The Skull Mantra (28 page)

Segeant Feng cursed and dropped onto the bench beside Shan, not taking his eyes off the animals. Three large black mastiffs, of the kind herdsmen used to patrol against wolves, lingered in the shadows, as though sensing that Feng and Shan were intruders. Feng's hand moved to his gun.

“Ai yi!” cried one of the monks as he saw Feng's reaction. He rushed to stand in front of the dogs. “They are under our protection,” he said in a pleading tone. “They are part of Khartok gompa. They come from all over Tibet to be with us.”

“Damned mongrels,” Feng growled. “Where I come from they are raised for the pot.”

The monk could not hide his horror. “They are part of us. The ones who remember. It is why they come here.”

“Remember?” asked Shan.

“Priests who failed,” the monk explained. “The dogs are reincarnations of priests who broke their vows.”

As the monk spoke Yeshe appeared on the steps with the
chandzoe.
From the far side of the courtyard someone else shouted angrily toward Yeshe. The
chandzoe
put his hand on Yeshe's shoulder as though to calm him. The monk on the steps was still there, still aiming his mudra at Yeshe.

At last Shan recognized the mudra. It was to bestow forgiveness. A cold wave of realization swept through him as he looked back at Yeshe, as though for the first time. He had been so blind. He had asked Yeshe everything about himself except the most important question of all.

 

Two hours later they were at the top of the pass, so high that the stars on the far horizon were below them. Shan, in a drowsy haze, wanted the feeling of drifting through space to continue, until he floated into a world where governments did not lie, where jails were for criminals, where men were not killed with pebbles.

He became aware of a liquid rattle in the back seat. Yeshe had a rosary.

An hour later, as they moved into the crossroads at the head of Lhadrung valley, Shan put his hand on Feng's arm. “Go left.”

“Lost your track, Comrade,” Feng grunted. “The barracks are to the right. Sixty minutes more and we'll be in our bunks.”

“To the left, to the 404th worksite.”

“That's miles out of the way,” Feng protested.

“That's where we are going.”

Feng pulled the truck to a stop as it passed the intersection. “It will be nearly midnight by the time we get there. It's empty.”

“Improves the odds.”

“The odds?”

“Of meeting the ghost.”

Feng shuddered. “The ghost?”

“I want to ask who killed him.”

Feng turned on the cab light and stared at Shan, as though hoping for evidence that this was a joke.

Shan returned the stare without expression. “Scared of a ghost, Sergeant?”

“Damned right,” Feng shot back, too loudly. He slammed the truck into gear and turned around.

 

A half mile from the bridge Shan instructed Feng to turn off the lights. The 404th worksite was as empty as death as they rolled to a stop near the bridge. Feng climbed out and immediately produced his pistol. Shan said nothing but began walking toward the mountain. After thirty paces he looked back to see Feng circling the truck, as if on sentry duty.

Shan paused at the end of Tan's bridge and gazed skyward, still in awe of the stars. He was afraid that if he reached out he would touch them. His knees were trembling.

He walked up the roadbed to the small cairn marking the site of Jao's murder and sat on a rock. There was no wind on the mountain. This was when the
jungpo
would prowl. This was when demon protectors would strike. He found his hand over his pocket which held the charm that called Tamdin. What were the words from Khorda's skull mantra?
Om padme te krid hum phat.

A pebble moved behind him. His heart leapt into his throat as a shadow appeared beside him. It was Yeshe.

“It was a night like this,” Shan observed, trying to calm himself. “Prosecutor Jao was driven to the bridge. Someone was here. Someone he knew.”

“I never understood. Why here?” Yeshe asked. “It's so far from anywhere.”

“That's the reason. The road goes nowhere. No danger of being discovered by passersby. Easy to escape.” But that was not all. The mountain still had not given up its secret.

“So they walked with Jao,” Yeshe said. “To look at the stars?”

“To talk. In private. Someone stayed below.”

“The driver.”

“I am here with Jao,” Shan said, switching to the view of the murderer who had lured Jao to the mountain. “I
brought him up here to tell him a secret. But something happened to surprise him. A loose rock. The tingle of metal. He senses his attacker at the last minute, and turns to struggle with him, long enough for Jao to pull an ornament from the costume.” Shan stood with a rock in his hand, acting out the scene. “Then I grab a rock and hit him from behind.” He threw the rock to the ground forcefully. “I arrange him neatly after I empty his pockets of identity. Then Tamdin uses his blade.”

“So there're two killers.”

“I think so now. Jao didn't come here with someone in a demon costume. He came with a friend, who had the demon waiting.” Shan took a step away, back into character. “I don't want to watch.” Shan walked toward the edge of the cliff. “I don't want blood to spray on me. I come to the edge and throw away what I took from his pockets.” He picked up a stone and moved to the brink of the cliff. Extending his arm over the void, he released the stone.

“You told me why you were sent back from university,” he said after a moment, still facing the abyss. “But you never said why you went to the university.” Investigations, meditations, careers, relationships were much the same, he mused. They failed because no one thought to ask the right question.

Shan sensed Yeshe moving toward him, and stepped to the very edge, until his toes hung out over the blackness.

“It was an honor to be invited to the university,” Yeshe said in a hollow voice.

A tiny shove, a mild gust of wind would be all it took. Yeshe could just slip and fall against Shan, and he would drop. On a night like this maybe you never hit the bottom. There would only be blackness, then a deeper blackness.

“But why would Yeshe Retang be invited? An unknown monk in a remote gompa?”

Yeshe moved beside him now, as if willing himself to take as much risk as Shan.

“They didn't start reconstruction at Khartok until after you left,” Shan pointed out. “The
chandzoe,
he treated you like his hero. Like he owed you. As if Khartok received favors after you left.”

“I promised my mother I would be a monk,” Yeshe said to the stars. “I was the oldest son. It was the tradition for Tibetan families, until Beijing came. The oldest son would have the honor of serving in a gompa. But I wasn't a good monk. The abbot said I had to reduce my ego. He gave me work in the villages, to see the suffering of the people. Twice a week I drove a truck to bring sick children to the gompa.”

A nighthawk called out on the slope behind them.

“He was just lying there, by the road. I thought I could save him. I thought I should push him over to get the pebbles out so he could breathe. I tried. But he was already dead.”

“You mean you discovered the body of the Director of Religious Affairs.”

“I never understood why he was up there all alone,” Yeshe whispered.

“And Dilgo of your gompa was executed for it.” Shan remembered the missing sheets from the files. Witness statements.

“When I turned him over it was there. I recognized it immediately.”

“You mean the rosary belonging to Dilgo?”

Yeshe didn't respond.

“So you were a witness against him.”

“I told the truth. I found a dead Chinese. He had Dilgo's rosary under him.”

It was such a perfect parable. Antisocial cultist condemned by the testimony of a member of the new society, who happened to belong to his own gompa. Proof of how evil the old order was and how virtuous the new could be. “They sent you to the university as your reward.”

“How could I refuse? How often does a monk get offered university? How often does any Tibetan get offered university? They said it wasn't a reward. They said my actions had simply demonstrated that I belonged in university, that I was a leader who should have been there all along.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Prosecutor Jao. Religious Affairs. Public Security. They all signed the paper.”

It meant nothing about who killed Jao, or who might be trying to manipulate Yeshe again. Granting such rewards
was all in the course of business in administering Chinese justice. Someone might have used Yeshe, knowing he had a pattern of driving on the route. Or his involvement might have been entirely coincidental. What mattered was that Yeshe had proved himself susceptible, and someone else was seeking to influence him in the same manner now. Not Zhong. Warden Zhong was just a conduit, just cooperating to secure Yeshe's labor for another year.

“I said it first,” Yeshe offered, as if it were an urgent afterthought.

“First?”

“I gave the statement long before they offered the university to me.”

“I know.”

“They said it was for being a good citizen.” He was whispering again. “Only thing is,” he added forlornly, “I don't know what it means anymore—to be a good citizen.”

As they watched the stars, the pain seemed to drift out of their silence.

“After we saw Religious Affairs,” Yeshe said, “after Miss Taring said artifacts were still being discovered and put in the museums, I wondered. What if someone had found a second rosary like Dilgo's? What if I had lied and didn't know it?”

Shan put his hand on Yeshe's arm and eased him back from the edge of the cliff. “Then you need to find out.”

“Why?”

“For Dilgo.”

They sat on a boulder and let the silence wash over them again.

“Do you think it's true what they say?” Yeshe asked.

“What is true?”

“That Jao's ghost is staying here, seeking vengeance.”

“I don't know.” Shan looked out into the night. “If my soul were set adrift,” he said slowly, “I'd never look back.”

They spoke no more. Shan had no idea how long they sat. It could have been ten minutes, or thirty. A shooting star arced across the sky. Then, just as abruptly, there was a loud sound, a wrenching, haunting half-moan, half-scream like he
had never heard before. It came from below them, and seemed to pierce the skin around his spine. It was not the sound of a human.

Suddenly there were three gunshots, then dead silence.

The two soldiers came for him as in a dream, seizing him as he slept in the dark, dragging him out of his bunk and putting on manacles. They did not speak as they shoved him into the car. They did not answer his questions, except to slap him viciously after the third one. Shan willed his body upright, fighting the pain, reminding himself what to look for. They were not Public Security, but infantry. Soldiers had more rules to follow. He was in a staff car, not a truck. They would not shoot him in a car. They were going out into the valley, not into the mountains where disposals were made. He leaned against the window, letting the glass hold the weight of his head, and watched where they were taking him.

It was the crossroads below the Dragon Claws, where Colonel Tan stood silhouetted against a dull gray sky. The two escorts dragged him toward Tan, released his wrists and moved back to the car, where they stood and lit cigarettes. One man muttered something. The other laughed.

“He said you would do this,” Tan said. “Zhong said you would mock me. Try to use me.”

“You'll have to be more specific,” Shan muttered through a cloud of pain. “I only had three hours' sleep.”

“Stirring up the separatists. Conspiring to breach public security. Leading soldiers into ambush.”

Shan became aware of a dull rasping sound. Beyond Tan's car he saw a familiar gray truck. The rear hatch door was open, revealing the two booted feet of a sleeping figure.

“Is that what Sergeant Feng told you?” Shan's jaw felt numb. “That he was ambushed?” He touched his lip. His fingers came away smeared with blood.

“He had orders to call when he returned last night. Woke me up. Completely frantic. Asked for reinforcements. Says
to give you to Public Security.” Tan glanced to the north. A column of trucks was approaching.

“Perhaps he didn't tell you how he shot one of the tires,” Shan said. “Or how he climbed onto the roof of the truck and wouldn't come down? Or that I had to drive back because he was too hysterical?”

The convoy overtook them. Shan recognized it at once, although there were twice as many trucks as usual. The extras were filled with knobs. He watched in despair. They would go to the South Claw. The knobs would set up their machine guns. The prisoners would walk up the slope and sit, working their makeshift rosaries, waiting.

As the dust of the column settled Shan saw that two of the trucks had stopped. A dozen bone-hard commandos leapt from one truck and formed two lines at the rear of the second. A Tibetan prisoner was thrown out of the shadows and landed between the lines, groaning in pain. Others began to climb out. Shan realized Tan was not looking at the prisoners, but at him.

The prisoners, fifteen in all, were marched twenty feet into the heather and ordered to form a line. Two knob officers appeared from behind the truck with submachine guns and took up positions on the road, facing the monks.

“No!” Shan moaned. “You can't—”

“I have the authority,” Tan said with a chill. “Their strike is an act of treason.”

Shan stumbled forward. It was just another of his nightmares, he told himself. He would wake up any moment in his bunk. He fell to his knee. A piece of gravel painfully pierced his skin. He was awake. “They did nothing,” he groaned.