Prayer of the Dragon (42 page)

“Ah,” Gao said, as if understanding now. Shan realized that Gao too had had a nephew in search of something.

“My father used to write to his grandfather and send him letters in smoke.” It was an ancient Chinese practice, to write letters to the dead, burn them, and let the smoke carry the message to the heavens. “My father died when I was a boy,” Shan said. “But sometimes, in the old tradition, I write to him.”

Gao and Shan watched the moon rise, then began speaking of gold, and India, and of three men who met at a Tibetan prison camp near Rutok, each with his particular skill. Tashi, the artist forger. Bing, with his military training. The third with his command of a small but conveniently placed company. Eventually Shan left, returning with a piece of paper torn from Abigail’s journal, one of her ink pens, and one of the old butter lamps that Shan had lit.

“I don’t know what to say to him,” Gao said in a hoarse whisper.

“When I write my father, sometimes I just speak of my life,” Shan confided. “Sometimes I say I am sorry for not being all that he would have expected of me. Sometimes I explain that once in a while I can still sense him walking beside me. Once,” he said, his voice cracking, “I confessed that of all the mysteries that are sent my way, the ones I know I will never solve are those of the human heart.”

Shan left Gao then, and wandered up the trail they had arrived on that morning. He watched the camp from a distance, then retrieved two leg bones from one of the cairns, and set to work. When he finished he found a perch a short distance from where Gao still sat, writing. Shan looked into the blackness of the fissure, then at the sky. A dark shape fluttered across the face of the moon. It could have been a cloud. It could have been a dragon.

The explosions came in rapid sequence, jolting Shan from a fog that was almost sleep. Lightning, shouted a panicked voice in the back of his mind. No, worse, he realized. Gunshots. Three closely spaced gunshots, from the place where he had left his three companions.

Chapter Fifteen

GAO HAD ALREADY taken several unsteady steps toward the shots when Shan grabbed him, pointed in the opposite direction, and ran.

His quarry was moving slowly, far less confident about rushing through the night landscape than Shan. The ghost on the trail stopped him. Shan, watching from the shadows, tossed a pebble against the ghost to make it move. It had been a rushed job, building a four-foot cairn in a shadowed section of the trail, joining the two bones into a rough cross frame with the yak-hair rope, then arranging his white undershirt on it, topped by a face made from another sheet of paper from Abigail’s journal, pierced by two round eyeholes. But on this mountain, on this night, it was enough to make anyone pause.

Shan made no attempt to conceal his presence as he approached. Kohler spun around at the sound of his boots. The German let one of the two staffs he carried drop against the tall rock beside him as his hand went to the small of his back. He turned sideways so as to be able to see both Shan and the ghost. More gravel rattled on the path behind Shan.

“Did you hear the shots?” Kohler blurted out as he saw Gao. “She’s crazy. She talks to herself half the time. She helped the lunatic monk tie me up yesterday. We can’t wait to go down together. I have to get help right away. God knows what she’s done.”

“Then we need you here more than ever,” Shan suggested, inching forward.

Kohler edged toward the ghost cairn, seeming to recognize what it was. “You made this,” he growled at Shan. “Take it down.”

“It’s a monument to dead hermits,” Shan rejoined.

The hand behind Kohler’s back reappeared, holding a small black gun. “Take it down,” he ordered. When Shan did not move, the German thrust the gun forward, then swung the staff in his other hand upward, a blow that was meant to break ribs. As Shan jerked sideways, a rock flew through the air, connecting squarely with Kohler’s brow. The German crumpled to the ground.

A familiar face appeared in the moonlight, wearing a surprised grin, the cloth blindfold hanging around his neck. Yangke could see again.

“He wasn’t going to kill you,” Gao offered in a taut voice.

“On that slender thread,” Shan said, “I was betting my life.”

Shan handed the gun to Gao. Then, with Yangke, he half carried, half dragged Kohler back to camp.

They laid Kohler by the fire and bound his arms and legs. There was no sign of Abigail or Hostene.

“I don’t know where he took them,” the Tibetan stated in an anxious tone. “My vision returned in the afternoon but I made some holes in the bandage and put it back on. I saw him lead Hostene and Abigail into the rocks above. He came back, tossed some pebbles in the fire, and ran toward the trail. They exploded three times. They were bullets, I guess, not pebbles.” Yangke looked toward the summit. “I don’t understand. It’s as if the mountain makes everyone crazy. Up there are only cliffs and crevasses, no place to be at night.” Yangke looked from the fire to the unconscious man, then ran up the slope, one step ahead of Shan. Gao sat on the ground beside Kohler, his head buried in his hands.

The German had done his work well. They found Hostene and his niece, gagged and tied back to back, abandoned on the narrow ledge where Kohler had confronted Shan earlier that day. They had been left twelve inches from a drop of five hundred feet. Abigail was slumped against Hostene, unconscious. Her uncle was staring so intensely into the night sky that Shan had to shake him before Hostene noticed him.

As Shan kneeled and untied the ropes, Abigail rolled into his arms. Hostene checked her pulse. She responded by pulling her hand away, then stretching. A sigh of relief escaped Hostene’s lips. She had been sleeping.

They kept Kohler against the stone wall, behind the fire, watching him in shifts. Only Hostene chose to keep the pistol in his belt during his shift, Shan and Yangke selecting one of the long staffs as a weapon. Yangke, who seemed to be brimming over with questions, sensed that his queries needed to wait. Just one mystery was entirely explained that night when Shan approached Hostene, who sat at the opposite side of the fire, and handed him a brown plastic vial he had discovered when searching Kohler’s pack.

“Kohler was right,” Shan said. “Altitude sickness can have many symptoms. And he was prepared for them all.” He showed Hostene three other similar containers he had taken from the pack, each with printed Chinese and English labels. “Acetazolamide,” he said, lifting the first jar, “is taken to prevent the sickness, and to relieve early symptoms.” He pointed to the other two. “Furosemide is for edema, promethazine for nausea. And what you are holding is morphine. Two or three of those and anyone will act the way she did this afternoon with Rapaki. And if this bottle was full, then she’s been drugged for the last couple of days.”

Hostene extended an arm as if to throw the little jar away, then glanced toward his sleeping niece and tucked it into his pocket.

“Once, at my old temple,” Yangke declared after a moment, “a teacher said you can’t have a god without a devil. The sinner defines the saint.”

“I stopped making excuses for sinners long ago,” Hostene rejoined, and walked back toward Kohler. Shan followed, watching as Hostene paced around the German, whose eyes were still closed. “The difference between you and me, Shan, is that you were an investigator. You just find facts and arrange them in the correct sequence. But I,” Hostene said, “I was a judge. You defined the messes. I had to clean them up.”

“He’s not exactly a killer,” Shan said.

“That’s what Yangke said about Rapaki. What do you mean?” Hostene demanded.

“He’s a physicist turned businessman, the real managing director of Little Moscow. He had a business plan: Eliminate Chodron by discrediting him and making Bing a better offer. Take the miners’ gold and pay them directly, eliminating most of their risks.”

A new disdainful voice joined the conversation. “It was never planned to end this way,” Kohler said, twisting himself until he was leaning against a rock. “I never intended any killings.”

“No,” Shan agreed. “The only planned murder took place last year, when Bing and Chodron decided to murder the dissenting miner and accuse his partner. Bing proved he could protect the miners so they elected him their head, just as he and Chodron intended. But that was before you cemented your alliance with Bing, before the three comrades from prison camp realized all the money they could make if each applied his particular skills to the business. Before you installed the new smelting equipment in Tashtul.”

“It was Tashi,” Kohler said, looking into the fire now. “He was the catalyst. He offered to make fraudulent customs forms for me so I could avoid paying duties. He was an amazing forger, a true artist. He practiced in prison by duplicating Buddhist scriptures. Bing discovered him faking passes for the guards at the gulag. Bing knew real talent when he saw it. And then Tashi told him about his magic mountain. Imagine my surprise when Bing asked if I had ever heard of the Sleeping Dragon.”

“But it was you who saw the bigger possibilities,” Shan pointed out. “Ship the gold in trucks to India. At the end of the summer you could convert the gold into Tibetan deities and yaks, the gold painted over to look like a cheaper metal in your little foundry in Tashtul. Then Tashi would take the souvenirs across the border with forged papers. Chodron’s scheme of simply charging the miners a secret tax to was nothing compared to this.” Shan glanced up at Yangke, who listened intently. Tashi had made him a promise, that he would ride all the way to India with the gods. “Heinz thinks on a global scale. He reversed Chodron’s business structure. Instead of taking a percentage from the miners, he would take the gold and pay them a percentage. He assumed the risk in transporting the gold out of China and converting it somewhere else. That’s why some of the miners had so much cash.” He turned to Kohler. “You had already begun to build your market.”

The German offered Shan a respectful nod. “If you want to predict the price of gold, count the number of wars being waged in the world. It’s a bull market.”

“An entrepreneurial miracle,” Shan said in a flat voice. “Except your driver and forger was too entrepreneurial.”

“Driving was merely a sideline for Tashi. Artwork was his passion. You’re on a roll, Shan. Don’t stop now. Except you forgot to point out that no one is hurt by my scheme except Chodron, whom everyone hates anyway.”

“That changed when Tashi violated your rules. He was supposed to stay away from the mountain, wasn’t he?”

“A great kid,” Kohler said. “Except when he got drunk. He had a sweet job at our warehouse in Chamba. I arranged sleeping quarters, a television. All he had to do was stay there until I sent for him in the autumn.”

“But he got bored,” Shan suggested. “He missed his mountain. Maybe he heard Yangke was back and wanted to see his old friend. The secret expedition Professor Ma proposed was too good to pass up. It wouldn’t affect your plan. He’d be back in time to help you run the foundry in Tashtul at the end of the summer, then drive to India. But he was a social creature, and when he saw some miners with Thomas’s vodka he couldn’t resist approaching them.”

“Technically,” Kohler inserted, “it was my vodka. Never in a thousand years would I have guessed Thomas would steal my liquor to sell. Christ, that’s how it all started. My pepper vodka.”

“When Tashi drank,” Yangke whispered, “he would sing old songs of the saints.”

“When Tashi got drunk,” Shan added, “he sang everything. He wasn’t much of a criminal, he just wanted to have friends.”

“But why kill Professor Ma?” Hostene asked in a hollow voice. “Why kill Bing himself?”

“Tashi was out of control. He had to be dealt with, he had to be silenced. I was the chief executive. Bing was in charge of dealing with details.” Kohler said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Bing had Rapaki waiting in the circle of stones that night. He was going to bring only Tashi to him. But the professor woke up. And Bing might have lived if he hadn’t followed us up here. It spun out of my control. You have to take your losses and move on, I told Bing. It had become too risky. But he wouldn’t listen.”

“Because he had a whole new plan,” Shan suggested, “for which he needed no partner.”

Kohler slowly nodded. “Apparently. After Rapaki started working on him he became obsessed with the lost gold. Bing said there was more than enough for both of us.”

“But you had already borrowed the laser pointer,” Shan said. “And you had learned Rapaki’s magic words.”

“Ni shi sha gua, ni shi sha gua . . .” Kohler’s mocking mantra faded away. Gao had returned, and had been listening.

The German seemed to shrink under Gao’s gaze.

They left Yangke watching Kohler and lay down in the little alcove at the rear of the cavern, though Shan could tell from the sound of their breathing that his companions were also unable to sleep.

“I don’t understand.” Hostene’s voice floated through the darkness. “Kohler was going to get all the gold he could need. Why did he need the monks’ gold?”

“He wasn’t coming for the monks’ gold,” Shan said.

“That was all Bing’s idea,” a new voice interjected. For the first time Abigail seemed free of the effects of the morphine. “He was waiting when Thomas and I came through the passage that morning. He hit Thomas, then tied me up and blindfolded me, and took me away to some other rocks. I was grateful when Kohler finally appeared. He said he had not been able to get to town, that he knew I might need help, that we had to hide until Shan caught up with Bing. He suggested we go up the kora, he’d always wanted to go follow the path and this was the perfect time to take Rapaki and finish my research.

“He helped me with my work, held the camera and carried my pack when I was tired. He didn’t object when I said I had to let Rapaki dress me as Tara, to win his trust. I still thought he was helping, and that his intentions were good when he told me I was showing signs of altitude sickness and gave me medicine. By the time Bing caught up with us, my mind was affected by the drugs. I watched from a distance, in some kind of fog. I hated Bing for hitting Thomas and taking him away. Kohler told me Bing had also been there when Professor Ma and Tashi were killed. He sat me on a rock and told me to stay there. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t run away. I wanted Bing punished but I thought they were going to tie him up, to take him prisoner. Then Rapaki began reciting his mantras about demons. Heinz stood there with the laser pointer as if he were directing a play. I closed my eyes when I saw the ax. A few minutes later they came up the trail. Rapaki was serenely singing one of his songs. Maybe I hadn’t seen what I thought I did, I kept telling myself. Maybe it was the drugs.”

“Heinz came here to tidy up,” Shan said, “To get rid of any witnesses. The three surviving people who could do him harm were on this mountaintop. He meant to go down alone. He would have reappeared from his business trip to India and mourned Thomas, maybe even helped us look for you, Abigail.”

“I’m not sure what happens now,” Abigail said. “If he goes to the authorities he will try to bargain for his life by telling them about the miners, about the village, about your friends. I don’t want the Tibetans to be hurt, Shan,” she said. “Tell me how to save the Tibetans.”

But Shan pretended to be asleep.

In the gray light of dawn an owl interceded as Shan, rising from an hour’s rest, approached the fire. Hostene had stayed several feet from Kohler but as Yangke exclaimed and pointed at the bird, Hostene, distracted and anxious, came too close. In a blur of movement Kohler leaped, kicking the remains of the fire with his bound feet, sending a shower of sparks into the air. His arms free, he pulled the gun from the belt of his surprised guard. Then he quickly untied his feet, herding his former captors into the back of the cave. He took Abigail’s pack and his own, swinging the last two staffs onto his shoulder.