Strangely embarrassed by her words, Shan rose. He walked along the cliff face, considering the barren ground, the cliff above, the undisturbed soil between the trail below and the spot where the body lay.
“I spent much of his last day with him,” Shan said. Increasingly it felt as if he were attending the funeral of an old friend.
“My uncle was a monk last time, one of those who kept the Yama shrine on the mountain above the village. He told me often that he would pay in the next life for letting it be destroyed,” Ama Apta said. Her words were taking on the thin, ethereal quality of a lama’s prayer. “When he came looking for a new place to live I said I would never let them drag him away the way they had my parents, that I would protect him, if he would take off his robe and become a shepherd with us. He agreed, because he knew someone had to watch over me and Kypo. He was with us more than twenty years. Six months after he died this young mule appeared while I was tending sheep. I offered him some barley in a bowl but the mule wouldn’t touch it. He kept looking at me like he had something to say, then he followed me home. I put more grain out, in four different bowls, including an old cracked wooden one used only by my uncle. He went right to the wooden bowl and ate all the grain. I understood then. As a mule,” she added after a moment, “he was always a good uncle.”
It must have been Ama Apte, Shan realized, who had arranged for the mule to be used for carrying the dead. It had always been waiting with Kypo at the side of the road, without an explanation. She had been sending her sturdy uncle, the mule. Shan remembered the attentive way the mule had always listened to his poetry.
“I need to examine his body,” Shan declared.
When the Tibetan woman did not reply, Shan reached into his pocket for his notepad. Ripping off a blank page, he wrote, in Tibetan. Thou were dust and now a spirit, thou were ignorant and now wise. It was a traditional expression of mourning. Ama Apte studied Shan as he set the prayer under a stone by the body, then she gestured him toward the animal. He removed the harness, stretched out the bent legs of the animal, then systematically ran his hands over its body, pausing over a lump here, a patch of dried blood there. Nearly a quarter hour later he wiped his hands on a tuft of grass and stood.
“This wasn’t one of his favorite places,” he ventured. “No water, not much grazing.”
“No,” Ama Apte agreed. “But here is where he must be burned. He is too big to move.”
“But above,” Shan suggested, “there is a place he favored.” He pointed to the top of the cliff high above them, then paused a moment, surveying the nearby outcroppings. He had a vague sense of being watched.
The Tibetan woman cocked her head. “He had favorite places, with grass and sun. There was an old shrine we would visit, now lost to the world. He liked the flagpole. There’s a trail from below that winds up toward a little grove of juniper and grass above. He would go with me there sometimes, in both his faces.”
Shan nodded. “He was shot at the top of the wall, here-” he pulled at the animal’s right front shoulder to reveal a wound that been pressed against the rock-“and he fell to the bottom of the cliff. Then someone came to put a bullet in his head with a pistol held between his eyes.”
A tear rolled down Ama Apte’s cheek. “How can you know that?”
“There are no hoofprints anywhere near here, except for a few from sheep. He has several broken bones, from the fall. If you look closely at his head you will see burned hairs around the wound, from the discharge of a large pistol pressed to his skull. There are prints from a heavy boot, a military boot, from someone walking close along the cliff face.”
“He hated soldiers. He would have avoided soldiers,” Ama Apte said in a distant voice. “But why? Why go to the trouble? What did they have to fear from him?”
“I don’t know. I left him near the road the day of the assassination, carrying Tenzin, a few hours before he was shot.” Shan turned and surveyed the little bowl-shaped valley defined by the ridge that curled into the massive Tumkot mountain. The trail that went upward led to a glacier that was said to be impassable. But on the other side of the mountain would be the road to the base camp. “He died because he was a witness to something.” Shan looked back at the seated woman, realizing only afterwards that he had given voice to the unlikely thought that had entered his head.
But the old diviner only nodded, as if the explanation made perfect sense to her. “Are you strong enough to find the rest of it for him, so he can move on?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“The truth. The truth about my uncle will be a heavy, dangerous thing. It will not want to be found.”
Shan nodded. The truth about the dead mule would also be the truth that would protect Tan, and therefore could be the truth that kept Shan’s son alive. Someone, on the same day, had assassinated the minister, a Western woman, and a mule.
“But I was casting the bones last night,” she declared in an apologetic tone. “And again just here. They said the same thing each time. A very strong portent. On the path of death lies more death.”
Shan closed his eyes a moment then gazed at the snowcapped peaks beyond the little valley. He extended his hand to the woman to help her up as he spoke again. “We’re going to need more wood.”
Chapter Five
Onward and onward! It was the shining light of the Party and Chairman Mao Tse-tung who gave us boundless strength and wisdom! read the dusty banner on the wall behind Tsipon’s desk. The quote was famous in the region, the fervent declaration from the journal of the first Chinese team to have ascended Chomolungma, emblazoned on tourist brochures and regional histories. On the adjoining wall was a new banner, almost as big, announcing the opening of the Snow Leopard Guesthouse, the most luxurious accommodation in the Himalayan region.
It was an hour after dawn, far too early for Tsipon to have stirred from his comfortable house on the slope above town, but with enough light cast through the windows for Shan to see without switching on a telltale bulb. He headed straight for the table under the window, where Tsipon’s secretary maintained an informal archive dedicated to local mountaineering: photos of early climbers, year-by-year statistics on expeditions, annals of the Chinese Mountain Institute, and copies of the regional newspaper.
With the battering of his mind and body, his memories of the murder scene had become so blurred he could almost believe everyone’s denial that any Westerner had been there. But he believed his dreams. Her face had haunted his sleep ever since that terrible day. In a nightmare the previous night, Shan had been lying broken and bleeding on a cell floor when the blood-soaked blond woman had appeared and carried Shan away from his cell, telling him in a comforting tone that the mountain was calling him for his final climb, that he shouldn’t think of it as death, just a cold, windy passage to a loftier existence.
He had decided that her face, though not familiar to him, was not altogether new. He had a sense he had seen Yates with a woman at the base camp, though he could not be certain since Public Security worked hard to discourage the support staff from mingling with the Westerners. But Kypo had confirmed that the American had a partner who was a famous climber, a woman named Ross.
He had planned to find her photo, tear it out and rush out of the office. But it took much longer than he had expected, as he futilely leafed through every newspaper from the past three months then started over, reminding himself to look for different hairstyles, different apparel, as he studied each of the many group photos. When he finally found her, her hair was much longer, shadowing part of her face, under an American style visored cap.
She stood in the center of the front row of a group of two dozen, described in the caption simply as the American guest speaker at a luncheon of the local climbing industry, celebrating the launch of the season, announcing American funding of a new environmental campaign to clean litter off the upper slopes of Everest.
He ripped the page out of the paper, folded it, and stuffed it into a pocket, then resumed his
search. Westerners were conspicuous and popular subjects during the season. Within five minutes he had found her again, a clearer image showing an athletic woman with a gentle, self-conscious smile shaking hands with a representative of the Ministry of Education in front of a new one-room schoolhouse donated by an American climbing club. He was scanning the second article, about to extract it, when the overhead light switched on.
Tsipon stood in the doorway, his face smoldering.
“Who is she?” Shan demanded before the Tibetan could speak. Shan held the photo in front of him, advancing toward the door.
The image of the woman seemed to jar Tsipon. He stared at it, his anger fading, as Shan repeated his question, then he pulled it from Shan’s grip.
“Megan Ross, it says,” Tsipon read. “Citizen of the United States.”
“You knew her. You must have known her.”
Tsipon glanced expectantly toward the entry to the building, then frowned. “Known her? I know her. A troublemaker. An agitator from the outside who has no notion of the delicate balance of politics in our world. Last year she started a petition demanding that Beijing send the climbing fees it collects to the mountain villages, abruptly announcing it at the climbing society banquet at the end of the season. She said every cent should be given to rebuild the temples leveled by Beijing so the mountain would be content again and stop taking so many lives. I told her if she wanted people to listen to her speak about temples she was going to have to die and come back as a Buddhist nun.”
“She did die, in my arms, beside Minister Wu.”
Tsipon rolled his eyes. “I read about a particular form of paranoid delusion, imagining that celebrities die in your presence. I know of a hospital near here that could deal with all that ails you,” the Tibetan added with a meaningful gaze, then saw Shan’s insistent expression and shrugged. “You can’t possibly think the death of an American could be kept quiet.”
“Cao has somehow managed to do so. Find someone who has seen her since that day. Anyone.”
“She is secretive. She has people who grant her confidential favors. She doesn’t like the spotlight.”
“You seem to know her well. If she is alive, contact her,” Shan pressed.
Tsipon glanced out the door again before taking another step inside. “I have to get along with all the foreign climbers. They are our lifeblood. Megan Ross has a list of the peaks she wants to climb. A life list she calls it. Did you know there are over twenty peaks of more than twenty thousand feet in this region alone? Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Sishapangma. And nearly all of them officially closed to foreigners. Sometimes she goes off for a few days and when she returns another mountain is crossed off her list.”
Shan considered the challenge in Tsipon’s eyes. “You mean you help her. You grant her secret favors.”
Tsipon shrugged. “She’s American,” he said, as if it explained much. “She’s been coming here for years, works with that man Yates now, and has influence with all the expedition companies. She needs equipment sometimes. Nothing much. Freeze dried food. Some climbing hardware, most of which she returns. A guide who can keep secrets. Sometimes even a private truck ride in the middle of the night. She pays in dollars. Dollars are very helpful to have. Some of the sherpas from Nepal insist on being paid in dollars.”
“Contact her.”
Tsipon glanced at his watch. “She isn’t stupid. She doesn’t tell me about every trip. And no one will talk even if they know. These are illegal climbs. No permits. No fees. Some are close to military bases.”
A new thought occurred to Shan. “Why would she know the minister of Tourism?” And why, he asked himself, would she have confronted the minister as she was driving up the mountain?
“You need to see a doctor for this disease of yours. She hated what the Minister was doing to the mountain. Ross said the minister acted like she owned Chomolungma. The minister was the enemy to her.”
And that, Shan realized, might have been exactly why Ross had met the minister on the mountain.
Tsipon stepped to a calendar on the wall by the door, lifting a marker from a nearby bookshelf. He put crosses through the past five days. “I need the body of that sherpa. You’ve got one more day. You should be in the mountains.”
Shan kept pressing. “How would a foreigner like Ross get past the Minister’s security?”
“The road was closed. When the minister suggested she go up without an escort, no one objected. She wanted to drive herself, experience the passage up the mountain as a tourist.”
“How do you know that?”
Tsipon offered a sly smile. “Because she borrowed one of the rental cars from the new guesthouse, free of charge.”
“And you,” Shan ventured, “have gone into the rental car business.”
Tsipon smiled again. “I only have a partial interest in the guesthouse. But the car agency is all mine. When I heard she wanted to drive herself, I readily offered our biggest car. The front license plate had an advertisement for the agency. Celebrity promotion.”
Shan gazed with foreboding at the calendar. “How is the prisoner?”
Tsipon looked out the door one more time, then paused, looking down, as if deciding something. “Yesterday they brought in more specialists, from out of town. An ambulance was called to the jail last night. Forget your colonel. I need the dead sherpa. And right now,” he added in a pointed tone, “I need for you to come with me.”
Shan silently straightened the newspapers, considering the many ways Tsipon could be laying a trap for him, then followed.
Outside a black sedan waited, bearing the number plates for a government car from Lhasa. Beside it paced a refined Chinese man, overdressed in a black overcoat and red fox cap.
“Comrade Shan,” Tsipon declared, “I don’t think you have met our distinguished visitor from the capital. Comrade Director Xie of the Bureau of Religious Affairs.”
Shan’s mouth went bone dry. He offered a hesitant nod.
“One of our glorious rehabilitated émigrés,” Xie observed in a polished voice as he reached for Shan’s hand. He made it sound as if Shan had decided to migrate to Tibet for his health. “I have heard about your skills with the local population.”
As Shan retreated a step Tsipon’s hand closed around his arm.
“At work before dawn as usual,” Tsipon declared to Xie, pulling Shan with him toward the car. “Two of the sharpest minds in Tibet gracing our little town at the same time. Great deeds can’t be far behind.” He herded Shan into the rear seat as Xie walked around and climbed in the opposite side, leaving Shan trapped between the two men as the sedan pulled away.
The Snow Leopard Guesthouse was a compact two story building of stucco and wood with a steep roof designed, Shan surmised, to conform to a Chinese concept of an alpine chalet. As the sedan pulled up to its front door the sun burst out through low-hanging clouds to the east, casting a brilliant gold light on snowcapped Chomolungma. Shan walked casually along the front of the building as Tsipon boasted to Xie about his new hotel, proudly pointing out its Western structural features and the adjacent plot they had targeted for expansion with a swimming pool. Shan reached the end of the building, looking around the corner before turning back. The old Jiefang truck was visible at the side of the hotel, two Public Security cars at the back of the parking lot.
Director Xie insisted that the driver take photos of him posing with his new friends with the mountain as a backdrop before following Tsipon inside, past the reception desk, into a private room with a table set for breakfast. The walls in the room were adorned with photographs not of the Himalayan highlands but of Beijing, with one wall bearing nothing but a large airbrushed portrait of the Great Helmsman. The buffet on the sideboard was a cosmopolitan blend of dumplings, rice porridge, pickled vegetables, red bean soup, fried bread, pastries, tea, and coffee. As Director Xie settled into a chair at the head of the table with a cup of coffee and a plate of pastries and vegetables, a solemn middle-aged woman in a dark business
suit slipped into the chair at the opposite end. “Madame Zheng from Beijing,” the director offered in introduction.
“It isn’t often we are given an opportunity to so directly serve Beijing,” Tsipon said with an uncertain glance at the woman before turning back to Xie. “Shan will be pleased to tell you all about the local gompas.”
Shan’s hand tightened around his cup of tea.
“The soft spots on our southern underbelly,” Director Xie put in as he lifted a pickle in his chopsticks. “We have long suspected renewed criminal efforts by the Dalai Clique.” Although the government never officially referred to the Dalai Lama by name, this new, more conceptual term had crept into government pronouncements, always the two words together, in the same tone used for the notorious Gang of Four.
“The gompas are small,” Shan replied in a tight voice. “Harmless.”
“If they were harmless my office wouldn’t exist,” Xie offered good-naturedly. “And once,” he added, looking at Madame Zheng now, “they were much bigger, building great wealth by oppressing the peasant class.”
Tsipon sampled one of the small, hard pastries. “Director Xie has a fascinating theory.”
“They had jewel-mounted statues, figures made of gold accumulated over centuries,” Xie announced, “the fruits of their enslavement of the masses. Are you aware, Comrade Shan, the Party has decreed that all religious artifacts belong to the state?”
“Of course.” Shan felt the steady, probing gaze of Madame Zheng. Although Tsipon had stopped looking at her, apparently dismissing the silent woman as a clerk, Shan had learned to be wary of anonymous, well-dressed bureaucrats from Beijing.
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