"Why would you say that?" Jakli asked, suspicion heavy in her voice.
"Major Bao asked. Twice, himself. And three days ago at the school, Comrade Hu asked. Said records had to be completed."
The words hung like a dark cloud over them.
At last Shan stepped to the Tibetan's side. "You should consider carefully who it is who lied to you," he said.
Kaju looked at him in confusion. "No one," he said in a brittle voice. "This is just a terrible tragedy." He shifted his gaze to Jakli, then back to Shan. "Except you. She was missing, they said. But you had her body hid."
"It was all planned. Arrangements were made to bring you to replace her."
"Plans for her to retire, yes," the Tibetan said. "She was going to Urumqi." He fell back off his knees, sitting, as if he had lost his balance.
"Ko told you that she would definitely be leaving for Urumqi?"
Kaju nodded. "Ko said he was going to erect a plaque to her at the school. She will always be a hero in the Brigade." Kaju kept staring at Lau's face. "I will not let them stop me," he said. It sounded like a vow to the dead woman.
"Who?" Shan asked as he sat beside the Tibetan.
"The ones who did this. The reactionaries."
Jakli groaned.
"It's wasn't reactionaries," Shan said calmly. "It was someone looking for a boy. A very specific boy." He told them, as they sat in the chill burial room, about the Yakde Lama. He was careful not to let Kaju know about the Raven's Nest or the waterkeeper, but he spoke about General Rongqi and how one of the zheli had been the incarnation of the Yakde, and about the Jade Basket.
Jakli sighed heavily, then raised her hand slowly and rested it on Auntie Lau's shoulder. The Tibetan sat in silence, his eyes restlessly studying the corpse in front of him. "If I were to believe you, it would mean they all are lying, that they were all working together. Ko. General Rongqi and Major Bao. They aren't. I know that. That's not the kind of government we have now. Bao and Public Security, sometimes they don't understand. One of our assignments is to help them understand new techniques for-" His voice faded, as if he had lost his train of thought. "But the Brigade is different. I got a letter from vice chairman Rongqi congratulating me on my appointment. The people sent me to university," Kaju added, as if it explained much.
"To study integration of cultures," Shan observed. "Not annihilation of them."
"My training," Kaju said, as if in protest.
"Training for what?" Jakli interrupted. "To kill teachers? To murder boys?" She stopped, as if surprised by the venom in her own voice, and looked down, with pain in her eyes, at Lau.
"Of course not."
They were silent a long time. Jakli's head moved slowly up and down as she gazed at Lau, as if she were having a conversation with the dead woman.
Shan sighed. "It's a starting place. Just believe that. That someone has killed four boys, is still stalking them, and will not stop until he has the gau. Do you accept that the killer must be stopped? Whomever it may be?"
Kaju's eyes met Shan's and he nodded soberly.
"And understand this," Jakli added. "The boys are not safe with the Brigade for now. Or with Public Security. Not until it is over."
"I will-" Kaju said, confusion clouding his eyes, "I will not tell Director Ko about the boys being here. He night not understand, he might inadvertently say something to the knobs. I will not tell Major Bao. You can trust me. I have not told about the Americans."
Shan looked at him with surprise. "You mean the boy Micah?"
"Micah, and his parents. There was a class just after she disappeared. No one knew she was dead. Most of the zheli came. Micah was there. They played some American games, even tried speaking some words of English. One of them spoke about Micah's parents sometimes visiting classes, sometimes helping with instruction."
"Why wouldn't you tell about the Americans?" Shan asked. He considered the timing. Kaju had known about the Americans for nearly three weeks. When had Bao begun his search for the Americans?
Kaju looked at him and shrugged. "I don't know," he said, and Shan saw that he had struggled with the decision. "It's none of my business. The boy Micah is part of the class, and my business is to instruct the class, to help the class. He's-" Kaju shrugged again. "He's like the others, just a boy trying to understand the world." The Tibetan turned to Jakli. "But there are classes scheduled, at Stone Lake. Not all the boys have been accounted for. I am still going there." He stood and turned to leave, then after three steps stopped, looking at the wall, at the handprints in the ice.
"To pay homage," Jakli explained. "The ice wall will seal the cave. And then those who paid homage will be with her."
Kaju hesitated, looking at them with entreaty in his eyes.
"Those who paid her homage while she lived," Shan added. "And those who will pay her homage in her death."
Kaju cast a grateful glance toward Shan and pressed his own hand into the ice.
"It is a vow you are making," Jakli said behind them, in an eerily disembodied voice. "A vow to save the zheli."
"Then I give my vow," Kaju said in a small voice, pressing even harder against the ice. When he finished he stepped back and stared at the hollow he had made in the ice, then looked at Shan. "There was something I gave to Public Security. I mean, they took it. I was assigned to Lau's old room in the single teachers' quarters. Public Security was there when I cleaned out her things. I pulled something from under the pallet and they took it."
Shan sighed. "A poem."
Kaju nodded. "Just a poem about a teacher gathering flowers. I didn't- I wouldn't have given it to them but they were there and just grabbed it. No one should be put in jeopardy because of a poem."
Just a poem, Shan thought. But to Bao, a prime evidence of treason. He exchanged a glance with Kaju. It was why Kaju had not told about the Americans, he suspected, because he felt guilty about breaching Lau's confidence- or maybe, Shan thought, about violating the beauty of the child's poem.
Kaju took a step away as Jakli moved toward the tunnel, then stopped again. "I never thought about it, but maybe-" He began twisting his fingers together. "The schedule. Lau's schedule, and all the details I know about the zheli. I meant no harm. They told me her biggest fault was her secrecy about the children."
Shan considered Kaju's words and the pain on his face. "So you put it all on the computer."
Kaju nodded slowly.
Shan looked at the Tibetan uncertainly. He couldn't say it didn't matter.
Kaju sighed heavily, turned to face Lau, and walked, backward, out of the room.
Shan lingered behind in the cold vault as Jakli led Kaju outside. On his first visit, he had come to Lau the teacher. This time he had come to Lau the ani. He knelt at her side again. Speak to me, he wanted to say. Which of them came to Karachuk? Which of those in Yoktian were simply zealously performing their duties and which was working with Bao, which was a murderer? He sighed and pulled the tiny ceramic jar from his coat pocket, the jar that had been filled with sacred sands and sealed at Lhadrung. He held it cradled in his hands for a moment, then pried open the seal with his thumbnail. Lifting the robe, he poured the holy sands, making a small circle on her shirt, over her heart. Then he replaced the robe and placed the empty jar by her head. He stepped back, looking at the ice surrounding on the wall and back at the handprints. Jakli's hand was there, and Akzu's and Kaju's and his own. They could last a thousand years and more, preserving their shame that they had let a saintly woman die with a bullet in her brain.
When he arrived back at the Red Stone camp he realized that the boys had not told him everything about the visit of Gendun and Lokesh. He found Batu with Sophie, listening to Marco proudly explain her heritage.
"When they left," Shan asked when Marco finished, "where did the Tibetans go?"
"Last night, they left. On donkeys. Somebody had given them donkeys," Batu said with wide eyes. "It's what you do for holy men, Lau told us once, you give them things so their deities
will smile on you. We asked them to stay, but they told us they had to go to another place. They were eager to leave."
"What other place?"
Batu shook his head, then called two other boys over. None of them knew. "In the desert," one of the boys said. "The old one who laughed a lot said he knew a place in the sand where souls collected."
Shan looked at Marco in alarm. "The Well of Tears," he gasped. "Where souls are collected by the wind when they become lost."
Jakli's hand shot to her mouth. "They are too old," she cried. "They could lose their way so easily. They could die in the wind."
"They came to the school, looking," Kaju interjected.
"Lokesh?" Jakli asked. "The lama?"
"No. Public Security. Knobs came this morning. They said they were looking for two old Tibetans who had escaped from prison."
Shan stared at Kaju with a clenched jaw, fighting the cold knot of fear that had suddenly gripped his stomach. The paths of the killers had indeed crossed. Bao had been looking for foreign subversives but now was asking about Tibetans. Someone must have seen Gendun and Lokesh, and reported them.
"Mother of God," Marco muttered and began harnessing Sophie.
When Jakli looked at Shan it seemed she was about to cry. "But we have to find the boys."
"Exactly," the big Eluosi said. "Which is why Sophie and I will go for the old Tibetans." He fixed Shan with a grave stare. "If the knobs take them, they won't last twenty-four hours. They don't want those old men for anything. Just want them gone."
***
Yoktian seemed in a state of seige. The town square was silent and empty, except for four squads of knobs, one stationed at each corner. Those few inhabitants who had business on the street scurried along, looking down, avoiding eye contact with anyone. The distant whinnying of horses floated through the air. Shan and the others had passed the pens on the way into town. Scores of horses were behind the heavy fences now, stamping the ground restlessly, looking wild-eyed and confused at the Kazakhs and Uighurs who watched them forlornly from a distance, not daring to approach the pens due to the knob guards at the gates.
Shan, Jowa, and Jakli followed Fat Mao along a side street that paralleled the square. With a grim set of his jaw the Uighur gestured toward two black utility vehicles parked near the square. "Another boot squad," he said. "Two new ones came in. One from Kashgar," he said to Shan. "And one just arrived from a base in Tibet." He looked to Jakli and grimaced. "They will start checking businesses soon," he said with an apologetic tone.
She sighed, then extracted a promise from the Uighur to keep looking for the Tibetans and turned toward her factory. She paused after her first step and turned. "Nikki could come looking," she said hurriedly. "Tell him to get back in the mountains. Tell him to just get to the festival on time," she added, then marched away to make hats.
Fat Mao led Shan and Jowa into a small restaurant in an old mud-brick building with a sign in Chinese, English, and the Turkic tongue that said Closed. Quickly checking the street for patrols, he led them to the rear of the building, then entered, stepping through the kitchen to the front dining room. A stout woman in a white apron, her hair bound in a red scarf, knelt on a small prayer carpet by a rear table. She glanced at them, grunted something that might have been a greeting, then reached up to flip a switch on the wall behind her. She flipped it twice, with no effect on the lights in the room, then Fat Mao led them through a doorway and down a set of rickety stairs to a musty cellar with a dirt floor. On one wall a set of shelves held blankets and clothing and many types of hats and footwear. Disguises. At a table under a single naked lightbulb a man and a slight woman with her hair bound in two small pigtails sat studying the screen of a portable computer. Shan recognized the man as the sullen, large-boned Kazakh who been on the truck to Glory Camp when Jakli and Shan had met it, who had driven Lokesh and Bajys to Senge Drak. Ox Mao. Fat Mao introduced the woman as Swallow Mao. Ox Mao was bent over something, studying it intently. He threw a paper over it when he saw Shan, but a corner could still be seen. It was one of the wooden tablets.
Half of Xu's detainees had been released, Swallow Mao reported, extending a sheet of paper after the prosecutor had conducted interviews. Shan anxiously studied the list. The waterkeeper was not on it. He watched as they reviewed half a dozen computer discs taken from an envelope in front of the woman, with no change in the list. He realized after a moment that he had seen Swallow Mao before, sitting at a computer screen at Glory Camp.
"You said you follow people sometimes," Shan said to Fat Mao. "What about Bao?"
"The clinic, having his wound treated," Swallow Mao reported with a cold anger. "Then Glory Camp, talking to detainees," she volunteered. "The knobs collected old men for interrogation. Some of them look like Tibetans, from the hills." She looked up and seemed to recognize the pain in Shan's eyes. "Did I say something wrong?"
Shan sighed and shook his head slowly. Bao was looking for a lama. "What about Ko?"
"At the clinic yesterday," Ox Mao offered in a deep voice. "Meeting with the parents of newborns. Explaining the Brigade's new statistical tracking service, about why certain questions must be answered, to allow the pattern of health problems to be identified. He says."
Fat Mao and Shan looked at each other. "Since when?" the Uighur asked. "When did his questions start?"
"Two days ago."
Two days ago. Khitai had been killed three days before.
"What kind of questions?" Fat Mao asked. "What, exactly, about newborns?"
Ox Mao looked from the Uighur to Shan with confusion in his eyes. "I wasn't there," he said slowly. "I got the report from the Kazakh nurse. Ko said the most important starting point was the background of the parents."
"I need to go to the clinic," Shan said. But the Maos ignored him.
"The background of new parents," Fat Mao muttered heavily.
With a chill Shan remembered the struggle over identifying the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The government had carefully waited for a baby born to parents who were both members of the Party. Ko's questions could mean nothing. Or they could mean that General Rongqi was indeed involved and was already searching for the new Yakde Lama, the Brigade's tame lama, which they could proclaim as soon as they obtained the Jade Basket.
"Names," Fat Mao said with sudden urgency, and he began explaining how the Maos must obtain a copy of the data that Ko was collecting. Shan listened for several minutes, then told them he would be upstairs, outside, getting fresh air.
He walked slowly, to avoid attention, watching the windows for reflections of anybody following him. It took another quarter hour to locate the door he wanted, then he paused in the shadows of an alley, watching again, before darting across to it- the rear door of the old palace that housed the Ministry.
In a darkened hallway he passed a narrow door that hung open before a closet that smelled of cleaning chemicals, then another, wider door, with a cross-bolt lock. With a deep breath he pushed open the door at the end of the hall and stepped into the lobby. The bald man was there, sitting on his desk, reading a paper. His eyes grew wide at the sight of Shan, and he leapt off his perch with unexpected speed, grabbing Shan's wrist, pushing him back into the shadows of the rear corridor. But he did not hit Shan or call out for help. "Wait," the man said instead in a hushed tone and looked over his shoulder. Shan nodded and the man released his hold, then darted out to the lobby.
Five minutes later Prosecutor Xu appeared, accompanied by the bald man, who opened the bolted door and flicked a light switch. Xu gestured Shan inside. It was a stale, windowless room, with a small metal table and four metal chairs. Its single lightbulb was encased in a wire cage. On a shelf in the back was a tin basin, a flyswatter, a roll of heavy duct tape, and several long slats of wood, the size of rulers. An interrogation room.
At a nod from Xu the bald man shut the door, leaving Shan and the prosecutor inside. The door shook, and Shan realized the man had not locked it but was leaning against it. Xu
sat in the chair nearest the door, Shan at the opposite side of the table.
"Public Security computers say Sui is on personal leave," Xu announced tersely. "Family leave."
"Did you ask Bao why he said Sui was transferred?" Shan asked.
Xu shot him a peeved glance in reply. Of course not, he realized from her expression. Because she had not asked Bao for permission to enter his document system. He looked around the room again. Xu was hiding; she didn't want Shan to be seen. Everyone in Yoktian had secrets. Everyone spied on everyone else.
"Bao expanded the file on Lau," Xu said. "Added two more witness statements."
"You mean, it's Bao's investigation now? A simple missing person case?"
"Public Security has the authority if they choose to exercise it. Two days ago he choose to do so, on the grounds that she was a former public official. We transferred our file and he inserted two more witness statements. No case anymore. He closed the file. Finding of death by accident."
"So all the detainees in the investigation can be released now."
Xu ignored him. "Bao contacted his Public Affairs Officer. There will be an expanded story in praise of Lau in the newspaper."
"What witnesses gave statements?"
"Comrade Hu, from the school. He reminded us that he had reported Lau for praising dissidents in her classes. Then he signed a statement. Walking to work the day after the reported accident he saw a woman's body floating down the river."
"Just like that, he suddenly remembered." What had Hu said at the camp? He had a family to think of.
"The other was a forensics expert in Kashgar. Said the wallet with the identity papers they recovered had traces of mineral consistent with the riverbank she reportedly fell down."
"I am endlessly amazed," Shan said with a sigh, "at what the resources of the people's government are capable of when properly motivated." He stared into his hands. "Did you verify how Sui came into possession of Lau's papers?"
"A responsible citizen." It was a familiar code for government files, referring to an anonymous source.
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