News flash," Sergeant Feng muttered to the commando in battle fatigues who stood at the 404th gate. "The Taiwan invasion is going to be on the coast, not in the Himalayas."
The 404th had the appearance of a war zone. Tents had been erected along the perimeter. New wire had been strung on top of the barbed fence already in place, a vicious-looking strand with razor-sharp strips of metal dangling from it. The electricity had been cut off, except for the wire leading to a new bank of spotlights at the gate, leaving the compound in shadow as the last glimmer of dusk faded across the valley. Bunkers of sandbags were being built for machine guns, as if the Bureau troops expected a frontal assault. A freshly painted sign declared that a fifteen-foot strip inside the fence was now the dead zone. Prisoners entering the zone without authorization could be shot without warning.
The commando raised his AK-47 rifle. There was a raw, animal quality in his countenance that made Shan shiver. Sergeant Feng shoved Shan violently through the gate, knocking him to his knees. The knob studied Feng a moment, then, with a reluctant frown, stepped back.
"Got to show them who's in charge," Feng mumbled as he caught up with Shan. Shan realized it was meant to be an apology. "Damned strutting cockbirds. Grab the glory and move on." He stopped, arms akimbo, to survey the knobs' bunkers, then gestured toward Shan's hut. "Thirty minutes," he snapped, and moved back toward the brilliantly lit dead zone.
The air of the blackened hut was thick with the smell of paraffin. There was a sound as though of mice scampering on a rock floor. Beads were being worked. Someone whispered Shan's name and a candle was lit. Several prisoners sat up and stared, breaking the count of their beads. Their faces were shadowed with fatigue. But on some there was also something else. Defiance. It scared Shan, and excited him.
Trinle was on his feet as soon as he saw Shan.
"I must speak with him," Shan said urgently. Choje was on the bunk behind Trinle, as still as death.
"He is near exhaustion."
Suddenly Choje's hands moved and folded over his mouth and nose. He exhaled sharply three times. It was the ritual of awakening for every devout Buddhist. The first exhalation was to expunge sin, the second to purge confusion, the third to clear away impediments to the true path.
Choje sat up and greeted Shan with a flicker of a smile. He was wearing a robe, an illegal robe, which had been sewn together from prison shirts and somehow dyed. Without speaking he rose and moved to the center of the floor where he dropped into the lotus position, joined by Trinle. Shan sat between them.
"You are weak, Rinpoche. I did not mean to disturb your rest."
"There is so much to be done. Today each hut did ten thousand rosaries. Many of the men have been prepared. Tomorrow we will try for more."
Shan clenched his jaw, fighting his emotions. "Prepared?"
Choje only smiled.
A strange scraping noise disturbed the stillness. Shan turned. One of the young monks was reverently spinning a prayer wheel, fashioned from a tin can and a pencil.
"Are you eating?" Shan asked.
"The kitchens were ordered closed," Trinle explained. "Only water. Buckets are left at the gate at midday."
Shan pulled the paper bag that contained his uneaten lunch from his coat pocket. "Some dumplings."
Choje received the bag solemnly and handed it to Trinle to divide. "We are grateful. We will try to get some to those in the stable."
"They opened the stable," Shan whispered. It was not a question but an anguished declaration.
"Three of the monks from a gompa to the north. They sat near the gate, demanding an exorcism."
"I saw the troops outside. They look impatient."
Choje shrugged. "They are young."
"They will not grow old waiting for striking prisoners."
"What can they expect? There is an angry jungpo. It would be but the work of a day to restore the balance."
"Colonel Tan will never allow an exorcism on the mountain. It would be a defeat, an embarrassment."
"Then your colonel will have to live with them both." There was no challenge in Choje's voice, only a trace of sympathy.
"Both," Shan repeated. "You mean Tamdin."
Choje sighed and looked about the hut. There was another unfamiliar sound. Shan turned and saw the khampa, sitting by the door. The man had a frightening gleam in his eyes.
"Gonna get us out, wizard?" he asked Shan. He had removed the handle from his eating mug and was sharpening it on a rock. "Another of your tricks? Make all the knobs disappear?" He laughed, and kept sharpening.
"Trinle has been practicing his arrow mantras," Choje observed as he watched the khampa with sad eyes. An arrow mantra was a charm of ancient legend, by which the practitioner was transported across great distances in an instant. "He is getting very good. One day he will surprise us. Once when I was a boy I saw an old lama perform the rite. One moment there was a blur and he was gone. Like an arrow from a bow. He was back an hour later, with a flower that grew only at a gompa fifty miles away."
"So Trinle will leave you like an arrow?" Shan asked, unable to disguise his impatience.
"Trinle knows many things. Some things must be preserved."
Shan sighed deeply to calm himself. Choje was speaking as though the rest of their world would not survive. "I need to know about Tamdin."
Choje nodded. "Some are saying that Tamdin is not finished." He looked sadly into Shan's eyes. "He will not show mercy if he strikes again. In the time of the seventh," Choje said, referring to the seventh Dalai Lama, "an entire Manchurian army was destroyed as they invaded. A mountain collapsed on them as they marched. The manuscripts say it was Tamdin who pushed the mountain over."
"Rinpoche. Hear my words. Do you believe in Tamdin?"
Choje looked at Shan with intense curiosity. "The human body is such an imperfect vessel for the spirit. Surely the universe has room for many other vessels."
"But do you believe in a demon creature that stalks the mountains? I must understand if- if there is to be any chance of stopping all this."
"You ask the wrong question." Choje spoke very slowly, in his prayer voice. "I believe in the capacity of the essence that is Tamdin to possess a human being."
"I do not understand."
"If some are meant to achieve Buddhahood then perhaps others are meant to achieve Tamdinhood."
Shan held his head in his hands, fighting an overwhelming fatigue. "If there is to be hope I must understand more."
"You must learn to fight that."
"Fight what?"
"This thing called hope. It still consumes you, my friend. It makes you wrongly believe that you can strike against the world. It distracts you from what is more important. It makes you believe the world is populated by victims and villains and heroes. But that is not our world. We are not victims. Rather we are honored to have had our faith tested. If we are to be consumed by the knobs then we are to be consumed. Neither hope nor fear will change that."
"Rinpoche. I do not have the strength not to hope."
"I wonder about you sometimes," Choje said. "I worry that you are too hard a seeker."
Shan nodded sadly. "I do not know how not to seek."
Choje sighed. "They are holding a lama," he observed. "A hermit from Saskya gompa."
Shan had long ago given up trying to understand how information spread through the Tibetan population and across prison walls. It was as if the Tibetans practiced a secret form of telepathy.
"Did this lama do it?" Choje asked.
"You think a lama could do such a thing?"
"Every spirit can lapse. Buddha himself wrestled with many temptations before he was eventually transformed."
"I have seen this lama," Shan said solemnly. "I have looked into his face. He did not do it."
"Ah," Choje sighed, and then was silent. "I see," he said after a long time. "You must obtain the release of this lama by proving that the murder was done by the demon Tamdin."
"Yes," Shan admitted at last, looking into his hands, his reply barely audible.
The two men sat in silence. From somewhere outside the hut came a long disembodied groan of pain.
Yeshe refused when Shan explained his task the next morning. "I could get arrested just for asking about a sorcerer," he complained.
Feng was driving them through the low rolling hills of gravel and heather that led to town. A meandering line of willows and high sedges marked the path of the river that, having cascaded through the Dragon's Throat, moved at a more languid pace down the valley. They passed a field where bulldozers had flattened a hill, cultivated with rows of now dying plants, so twisted and contorted by the wind and dryness that they were unidentifiable. Another failed attempt to root something from the outside that Tibet neither needed nor wanted.
"What did they punish you for?" Shan asked Yeshe. "Why were you sentenced to a labor camp?"
Yeshe would not reply.
"Why do you still fear them? You've been released."
"Every sane person fears them." Yeshe smirked pointedly.
"It's your travel papers, is that what troubles you? You think you won't get them if you work with me. Without new travel papers you'll never get out of Tibet, never get a job in Sichuan fitting your station, never get your shiny television."
Yeshe seemed to resent the comment. But he didn't deny it. "It's wrong to encourage these people who cast spells," he said. "They hold Tibet in another century. We will never progress."
Shan stared at Yeshe but did not reply. Yeshe shifted in his seat and scowled out the window. A woman, enveloped in a huge brown felt cloak, walked down the road, leading a goat on a rope.
"You want a history of Tibet?" Yeshe asked sullenly, still facing the window. "Just one long struggle between priests and sorcerers. The church demands that we strive for perfection. But perfection is so difficult. Sorcerers offer shortcuts. They take their power from the weakness of the people and the people thank them for it. Sometimes the priests rule, and they build up the ideal. Then the sorcerers rule. And in the name of the ideal the sorcerers ruin it."
"So that is what Tibet is about?"
"It's what keeps society moving. China, too. You have your sorcerers. Only you call them secretary this and minister that. With a little red book of charms written by the chairman himself. The Master Sorcerer."
Yeshe looked up, aghast, suddenly aware that Feng may have heard. "I didn't mean-" he sputtered, then clenched his fists in frustration and turned to the window again.
"So these students of Khorda, they scare you?" Shan asked. Maybe they should all be scared, he realized. If you want to reach Tamdin, Choje had suggested, speak to the students of Khorda.
"Students? Who said students? No need. People are always talking about the old sorcerer. He lives. If that's what you call it. They say he doesn't need to eat. Some say he doesn't even need to breathe. But we'll have to find his lair."
"Lair?"
"His hiding place. Could be a cave deep in the mountains. Could be in the market place. He is very secretive. He moves about, from shadow to shadow. They say he can disappear into thin air, like a wisp of smoke. It may take some time."
"Good. The sergeant and I are going to the restaurant, then to Prosecutor Jao's house. After that, the colonel's office. Meet us there when you find your sorcerer."
"This Khorda, he will never talk to an investigator."
"Then tell him the truth. Tell him I am a troubled man badly in need of magic."
They tried to close the restaurant when Shan arrived. "You knew Prosecutor Jao?" he called to the head waiter through a crack in the door.
"I knew. Go away."
"He ate here with an American five nights ago."
"He ate here often."
Shan put his hand on the door. The man moved as though to push it shut, then saw Sergeant Feng and relented, trotting back down the front hallway.
Shan stepped inside and followed the shadow of the fleeing waiter. In the hallway busboys cowered. In the kitchen no one would look at him.
He caught up with the man as he reentered the dining room through a side door. "Did someone bring a message that night?" Shan asked the waiter, who was still beating his awkward retreat, picking up trays and nervously setting them down a few steps later, then pulling a stack of plates from the counter.
"You!" Sergeant Feng shouted from the doorway.
As the man flinched, the plates slipped from his grip, shattering on the floor. He stared at the plates forlornly. "No one remembers. It was busy."
The man began shaking.
"Who has been here? Somebody was already here. Somebody said don't speak to me."
"No one remembers," the waiter repeated.
As Feng took a step inside the door, Shan raised a palm in resignation and walked away.
"Who's going to pay for the plates?" the waiter moaned behind him. Shan could still hear him, sobbing like achild, as he moved out the door and back into the truck.
Prosecutor Jao had lived in a small cottage in the government compound on the new side of town, a square stucco structure with two rooms and a separate kitchen. In Tibet it was the equivalent of a grand villa.
Shan lingered at the entrance, making a mental note of the way the heather along the wall of the house had been recently trampled. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it with his elbow, careful not to smudge any prints that might be on the handle. Here, he hoped, could be the answer to why Prosecutor Jao had detoured to the South Claw. Or at least, the picture of Jao the private man that would help Shan understand his motivations.
It was an orderly, anonymous room. A decorative mah-jongg set lay on a small table in the corner, under a poster of the Hong Kong skyline. Two large overstuffed chairs comprised the only furniture. Shan stopped, aghast. A young man was slumped in one of the chairs, deep in slumber.
Suddenly he heard voices from the kitchen. Li Aidang appeared, as sleek and well scrubbed as when Shan had first seen him in Colonel Tan's office. "Comrade Shan!" he exclaimed with false enthusiasm. "It is Shan, isn't it? You did not formally introduce yourself when we first met. Very clever." The man in the chair stirred, blinked at Shan, stretched, and shut his eyes again.
Beyond Li, a team of Tibetan women was washing the walls and floor. "You're cleaning his house before the investigation is completed?" Shan asked in disbelief.
"No need to worry. Already searched. Nothing here."
"Sometimes evidence is not always obvious. Papers. Fingerprints."
Li nodded as though to humor him. "But of course the crime was not committed here. And the house belongs to the Ministry. It can't be left idle."
"What if the murderer was looking for something? What if he came back here and searched the house?"
Li spread his arms. "Nothing was taken," he said. "And we already know the movements of the killer. From the South Claw to the cave. From the cave back to his gompa." He held up his hand to preempt further discussion, then called out to the man in the chair. The man stirred again, extending a folder. Li took it and handed it to Shan. "I took the liberty of assembling Jao's schedule. Committees he served on. Details of the prosecution when the accused Sungpo was jailed as one of the Lhadrung Five."
"I thought we would speak with his secretary."
"Excellent idea," Li said, and shrugged. "But she always takes her leave concurrently with Jao. She is in Hong Kong. Left the same night as Jao. I took her to the airport myself."
Outside Shan paused beside the truck and watched in disbelief as the crew began hosing down the outside of the house.
"Little birds have big voices," Feng said with amusement as he climbed behind the wheel.
Suddenly Shan remembered. The only person he had told about going to the house and the restaurant had been Yeshe.
Dr. Sung appeared in the clinic hallway wearing a surgical gown and bloody gloves. A koujiao mask hung around her neck. "You again?"
"You sound disappointed," Shan said.
"The nurse said there were two men with questions about Prosecutor Jao. I thought it was the others."
"The others?"
"The assistant prosecutor. You two should engage in a dialectic."
"I'm sorry?"
"Talk to each other. Do your own jobs right so I can do mine."
Shan clenched his jaw. "So Li Aidang was asking about the body?"
Sung seemed pleased with Shan's discomfort. "Asking about the body. Asking about you. Asking about your companions," she said, casting a glance down the hall where Feng and Yeshe lingered. "They took the receipts for the personal possessions. You never asked for the receipts."
"I'm sorry," Shan said, without knowing why.
Doctor Sung stripped off her gloves. "I have another surgery in fifteen minutes." She began moving down the corridor.
"The colonel had the head sent here," Shan said to her back, following her.
"A lovely gesture, I thought," she said acidly. "Someone could have warned me. Just like that, out of the bag. Hello, Comrade Prosecutor."
Surely the doctor should have known what to expect from Tan, Shan considered. Then he understood. "You mean, you knew him."
"It's a small town. Sure I knew Jao. Said goodbye last week, when he left on vacation. Then suddenly I'm unwrapping the colonel's package and he's staring right at me, as if we had unfinished business."
"And what were your conclusions?"
"About what?" She opened a closet and scanned its nearly empty shelves. "Great." She put the gloves back on. "I wrote to ask for more gloves. They said just sterilize the ones you have. The fools. Just what do they think would happen if I put latex gloves in an autoclave?"
"The examination of the head."
"Ai yi!" she exclaimed, throwing her head back. "Now he wants an autopsy of a head," she said to the fly-specked ceiling.
Shan just stared at her.
"Okay. One skull, intact. One brain, intact. Hearing organs, sight organs, taste organs, smell organs all intact. One big problem."
Shan moved closer. "You found something?"
"He needed a haircut." She moved down the corridor as Shan stared.
"You looked at his dental records?" he said to her back.
"There you go again. Thinking you're in Beijing. Jao had dental work, but it wasn't done in Tibet. No records to verify against."
"Did you try to match the head to the body?"
"Exactly how large is your inventory of headless bodies, Comrade?"
Shan stared at her without reply.
Sung muttered under her breath, tightened her gloves, and threw him a koujiao from the shelf.
They walked in silence to the morgue. Inside, the stench was far worse now, nearly overwhelming. Shan pulled the mask tighter, looking over his shoulder. Sergeant Feng and Yeshe had refused to enter. They hovered in the hall, watching through the small window in the door.
A soiled cardboard box was on an examination table, resting on top of a covered body. He turned away as Dr. Sung removed the contents of the box and leaned over the body.
"Amazing. It fits." She made a gesture of invitation to Shan. "Perhaps you would like to try? I know. We'll cut off the limbs and play mix and match."
"I was interested in the nature of the cuts."
Sung cast him a peeved look, then retrieved a bottle of alcohol and washed the flesh around the neck. "One, two… I count three cuts. Like I said before, not violent blows. Precise, like slices."
"How can you know?"
"If the killer had relied on force the tissue would have been crushed. These are very neat cuts. A razor-sharp instrument. Like a butcher makes."
A butcher. He had reminded Sung before that Tibet was the only land on the planet with butchers trained to cut up human bodies. "Did you look for a bruise on the skull?"
Sung looked up.
"As you said," Shan added. "He was laid down before the incisions. No blood on his clothes. He must have been knocked unconscious. Then the cuts were made."
"We seldom have a need for complete autopsies," she muttered, and wheeled a lamp on rollers to the edge of the table. It was the closest she would come to an apology.
Sergeant Feng paced in the corridor outside as she examined the scalp.
"All right," she said at last. "Behind the right ear. A long ragged contusion. Some skin was opened."
"A club? A baton?"
"No. Rough-edged. A rock could do it."
Shan produced the card taken from the prosecutor's body. "Do you know why Jao would have been talking to someone about X-ray equipment?"
Sung studied the card. "American?" she asked, handing the card back. "Too expensive for Tibet." She pulled a pad from her pocket and busily wrote notes.
"Why would he want such equipment?"
She shrugged. "Must have been for an investigation." She turned the collar of her blouse up as if suddenly cold.
"What about the Americans at the mine? Would someone need this type of equipment for them?"
Sung shook her head. "They have to use the clinic like everyone else. Allocation of medical resources has been carefully planned."
"Meaning what?" Shan asked.
"Meaning the most productive members of the proletariat must be supported first."
Shan stared at her in disbelief. She was quoting something, as warily as if this were a tamzing session. "The most productive members, doctor?"
"There is a memo from Beijing. I can show it to you. It states that Tibetans suffer permanent brain damage by spending their childhood in oxygen-deprived altitudes."
Shan wouldn't let her get away with it. "You're a graduate of Bei Da University, doctor. Surely you know the difference between medical science and political science."
She returned his stare for a moment, then her gaze drifted to the floor.
"This must be difficult," Shan offered. "An autopsy on a friend."
"Friend? Jao and I talked sometimes. Mostly it was just the investigations. And government functions. He told jokes. You don't often hear jokes in Tibet."
"Like what?"
Sung thought a moment. "There was one. Why do Tibetans die younger than Chinese?" She looked up expectantly, her mouth in a crooked shape that may have been a grin. "Because they want to."
"Investigations. You mean murders?"
"I get dead people. Murder. Suicide. Accident. I just fill out the forms."
"But you wouldn't fill out our form."
"Sometimes it's hard to ignore the obvious."
"And the others? You're never curious?" he asked.
"Curiosity, Comrade, can be very dangerous."
"How many traumatic deaths have you investigated over the past two years?"
"My job is to tell you about this body," Sung frowned. "Nothing else."
"Right. Because that's what your forms are for."
Sung threw her hands up in surrender. "Anything to shut you up. Okay. I remember three who fell off mountains. Four in an avalanche. A suffocation. Four or five in auto accidents. One bled to death. Record-keeping is not my responsibility. And that's mostly the Han population. The local minorities," she said with a meaningful glance, "do not always rely on the facilities provided by the people's government."
"Suffocation?"
"The Director of Religious Affairs died in the mountains."
"Altitude sickness?"
"He didn't get sufficient oxygen," Sung acknowledged.
"But that would be death from natural causes."
"Not necessarily. He lost consciousness from a blow to the head. Before he recovered someone stuffed his windpipe with pebbles."
"Pebbles?" Shan's head snapped up.
"Touching, really," Sung said with a morbid smile. "You know it was a traditional way to kill members of the royalty."
Shan nodded slowly. "Because no one was allowed to commit violence on them. Was there a trial?"
Sung shrugged again. It seemed to be her defining mannerism. "I don't know. I think so. Bad elements. You know, protestors."
"What protestors?"
"Not my job. I don't remember faces. If asked, I attend and read my medical reports to the tribunal. Always the same."
"You mean you always read your reports. And a Tibetan is always condemned."
Sung's only response was a sharp glare.
"Your dedication to duty is an inspiration," Shan said.
"Someday I'd like to return to Beijing, Comrade. How about you?"
Shan ignored the question. "The one who bled to death. I supposed he stabbed himself fifty times."
"Not exactly," Sung said with a dark gleam. "His heart was cut out. I have a theory on that one."
"A theory?" Shan asked with a flicker of hope.
"He didn't do it himself." On the way out she threw open the door so hard Sergeant Feng had to jump out of the way.
Twenty minutes later he was in Tan's office. He had passed Yeshe in the waiting room, ignoring his agitated whispering.
"You, Prisoner Shan," Tan declared, "must have balls the size of Chomolungma."
"Do you know for certain the cases are not related?"
"Impossible," the colonel growled. "They're closed cases. You're supposed to be filling in one hole, not digging others."
"But if they are related-"
"They are not related."
"The Lhadrung Five, the people call them. You mentioned them yesterday. I didn't understand when you said the protestors keep proving your point, that you were too easy on them after the Thumb Riots. It's because they are being arrested again. For murder."
"The minority cultists have difficulty complying with our laws. Possibly it has not escaped your attention."
"How many of the Five have been arrested for murder?"
"It only proves it was a mistake to release them the first time."
"How many?"
"Sungpo is the fourth."
"Jao prosecuted them?"
"Of course."
"The connections can't be ignored. The Ministry would not ignore such connections."
"I see no connections."
"The five were all here in Lhadrung. Convicted and imprisoned together. A connection. Then, one after another, four are charged with murder. A connection. First three prosecuted by Jao. The fourth charged with Jao's murder. A connection. I need to know about those three cases. Proving a conspiracy might finish the case."
Colonel Tan eyed Shan suspiciously. "Are you prepared to attack a conspiracy by the Buddhists?"
"I am prepared to find the truth."
"Have you heard of the purbas?" Tan asked.
"A purba is a ceremonial dagger used in Buddhist temples."
"It's also the name taken by a new resistance group. Monks mostly, though they don't seem to mind violence. A different breed. Very dangerous. Of course there's a conspiracy. By Buddhist hooligans like the purbas, to kill government officials."
"You're saying all the others were officials?"
Tan lit a cigarette and considered Shan. "I'm saying don't let your paranoia conceal the obvious."
"But what if it's something else? What if the Lhadrung Five themselves were the victims of a conspiracy?"
Tan gave an impatient wince. "To what end?"
"Covering a larger crime. I could not suggest anything specific without analyzing the other cases."
"The other murders were all solved. Don't confuse the record."
"What if there is another pattern?"
"A pattern?" When he exhaled smoke Tan had the appearance of a dragon. "Who cares?"
"Patterns can't be seen in just two deaths. Sometimes not in three. But now we have four. Something may have been invisible that could be seen now. What if it were obvious to the Ministry, which will have access to the files? Four murders within a few months. Four of the five most prominent dissidents in the county are tried for those murders, but no effort is made to link the cases. And the victims include at least two of the most prominent officials in the county. Two or three, you might explain as a coincidence. Four murders feels like a crime wave. But five, that might seem negligent."
A pattern, Shan repeated to himself as he followed Yeshe and Feng into the clutter of the market square. There was a pattern, he was certain. He knew it instinctively, the way a wolf might smell prey on the far side of a forest. But where was the scent coming from? Why did he feel so sure?
The market was a jumble of stalls and peddlers selling from blankets arranged on the packed earth. Shan's eyes opened wide as he absorbed the scene. Here before him was more life than he had seen in three years. A woman held out yak-hair yarn, another shouted prices for crocks of goat butter. He reached out and touched the top of a basket full of eggs. Shan hadn't tasted an egg since leaving Beijing. He could have stared at the basket for hours. The miracle of eggs. An old man tended an elaborate display of torma, the butter and dough effigies used as offerings. Children. His gaze settled on a group of children playing with a lamb. He fought the urge to walk over and touch one, to confirm that such youth and innocence still existed.
Sergeant Feng's hand on his shoulder brought Shan back to his senses, and he moved through the stalls. The questions flooded back, the scent of a pattern. Was it simply that he knew a man like Sungpo did not kill? No. There was something else. If it was not Sungpo then it was a conspiracy. But whose conspiracy? That of the accused? Or of the accusers? Would he show the world that the monks were guilty, for which he would punish himself forever, or that they were innocent, for which the government would punish him forever?
Feng bought a stick of roasted crab apples. A man with a milky eye whirled a prayer wheel and offered jars of chang, Tibetan beer made from barley. Yak cheese, hard, dry, and dirty, stood stacked beside a forlorn girl with waist-length braids. A boy offered plastic bags stuffed with yogurt, an old man some animal skins. Shan realized that most of the Tibetans wore sprigs of heather, tied or pinned to their shirts. A girl with one arm called for them to buy a scrap of silk to use as a khata. The air was filled with the pungent traces of buttered tea, incense, and unwashed humans.
A squad of soldiers was checking the papers of a wiry, restless-looking man who wore a dagger in his belt in the traditional khampa style. As the soldiers approached he gripped not the dagger but the amulet around his neck, the gau locket which probably contained an invocation to a protective spirit. They let him walk on. As the man gave his gau a pat of thanks, Shan suddenly remembered. The local inhabitants had complained about the blasting because it angered Tamdin. Fowler had said no, she started blasting only six months earlier. She meant Tamdin had been seen more than six months earlier. Tamdin had been angry earlier. A pattern. Had Tamdin killed earlier?
Yeshe stopped at the far end of the market, beside a shop whose door was a filthy carpet supported by two spindly poles. Sergeant Feng eyed the dark interior of the shop and frowned. More than one Chinese soldier had been ambushed in such places. He pointed toward a stall selling tea near the center of the market. "I'll have two cups, no more." He reached into his shirt and pulled out a whistle on a lanyard. "After that I'll call the patrol." He pulled an apple from the stick with his teeth and walked away.
There was no window in the building, no doorway but the one they entered by. The interior was lit only by butter lamps, their meager light made even dimmer by the smoke of incense. As his eyes adjusted Shan discerned rows of shelves covered with bowls and jars. It was an herbalist's shop. An emaciated woman sat behind a wide plank laid across two upended crates. She cast a vacant stare at Shan and Yeshe. Three men sat on the earthen floor against the wall to the right, apparently in a state of stupor. He followed Yeshe's gaze to the left, into the darkest corner of the room. On a rough-hewn table sat a short, dirty conical hat with the bottom folded up. Behind it was a deeper shadow which had the shape of an animal, perhaps a large dog. "An enchanter's cap," Yeshe said with a nervous whisper. "I haven't seen one since I was a boy."
"You said nothing about Chinese," the old hag barked. As she spoke one of the men on the floor sprang forward, grabbing a heavy staff that leaned against the shelves.
Yeshe put a restraining hand on Shan's arm. "It's all right," he replied nervously. "He's not like that."
The woman fixed Shan with a frigid stare, then pulled a jar of powder from the lowest shelf. "You want something for sex, eh? That's what Chinese want."
Shan shook his head slowly and turned toward Yeshe. Not like what? He took a step closer to the table in the corner. The shadow at the table seemed to have shifted. It was clearly a man now, who appeared to be asleep, or perhaps intoxicated. Shan took another step. The left half of the man's face had been crushed. Half his left ear had been cut away. A brown bowl sat in front of him, lined with silver. Shan studied the peculiar pattern on the vessel. It wasn't a bowl. It was the top half of a human skull.
Suddenly a second man leapt forward to hover at Shan's elbow. He muttered a threat in a dialect that was unintelligible to Shan. Shan turned and saw to his surprise that the man was a monk. But he had a wild, feral quality, a raw look that Shan had never seen in a monk.
"He says"- Yeshe looked at the sleeping man as he spoke-"He says that if you take a photograph you will be sent immediately to the second level of the hot hell."
No matter where Shan turned, people wanted to warn him of the great suffering that awaited him. He turned his palms outward to show that they were empty. "Tell him," he said wearily, "that I am not acquainted with that particular hell."
"Don't mock him," Yeshe warned. "He means Kalasutra. You are nailed down and your body is cut into pieces with a burning hot saw. These monks. They are from a very old sect. Almost none left. They will tell you it is real. They may tell you they have been there."
Shan studied the monk with a chill.
Yeshe grabbed his arm and pulled. "No. Don't anger him. This drunkard cannot be who we want. Let us leave this place."
Shan ignored him and moved back toward the woman.
"I could read your omens," the woman said in a voice like that of a hen.
"Not interested in omens," Shan said. There was a brass piece, a plate the size of his palm on the table. It was inscribed along the perimeter with small images of Buddha. The center was brilliantly polished.
"Your people like omens."
"Omens just tell facts. I am interested in implications," Shan said. He reached for the plate.
Yeshe's hand snapped up and grabbed his wrist before he touched it.
"Not for you," the woman said with a chiding glance at Yeshe, as though she wished Shan had reached the disc.
"What is it?" he asked. Yeshe turned with his back to Shan, as though Shan needed protection.
"Much power," the woman cackled. "Enchantment. A trap."
"Trap for what?"
"Death."
"It catches the dead? You mean ghosts?"
"Not that kind of death," she said enigmatically, and pushed his hand away.
"I don't understand."
"Your people never understand. They fear death as an ending of life. But that is not the important one."
"You mean it catches the forces that lay waste to the soul."
The woman gave a slow nod of respect. "When it can be focused correctly." She considered him for a moment, then pulled a handful of black and white pebbles from a bowl and tossed them on the table. She solemnly arranged them in a line, then extracted several after careful deliberation. She looked at Shan sadly. "For the next month you must not dig in the earth alone. You must light torma offerings. You must bow before black dogs."
"I must speak with Khorda."
"Who are you?" the woman asked.
Shan weighed his words. "Right now," he whispered back, "I only know who I am not."
She stepped around the table and took his hand as if he might lose his way if he tried to reach the corner alone. The monk moved to intercept him again, but was stopped with a sharp glance from the woman. He retreated to sit squarely in the entrance, facing outside. Yeshe squatted beside him at the doorframe, facing Shan, as if he might need to spring to Shan's rescue at any moment.
Shan sat on a crate in front of the table and studied the old man.
As he did so the man's eyes burst open, instantly alert, the way a predator wakens.
Shan had the fleeting impression of looking into the face of an idol. The eye on the ragged side of the man's face looked at him with a supernatural intensity. The eyeball was gone, replaced with a brilliant red glass orb. The right eye, the living eye, seemed no more human. It too gleamed like a jewel, lit from the back.
"Choje Rinpoche suggested I speak with you."
The eye seemed to turn inward for a moment, as though searching for recognition. "I knew Choje when he was nothing but a brown-robe rapjung, an apprentice," Khorda said at last. His voice was like gravel being rubbed against a rock. "They took his gompa many years ago. Where does he study now?"
"The 404th lao gai brigade."
Khorda nodded slowly. "I've seen them take gompas." The right side of Khorda's face twisted into a hideous grin. "You know what it means?" the sorcerer asked. "They eliminate it. They take it stone by stone. They eradicate its existence. They pound the foundation into the earth. Reclamation, they call it. They take the stones and build barracks. If they could dig a hole deep enough they would bury all of Tibet." Khorda stared at Shan. No, he stared at a point behind Shan that he seemed to see through Shan's skull. After a moment his eyelids shut.
"I touched a dead body," said Shan.
Slowly the left eyelid opened. The red jewel stared at him. "A common enough sin. Ransom a goat." Khorda spoke with what seemed a shadow of a voice. It was hoarse and distant and gasping.
The penance was common among the herding people, who would buy a goat out of the herd to save it from the pot. "Where I live there are no goats."
The cheek curled in another half grin. "Ransoming a yak would be even better."
"The killer was wearing this."
The sorcerer's face tightened. His good eye opened and transfixed the disc that Shan held out. He pulled it from Shan's hand and held it closer.
"Once he was awakened," Khorda nodded knowingly, "he could not be expected to sit idle. When he sees everything he will have no more rest."
"Everything? You mean the murders?"
"He means 1959," the woman snapped from behind Shan. The year of the final Chinese invasion.
"I need to meet him."
"People like you," Khorda said, "people like you cannot meet him."
"But I must."
Half of Khorda's face curled into a hideous smile. "You will take the consequences?"
"I will take the consequences," Shan said. He felt a tremor in his lips as he spoke.
"Your hands," Khorda rasped. "Let me see them."
As Shan laid them on the table, palms upward, Khorda bent over each one, studying them a long time. His eyes rose to meet Shan's. As he did so, he pressed Shan's hands together and dropped a rosary into them.
The beads felt like ice. They seemed to numb his hands. They were made of ivory, and each was intricately carved in the shape of a skull.
"Repeat this," Khorda said. There was something new in his voice, a bone-chilling tone of command that caused Shan to look into the sorcerer's eye. "Look at me with the beads in your hands and repeat this. Om! Padme te krid hum phat!" he barked.
Shan did as he was told.
Behind him Yeshe gasped. The woman made a sound like the call of a raven. Was it laughter? Or fear?
They repeated the strange mantra at least twenty times. Then Shan realized Khorda had stopped and he was speaking alone. He felt light-headed, then an intense coldness clenched him and everything seemed to grow dark. The words came faster and faster, as though his voice was being controlled by another. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash that seemed to come from inside his head, and Khorda gave an immense roar. It was a sound of great pain.
Shan shivered violently. He dropped the beads and the room came back into focus. The shivering stopped, though his hands felt ice cold.
The sorcerer was gasping, as though from strenuous exercise. He looked warily around the chamber, especially into the shadows of the corners, as though expecting something to leap out. He reached and poked Shan's chest with a gnarled finger. "You still alive?" he croaked. "Is it still you, Chinese?" He retrieved the rosary and studied Shan's palms again.
Shan's heart was racing. "How do I find Tamdin?" he asked.
"Follow his path. He won't be far now," the sorcerer said with his crooked grin. "If you are brave enough. The path of Tamdin is a path of ruthlessness. Sometimes only ruthlessness reaches the truth."
"What-" Shan's mouth was as dry as sand. "What if someone offended Tamdin? What would need to be done?"
"Offend a protector demon? Then expect to attain nothingness."
"No. I mean a true believer did something in the name of Tamdin, pretending to be Tamdin. Maybe borrowing the face of Tamdin."
"For the virtuous there are charms for forgiveness. Might work for the girl."
"A girl asked to be forgiven by Tamdin?"
Khorda said nothing.
"Can they work for me?" If a nonbeliever used a costume, Shan realized, they would not ask for a charm. But surely a nonbeliever would have no reason to use the costume, unless they were framing the Buddhist monk. And then they would not be concerned with forgiveness. Shan sighed. He wished he could simply settle for attaining nothingness.
Khorda lifted his enchanter's cap and set it on his head. As if it were a cue, the woman appeared with a sheet of rice paper, ink, and a brush. Khorda lifted the brush and began to work on the paper. He inscribed several large ideograms, then closed his right eye and raised the paper to the jeweled eye. He shook his head sadly, tore the paper into pieces and dropped it all onto the floor. "It won't stick to you," Khorda grunted in frustration, fixing Shan with his unearthly stare. "You require much more." The sorcerer's hand, still clutching the rosary, began to shake.
"What do you see?" Shan heard himself say, as though from a distance. He massaged his fingers. They still seemed icy cold where they had touched the skull rosary.
"I have known men like you. Like a magnet. No. Not that. A lightning rod. If you are not careful your soul will wear out long before your body."
Khorda's hand was shaking violently now. It began to move. Khorda seemed to fight it, to try to restrain it, but without avail. It leapt at Shan and grabbed his pocket. Two bony fingers pulled out a paper. It was the charm from Choje. The shaking hand unfolded it, then abruptly dropped it, as though burned.
The old man studied the paper and nodded deferentially. "This Choje must love you well, Chinese, to give you such a thing," he said solemnly. A hoarse laugh rose in his throat. "Now I know why you survived," he said, wheezing. "But it cannot change the thing you did." He gave a great sigh, as though he had been released from a powerful grip, and began to stare at the skull beads in his hand. An intense curiosity seized his face, as if he could not understand how they got there, or why.
"The thing I did? The mantra, with the skulls?" Shan asked.
But Khorda seemed not to hear. The woman pulled his arm urgently. "The summoning," she hissed, pushing him out the door. "You summoned the demon."
As they moved back through the maze of stalls, a two-wheeled cart filled with young goats turned in front of them, pulled by two old women. The women stumbled and the cart flew upward, tipping its contents directly onto Sergeant Feng. Feng went down, entangled in bleating animals. The alley exploded with activity. Merchants angrily shouted to keep the goats from their wares. Herdsmen moved in to help, adding to the confusion.
Three men, dressed in the fleece vests and caps of herders, materialized at Shan's side. They pushed Yeshe and Shan into a doorway six feet away. One of them turned his back to them, blocking the view to Feng; he began shouting encouragement to the herdsmen.
"We know you have Sungpo," one of them said abruptly. He pulled back his cap, revealing a familiar haircut. Several long scars crisscrossed his face.
"Isn't it a breach of the monastic rules not to wear your robe?" Shan asked.
The man gave him a sour look. "When you do not hold a license you are not so fastidious," he said with a distracted tone. He was studying Yeshe. "What was your gompa?" he demanded.
Yeshe tried to push away. The man at his arm responded by squeezing the top of his shoulder. The motion seemed to take Yeshe's breath away. He bent over, gasping. It was a traditional martial arts pincer movement against a pressure point.
"What kind of monks-" Shan began, then recognized the scars. They were the kind left by Public Security batons, from a beating so savage it ripped open long gutters of skin. Sometimes Public Security glued sandpaper to their batons.
The man's companion held Yeshe by the upper arm.
"Purba!" Yeshe warned.
"Some say you are among the zung mag protected by Choje Rinpoche," the scarred-face man said. Zung mag was a Tibetan term. It meant prisoners of war. It was not a term Choje ever used. "Others say you are protected by Colonel Tan. It cannot be both. It is a dangerous game you play." He silently pulled up Shan's arm, unbuttoned the cuff and rolled up his sleeve. He pushed the flesh around the tattoo. It was a test used in the prisons for infiltrators. Recent tattoos would not lose their color because of the bruising underneath.
The man nodded at his companion, who relaxed his grip on Yeshe. "Do you have any idea of what will happen if you execute another of the Five?" Inside his sleeve another garment was visible. He was wearing a robe after all, Shan realized, under the herdsmen's clothes.
For some reason the man made Shan angry. "Murder is a capital offense."
"We know about capital offenses in Tibet," the purba snapped. "My uncle was executed for throwing your chairman's quotations into a chamber pot. My brother was killed for conducting rites at a mass grave."
"You are talking about history."
"That makes it better?"
"Not at all," Shan said. "But what does it mean for you and me?"
The purba glared at Shan. "They killed my lama," he said.
"They killed my father," Shan shot back.
"But you are going to prosecute Sungpo."
"No. I am making an investigation file."
"Why?"
"I am a lao gai prisoner. It is the labor assigned to me."
"Why would they use a prisoner? It makes no sense."
"Because I had a life before the 404th. I was an investigator in Beijing. That is why Tan chose me. Why he decided to do an investigation outside the prosecutor's office I do not yet know."
The rancor began to fade from the man's voice. "There were riots before, the last time the knobs came to this valley. Many were killed. It was never reported."
Shan nodded sadly.
"It seemed that they were beginning to move on. But then they started persecuting the Five."
"Prosecution. There was a murder in each case." As much as he disliked the man's violence, Shan desperately wanted to find common grounds with the purbas. "At least accept that murderers must be punished. This is not some pogrom against the Buddhists."
"Do you know that?"
No, Shan realized wearily, he didn't know that. "But each started with a murder."
"Strange words, for someone from Beijing. I know your kind. Murder isn't a crime. It's a political phenomenon."
Shan felt an unfamiliar fire as he stared back at the young monk. "What is it you seek? To warn me? To scare me away from a job I am forced to do?"
"There must be payment in kind. When you take one of ours."
"Revenge is not the Buddhist way."
When the monk frowned, the long gouts of scar tissue contorted his face into a gruesome mask. "The story of my country's destruction. Peaceful coexistence. Let virtue prevail over force. It doesn't work when virtue has no voice left." He grabbed Shan's chin and forced Shan to look as he turned his head slowly, to be certain Shan could see the ruin of his face. "In this country, when you turn the other cheek they just destroy both of them."
Shan pushed the purba's hand away and looked into his smoldering eyes. "Then help me. There is nothing that can stop this, except the truth."
"We do not care who murdered the prosecutor."
"The only reason they will release a suspect is because they have a better one."
The purba stared at Shan, still suspicious. "In the hut of Choje Rinpoche, there is a Chinese prisoner who prays with Rinpoche. They call him the Chinese Stone, because he is so hard. He has never broken. He tricked them into releasing an old man."
"The old man's name was Lokesh," Shan acknowledged. "He sang the old songs."
The man nodded slowly. "What are you asking of us?"
"I don't know." Shan's eyes wandered toward Khorda's hut. "I would like to know who has suddenly been asking for charms for forgiveness from Tamdin. A young girl. And I need to find Balti, Prosecutor Jao's khampa driver. No one has seen him or the car since the murder."
"You think we would collaborate?"
"On the truth, yes."
The monk did not reply. Sergeant Feng's voice could be heard now, calling for Shan and Yeshe above the bleat of the goats.
"Here-" The purba in front spun about and dropped a small goat into Yeshe's arms. His disguise.
Feng was raising the whistle to his lips as Shan and Yeshe stepped out of the doorway.
Shan glanced back. The purbas were gone.
Yeshe was silent as they returned to the truck. He sat in the back and stared at a piece of heather, like those worn by the people in the market. "A girl gave it to me," he said in a desolate tone. "She said to wear it for them. I asked who she meant. She said the souls of the 404th. She said the sorcerer announced they were all going to be martyred."