Prayer of the Dragon (25 page)

SUDDENLY HE NOTICED the gibbous moon high overhead. Hours had passed. Inside, the tower was still, lit only by dim bulbs along the stairwell. Hostene’s door, previously closed, was ajar. Shan pushed it open, confirming that the Navajo still slept soundly. But on top of one of his boots was a slip of paper.

Shan hesitated, then with a pang of guilt lifted the paper and took it to the stairwell, where he held it under one of the bulbs. He read it once, then again. He sat down, blinking at the words, confusion burning away his fatigue as he read them over and over:

In Beauty before me I walk

In Beauty all around me I walk

It is finished in Beauty.

It seemed to take a long time for him to cross the room toward Hostene’s bed. He paused, listening to his friend’s peaceful breathing, gazing at the objects he held in his hands. He had removed the large feather from inside his vest, the feather he had brought from home, found a short stick, and tied the feather to it with thread taken from the sheet, inserting several smaller colorful feathers around the base of the larger one. Clasped in his fingers at the base of the feather stick was the small leather pouch Shan had seen hidden inside his vest. Devout Navajos, Hostene had told him, carried with them a pouch of soil from the Navajo sacred mountains.

With another stab of guilt Shan retreated into the stairwell. But then he read the note again, went back inside, and shook his friend’s shoulder. Hostene shot upright, squinting at Shan in the dim light.

“Get dressed,” Shan said, handing him the verse. “Abigail has gone back to the kora, to the path of the murderer.”

Outside, the motion detectors had been pushed over so that they faced the ground. The granary door had been left open. The pack that had contained Abigail’s field equipment was gone. Several cartons of canned goods had been ripped open and some of their contents removed.

“She wouldn’t steal,” Hostene said in a worried voice.

“What do they mean,” Shan asked, “the words she wrote?”

“They are from a prayer used by my people, for summoning the holy ones,” Hostene replied.

They moved quietly, pausing at every outcropping that offered cover, aware that Gao had promised to put a guard at the passage, not knowing how far in front of them Abigail was, but knowing that she was not alone. Thomas’s bedroom had been empty as well.

They waited for a cloud to cover the moon before they ventured to the last outcropping before the summit, then watched, waiting. As the moon reappeared, Hostene uttered a hoarse gasp and pointed to a shape lying beneath the cartoonlike painting of the Buddha. Shan thought it could be a rock at first, then saw the glow of teeth near the ground.

Hostene rushed forward. “My God!” he moaned. “What have they done?”

Shan’s stomach almost turned as he saw the small fleshy kernels oozing out of the soldier’s hairline. But then he sniffed. As he took the man’s pulse he noticed two cylinders lying on the ground. “It’s not what you think,” he explained to Hostene. “Someone threw cans of corn at him. One hit the rocks and exploded. He probably bent to investigate and was hit on the head with the second. But his pulse is strong.”

Hostene helped Shan to clean the man’s head and prop him up. Shan took the rifle that lay beside the soldier, removed the clip of bullets from the weapon, pulled the spare clips from the man’s belt, and threw them all high overhead, out of sight. Hostene removed a small, high-power flashlight from the soldier’s belt and switched it on. Together they entered the shadowy passage.

They moved quickly, both men stumbling frequently on the loose gravel underfoot, Hostene pausing sometimes to shine the light behind them, certain he heard sounds of pursuit.

When they reached patches of soil, Shan took the flashlight and examined the ground. The first prints, of Abigail’s boots, were single sets. A second set appeared later, often superimposed on the first. But after a mile the tracks proceeded side by side. Thomas had followed, then caught up with Abigail.

“He’s running away from his uncle,” Hostene said.

“Not exactly,” Shan replied. “Running away is part of it. But he could have gone in any direction, all of which would have been safer than this one. He followed her to protect her. A brave thing, considering he has seen the killer’s work up close.” Shan paused. “What is it, Hostene?” he asked. “Why is it so urgent for Abigail to complete her work on the other side?”

But Hostene didn’t answer as he passed Shan and entered the darkness.

The Navajo waited for Shan to cross the ladder bridge first, then began his transit, upright this time. He was nearly at the far end when he froze. An owl, the biggest Shan had yet seen on the mountain, came flying straight at him, nearly touching his scalp with its talons as it swooped by, then wheeled and returned in the direction from which it had come. Hostene began to lose his balance, his arms flailing the air, his body swaying, the flashlight flying out of his grip.

Shan darted back onto the ladder, grabbing Hostene’s arm an instant before it seemed he would surely fall onto the sharp rocks below. But as he did so, the dry old wood began to crack under their combined weight. When they reached the end of the ladder Shan pushed Hostene forward and leaped onto the rocks.

Hostene soon assumed the lead again, moving more rapidly, as if he sensed a destination close ahead. When they emerged from the cleft in the rock wall, the sky had taken on a bright predawn blush, lighting three lanky shapes lurking at an outcropping fifty yards away. The wolves were hesitant to leave, not reacting to the first stone Shan threw at them, only trotting away when both men moved closer and began pelting them with gravel.

As Shan watched, the animals stopped and looked back with fear in their eyes, not at him, but at the shadows beyond the outcropping.

It wasn’t fear Shan felt as he saw what lay behind the rocks, it wasn’t fear that sapped his strength so quickly that he fell to his knees. It was the black mood that had seized him the night before, his bleak despair now redoubled, hitting him like a club, roiling his stomach, numbing him.

Thomas had a slight grin on his face, frozen in place, as if he thought his assailant had been joking with him. His eyes stared vacantly into the dawn sky. A stream of blood trickled from his scalp, though it seemed unlikely the blow to the head had killed him, for the large pools of blood at the ends of his outstretched arms and the stains on the adjoining rocks showed that his heart had still been pumping when his hands were severed.

Chapter Eight

SHAN MEANT TO stop Hostene from entering the little rock-walled chamber but he was unable to make his body act. The old Navajo stood beside him uttering an anguished moan then, staggering, dropped onto a rock. When Shan was finally able to move, he looked up to see Hostene staring at the corpse, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

“Abigail,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“This time,” Shan said, “I think the killer did take her.” He gestured into the shadows where a pack of hair ties, a small battery, and a toothbrush lay on the ground. Someone had tipped over Abigail’s pack.

Hostene wiped his cheek. “We have to follow, quickly.”

“There will be no trail. And if he wanted her dead, she would be lying here beside Thomas. Can you find that cave again, Rapaki’s cave?” Hostene nodded. “Then you must go there and bring back Yangke, as fast as you can. But if you see any miners you must hide.”

Hostene nodded again. Before he left the rock circle he picked up Abigail’s toothbrush and pocketed it, then surveyed the sky, wary not of killers but of owls.

Swallowing his despair, Shan studied the scene, retracing the two sets of boot prints that led from the passage to the cluster of rocks. Abigail and Thomas had stopped, taken several small, shifting steps as if undecided about something, then walked straight to the rocks, as though someone had called them. While the killer was performing his grisly work, what had he done with Abigail? She owed Thomas a debt. Shan did not think she would have fled if she had seen him attacked. Had the killer knocked her unconscious, then bound and gagged her? Or had she been bound and gagged but awake, forced to watch as the killer stretched out each of Thomas’s arms and butchered him?

Shan fought down another wave of nausea, then forced himself to study the bloody stumps at the end of Thomas’s arms. The left had been taken off with one clean chop, the right with two, leaving an uneven line on the bone where the blade had stopped the first time. The edge of the blade had been chipped, which probably meant it was made of either cheap steel or old, brittle, forge-worked metal. The tight pattern of blood reached across the ground onto a rock five feet away, leaving no doubt that Thomas had been alive when his hands had been amputated. But even with such ghastly injuries, a youth in prime health might have survived. Shan bent over Thomas’s head, noting for the first time the burst capillaries in his corneas, the discoloration around his mouth. With another chill Shan looked back at the hair ties and the battery on the ground. He remembered seeing them in the granary. They had been in a plastic bag. The killer had been patient, proceeding as if he had all the time in the world. He had covered Thomas’s head with the bag and waited for the unconscious, bleeding youth to suffocate.

Shan’s legs became weak twigs. He lowered himself onto the ground, staring, unfocused, at the boy. Thomas had been so alive, so full of defiance and ambition, much like Shan’s own son. He had been beaten down, had reacted by fleeing, escorting his new American patron to the deadly side of the mountain. Only the day before his uncle had told him he was finished with his childhood.

When Shan finally found the strength to rise, he walked in ever-widening circles around the site of the murder, eventually finding the plastic bag tucked into a crack in a large boulder. Except for a few drops of blood in a line leading up the slope there were no tracks, no evidence of the direction the killer had taken, no sign at all of Abigail Natay. Thomas and Abigail had been doomed the moment they had stepped out of the narrow passage. But how did the killer know they were on their way through the passage? No one should have expected them, they were meant never to return to the western slope again. But the miners had been prowling, filled with blood lust. A miner from Little Moscow could have been there, waiting for Shan and Hostene. Thomas might have been his poor second choice, when his intended targets did not appear. But the hands! Even if a miner seeking revenge had severed the hands, surely he would not have taken them away.

The ledges of rock would have afforded an untraceable route for anyone leaving the scene. The short line of blood, probably drops from the severed hands, led upward toward the miles of rugged, undulating terrain that rose toward the summit.

Gravel rattled behind him. Shan spun about to see Yangke, slowing from a frantic pace, bent over, hands on knees, panting.

“You have to go to the village, to Chodron,” Shan said.

“I’d rather seek a pack of wolves.”

Shan’s reply was to gesture toward the outcropping. “The bridge ladder is gone. Even if it were still there, we couldn’t carry a body across it.”

Yangke’s eyes filled with pain. Shan did not follow him into the circle of boulders but waited, watching the slopes, wondering what reason a man could have for collecting human hands on Sleeping Dragon Mountain. When the Tibetan finally reappeared his face was drained of color. He walked as if the canque were on his neck once more. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Gao boy. This is the end of everything. The army will take over both sides of the mountain now.”

“Go. Tell Chodron who the victim is. Tell him to send four men with a blanket and two poles, for a stretcher. Tell him to reach Professor Gao on his radio, but only Gao, no one from down below. Gao should bring a helicopter to Drango in”—Shan did some quick mental calculations—“six hours’ time. I will go to the cave for Lokesh.”

Yangke glanced forlornly back toward the body. “There’s no point. You should run. Get your friends and flee. I remember hearing about a Chinese prince, centuries ago. He was murdered in a village somewhere. The emperor couldn’t tell who was responsible so he had everyone in the village killed. Whoever murdered Thomas has killed us all.” Yangke looked longingly toward the wild mountains to the south, where a man could lose himself, then back at Shan. He began to trot down the trail toward Drango village.

IT WAS A slow, silent procession. Four men carried Thomas’s body tied to the makeshift stretcher, Shan and Yangke alternately bearing Lokesh on their backs. Even Chodron was pale and subdued when he met them at the top of the fields. He ignored Shan who was walking beside the stretcher. He had arranged a plank table by one of the stone granaries and covered it with a piece of black felt.

The headman did not object when Shan and Lokesh headed toward the stall where Gendun remained under guard. The lama appeared to be reading the unbound sheets of a text propped before him on a milking stool. But he was not reading, only staring at them, unfocused, one hand trembling uncontrollably. He was propped up with rolled blankets, as Hostene had been when Shan first saw him. Shan had never seen Gendun look so frail. After an earlier dose of tamzing torture this sometimes happened. It had taken time for the damage to manifest itself.

Lokesh touched the lama on the knee. Gendun slowly came to his senses, raising his head with what seemed great effort. “Dolma visits me,” he reported, his voice thin but steady. “Yesterday we polished the prayer wheels in the temple.” Shan and Lokesh exchanged an alarmed glance.

“Rinpoche!”
Shan cried, using the term for a revered teacher as he touched Gendun’s hand. The lama did not respond, did not even seem to take notice when Shan pushed up his sleeve. Shan’s heart lurched as he saw the marks—new bruises and electrical burns. He had thrown away the battery but Chodron still had his generator.

Lokesh fell into the quiet rhythm of a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha. Gendun’s lips moved but his eyes were empty. Shan found his own lips mouthing the words as he fought to control the flood of emotion, first anger then deep helplessness. He could do nothing. The more he protested, the worse it would be for Gendun. He heard a dull, staccato rumble overhead. By the time he reached the landing circle the helicopter was on the ground and Gao stood before the makeshift bier. He examined his dead nephew without expression, then somberly studied those who had gathered around the table.

Shan did not move when Gao reached him, did not react when Gao, his face like a gray mask, raised his hand and slapped him. He stood still as a post when the scientist slapped him again harder, a third time still harder. Finally, Gao broke away and disappeared behind the granary. Chodron dispersed the crowd as Shan helped two soldiers wrap Thomas’s body in the black cloth and carry it into the still-whining helicopter. When Shan descended another soldier was there, holding a set of manacles. Shan silently extended his hands and watched without expression as the soldier locked them around his wrists and walked away. The villagers stared at him, stepping fearfully aside when, like a dutiful prisoner, he followed the soldier with the key. No one met his eyes. He had been claimed by the government and, with the final snap of the steel bracelets, had become nobody. He was a number again, nothing more.

The soldier led him to Gao, now seated on the same flat rock Lokesh had been perched on when Shan first arrived in the village. Gao’s face was gaunt, no expression, not even sadness in his eyes.

“When Public Security comes,” Shan said, “they will sweep the slopes and arrest everyone. There will be forced confessions. A heavy price will be exacted.”

“Listen to you.” Though Gao’s face seemed numb, his voice overflowed with bitterness. “Suddenly, the careful politician.”

“Leave the village alone. These people suffer enough.”

“But you told me before, they tortured your lama, they were going to kill Hostene. Why should you care?”

“Even so . . .” Shan didn’t finish the sentence. He lowered himself onto the rock beside Gao. It was a quiet season for Public Security, and their Ax to Root campaign still needed to gain momentum. There was not a shadow of doubt that once senior officials outside Chodron’s sphere caught scent of Drango, the village would be obliterated. There would be photographers, perhaps even a film crew, certainly speeches about progress and the twenty-first century. The inhabitants would be herded out, perhaps on two hours’ notice, then a reconstruction brigade would arrive, possibly prisoners who were themselves Tibetan. Shan had seen it before, had been in such a brigade when it was ordered to such duty in the hills above their compound, had watched Lokesh and the other old Tibetan prisoners weep as the prison guards started the process by throwing torches into centuries-old wooden homes.

“Don’t you realize that the man who did this is too clever to be caught by a sweep?” Gao said after a long silence.

“Criminal justice in China is an approximate thing. I didn’t say he would be caught, I said a heavy price would be paid.” Shan gazed out over the distant ranges. “If Thomas is looking down on us,” he ventured at last, “there would be something more important to him than finding his killer.”

“You mean the Navajo woman.”

“She is up on the mountain. I think she is still alive. She crossed paths with the killer before and was spared. But this time I think he took her with him.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know exactly. He needs her for something.”

“What are you trying to say?” Gao asked after another long silence.

“Hostene and I can find her. When we find her we will know who the killer is.”

“If I let you go, I will never see you again. That’s what convicts do in Tibet. Disappear.”

Shan lowered his head into his hands. His body was fatigued. But his spirit was beyond exhaustion. “How many years did it take,” he asked, “to find the old dzong you live in?”

Gao did not reply.

“When they come,” Shan continued, “they will also find out about the gold. Not even the army will be able to stop what will happen then. Maybe it could have twenty or thirty years ago, but not today. Economic development is Beijing’s new mantra. The first year or two they will just send survey teams. There will be helicopters coming and going overhead. Geologists will drill and blast. After that, they will build roads, with bulldozers and more dynamite. They’ll assign a gulag crew to do the work for a year or two, maybe three or four hundred prisoners, so they’ll probably build a prison camp right here at the village site. A new town will go up, built of metal and concrete. A depot, a garage, dormitories. Then the real work will begin. Scores of miners. More dormitories. Huge trucks to move the material as it is blasted loose. After they deplete the seams and have sluiced the dust in the streams, they’ll pick a small valley in which to heap the soil they strip from the slopes, then spray it with sodium cyanide to leach out the ore. They won’t stop until there is nothing left but bare, sterile rock. Once they start, a Tibetan mountain lasts about a dozen years.”

Shan never heard the angry words forming on Gao’s lips. Chodron had appeared, accompanied by two of his men. The headman pointed at Shan. “He’s mine. He has already been arrested by the civil authority. I released him on his parole, to assist me.”

“Already arrested?” Gao asked, suppressing his rage. “On what charges?”

Chodron swallowed hard and pressed on. “Interfering with municipal government. Violations of the Ax to Root directive.”

“Ax to Root is a campaign,” Gao pointed out, “not a criminal law. A campaign against Tibetans. Shan is not Tibetan.”

“He has no government registration. He is nothing, an escaped convict. Leave him with me and we will find the bastard who did this to your nephew. I have already started an investigation. I know what to do with men like Shan.” Gao’s silence was making Chodron nervous. “Do not blind yourself to the truth, sir.”