Shan found himself standing at the desk. He quickly sat back in the chair near Xu.
Xu's face drew tight as she stared at the pocket where he had stuffed the tablet. "I thought we were speaking of caravans." Did she recognize the dangerous ground Bao was pushing her toward? Shan wondered. Or was she simply reacting to the wild gleam in his eyes?
Bao's hand moved to a breast pocket, from which he extracted a folded piece of rice paper. "You've never seen this, I suppose?" He unfolded it and extended it in his hands a moment, then turned it over. It was a strip sixteen inches long, a poem inscribed in a child's hand, in Mandarin on one side and Tibetan on the other. Master's gone to gather flowers, the first line said. Pollen on his funny robe.
"Discovered hidden in her quarters," Bao stated. "Fortunately Public Security was able to intercept it instead of another office," he added pointedly, then folded the paper and stuffed in back in his pocket.
"A child's imagination," Xu offered stiffly, though the writing seemed to shake her.
Shan stared at the floor, avoiding eye contact with either. The poem was written about the waterkeeper. Bao suspected there was a lama somewhere, an illegal lama, and that Lau had been connected to the lama.
"I was in Turfan too," Bao said, giving no sign of having heard the prosecutor. "I heard the speeches. Some have lost sight of their essential duties. If you neglect your essential duties, no matter how hard you work, you are a liability to the state." It was a familiar code Bao was using now, speaking in political slogans.
As the major finished, his gaze rested on Shan for the first time. "Do you know your essential duties, comrade?" Bao asked him with a narrow, lightless smile. "Do you recognize treason when you see it?"
"I remain ever mindful of what I owe the state," Shan said woodenly. He fought the almost overwhelming urge to bolt. Xu's enforcer was outside the door, then the man at the stairs, perhaps others who had returned from their rest. With luck, Shan might get past them. But Major Bao was not the type to travel without an escort. There would be more knobs outside.
Bao let the smoke drift out his mouth so that it curled around his cheeks. "Tell your prosecutor to do the same."
Shan clenched his jaw so tightly his teeth hurt.
"I am not his-" Xu began. Shan turned toward her with an empty expression, resigned to his fate. Xu locked eyes with him for a moment, then looked back at Bao, without continuing.
"I do not consider Prosecutor Xu a woman who forgets her duties," Shan offered.
Bao gave Shan another narrow smile and leaned toward him. "I thought I knew all of the trained hounds here. You're new?"
His incredible luck had failed. For a moment there had been hope that both would end the meeting with mistaken assumptions about him. But now there were only two ways to leave the room. With Xu or with Bao. He couldn't say he worked for the knobs, as Xu had assumed. He couldn't say he worked for Xu, for any disclaimer from her would mean immediate arrest by Bao. Shan's only hope was to give Xu something, perform for her now, make her curious enough that she might offer him cover.
Bao stared at him with sudden, intense interest.
"I am new," Shan said. "I am from Beijing."
"Who are you?" Bao pressed. "Your name."
"Someone who is wondering why you seem more concerned about smugglers than the murder of one of your officers."
Bao's eyes flared and his upper lip began to curl at one edge, exposing a large yellow tooth, like a fang. He stood and threw his cigarette, still lit, onto Xu's desk. "You don't know that."
"On the highway. Two days ago."
Bao did not take his eyes from Shan. "Accidents happen on the highway," he muttered.
"His name was Lieutenant Sui." Shan heard a sharp intake of breath from Xu, behind him. "Two bullets in the heart. Surely you have reported it. Beijing takes great interest in attacks on Public Security officers." Could it be possible that Xu didn't know about Sui?
Bao's face paled. His lip curled higher, toward his nose. It was not a sneer- more like the way some animals bare their teeth before tearing into the flesh of their prey. Without looking Shan sensed Xu's body tighten, but he did not take his eyes off Bao. The major reached Shan's side in two quick steps, then raised his open hand and slapped him, hard.
"No officer was killed," he snarled. Then, in his next breath, as only one trained in the peculiar logic used by political officers could do, he asked, "How do you know this? This is a Public Security matter." His furious question was directed at Shan but Bao's eyes came to rest on Xu. Then, as if his remark needed further punctuation, he raised his thick pawlike hand and slapped Shan again.
Shan tasted blood from the inside of his cheek. He would sit there and let Bao slap him all day but he would say no more. Shan had found a place inside, an oddly serene place, a little room he had constructed in prison and not visited since. Some prisoners had called him the Chinese Stone for never breaking from physical punishment. Some of the Tibetans had said it was because his soul had sufficiently evolved so that he was always prepared to leave his body. He had never thought they were right. He only knew that he had evolved sufficiently that, no matter what, even under the threat of death, he would not cower before men like Bao. It didn't mean much to the world if such men couldn't get what they wanted from physical torture, for they could usually obtain it through chemicals. It only meant something to Shan.
As he braced for another blow Shan reminded himself of the Tibetan prisoners who, after all the torture, the starvation, the freezing, even the amputations, thanked the Lord Buddha for allowing them the opportunity to test their faith.
Through a fog of pain Shan heard Xu push back her chair and step away from her desk. He had lost. She was going to join in Bao's fun, he thought numbly.
"This is Prosecutor Xu Li of Yoktian County," he heard her say in a loud, professional tone, the way she might speak before a tribunal. "In the name of the Ministry of Justice I am demanding that Major Bao immediately desist."
Bao had found a place within himself too. Not a place of serenity. Perhaps the opposite of serenity. As the Major looked toward Xu he made a sound like a snarl, a sound of disgust. Shan followed his gaze. He had to blink hard to focus on the prosecutor, blink several times before he fully understood what she was doing. Xu stood with a video camera. She was recording Bao's actions.
Bao picked up a tea mug and threw it, not at Xu, but at the wall beyond Xu, who kept filming as the mug shattered behind her. Then he grabbed the gold coin, spun about and marched out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
A brittle silence lingered in the office. A thin line of smoke rose from Bao's cigarette, still on Xu's desk. Xu approached her desk and stood looking at the door, then looked at Shan. She raised the smoldering cigarette with the paper it had landed on and dumped it into a mug at the side of her desk, then picked up the phone and asked Loshi to bring in two teas.
The prosecutor circled her desk twice, her arms folded over her chest, not speaking until the tea arrived.
"I could have you behind the wire at Glory Camp before nightfall," she said.
"I've been to camps," Shan said quietly, returning her stare over his steaming mug. "Good exercise, bad food."
"I thought you were working for Public Security when I met you. One of the new agents brought in for the project."
"The Poverty Eradication Scheme?"
Xu did not respond. "Let's say you're not Public Security. Let's say you're not Ministry of Justice, not here on a corruption investigation. Just theoretically. But you know that Sui was killed, a secret kept even from me." Xu had not challenged Shan's announcement about Sui. Bao's reaction, he realized, had been confirmation enough. And Shan had been wrong. Xu had not known about Sui's death, he was certain. But Bao had. The knobs knew one of their own was murdered, and they were doing nothing about it.
"Walk around one of the markets and listen for twenty minutes. You'll see how big a secret it is."
She still ignored him. "S
o let's say you were associating with bad elements. Say, independence-minded herdsmen. Maybe subversive hatmakers."
The words hit Shan harder than Bao's hand ever could. Xu had seen Shan at the garage with Jakli, maybe also checked at Glory Camp for the names of anyone on the rice truck known to the guards. He glanced across her desk, looking for the second half of Jakli's file, the active half.
"I don't wear hats," he said weakly.
"Then maybe you're with the smugglers. We'll have lots of time to decide."
"I'm not with anyone."
"But you are from Beijing. I can tell. Your accent maybe. Or your arrogance in getting around my office."
"As I said, I am an investigator. My name is Shan. And I am from Beijing."
"But not investigating for Beijing. Surely not an independent investigator? Please, comrade. This is not some American movie."
"I am retired."
Xu studied him over the top of her teacup. "And you say you've been in camp before? Maybe you were forcibly retired."
Shan raised his mug. "I salute your deductive powers."
"And what? You're investigating as a pastime?"
"I was asked by friends to look into something. Nothing that concerns you," he offered, though he didn't believe it.
"Except you wind up breaching security at Glory Camp, then rummaging through my files."
Shan looked into his mug. "I have interesting friends."
Something that might have been amusement passed over Xu's countenance, then her features hardened again. "If I weren't so overworked I could spend hours just thinking of all the charges against you. Entering Glory Camp, a state security facility, without authorization, breaching the security of my files, that's a few years right there. But I think we'll keep it simple." All she had to do was to ask for his papers, for the required identity documents he did not possess, or the required travel permit. Then she would order him to roll up his sleeves, and find the tattoo on his arm.
Shan fixed his gaze on a carved bird at the edge of the table. "I am here about the children," he said quietly. "The children who are being killed. Lau's children."
Xu stared at him in silence. She seemed about to speak more than once but reconsidered each time. Then she slowly stood and walked to the shelf behind her desk.
With a chill Shan saw the tiny red light that indicated that the video camera, now on the shelf, was still operating. She had been recording their conversation. But now she retrieved the camera, shut it off, and returned it to the shelf, facing the wall.
She came back to sit not at her desk but in the wooden chair beside Shan. "What children?" she asked. Her voice was still hard, and filled with suspicion.
"A boy named Suwan, nine years old, shot in the head. A boy in the Kunlun mountains, named Alta, beaten and stabbed to death. The same age. Both part of her orphan class."
Xu frowned. "You're desperate, comrade." She had apparently decided not to believe him. "There have been no reports."
"They were with nomad families."
Xu's eyes seemed to drill into his skull. He broke eye contact and stared at the bird again. "Impossible. You should investigate a bit more before concocting your stories. The orphans have a new teacher. Everything continues as normal. But of course you know that. You asked my secretary about him."
"Yet, Comrade Prosecutor," Shan said very slowly, "you are concerned about Lau. About how she died." He glanced back at the evidence table. "She was murdered. And now her murderer is killing her children."
Xu frowned again and sighed. "Fiction. Concocted by the reactionaries, to make the people fear the assimilation programs. Lau died in an unfortunate accident. When the river waters recede this winter we will find her body." She opened a desk drawer and retrieved a pad of paper. "Write your statement, comrade," she said. "You've done it before, no doubt. We will consult it in your sentencing." She paused a moment, then tossed the pad toward him. "Maybe you did think the children were in danger. Say that. It could be useful. Bad elements put the children in danger. They engage in the patterns of feudalism. Distrust of authority. Blood feuds. Obsession with icons of dying cultures," she suggested as she extended the pad toward him. "Reactionaries, all of them. Those who resist our efforts to integrate all peoples."
Shan did not touch the pad. "Is it possible she was a friend of yours?" he asked tentatively. Xu had written a memo to defend Lau.
Xu did not answer.
"I saw her body," Shan said. "She was beaten on her shins. Tortured, before being drugged and shot." He paused to let the words sink in. "What are you going to do about her children?"
This time when Xu stared at him her eyes blinked, then she looked down. For a fleeting moment there seemed to be a glimmer of uncertainty on her face.
"She was getting old," the prosecutor said. "She was having trouble with her heart."
"Who told you that?" He realized she had not answered a single one of his questions.
"There was a meeting of the Agricultural Council, after we decided she had died. It was mentioned in a speech honoring her on her death."
She stared at him as he shook his head slowly. "Maybe you should ask your friend Bao about the orphans," Shan suggested.
"What do you mean?"
"I had an old friend in Beijing. Forty years with the Ministry of Justice. Said I should always assume that Public Security knows ten times more than they tell the public, five times more than they tell their colleagues at other government offices, and twice as much as they tell the Chairman."
Xu acknowledged the point with a sour smile, then pulled a form from a pile of papers on her desk and began writing on it with the stub of a pencil. "Maybe I will find time to explore your imagination further, comrade. Not today. At Glory Camp. They will hold you in a special place, alone, so you can more clearly consider all you will need to confess to."
"I have a better idea. Let me go."
Xu gave a cold smile and kept on filling out the detention form. "Shan," she said without looking up. "A common name. It tells me nothing."
"You know Bao is lying to you," Shan said. "You just don't know how much. You think you should do something about Lau. What if what happened to Lau is connected to Sui being killed? Let me go and I will find out. I promise to meet you again, soon. Here. You think because Bao is Public Security that there is nothing you can do. But there is. You can let me continue."
Xu's pencil stopped writing. "Maybe I was wrong about you," she said. "The Brigade runs a lao gai camp deep in the desert. Maybe that is where I should-" Her words were cut off by a woman's scream. There were shouts from the outer office, and the pounding of running feet. There was another high-pitched scream, then another. Xu stood at her desk, then quickly stepped to her door and opened it. The outer office was empty. At the sound of one more scream she ran to the corridor and down the stairs toward the sounds. Shan followed her, then stopped in the corridor and ran to its end, where he quickly found the back stairway.
In less than a minute he was running down an alleyway. He emerged onto the street a hundred feet from the Ministry office. Traffic in the street was stopped, the cars and trucks abandoned by their drivers. A crowd swarmed around the front of the Ministry building. Shan edged forward and stood on the running board of an abandoned truck to see over the crowd.
"Murder!" someone shouted.
He saw the prosecutor emerge from the building, followed by Miss Loshi and the lean man from the outer office. On the steps in front of Xu a man and woman in herders' clothing stood, the man holding a bundle in his raised arms, a bloody blanket wrapped around a young boy. The boy was dead.
Chapter Ten
Someone grabbed his arm and began pulling. He stood, resisting, staring at the dead boy. The woman beside the man with the boy began shouting at the prosecutor. Then she turned and began shouting at the rapidly growing crowd. Some people were fleeing, Shan saw, trying to urgently weave through the crowd, to escape the square. Han. The Han Chinese were fleeing.
"Niya!" someone shouted, and the crowd began to loudly chant the name. "Niya! Niya! Niya!" The name from the posters, the name of the red-haired woman he had seen on the posters.
The knobs, he suddenly remembered. There were knobs with machine guns. He turned and saw the two grey uniforms on a balcony overlooking the far side of the square. One appeared to be speaking on a portable radio. The other held his gun at the ready.
On the Ministry steps the herder with the boy still stood, silently holding the boy as though presenting the body to the prosecutor. He was crying. The dead boy's eyes were partially open, as if the boy were squinting, trying to see something in the distance. His shirt was torn and stained with blood. There was a hole in the center of his forehead.
Someone grabbed Shan's arm with two hands now and would not let go. It was Jakli. He looked back at the dead boy and let himself be pulled down from the truck and led away.
They walked fast, though not so fast as to attract attention, past four blocks of pressed earth and cinder block structures in various stages of disrepair, the shops, garages, restaurants and dreary offices with grey metal shutters that kept Yoktian alive. He asked her who the boy was but she said nothing. He asked who Niya was, and then he saw she was choked with emotion, her eyes moist, her jaw clenched as though to stifle a sob.
Jakli led him into a compound of four one-story buildings surrounded by a waist-high wire fence. A concrete walkway, so badly buckled and split that Jakli stayed on the dirt beside it, led to the mud-walled building that sat in the center of the compound, flanked on three sides by identical structures. Shan stopped at the entrance and looked at the wooden sign that had been fastened over the doorway. It had once held a slogan, but half the sign had blown away, so that all remained were the words Strengthens Children.
Jakli did not realize he had stopped until she was twenty feet down the darkened hallway. She turned with her hands on her hips, waiting.
"Was the boy from the zheli?" Shan called out.
She looked up and down the hall with worry in her eyes, then stepped closer. "An orphan, yes," she replied in a taut, melancholy voice. "His name was Kublai. Staying with a clan about twenty miles into the mountains. He was watching sheep and didn't come back. When they went to look they saw his body below a cliff, with a dead lamb in his arms. He had fallen, they thought, probably while rescuing the lamb. But when they retrieved the body they saw he had been shot. The lamb," she added with a sudden, deep despair, "the lamb was shot too."
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