Beautiful Ghosts (27 page)

She grew silent again, and moisture filled her eyes again. “I feel responsible for his death. I took him there, months ago. I asked him to go to Zhoka with me because Surya was going to show us how to make it live again, and I wanted Lodi to be part of it. He didn’t want to go at first, but when we began finding things he seemed to change, and did not protest.”

“Did he assemble the skulls on the table?” Shan asked. “Did he make the writing beneath them, about being taken by beauty?”

“We both gathered the skulls. There were old chambers where they were scattered about the floor. All these years, and everyone has been too frightened to return to pay homage. We weren’t sure what to do with them. Lodi wrote the words. It should have been a prayer but we know so few,” Liya added in a whisper.

“Ming was his partner. Don’t you think he would have told Ming about Zhoka? They had dealt with ruins before, for the museum.”

“I don’t know. Lodi was becoming distrustful of Ming. He said Ming was too interested in emperors and glory to be trusted.” She turned her gaze back to Shan.

“Ming spoke to Lodi about emperors?”

“That’s what Lodi said, nothing else.”

“What were they doing, Liya? Ming and Lodi were doing more than distributing art.”

She clenched her jaw, and acted as if she had not heard the question. “He never said more about Ming on his last visit, except that he said we should be prepared to resist if Chinese came from the north. He said it would not be soldiers, but men like soldiers. He sent for the Gurkhas who help him get by the border patrols.”

“The ones with guns.”

“Some of us argued with Lodi, said we must not have guns. He said we did not understand how dangerous things had become. He said something happened long ago that is finally going to destroy us. He even asked me to begin to move everyone away across the border.”

“But you haven’t.”

“I will not be the one who abandons Bumpari after so many centuries. I will be the last one here, if it means I live alone.”

Liya’s tone, as much as her words, frightened Shan. “What did he mean long ago? The Chinese invasion?”

“I don’t think so. The last time he was here he was looking for old books, old peche that spoke of the history of Zhoka. He would not tell me why. But he got drunk one night, and said only fools think emperors put deities first.”

A deep hollow ring reverberated outside, three peals in succession. Liya looked up in alarm. “There is trouble,” she gasped, and darted out of the building. The circle of Tibetans began to break up, the other villagers also leaving the building, some running.

Only Corbett remained, still sitting on the floor, his lap full of brushes and flowers and fruit.

“I think,” Shan observed, “they want you to stay here and teach them how to paint gods.”

Corbett’s only reply was a melancholy grin. After a long moment, he looked up at Shan. “My mother was an artist, and her sister. They took me with them when I was young, gave me an easel and watercolors to use as they painted seascapes. But eventually they packed me off to college, telling me I couldn’t support a family on art.”

“Ming has not been telling us everything,” Shan said, glancing toward the gathering of Tibetans below, by the gate.” There was a photograph of William Lodi,” Shan said, extracting the picture of the banquet in a tent and handing it to Corbett. “Ming knew Lodi.”

The contentment disappeared from Corbett’s face as he gazed at the photo. He abruptly rose, letting the brushes in his lap fall to the floor, then stormed out of the building without a word.

Shan caught up with him in the garden, where the American stood facing the distant peaks, his face dark, his eyes lit with anger. He waved the photograph toward Shan. “It’s him! They knew him! Ming and Lodi both knew the famous Mr. Dolan. The son of a bitch Ming must have planned it all.” His mouth twisted and he kicked a stone, which flew through the air, knocking a flower from its stem.

“Ming is laughing at us,” Corbett spat. “They knew of Dolan’s collection, knew how wealthy he is. It was probably irresistible to Ming. A conspiracy against a rich American capitalist, with his friend the international art thief. Who would know better how to dispose of such a collection than Ming and Lodi? Ming has been laughing at us all along, knowing that politically he can’t be touched.”

“Except Lodi was killed,” Shan pointed out. “And Ming didn’t do it, he was in Lhadrung.”

“Maybe it was your monk who killed him after all.”

“It doesn’t explain what happened in Beijing.”

Corbett nodded slowly, offered a curse under his breath, then sat on a nearby bench, watching the villagers as they gathered below, near the gate. The stone barrier had been rolled back, and one of the Gurkhas was addressing them, waving a gun as he spoke. Half a dozen of the villagers stepped out of the gate, packs on their backs. “I don’t know,” Corbett said in a worried voice. “I understand less now than when I arrived in Tibet.” He stared into his hands a long time, then pulled a paper and pencil from his pocket and began writing. “Can you use a computer?” he asked Shan.

When they stood up from the bench half an hour later the villagers were still assembled below, but their mood had grown somber. Yao sat apart, as if shunned, gazing into the pond. The Tibetans would not look into Shan’s eyes as he approached.

Liya intercepted him before he reached the others, pulled him toward the old cottage, then waited on the porch as Yao joined them.

“I am sorry,” she began. There was a deep anguish in her eyes. “I tried to make them see reason. But…” She turned, fixing both hands around the old prayer wheel as if she were about to fall. “The Chinese are in the mountains blowing up old caves. Our people sometimes hide in those caves, and some could be trapped inside. They know you work with Ming. They say now that Ming is leading the godkillers. And now they attacked an old woman, a cousin of ours, stole all her old statues and scriptures, then destroyed her kiln.”

“Fiona?” Shan asked in alarm. “Was she injured?”

Liya looked at him with new curiosity. “You mean our Dolma? She was not hurt. But the Gurkhas insist you two were part of it, that you are just spying for the other Chinese, that what you really want is to destroy Zhoka and Bumpari, wipe all traces from the earth. They say you came to finish what was started the day Zhoka was bombed. Others are saying you are some of the earth demons come to end the taming.”

The villagers began staring at the cottage now, some approaching cautiously.

“Go inside,” Liya urged. “I will speak with them, try to make them understand.” But then she paused and put a hand on Yao’s arm. “Is it true, Inspector? Would you destroy us if you could?”

Yao did not hesitate. “Everything you do here is illegal,” he said in a steady voice. “You are illegal. The entire village is illegal.”

“Would you destroy us?” Liya pressed.

“It is my duty,” Yao shot back.

Liya searched Shan’s face as if asking him for a solution, then closed her eyes a moment. “Thank you for your honesty,” she said to Yao, then she escorted them into the second bedroom and closed the door.

Yao instantly began opening the chests in the room. “A weapon,” he whispered urgently. “We must find a weapon.”

Shan did not help him but studied an old framed sketch by the door. It was one of those done by the major. He took it off the wall to gaze at and sat on a bed. It was of a laughing lama, sitting on a yak. He felt suddenly very tired and fell into an odd meditation, in which the disjointed events of the past three days floated before him. The lama on the yak seemed be to mocking his lack of understanding.

He did not know how many minutes passed before the door opened and Liya entered. She silently studied the disarray from Yao’s search, and sighed. “There is tea,” she announced in a tight voice, and turned back into the main chamber.

Shan followed Liya, Yao a close step behind him, holding the little computer.

Corbett sat sipping from a white porcelain cup, Dawa on the floor beside him, showing him pictures in a book. Liya handed Yao and Shan each one of the dainty cups, gesturing for them to sit at the table, then extended a plate of dried cheese and apricots. He sipped at his cup, then studied its contents in surprise. It was heavy black tea, with milk, in the Indian fashion. It was sweet and invigorating, with a strangely metallic aftertaste. Liya nibbled a kernel of cheese, seeming careful not to look them in the eye.

Shan was about to ask where the others were when he froze. Corbett was slumped in his chair, unconscious; Liya carefully lifted the little cup from his hand.

Shan stood in alarm. “Lokesh!” he called, or thought he called, but then he realized his tongue felt thick and heavy. His knees began to buckle. The room swam. He took a step forward, and fell to his knees as he heard the computer drop to the floor beside him and saw the inspector clutch his throat.

Liya stepped close to Shan, taking the cup from his hand. “Lokesh will not be harmed,” she said forlornly, as if she owed Shan one last favor. Then she put out her arms as Shan fell forward. In his last moment of consciousness he saw several figures run into the room, dim shadows of people surrounding him. “Make sure it is quick,” was the last thing he heard Liya say. “I do not want them to suffer.”

P
ART
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WO

C
HAPTER
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INE

The light Shan kept reaching for stayed just out of reach, a tiny brilliant patch in a long black tunnel. A child kept calling to him down the tunnel, crying out that everything was safe, to come back now. A man cursed, in Chinese. A girl prayed, in Tibetan.

Suddenly something like lightning exploded in Shan’s head, and there was nothing but light, glaring, painful light. He threw his arm over his eyes, and heard himself moan.

“Come back,” the girl said in an anxious voice, pulling his arm from his head. “Aku Shan, please come back.” She squeezed his hand repeatedly.

Shan’s eyes finally found their focus. He was lying in a meadow of tall grass, and Dawa was holding his hand. She smiled as his confused gaze settled on her, then helped him sit up. They were on the gentle slope of a long high ridge, much of it carpeted with wildflowers. The sun was perhaps two hours above the horizon. Larks sang nearby.

“You didn’t die,” Dawa offered, then gestured toward the sitting figure of Inspector Yao, as if his presence were proof enough Shan had not reached heaven. “Some people in the village wanted you dead,” the girl reported in a matter-of-fact tone, “but Liya gave you medicine, she said, so you would feel better today.”

Shan studied the girl’s face. Medicine. He stood, filling his lungs with the cool morning air. So he would feel better. So he would remain alive, he realized as he recalled the events of the night before. Some of the villagers had wanted Shan and Yao dead. Liya had drugged her Chinese visitors to save them.

“How did we get here?”

“Tied over the backs of horses. They only had two horses in the village. I rode on Liya’s back.”

“But where’s Lokesh? And the American?”

Dawa shrugged. “They stayed at the village.”

A spring bubbled out of the earth thirty feet away. Shan rubbed the cool water over his face, drank deeply, then gestured for Yao to do the same.

“Kidnapped,” the inspector growled. “Attempted murder of a government official.”

Dawa stared at Yao in confusion. “It was medicine,” she repeated.

“Liya saved us,” Shan said, and explained what the girl had told him. “She let you go even though you said you would destroy Bumpari.”

“She just found a less violent way to kill us,” Yao shot back. “We’re stranded in the wilderness, without food, without a map, without transportation.” Yao paused, patting his pockets, and pulled out his notepad. He leafed through its pages, as if to confirm they were intact, then pushed it deep into his pocket. As he did so he paused, then pulled something from his pocket, a long brown bead with an intricate pattern etched in white.

Shan searched his own pockets and found another of the beads. “Liya,” he said. “She gave them to us for protection.”

Yao frowned but put the bead back in his pocket. “The American,” he said in a worried tone. “A foreigner is in even greater danger than we were. People like that just rob foreigners and dispose of the bodies.”

But Shan did not believe Corbett was in physical danger. Corbett hadn’t been singled out because he was a foreigner, Shan suspected, but because the villagers had decided he had awakened from a rainbow. “Why did they send you away?” he asked Dawa. “They would never hurt you.”

“Liya said people would keep looking for me if I didn’t go back. She said you would know the place to take me.”

“I don’t know any—” Shan began, then stopped as she extracted a piece of paper.

“Iwin how,”
she said, struggling with the word, and handed the paper to Shan.

He grinned as he read it. “To Ivanhoe.”

Dawa nodded energetically. “Yes! She said find Ivanhoe, that there we can help each other.”

“Which way?” Shan asked the girl. “Which way did we come last night after leaving the village? Up that long plain? Down the trail we arrived on?” He did not recognize any of the surrounding landscape.

Dawa shrugged. “It was dark. I was sleeping when they carried me.” She pointed to a cloth sack on a rock near the spring. “Liya sent that for you.”

“It’s been twelve, maybe fourteen hours,” Shan calculated as they retrieved the sack. “We could be thirty or forty miles away,” he exaggerated, not wanting to make it easy for Yao to find the village again. He doubted they had come more than ten miles over the rugged terrain. “We came south, closer to the Himalayas.”

Yao upended the sack onto the grass. Six apples and some dried cheese tumbled out. “It just means we die more slowly of starvation,” he groused.

“No,” Shan said as he studied the landscape again. “She picked this place carefully. Water close by. High enough to see the road, far enough from it to avoid onlookers.” He pointed to the southwest, where a plume of dust could be seen in the distance.