Water Touching Stone is-2

by Eliot Pattison

  As Malik moved away to offer the last cube to his own horse, Shan followed. "I saw what was in his grave," he said to the youth's back. The boy only nodded as he stroked his horse's mane.

  "Was it Khitai's compass?" Shan asked.

  "No," Malik said in a whisper, as if frightened to speak of the thing. "His zheli parents, they said they found it near his body, lying against a rock. Khitai must have knocked it away from the killer." Malik turned to face Shan. "In the old days if a warrior died in battle, you buried him with the trophies he had taken from his enemies." The boy shrugged and turned back to his horse.

  They ate a vegetable stew prepared by Lokesh on the little iron stove. Afterward Shan wandered out toward the pasture, watching as the evening stars rose, listening to the serene sound of the waterfall, immersing himself in the peacefulness of the place. He saw a glimmer of light and discovered Marco with a lantern at the end of the cabin, talking in low tones to Sophie as he stroked her back. Shan sat on a log and watched, not thinking the Eluosi had seen him until a few minutes later, when Marco's hand swung out and gestured for him. "You can scratch her ears," he said. "She likes that, after a long day."

  The two men worked on the animal in silence for several minutes.

  "She's a handsome creature," Shan offered.

  Marco nodded approvingly. "And smart as any two Chinese." A moment later he looked up, his mouth open, as though to apologize, but did not.

  "Your son," Shan said. "He has his own camels?"

  "He prefers horses. Grew up riding with the Red Stone clan. He rides a strong black mountain horse. His mother's stock had Cossack blood."

  "Is she traveling too then?" Shan asked.

  Marco grew silent. "Not here," he said in a tone that made it clear Shan had gone too far. Marco's parents had died at the cabin, Shan recalled, but there were three graves.

  "I have a boy," Shan volunteered quietly. "He would be eighteen."

  "Would be?"

  "I don't know," Shan began. "I haven't seen him for eight years." Marco looked at him and seemed to recognize that Shan too had pieces of his life too painful to probe.

  "Eighteen. Not a boy, then," Marco said. "A man. Not much younger than my Nikki. Did he have a horse when he was young?"

  "No. No horses."

  "A camel, perhaps?" Sophie stood with her eyes closed, but her ears moved as if she were following their conversation.

  "No."

  "Ah," Marco acknowledged with a sympathetic tone. "Not everyone gets to ride in this life." He produced a wooden comb, which he began to run through the hairs of Sophie's neck. He handed it to Shan after a minute and showed him how to use it, putting his huge hand over Shan's to pull it through the hair.

  "My Sophie," Marco sighed, "she has a soul deeper than most men. I talk to her. She talks to me. Smells strangers from two mountains away. Damned few people I'd rather be with." He walked around the camel, as if making a final inspection, then looked at Shan with an expectant expression.

  "Come with me, Mr. Shan. I've got something to show you."

  Shan looked up in surprise. Marco was speaking in English.

  "Shan. Sh-aann," Marco tongued the word as he led Shan toward the front door. "Not an English name. In English you should be John. Yes," he said with a look of satisfaction. "John. Johnny, they say sometimes."

  Shan smiled. "Like an American movie," he said in the same language.

  "Ah! Exactly. John Wayne!" Marco exclaimed, then returned to Mandarin. "You speak it better than I do."

  "My father," Shan said, and Marco nodded, as if it were all the explanation he needed.

  They stepped into the room at the end of the inside corridor, a large chamber with rough log walls and a huge bed constructed of split logs, piled with felt blankets and furs. Pelts hung from log rafters. A sword hung on the wall. Two old pistols with cylinder magazines hung from pegs near the door. Flung across a table by the bed was a stack of magazines, in English. Oddly, all seemed to be about ocean fishing. Shan picked up the top magazine.

  "Do you know the ocean?" the Eluosi asked tentatively. He seemed reluctant to show curiosity in his voice, but his eyes betrayed it. For an instant Shan saw the eagerness of a schoolboy. On the wall behind Marco there was a series of old calendars, all with a single color photograph of an ocean beach or an island. The region Marco lived in, Shan suspected, was further from an ocean than any place on the planet.

  "As a boy, I lived in Liaoning Province," Shan replied, "near the sea. My mother's family was from a fishing village."

  "Beaches!" Marco exclaimed in English. "Of white sand, like warm snow. Water as far as you can see. And the tuna fish." He looked at one of his calendar pictures, of a rocky coastline containing conifers and a single log cabin with bright yellow shutters. "It can reach over one thousand American pounds," he said soberly. "A fighting fish that's not for the faint of heart or weak of limb." He looked back at his magazines.

  Shan had a vision of Marco, lying on his furs as it snowed for days, memorizing passages from his magazines.

  One of the calendars had a photo of a man in a brilliant white shirt landing a long silver fish on a brilliant white boat. "Not a man in my family for five generations has ever seen an ocean," Marco declared, with longing in his deep voice. "Salt water. It has fish, delicious fish, as heavy as mutton, as delicate as sugar cake." He fixed Shan with a stern gaze and leaned toward him, as if about to disclose an important secret. "There is a place called Alaska," he declared, lowering his voice. "It has mountains like here. It has ocean too. I have seen pictures. Nikki has books that talk about it. Monster fish. Fry them in butter. And you know what else, Johnny?" Marco asked with a spark in his eye.

  Shan shrugged. "I have never been there."

  "It has Russians. Emigres from the Czar's days. Russians who speak English. Who are free men."

  Shan smiled. He realized that he liked the man not so much for the boldness of his actions, but for the boldness of his dreams.

  Marco pulled a thick book from a wooden crate, an album of old photographs, and gestured for Shan to sit beside him on the bed as he quickly leafed through the pages until he found what he was looking for: a brittle, faded photograph of a Bactrian camel draped in what looked like a silk banner. Holding the camel's head was a man with a thick moustache and a bald head. On the other side of the animal was another man, a European, wearing a heavy fur ushanka, the winter cap favored by Russians. On the European's coat was a shining medal in the shape of a star. Flanking the two smiling men were two stern guards in turbans, each holding a long rifle.

  "Sophie's great-grandmother," Marco said proudly.

  "I see a certain resemblance," Shan said, to be polite.

  His words delighted Marco, who shut the book with a huge grin. He pointed to an object that hung from a leather strap around a bedpost and lifted it to show Shan. It was the medal from the photograph. "Given to my great-grandfather by the Czar himself," Marco explained proudly. It was a golden star with red enamel borders and the image of a mounted cavalryman in the center. Marco gazed upon it with silent satisfaction, then looked at the wall, as if consulting an invisible clock. "Time to go up. We always go up," he announced, then stood and left the room with long, deliberate strides.

  Shan checked on the boys, who slept in Nikki's room, then found Marco on the tower, staring out over landscape as if searching for someone.

  "It's a dangerous thing, your seeing the Jade Bitch," Marco said in a slow, contemplative tone without turning toward him. "You heard that boy. She killed Khitai."

  "I don't know that. Malik just saw her the day after. You didn't see Zu's face when Kublai was brought to her door. She was horrified. It was no act."

  "The worst thing you could do is to underestimate her."

  "The worst thing," Shan countered, "would be for me to misunderstand her."

  Marco offered a skeptical grunt in reply.

  "Why would she go to that place twice? Why not apply the spray paint the same time
she killed Khitai?"

  Marco threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration. "Didn't have the paint. Wanted to go back for that camera."

  "I don't know. Maybe there wasn't just one killer," Shan said. "Kublai and Suwan were shot. Alta and Khitai were beaten and stabbed."

  "Maybe it was four killers," Marco said darkly. "Someone declared an open season on boys."

  "But they all had one shoe missing," Shan said in a distant voice. He had no answer. They watched the moon. He found himself listening for crickets. "When you arrived here today," Shan said after several minutes, "you thought someone might be waiting. Because of the silver bridle."

  Shan could see Marco's nod through the moonlight. "Osman. With more horses."

  "The silver bridle," Shan suggested, "it was a signal, it meant a new plan. A faster plan, for the next caravan."

  Marco nodded. "The silver bridle was a gift for Jakli. For the wedding. It just means get ready, at the horse festival, at the nadam."

  But Jakli wasn't making bridal preparations. She was in the mountains, evading the knobs, trying to save the lives of orphan boys. Maybe, he hoped, she would meet her Nikki in the mountains, maybe Nikki could persuade her to stay out of danger. "I don't understand something, Marco," Shan said after a long silence. "You are a smuggler, but you live over a hundred miles from the border."

  "I would never live closer, too dangerous. Like lingering in the breath of a dragon." The Eluosi looked up at the moon and yawned. "You're too traditional. You think too much like a policeman. There're many kinds of borders. Over the next ridge, it's Aksai Chin. Disputed land. India says it's hers. Traditionally it was part of Ladakh," he added, referring to the border region between Pakistan and India that held the upper waters of the Indus river.

  "But the People's Liberation Army controls it," Shan reminded him. "Soldiers everywhere. And villages. Muslim villages. Old Tibetan villages." He had been driven through the disputed zone in one of the armored cars used by the knobs to transport special prisoners. On a break, when they allowed him ten minutes of exercise, he had seen prayer flags for the first time, fastened to a distant cairn of rocks. He remembered thinking through a drugged haze that it must be some kind of festival day.

  "I found something out, Johnny," Marco said in a conspiratorial tone. "Sometimes the more you watch, the less you see."

  The edge of the moon appeared so brilliant, so crisp, that it seemed like a shining piece of porcelain. In the distance, high snow fields glowed.

  "They have huge caves, the army," Marco said. "Brought in thousands of gulag slaves to hollow out entire mountains. Some say the whole Tibetan border is just a series of hollowed-out mountains, full of soldiers. They have their damned missiles and radar dishes. An Indian plane goes through, or a Pakistani, and they can shoot it down in seconds. But say an eagle goes through- they never see it, because they use machines to do the watching. They watch for metal things, not real things. You and I, we would watch the sky. But they just sit and watch screens inside the mountains.

  "And if army trucks or tanks come across one of the passes, they see them on their detectors. But maybe not a camel or two. Elsewhere they have patrols, but in some places it's so important they use only electronic surveillance. A small group, if it's careful, can sneak through. Don't carry metal. Don't make sharp noises. Don't do it often, got to use different routes, many techniques." He sighed and pointed toward a falling star. "Things can be arranged from a hundred miles away. Sometimes a wise man may even find ways to smuggle without smugglers."

  "I don't understand."

  "Trucks, for example. Big market for heavy trucks in Xinjiang. So last year I brought in five heavy trucks, filled with Indian dyestuff for the carpet factories. The border patrol, they searched those trucks good, but everything is legal. Never realized I was smuggling in the trucks. Even had trucks going out, with the same paperwork. But they were twenty years older and about to fall to pieces." Marco chuckled to himself. "Even did it with a bus.

  "And something else I have learned. When is contraband not contraband?" He turned to face Shan, leaning on the old stone parapet. "When the government brings it in."

  Shan nodded. In his Beijing incarnation his main activity had been investigating corruption. Once he had discovered that an entire shipload of equipment had breezed through customs clearances because the smugglers had falsified papers saying it belonged to the Ministry of Petroleum Industry.

  "Sometimes, if someone in the government has a shopping list, they won't ask where you got it. They may even be willing to turn a blind eye at a checkpoint."

  "You mean, you work for the government sometimes?"

  Marco spat a curse. "Never. I mean sometimes, if a certain greedy officer wants some Western goods, he may want to place an order, and may want to misdirect a patrol so his order gets through."

  "And sometimes," Shan said, "people go out. People go out to stay. Nikki, he goes in and out."

  "Sure. You can sneak past the missile silos, once in a while. And there are places you can use, between snows, high passes no good for trucks or Chinese soldiers. Places that only a few old hunters know about. Where you can die from the cold or wind as easily as a bullet. Nikki knows them well. He went across for horses. He knows a horse trader in Ladakh, across the border."

  "White horses," Shan suggested.

  "Right. For Jakli."

  "For getting married. At the nadam festival."

  Marco nodded. "All the Kazakhs will be there, the few old clans left here. Starts in four days. The last one for the clans in Poktian County," he added somberly.

  Shan thought a moment. "Lau was going to be there, wasn't she?"

  "Jakli asked Lau to stand for her. Lau was the closest she had to a mother."

  "But why get horses if they're leaving?"

  Marco grunted. "You can't stop, can you? Can't stop asking questions."

  "Not while there is a murderer stalking boys."

  Marco made a frustrated, rumbling sort of sound that Shan took to be a token of surrender. "Nikki has to get the horses. You have to understand about Kazakhs and their horses. Not like anything Chinese. Or anything Russian. Horses can be as important as family."

  "Like some camels."

  "Different than me and Sophie. The old ones, they talk about how the souls of horses and the souls of Kazakhs are intertwined. They name horses after their children, and children after their horses. The rite of passage for a Kazakh is when he gets his first saddle, meaning he is old enough to ride alone. They have a whole vocabulary for types of horses and movements of horses. They tell stories about horses that lived five hundred years ago. They have old shamans who can speak to horses. The old Kazakhs, they won't go near a Chinese clinic for themselves. But if their horse gets sick, they'll do anything, even ask a Chinese doctor for help. Nikki knew how important it was to Jakli, to observe the tradition by giving at least one white horse to the bride's family. To honor her, to honor Akzu. To honor her lost father. In the old days, there would have been many horse gifts, from friends and cousins. Once I saw a nadam camp with two hundred white horses."

  "So Akzu gets the horses," Shan said. Akzu, whose clan was being dissolved, whose herds were being surrendered to the government. "But Jakli and Nikki, they are going. Out of China. To America. It's why she isn't worried about Prosecutor Xu anymore, only angry at her. But how? Out of Aksai Chin?"

  Marco made one of his growling sounds. "Don't ask what cannot be told."

  "This isn't about Lau anymore," Shan said. "It's about keeping Jakli and Nikki safe. About the boys. About the Red Stone clan."

  Marco put both hands on the parapet and looked out over the moonlit range. "Okay," he sighed. "A special route. Foolproof. Can only be used once. By boat."

  "But the rivers aren't navigable," Shan said in a puzzled tone.

  "In the missile region they still use laborers to dig out mountains. Prisoners- Kazakh, Tibetan, and Uighurs, mostly. There's buses that take them, shuttle them in and out
twice a month. Big project at the end of the road, past the main base at Rutog, in Tibet."

  Shan knew about Rutog. About one hundred twenty miles from Xinjiang. Close to India. A nuclear zone, a missile command center.

  "There's a village called Ramchang, on a lake about twenty miles long. The border with India, the real border, cuts right through the lake."

  "Then the army must have surveillance."

  "Sure. Electronic, it's so important. You know, in case the Indians launch a battleship at them. But we know a man there, a Tibetan hunter who was allowed to stay on the border because his daughter was in a special Party school in Lhasa."

  "A hostage."

  "Right. Except Lhasa forgot to tell the army that his daughter died in a traffic accident a few months ago. He's leaving, and he needs some money."

  "Even if he takes you over the lake the army could detect-"

  "He has stealth boats," Marco said with a hint of amusement. "Coracles, made of willow branches and yak skin. They can't be detected on radar. It works."

  "You mean," Shan said, "that the purbas use them."

  "A boy named Mao went too, with some scientific specimens. They have their own boats. We have the Panda boats."

  "Panda boats?"

  "That's what he charges. Four people in a boat. One gold Panda per boat."

  Shan's hand clenched the stone wall in front of him. "Auntie Lau," he whispered.

  "What's that?"

  "Lau was going."

  "It was for Nikki and Jakli. I arranged it. Part of my gift, for their new life."

  "But Nikki and Jakli are going to America."

  Marco sighed. "They weren't at first. But then they met the Americans. That Warp, she became like another aunt to Jakli. Warp was going out, with their son, back to start writing her book, to get him back in American schools. The Maos were working on it. Then Jakli spoke to Warp. Warp spoke to some Maos. Some Maos spoke to me. Before long they're getting a Panda boat too. Then Warp and Deacon, they offer for Nikki and Jakli to live with them. Nikki, he wants to go to Alaska, to build a cabin so I can come someday. But Warp says first come to their university, she will get them money to help with the translation and explain the research. The Maos want it too, now- they say Jakli can give speeches in America about what Beijing does in Xinjiang."