Emotion flooded Gyalo’s face. It was a long time before he spoke. “Some were singled out for special punishment. By then that Commander Wu understood our ways. For some a quick death wasn’t enough. She learned ways to destroy a monk, in this life and the next.”
“Singled out because they had offended the Hammer and Lightning Brigade,” Shan suggested. When Gyalo did not contradict him he ventured further. “Because they were suspected of being sympathizers with the rebels.”
Gyalo began picking at the little statue again. “I need a drink.” His hands were shaking, the tremors of an alcoholic in desperate need.
“If you were one of the old rebels it would be reason enough to kill her.”
“She was smart enough to keep out of town. If she had ventured into Shogo there’s still a handful who might recognize her. I keep an iron pipe behind the bar,” Gyalo said without emotion. “If she had walked in I would have gladly beaten her brains out.”
“Or shot her?”
Gyalo murmured a mantra to the deity, then looked up distractedly. “You ever see those protector demons in the old tangkas, with human skins draped around their necks? I think they would have used the pipe.”
“How many rebels survived?”
“No one ever knew how many made it across the border.”
“I mean how many stayed alive, staying here, in the county?”
Gyalo looked as if he bitten something sour. “People moved on, started new lives.” He spoke to the Buddha, as if it were listening. “If one happened into my bar we would not acknowledge one another, never say a word about it. We were different people then, with different lives. Everyone finds their own way to survive, eh?”
“As tavernkeepers? As fortunetellers?”
“You don’t know how it was. I worked for the abbot, taking messages and sometimes supplies to the hermitages and small gompas in the mountains. I saw what that Youth Brigade did. The Dalai Lama said not to fight. But how could a Tibetan not fight, I said to my abbot. He said I had to resist my emotions, he made me do penance, ten thousand mantras at a shrine out in the snow.”
“When’s the last time you went into the mountains?”
A spasm of pain shook the Tibetan. “I need a drink,” Gyalo pleaded to the Buddha.
“Why are you so frightened of leaving town?”
“You don’t know her. She was like a tigress, one of the best of the fighters. She vowed she would kill me if she ever saw me again. She told everyone I had betrayed them, to save my life.”
“She helped you, grandfather. Ama Apte set your arm.”
The former lama gazed in horror at the splint on his broken bones. For a moment he looked as if he would rip it away. Gyalo seemed to be in real agony now, clutching his abdomen, his head bobbing up and down. “Any fool could see who the traitor was. It was my home, my life, that was destroyed. Her village was never touched.” He grew very still, his face clenched like a fist.
Shan coaxed the coals in the brazier by the entry back to life, and made black tea. He pushed the hot mug to Gyalo’s lips, forcing him to drink. “Did you ever go up to their stronghold, their last hiding place?”
Gyalo took the mug from Shan and nodded. “They had weapons there, many still in their crates as if they had magically appeared. Grenades, machine guns, mortars.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. They would take me there in the night, from an old cave hermitage, to help with the wounded, to help with the dead. I remember walking along a cliff face. I remember a hole in the trail, by a high ledge, where they took me by the hand and said if I did not follow exactly in their footsteps I would die. Once you got to the top, it was broad and flat and glowed all white, opened toward the mother mountain. An old place.”
“Old?”
“The rebels weren’t the first to use it. There were cairns covered with lichen, with shreds of very old prayer flags. It was one of the ancient shrines to the mother mountain, to keep her placated, one of those that helped keep her anchored to our world. No one cares about her anymore.” The Tibetan shrugged. “Trash and bodies all over her slopes. No wonder she does these things to us.”
“How long was the climb from the hermitage?”
“Two hours, maybe three.”
Shan weighed Gyalo’s words as he poured him another cup of tea. “What do you mean you helped with the dead? You performed the death rites?”
“They always carried away the bodies of their dead. I would be asked to perform death rites, to call out the spirits, to ask for forgiveness so they would not be offended.”
“Offended?”
“The rebels could not risk pyres to burn the bodies, or to go to fleshcutters. They had a place, a deep gully they rolled the bodies into, like a burial at sea.”
Yates waited for him in the shadows by Tsipon’s warehouse.
“We need ropes,” Shan said. “We need climbing equipment.” He tried the door. It was locked.
“It’s the middle of the night, Shan,” the American protested.
“There is no time. The answers are all at the last drop zone, at the last hiding place of the rebels,” he said, and explained what he had learned from Tan and Gyalo.
When he had finished Yates studied the two-story building. “Is there a maintenance hatch on the roof?”
Shan had barely nodded before the American launched himself onto the wall in front of the building. He found a protruding nail, a narrow lintel, a tiny ledge for footholds as he climbed. He was up and over in less than two minutes, and took even less time to open the door from the inside.
They selected their equipment by the light of the lanterns, nearly filling two backpacks before Shan stopped and ran the beam of his light along the wall shelving. “Look for canvas ground cloths,” he said. “Two, with rope to lash them together.”
Yates began scanning the shelves then froze and looked at Shan as if reconsidering his words. “God, no. I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to bring her body back,” he said in a haunted voice.
“It’s the last chance we have,” Shan said. “A real exam, by a real scientist, will show that she died from bullets fired by the same gun as Wu, at the same time. The blood on the shirt I wore that day will match hers. They won’t be able to deny the truth.”
“I’ve seen the bodies on the upper slopes. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t touch her.”
Shan reached onto an upper shelf and pulled away two ground cloths.
“You’ll never find her,” Yates said, as if arguing with himself.
“I can’t do it alone, Yates,” Shan said. “If I don’t bring the truth out of the mountains, the monks in this region are finished. An innocent man will be executed.”
“And your son. .” the American whispered.
A tremor of fear shook Shan. He had fought for hours to keep the image of his son on a surgeon’s table from his consciousness and now as it returned it seemed to paralyze him. The American pulled the canvas sheets from his hands and began packing them.
A yellow-gray hint of dawn rimmed the eastern horizon by the time they began moving up the mountain road in the battered old Jiefang, starting the long steady climb toward the spine of the Himalayas. They passed the site of the minister’s murder, stopping more than once to consult the American map in the light of the rising sun.
“Forget the map,” Shan said at last. “Look for a small mound of rocks twenty feet off the road.”
“I thought you said the trail to Tumkot was hidden, not marked.”
“It isn’t. Not exactly.” Shan stopped the laboring truck, climbed out, and walked along the road, studying first the terrain to the west, where the massive flank of Tumkot’s mountain dominated the skyline, then the road behind them, where a cloud of dust ominously approached. He was about to ask for the American’s binoculars when with a low angry mutter Yates darted past him and sprang into the cargo bay of the truck. He leaped onto a pile of canvas cargo covers and cursed as half the pile unfolded itself, and stood.
“Jomo!” Shan called in surprise. The Tibetan mechanic met Shan’s gaze with an odd hint of defiance. “What are you-” Shan began then changed his question. “Why are you dressed like that?” Jomo was wearing a tattered ankle-length raincoat.
“They are coming, you know,” the Tibetan said. “The knobs. You thought you could make some kind of deal, but they can never be trusted.”
“I saw them.”
“No,” Jomo said. “That group below is all bounty hunters. The knobs are behind them.”
“Then they will stop the bounty hunters.”
“No. I was working on a truck in the military garage. Cao came in to give his orders personally. He didn’t know I was working in the back. They assume I don’t understand Chinese. That Cao, he is furious at you. He told them you would be with the monks somewhere high. He said you would help them escape, and that they all knew how to deal with traitors. I think,” Jomo added with an uneasy glance at Shan, “he cares more about destroying you than solving his case.”
“Surely they wouldn’t just shoot Shan,” Yates interjected.
“Of course they would,” Jomo said impatiently, gesturing them up the road. “They will shoot you both and rejoice to be rid of outsider pests.” He seemed eager for Shan and Yates to leave.
Shan let the America pull him away as he studied the Tibetan in confusion. After a long moment he grabbed Yates’s binoculars and studied the roadway ahead, spotting the fresh mound of rocks he had piled over the dog’s grave less than a hundred yards away. He was looking for a place to hide the truck when a frantic cry from Yates caused him to spin around. Jomo was standing on a ledge above the road. He had taken off his coat. Under it he was wearing a maroon robe, no doubt one of those Shan had found in the old underground chapel. Yates threw off his pack and ran.
Jomo was doing a little jig by the time Yates reached him, first toward the descending road, to get the attention of those below, then toward the American to evade Yates’s desperate efforts to pull him down. As Shan reached the Tibetan, shards of rock exploded from boulders at either side.
“The fool!” Yates shouted in English as he grabbed Jomo’s arm. “He wants them to think he’s one of the monks!” When Jomo squirmed out of the American’s grip Yates lowered his shoulder and slammed into the Tibetan, knocking him down, pinning him as Shan lifted the binoculars and ventured a glance over the ledge. Less than half a mile away two of the heavy highway trucks, shed of their trailers, blocked the road. At least two of the men beside them held rifles. Their attention was riveted on the rocks where Jomo had appeared. They had not noticed the second cloud of dust behind them. Even if the knobs had orders to find Shan, they could not ignore men with illegal firearms.
Shan looked back at Jomo’s beloved old Jiefang truck, then studied the straight stretch of roadway before the curve where the heavy trucks sat, above one of the many high cliffs along the road.
He gazed at Jomo, who sat on the ledge, his arms behind him, locked in the American’s grip. “They will kill you Jomo. They will kill you with as much thought as swatting a fly. And when they see you don’t have the right gau, they will kick your body and move on.”
“They’ll have to catch me,” Jomo shot back.
“Can you outrun a bullet?” Shan asked. He walked along the truck, his hand on its body, then considered the straight road below them, cut through the living rock so that much of it was flanked on both sides by stone. “I’ll need your help,” he said to Jomo.
Jomo gazed in confusion for a moment, then followed Shan’s gaze as he turned back to the truck. “Noooo-oooo!” he cried in a mournful tone. “Not her!”
“Do you want to help the monks?” Shan asked.
As the Tibetan nodded Yates released his grip and the two men listened to hear Shan’s plan. As Jomo stripped off his robe then turned the truck to face downhill, Shan and Yates frantically collected rags, cargo covers, even clumps of heather, then ripped Jomo’s robe in three pieces as Jomo began working with a rope around the steering wheel. They quickly produced three dummies seated in the cab, their shoulders wrapped in the maroon of monks’ robes, hats pulled low. If Shan’s scheme worked no one below would have time for more than a quick glance. They would see what they had come for, three monks making a desperate last stand. With a satisfied nod he turned to Jomo, who was scrubbing tears from his cheeks.
“You said she was a battle junk,” Shan reminded him. “This is what they did, ram their enemy to destroy their ships.”
“She never failed us,” Jomo said in a cracking voice, with a hand on the rusty fender.
“She never failed us,” Shan repeated. He rummaged in his pocket and found a cone of incense which he lit and placed on the dashboard. “The spirits will find her,” he observed as the smoke curled around the wheel and gearshift.
Jomo insisted on starting the engine himself, which groaned and sputtered one last time before finally coming to life. He wedged a stone on the accelerator and jumped out as the truck began rolling downhill.
As the figures below darted onto the road, guns at the ready to stop the fugitive truck, first one then another spun about. Soldiers had materialized behind them.
The old truck gained speed quickly, the engine’s backfire like a battle cry. The bounty hunters and soldiers scattered as they saw it was not slowing down. It smashed into the first semi cab with an explosion of metal and glass, knocking it on its side, sparks flying as the combined vehicles, locked at bumpers, careened into the second truck with a glancing blow that shoved it onto the road below the curve. As it reached the curve, the first truck knocked away the small boulders guarding the cliff below, then disappeared over the edge. Jomo’s old Jiefang seemed to hesitate, as if sensing its fate. Then the weight of the first truck, still attached to the bumper, jerked it forward and the old blue junk sailed out into the void.
No one moved, not even at the sound of the explosion, not until a dense column of smoke reached the top of the cliff. The stunned bountyhunters offered no protest as the soldiers relieved them of their guns. Shan studied the short column of men as they were led away. The two tall Manchurians were not among them.
Jomo watched the smoke with a stricken expression as Shan and Yates pulled on their packs.
“She will have a new life,” Shan offered to the mechanic. “I think,” he added after a moment’s thought, “that she will be a jet airplane.”
The words shook Jomo out of his melancholy. He nodded slowly and turned to Shan with a sad grin. “You can’t go back, Shan,” he warned. “Yesterday I saw that Madame Zheng sitting at Tsipon’s desk, waiting for him.”
“Waiting?”
“He wasn’t there. He must have come later. They’re planning something against us.”
Shan paused to consider Jomo’s news. It was hard to believe that Zheng would seek Tsipon’s counsel on anything. “I don’t want you going back either,” Shan replied. “Not until we return. Go up to the base camp.”
“In my depot tent,” Yates offered, “there is a cot you can use. Take it for the night.”
“I’ll come up with you,” Jomo suggested.
“No,” Shan said. “Go to the base. Stay away from the soldiers who will be on the road today.”
Yates pulled a T-shirt from his pack, one of those with his expedition company’s name. “There. You’re one of my sherpas.”
“But tomorrow morning,” Shan said. “We’ll need a ride back to town. Be at the big rocks ahead.”
Jomo did not hesitate. “I’ll be there before sunrise with one of the company trucks. I’ll sleep in it if I need to.”
For several desperate moments Shan thought he must have been wrong in assuming that Dakpo had watched from the hidden trail as he buried the dog, but then he saw a single hoof-print, several days old, then another, and another angling upward. The trail was barely discernible at first, so faint Shan climbed as much by intuition as physical signs. After half an hour of steady ascent they reached a small sheltered plateau where
soil had collected, giving life to tufts of grass and heather. They walked slowly about the edge until at last Yates pointed to a large hoof-print, perhaps a week old, made by an animal climbing upward. Shan knelt and recognized it immediately.
“The mule,” he said, and without looking back quickly followed a second, and third print into a narrow channel between two high ledges. Soon the trail widened and its packed soil became obvious. They frightened a flock of mountain sheep as they lay on an outcropping, stopping to admire faded paintings of a protector demon on squared boulders that marked what Shan knew must have been the crossing of a pilgrims’ path.
After an hour of arduous climbing up steep switchbacks they crested the northern arm of the steep mountain to enter a high plateau with scattered patches of snow. After a quarter mile they rounded the far side and saw Tumkot far below. Shan pointed to a fork in the trail, and gestured Yates toward the higher path, that led into a chill wind from above that smelled of ice.
Half an hour later Shan set his pack down at the entry to a large cave flanked by more faded paintings of deities. With painful foreboding he studied the soil around the entry, compressed with the impressions of so many boots he could not manage a clear count of the number of people who had recently been there.
They advanced with hand lights into the cave, following a vague scent of incense that grew stronger as they walked. When at last they reached the main chamber they had no need for their lights. The cavern in which Dakpo sat was lit by shafts of sunlight slanting in through a long, narrow cleft in the outside wall. The monk was not praying but cleaning, rolling up three worn sleeping pallets. He greeted them with a surprised grin. “I go for months without a visitor,” he said, “and now my home is like a town square.” He silently accepted Shan’s help in rolling and stacking the pallets by a plank that held three pairs of tattered sandals.
“You need to hide all this,” Shan warned the old Tibetan. “Men may be coming in search of them.” The hermit nodded absently, looking past Shan’s shoulder with an amused expression. Shan turned to see Yates standing as if paralyzed before what looked like an altar in a dimly lit corner. But it was not an altar Shan saw as he approached, just a low table made of planks on stones. On it sat a rectangular object under a blanket, with an electric cord wrapped in frayed cloth fiber extending out of it, leading to a strange wooden box with two crank handles jutting out of its sides. Yates shined his light on English words stenciled along the side of the box and gasped. US ARMY, it said in black stenciled letters.
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