"They?"
Xu was silent. She ran her hand over her lips. It trembled. "We," she said at last and pushed a knuckle into her mouth. She took the finger out after a moment and stared at it, as if not understanding what it had done. "I wanted to stop. I wanted to go home. I was tired of the brutality. I was worried about my family. But if you spoke about family you were criticized. Sign of a reactionary, sign of addiction to the tradition of oppression. All I could do was continue. We got awards. A model unit. I kept getting promoted. There was a gompa far in the hills, a big gompa past Shigatse. The Revolutionary Committee came with photographers from Lhasa to watch us do our job. We surrounded the gompa and sang songs of the Revolution. I gave the order to burn it. I thought the monks would come out, they had time to. But they didn't. Some of them stood in the doors and looked at us as they burned. But most just stayed inside, saying their mantras. For a long time we could hear them, louder than the roar of the flames. Afterwards we found the bodies in rows, because they had carefully sat in their sanctuary with their lamas facing them. Rows and rows, like a cemetery. We celebrated and sang our songs again. Three hundred forty-nine. The Chairman sent me a letter of commendation. It's how I got my first job in the Ministry. Because I had the letter from the Chairman. It just said I did a good job, that I was a model worker. It didn't say it was because I had killed three hundred forty-nine monks."
Shan had no words. A history teacher had once told him that the only problem with modern China was that people lived too long, that too many millions lived to old age, when they began to cultivate a conscience. For Xu the nightmares had come early, and her conscience had trapped her. It's not like that, she had said of the Lotus Book. Meaning, It was like that, but now I am a different person. She was as surely a prisoner as those she sent behind wire, self-exiled in the borderlands where she thought she might make a difference.
She seemed not to notice when he rose and climbed the stairs. He passed the car without looking at the bald man at the wheel and walked back to town, the wind throwing sand across the road, his soul so heavy he thought he might never hear a bell again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sand blew down the streets of Yoktian, obscuring their broken curbs and other imperfections, blurring the cracks in the walls. It was as if the entire town had been airbrushed for a cleaner, more wholesome image. Perhaps on the general's orders. But Shan was not fooled. There were still holes in the street that would break your ankle and fissures in the walls where rats waited.
A cargo truck was at the rear of the restaurant when Shan arrived. Gendun and Lokesh were asleep in the front room under two tables that had been pushed together, as if the Maos expected an earthquake. Jowa sat beside them, lotus fashion, watching them. As the stout woman extended a mug of tea and a bowl of noodles toward him, the truck's engine started.
"Rice camp," she said in response to his look of query, and he bolted out the door, jumping into the cargo bay so quickly that he did not realize until he sat down that the tea was still in his hand.
Fat Mao, sitting in the shadows behind the cab, was not happy to see him. A quick trip, he said, to pick up the order for the next week's food delivery, although Shan knew better. They were going because of Red Stone clan, because the next afternoon the clan would be disbanded, because Akzu and Fat Mao had a plan they would not explain. But Shan did not care. He was going for the waterkeeper. There was nothing else to do except wait for the dawn, wait for the meeting at Stone Lake, for the final confrontation where the killers would come to collect their last prize, where Shan had to be before the knobs, to whisk the boy away if he and the herders guarding him eluded the Maos, who would be trying to intercept the boy on the roads leading to Stone Lake.
The adminstrative compound at Glory Camp was deserted. The gatehouse itself was empty and the gate locked. But Ox Mao climbed out of the driver's seat and quickly unlocked the padlock. They parked by the warehouse and a woman followed the big Kazakh out of the front seat- Swallow Mao, wearing a severe-looking business suit. The woman carried a large envelope and marched toward the administrative building with an air of authority.
Shan stood by the inner wire, studying the barracks with the holding cells, inside the prisoner compound. He had no plan, no idea, no confirmation even that the lama was in the barracks. Even if Swallow Mao could find his hut assignment the Maos could not risk entering the second wire, which was where the real security started. He bent to a small clump of dried asters that had managed to survive in the sandy soil at the base of the inner wire. Plucking one of the stems, Shan tied it to the wire at the closest point to the holding cells. Maybe, he thought sadly, he had come just to say goodbye. The old Tibetan would not last long once Bao, or Rongqi, discovered he was a lama. He looked back at the administrative building and slowly, reluctantly, turned his head toward the small shed where he had found Nikki, then the boilerhouse.
He started walking, without conscious effort, and found himself under the boilerhouse roof. From twenty feet away he could feel the heat of the furnace and he stood there, the image of the spirited blond youth by the boiler door burning through his mind. Not much older than his own son. He walked out the far side of the building and stopped at the edge of the cemetery. In the dim light of the cloud-covered moon the graves seemed endless. With small, uncertain steps he started toward the far end, where the freshest mounds of earth had been.
Then he saw the animal. A low shadowy hulk, it moved along the graves as though following a scent. Shan looked down for a spade, a stick, anything he might use as a weapon. The creature lingered at one of the freshly dug piles of earth. With a pang of fear Shan wondered what he would do if it began to dig for the dead. Scavengers preferred rotten meat. Feebly, he stepped forward. The beast paid him no attention. It pawed idly at the earth in long motions that gave the impression of a great and reckless power.
After a moment the animal leaned back and sat up on its rear haunches. As the moon appeared from behind a cloud Shan gave a half-choked cry. The animal was Marco Myagov.
He stood in silence for a long time before venturing a step forward. Marco tensed and seemed about to pounce on him, then eased back as he recognized Shan. Shan spoke no word of greeting but instead began to range among the graves himself, surveying the mounds, trying to remember how they had looked on his first visit. After a few minutes he stopped at a group of three fresh graves. "Here," he said. "This is where he would be."
Marco seemed to require great effort to rise. He wiped his hands, caked with soot and the dirt of the cemetery, and joined Shan.
"He is-" Shan struggled to find words. "He is with many good men." Despite their miserable deaths in a forgotten wasteland, many of those laid to rest before them were men who defied the dictators, who had been true to their beliefs.
Marco gave no sign he had heard Shan's words.
"I thought you were-" Shan offered tentatively. "I saw the flames, I thought you had died." What if this was not Marco, he thought with alarm, what if it was some frail shadow of Marco, some wraith left after he had lost his soul that night?
But then the man spoke, and Shan sighed with relief. "She burned," Marco said in a hoarse voice. "God's breath, how she burned."
"But why are you-"
"I have had talking to do with my Nikki."
"Then what?" Shan asked after a moment.
"I told you before. I get bastards. It's what I do."
The words somehow made Shan sad. "They need you. The Americans still have to get out. They're in great danger."
Marco looked at Shan, with an expression of confusion, as if he had not thought of it before.
"They'll kill you here. There're soldiers. You won't have a chance."
Marco did not reply. He selected the middle of the two graves and sat on the earth by it, then patted the soil beside him as though gesturing for Shan to join him. Shan knelt by the end of the mound.
"I would not fear to stay here with Nikki," the Eluosi said, almost brightl
y. "I have nothing left. I have no country. I have no family. I have no home."
"But what would Sophie do without you?"
Marco's eyes rested on a patch in the darkness, in the shadows of the knoll by the camp. He sighed heavily and pulled something out of his pocket. In the moonlight Shan recognized it. The Russian medal he had seen in Nikki's room. The medal from the Czar.
Marco scooped loose soil from the head of the grave and buried the medal, then spoke in Russian for a long time, looking first at the grave, then at the sky.
When he finished Marco shifted his gaze toward the compound. His eyes had a new, sharp glint, a warrior's eyes. Suddenly he rose and began jogging toward the boilerhouse.
By the time Shan caught up, he was at the open boiler, rapidly shoveling in coal. He motioned toward the loaded barrow at the front of the shed, and Shan pushed it toward him. Soon the boiler was packed with fuel, almost overflowing with coal. The heat was nearly unbearable before Marco closed the door. The Eluosi darted to the tool bench and returned with a long spike and a pair of pliers. He jammed the spike through the holes designed to hold a padlock on the door when not in use, and bent both ends so the door could not be opened. He quickly studied the simple controls above the door, then shut off the relief valve, opened the air intake to maximum, and smashed the temperature warning gauge. He turned away, then paused and turned back, pulling something out of his pocket and placing it on the top of the door. Shan recognized it. The plain steel ring that Nikki had worn.
There was no point in protesting, no way to stop what Marco had set into motion, no possibility of asking the Maos to stay and find the waterkeeper in the chaos that was to follow. If any of them were found near the camp they would probably be held, even summarily shot, for committing sabotage.
The Maos were waiting at the truck. Shan stared into the inner wire once more, and sighed.
"I'm sorry, Johnny, Marco said. It's what I do. Now go. Go quickly."
The Maos were ready when he returned. He said nothing about the boiler until several minutes after they had left the gate. Fat Mao listened, then rapped on the window and Ox Mao slowed the truck. Just as he rolled down his window to speak, an explosion shook the valley. The truck rocked. A boulder on the slope above dislodged and rolled past them. Ox Mao accelerated up the hill at the end of the valley and stopped the truck. They could see the camp clearly, no more than three miles away. Huge flames reached into the night sky. The boilerhouse and warehouse were engulfed in flames. Burning debris could be seen blowing across the compound. Moments later the administration building began to burn.
Thirty minutes later the Maos were pacing anxiously around their cellar, arguing among themselves, offering plans and rejecting them, suggesting what the knobs and Brigade might do next, seeming to make themselves more nervous with each suggestion. Fat Mao kept reminding them that the Red Stone clan was being processed for dispersion within hours and now their plan was impossible. Ox Mao said they should be celebrating. Swallow Mao sat at the table, staring at the blank computer screen.
Shan watched for a quarter hour from his seat on the stairs, then took a stool at the table. "Your plan. If it is impossible now, then you can tell me what it was. I know it had to do with trucks, like the one Red Stone tried to steal."
Fat Mao frowned but shrugged and explained. The herds were being shipped to the north, in four big livestock trucks. All of the personnel assignments were finalized- the Kazakhs were to go to towns, to Brigade factories, mostly. Swallow had obtained all the details from the Brigade computers. Mao drivers had been arranged for the four trucks. "But the trick was this," the Uighur said. "Truckloads of livestock are sold by the Brigade to Kazakhstan all the time. A dozen trucks are booked to go across the Kazakh border this week, west on the highway to Alma Ata. Swallow got the shipment numbers, the travel permit numbers, which have all been approved and processed. The border guards have the numbers, for verification. Jowa helped us plan everything. Tonight Swallow put in a new disc, for when the office opens tomorrow. Swallow's name will not be attached to any file. Some other clerk will get the file and transmit the travel confirmations to the Brigade headquarters. The four Red Stone trucks will be cleared by the computers to go to Kazakhstan. Those four will arrive at the depot that is receiving the Red Stone sheep, because Mao drivers will take them."
"And when the trucks leave with the sheep, the clan will be with them."
Fat Mao shrugged. "It's a small clan. There's land in Kazakhstan for those displaced from China. They will get new pastures, with other Kazakhs."
"But trucks get inspected. First the papers are checked, then the cargo is checked."
"Which is why timing was so important. Border guards get bribed all the time. At a certain time two days from now a certain guard sergeant was going to be in charge of inspecting four trucks. He would handle the clearances himself. The papers would be fine, he just won't look at the cargo. He's used to black market goods. Marco recommended him."
"Except now the data won't get sent because the disc burned in the fire," Shan said.
"All they can do now is take their factory jobs and hope we can find some other way later."
Shan studied the faces of the Maos. The excitement that had been there when they first saw the flames of Glory Camp had been replaced with expressions of defeat.
"The copies of records from Glory Camp," Shan said to Swallow Mao. "Do you have the cemetery records?"
She nodded slowly.
He turned to Fat Mao. "Can you get money? Maybe four Panda coins."
The Uighur nodded. "We use them with people across the border. They all prefer to deal in gold."
Shan quickly outlined his plan. "The only problem," he concluded with a sober tone, "is that Akzu and the others, they all have to die." Marco would take the Kazakhs out with the Americans, with four more gold Pandas for four more boats. The difficulty was that the Brigade couldn't know, Rongqi couldn't allow anyone to think the Kazahks could defy the Poverty Eradication Scheme. So the names and identity numbers for the Red Stone members would be switched with the names and identity numbers of long-dead prisoners. Recordkeeping would be chaotic in the aftermath of the fire, Swallow Mao confirmed. An emergency operations center would be created, and she would be assigned there, giving her a chance to replace the cemetery records with the new disc. The Kazakhs would have officially disappeared. And the records would be changed to show that the correct number of names were transported with the others as part of Rongqi's program, transferred onto Brigade factory headcounts. In his Beijing career Shan had investigated more than one government factory system where favors were distributed in the form of payroll identity numbers for nonexistent employees, since managers could keep the wages and no one would complain. It took no stretch of imagination to believe that Rongqi already distributed patronage in the form of such profitable ghosts.
The Maos debated the risks for nearly an hour, then Swallow chided them all. "The biggest risk is mine," she announced and sat at the computer with a new set of discs. A moment later the Glory Camp cemetery list was on the screen, then the list of Red Stone clan members assigned to the Poverty Scheme. They watched as she began tapping the keys, and one by one the members of Red Stone clan were buried at Glory Camp.
***
When they arrived at Stone Lake just after dawn, a silver camel stood in the shadow of the long dune that ran along the western edge of the bowl, beside a large shape under a blanket. They let Marco sleep and sat thirty feet away, near the top of the dune, three hundred yards from where the road led into the camp. Fat Mao had brought them and offered to stay, looking toward a toolbox in back of the truck. Shan had seen the cold anger that had settled over him and suspected the box contained weapons. He asked the Uighur to leave.
"You need a plan, in case the boy makes it here and the knobs come," Fat Mao protested.
Shan stared at him for a moment. "The boy won't come here because the Maos will find him first."
"There'
s been no sign of him. Those dropka he's with, they're like wild animals. Stealthy. We may not intercept them."
Shan sighed. "Then everyone will flee with the boy and the Jade Basket," he said quietly, so only the Uighur could hear. "I will distract any knobs who come."
"Distract?"
"There is something else Bao wants in addition to the gau or the Americans."
Fat Mao studied him a moment. "You."
Shan shrugged.
"Not everyone has to be a victim," the Uighur said with a frown. "Not every time." There was frustration in his voice and, oddly, a tone of apology.
"Look for the boy for another hour," Shan said, "then go to Red Stone clan. They need you today too."
Fat Mao frowned again, then turned and left.
The last day had arrived, the day Rongqi and Ko had dreamed of, the final implementation of the Poverty Eradication Scheme. Akzu had to be found and told of the new plan. The Red Stone herds had to be surrendered, with their tents and everything else being taken over by the Brigade. For the only way for the clan to be free, and together, was to give up everything in life they had valued, except life itself.
Gendun laid back on the sand and exclaimed over the shapes of the clouds. Lokesh, as he had countless times before, laid out the possessions of the Yakde Lama and studied each one. They had all their bags, ready to leave for Tibet. Shan pulled out their old pair of binoculars and cleaned the lenses on his shirt, then handed them to Jowa, who crawled to the top of the dune and began to watch.
After an hour Jowa whistled. Kaju had appeared, walking alone down the road. They lay on the sand behind the crest of the dune and watched as he stopped at the building skeleton that swayed in the wind, tied something to one corner post, then tightened it and secured it to another post. A string of Buddhist prayer flags, the flags, Shan suspected, from Lau's office.
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