Mandarin Gate (37 page)

For a moment she lay without moving, her eyes wide and unknowing. Then she shut them and sighed and when she opened they were heavy with the world.

They folded the blanket in silence and descended the slope. His truck had come into sight when they encountered a small cairn with a tangled strand of prayer flags wrapped around its base. They straightened the rope and anchored it anew at the top. Meng began straightening and wiping the tattered, dirty flags. “I hear there are words to say, to put power in the flags,” she said.

He taught her the mantra. “I must go make arrangements,” he said.

She held his arm a moment. “We can’t just let the murderer leave, Shan, can’t let him go unpunished.”

Shan saw the torment in her eyes. “He will be punished, Meng. He will be punished by the truth. He will be pushed out of the valley and marked by all monks, never allowed to accomplish his mission. The Institute will be exposed, unable to send out agents again. That is the way of Tibet. His crime was a crime against Tibet. There will be an accounting, in this life or the next.”

She stared at him as if about to argue. “You would trade yourself for that?”

“If it is the only way, yes. It’s not prison I fear, it’s standing in the way of the truth.”

She broke from his gaze and looked back toward the mountain. “
Yan que yong you hong hu zhi
,” she murmured.

Shan touched her. “I’m sorry?”

Meng gave a tiny, sad smile. “Nothing. It’s something my mother used to say about me. The story of my life, she would say. I was speaking to the mountain, not to you.”

But Shan had heard. “Little sparrow who dreams of swans,” she had said.

Meng suddenly embraced him, very tightly, very quickly, then turned to the first flag and recited the mantra as she kneaded the dirt off the cotton.

“I have to go,” he reminded her.

“I know. I want to finish this.”

He left her there. When he reached his truck he looked up. In the distance she was just another peasant, wringing blessings out of the old cloth.

*   *   *

The constable at the Baiyun post had to invoke Meng’s name to convince the headquarters office to transfer the call to the guesthouse. “He is loading bags into his car,” the Tibetan nervously reported. He kept looking over Shan’s shoulder. Sansan watched from the holding cell.

“Tell him Shan demands to speak with him.”

Two minutes later the constable handed the phone to Shan, then hurried out of the room. Shan did not give Liang a chance to complain. “Major, you are going to meet me in Baiyun this afternoon,” he began.

He had three hours to wait, and no stomach for the condemning stares of those on the streets of Baiyun. He retrieved Yuan Yi’s tablets from the truck and took them to the little shed behind the professor’s house. He murmured a little prayer as he left them, and the ancient mandarin’s badge, inside the secret shrine, then drove to the empty marketplace. He left the truck and began climbing the trail that wound up the steep ridge above the town. At the top he found the outcropping where he had been with Jamyang as they confronted Jigten. It seemed a lifetime ago. He sat on a flat boulder and gazed down the valley, then noticed a deposit of white sand at the base of a rock. He sifted it in his fingers, making a circle on the flat surface of the rock, then within it the outlines of temples. It was the simplest of mandalas, the kind young boys had once been taught when they first entered monasteries. Lokesh would make such a shape and gaze upon it for hours, envisioning the deities that dwelled in each chamber.

As he stared at the sand image he recalled Chenmo’s description of how the abbot had made a mandala at the convent but had mistakenly arranged the deities on it. One of the nuns had seen Lokesh walk toward the convent to work there that night and had spoken with him, out of Shan’s earshot. Lokesh had gone right to the mandala and spent hours correcting the mistakes. He recalled how melancholy had seeped into Lokesh’s wise, gentle eyes after he had examined the abbot’s work. Lokesh’s way of seeing the world often cut closer, and quicker, to the truth than Shan’s. At that moment, Shan knew now, his old friend had sensed something wrong, something out of balance at Chegar.

He gazed in the direction of the shrine where Jamyang had died and murmured an apology. Shan had been too blind, too slow, to understand the path Jamyang had left for him. The lama had raced to save the tablets from Jigten because they were the first clue on the path. He had wanted Shan to investigate, to know why he had had to take such terrible steps, perhaps even to assure the truth came out if somehow his plans went awry. The ribbon had been left on the altar to lead Shan to the tablets, the tablets had been meant to lead Shan to Yuan and his daughter, who had the journal that connected Jamyang to the Peace Institute.

He was halfway down the slope when he saw the grey car speeding toward Baiyun. The demon sent by Beijing was making one last appearance in the valley.

*   *   *

“You were supposed to bring me the American!” Liang roared as Shan entered Meng’s office alone.

“I did not say I would deliver her in person. I said I could sell her to you. Worth more than some outlaw lama surely. Then there’s the abbess and that Chinese criminal Lung.” Shan fought the temptation to turn to confirm that the constables were still in the outer office.

Liang’s hatred for Shan was a living thing, a serpent that seemed to writhe inside before the major opened his mouth. “I will see you dead before I am done!”

“Just a business transaction,” Shan replied in a level voice. “A thousand for my patriotic killings. Another thousand and I’ll tell you where to find the American.”

Liang glanced into the outer office. All he had for backup was Meng and the taciturn Tibetan constables. Liang gave a nod, as if acknowledging the constables, then Shan heard the sound of the main door opening and shutting behind him. Meng probably had no stomach for the scene.

The major spat a curse. “You didn’t kill them.”

“You mean to argue against my petition?” Shan shot back. “By all means. There are procedures, committees who hear such disputes. I will write everything down, explain how I had to act to protect the glorious work of the Peace Institute. I have the pistol,” he said, setting Jamyang’s weapon on Meng’s desk. “You threw away the killer’s bullet so no one can say otherwise. They were at the convent that day to stop the abbot of Chegar from infiltrating the exile government so I did the work of any good patriot.”

Liang did not react at first. His face remained impassive as he studied Shan. “I see now you are dead inside, Comrade. You have no political consciousness. I don’t have to kill you. You are killing yourself.” He dropped a bundle of currency on the desk.

Shan pocketed the money.

“And the American?” Liang seemed to struggle to keep from striking Shan. His eyes narrowed to thin slits as he tossed a second bundle of money in front of Shan.

“There’s a field of rock formations a mile south of the monastery. You can’t miss it. On the top of a hill just off the highway, with a view in all directions. She will be there at sundown, waiting to meet some of the purbas.”

Liang hesitated, as if confused by Shan’s words. He had not expected Shan to speak of purbas, or the rendezvous point with the smugglers. His gaze drifted down to the top of the desk, his eyes working back and forth until at last his lips curled into a thin, lightless grin. He gestured Shan to the far side of the office then sat, opened his computer, and began rapidly tapping the keys. He could not risk going to the monastery, Shan knew, but he had to get word to his agent about the gift Shan had just given them.

“She’s yours to deal with as you wish then,” Shan said as Liang shut his computer with a victorious gleam. “Unless the American consulate calls.”

“What are you talking about?” Liang snarled.

“I took a photograph of her,” Shan lied. “With a copy of yesterday’s
Lhasa Times.
If anything happens to me the photo gets mailed to the embassy.”

The rage quickly rekindled in the major’s eyes, then burst into flame.

Shan jumped an instant before Liang leapt for him.

“Seize him!” the major roared as he grabbed the truncheon Shan had earlier placed on the desk. Shan swerved away from a violent blow, then darted into the outer office. With a groan of sudden despair, he saw that the office was empty. Through the window he caught a glimpse of Meng and the constables standing at the back of the parking lot and froze in panic.
No! They had misunderstood! They had not been inside! The constables had not heard!

He regained his senses in time to swerve as Liang took another vicious swing with the stick.

Liang’s fury raged like a bonfire. Chairs fell over, files were knocked on the floor in his frenzy. One slam of his baton broke the back of a chair, another left a long scar on a desktop. He wanted nothing more than to lay a skull-shattering blow on Shan. “This time no one will see your name in the record!” Liang roared.

Shan glanced at the clock on the wall and parried another furious downstroke.

“The manacles!” Liang shouted. “Chain him!” Shan sensed movement in the doorway. The constables must be coming back. They could at least witness Liang’s fury and they could learn the reason afterwards. He glanced at the clock again, then ran around Liang into Meng’s office. As the major gained on him he grabbed Liang’s computer on the desk and held it like a shield.

“Bastard!” Liang hissed. The serpent inside had full control of him.

The first hammer blow of the truncheon split the top of the laptop, the second tore the top away, the third split the keyboard and spilled electronic shards onto the floor. Liang hesitated only a moment as he saw what he had done, then kept smashing at the machine, desperately trying to reach Shan’s head. Shan retreated backward toward the door until suddenly strong arms seized him. As Shan’s hands were being cuffed behind him, Liang slammed the baton into his belly, dropping him to his knees.

“You saw him! He attacked an officer!” Liang screeched, kicking Shan now.

To Shan’s horror he saw the grey uniforms of the men who had grabbed him. They were not the Tibetan constables who were supposed to have witnessed his performance. They were knobs. Liang had found soldiers to help him after all. They had kept Meng and the constables outside. No one had heard. No one had seen anything. His desperate plan had failed. He had given up his freedom for nothing.

Shan shut his eyes against the pain in his gut as he was thrown into the backseat of a car. He lay on the seat, his head reeling, trying to catch his breath after having the wind knocked out of him, trying to think only of the next moment and the next, anything to keep his mind off the cell that waited, the prison far away. In another day he would be hundreds of miles from Ko.

Moments before it stopped he realized the car was driving on gravel, not the paved highway. It was a constable who pulled him out of the car, and another who turned it around. Suddenly his hands were released. The Tibetan constable wiped at the blood on his face.
“Lha gyal lo,”
he whispered to Shan, then tossed something to his feet.

“What are you doing?” Shan shouted in confusion as they drove away. He was standing at the gate to the Jade Crow compound. Jamyang’s gun lay at his feet.

Lung Tso leaned against a post, smoking a cigarette, as if waiting for him. As Shan took a staggering step toward him another car drove up.

Meng was alone. “I told you Liang had officially departed,” she explained. “But I left a message for him at headquarters that they relayed to his car. I said Colonel Tan was looking for him, had questions about something called the Peace Institute. He didn’t dare take any more official action here, in Tan’s county, for fear of compromising what goes on in Chamdo.”

“You lied to him.” As his pain subsided he began to grasp the cleverness of her ploy. Liang knew Tan as the powerful bully who hated Public Security, but he was also experienced enough to know how furious an old veteran like Tan would be to learn of covert operations inside his territory that had been kept hidden from him.

“Words are such hollow things,” Meng reminded him. “He knew he never should have come here today. Like you said, it was too big a risk to his mission, too big a risk to him personally. He has to disappear. He’s gone. He is convinced his work is done, that his agent will take the American woman. That was enough for him, that and being able to rough you up.”

“But the soldiers…”

“You were wrong, Shan. He never would have spoken openly in front of Tibetan constables. Those soldiers were here to help me with traffic duties, because of the convoys. They had no idea what was going on.” Meng gestured to Lung and with a short bow of her head left him with the gang leader.

Lung Tso stomped out his cigarette as Meng drove away. “The girl won’t go any farther, says she won’t go near a monk without you.”

Shan followed Lung’s gaze toward the entry of the house, where Cora Michener stood with Ani Ama, watching him with a frightened expression. He had no words to comfort her. The only way for her to escape was for Shan to take her to the one man left in the county who wanted her dead.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lung Tso eased the truck to a stop behind the long rock formation that flanked the highway, below a knoll that was surrounded by boulders on all sides like a natural fortress. A strange mist was building on the valley floor, its fingers reaching up into the rocks. At the top a monk appeared and gestured for them to join him. When Cora saw the man in the robe she shrank back, gripping Shan’s arm tightly as he led her forward.

Dakpo moved slowly. Although he was clearly still in pain, his serene expression had returned. He stepped into the evening light so that Cora could see his face.

The American cautiously studied him, then relaxed her grip as Dakpo stepped aside, pointing them down a short passage between the rocks. Trinle was in the clearing they entered but Cora stepped ahead of Shan as she saw Chenmo at his side, helping him tie off the top of a large backpack. As Cora and the novice embraced, a third man in a robe emerged from behind a rock.