The Skull Mantra (40 page)

The nun looked up with deep, sad eyes. “There are eleven copies of this in Tibet,” she said quietly. “Several more in Nepal and India. Even one in Beijing.” She moved to the side and gestured for Shan to sit at the table. “It is called the
Lotus Book.”

“Here, my friend,” Lokesh said excitedly as he turned to the front pages of the book. “It was such a wonderful time to be alive in those days. I have read these pages fifty times and still sometimes I weep with joy at the memories they preserve.”

The pages were not uniform. Some were lists, some were like encyclopedia entries. The very first word in the book was a date. 1949, the year before the Communists began to liberate Tibet.

“It is a catalog of what was here before the destruction,” Shan spoke in awe. It wasn't just lists of gompas and other holy places, it also held descriptions of the numbers and names of monks and nuns, even the dimensions of buildings. For many sites, first-hand narratives by survivors had been transcribed, telling of life at the place. Lokesh had been writing when Shan entered the room.

“The first half, yes,” the nun said, then opened the pages to a silk marker where another list began.

It was an inventory of people, a list of individual names. Shan felt a choking sensation as he read. “These are all Chinese names.”

“Yes,” Lokesh said, suddenly more sober. “Chinese,” he whispered, then his arms slackened and he fell still as if he had suddenly lost his strength.

The nun bent over the book and turned to the back, where the most recent transcriptions had been made. One by one, she pointed out names to Shan as he stared in a mixture of horror and disbelief. Lin Ziang was there, the murdered Director
of Religious Affairs, as was Xong De, the deceased Director of Mines, and Jin San, the former head of the Long Wall collective. All victims of the Lhadrung Five.

Forty minutes later they returned him in the wheelchair, blindfolded, creaking down corridors hewn from the stone, then onto the smooth floors of the clinic, turning so many times he could not possibly have retraced the route. Suddenly, with the sound of the bells again, the scarf that had covered his eyes was untied and he was in the front corridor, alone.

Yeshe was still on the phone, arguing with someone. He hung up when he saw Shan. “I tried every combination. Nothing seems to work.” He handed the paper back to Shan. “I wrote down other possibilities. Page numbers. Coordinates. Specimen numbers. Product numbers. Then I thought to call about his travel plans. There's a travel office for government officials in Lhasa. I called to confirm what they said about his trip.”

“And?”

“He was going to Dalian, all right, with a one-day stop-over in Beijing first. But no other arrangements for Beijing. No Ministry of Justice car to pick him up.”

Shan gave a slow nod of approval.

“When you didn't return I went on to other things. I called that woman at Religious Affairs. Miss Taring. She told me she would check the audits of artifacts herself and to call back. When I did, she said one was missing.”

“A missing audit report?”

Yeshe nodded meaningfully. “For the audit done at Saskya gompa fourteen months ago. Shipment records show everything went to the museum in Lhasa. But there was no accounting in her records for what was actually found. A breakdown in procedures.”

“I wonder.”

Yeshe seemed to puzzle over Shan's reaction, then offered more news. “And I tried that Shanghai office.”

“The American firm?”

“Right. They didn't know Prosecutor Jao. But when I mentioned Lhadrung they remembered a request from the clinic here. Said there was some correspondence.”

“And?”

“Lots of static, then the line went dead.” He paused and pulled a sheet of paper from under the blotter. “So I went to the office here. Said I had to check their chronological files. Found this, from six weeks ago.” He handed Shan the paper.

It was a letter from Dr. Sung to the Shanghai office, asking if the firm would provide a portable X-ray unit on approval, to be returned in thirty days if found not to be compatible with the clinic's needs.

Shan folded the paper into his notebook. He moved toward the exit, and broke into a trot.

 

Madame Ko led them to a restaurant beside the county office building. “Best to wait,” she said, gesturing to an empty table near the rear, beside a door guarded by a waiter holding a tray in arms folded across his chest.

Sergeant Feng ordered noodles; Yeshe, cabbage soup. Shan sipped tea impatiently, then after ten minutes stood and moved to the door. Madame Ko intercepted him, pulling him back. “No interruptions,” she scolded, then saw the determination in his eyes. “Let me,” she sighed, and slipped behind the door. Moments later half a dozen army officers began to file out, and she opened the door for Shan.

The room stank of cigarettes, onions, and fried meat. Tan sat alone at a round table, smoking as the staff cleared away dishes. “Perfect,” he said, exhaling sharply through his nostrils. “You know how I spent the morning? Being lectured by Public Security. They may decide to report a breakdown in civil discipline. They note my abuse of investigation procedures. They have recorded that security at Jade Spring Camp has been breached twice in the last fifteen years. Both times this week. They say one of my cell blocks has been turned into a damned gompa. They hinted about an espionage investigation. What do you know about that?” He drew on the cigarette again and exhaled slowly, watching Shan through the cloud of smoke. ‘They say their units at the 404th will begin final procedures tomorrow.”

Shan tried to conceal the shudder that moved down his
spine. “Prosecutor Jao was killed by someone he knew,” he announced. “A colleague. A friend.”

Tan lit another cigarette from the butt of the first and stared silently at Shan. “You have proof finally?”

“A messenger came that night with a paper.” Shan explained what had happened at the restaurant, without disclosing the messenger's identity. Tan would never accept the word of a
purba
against that of a soldier.

“It proves nothing.”

“Why wouldn't the messenger give the paper to Jao's driver? Everyone knew Balti. Everyone gives messages to drivers. It is the custom. Balti was right outside with the car. They were going to the airport.”

“Perhaps this messenger didn't know Balti.”

“I don't believe that.”

“Then by all means we'll release Sungpo,” Tan said acidly.

“Even if he didn't know Balti, the waiters would have sent him to the car. The waiter intercepted him assuming that was what Jao would want. But instead, Jao expected something, or recognized something, something that required his instant attention. So he spoke with the messenger. Away from the waiter. Away from his table where the American sat. Away from Balti. And he heard something so urgent that despite his orderly nature he broke his schedule.”

“He knew Sungpo. Sungpo could have sent the message,” Tan said.

“Sungpo was in his cave.”

“No. Sungpo was on the South Claw, waiting to kill.”

“Witnesses would say that Sungpo never left his cave.”

“Witnesses?”

“This man named Jigme. The monk Je. Both have made statements.”

“A gompa orphan and a senile old man.”

“Suppose it was Sungpo who sent the message,” Shan offered. “Prosecutor Jao wouldn't go to some remote location alone, unprotected, to meet a man he had imprisoned. There was nothing any monk could say to get Jao to act that way. He was anxious to get to the airport.”

“So someone helped Sungpo. Someone lied.”

Shan stared at the colonel with a grin of victory.

“Shit,” Tan muttered under his breath.

“Right. Someone he trusted lured Jao with news he could use on his trip. Information that would help him in his secret investigation. Something he might use in Beijing. We have to find out about it.”

“He had no business in Beijing. You saw the fax from Miss Lihua. He was just passing through to Dalian.” Tan watched the ashes of his cigarette build a small hill on the tablecloth.

“Then why would he arrange to stop for a day there?”

“I told you. A shopping trip. Family.”

“Or something about a Bamboo Bridge.”

“Bamboo Bridge?”

“It was on a note in his jacket.”

“What jacket?”

“I found his jacket.”

Tan's head snapped up with a flash of excitement. “You found the
khampa,
didn't you? You told the assistant prosecutor you didn't, but you did.”

“I went to Kham. I found the prosecutor's jacket. That was the best we could do. Balti was not involved.”

Tan offered an approving smile. “Quite an accomplishment, tracking a jacket into the wilderness.” He snuffed out his cigarette and looked up with a more somber expression. “We asked about your Lieutenant Chang.”

“Did someone recover his body?”

“Not my problem.”

Another sky burial, Shan thought. “But he was army. One of yours.”

“That's the point. He wasn't PLA. Not really.”

“But he was in the 404th.”

Tan silenced him with a raised palm. “Fifteen years in the Public Security Bureau. Transferred to the PLA rolls just a year ago.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Shan said. No one left the elite ranks of the knobs to join the army.

Tan shrugged. “With the right patron it could.”

“But you knew nothing about it?”

“The transfer was entered into the army books two days before he arrived here.”

“It could be something else,” Shan suggested. “He could have still been working for someone in the Bureau.”

“Nonsense. Without me knowing?”

Shan just stared in reply.

Tan clenched his jaw and let the words sink in. “The bastards,” he snarled.

“Where did Lieutenant Chang serve before?”

“South of here. Border security zone. Under Major Yang.”

So he had a name after all, Shan thought. “What do you know about this Major Yang?”

Tan shrugged. “Hard as a rock. Famous for stopping smugglers. Takes no prisoners. Be a general some day.”

“Why, Colonel, would such an esteemed officer bother to personally make the arrest of Sungpo?”

Tan's brows furrowed. “You know this?”

Shan nodded.

“A man like that goes anywhere he wants,” Tan said, sounding unconvinced. “He doesn't report to me, he's Public Security. If he wants to help the Ministry of Justice, I can't stop it.”

“If I were conducting a Bureau investigation I don't think I would parade around the county in a brilliant red truck or buzz the countryside in a helicopter.”

“Maybe you're just bitter. I seem to recall that your warrant for imprisonment was signed by Bureau headquarters. Qin ordered it, but the Bureau made it happen.”

“Maybe,” Shan admitted. “But still, Lieutenant Chang tried to kill us. And Chang was probably working for the major.”

Tan shook his head in uncertainty. “Chang's dead, and you still have a job to get done.” He rose as though to leave.

“Have you heard of the
Lotus Book?
” Shan asked, stopping Tan at the door. “It's a work of the Buddhists.”

“The luxury of religious studies is not available to me,” Tan said impatiently.

“It is more of a catalog,” Shan said in a hollow tone. “They started writing it twenty years ago. A catalog of
names. With places and . . .”—he searched for a word—“events.”

“Events?”

“In one section the names are nearly all Han Chinese. Under each name is a description. Of his or her role in destroying a gompa. Of participating in executions. Or looting shrines. Rapes. Murders. Torture. It is very explicit. As it is circulated it is expanded and updated. It has become something of a badge of honor, to add your name to its list of authors.”

Tan had stiffened. “Impossible!” he flared. “It would be an act against the state. Treason.”

“Prosecutor Jao was in the book. For directing the destruction of the five biggest gompas in Lhadrung County. Three hundred twenty monks disappeared. Another two hundred were shipped to prisons.”

Tan slipped into a chair, a new excitement on his face. “But that would be proof. Proof that he was targeted by the radicals.”

“Lin Ziang of the Religious Bureau is in the book,” Shan continued. “Twenty-five gompas and chortens destroyed at his command in western Tibet. Directed the transportation of an estimated ten million dollars' worth of antiquities to Beijing where they were melted down for gold. Came up with the idea of alloting nuns to military installations for entertainment. Xong De of the Ministry of Geology was in there. Commanded a prison when he was younger. He had a predilection for thumbs.”

“I want it!” Tan bellowed. “I want those who wrote it.”

“It does not exist in one volume. It is passed along. Copies are transcribed by hand. It is all over the country. Even outside.”

“I want those who wrote it,” Tan repeated, more calmly. “What it says is unimportant. Just history. But the act of writing it—”

“I would have thought,” Shan interrupted, “that just the one investigation was more than we could handle.”

Tan pulled out a cigarette and tapped it nervously on the table, as if conceding the point.

“I know prisoners in the 404th,” Shan continued, “who
can recite the details of atrocities committed in the sixteenth century by the pagan armies which attacked Buddhism, as if it happened yesterday. It is a way of keeping the honor of those who suffered, and keeping the shame of those who committed the acts.”

Tan's anger began to burn away. He did not, Shan suspected, have the strength for more than one battle at a time. “This is your proof that the killings were connected,” he observed.