“I didn’t kill him,” Shan shot back, then gestured toward Yates. “This man didn’t kill him.” A man stepped forward, an ax in his raised hand. Yates retreated into the shadows. So much for allies, Shan thought. He eased backward to avoid the man’s swing but then another villager advanced at his flank, his face dark with anger, his hand clutching a short club.
Suddenly the American was back, brandishing a long hoe, swinging it to clear a radius of several feet around Shan.
“We can finish this here!” the blacksmith snarled. “We will have justice for once! A pyre can hold three as easily as one!” He moved forward, followed by the man with the club and the one with an ax.
Suddenly Ama Apte was at Shan’s side, holding out a hand from which hung a necklace with an ivory skull as its pendant. She extended it in an arc, taking in the entire crowd, causing them to step back, then dangled it in front of the blacksmith’s face.
“It’s enough, Ama Apte,” the blacksmith said loudly, though his voice had more pleading than anger in it now.
“It will not end here, nor with Tenzin’s pyre. The mountain is still at work,” Ama Apte declared, then stepped between Shan and Yates, who had lowered his hoe. She lifted Shan’s arm. “This one has been bonded to the dead of the mountain,” she declared, then startled Yates by raising his wrist in her other hand, showing the Tibetans his missing fingertip. “And the mountain has marked this one too,” she declared. “She has plans for them. My dice have confirmed it, this very night.” She kept the arms extended, squeezing them tightly. She smelled of aloe, used by many Tibetans for healing. On the heel of the hand that held Shan was a patch of dried blood. As she moved, there was a soft jingling, from her silver necklaces, and Shan recalled the words of the driver from the ambushed prison bus. When the yeti had gone inside the bus-to steal the prisoner files, Shan now knew-the driver had heard tiny bells.
The astrologer’s challenge was not enough for the angry men in the front, but her words were like magic for the others. Their rancor was gone. Some nodded and melted back into the shadows outside. Kypo slipped between his mother and the blacksmith, fixing the smith with challenge in his face until the bigger man muttered and broke away, taking his companions out into the street.
Shan turned to the dead sherpa’s sister as the chamber emptied. “We will help you wash him again,” he said in an apologetic tone. Kypo turned and soon brought new sticks of incense, his wife basins of water. The sister accepted their help in the preparation but would not let them touch the body again. As Shan and Yates watched from the shadows of the stalls Shan asked the American about the night before Tenzin had died.
“Three sherpas had gone up to scout locations for our staging camps,” the American explained, and offered a familiar description of the strenuous work involved in establishing a new line of support camps above the base camp, testing ice ledges, anchoring safety lines along the most difficult rock faces, trying to locate resting points protected from the frigid, incessant winds of the upper slopes. The three had planned to stay together but sudden blizzard conditions had separated the party on their descent after they had pitched a tent for an upper camp and Tenzin had continued down while the others had given up and gone back to the upper tent for the night. The next morning Tenzin, always the tireless worker, had announced on his radio that he would begin setting up a practice climb for the customers who would have to wait at the camp to acclimatize. When the other sherpas finally arrived they could not find him and radioed Megan, their climb captain. A search was begun from above and below. Two hours later Megan spotted his body in her binoculars. “There were over a hundred people at base camp that night,” Yates explained, “and since the sky had cleared, leaving a bright moon, any of them could have made the climb to the camp where Tenzin was sleeping.”
“The most important question,” Shan mused, “isn’t who could have made the climb, it is why a sherpa who just arrived from Nepal for the season so threatened someone that he had to be killed.”
The bonfire in the square had begun to die as Shan and Yates slipped outside, Shan pointing the way to Ama Apte’s house. They had reached the side of the square when Kypo stepped in front of them. “When did you meet my mother?” he demanded of the American in an unsettled tone.
“I never have, until now,” Yates replied, with a pointed glance toward Shan that said he had not forgotten the strange encounter with her at the base camp. Shan saw that the American was gazing at the truncated finger Ama Apte had raised to the crowd. “It’s nothing,” he added hastily. “She noticed my finger and decided to use it to help quiet the mob.”
As his two companions stared uneasily at each other, a red light flickered in the sky along the southern horizon then disappeared behind a peak. The mountain commandos sometimes patrolled with infrared scanners, and outside the Everest zone were known to shoot at anything that moved within a mile of the border, whether man or beast. Shan watched the light absently, nearly overcome with fatigue, following Kypo toward his mother’s house, past the center square. Half the villagers still lingered there, listening to a man’s harangue about how Religious Affairs had destroyed a farmer’s barley stores because the Bureau suspected he had helped the fugitive monks, how the knobs would do the same to all of them when they came.
Another red light appeared momentarily between two ridges to the north.
Shan, now wide awake and frightened to his core, grabbed Kypo’s arm. “You have to send them home!” he insisted. “Put out the fire and send them home!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The knobs are coming tonight, not tomorrow! They want the village worked up, they want resistance so they can justify detention of every man here.”
Kypo raised his lantern close to Shan’s face, searching it as if hoping for a sign of deception, then just shook his head despondently. “It’s gone too far. Some of them have been drinking. They want a fight with the knobs.”
“Then your mother-“ “My mother,” Kypo shot back, “has put herself in enough jeopardy tonight.”
A vise seemed to be tightening around Shan’s chest. He knew what Public Security was capable of, but he was probably one of only a few in the village who had seen it firsthand. He stared forlornly at the fire, seeing in his mind’s eye how the destruction of Tumkot would become another of the tragic tales told at campfires, another story of Tibetans battered by a century they hadn’t chosen to live in.
“Then get Gyalo away.”
“What are you talking about?” Kypo protested. “I don’t know-”
“There’s no more time for games. He is at your mother’s house. Get him out, back to Yates’s truck, back to the sunken chamber at my stable. And get me four sober men who can be trusted.”
Major Cao said nothing as Shan opened the door and slid behind the wheel of his utility vehicle parked below the village, did not react when four dark figures took up position around the vehicle. He was used to figures in shadow, and would never for an instant have believed anyone but other knobs would be so bold.
Shan put his hands on the wheel, in plain sight, before speaking. “You’re going to call off the raid tonight,” he declared.
Cao’s head snapped up, his hand went to his holster, then he froze as he took notice of the figures outside the truck.
“You’re a dead man, Shan,” he hissed.
“Your disadvantage, Major, is that you don’t understand investigations for the top ranks in Beijing. But I carried them out for twenty years. Everything is in motion, everything is in play, including the investigator. Especially the investigator. They will turn on you in an instant. The number of antisocial Tibetans you arrest won’t matter. Have you asked yourself why they sent you, an investigator from Lhasa, and not someone from Beijing for such an important investigation? You are the failsafe. If things don’t go well you become a conspirator. A few adjustments to your investigation file and suddenly you’re part of the crime.”
“I will start with the bo
nes of your feet,” Cao said. “I will keep you alive for a month or two. But after the first hour you will never walk again.”
“Do you think Madame Zheng is here for the mountain air? Have you even bothered to ask what her role is?”
“An observer.”
“No. She is from the Ministry of Justice. I don’t know her but I know her type. She is credentialed as a judge prosecutor, I wager. And for you that makes her the most dangerous person in the county right now.”
“Ridiculous. She just sits in meetings and takes notes.”
“She will ask for your file. That’s when you know they are beginning to doubt your ability, beginning to consider their own version of the crime.”
There was just enough moonlight for Shan to see the wince on Cao’s face.
“A Public Security bus is ambushed and a state minister killed a stone’s throw away. She knows these events must be related, and every hour you lose pretending otherwise puts you that much closer to disgrace.” Cao seemed to stop breathing for a moment. Shan’s guess about Madame Zheng was right. “You have a few more days at most. Then new reports will be written, your name will go into the file.”
“You are delusional. I have fifteen years with the Bureau. That would never happen.”
“You have all the proof you need that it does.”
Cao’s head moved toward Shan.
“I am that proof. Read my file again.”
Cao was silent for a long moment. “For all I know, you were Tan’s partner in the killing.”
“The other element you don’t appreciate is that there are foreigners here.” As Shan spoke, the right side of the vehicle began to sag. As Shan had instructed, Kypo’s men were releasing air from the tires. It was the subtlest act of resistance but enough to cause Cao to hesitate. He had no way of knowing how many of the shadowy figures lurked in the darkness around his car.
“There’s nowhere you can hide, Shan,” he snarled. “When you attack a Public Security officer your life is forfeit.”
“Pay attention to the subtleties, Major,” Shan replied in a level voice. “At this point in your career they make all the difference. This is just an informal conversation. Let’s call it career counseling. What you are doing tonight will make headlines in the Western press. Climbers and trekkers from America and Europe are all over this area, most with cameras. By noon tomorrow they will be giving interviews by satellite telephone to reporters in their home countries. The jackbooted oppressor attacks a hamlet of peaceful Tibetans, practically in the shadow of Everest, as a pretext so a Public Security bureaucrat can divert attention from his failed investigation. You may be under tremendous pressure now, yet you still have a chance to come out victorious. But your career is over with the first phone call from an embassy to the Minister of Public Security. They will find you a latrine on the Vietnamese border that needs cleaning for the next ten years.”
“My case is finished. I have the murderer. The trial will be next week.”
“No. You and I know you wouldn’t be here tonight if you were finished. You never had to deal with a prisoner who wouldn’t speak. You have to have evidence from some other source. You have to dirty your hands. That’s why you’re here, to test the market for new witnesses.”
“We’ll just include you in the sweep,” Cao spat. “You’ll be lost in the confusion. When you have no papers no one needs to account for you. A nobody can become nothing in an instant.”
Shan gave an exaggerated sigh as he lifted the door handle. “I leave you to your witticisms. I think I told you before you are overeducated for your job. Too much wit, not enough judgment. You fail to grasp the most fundamental truth of those you work for. The higher you aspire, the lower must be the denominator on which you base your actions. I fear for you, Major. You may not survive as long as I do.”
“I promise I will survive long enough to destroy you.”
“You will have to choose. You can destroy me or you can find out the truth of what happened that day on the road to the Base Camp.”
As Shan began to open the door Cao spoke again. “I didn’t come just looking for hooligans tonight. There is a matter of a body that mysteriously vanished from the experimental hospital. Breach of a highly classified facility, that is an attack on the state. Theft of evidence in a capital case. Now this attack on me. I have enough to shoot you several times over.”
“I might understand losing a hand here, a leg there, but a whole body,” Shan replied evenly. “That sounds like negligence.”
“Imagine my surprise when I found out that you were responsible for taking that same body down from Everest, back to this village. I have learned to study my enemies, before I dissect them. You are a man, like me, of fanatical devotion to his responsibilities.”
Shan put one foot out the door, silently surveying the surrounding shadows, for a fleeting, desperate moment telling himself that there were men in the night who, with one word from Shan, would be eager to make a man like Cao disappear. “You are a victim of your own techniques, Major Cao. You need to speak with the doctor who performed the autopsy on that sherpa. Forget the report sent to you for the file. Make him understand that you need the truth. If you had bothered to look at the body even you could have seen that those two bullets were shot into him after he was dead, bullets with a much larger caliber bullet. But he was murdered, killed in his sleep on the slopes above the base camp. The foreign expedition leaders have photographs, have the evidence that proves it.
“When those foreigners release the photos of a leading sherpa murdered on Everest and tell how the government hid the body, it will be like an atom bomb detonating in the climbing community. No one will pay to climb on the Chinese side of the mountain, not for years. How many millions was the minister projecting for her new economic model? Fifty million? A hundred? You will be the man who lost it all. You will be the one who shamed China on the global stage. Your star will not fade. It will be extinguished overnight.”
These were were terms Cao understood. The major had no reply.
Shan studied his shadowed face, creased with worry now. “I will make you a deal, Major Cao, one that may yet save you.”
“You have nothing to offer me,” Cao snarled.
“Go to Sarma gompa tonight. Discover the next murder victim.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Director Xie is dead.”
“Impossible! I saw him a few hours ago.”
“You have a satellite phone I believe, as does Xie. Call him.”
Cao’s eyes seemed to glow as he glared at Shan, but after a long moment he opened the console, pulled out his phone and punched in a number. Shan could hear it ring, five times, ten times, before Cao shut it off and stared at it.
“I found his body at sunset,” Shan continued. “No one will have reported it. Seal the site. Call Lhasa. Tell them you believe it should be kept quiet to avoid rumors of civil disorder. Say it to them before they have a chance to say it to you. Tell them you need time to resolve it quietly, for the good of the state. Tell them you are following leads to discover why Xie was alone at the gompa. Then decide what to say to Madame Zheng when she asks about it. Lhasa will call Beijing. Beijing will call her. When you see her next, your head better touch the floor.”
The anger on Cao’s face was slowly replaced with worry. “Are you certain Xie is dead?”
“He is extremely dead, as you will see.”
“Why would you ask for a deal? You just gave me everything.”
“Find the body at the back of the gompa ruins. Call your headquarters. Arrange for an ambulance from the yeti factory to secretly take away what’s left of the body. All I ask is that you cancel the removal order on Colonel Tan.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To save yourself the embarrassment of having to recall him from prison when the real killer is found. To pay for the favor I am doing you.”
“You have already told me what I need to know.”
Shan gazed out at the moon rising between two peaks. “Then I will save your career. Keep Tan in town and I will give you the real murderer.”
“The antenna attached to the car has been disabled,” Shan added as he climbed out. “There will be men hidden in the rocks. If you don’t stay in the truck for at least an hour I cannot be responsible for what will happen.”
As Cao lit a cigarette Shan saw his hand tremble. “When this is over, Shan,” the major spat, “I will have you on your knees begging me to shoot you.”
Chapter Eleven
Gyalo had gone to another level of existence. He cursed the gods, rattled off the names of the levels of hell as if he were being examined by some ancient guru.
“All the way here,” Kypo explained in a pained voice as he sat on a stool in the sunken chapel, “he shouted verses from sutras and tried to get out of the truck. I had to hold him down.”
It was no surprise the drunken lama had been left for dead. One arm had been broken, the side of his head had been kicked until it looked like a pulpy, rotten fruit. Two fingers were splinted in place. An eye was swollen shut. Blood trickled from his mouth where a tooth had been knocked out. Whoever had attacked him and thrown him into the pit had thought they were disposing of a dead man.
“I sent Yates away,” Kypo explained. “He was very upset. He said he had work to do at the base camp but he acted like it was his fault this had happened.”
Shan examined the broken arm. It had been expertly set and splinted. “The American did this?”
“My mother. When we brought him to her, her first words were ‘let the old bastard die’ and she turned her back on him. But a few minutes later she came back with her first aid kit and worked on him. She said to tell him the gods would look after him despite himself. He woke up and starting shouting like this.”
“Saying the same things as now?” Shan asked.
“Mostly.” Kypo thought a moment, reconsidering. “He chanted monk’s words, charms against demons, in the voice of a terrified child. It was as if he were more scared of us than those who attacked him. He reached for me, and said ‘just let me die.’ She hit him.”
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