Prayer of the Dragon (28 page)

“You said you weren’t interested in murders anymore.”

“On this particular mountain, corpses are but another resource determined by supply and demand. So much so that when you run out of murders you borrow a body and call it a murder.”

Bing glared in silence at Shan, then glanced sharply at the Navajo. He made a small gesture to Hubei, his wiry, bulldog lieutenant, who fetched one of the shovel handles. “We don’t believe in digging up old ghosts.”

“But that’s my job,” Shan said. “Reviving old ghosts. Making them speak, tapping their wisdom.”

Bing was disturbed. “Talk like that scares people. Every day they’re more superstitious here. Look what they’ve done. Some hang charms outside their quarters. One man bought an old prayer box from a farmer, because he says the only gods here are Tibetan. Another put his rooster outside because his grandmother once told him they frighten off evil spirits.”

Shan nodded at Hostene, who had now arranged certain of the contents of his pack on his brightly colored blanket—his feathered spirit stick, a bag of pollen they had collected from flowers picked on the trail, the leg bone of a yak they had found near the path.

A worried murmur swept through the onlookers. Each miner represented a separate mystery to Shan. The only thing he knew for certain was that they were all superstitious.

“What the hell is he doing?” demanded Bing.

“Hostene is frightened of ghosts too,” Shan declared in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “He is going to perform a ceremony to speak with them, to ask them why they are so upset with Little Moscow, why they think someone is lying to them.”

Bing’s mouth opened in protest. “He’s an American” was all he could manage.

“He’s an American Indian. A shaman among his people. A ghost speaker.”

“Sorcerer!” someone barked.

Shan studied the men. Half a dozen had lowered themselves to the ground, forming a wide circle around Hostene. Others had stepped out of their dug-out homes and anxiously watched from the shadows. The Navajo began murmuring in his native tongue, arms flying toward the heavens. Hubei backed away several steps, then hurried off.

“I want him stopped,” Bing muttered to Shan.

“He is speaking to the ghosts, asking them to tell us the truth.

Surely the citizens of your bold new world have nothing to fear from old world ghosts. Or is it you who are scared of ghosts, Captain Bing?”

“What do you want?”

“The man who died last year. What exactly happened?”

“He was found with a chisel in his back and a bloody patch on his head where he had fallen against some rocks. A shopkeeper from Guangzhou had come here with him, his partner. But they were always arguing with each other, and with the rest of us. We confirmed it was his partner’s chisel.”

“We?”

“Hubei and I.”

“And the killer?”

“No one knows how
he
died. All we found was his skeleton.”

“Wearing his old ring. A skeleton with jewelry. Even the dead adapt here.”

“That’s when we organized ourselves. Signed articles governing Little Moscow, so it would be a safe harbor, a place to keep supplies.”

“And that’s when they elected you to lead them,” Shan pointed out.

“The murder made it clear that someone had to do it. I had government experience. It was my duty to accept the nomination.”

“Supply and demand again,” Shan pointed out. “After all these years, a need for protection arose, and the perfect candidate was there to fill it.”

Outside, Hostene was speaking in his tribal tongue, holding the bag of pollen up to the sky. “There are still some who consider him a killer,” Bing ventured.

“Where’s the body of the man who was killed last year?”

“I don’t know. We left him under some rocks. But when the wolves get hungry enough—” Bing finished with a shrug.

“You’re saying you haven’t been back to the grave?”

“I had no reason to go there.”

Shan considered Bing’s calculated lack of interest. He decided not to ask the question that leapt to his tongue. Instead he said, “When I go to Tashtul town, where will I find the gold agency?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where does one go to sell gold? Officially, only the government buys gold.”

Bing replied, “You’re not actually going to Tashtul.”

“A fascinating idea, though. The miners disperse all over China come autumn, they have black markets all over China to go to. But you and Chodron, you need to convert the share of gold paid to you by the miners somewhere much closer. It’s against the law to exchange it without involving the government. The Ministry of Mines is the flaw in your business model. It restricts the upside potential of your enterprise. The worst possible partner in a conspiracy is a bureaucrat. You’d be surprised how quickly such officials can be made to sing. Investigators love to start with bureaucrats because they harbor no delusions about the criminal justice system. And this year,” he added, “some of the miners have already converted some of their gold into cash, in the middle of the summer. As if there were a new gold dealer nearby. Or a bank.”

Bing glared at him, then shrugged. “You have no way off this mountain. If you try to go to Tashtul, Chodron will make sure you’re never seen again.” He pushed the canvas flap aside, his anger building, as Hostene began sprinkling pollen on the miners’ heads. Bing cursed under his breath and hastened back to the square.

Shan found Hubei packing a sack with mining equipment near his lean-to.

“That last day Thomas was here, before I arrived, what was he speaking about? Who was he speaking with?”

“Everyone.” Hubei did not stop his packing, but did not hesitate to answer. “Anyone who came along. One moment he was hawking his wares, the next bragging that he knew how to catch criminals.”

“What did he say about catching criminals?”

“Forensics, he called it. He claimed he could tell what made a wound by examining the blood spatter, could tell if a man was dead or alive when he was stabbed or shot by whether blood had flowed out of the body. Bones. Bullets. Fingerprints.”

“What about bones?”

The miner tied off the top of the pack. “Fractures. A skull fracture from a fall made a long crack. A skull fracture from a hammer might knock out a circle of bone. A leg fracture from a car accident was different from one where the leg was held down and smashed.” The miner raised the pack onto his back.

Thomas had spoken of how a victim’s bones could betray a murderer, and then Abigail had seen Bing tossing old bones from a cliff.

“Did you help bury the man who died last year?” When the man did not reply Shan blocked his exit from the shelter. “Did he still have his hands?”

Hubei lowered the pack and rubbed a hand over his face. “There was no need for the others to know about that. We rolled the body in a blanket before they could look.”

“Which means you know his partner was
not
the murderer.”

Hubei glanced toward the square, where Bing was putting Hostene’s ritual instruments back into his pack even as Hostene continued dispensing pollen. “Maybe there are different murderers. New people came to the mountain this year. Last year, we softened the man’s partner up with a couple of shovel handles, enough to scare him off the mountain. We borrowed his ring before he left,” he admitted.

Shan nodded at the confirmation of his suspicion. “By my count that makes ten hands that have been severed and taken away. How many do you suppose this killer needs? An even dozen? A score? You’re a brave man, going back to your claim alone. Be sure to get some of that pollen sprinkled on your head before you leave.”

Hubei winced, rubbing at the tattooed numbers on his forearm, the nervous reaction of a former prisoner. Hubei was wise in the ways of the world. He, at least, understood that they were on the brink of disaster. His hand went to his belt. For the first time Shan saw an old military knife tucked in his waist.

“You aren’t going mining,” Shan observed.

“No one is to get past the claim Bing posted down the trail. Between patrols I’ll push some rocks around and pan the streams.”

“The problem with being in the middle of a war, Hubei, is that everyone eventually has to choose a side.”

“I’m on the side of my family,” Hubei said. “You should get out of the way. Leave the mountain, Shan, and the war ends.”

Shan said, “I’m not leaving until the murderer is caught.”

For a moment Hubei looked as if he meant to argue with Shan. Then his attention focused on the town square of Little Moscow, which had gone very quiet except for a voice chanting in Navajo. “He’s had a message.”

“Bing?”

Hubei nodded once more. “From that damned woman. He says she came to him yesterday when he was alone working his claim, asking him to give a note to her uncle. We should’ve stopped her the first day she arrived, and sent her away from the mountain. She’s nothing but bad luck.”

“He knows we are looking for her. Why didn’t he give the message to me?”

“A man like Bing doesn’t share secrets. He uses secrets.”

“He told you. He told Chodron.”

“Me, because he doesn’t read English. Only me,” the miner added pointedly.

Shan didn’t wait for Bing to return to his makeshift house. He quickly slipped inside the shelter of rock and canvas, and began searching, starting at the entry from which he surveyed the entire chamber before examining each chink in the rock wall. When he finished with the wall, he searched under the pallet on the floor, then moved to the jacket hanging on a peg. The note was there, in an inside pocket sealed with a zipper. It was written on a page torn out of a journal, the same thick unlined paper she’d used for her note at Gao’s house. It was the same handwriting.
“I am safe,
Abigail had written
, and on the way to Tashtul town. After what happened
to Thomas I cannot bear to stay here. I have research to do in
Lhasa and will wait for you there at the hotel we stayed at before.”

He put the paper into his own pocket and walked down the nearest of the little alley ravines to the square. Hostene was pacing around the circle of men still, blowing pollen onto them. No one was ridiculing the Navajo now. These were men who would take a blessing any way they could. Even Bing stood and let Hostene scatter the yellow spores on him, as did a new arrival who stood at the rear, watching with a curious, uneasy expression. Yangke had found them.

Shan retreated to consider Abigail’s note. Bing was keeping her departure a secret even from his patron and partner, Chodron.

A sound came from behind him, a soft, summoning whistle from the shadows. He glanced back to confirm no one in the square had noticed. He did not see the heavy loading boom over his head or the flicker of movement until it was too late. The loop of rope, expertly thrown, cleared his shoulders and was tightened around his waist, pulling him off his feet as it was raised by the overhead pulley, suspending him six feet in the air, his arms pinned to his sides. A man came out of the shadows holding a pole. He wore a hooded black sweatshirt, the hood drawn so low that the man’s face was obscured, even when he began to beat Shan.

By the time Shan tried to call out, he had no breath left with which to speak. His assailant concentrated on his ribs and abdomen, delivering no bone-breaking blows but inflicting maximum pain. The pole, Shan noted, was of juniper. A sacred wood should not be used for such a profane task, he thought.

And then he must have lost consciousness. He was aware only that he was in a storm, with the wind howling, men shouting in fear, deafening thunder and darkness directly overhead. With painful effort he twisted to look upward. If lightning was going to strike him he wanted to see it coming. Despite his pain and the swirling dust, he could see the great black thing. The dragon deity, the thunder maker, the mountain shaker? Then a pebble stung his cheek, awakening him. The dust was scoured away by a downdraft, the shape of the thing outlined by daylight. It was a different breed of demon entirely. It was an army helicopter.

Hands reached up. Knife blades cut the rope that bound him. Orders were shouted, by Bing, by someone in a uniform. Shan was on Hostene’s blanket. Someone was washing his face with a wet cloth, a man with a yellow-streaked face was handing him tea. His shirt was being unbuttoned. Fingers pressed against the pulse in his wrist. He passed out.

SHAN LAY IN a swirling, confused place of memory and fear, in a bed of a remote Public Security ward. The hospital was in the desert, and sand crept into everything, even the cold rice they served him three times a day. He was in a special section reserved for Party luminaries, staffed with special doctors trained in interrogation. They experimented on him, using sodium barbitol, injections of iodine solution, and electric wires and small needles.

“I can’t find a pulse. Just like him, the son of a bitch.”

“Look, he’s vomiting.”

“Excellent. Better than a pulse.”

They tied him naked to a chair and two bald men entered, one with a single long syringe, the other holding a short piece of bamboo.

“No ribs broken,” they confirmed before starting in again.