The silver camel exploded into an ear-splitting bray and bolted straight through the line, scattering all those nearby. Marco shouted after her, then called for someone to catch her. More than twenty people broke into pursuit, including the figure in the alley, who ran headlong into Shan and Jakli, pushing them both to the ground while he shouted for the camel. Several hands grabbed Shan. Something moist touched his hand, and a hat was thrust low over his head. The instant he regained his feet Jakli pulled him into the crowd chasing Sophie. A moment later the camel quieted under the hands of an old Kazakh, who led her back to Marco. Jakli pushed Shan into the shadow of a doorway. He looked at his hand. It was stamped with a ring of five red stars. They wandered around the square, casually showing their stamp to the knobs they passed.
Another man was singled out for special attention at the table of officers.
"Ask someone," Shan said in a low voice, "if it is a another Tadjik."
It was, a nearly toothless old woman said, and the chill returned. Suddenly, despite Bao's desperate rush to find the subversives, Public Security wanted a Tadjik.
"The fools don't know," the old woman added. "The Tadjiks have gone to Yoktian. Director Ko is giving all of them new clothes, American blue jeans. A special tribute to the social contributions of Tadjiks."
As Jakli pulled him into the shadows at the edge of the street, Shan stared at the old woman in confusion. The Brigade was not only watching to see what Tadjiks the knobs might snare, it was separately trying to entice Tadjiks to town. So they could turn over the Tadjiks to the knobs, Shan wondered, or so they could prevent the knobs from finding Tadjiks? Or at least one specific Tadjik.
Jakli brought them bottled orange drinks from a vendor who sold goods from a rug in the corner of the square, and they sat against the wall of a building, watching the knobs like almost everyone else in the village. In another thirty minutes the line was done, and Marco and Sophie were led to the table. The village began to close in, as if expecting an entertainment. But Marco stared straight ahead and spoke in low respectful tones. He had his identity papers. When the officer finished, however, he stood in front of Sophie, his face eighteen inches from her nose, and began a loud harangue about how undisciplined she was, how animals doing work for the people should respect the people, that she had wasted the valuable time of the Public Security Bureau. Shan had once seen a tamzing held for a horse by a furious Red Guard who had been delayed on a river bridge because of the slow horse and its cart, and wondered absently if this was the same man, thirty years later.
When the officer finished he lingered, glaring at Sophie. Sophie cocked her head as if to study him, put her nose closer, and erupted in a sound that was half snicker, half bray, an action that sprayed the man with her saliva.
Everyone laughed but Marco and the officer. Marco began to urge Sophie away, but the officer pulled his pistol and held it toward her head. With a chill Shan saw Marco's hand creep inside his coat. The crowd was instantly sober, and scared.
When the shot came Shan's head jerked back in the reflexive agony instilled by hearing so many knob pistols so many times before- in public executions in Beijing, where those seated nearest were sprayed with blood and particles of brain tissue. And in the gulag, where three times he had seen knob guards shoot monks as they calmly and defiantly recited their mantras.
But the shot came from behind, he suddenly realized, near the bus, where another officer held his gun in the air. The knob by Sophie scowled but lowered his gun, and the man who had fired in warning approached him. He had the same lightless eyes as the first man but more grey in his hair. He stared at Marco for a long moment, then ceremoniously picked up the ink stamp on the table and stamped a ring of red stars on Sophie's nose.
The knobs climbed into their trucks and in five minutes were gone, escorting the bus down the Kashgar highway. Moments later the Brigade truck eased out of the square, following the knobs.
Marco was at the village water trough when they reached him, where Sophie drank long as he washed away the red ink. "Four hours. Four damned hours wasted here," he groused.
With longing in his heart Shan watched Marco steer Sophie away into the Taklamakan at a brisk trot. Then he turned to Jakli with a new urgency. "That Tadjik Hoof holds the key. We have to find him before Ko or the knobs do."
***
Their sturdy horses climbed for hours, following a teenage girl from the camp where they left the truck. They rode hard, trotting constantly, their horses struggling, the girl's eyes always on the trail, where patches of ice could suddenly appear to trip the horses, or on the sky, where helicopters could materialize with even worse effect. Twice they stopped at small herding camps, where each time fresh mounts were given to Shan and Jakli. None of the herders argued. At the first camp the girl said it was for the zheli boys who were dying, and the horses were quickly offered with a cup of tea. At the second a man was talking about the holy men, and when Jakli said Shan was with them, the remounts were offered without their having asked.
They arrived at a solitary yurt so high that its water ran from a small ice field a few hundred feet above the camp. A middle aged woman wearing a soiled red apron sat by a fire at the front of the yurt, threading kernels of sun-hardened cheese onto a string. A boy of no more than six stood close against the felt of the yurt, out of the wind, methodically working a butter churn. The woman nodded greetings, then broke a corner from a brick of black tea and dropped it into a kettle at the edge of the fire. Her face was friendly but sad, and Shan remembered. This was the camp of Osman's uncle, where a son had died recently of fever.
The woman poured the tea and said the herders would return by sundown, then pointed to the cushions and blankets piled high at the rear of the yurt. Shan felt desperately tired and knew his face showed it.
He was awakened from his slumber by a chorus of bleating sheep. A deep blush of pink over the western peaks was all that remained of daylight. The fire was blazing, and a grey-haired man squatted before it with a tin mug of tea. Sheep were everywhere. The yurt seemed to be an island in a sea of sheep. Shan saw two more figures in heavy dark chubas, moving among the sheep. One, an older woman, was walking toward the fire. The other, wearing a black felt cap, hung back, sitting on a rock, with a big mastiff guard dog.
There were more dogs, Shan saw. Two mastiffs lay near the fire, one with its head over the other's back, both watching Shan suspiciously as he stepped toward the fire. A smaller white dog, crawling under the sheep, emerged from the flock and ran into the yurt. When Jakli and their guide awoke they all ate bowls of yogurt with nan bread and some kind of dried meat, their hosts nodding politely but speaking more to their dogs than to their guests. Jakli provided a package of hard round candies from her bag, which were enthusiastically accepted and passed around. Finally, his hunger apparently outstripping his fear, the man in the black hat approached.
Shan was not sure he would recognize the man, but as soon as he entered the circle of the firelight Shan remembered how the Tadjik had jumped on him. He recognized the eyes, which had been so wild with emotion when the man had pounded Shan's chest.
"We have come to speak with you, Hoof," Jakli said.
The Tadjik only grunted, and accepted a bowl of yogurt from the woman.
"He knows sheep," the woman said, as if Hoof needed to be defended. "Most of the dogs like him." Even more dogs had appeared when the meal began. Shan counted seven and wondered how many more might still be in the shadows. If herders couldn't make their family of children, they made a family of their dogs.
When Hoof sat beside Shan, he thought nothing of it. But as the man gulped down his food, Shan noticed the nervous way he looked at Jakli. The woman poured the last of the tea and five minutes later, as he turned his head back from watching the rising moon, Shan discovered that only Jakli and Hoof were left at the fire.
"It's a long way from anywhere," Shan observed.
"They have a radio," Hoof said, "to listen to music." He shrugged. "Mo
stly it doesn't work."
Jakli rose to push a stick into the fire. Shan saw that Hoof tensed his muscles as she moved, as if he thought she would hit him.
"Seems like a long time ago, when we were at Karachuk," Shan said.
"Seems like," Hoof agreed with a sigh, then he looked up and spoke hurriedly. "I came here straight away, like Marco said."
"We're not here for Marco."
The announcement seemed to confuse Hoof. His brow furrowed and he stared into the fire. He muttered a syllable Shan did not understand, and one of the mastiffs came and sat by him, watching Shan and Jakli.
"Xinjiang, it's a hard place," Shan said with a sigh. "People have to do a lot of things they don't want to do. If we had a choice we wouldn't do things that hurt other people."
"When I was young," Hoof said in a nervous, high-pitched voice, "my father had a herd of sheep. But the government took them away, they said no one could have private property. Now you can have private property but I don't have my sheep. Someone else has them. I looked for my sheep, in the market, but couldn't see them anywhere." His voice had a slow, confused quality to it. He was not the same insolent man Shan had seen at Karachuk. "I asked a Chinese in the city. He laughed, and said probably they were sent to Beijing to feed the Chairman."
An owl called.
"My mother died last year but she lived in Tadjikstan," he said morosely, referring to the independent Tadjik homeland. "They wouldn't give me papers to go bury her."
Papers. Hoof meant travel papers, to go over the border. "You mean, you went out with Marco."
"My brother did. Not with Marco," the Tadjik said with a glance to Jakli. "Little Marco. I offered to pay for him to go, but Little Marco paid him, because he was so good with the animals."
"Nikki," Jakli said, in a hushed, emotional tone. She glanced at Shan with a smile.
"Right," Hoof said. "Nikki." He looked at Jakli and cocked his head, as if remembering something. "He paid my brother to go on more caravans. I like that Nikki. He laughs good."
Jakli smiled again and stroked the head of Hoof's dog.
"But someone asked you about it later," Shan said. "Someone in a uniform." If Hoof had been stealing information about Americans from Karachuk, it must have been for Bao.
"Not a uniform," Hoof shot back, as though anxious to correct him. "I mean not at first. I wouldn't have done it if I had known who he was on that first day. I thought he was a merchant, looking for Western goods. I was in the market in Yoktian. He just wanted to know about getting out, about the safe way for some friends of his to go across. He gave me drinks. We walked around the market. He gave me new shoes, just because I saw them and liked them. Said maybe if we became good friends, he could get me some sheep. Even get me a job. I never had a Han friend. I thought maybe I should have one. I think you have to have one," he said, looking to Shan as though for confirmation, "if you want to be successful in our world." Shan remembered when they had first met, how Hoof had boasted that he had Chinese friends in order to impress Shan.
"Maybe later you found out he was a knob in disguise," Shan ventured.
"A big one," Hoof nodded with a haunted expression. "An officer. I didn't know until later, when he wore his uniform once to meet me on the highway."
"Bao Kangmei?" Shan asked.
Hoof looked up with surprise. "Not that bastard. The other one. The thin one with the bad skin."
Sui. Hoof meant he had been recruited by Sui.
Hoof looked into the fire. "I had known a knob once before. He owned a gas station, after ownership was allowed. He ordered all the knob cars to come for gas."
"Later, though," Shan suggested, "this officer wanted other things. To know about Lau and people close to Lau. About foreigners."
Hoof shrugged. "He said he was going to leave the knobs, go into business. Business, it's international. Sure, he needed to meet foreigners. Americans especially. He really wanted to see Americans and things Americans did. I gave him an empty can of American soda once from Karachuk and he paid me more money than I can make in a month herding sheep. An empty can," the Tadjik repeated incredulously.
The sheep were all asleep, around the edge of the camp, a soft grey carpet under the moon. Beyond them one of the mastiffs sat upright on a rock, facing the darkness beyond.
"So you took him some more things from the Americans."
"Not much. You stopped me."
"But then you left Karachuk. The same night. You were planning to leave anyway, when Marco sent you here. You were planning to meet your friend from the knobs," Shan suggested.
Hoof nodded. "There were two of them there. The knob and another, who wore dark glasses even though it was after sunset. They were sitting in a red car waiting for me, drinking beer. The one with the glasses took me for a ride in the car while the knob sat on a rock and drank. As he drives he says he could help me. Says he was going to be my new friend, and he gave me money, for nothing. He asked me what I wanted most. I said sheep, and he said no problem." Hoof looked up at Shan. "If he can get some sheep for me, my brother and I can start our own camp in the spring. My brother needs to meet my new friend. Don't work for the knobs, I told him. They don't pay you as much."
It seemed to have gotten much colder. Hoof was working for the Brigade now. Shan moved closer to the fire. "So that night when you left," he pressed. "You saw both of them. Your friend who drives the red truck. Near the highway. Late."
"My new friend said he didn't have much time. But he said he wanted me to watch something. Said here's what happens to people who try to take away your business. The knob with the bad skin, he was just standing there smiling, like it was all a joke when the gun was pointed at him. But bang, the one with the red car just pulled the trigger. In the heart, two times. I ran. I came here, because Marco had said so."
Shan looked into the burning embers. Hoof had been a witness, he had seen Ko Yonghong shoot the man with the pockmarked face, Lieutenant Sui. Then Hoof had disappeared, making Ko nervous. He wanted Hoof. But so did Bao. With Hoof on his side, Bao could destroy Ko. But how had Bao found out?
Suddenly the dog leapt up and began barking toward the darkness on the north side of the camp. Jakli groaned and pointed. In the distance, on the horizon, two streaks of brilliant white light lit the sky.
"Flares," Hoof muttered. "We see a lot of them lately."
"Flares?" Shan asked. "From who?"
"The knobs. They like to search at night sometimes, catch people off guard."
As Shan looked at the fading streaks in the sky he remembered the dropka woman's words, how the demon had stopped attacking Alta because he was called away by lightning. It was how demons spoke with each other, she had said. She was right, he thought sadly. It was how demons spoke with each other. But if Alta's killer had been called back by Sui, if he had been working for Sui, why curse him when he saw the flares? Because he had not finished his work with the boy perhaps. Because the boy had still been alive.
They were silent a long time, watching the darkness where the flares had been.
"Before you came here," Shan suggested at last, "you saw your brother, didn't you?"
"On the way here. I said I'd be gone for a long time, to a secret place. But I wanted to tell him about my new business, about how we can get sheep. Good money, when I get done here," Hoof said. "Just cooperate, I told my brother, or you'll be like that dead Chinese."
But Bao, Shan realized with a sinking feeling, was already in business with Hoof's brother. Don't work for the knobs, Hoof had told him. They're not paying as well. That was how Bao had discovered that Ko was Sui's killer. That was how Bao had obtained a shiny new car from Ko, by divulging to Ko what he had heard about Sui's murder. Bao was learning about the new economy. Ko had killed Sui, but now Ko had a new competitor. And if Bao could find Hoof, if he could produce the witness to Sui's murder, he would have the means to destroy Ko, to take over all of Ko's lucrative bounty hunting.
Hoof sighed. "It's a hard thing, business,"
he said, his eyes lingering for a moment on Jakli, as if he had something to say to her. But he turned away, and after a moment spoke to the fire. "I only wanted to bury my mother."
***
In the morning Jakli was gone. She had said nothing, left no word other than to tell their guide that she would see Shan at the nadam. Everyone knew Jakli would go to the nadam, the Kazakh girl said with a flush of excitement, because her wedding was to be the main event of the festival. But not everyone knew that from there she would leave, from there she would start her new life.
And beginnings were always built on endings, a lama had once told Shan.
Shan described a place with a high cliff, with a meadow across the road, and asked if the girl could take him there. "Not far," she said, "maybe two hours." They rode hard until they reached the road, then walked the horses along the road until they found the spot where Jakli had left the flowers the day she had driven him to Senge Drak.
He thanked the girl, then found a trail that led up the high ridge and in half an hour he emerged on a small shelf of land that overlooked the road. He dismounted and tied his horse to a tree.
She was there, kneeling at a low, broad mound of earth on which autumn asters were blooming. He plucked a piece of reddish heather and dropped it on the mound beside her.
Jakli smiled through her tears. "The great detective," she said in greeting.
"I was worried about you."
"With you and Marco both watching over me, how could anything go wrong?" she asked, and began pulling away dried leaves that were caught among the flowers. "My great uncle who was the synshy, the horse talker, he said that horses have spirits that roam after death. That they may settle in another horse, far away."
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