Mandarin Gate (30 page)

Staying in the shadows, he watched the monks at the wall as much as the worshipers, noting the pinched, unsettled expressions on the men in maroon robes. Were they being punished? Were they being brainwashed? Or were they the watchdogs of the temple?

An old man settled nearby and began a mantra in a low, dry voice. The sound invoked fond images of Lokesh and the lamas they knew, and he soon found himself drifting under its spell.

He was so focused on the mantra that the movement did not register at first. It seemed to be just another pilgrim adjusting his position as he paid homage to one more deity. But then the man, wearing a hat low on his head and mumbling a low mantra, seemed to stumble against one of the seated figures in the shadows, a monk. As he bent over the monk his mantra changed to a curse and he slammed his fist into the robed figure. The monk rolled away, trying to escape.

“Bastard! Murderer!” the pilgrim shouted in Tibetan, and leapt over the monk, blocking his path then pummeling him with his fists.

The monk moaned and covered his head with his arms, then pushed up, knocking the pilgrim back. The man staggered forward, landing another blow on the monk, before shoving him down, slamming his head on the stone flags.

“Jigten!” Shan shouted as he recognized the attacker. He shot up and began pushing his way through the crowd of shocked worshipers

The young monk cried out in pain but offered no resistance. “Killer!” Jigten shouted as he began kicking him. As he bent to slam his fist into the monk’s jaw, Shan broke free of the crowd and leapt forward to grab his arm.

But other arms reached Jigten first. Four monks were suddenly pulling the two men apart, then a moment later uniformed knobs appeared from the shadows of the corridor. A big man in one of the grey uniforms viciously kicked Jigten, propelling him across the floor. As the knobs placed manacles on the shepherd, Shan knelt over the bruised, whimpering monk, wiping away blood with his sleeve, and gasped. It was Dakpo.

One of the knobs noticed Shan’s reaction and eyed him suspiciously. Shan retreated, joining the throng of frightened worshipers fleeing the chamber.

He stood in the courtyard, numb with despair. Somehow he had begun to believe Dakpo knew more than any of them about the murders, that his mysterious quest in the north would hold a key to the puzzle of the valley and its monastery. But all that was lost. A monk involved in a civil disturbance was guaranteed incarceration, and probably loss of his robe.

Police vans with flashing lights rolled up, followed by an ambulance. As he backed away someone gently pulled his arm. He let Meng guide him across the street to a table in the shadows of the café. He watched forlornly as uniformed men and women swarmed into the courtyard. Dakpo was limp as two knobs carried him out of the temple. Jigten had hit him hard, knocking his head on the stone flags.

Shan found himself rising from his chair as the officers hauled the monk into the ambulance. Meng pulled him down. “It’s not what you think,” she said, and he watched, confused, as the ambulance drove away without a police escort.

“I don’t understand,” he said to Meng, but she was calling the waiter, ordering tea.

“I bought you something,” she said after he had sipped his cup. He noticed now a small parcel wrapped in brown paper at his elbow.

“Where’s the hospital?” he asked.

“It won’t be hard to find.” She nodded toward the package with an awkward smile.

“Why wouldn’t the police go with Dakpo?”

Meng ignored his question. “I passed a little shop that sells souvenirs. The man said this was an old one. You don’t have yours anymore.”

Shan studied her a moment. She seemed to have grown younger. There was a light in her eyes he had not seen before.
Leave her,
a voice inside shouted.
She’s a knob. She’ll always be a knob. You loathe knobs.
He opened the package.

It was a strand of Tibetan prayer beads.

“A mala?” he asked in surprise. He glanced back at the disappearing ambulance, then felt the touch of the beads. It was not simply a mala, it was a very old and rare sandalwood mala, each bead exquisitely carved with the head of a deity. “I can’t,” he protested. “It’s a treasure.”

“Don’t be silly. They’re being sold to tourists.”

He watched as his fingers began working the beads as if of their own accord. They had a warm, natural feel, with a patina of long use.

“You wear that well,” Meng offered.

Shan looked up. “I’m sorry?”

“Your smile. I haven’t seen it before. When’s the last time a woman brought you a present?” Her question was as much a surprise as her gift.

His ran his hand over the stubble of his hair, painfully conscious of his shabby clothes. It had been nearly thirty years. “A long time,” he answered softly.

She too wore her smile well. For a moment he forgot about Jigten and Dakpo, then his gaze drifted back to the beads. “The shop,” he asked, “can you take me there?”

The little store was tucked between a noodle stand and a bicycle repair garage, its front window lined with little plastic busts of Mao labeled in Tibetan and Chinese, soapstone snow leopards and genuine yak tail fly whisks. Inside, at the back, was a display case filled with malas, ritual purba blades, temple bells, and gaus, all of them finely worked antiques. They were being sold as if they were just more cheap trinkets.

Shan glanced in confusion at the shopkeeper, who was busy with a Chinese family. “I don’t understand. These should be in museums.”

Meng shrugged. “They say the vaults are full. If it’s gold or silver it’s melted down, but otherwise they allow for disposal locally.”

Shan felt a growing unease. “What are you saying?”

“There’s bins at the entrance to the camps. We take them. Sell them by the kilogram at auctions.” Her grin quickly faded as she saw the pain on Shan’s face. “We don’t get them all,” she offered awkwardly. “Some get hidden.”

Shan looked away. The Chinese boy began demanding that his father buy him a temple bell with an elegant tiger engraved around it.

He found himself on the street, strangely short of breath. The crowd buoyed him down the pavement. Minutes later he was standing at the entrance to the temple again, telling himself to forget Meng, that Jigten was somewhere inside the complex, under arrest and needed his help.

Suddenly his arm was pushed down to his side.

“Don’t show it,” a Tibetan woman warned. It was the noodle vendor he had seen the day before. She gestured him toward her stall.

“Show what?”

The middle-aged woman nodded toward his arm, then stepped between Shan and a passing policeman. He had forgotten about the bloodstains on his sleeve. Dakpo’s blood.

“They are looking for you. They think you may have been part of the attack on that monk.”

“But I was trying to stop it,” he protested. The woman shrugged.

“The other one,” Shan said in an urgent whisper. “The Tibetan who jumped on the monk. I have to find him.”

The woman shook her head. “You won’t see him. Not for a year or two. The knobs will interrogate him, then the police will take him away.”

“Where?” Shan pressed.

The woman frowned. “Are you deaf? I said they are looking for you. They will take you away too.”

“That police station behind the Institute?”

“They have special treatment for Chinese who help Tibetan hooligans.”

Shan clenched his jaw and stepped away from the gate. As he reached the corner another hand pulled him back. “Don’t do it, Shan.”

When he turned he saw the pain in Meng’s eyes. “I’m sorry about those beads. I just thought…” Her words trailed away and she took a deep breath. “There’s no need for you to go.”

“I have to.”

“No. I have to.” Meng began tying her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. “Like you said yesterday, I couldn’t go into that station or down that corridor because I had no way to account for my visit. Now I am on the trail of a suspected criminal, a known thief, who has to be returned to Lhadrung County.” She backed away from Shan and pointed him toward a bench.

Ten minutes later she reappeared in her uniform. She shot him a quick, worried glance as she silently marched past.

*   *   *

The heavy truck pitched and rolled as it sped along the highway. Meng, driving her car in front, seemed as anxious as Jigten to get out of Chamdo. Shan bent over Dakpo, who was in obvious pain, wiping his brow, tapping the dim battery lantern that was their only light in the hollow they had built into the sacks of rice in the cargo compartment

“He can’t be moved,” the nurse had insisted when Meng and Shan had arrived at the hospital for him. “Cracked ribs,” she warned. “A concussion.”

“We will accommodate him.” Meng had offered.

“Not without a doctor’s order,” the nurse had snapped and retreated to her workstation. She seemed to be surprised when she turned to find Meng hovering over her.

“I am a lieutenant in the Suppression Brigade,” Meng growled, “and I am the most pleasant of all of those in my squad. You don’t want me to call my superior. But if I am not out of here in five minutes with this monk I will have no choice. We will start by demanding all the papers of everyone in this unit.” She pointed to an image on the wall of a blond couple in a sports car, torn from an American magazine. “When was the last time you were examined for loyalty, Comrade?”

The color drained from the nurse’s face and she quickly pulled out a clipboard. “Someone will have to sign,” she said. Meng had scrawled an indecipherable character at the bottom of the proffered page and pointed to a wheelchair.

Dakpo moaned as the truck lurched over a pothole. Shan tried to speak with him but he lapsed into unconsciousness. When his eyes were open they seemed unable to focus.

Two hours later the truck stopped and the rear door opened. They were at a crossroads village, parked behind a decrepit stable. An old Tibetan couple, owners of the rundown roadhouse on the corner, helped ease the monk out onto a stack of straw in the stable. The woman brought a small pot of soup and seeing the fatigue on the faces of Shan and Meng, gestured them toward the roadhouse as she sat and began spoon-feeding Dakpo.

The only other customers wandered out as they glimpsed Meng’s uniform. She unbuttoned her tunic and hung it on the back of the chair. In her pale grey blouse she almost passed for one more weary traveler. They silently ate the soup brought by the old man, then she reached back into a pocket of the tunic and produced two folded sheets of paper. She pushed the first in front of Shan.

It was a copy of a page from an official Public Security file, marked
STATE SECRET
. He scanned it quickly, his face clouding in confusion. “It’s just a personnel file,” he observed. “For some Tibetan named Pan Xiaofei. Fifty-eight years old. Early assignments with security units. Assigned to special operations, which could mean a hundred different things.”

Meng nodded soberly. “He’s from a village called Chimpuk, only an hour off the highway. A Tibetan with a Chinese name.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know what the Peace Institute does.”

“It promotes cross-cultural friendship,” Shan said in a tight voice.

“Don’t be such a damned fool! You know what it does!”

Shan stared at her. He tried to convince himself that the knot in his stomach was from hunger. He looked down at the paper. “They produce politically indoctrinated monks,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“And? You damned well know what else they do. They wouldn’t need a platoon of senior Public Security officers just to teach quotes from the Chairman.”

“You tell me, Lieutenant. I want to hear you say it.”

Meng’s eyes flared. “There’s an inner office there, closely guarded. I waited for an hour for the chance to slip in. They keep a special drawer of files in there, a single copy, one card for each agent. A Tibetan name and a Chinese name. That’s how I found this.” She tossed another sheet onto the table. It was a photocopy of a card bearing many lines of numerals and personnel codes, with a record of advancement through bureaucratic grades and Party ranks. In the corner there was a photo with the same Chinese name under it. Pan Xiaofei. Except the photo was of Jamyang.

Shan went very still. His hand trembled as he picked up the first sheet again and read the detailed entries. University in Sichuan, then three special government academies in the east, followed by short duty tours at several monasteries in Tibet, marked as training missions, then finally a year at the Institute. The Institute was the finishing school to which only the elite were admitted. He forced himself to read the rest, then looked away out the window for a long moment.

“Why,” he asked in a shaking voice, “would they send a highly trained undercover officer to become a hermit in Lhadrung?”

“I don’t know. It makes no sense. I don’t think he was sent to Lhadrung. At the bottom there is a note that says Drepung. That’s the big monastery outside Lhasa. Hundreds of monks. The government would have political watchers there. Agents like that, Shan, would be trained in personal defense, in fighting with improvised weapons, or weapons disguised for other purposes. You saw those monks on the street. That fire striker Lung Ma had when he died, it wasn’t the murderer’s. Jamyang had an identical one, issued by the Institute. He showed it to Lung Ma to convince him that he told the truth about his son’s murder, to help explain who the murderer was.”

He pressed his fist tightly against his forehead, as if he could force out the pain that was rising inside.

“Whatever Jamyang may have been is just a distraction, Shan,” Meng said. “We have murders to solve.”

He met her worried, earnest gaze, knowing that she had taken a grave risk by venturing into the inner offices of the Institute.

A movement at the corner of the building caught Shan’s eye. Jigten, who had been napping in the cab of the truck, was walking toward the stable. As he reached the entry he picked up a pitchfork leaning against the wall. Shan gasped and leapt up, running to the stable.

“This will end!” he shouted as he grabbed the pitchfork from the shepherd.