Prayer of the Dragon (23 page)

A thick reference book was slid across the table to him. Pages were marked with tabs of paper.

“Cancer,” Gao declared. “These are drugs for someone who is in the advanced stages of cancer.”

A new ache entered Shan’s heart. He slowly opened the book and scanned the marked pages. “Could they be for something else?”

“No. They are highly specialized, very expensive. Not usually available in China,” he added pointedly. “In this combination they have no other purpose. Drugs like these forestall the cancer from debilitating the body until it is in the final stage.”

Shan stared without focusing, twisting the pencil that remained in his hand, reconsidering everything that had happened to Hostene: his coma, his fatigue, his having been passed over by the killer. The wise old Navajo, who reminded him so much of Lokesh, was dying, and, worse, knew he was dying. Shan’s confusion and sorrow took him to a dark, unfamiliar place, until suddenly the pencil broke and he snapped out of his trance.

“The motion detectors,” he whispered at last, “how do they work?”

“Infrared heat signatures,” Gao replied. “Solar powered cells with transmitters, all wireless.”

“Where does the data go?”

“It is transmitted to the computer in my office and stored on the disc drive.”

Five minutes later they sat at a small table in Gao’s office, fast-forwarding through data from the prior twenty-four hours, watching the movement of vague yellow shapes across the screen as numbers indicating the time of transmission scrolled across the bottom left corner. The smallest blotches of color were the little creatures that nested on the rocky slope. Bigger patches of color were humans, although Gao had been warned by the soldiers to disregard patches that appeared at dawn and dusk in and out of certain rock formations, which represented groups of pikas entering and leaving their nests. “Sometimes false positives occur,” he told Shan.

Gao pointed to a big shape moving up the slope from the house. “Kohler going hunting,” he said, then indicated the two shapes that represented Shan and Hostene arriving that morning. They watched movements back and forth from the house. “Thomas helps the housekeeper bring in supplies. In the summer dry goods are kept in the old granary.”

Shan noted the times of the movements to and from the little building. “Does Thomas go only around meal times?”

“Heinz and I made him responsible for keeping an inventory, a serious job since we can’t run out to a shop when we’re out of a necessity.”

“You could always call Public Security for salt and rice,” Shan observed. He was still resentful of what Gao was.

“The Party secretary would respond immediately,” Gao replied in a stiff tone. “But regional commanders are not always as accommodating.”

Shan stared at the screen as the display of the data entries finished, then asked Gao to run them again. He had missed the quick blurs of color on the upper left corner of the field on the first run-through but noted them on the second. He asked Gao for one more replay. A glow that, though fleeting, indicated a human, reappeared.

Gao took Shan to the main entrance and pointed out the location of the scanners. Shan noted blind spots; infrared light did not register through rocks. There were a lot of low spines of stone along which someone could have crawled undetected. Shan pointed out where the unknown intruder could have circled the house.

“Could it have been someone from the village?”

“No. They are not welcome here,” Gao replied.

“But they do come. Bearing gifts.”

“Nothing I ask for. That fool Chodron arrives every spring, kowtowing, bringing me tokens. I think he believes he keeps the soldiers away by doing so.”

“But recently he sent you something else. A gold beetle.”

“He sought my help in removing some intruders from the mountain,” Gao said. “I declined to get involved.” He studied the screen again.

“Could it be the guards?” Shan asked.

“No. They usually come twice a day, check the system, then walk around the perimeter of the house, and leave. I sent them away until tomorrow. If they knew a foreigner was here, so close to the base, it could be”—he paused to select a word—“problematic.” Gao frowned, stared at the now blank screen, then walked to his office window. Someone seemed to be watching his house. Someone who, knowing that the scanners were operating, was using the cover of the rocks to come and go, leaving only the most slender traces.

“Why did this American come here if he is dying?” the physicist asked after a moment.

“Perhaps to prove he is still alive,” Shan suggested.

But Gao answered his own question. “How many places on the planet are so completely removed from the eyes of any authority? Surely there are no more left in America.”

“Hostene did not come to Tibet to commit a crime.”

“We know he has already committed crimes. He achieved admission to the country under false pretenses, no doubt involving a lie on his visa application. He’s trespassing in a restricted region. We know he is a criminal, even if we don’t know the full list of his crimes.”

“I trust him.”

Gao stared at Shan, and shook his head in disappointment. “You live in a fairy tale, Shan. You will have to grow out of it.”

Shan searched Gao’s face. Another time he might have taken the remark as a bitter joke. But now Shan saw no mockery in Gao’s expression, which seemed to reflect his own sorrow.

“
You
live a fairy-tale life, Gao,” he echoed. “A make-believe existence in a make-believe castle. You know you will have to grow out of it.”

Shan had been slapped in the face by such men for much less. But Gao merely left the room. Shan stared at the screen again, glanced at the door, then quickly closed the program, and scanned the pile of papers in the tray beside the fax machine. Thomas had sent several messages to Beijing recently, each confirming that he had dispatched a new package of evidence—photos, fingerprints, and, later, fibers from the bloody cloth stuffed in the mouth of one of the victims.

Shan found Gao at the telescope, gazing at the distant nest of vultures. “I’m worried about Albert,” Gao said. “He leans out of the nest too far. He does not have his flight feathers yet.”

“Before you learn to fly,” Shan observed, “you must learn to fear.”

Gao continued to study the young birds of prey. “We can take a day or two and delay sending Hostene away,” he said. “It would give me time to get a doctor to look at him. Neither of us wants him to die while he is on this mountain.”

“If he dies on this mountain,” Shan replied, “it will not be from cancer.”

Gao shrugged and stepped toward his sand garden below. “For now we shall let sleeping Americans lie.”

But Shan couldn’t let things rest. He found the Navajo’s pack and recharged the battery of the video camera. He had spent a quarter hour reviewing Abigail’s videos when Thomas appeared from the kitchen, carrying an empty basket, wearing a black linen shirt. “Let’s discuss the evidence,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “After I finish my chores,” he added.

Shan hurried to Hostene’s side and shook him, gesturing for him to keep silent. He lifted the camera and pointed to a long silver object lying on a rock. “Whose is that?” he asked in a whisper.

“Tashi’s,” Hostene said with a yawn. “His pen case. He kept little drawings and things in it. You woke me up for that?”

“No,” Shan replied. “You must come with me to the granary,” he said urgently.

Hostene stretched. “That old stone ruin? Why?”

“Because of a ghost in the motion detectors,” Shan said. “And because Thomas put on a clean shirt to go get groceries.”

Chapter Seven

THEY APPROACHED THE granary as they had before, running together from rock to rock, using the shadows for cover until they reached the plank door of the low stone structure. If Gao happened to open the monitoring program, he might assume the movement on the screen was caused by Thomas. Shan glanced at the padlock that hung open from the door’s hasp and peered inside. He saw a second door beyond a stack of rice and onion sacks, on top of which sat a small lantern. There was no sign of Thomas. He withdrew, whispered to Hostene, then both men slipped around the side of the structure.

Thomas emerged fifteen minutes later, setting his basket, now filled with foodstuffs, on a rock in front of the door before he turned to fasten the padlock.

“Did you know the miners tried to kill us yesterday?” Shan asked as he came around the corner.

For a moment Thomas looked as if he was going to attack Shan. Then he shrugged. “That Bing,” the youth said, “he tells people that they should still consider him to be Public Security, but without all the red tape.”

“They’re not hard to beat, Thomas,” Shan observed, pointing to the nearest motion detector. “By shifting each a quarter turn you could create a corridor where they are blind. Or if you set a lighted candle in front of one, you blind that sensor.”

Thomas cast an uncertain glance toward Shan. Then, acting on Shan’s suggestion, he began turning the little metal box. Shan sensed Hostene behind him, going inside. Thomas paused, as if he too had sensed something. They heard a low moan from within the building.

Thomas sagged, and for a moment looked as if he was about to flee. “You tricked me,” he said, wounded.

The sounds from inside turned to muffled cries of joy, then a low, feminine sobbing.

Thomas lowered himself onto a rock. “You wouldn’t believe what she knows about rock and roll,” he said. “She drives a car with satellite radio. It receives two hundred fifty stations. She says when I finish in Beijing she’ll help me gain admission to a graduate program in America.”

Shan gave Hostene five more minutes. Inside, Abigail Natay was crying on her uncle’s shoulder. She scrubbed away her tears with the sleeve of her denim shirt and extended a hand to Shan, shyly smiling. “Some of the old Tibetans have told me there are things too important to be put into mere words,” she said in a voice husky with emotion. “I guess one of those would be how I feel about your bringing my uncle back from the dead.”

A remarkable opening from a stranger, Shan thought. But she wasn’t a stranger, he reminded himself. She was the familiar image on the video camera screen. He self-consciously accepted her hand. “The old Tibetans would say he still has a destiny in this incarnation,” he said.

Abigail replied, “Your mountain is the most beautiful and terrifying place I have ever known.”

“One thing I have not been able to figure out,” Shan replied, “is just whose mountain this is.” He almost added that sometimes it seemed that if he could only solve that mystery all the others would fall into place.

Hostene and his niece began speaking, sometimes reverting to their native tongue. Abigail showed her uncle the cozy nest of blankets among the stores of supplies where Thomas had hidden her in the inner chamber. A blue nylon backpack lying open near the door revealed a small digital camera, a plastic bag of toiletries, and half a dozen ketaan sticks.

Thomas, downcast and silent, ventured into the granary and settled onto a wooden crate near Shan. “You tricked me,” he repeated.

“
You
tricked all of us,” Shan rejoined.

Thomas clasped his hands together and stared at them.

Strangely, Shan felt sorry for the youth. “I still need to review your investigation notes,” he ventured, “and I still need to hear how you met her, and when. Was it with Rapaki?”

“I take things to him. Uncle Heinz thinks he’s a good-luck charm, like when a singing bird nests in your eaves. We communicate in pantomime, since I know no Tibetan.”

Shan paused. “But you speak English with Abigail?”

“Sure. Anyway, I saw him a month ago and pulled out a box of sweet biscuits to give him. He started waving in another direction, singing one of his songs. He was showing me Abigail coming up the trail. Like some kind of goddess. Who would have thought of seeing someone like her on this mountain?”

“Then you’d met her before the murders?”

Thomas nodded. “But she won’t speak about them. Maybe knowing her uncle is alive will make a difference.”

Shan asked, “Did you see her this morning?”

“Early this morning, on the way to Little Moscow.”

“You ran away from there to warn her?”

The youth nodded again. “You made sure all of the miners knew she was still alive,” Thomas pointed out.

Shan studied him, worried now. “You mean you’re convinced the killer was there, among the miners?”

“He must be,” Thomas said. “At least that’s my hypothesis. I need a credible theory or my project is a failure.”

Tears starting flowing down Abigail’s cheek as she uttered two names: Tashi and Dr. Ma. She leaned against Hostene’s shoulder again, then gasped as she gazed past Shan.

A figure had materialized in the doorway. Kohler’s hunting rifle was cradled in one of Gao’s arms, and he held one of the small radio units he used to summon soldiers from below. His face, which had at first displayed a mixture of emotions, now showed cold anger. As he neared his nephew, Abigail stepped between Gao and Thomas. “I asked him to hide me,” she said in a level voice in English. “He said he had a safe place where I could rest for a while. I said I would go only if I could remain invisible. He was trying to help me, to protect me.”

Gao studied the Navajo woman in silence, taking in her heavy hiking boots, her scuffed blue jeans, the belt pack from which ink pens protruded, the turquoise pendant hanging from her neck on a silver chain, her long braided hair, her dark, intelligent eyes, full of challenge. “Invisible?”

“I have to finish my work, for which I must stay on the western slope without being noticed.”

Gao looked past the American woman to his nephew. “You deceived us, Thomas,” he said. “You have stolen from me and from the government, which pays for everything here. For what, to be a black marketeer? To disgrace us and never be allowed back to the university?”

Abigail looked from Gao to Thomas, her quick, bright eyes taking everything in. “It was for me,” she declared. “The murderer took all my food supplies. I will gladly pay you back.”

Gao’s steady gaze shifted from his nephew to Abigail. “You misunderstand me. I refer to the goods he has been
selling
on the other side,” he said. Thomas cast a confused glance at Shan then, understanding, shut his eyes. There was only one way Gao could have found this out. Thomas’s other uncle had told him. Gao, still gazing at the Navajo woman, suddenly became self-conscious about the rifle. He lowered it, putting it behind him. “We have not been properly introduced, Miss Natay.”

“You are Gao Hu Bo, the most famous phantom physicist on the planet.”

Gao seemed unable to restrain his lips from momentarily curling upward. He glanced back at Thomas. “This must stop,” he said to the youth. “Everything. Keep up the playacting and I will arrange for a sergeant the size of a yak to escort you back to Beijing.” He bowed slightly to Abigail and Hostene. “If it is not inconvenient we will dine in thirty minutes. Enough time for a hot shower if you like,” he added to Abigail. Then, still awkwardly keeping the gun out of sight, he gestured Thomas and Shan to the door.

ABIGAIL WAS RADIANT when she walked into the candlelit dining room, greeting her uncle with another long embrace and affectionate words in their tribal tongue, smiling at Shan, then asking a surprised Gao where the altar had been in the old dzong before it was converted since, as all Tibetans knew, such places had been garrisoned by warrior monks. She guided the conversation as if she were a hostess to old friends, expressing her regret at not meeting Thomas’s German uncle, entrancing Gao by describing a workshop she had once attended on the cultural aspects of space travel—Russians always insisted on bringing some form of borscht into space, Americans always wanted more privacy in the living quarters. She looked forward to seeing what the Chinese would introduce to the mélange. Gao was fascinated by the theories behind Abigail’s work on the mountain, though quick to point out what a simple thing it should be to compare the writings, the social structure, the dress, and even architecture of the two peoples.

“By definition, that is impossible,” Abigail explained. “The Tibetans became a sedentary civilization long ago. For thousands of years my people were nomads, until only two centuries ago. What I am trying to reconstruct is the prototype, the people who existed before the split, then postulate what would happen once they split, one developing printing, colleges, the substantial social structure that is possible in a fixed and fertile geography while the other, nomadic for centuries, was unable to develop printed books or even a written language, unable to develop a substantial social structure beyond the family unit because they never stayed in one place long enough. It is as if a planet left the gravitational field of a solar system. How do you prove the lost planet once belonged to it?”

Gao seemed to be in his element, offering other analogies from the physical sciences, observing the coincidence that both peoples had settled on the highest plateaus of their respective continents.

“So you are building a model of the Tibetans ten or fifteen thousand years ago,” Shan recapitulated.

“Exactly. Professor Ma and I were developing one. The original people were fierce soldiers. They were deeply philosophical. They were resourceful, adapting to severe environments, and not just in a physical sense. They interacted with earth and sky in a primal way.”

“Spirit warriors,” Shan suggested.

Abigail nodded. “You begin to understand,” she said, and described the reasons she suspected the early Tibetans did not distinguish between physical and spiritual endurance.

Gao studied them both with an expression of curiosity, then excused himself for a moment, bringing back a small cardboard box. “I believe this belongs to you,” he told Abigail.

It was the golden beetle. Abigail, unable to contain her gratitude, grabbed Gao’s hand in both of hers and, as he blushed, pumped it up and down. She explained that it was a family heirloom, a protective charm made by a Spanish artisan for an ancestor who was one of her people’s holy men in the eighteenth century, handed down to his daughter and the first daughter of each generation thereafter. To daughters, because the Navajo were a matriarchal society and the corn beetle was a symbol of fertility.

As Thomas asked to examine the beetle Abigail praised him as demonstrating the intellectual energy of a great scientist in the making. “I have no doubt he saved my life,” she said.

“He’s a student, Miss Natay,” Gao said in a polite voice. “In China there are far too few universities of the first rank. If he engages in questionable conduct he will be banned. There are a thousand other qualified students waiting for his place.”

“She says she can help me to qualify for university in America,” Thomas blurted out.

Gao ignored his nephew. “Thomas has a great career ahead of him after he settles down. Heinz and I have conquered the mysteries of the earth. Thomas will conquer mysteries off the earth. I have decided to remove him from the temptations he has here. I am sending him to Beijing. I spoke to his parents this evening.”

The color drained from Thomas’s face as he stared at his uncle. “But you said you would give me another chance,” he protested.

“I reconsidered. I began to realize how many lies you must have told us. You stood in front of us and lied about Miss Natay going to Tashtul. Your uncle Heinz has been put to a lot of trouble to find her.”

“But it was to protect me,” Abigail said.

Gao ignored her. “Thomas has been crossing over the mountain frequently, deceiving us, knowing we forbid it, telling me he is looking at wildlife.”

Shan considered the words a moment. Gao must have spoken on the phone with Kohler, now in Tashtul. “Thomas could be useful here,” Shan interjected. “He is helping us discover the murderers of Tashi and Dr. Ma.”

“The truth stares you in the face.” Gao’s patience was wearing thin. “But you refuse to accept it because it is so mundane. The killers were miners. They are greedy, opportunistic creatures, rats that salivate as soon as a bell is rung. Was there ever any doubt as to what would become of wealthy strangers who stumbled into their lair? Every one of them is a criminal by definition. I am sorry, but the moment word spread that you were trespassers without protection, your party was doomed. Once they knew no one would miss you, no one would complain of your absence, your fate was sealed.”

“We’re not wealthy,” Hostene interjected.

“To people like these, all foreigners are wealthy. You became a target the moment you set foot on the mountain. Your companions should have known better, and they paid for the mistake with their lives. Americans are notorious for not taking no for an answer. But it’s finished. Go home. When you think of your tragedy in the future tell yourself it was an attack by wild animals. An accident of nature.”

A brittle silence fell over the table.