Shan looked up, not sure he had heard correctly. “Your mother hit Gyalo?”
Kypo nodded. “With a small club. She knocked him out. She said she couldn’t risk having neighbors hear, said he needed to be still so she could set his arm. But she seemed glad for the excuse to strike him.” He searched Shan’s face, as if hoping for an answer.
“How did she know him? I thought she never came to town.”
Kypo shrugged. “And Gyalo never left town. For a while, before she knocked him out, he was trying to crawl to the door.” He shrugged again. “He’s been crazy for years. An old man. An alcoholic.”
“I’ve known many Tibetans a lot older.”
“Old enough to have known another Tibet, I mean.”
Shan chewed on the words, sensing the passing, like a leaf on the wind, of a shard of truth. Once all of his investigations had been linear, one fact linking to the next in quick progression leading to the truth. But in Tibet all his puzzles were like giant tangkas, the traditional religious paintings with overlaps of deities, suffering humans, protector demons, even alternate worlds, linked not by events so much as expectation and hope, by relationships in other, earlier Buddhist lives.
“Has your mother always been an astrologer?” Shan asked.
“Of course. It is who she is.”
“Was her father an astrologer? Her mother?”
Kypo frowned, bending over the former lama. He was not going to reply.
They washed Gyalo in silence, dressing him in clean clothes from Shan’s meager wardrobe. Shan lit more butter lamps. Kypo produced a small cone of incense and lit it by Gyalo’s pallet.
“He could still die,” Kypo observed in a heavy voice. “I think he wants to die. What will the town do without him? People call him a mascot. But he’s something else, something none of us understand.”
“I think he is more like a teacher,” Shan said. “One who takes on roles to make us understand. Except long ago he lost the ability to go back to himself.”
Gyalo stirred, coughing, as Shan held a cup of water to his lips. The old Tibetan ignored it, instead grabbing his arm and studying it, close to his eyes, as if to confirm he was real. There was nothing but bitterness in his eyes when he looked up and recognized Shan. “I know I’m in hell now,” he muttered, then drifted into sleep.
Shan sat on a blanket in the corner of the dim chamber, intending to mentally reconstruct his puzzle using its new pieces. But the exhaustion he had been fighting finally overwhelmed him. When he opened his eyes briefly an hour later Kypo was gone. Later when he opened them for a few moments Jomo was there, with a kettle of hot tea, helping his father to drink. Much later, when he fully awoke, Jomo was gone and several fresh momo dumplings were stacked on a low stool between Shan and Gyalo.
The former lama sat upright, gazing with his one good eye at the dim images on the walls. He wore an oddly vacant expression, showing no pain, none of his usual alcoholic haze. He stared at the image of the central demon on the opposite wall. It was Mahakala the protector, in his four armed blue form, holding a skull cup and a sword, draped in a garland of human heads.
“I knew a place like this once,” the old Tibetan said in a ragged voice. “but that one was destroyed.”
“The tunnels that connected to the temple were filled with debris,” Shan explained. “But there was an exit through the stable, probably forgotten long before the gompa was destroyed. I cleaned away enough to be able to enter.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“All these deities. It felt like they had been buried alive. They needed to be released.”
“You were scared of them,” Gyalo growled. “They put you under a spell.”
“They put me under a spell,” Shan readily admitted.
The moist, rattling cackle that came from Gyalo’s throat became a groan as the Tibetan clutched his side, doubling over in pain. Blood was seeping into the bandage on the arm that was not broken, but Shan had no fresh one to replace it.
“Who did this to you, Gyalo?”
“I need a drink. A real drink.”
“Of the handful of people who know you are here, not one will bring you alcohol.”
“Then I may as well die.”
“Who did this?” Shan repeated.
When Gyalo finally spoke it was to the demon on the wall, as if he preferred to converse with the old god. “Two strangers in dark sweatshirts, hoods over their heads.” His voice was dry as stone. “Big men, built like yaks. They didn’t introduce themselves. Someone else stood in the shadows, as if enjoying the show.”
“What did they want?”
“They spoke a few words of greeting at first, and gave me a bottle, like maybe they came for a blessing. After I drank some they said more words.”
“What words?”
“Questions. Who had spoken with me about the Yama temple that had been up on the mountains. Who had I given a sickle to, with the writing on the blade.” A spasm of pain racked his body, and he spat up blood again. He began shivering.
Shan lifted an tattered sheepskin chuba coat from a peg by the entry and covered him with it. “So you told them about the American and me.”
Gyalo gazed at the demon. “Not at first.”
Shan looked up in surprise. Surely the drunken lama had not invited the beating by trying to protect Yates and Shan.
“In the cupboard,” the Tibetan said abruptly, and pointed to a little alcove in the dusty stone wall.
“There is no cupboard,” Shan said, confused. The small squared-out space in the wall might well have once held shelves but no trace of them remained.
With what seemed like a great effort Gyalo lifted a finger and pointed insistently at the alcove. Shan stood, carrying a lamp to show that the space was empty. But when the Tibetan grunted and jabbed his finger again he tapped his fingers along the surface of the wall until, on the left side at shoulder height, his drumming reached something hollow. He pressed his fingers into the dust-encrusted stone, scratching until he found the lip of a board and pulled. With a small cloud of dust, a door cracked open. He reached inside and extracted a six-inch painted figure, carved of wood. It was Mahakala, Protector of the Faithful, in his fierce blue skinned form, matching the painting on the wall. Shan blew away the coating of dust from the figure and placed it on the stool beside Gyalo.
The Tibetan seemed to relax as he saw the figure, and for a moment Shan thought he saw the lama of fifty years earlier. But then he began to sway, and he managed only a few words before passing out again. “Look at the old fool,” he said, speaking of the little god, “what does he know?”
Shan watched the forlorn lama a long time, working and reworking the puzzle in his mind, before gathering up several musty sacks for a pillow and draping the blanket over the sleeping Tibetan.
He did not seek the constable’s help this time before venturing to the rear of the jail. The cleaning crew arrived exactly on time, saying nothing as he joined them again. The invisible workers who kept Tibet functioning were often invisible to each other as well.
Cao had cancelled the order to transport his prisoner out of the county. Tan lay on the pallet, one filthy blanket covering his body, another rolled up for a pillow. His face was in shadow, but Shan saw Tan’s breath momentarily catch as he reached the cell door.
“I need to know how you knew the minister,” Shan said. “I need to know why you needed to see her.”
Tan stood up, retrieved the tin cup from the sink and, fixing Shan with a steady gaze, urinated in it. When he was finished he hobbled forward, dragging one foot.
“I am encouraged you still have your bodily functions,” Shan observed as he retreated several steps.
“Get the hell out of here!” Tan snarled. His face was directly in the light now. Shan could see the way it sagged, could see the bruises and lacerations. Although the eyes still burned with a cool fire, there was no arrogance left in them, only hatred.
“I had thought the killer had s
omehow stolen your gun. But then I discovered the minister had entertained someone in her room the night before her death. I have struggled to find some theory to explain how the killer got your gun. You would not have surrendered it without a struggle, and if it had been stolen you would have raised the shrillest of alarms with Public Security.
I have learned to be suspicious of complicated explanations. I find the simplest one is likely the truth. You were the one she entertained, and she took your gun. You were too embarrassed to report that you lost it to a minister of state. A female minister.”
Tan, apparently deciding he could not reach Shan, extended his arm through the bars and poured his urine in an arc across the front of the cell, as if casting a charm to ward off an evil spirit. Before he finished his hand started twitching, so that the contents of the cup splattered onto his hand. Tan dropped the cup and clamped the hand under his other arm.
Shan silently retrieved the mop and bucket he had left at the end of the corridor, mopped up the urine, then located another cup in an empty cell and tossed it onto Tan’s pallet. He then extracted a sack from his pocket and extended it through the bars. Tan slapped it away, launching it from Shan’s hand, spilling the contents onto Tan’s feet. Four momos, the last of the dumplings Jomo had left in the underground chapel.
With the reflex of a seasoned prisoner Tan bent and scooped up the momos. He had jammed one into his mouth and was gulping it down when he seemed to remember Shan. With a hint of shame in his eyes he glanced up, then hobbled to his cot and proceeded to eat the rest.
“Tell me about the gun,” Shan pressed. “If I can prove she had it Cao’s case against you is destroyed, because it is the only connection to you. A sherpa’s body was placed beside that of the minister’s, substituted for the American woman who died there. He was shot with a different gun. Not yours. A big one, a huge caliber. Not one issued by Public Security or the army.”
When Tan did not reply Shan retreated again, stepping into the first of the interrogation rooms that adjoined the corridor, opening drawers in its metal cabinet. When he arrived back at the cell he extended a small brown plastic bottle. Tan’s head snapped up. “Painkillers,” Shan announced. “Enough to get you through a couple more days.”
Tan extended his open palm. Shan tossed the bottle through the bars. Tan stared at the bottle, then clenched it so tightly his knuckles went white. “There was no dead American at the scene,” he announced in a thin voice. “Stealing that second body from the hospital was only a ploy to confuse the chief investigator.”
“How would you-” Shan began, his brow wrinkled in confusion. Then he understood. Tan was reciting the official version of events.
Tan replied with a bitter grin. “The monk said he saw the American woman running away after helping me commit the crime. The dead sherpa was patriotically trying to stop the murder and was shot.”
“What monk?” Shan asked, filled with new dread.
“That one,” he said, with a nod down the darkened cell corridor. “It was a busy morning in the interrogation rooms.”
Shan found himself halfway down the corridor before he was conscious of his own movement. He paused then followed the faint sound of breathing from a cell in the center of the corridor. He stepped hesitantly to the cell, discerning a small figure asleep on a pallet in the shadows at the rear. Scratched into the wall were several figures in a line about two feet above the floor, crudely drawn but still recognizable. A lotus blossom. A conch shell. The prisoner had been drawing the tashi targyel, the seven sacred symbols. Shan’s heart began rising into his throat. He knew before he spotted the shreds of a robe and a dirty prison shirt coat on the floor. Cao had brought back one of the captured monks.
When Shan returned to the colonel’s cell, Tan’s expression was oddly triumphant. “I don’t understand your obsession with rearranging facts, Shan,” he said. “When an artist is halfway through his masterwork you can’t just run and up and steal his paints. It’s unbecoming.”
“Cao is no artist. What exactly has he done?”
“He went away for half a day. When he returned he announced he had found the witness he needed to destroy me. He had the monk worked on for a few hours in the back rooms. When it came time for the climax he moved his little opera to this corridor, to the table there in the center so I could hear it all. The Tibetan has confessed to obstructing justice by not coming forward as a witness to the crimes. Cao promised him only a month’s imprisonment, and something for some other monk, a lama who will be released so long as he takes off his robe. So he signed a statement that he saw me with the pistol. Otherwise the lama was to get ten years’ hard labor.”
Shan felt his frail hopes slipping away. Cao had used the old lama from Sarma, the one who had been captured because he insisted on tending to the injured driver.
“Cao made him shout out his confession, like at one of the struggle sessions we used to have, just to be sure I could hear.”
Shan, suddenly feeling weak in the knees, gripped the bars in both hands.
Tan opened the bottle, dumped out several pills and swallowed them. “I think,” the colonel continued, “that Cao was considering a story of more texture, a more interesting tale for the audience back home. But he seems to have changed course. It is to be a simple trial. A forensic report says the victims died from shots from my gun, a witness says he saw me pull the trigger. He has spunk, that little Tibetan. They raised a baton to strike me when I started laughing and he leaped up to block it, and took the blow on his skull.” For a moment Tan hesitated and Shan saw confusion cloud his eyes before derision returned. “The fool.”
“He was apologizing for what he had done.”
Tan frowned. He had no reply.
“There was another death. Director Xie of Religious Affairs. How will such a report explain that killing?”
Tan shrugged. “The guards told me about it. No doubt it will be recorded as an industrial accident.”
“You have to stall him,” Shan said in a plaintive voice. “Tell him there was a conspiracy, suggest that Minister Wu was corrupt, that this was about a conspiracy of bribery reaching high into the government. He will have to pause, think about involving others in Beijing. It will buy us a few days. Tell me where you were. Maybe I can help confirm that you were somewhere else that day.”
Tan gazed without expression at Shan, then his lips formed a thin grin, made crooked by his swollen lips.
“Do you understand nothing I’ve said?” Shan asked. “Another day of this and he’ll have a confession from you. That is the prize he is after.”
Tan turned away to face the wall.
“We don’t have religion in China,” Shan said to his back. “We have confession. For a zealous Party member it is the moment of consecration. When the bullet enters your skull, some pampered niece of a Party official will watch and realize at that moment that the Party is her god. And that, Colonel Tan, becomes the entire point of your life.”
Tan turned back, his lips still curled up in the lightless smile Shan had seen so often in his Lhadrung prison camp.
Realization hit Shan like a sack of stones. He tottered backward, sank onto a nearby bench. “You want to die!” he gasped, burying his head in his hands. “You want the bullet in your head.”
Shan looked up once, twice, three times, each time with a new argument on his tongue, each time meeting the colonel’s crooked sneer. Finally Tan lay down on his pallet, his back to Shan.
Numb with despair, Shan stared at the floor as he shut the door and walked toward the rear exit. He did not at first notice that the Tibetan cleaners were gone until he nearly collided with a knob guard barring his path, automatic rifle slung forward. A single office was illuminated, cigarette smoke hanging in the air before it.
Shan let himself be herded into the office. The face of the man at the desk was hung in shadow above the metal shade of the gooseneck desk lamp, but the fearful expression of the guard told Shan all he needed to know. He lowered him
self into the chair in front of the desk as Major Cao leaned forward and shut off a receiver on the desk. Shan’s mouth went dry as he recognized the device. Cao had been listening to his conversation with Tan. “I want the other monks,” Cao declared in a venomous tone. “All of them.”
“I hear there are a lot of Tibetan monks in India.” Shan fought to keep his voice steady. He was in Cao’s world now, an automatic rifle aimed at his spine.
“You know where they are, or can find them. You’re going to get them. You’re going to make sure they give me more witness statements against Tan.” Cao rose and walked around the desk, leaning on the front, barely three feet from Shan, as he lit another cigarette. “You won last night,” the major declared. “No raid. No detention of those villagers. You were right. It was very old school, what I was doing. A blunt instrument when what is needed is a surgeon’s scapel.”
Cao let the words hang in the air. Shan’s gut began to tie itself in a knot.
The major lifted a small silver and turquoise bracelet. “Director Xie put up a noble fight with his killers before he was knocked unconscious. He was still holding on to this when the cowards dragged him before the machine. It has been identified as belonging to the American Megan Ross. You were right after all. The American was at Wu’s killing. She was there, helping Tan. Now she and the monks roam as a criminal gang in the mountains. You are going to bring them to me.”
Cao glanced over his shoulder. For the first time Shan noticed a small figure in a chair in the dim corner of the office. Madame Zheng.
“You know this woman Ross,” Cao observed.
Shan gazed woodenly at the major. What Ama Apte had said was true. The American woman kept coming back to life. It was as if she had a truth to speak, a quest to fulfill, and she would not let a little thing like death interfere with its completion.
“The bracelet was planted. Her belongings are still in a tent at the base camp, anyone could have taken it. You need to find out who met with Xie at Sarma gompa. Why was he there alone?”
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