The Skull Mantra (16 page)

Sergeant Feng appeared at Shan's side and made a sharp guttural sound, one of his warnings.

“—the government removal of artifacts,” Shan continued, in English.

Rebecca Fowler's eyes flashed with surprise. “You speak it well,” she said in her native tongue. “We are not in a position to stop anything the government does. We just believe governments should act openly in dealing with cultural resources, especially resources of a different culture. The Antiquities Commission helps collect evidence.”

“So you have two jobs?”

Feng stepped between them with a resentful glare, but seemed uncertain what to do.

Fowler was six inches taller than Feng. She continued to speak, over his head, but switched back to Mandarin. “How about you, Inspector? How many jobs does an unofficial investigator have?”

Shan did not answer.

Fowler shrugged. “My job is mine manager. But the Commission has only one expatriate: Jansen. A Finn. He asks other expatriates working in the remote areas to serve as his eyes and ears.”

“Your committee.”

Fowler nodded, looking uncomfortably at Sergeant Feng.

“You still didn't say why you were at the cave.”

“Didn't even know there was a cave. Until the PLA trucks got noticed.”

“By whom?”

“Army trucks are conspicuous. One of my Tibetan engineers saw them when he was climbing.”

“But army trucks can be explained in many ways.”

“Not really. There're two patterns of truck traffic in the high ranges. Maneuvers. Or new construction for military camps or collectives. These weren't maneuvers, and there
was no construction equipment entering the site. The trucks weren't carrying things in. Not much, anyway.”

“So you decided they were carrying things out. Very clever.”

“I couldn't be sure. But as soon as I arrived I saw two things. Your colonel. And a cave crawling with soldiers.”

“The colonel could have other reasons to be there.”

“You mean the murder?”

“I have had several American friends,” Shan observed. “They are always quick to jump to conclusions.”

“There's a difference between jumping to conclusions and being direct. Why don't you just say no? Tan would just say no. Jao would just say no, if it suited.” She ran her fingers through her hair. Shan realized she did it when she was nervous. “That day at Tan's office, you openly defied him. You're not like other Chinese I've known.”

It was going too fast. Shan drained his cup and asked for more. As Fowler moved toward the conference room by the door he studied the bulletin board. There was a hand-written document in one corner, in Tibetan. With a start, Shan recognized it. It was the American Declaration of Independence. He led Sergeant Feng away from it, to the conference room, where Fowler sat on the table, waiting for him with the tea.

“So you are replacing Prosecutor Jao?” Fowler asked.

“No. Just a short assignment for the colonel.”

“He would have been disappointed. Jao used to read Arthur Conan Doyle. Loved his murder investigations.”

“You make it sound like a habit.”

“Half a dozen a year, I suppose. It's a big county.”

“He always solved them?”

“Sure. It was his job, right?” she asked in a taunting tone. “And now you have already arrested the murderer.”

“I didn't arrest anyone.”

Fowler studied Shan. “You sound like you don't think he did it.”

“I don't.”

Fowler could not conceal her surprise. “I'm beginning to understand you, Mr. Shan.”

“Just Shan.”

“I understand why Tan wanted you away from the cave when I was there. You're—what? Unpredictable, like he described the Tibetans. I don't think your government deals well with unpredictability.”

Shan shrugged. “Colonel Tan prefers to deal with one crisis at a time.”

The American woman studied him. “So what was his crisis, you or me?”

“You, of course.”

“I wonder.” She sipped her tea. “If it wasn't your prisoner who killed Jao, then who was the murderer?”

“Your demon. Tamdin.”

Fowler's head snapped up. She looked around to see if her staff was listening. They were gathered at the far end of the room. “No one jokes about Tamdin,” she said in a low voice, suddenly tinged with worry.

“I wasn't.”

“Every village, every sheepcamp around here has been telling stories of demons visiting. Last month there were complaints about our blasting. They said it must have awakened him. There was a work stoppage for half a day. But I explained that we only began blasting six months ago.”

“Blasting for what?”

“Dikes. A new pond.”

Shan shook his head in bewilderment. “But why build ponds? Why all this water? How can you produce minerals? There is no mine.”

Fowler smiled. “Sure there is,” she said, seeming relieved to change the topic. “Right out the front door.” She grabbed a pair of binoculars and gestured for him to follow. She led Shan outside along a path that rimmed the largest pond, walked briskly to the center of the largest dike, the one that was built across the mouth of the valley, then paused for Yeshe and Sergeant Feng to catch up. “This is a precipitation mine.”

“You mine rain?” Yeshe asked.

“Not what I meant. But I guess that's one way to describe it. We mine the rain of a hundred centuries ago.” She pointed across the ponds. “This plain is the bottom of a bowl. No outlet but the Dragon Throat, and it was blocked up here by
an ancient landslide. It's a volatile geology. The surrounding peaks were volcanic. Lava flowed down the slopes. Lava is filled with the light elements. Boron. Magnesium. Lithium. Over centuries rains dissolved the lava and washed the salts into the bowl. A salt lake would build up. In time of drought a crust would form over the lake. A foot thick. Sometimes five feet thick. Then a cycle of wet years would fill the basin with water again, with the dissolved minerals. Then another crust. Every few centuries another eruption would replenish the slopes. It's how the Great Salt Lake in America was formed.”

“But these lakes are manmade.”

“The natural salt lake is there. In fact, eleven of them. In layers, underneath us. We just moved clay to build surface ponds. We pump up the brine into our ponds for evaporation.” Fowler pointed toward three small sheds across the valley floor, ganglia in a network of pipes. “Three wells do all the work.”

“But where is your plant?”

“In the ponds. With the right concentration we can precipitate out boron particles. Each lake is periodically drained and we harvest the product that has accumulated on the bottom. The trick is to maintain the concentration. Get it wrong and we wind up with table salt. Or a stew of metals too expensive to separate.”

She led them down the dike to where it intersected the gully of the Dragon's Throat.

“But you said it was a landslide that blocked the valley,” Shan said.

“We moved it. Too unstable. The dam needs to be packed clay. Just finished this one, our last dike.” Shan saw that the pond beside them, noticeably lower than the others, was still being filled by the wells. The American pointed toward the far end of the plateau and handed Shan the binoculars. “The farthest pond is being harvested.”

There was a mound of brilliant white material near the pond.

“We have a crude processing unit, to slightly refine the product. Once we start production, we will seal it into one-ton bags and ship it to the world.” He realized she was looking
elsewhere as she spoke, toward a cluster of workers in the middle of the pond complex. He turned the binoculars to the workers and saw that it was two separate groups. Neither seemed to be working.

“The world?” he asked.

“Some to factories in China,” she said distractedly. “Much of it to Hong Kong for shipping to Europe and America.”

Shan studied the dull gray equipment beside the second group. “Why would Tan send them when your permit is suspended?”

“The Ministry of Geology suspended the permit.”

“Who signed the order?”

Rebecca Fowler paused, as though considering whether to respond. “Director Hu.”

“Of the local Ministry of Geology office?”

“Right. But I explained to Tan that if we shut down now, we lose all the material in the ponds. We design the process so our commercial products precipitate first. If we wait, they get contaminated. Could lose six months' work. He agreed we should continue to process our sample batches on the grounds that the permit only applies to commercial scale production.”

“But then everything stops?”

“Unless we can figure out what's going on.”

“You're saying Hu gave no reason for the suspension?”

It was as far as Fowler would go. She took two steps away and looked up at a rock face at the end of the pond. Shan studied her for a moment, trying to understand if she was upset because of Prosecutor Jao, Director of Mines Hu, or himself, then followed her gaze to the rock. The cliff rose at least three hundred feet, nearly perpendicular. Suddenly he saw movement on the rocks, two white ropes dangling down the face from the top.

Fowler turned to look at the gully. “You can see all the way to the valley,” she observed.

But Shan did not turn. The ropes were moving. There were two figures at the top, in brilliant red vests and white helmets.

Suddenly Yeshe called out with surprise. He was looking
down the Dragon's Throat. “The 404th! You can see—” He caught himself and cast an embarrassed glance toward Shan, who swung the binoculars around. It took only a moment to follow the Dragon's Throat to the base of the range. They were twenty miles away by tortuous mountain road, but there in plain view was the 404th's worksite, no more than three miles' distance as a raven would fly. Adjusting the focus, he picked out Tan's bridge, the tanks of the knobs, and the long rank of prison trucks.

He felt the glare of the American and lowered the glasses.

“My chief engineer showed it to me,” she said with an accusing tone. “It's one of your prison projects. Slave labor.”

“The government often assigns compulsory work crews to road construction,” Yeshe said, suddenly self-righteous. “Beijing says it builds socialist awareness.”

“I've been talking to the UN about it.”

“Personally,” Shan said, “I am in favor of international dialogue.” He felt a sharp gun-barrel jab in his back. Sergeant Feng had arrived behind him. Shan turned. Feng's thumb was extended toward Shan and his eyes were smoldering.

The action was not missed by Fowler. She seemed about to say something when suddenly a loud whoop echoed across the rock face. They turned to see the two figures dropping down the cliff on the ropes, kicking off the rock as they fell.

“Crazy fool,” Fowler muttered. “It's Kincaid. He's teaching the young engineers. He's going to do Everest before his tour is finished. Wants to go up with a team of Tibetans.”

“Everest?” Yeshe asked.

“Sorry,” Fowler said. “Chomolungma is what you call it. Mother mountain.”

“It means ‘goddess mother of the world,' ” Yeshe corrected.

As the figures landed at the base of the cliff, they made exhilarated leaps into the air and embraced. Moments later they began moving onto the long dike, the lean man with brilliant eyes and ponytail Shan had seen at the cave and the young Tibetan Shan had seen driving the truck and later at Tan's office.

“I'm Tyler,” the American introduced himself. ‘Tyler Kincaid. Just Kincaid will do.” His smile faded as he saw Sergeant Feng. His eyes settled on the sergeant's pistol. “This,” he said with a distracted jerk of his thumb, “is Luntok, one of our engineers.”

“Kincaid works the magic in the ponds,” Fowler explained.

“Nature does the magic,” Kincaid said impassively. He spoke with a slight drawl, the way Shan had heard characters speak in American westerns. “I just give her the opportunity.”

He studied Shan, then lowered his voice. “You were at the cave. With Tan,” he said with a tone of accusation. “We want to know about that cave.”

“So do I. I need to know why you were there.”

“Because something is wrong there. Because it's a holy place,” he said.

“Why would you say that?” Shan asked.

“It is one of those places the Buddhists call a place of power. At the end of a valley. Facing south. A spring nearby. A large tree.”

“So you've been there before?”

Kincaid make a sweeping gesture toward the mountains. “We climb a lot of ridges. Luntok saw the trucks. But we didn't need to see them to know it might be important. The topography shows it all.”

Suddenly an airhorn blew, a long unceasing howl that hurt the ears. A worker appeared beside Fowler, panting from a run across the dike. “They're going to fight!” he shouted. “They're going to destroy the equipment!”

“Goddamned MFCs!” Tyler snapped at Fowler. “I told you!” He darted toward the trouble, Luntok close behind.

The Tibetan workers had formed a line in the middle of the valley. A huge gray bulldozer on which half a dozen of Tan's engineers perched had been stopped by a makeshift barricade of smaller trucks and earthmovers. The soldiers were firing the bulldozer's airhorn in staccato blasts, like a machine gun. The Tibetans sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the vehicles.

Kincaid appeared between the lines, standing with the Tibetans, haranguing the soldiers.

Shan offered Rebecca Fowler the binoculars. She seemed reluctant to take them. “I never meant for this—” she began. “If anyone got hurt I couldn't live with myself.” She turned to him, as if surprised to have said the words to Shan. Anguish filled her eyes. “Make them leave.”

“Who?”

“The soldiers. Tell Tan we'll find some other way to meet the schedule.”