The Skull Mantra (35 page)

Feng slowed down for an old man in the road. The man
reacted to his inquiry by pulling out a tattered map of the region. It was contraband, for it depicted the traditional borders of Tibet, and Shan quickly moved to block it from Feng's view.

“Bo Zhai,” the old man said, pointing to a region about fifty miles eastward. “Bo Zhai.” Shan thanked him by giving him a box of raisins from the supplies Feng had hastily packed. The man seemed surprised. He stared mutely at the box, then with a proud, defiant gesture swept his hand over the vast eastern half of the map. “Kham,” he pronounced, and marched off the road onto a goat trail.

Most of the territory he had indicated had been partitioned by Beijing and given to neighboring provinces. Thus it was that Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces contained sizable Tibetan populations. Sichuan had Aba Tibetan Prefecture, Garze Tibetan Prefecture, and Muli Tibetan County. It had been a subtle measure to erode the nomadic lifestyle of the Kham herders; residency permits could not be granted in more than one district at a time, and travel papers were seldom issued to such people. It had also been punishment for the emphatic antisocialist sentiments of the region. Kham guerrillas had fought longer and harder against the People's Liberation Army than any minority in China. Even in the 404th Shan had heard tales of resistance fighters still roaming the eastern ranges, sabotaging roads and attacking small patrols, then disappearing into the impenetrable mountains.

It was midafternoon before they arrived at the office of the Bo Zhai agricultural collective, an assembly of shabby buildings constructed of cinder blocks and corrugated tin surrounded by fields of barley. The woman in charge, clearly unaccustomed to unannounced visitors, eyed the three men uneasily. “We have tours during harvest,” she offered, “for the Ministry of Agriculture.”

“This is a criminal investigation,” Shan explained patiently, extending a paper with Balti's clan written on it.

“We are just ignorant herdsmen,” she said, too meekly. “Once we had a hooligan from Lhasa hiding in the hills. The procedure was to use the local militia.” There was a faded poster on the wall behind her, with young proletarians extending
their fists proudly. Demolish the Four Olds, it said at the bottom. It had been a campaign during the Cultural Revolution. The Four Olds were ideology, culture, habits, and customs. The Red Guard had invaded the homes of minorities and destroyed their traditional clothing—often heirlooms passed down for generations—burnt furniture, even cut off the braids of the women.

“We have no time,” Yeshe said.

The woman eyed him stonily.

“You are correct, of course,” Shan confirmed. “In our case the procedure would be to contact the Public Security Bureau to tell them we are waiting here. Bureau headquarters would contact the Ministry of Agriculture, who would arrange for a company of soldiers from the Bureau to assist. Perhaps I could use your phone.”

The challenge quickly left her face. “No need to waste the people's resources,” she said with a sigh. She took the note from Shan's hand and produced a tattered ledger book. “Not in our production unit. No Dronma clan,” she declared after a few minutes.

“How many units are there?”

“In this prefecture, seventeen. Then you can start checking Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai provinces. And there're still the bad elements in the high ranges. They never registered.”

“No,” Yeshe said. “He never would have been cleared for his job if his family weren't registered.”

“And his work papers,” Shan added, “were not likely to be transferred from another province.”

“That's right.” Yeshe brightened. “Doesn't someone have a master list, just for this prefecture?”

“Decentralization for maximum production.” The woman spoke now in a familiar antiseptic voice, the one for strangers, the one tuned to the safety of reciting only banners and anything heard over a loudspeaker.

“I've also heard that we should stop worrying about black cats or white cats,” Shan observed. “And concentrate on catching mice.”

“We would have no authority to hold such a list,” the
woman said nervously. “The Ministry's office is in Markam. They would have the master list.”

“How far?”

“Sixteen hours. If there's no mudslide. Or flood. Or military maneuvers.” The woman knitted her brow and moved to a dusty shelf at the rear of the office. “All I have is the names of those in the combined work units receiving production awards. At least, in the past five years.” She handed a stack of dusty spiral-bound books to Yeshe.

“It's like searching for a single kernel of rice. . . .” Yeshe began.

“No. Maybe not,” she said, for the first time warming to the task. “Most of the old clans were concentrated in maybe six collectives. They were considered the greatest political risks, needed closer scrutiny. You're just looking for the one clan.”

“And if we find the right collective?”

“Then you start the real search. It's spring. The herds are moving.”

In thirty minutes they had identified three collectives with Dronma clan members. One was two hundred miles distant. The second, nearly a hundred miles away, answered its phone after twenty rings. The man recognized the name. “Old clan. Not many left. Stays close to the herds. Gathering stock.” The man spoke with an urbane Shanghai accent that seemed out of place. “Only half a dozen adult workers. Three over sixty. Another lost a leg in a riding accident.”

The third, only fifteen miles away, announced that their Dronma clan members were as plentiful as the sheep in the hills.

Shan studied his map, marking the location of the three units. They had time for only one choice.

He wandered outside, as if the wind might bring an answer. He watched an old woman ride by on a pony, cradling a pig as if it were a child. Suddenly he halted and darted back inside. “We're going here,” he announced and pointed to the second collective.

“But you heard them,” Yeshe protested. “There're only half a dozen.”

“The shoes,” Shan said. “I couldn't understand why Balti had two left shoes under his bed.”

 

Three hours later, as they approached the battered buildings that comprised the collective, Sergeant Feng slammed on the brakes and pointed. A helicopter bearing the insignia of the border commandos sat at its perimeter, guarded by a soldier with an automatic rifle.

“Congratulations,” Feng muttered. “Your guess has been confirmed.”

Yeshe started to speak, but his words were lost in a sharp intake of breath. Shan followed Yeshe's gaze. Li Aidang was standing in the center of the compound, arms akimbo, with the air of a military commander. Behind him, in the pilot's seat of the helicopter, Shan saw a familiar face in sunglasses. The major. He suddenly realized that for all his bravado Li, like so many others, might only be another pawn.

The assistant prosecutor greeted Shan with a condescending smile. “If he's alive I'll have him in an interrogation cell by noon tomorrow,” he vowed smugly. Without waiting for a question, he explained. “It's simple, really. I realized a security check would have been necessary for the chauffeur of an important official. Public Security computers had all the records of his past life.”

Shan had once participated in an audit of the billions spent by Beijing on central computers. Priority had gone to the Public Security applications. The 300 Million Project, they had called it. Shan had thought at first that it described the funding for the project, but in fact it was the number of citizens who had at one time fallen under scrutiny by the Bureau. He had begun to convince himself that it was a welcome efficiency. Until he discovered his own name on the list.

“So he is here?”

“This is his family's collective. Though no one has seen him for a year, maybe two.”

“His family?”

“They're on the high plateau,” Li said, pointing to the north. “Chasing yak and sheep.”

“Then he can be brought back here,” Shan suggested.
“Send someone from the collective who knows him.”

“Impossible,” Li shot back. “He must be placed in our custody. He will be arrested and removed to Lhadrung.”

“There is no evidence against him, only conjecture.”

“No evidence? You saw what was in his tenement. Clear links to hooliganism.”

“A little Buddha and a plastic rosary?”

“He fled. You forgot he fled.”

“Why are you so sure that he's here? I thought you said he ran with the limousine to Sichuan. A limousine does him no good in Kham.”

“Strange question.”

“What do you mean?” Shan asked.

“Here you are, searching for him.”

Shan stared at the helicopter. “If you go to arrest him he will bury himself in the mountains.”

“You forget that I know Balti. He will react better to a familiar face.”

Shan considered the assistant prosecutor. Balti, he knew, might not survive an arrest by Li and the major.
Khampas
seldom submitted peacefully. And if Balti died, Shan could never forgive himself, for somehow he knew that Li was only interested in Balti because of Shan's own interest. But who had told him?

With a chill he looked back and saw Yeshe speaking with the major beside the helicopter. The major became animated, almost violent, shaking a piece of paper at Yeshe, who looked as though he were about to cry. Then the major pointed a finger at Yeshe's chest. Yeshe recoiled, as if struck. Ripping the paper in half, the major spat a final curse and climbed back into the machine. Li, also watching now, uttered a disappointed sigh.

“Balti's interrogation will be completed by the time you return,” Li declared icily. “We will take careful notes for your review.” He darted to the machine and climbed aboard.

They watched in silence as the helicopter disappeared over the mountains. “You have destroyed him,” Yeshe accused.

“I wasn't the one who invited them,” Shan said bitterly.

“It wasn't me,” Yeshe said very quietly, still watching
the horizon. “The old woman at his loft, she expects me to help Balti.”

Shan wasn't sure he heard correctly. He was about to ask, when Yeshe turned to him with great pain in his eyes. “He offered me a job,” Yeshe said in a hollow voice. “Just now. The major had work papers filled out in my name, for a real job, as a clerk with the Public Security Bureau in Lhasa, maybe even Sichuan. The signatures were already on them.”

“You turned it down?”

Yeshe looked at the ground, the torment still on his face. “I told him I was busy right now.”

“Shit, you said!” Feng gasped.

“He said it was now or forget it. He said maybe I could bring your case notes. I told him I was busy.” He searched Shan's eyes for something, but Shan did not know what to offer. Confirmation? Sympathy? Fear?

“Sometimes,” Yeshe continued, “these past few days, I think maybe it is true, what you said. That innocent people will die if we don't do something.”

There was something unfamiliar in Sergeant Feng's eyes now as he gazed at Yeshe. For a moment Shan thought it might be pride. “I knew that boy Balti,” Feng said suddenly. “He never hurt anybody.”

Shan realized that both men were looking at him expectantly. “Then we have to find him before they do,” he said, and opened the back of the truck to search through a pile of rags. He produced a tattered shirt and measured it against Feng's shoulders.

 

It was evening by the time they had climbed the long, increasingly high ridges that formed a fifty-mile stairway onto the high plateau, and located one of the nomad camps. They had sighted the three tents miles away as they drove onto the plateau, but had dismissed the low, gray shapes as rock outcroppings until they saw the long line of goats tied to a central tether nearby, their horns interlocked to keep them stable for milking. The squat, yak-hair tents were tied to the ground with stakes and leather straps, heightening the impression of crevassed boulders worn down by centuries of wind.

They stopped the truck fifty yards from the camp, and moments later were walking toward the tents, Sergeant Feng's uniform and gunbelt covered by the long shirt.

There were no humans to be seen. Prayer flags fluttered beyond the tents. Butter churns stood idle. Dried dung had been piled near the tents. Beyond the camp stood a small herd of yak, grazing on the spring grass. A goat with a ribbon tied on its ear grazed without fetters. It had been ransomed. By the entry to the largest tent the skull of a sheep hung over a willow rod frame in which yarn had been interwoven in geometric patterns. Shan had seen
khampas
make the same patterns with blanket thread at the 404th. It was a spirit trap.

A dog barked from the line of goats. A puppy on a tether lurched forward, upsetting a butter churn. From a bundle of fleece by the first tent a baby cried, and immediately the tent disgorged its inhabitants. Two men appeared first, one wearing a fleece vest, the other a heavy
chuba,
the thick sheepskin overcoat favored by many Tibetan nomads. Behind them Shan could see several women clad in patchwork tunics; soot and grime muted the once vibrant colors of their clothing. A child, a boy of no more than three, wandered out, his chin and lips covered with yogurt.

The man in the vest, his leathery face lined with wrinkles, gave them a sour acknowledgment, then disappeared into the tent and emerged with a soiled envelope stuffed with papers. He extended it toward Shan.

“We are not birth inspectors,” Shan said, embarrassed.

“You are buying wool? It is too late. Last month was wool.” The man was missing half his teeth. With one hand he tightly gripped a silver
gau
which hung from his neck.

“We are not here for wool.”

From his jacket pocket Feng produced a piece of candy wrapped in cellophane and extended it toward the child. The boy approached cautiously, grabbed the candy and ran back to stand between the two men. The man in the
chuba
pulled the candy from the boy and smelled it, held it to his tongue, then returned it to the boy. The boy uttered a squeal of delight and ran inside. The man nodded, as though in gratitude, but the suspicion on his face did not disappear. He
stepped aside and gestured for them to enter the tent.