Prayer of the Dragon (32 page)

Shan gazed at Gao with new respect. There were indeed separate units of the Public Security Bureau assigned to protect and assist special people with special secrets. Given the many secret installations in the area, a post of such officers in Tashtul, wearing brass stars in circles, was to be expected. He remembered Gao’s worried reaction when he had seen the red banner that morning. He had known Yangke and Hostene would have no chance against Ren’s visiting squad, so had called in a preemptive strike. Never trust reality, Gao had warned on the park bench.

“Some aspects of security, Major Ren, require more subtlety than a gun and a baton.”

Ren seemed unconvinced. He gestured with one hand. His men sprang into action, stepping to either side of Hubei, dragging him to the end of the table and pushing him into a chair. In another few seconds they had produced leather straps and secured his arms to those of the chair.

Ren turned to Gao. “This man was found lurking about outside the bus station with a knife. He tried to flee when my men approached him. He can’t decide who he is. We know he’s a former prisoner from his tattoo. But he says he is a shepherd. Then, later, he said he arrived with your party. Imagine my surprise, a shepherd who knows of Gao. Your driver also paid three farmers to provide him with intelligence about a person coming from the mountains. One recognized his civic duty and came forward to confess. He waits in the next room. He has already spoken of mysterious caravans that head into the mountains in the spring.”

“We have had this conversation before, Major Ren,” Gao said, barely stifling his impatience.

“What were these men bringing to you?” Ren demanded.

Gao did not reply right away. He made a show of bringing tea for Yangke and Hostene before replying, “Your job is to protect state secrets, not to know them,” he finally said.

Ren made another gesture. One of his men produced a black box with a small rod extending from it, one of Public Security’s favorite imports from the West, a cattle prod.

Shan had to admire Hubei’s grit. Other than clenching his jaw, he showed no reaction to the first jab of the device onto his bared forearm. Behind his back the officer adjusted the output and thrust the rod between the rails of the chair, into Hubei’s spine. Hubei gasped, arching his back, lifting the chair off the ground.

“I have never seen this man before,” Gao said.

Ren extracted a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his tunic. “This is your shopping list,” he said to Hubei. “Medicine. A long bead necklace. A cardboard mailing box at least twelve inches long by ten inches. Small plastic sheeting in which to wrap the contents. Fifty renminbi postage.” He looked up with a surprised expression, as if reading it for the first time. “A lot of postage. With it one could send something heavy to the other side of the world. You
shepherds
fascinate me. What kind of medicine?” He tossed the paper down on the table, then closed the door and nodded to one of his assistants, who lifted the prod again.

The miner, twitching, spittle hanging from his jaw, finally yielded. “I came on an errand,” he said with a groan. “I was sent on an errand, that’s all.”

“What kind of medicine?” Ren repeated.

“Painkillers. And stomach medicine.”

“Your big mistake, Gao,” Ren declared, “was not claiming this man to be one of your own. Now he is mine.”

Shan’s protest started as a hoarse whisper but grew louder as he met Ren’s gaze. “But he
is
with us,” he began. “The professor can’t be expected to know every porter at every work site.”

“Making a false statement to me is a crime in itself. He said he was a shepherd. Was he lying?”

“We would be foolish not to have a cover story for all of our workers. More than foolish. Unpatriotic.”

“Unpatriotic?” The word seemed to catch Ren off guard.

“Tell me, Major,” Shan continued, “can you imagine a project more important to the people of China than sending a rocket to the moon?”

Ren studied Shan.

“An electropulse relay transmitter must be repaired,” Shan announced. “The part must be carefully packed, and a detailed description of the problem will be enclosed. The manufacturer is in Tianjin. If we handed it over to the army they would send it to their supply depot, fill out endless forms, and deliver it to the right place maybe four months from now. If it is shipped direct we can get it back in six weeks. There is a test launch in eight weeks. We must have a functioning transmitter by then. This man was bringing the packing material back to our camp. Until you stopped him.” Shan scooped the paper off the table and pocketed it.

“And the necklace?”

“Surely a man can be forgiven for trying to buy a trinket for a woman.”

Ren studied Shan with a cool, calculating expression. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Shan took a sip of his tea. “It was the Chairman himself who promised that the People’s Republic will put a man on the moon.”

“I asked for your name,” Ren pressed.

“I want
your
names,” Gao shot back. “And that of every man in your squad. Name, rank, and serial number. I want to be able to identify of all those responsible if the launch test fails.” He turned to the young officer behind Hostene, who stepped forward with a pad of paper in his hand, nervous anticipation in his eye. “Do we list your office as Lhasa or Tashtul, Major?”

“Inner Mongolia perhaps?” Shan suggested.

Ren gripped the back of a chair. The raw fury in his eyes was aimed at Shan. A dozen thoughts raced through Shan’s mind as he returned the stare, ending with one that almost caused him to break away. Chodron. If Chodron were to walk through the door, Shan’s life wouldn’t be worth ten fen.

Ren paced along the far side of the table, pausing to give a muttered order to one of his men, who darted out of the room. “It’s peculiar, Comrade,” he said to Shan as he began releasing the straps binding Hubei. “You are wearing two pairs of trousers.” Something bright appeared in his hand, which he abruptly tossed across the table. As they watched, a flash erupted, and another. The second officer had returned with a camera, and by the time the object landed and rolled to a stop he had photographed each of their faces. They all stared at the object Ren had tossed onto the table. It was the gold nugget Shan had given to the deliveryman.

“I shall of course release your shepherd,” Ren volunteered as he pocketed the little nugget. “No doubt you need him to pilot a rocket.”

They were sober as they left the building and headed toward Gao’s car. Shan handed the list to Hostene, who thrust it into a pocket. As they reached the car Yangke halted. They followed the Tibetan’s gaze. Hubei was sprinting away.

“Shan is coming with me,” Gao announced to the others as he waved them toward a decrepit sedan bearing a taxi sign. “We will meet you back at the factory.”

Gao stayed in the taxi when they reached the bus station.

Shan found Hubei sitting on a wooden crate in the shade of the cinderblock wall of the station, stricken with fear. He had no resistance left in him.

“If you had told us about your brother it might have been different,” Shan said.

The miner’s eyes flashed but then he sagged. “No family, not ever, that’s Bing’s rule. It makes for too much conflict on the mountain. But then my younger brother came to me in the winter. He had lost his job as a chef, but he had big plans. All we needed was some capital and he would get us to Hong Kong, where we would start a restaurant. He would cook, I would be the manager. We always spoke in secret. We met at out-of-the-way places like in front of those old paintings.”

Shan thought back to the strange video that had so disturbed him. Abigail had told someone to think of his family and of the Eight Treasures in a Winter Melon, the classic gourmet dish. “Did he encounter Abigail at a painting site?”

“I told him to stay away, that foreigners were trouble. But he could speak some English. He began to help her with little things. Tashi didn’t like it. He threatened to tell her uncle.”

Shan studied Hubei. “Were you the one who found your brother’s body?”

Hubei’s voice trembled. “So much blood. At first I thought he must have been hunting for a goat for us to eat. But when I spoke to him, I saw something was wrong with his tongue. I kept talking to him, asking what was wrong, asking why he didn’t answer. Then I saw a stick of wood with eyes painted on it was jammed into his mouth. It took me a long time to realize that he was dead.

He couldn’t be dead! We had plans, we were going to start new lives. I didn’t know what to do. He had picked flowers and sprigs of juniper for an offering. I put them on his chest, and was going to cross his hands over them.”

“That’s when you saw he had no hands.”

The miner nodded. “I would have had my vengeance by now, but you came along.”

“It was you on the bicycle, with the club,” Shan said, “You who hung me on the rope today and beat me. You lit the fires in the barley to punish Chodron for failing to punish Hostene.”

Hubei said nothing.

“If you think Hostene killed your brother, why help his niece? Why undertake to do the shopping for the things on the list she gave to Bing?”

“Because it’s the way to find her again. And when I have her, I will get her uncle.”

“Where were your purchases to be taken?”

“Bing has a map. To a place with black sand, near the summit.”

“Why did she have your brother put out those skeletons?”

“She wanted to keep people away from the old paintings.”

“People?”

“Some of the other miners. There were legends about an ancient gold mine. I had told my brother about the skeletons Bing and I had set out, so he wouldn’t be frightened. He must have told her.”

There seemed to be a surplus of bones on the haunted ridge. “They were ancient bones, weren’t they?”

“Very old, I think. Last week, they all disappeared, even the skeleton on the grave.”

Right after Thomas had boasted of being able to tell old bones from new, Shan realized. But fortunately for Bing a new body had materialized, the corpse of the farmer who had been struck by lightning. Bing had staged his death as a murder to keep the miners frightened of the haunted ridge.

Gao was becoming impatient. Shan went to the car and spoke to him.“How do I find this black-sand place?” Shan asked Hubei when he returned.

“It’s past the old shrines, near the top of the mountain. All summer she kept moving higher up the slope, looking for paintings with the little ovals. Watch for the crazy monk, if you want to find her. She could speak to him, calm him, and get him to help her.”

“What do you mean, little ovals?”

“Tiny ovals, outlining shapes. She taught my brother to use her video camera, so he could take pictures of them.”

A siren blared. Hubei looked as if he were about to bolt.

“Do you know what reincarnation is, Hubei?” Shan asked.

“This is Tibet. Everyone knows.”

“You have just been reincarnated, without going to the trouble of dying. Congratulations.”

Hubei stared at a paper Shan had dropped into his lap.

“It’s a ticket to Golmud, in the north. A big factory town. Lots of jobs. You’re not going back up the mountain.”

“Like hell.”

“I’m saving your life. If you go back up the mountain you won’t survive the summer. What do you think Chodron and Bing will do, once they find out you burned the barley fields?”

As they spoke a bus pulled up, northbound.

Hubei stared at the bus, stared at the ticket, then boarded the bus.

“THERE ARE SLEEPING quarters upstairs,” Gao announced when they met the others at the company compound. “I will arrange for food.”

They ate in the conference room, with the driver perched at the window like a guard.

Hostene broke their weary silence. “She intended to trick us. Abigail never left the mountain. I don’t understand.”

“She intended to make you leave, to get you out of harm’s way. She knew Thomas had been killed, and she knows the killer is close. But she is determined to reach the summit. Only two things are important to her now—your safety and reaching the end of the pilgrim’s path.”

“A cheap trick,” Hostene said. “We came all this way because of that damned Bing.”

“It was
her
trick,” Shan pointed out. “Abigail wrote that note willingly.”

Hostene nodded. “She doesn’t want us to interfere. She asked us for a box and postage. She means to send her work home.”

“It’s as if she—” Gao did not finish his thought. As if she didn’t expect to make it off the mountain.

“If the doctors are right, she has three or four months before her strength fails.”

“If I went to Ren right now and explained, he would forget the rancor between us,” Gao said. “This is the kind of thing he lives for. He could have a hundred men on the mountain tomorrow.” He handed a folded paper to Shan.

“No,” Hostene said, and it seemed to settle the point. “It’s between me and Abigail.”

“And the killer,” Shan added.

“And the killer,” Hostene repeated. “But if we don’t find the killer, what becomes of Lokesh and Gendun?” he asked Shan. This was the question that never left Shan’s mind.