Dragon Bones (9 page)

The deck hummed with excitement. Even those for whom this trip was a daily or weekly occurrence pressed against the railings to watch as the ferry entered the gorge. Two large mountains flanked the river, forming the Kuimen Gate, its giant peaks hidden in mist. The water churned turbulent clouds of yellow silt as the ferry fought its way through the dramatic entrance. Precipices hung out high overhead. Rain and time had caused crevasses to form, and the limestone walls had been pitted into great spongy forms.

The voice on the loudspeaker recited, “The Qutang Gorge is eight kilometers long. It is the shortest but most majestic of the Three Gorges. The widest point is just one hundred and fifty meters and can be just as deep, making this part of the river one of the deepest in the world. The river has been known to rise from fifty to seventy-five meters during monsoon season.”

Two elderly women with thick Sichuan accents elbowed their way to the railing next to Hulan.

“Please note the old towpath,” the voice on the loudspeaker continued. “In olden days our countrymen pulled boats up the river by using ropes.” Static rendered the next part of the message unintelligible, but one of the women next to Hulan pointed up the cliff on the southern bank and jabbered animatedly. Toward the top were coffins that the Ba people had attached to the sheer rock face thousands of years ago. The static cleared, and the announcer directed passengers to observe other highlights. The ferry came around a bend in the river, and Hulan saw a painted line marking the future water level. The uppermost reaches of this gorge would still be here, but its grandeur would disappear.

“‘A bridge will fly to span the north and south,’” Hulan murmured.

“What did you say?” David asked.

“It’s a line from a poem by Mao. He envisioned the dam back in the fifties.” She looked at David and smiled. “Don’t expect any more poetry. You’ve just heard all I know.”

Although most Chinese of her social class were well-versed in both the classics and contemporary works, Hulan had great holes in her knowledge. Having been sent as a child first to the countryside, then to the States, she’d forgotten most of the folktales of her childhood and had missed the university courses in Chinese history and literature that others of her generation took.

A few minutes later, the ferry docked at Bashan Village—Bashan meant Ba Mountain—which lay about 130 meters above the waterline on the north shore. Boats—from small two-man fishing vessels to a bright white modern hydrofoil—bobbed in the waters along the pier, where passengers greeted family and friends. Bearers shouted out their best prices, then carried baggage, gifts, and goods like television sets and refrigerators bought in Chongqing up the steep stairs that led to the town itself. On the edges of the stairs the usual food and water vendors crowded together with women and children who sold homemade items—knit booties, fans, sandals, and woven straw hats.

Dr. Ma Zhongyan, the leader of the Site 518 excavation, was easy to find in the pushing, shouting, waving throng. He was dressed in khaki pants, a white linen shirt that had wrinkled in the humidity, and a Yankees’ baseball cap. His feet were planted apart, and his arms hung loosely at his sides. Ma’s English was as perfect and American as Hulan’s, showing not only that he’d been educated abroad but that he’d spent a great deal of time in the United States from an early age. Maybe he was a Red Prince, but if so, Hulan would have known who he was, and she definitely didn’t.

They climbed into Ma’s Jeep, and he beeped the horn to alert the crowds milling about at the top of the stairs that he was coming through, but the action was hardly necessary. The Jeep apparently had no muffler, and the engine itself rattled and groaned. Ma ground the Jeep into gear and, after a series of jerks, eased into traffic.

Bashan was a relatively small town by Chinese standards. The buildings by the dock were practical, with corrugated roofs and electrical lines hung in a jury-rigged jumble overhead. This town wasn’t large enough to merit a New Immigrant City, so everyone here would be moved and everything left behind would be inundated. A large placard on the central plaza declared the fact in huge red countdown numbers—423 days left. In the meantime, life in the old town continued as usual. They drove past open-air meat shops, vegetable stands, and kiosks for cosmetics, tires, hair cutting, tooth pulling, fortune-telling, and herbal remedies. The farther they got into the town, the older the buildings, which were constructed of homemade brick with old-style sloping tile roofs. Though this place was far off the tourist track, signs in Chinese and English welcomed all visitors and proclaimed Bashan’s hospitality.

“Our group has practically taken over the town,” Ma shouted above the roar of the engine. “It hasn’t been very developed or influenced by the outside, but we do have a good hotel for our foreign experts. The headman thinks our business is so important that he’s allotted electricity all day to the quadrant of Bashan that includes the Panda Guesthouse. Of course, promising electricity and providing it are two different things. Still, I think you’ll find the Panda Guesthouse quite nice.”

The words
guesthouse
and
quite nice
rarely found themselves paired together in China.

“Don’t worry,” Ma said. “The Panda Guesthouse was originally a courtyard home for a very wealthy family. All of our VIPers stay there. We can swing by now if you’d like.”

They didn’t, and Ma continued on. Billboards and posters advertised regional products—pickled mustard tuber, Magnificent Sound cigarettes, and canned lichee. There were also the usual one-child admonitions, as well as other government slogans promoting New Immigrant Cities in the Three Gorges. But here and there were crudely painted characters slapped onto rough walls:
BE REVERENT, FOLLOW THE NINE VIRTUES
, and
BE CAREFUL FOR THE END AT THE BEGINNING.
Hulan had never before seen such a blatant display of All-Patriotic Society slogans. The phrases contained nothing inflammatory—they were the usual exhortations for righteous living interspersed with meeting times—but practice of the religion was illegal nonetheless. Why hadn’t the local Public Security Bureau painted out these signs? Why hadn’t they made arrests during the advertised meetings? Once she’d dealt with Brian McCarthy’s murder, she’d investigate the local All-Patriotic Society’s movements.

The Jeep slowed as it approached a narrow bridge that crossed the river. There was considerable foot traffic here, and Ma explained that this old bridge connected the village to the countryside and served as the main artery for transporting produce and other materials in and out of Bashan. A few children hung over the guardrails, throwing rocks into the Bashan Stream, which ran below the pylons. The Jeep crossed the bridge and continued east along a dirt road that cut over the hills and followed the course of the Yangzi. Hulan saw no other cars, trucks, or bicycles. Cultivated terraces planted with corn rose above her as far as she could see and extended down to the river’s edge.

They traveled east another kilometer. The hillsides became steeper until finally they were no longer arable. Green gave way to dust and rocks. Every few meters they passed electric poles that teetered precariously on the side of the road. No wonder electricity and phone service were iffy at the site. A strong wind or a slight bump from a passing pedestrian could easily topple one or more of the poles.

Ma braked at a barrier made up of a two-by-four propped on two piles of stones and held in place by large rocks. He jumped out, moved the two-by-four, drove the Jeep through the gate, and jumped out again to replace the board. This security gate wouldn’t have been much of a deterrent for thieves whether from inside or outside the camp.

Ma drove down to a cluster of work tents about three meters above the river. He had Hulan and David wait by the Jeep, then jogged over to one of the larger tents. When he returned, he had cold-water bottles and hats for each of them. Now that they didn’t have the breeze from the open Jeep, the heat was crushing. There were a few trees, all of which were dwarfed and deformed as if from some disease, so the camp had no relief from the sun except under the tarpaulins. And while it seemed unbelievably dry with all of the dirt and rocks, the air itself was thick with the humidity that rose off the river, exacerbating the worst aspects of this Give-Up Weather season.

After handing off the water bottles, Ma said, “It seems I have a double audience and a double duty here. Attorney Stark, you’ve been sent by my boss to check on me and my missing artifacts.”

No one disagreed with this assessment.

“And you, Inspector Liu, have come from that most worrisome of places—the Ministry of Public Security—to investigate what happened to a young man who was my responsibility. That’s the kind of checking I really don’t like. But it seems that, in either case, I have no choice. So, before I show you what I think happened to Brian and what I know about the thefts, I want to explain a little about what we’re doing out here. I think it will help Attorney Stark and at the same time give you, Inspector, a sense of the people we’re working with and our goals.”

Ma pointed up the hill to where most of the work seemed to be happening. “We’re standing about a fifth of the way up from the river to the top of the site. Most archaeological sites in the Three Gorges are classified as ‘second tier,’ which means they’re located between one hundred twenty-five and one hundred fifty-five meters above river level. Even today, towns and villages in this area are found well above the reach of floodwaters. Time has left behind layer upon layer of history in these platforms. The dam, when completed, will reach—”

“One hundred and seventy-seven meters,” David finished.

“Exactly, which means that most towns and nearly all archaeological sites along the river, this one included, will be inundated. These last three years—with help from our foreign friends—we’ve excavated not just in areas that are exposed to the elements but in the caves as well.”

“Caves?” David asked.

Ma again pointed up the hill to several dark openings in the earth. “This whole hillside is honeycombed with caves.”

The pattern was set. David asked questions; Hulan listened and looked around. He was direct; she preferred the indirect.

“Come, let’s walk.” Ma set a vigorous pace up the trail. Hulan felt sweat trickle down the backs of her legs, and she took a drink from her water bottle. But if Ma expected his visitors to show any signs of physical weakness, he was mistaken. David was in great shape. He ran every day, even in the heat of the Beijing summer, and Hulan had the toughness of having spent her youth at the Red Soil Farm in the harsh countryside. Hard physical activity in relentless heat ranked as only a slight inconvenience.

“Our main interest is the Ba civilization,” Ma resumed. “We believe one of the reasons the Ba people settled here was that the caves offered protection from the elements. They were also good places to hide in times of danger. You may not know this, but China has more caves than any other country in the world. You came down from Chongqing, right? During the war with the Japanese, the people of Chongqing hid in caves during air raids. Today many of those caves are shops. Actually, about forty million people live in caves throughout China. Do Americans use their natural resources so well, Attorney Stark?”

“Can’t say we do.” David responded to the challenge with equanimity.

“And of course nearly every province in China has caves renowned for the beauty of their stalactites and stalagmites. We also have caves filled with Buddhist carvings….” Ma paused just long enough for them to catch it, then added, “But I guess you know that.”

So Ma knew a bit about David and Hulan, which meant, if nothing else, that he’d read the newspaper coverage of the Knight factory debacle five years ago. Hulan gave him a cool look.

“As an archaeologist, I’ve been in many caves in many countries,” Ma continued easily. “I’m always touched by the idea that once people used those dark holes in the earth not only as means of artistic or religious expression but also to record their daily lives—the animals brought down in a hunt or the battles won. People were leaving history on those walls even before written language was invented. Unfortunately, although we continue to look, we have yet to find any artifacts in the Site 518 caves. Primarily we scrape at the ground in the pits, looking for artifacts, looking for the past, looking for civilization, looking for the
lives
of the people who came before us.”

“What exactly are you looking for?” David asked.

Ma sighed, then said, “Thanks to your Indiana Jones, many people think that archaeologists are treasure hunters. We aren’t. Our group—archaeologists interested specifically in the Yangzi watershed—has four questions that fascinate and perplex us. We call them the Four Mysteries, and I’m sure you’ll hear about them at lunch, although you never know. The people on our team have many interests.” He quirked his head. “How much do you know about archaeology, Attorney Stark?”

“Your mandate is to prove five thousand years of continuous culture.”

“Real culture, as opposed to a few people huddled around a fire carving crude weapons from stone,” Ma said, then motioned for them to sit on some large boulders. “For years scholars suspected that people may have lived in the gorges during the Stone Age, but it wasn’t until this final push before inundation that Paleolithic sites dating from 50,000 to 12,000
B.C.
were located. We’ve also found Neolithic sites, one of which is right here beneath our Ba excavations. The ceramics that we’ve uncovered are stylistically different from those found outside the gorges. We think this means that the Qutang Gorge must have been some sort of cultural divide. So Mystery One is why did societies in the Three Gorges area—and the Qutang Gorge in particular—develop so independently? Mystery Two: the Chu Mausoleum….”

Hulan tuned out his words and tried to imagine Brian McCarthy in this landscape. Site 518 was far larger than she’d imagined, extending up and down the hillside. The land was terraced, but whatever cultivation had occurred here was long gone, leaving only dirt and rocks. Peasants crisscrossed the dusty terrain with wheelbarrows, while others—Chinese students and foreigners—squatted in pits sheltered by tarpaulin canopies.