. "He works with the foreign experts."

  The short, sleek man called Zhu nodded slowly. "But I haven't met you before," he said pointedly. "You are not with the venture. I would know."

  Winslow sighed, then pulled out his wallet and handed a business card to Zhu.

  It was printed in Chinese on one side and English on the other. Shan saw the image of an American eagle, in blue ink, and gold stars. Zhu stared at it a long time, before handing it to the geologist, who repeatedly turned the card over in his hand, seeming to read it each time, as though the lettering might change when he turned it. "I heard someone from your government came," Zhu said dryly.

  "Are you suggesting Miss Larkin suffered an accident?" Winslow asked.

  "Miss Larkin is dead," Zhu said abruptly. "She fell off the mountain into a river. I saw it happen."

  Shan heard a sharp intake of breath from Winslow. "You were there?"

  "I saw it, but not close. You know she had stayed out in the field without properly clearing it- supposed to be on a three day mission but never returned. We had been watching for her, because her superiors were quite angry about it. Her team had expensive equipment and was gathering important data. Only two of her team came back, only the Chinese, who said they had become lost. The others with her were Tibetans," he observed in an accusing tone. "I said maybe she was just lost as well. It is so easy to become disoriented in these ranges. We watched for her when we were traveling in the mountains, and saw her through binoculars on a ledge high above us. I think she was delirious from hunger. Or maybe the altitude. Foreigners often have trouble with the altitude."

  "Why wasn't I told this when I visited the camp?"

  "I was in the mountains. When I returned I reported it. Forms have been sent to Beijing. And to her American employer."

  It was Winslow's turn to fall silent. He sat on a flat rock and surveyed the barren landscape. "Is her body at the camp?" he asked after a long moment. "I need to take the body."

  "No body," Zhu said soberly. "Into the river, washed away. It happens. Sometimes people are found floating hundreds of miles away."

  "You mean the Yangtze?"

  "No. We were on the crest of the long ridge, on the provincial border. She fell on the southern side. The Tibetan side."

  "I have to have a body," Winslow declared quietly, to a cloud over the northern horizon. "It's my job. The U.S. government must account for all of its taxpayers." He sighed and unfolded his map. "Show me where."

  Zhu pulled a pencil from his pocket, studied the American's map for a long time, then pointed to an area of rugged terrain nearly fifteen miles to the west, where the topographical map showed the sharply compressed lines of a steep wall. Below was a thin blue line that drifted south on the map, into Tibet. Zhu followed the blue line with his pencil tip to a larger blue spot over a hundred miles away. "To a lake," he said in a victorious tone, as if it proved his point. "Probably one of those sacred places."

  Winslow's gaze moved slowly up and down the man. "I'll need those papers you filed," he said in a cool voice.

  "At Yapchi. Ask for the manager."

  "Jenkins. I met him."

  "Right," Zhu agreed in his slow, oily voice. "Mr. Jenkins was very upset, too. We all liked Miss Larkin. Very pretty. She told jokes. Spoke Tibetan. Not Chinese," he said pointedly, "but Tibetan." The foreman turned away, as if Zhu's words were a cue to leave.

  "Stay on the main tracks," Zhu advised as he took a step backwards. "Safer for everyone." He studied the steep slope behind them as though trying to discern how they might have descended. "Otherwise we can't guarantee your safety." As he spoke the Special Projects Director stepped past Shan to the rocks behind them, walking warily along the edge of the field as though he suspected others might be hiding. He circled back and stood behind the foreman again. "You have no dogs," Zhu said, looking at Shan suspiciously. "Shepherds have dogs."

  Shan returned his steady gaze. "Sometimes dogs have to choose when sheep stray. Go to the shepherd or stay with the sheep. This time they must have stayed with the sheep."

  Zhu replied with another narrow smile. "A Han shepherd with Tibetan sheep. Difficult," he said, and nothing more. He spun about and the two men marched away to join their crew, back on the far side of the long rock-strewn clearing which now resembled a battlefield. Shan recalled another crater, the one he had seen at Rapjung. The land took long to heal from such wounds.

  Shan watched the Special Director until he was out of sight, trying to persuade himself Zhu was only what he had said he was. But he had known too many men like Zhu, as colle
agues in Beijing, and later as his handlers in the gulag, for him to dismiss Zhu so easily. Zhu was more than what he had claimed to be. A Party member, almost certainly. The political commissar of the oil project, most likely. Perhaps a special watcher from Public Security.

  He weighed Zhu's words, trying to make them fit with what they had seen earlier that day. No oil crew had been authorized to work on the other side of the mountain but the explosions they had heard that morning had been seismic charges, identical to those they had just experienced. The helicopter Chemi had seen had been civilian, and the only civilian helicopters in the region probably belonged to the oil venture. Zhu had said a helicopter had searched for Larkin. But why would it search on the far side of the mountain? And if Zhu had already reported Larkin dead, what was it searching for?

  As the oil crew disappeared from sight, Winslow kept staring at his map. "Jesus," he said as Shan approached. "Over a cliff." He was remembering, Shan suspected, that he had almost fallen the same way the day before.

  "I always get a body," the American said absently, staring at the map.

  "Maybe later we could find the river," Shan suggested, "and say some words."

  "I didn't know her," Winslow said, in a tone that sounded like protest.

  "A rebellious American," Shan observed, "who leaves her normal duties, her normal life, to wander about Tibetan mountains, perhaps to look for something bigger."

  Winslow grunted. The small grin that rose on his face slowly angled downward into a frown. "You make it sound like she and I have been looking for the same thing."

  Shan did not reply, but kept staring at the American. Winslow returned his gaze for a moment, grimaced and looked away.

  The landscape greened as they descended into Qinghai Province. The hills were still largely the same rugged, gravelly slopes they had encountered on the south side of the range, but the gullies where the spring melt ran contained more vegetation. Juniper and poplar trees could be seen in the lower elevations. There even seemed to be more pikas running in and out of the tumbles of rock scree that covered many of the slopes.

  Lokesh seemed intensely interested in every stream and rivulet they encountered. Whenever they were within reach he paused to taste the water. Where one came into view in the distance he pulled his hat low to shield his eyes and studied the water. He offered no explanation, but Shan knew Lokesh was thinking of the patch of blood red water they had seen the day before. Shan still did not understand it, but he did understand that the healers Lokesh had trained with believed the health of the land and the health of the people who inhabited it were inextricably linked. To Lokesh and his teachers it was impossible to treat a human illness without addressing the state of harmony in the human's spirit, and it was impossible to address the harmony in a human spirit without also considering the harmony in that part of the earth where the human lived. To Lokesh the crimson patch might have indicated a tear in the fabric that bound them all together.

  They followed Chemi down a long steep gully for half an hour before Winslow paused, map in hand, and called out to her. She pointed to their location on the map, then to the narrow gorge they were about to enter. Where the gully opened onto the lower slope of the mountain was her village, she said with a smile of anticipation. Winslow stooped for Anya to climb onto his back. Chemi's pace quickened, and although she usually remained at least fifty feet in front of their small column as they moved down the gully, Shan thought he heard her singing.

  The gully ended abruptly and Chemi stood in a pool of sunlight in front of them. The sharp, sudden sound she made seemed to start as a greeting. But then she sank to her knees and held her belly, and the sound became a long painful groan. He ran to her side but she seemed unable to speak.

  Her home had been there, Shan saw, less than two hundred feet from a small stream that emerged from the mountain near the mouth of the gully. Between the stream and the site of the tiny village there had been trees, but now these were twisted, smoking stumps. And beyond the stumps were the smoldering remains of four houses.

  Chapter Eleven

  The sound of engines and clinking metal broke through their stunned silence. Chemi did not hesitate, did not look back, just ran for the cover of the outcroppings that lined the slope beyond the ruined village. Shan grabbed Lokesh and pulled him into the same rocks as Winslow threw Anya onto his back and followed. Only when they had run nearly a hundred yards did Chemi stop. She seemed unable to speak, not because of her exertion but because of the emotion that twisted her face. She bent into the rocks and retched. When she turned back Shan glimpsed the sick woman again, the frail creature they had encountered on the trail.

  It wasn't battle tanks, as Shan feared, but two bulldozers that appeared from around the high rock wall that sheltered the southern and eastern sides of the village. One of the machines did not slow, only lowered its blade and began carving a swath through the ruins of the village, sweeping through the remains of the buildings, throwing before it a rolling wave of debris. A chair flew into the air, the shards of a window and a bed, then something swollen and white that could have been the body of a dog.

  The second bulldozer pulled a two-axle trailer from which at least a dozen men climbed down. They quickly unhitched the trailer and, as the second earthmover crawled forward, began unloading building materials.

  "The petroleum venture," Anya said in a pained voice. "Only they have such equipment."

  Her words seemed to say it all, or at least there seemed to be nothing else anyone could say. Anya took Chemi's hand and led them through the rocks. Yapchi Village, Chemi had said, was only an hour's walk past her home.

  Shan had never understood the subtleties of traveling by foot, the many ways one could walk, the messages of human stepping, until he had come to Tibet. Lokesh had once reminded Shan that Tibet had known the wheel for many centuries, as long as China and India, but for most of its existence Tibet had used the device not for transportation, but only for prayer wheels. Tibetans liked to walk, Lokesh said, for it kept them connected to the earth and gave them time to contemplate. But there were many ways of walking in Tibet. There were pilgrim's steps, the slow reverent pace of those bound for holy places. There were caravaners, who moved firmly and steadily, eyes fixed on the horizon or their animals. There were prisoners, who moved in short shuffling steps, heads bowed, sometimes even, by habit, long after they were released. Now Chemi assumed another, an uneven stuttering pace that involved frequent steps to look nervously over the shoulder or to simply sigh and let a wave of emotion break and ebb before moving on. It was the walk of the refugee. It pained Shan to see Chemi fall into it so readily.

  They walked in silence, until Anya led them to a narrow ledge of rock that opened with views to the north and west. They stood on a saddle of land that rose up to separate the grey rolling hills to the east from a small fertile valley, bounded on three sides by a long high curving outrider of Yapchi Mountain. The walls gave a symmetrical shape to its curving sides, so that the valley, lush with spring growth, had the appearance of a green oval bowl. Except for the open grass-covered saddle of land they stood on, the sides of the bowl were trimmed with a swath of conifers perhaps a quarter-mile wide. Above the trees were cliffs and towers of rock. Below them were pastures, and fields concentrated at the end nearest them- some crudely terraced, some of them a warm willow green, the color of sprouting barley, others the deeper green of pastures used for sheep.

  Anya pointed excitedly to the small cluster of buildings at the south end of the bowl and pressed her rosary to her chin as if in silent prayer. Her village was intact. The girl glanced up at Chemi with an apologetic air and reached for the grim woman's hand. Chemi seemed to be in shock. Shan was not certain her eyes even saw the valley below them. "You'll stay with us. You'll like Yapchi," the girl said. "Soon we will have Lamtso salt for our tea," she added, and led them back onto the trail.

  Winslow lingered, scanning the far side of the valley with his binoculars. Shan saw his frowning e
xpression and reached for his own field glasses. As he adjusted the focus another village came into view at the far end of the valley, more than two miles away, where a dirt road descended into the valley from a gap at the end of the high saddle of land. A line of heavy trucks were parked beside two rows of box-like structures.

  "They bring in offices and quarters on the back of trucks. Long trailers," the American explained. Shan nodded as he swept the valley with the lenses. He had seen oil convoys in Xinjiang, the vast arid province to the northwest. Once he had encountered one over a mile long, waiting at the edge of the highway, trucks of many sizes, and buses, derricks and laboratory vans, a small city on wheels.

  On the slope above the oil camp, crews were leveling the forest. A section a quarter mile wide had been clearcut, and the logs were being rolled down to the oil camp. The swath of stumps looked like an open wound on the side of the mountain.

  Winslow pointed again and Shan trained the lenses closer, to a point near the center of the valley where a heavy derrick stood with two trucks parked beside it. "An easy place to work," Winslow said. "That's what the manager told me. Very dry. They like dry. Water makes everything more complicated, more costly. Yapchi is so dry they have to bring water in with big tank trucks. No water at the bottom of the valley means they can easily work the center, the lowest point, shortest distance to their target."

  Their target. Shan remembered Lhandro's words. The company wanted to take the blood from Yapchi's earth.

  Winslow turned to follow the others but saw that Shan still scanned the slopes. "It was a pretty small piece of stone," the American observed.

  Shan lowered the glasses with a weak smile. "It's not that I expect to see the stolen eye," he said quietly. "I'm just trying to understand how to look for a blind deity."