Beautiful Ghosts (29 page)

Outside, he found Yao staring at the clay tsa-tsa tablets Shan had seen on his first visit. They were still in a line, but all were crushed, as if someone had carefully, heel to toe, walked on top of the fragile deities.

*   *   *

Frantic activity filled the guesthouse compound when Shan and Yao arrived two hours after noon. A military truck had picked them up as they walked down the highway toward the turnoff to the compound. The sergeant at the wheel, one of Tan’s staff, excitedly radioed ahead with the news of their appearance. Yao, who had maintained a brooding silence since their discussion on the truck, kept glancing at Shan as the truck approached the compound, then suddenly he opened the small pouch, which he had clutched for the past hour, and ripped out the back page of the catalog. He handed Shan the page, bearing the list of fees paid, or to be paid, then gave Shan three of the six discs he had taken from the cottage, gesturing for him to stuff them into his pockets. He was dividing the evidence, giving half to Shan.

Why, Shan kept asking himself as they entered the compound, why would the inspector trust Shan with such vital evidence? It was as if Yao had suddenly decided to worry about Ming, perhaps even fear him. The inspector had not asked questions when Fiona had described in more detail how her home had been raided. But he had carefully recorded in his pad her description of the two men who had done it, the small Chinese with the crooked nose and a large Mongolian who smoked sweet-smelling cigars.

At least thirty people were working in the courtyard, with wheelbarrows, buckets, hammers, and brooms. The bilingual sign at the gate that had identified the compound as the Lhadrung Guest House had been replaced with a new one, bigger, with two rows of freshly painted foot-high ideograms. A
NNEX
, M
USEUM OF
A
NTIQUITIES
, read the top line. B
UREAU OF
R
ELIGIOUS
A
FFAIRS
was painted below.

As the sergeant herded Yao into the main building, Shan paused at the door and studied the courtyard. There were army soldiers, Tan’s soldiers, supervising Tibetans laboring along the back wall and far side of the yard. Two Tibetan men and a heavyset soldier with his tunic stripped off were hammering with sledges at a large bent piece of metal. It had been the head of a large statue of Buddha that had been stored along the rear wall. The soldiers were pounding chisels into the metal, splitting the back of the head. At a long makeshift table of planks supported by sawhorses several dozen smaller artifacts were piled, the small statues of deities and saints that typically adorned the private altars of Tibetan families. Half a dozen well-groomed Han Chinese men and women seemed to be supervising the work of perhaps ten Chinese men, clad in blue denim work clothes, several of whom were digging a trench along the wall. Shan stared at the workers in confusion, then suddenly he felt weak and leaned against the wall.

The oldest of the men in blue clothing, a stocky man Shan’s age, sat on the plank table and was amusing himself by throwing stones at a row of the smaller altar offerings placed at the edge of the stagnant fountain pool ten feet away. Another, a lanky young Han with greased hair and a cold sneer on his face, hovered over a barrow of dirt pushed by a middle-aged Tibetan man. As Shan watched the man lost his grip and the barrow tipped over.

“Damned locusts!” the young Han growled. Locusts. It was one of the epithets for Tibetans used by some Chinese, for the buzz of their mantras. The youth kicked the barrow, then kicked the Tibetan in his thigh. Shan was at the man’s side the next moment, stepping between the weary, frightened Tibetan and the surly Han.

“Thuchechy,”
the Tibetan whispered. Thank you.

The young Han kicked out again, striking the dirt this time, sending particles into Shan’s face. As Shan straightened, he saw something familiar in the angry, empty eyes of the youth. The youth, like the other Han in blue, were themselves prisoners, trustees deployed to help manage the Tibetans.

Shan broke away from the youth’s glare and studied the yard once more. He recognized several of the Tibetans now. He had seen them at the chorten, in the ruins of Zhoka. Some of the fugitives from the festival had been detained. He hurried into the building, suddenly very concerned about what Yao might be saying to Director Ming.

The inspector was standing in the door to the large chamber where Shan had been confronted on his last visit, staring with his own perplexed expression into the hall. Ming was at the long table, sitting across from an aged Tibetan woman, speaking to her in rough tones. Another fifteen Tibetans were seated on the floor on the opposite side of the hall, watched over by two armed soldiers. Several of the Tibetans were crying. Several were staring into their hands, anxiously working their beads. None appeared to be younger than seventy.

Ming nodded at Yao and dismissed the woman in front of him with a flick of his wrist. She was pulled away by another soldier who stepped from the shadows at the end of the table.

As Yao lowered himself into the empty seat at the end of the table, where Shan had sat earlier, Shan stepped toward the shadows six feet behind him, leaning against the wall. On the adjacent wall, along the table, photographs of Tibetan paintings had been pinned, all of them images of different forms of the death deities. Not one matched the image Shan had seen on the wall of Lodi’s mourning hut. Beside them sheets from the large easel had been taped to the wall. Prince Kwan Li, the first said, at the top, followed by what appeared to be a chronology of his life, starting with his birth in 1755, ending with an entry that simply said “last seen a day’s ride south of Labrang.” Labrang was hundreds of miles to the north.

“A patrol was dispatched to look for you,” Ming announced.

“We got lost,” Yao said quietly.

Ming seemed to find the words amusing. He glanced at Shan. “Even with your famous guide.”

“We followed the evidence much deeper into the mountains than expected,” Yao declared. “Our radio malfunctioned.” The inspector looked toward the old Tibetans. “What are you doing with these people?”

Ming ignored the question. “Did you find him? The thief?”

Yao hesitated, made a movement as though to look back at Shan, then he stopped and looked at the old Tibetans. “William Lodi is dead,” he announced slowly.

Director Ming stared at Yao, uncertain, as if deciding whether to believe him. He seemed about to speak when a sound behind them broke the silence, the sound of someone stumbling, and what might have been a muffled cry. Ming grimaced and seemed about to move toward the door, then froze and stared down at the table, clenching his jaw tightly.

“Did you recover the artifacts he had brought with him?” Ming asked in a tight voice.

“None,” Yao replied tersely.

“Then Lhadrung has become a dead end for you, Inspector,” the museum director said. “And for the American.”

“Not at all,” Yao said. “It proves we are in the right place. Now we just have to find Lodi’s killers.”

Ming frowned. “What have you done with Agent Corbett?”

“Still in the mountains.”

Ming shot an accusing glance at Shan. “That might seem negligent.”

Yao ignored the comment, studied the frightened Tibetans again. “I don’t understand what you are doing with these citizens, Comrade Director.”

“I made a trip to Lhasa in your absence. Bureau of Religious Affairs. Very resourceful people. They are not sufficiently appreciated in Beijing. They explained things about Tibet I had not understood. I discovered that the office of the director in Lhadrung County is vacant.”

Shan stiffened, feeling Ming’s cold stare again. The Religious Affairs office was vacant because the year before Shan had provided evidence that had sent the director to a firing squad. “They said officially Colonel Tan has authority in the absence of a permanent director. But they gave me a letter for Tan to sign, granting me temporary powers as director for the purposes of my investigation.”

Shan saw Yao’s fingers tighten on the arm of the chair. My investigation.

“Then they instructed me in techniques.”

Shan found himself stepping toward the old Tibetans. The words stopped him. He turned back toward Ming. “Techniques?” he asked with a chill.

As Ming raised his head in Shan’s direction a cool grin grew on his face. “Certainly you are familiar with them, comrade.” He gestured toward the table. “Please sit. There is tea.”

The porcelain panda cups appeared again, on a tray carried by a young female soldier. Shan sat and clamped his hands around his cup as Ming continued.

“Religious Affairs explained two things. First, Tibetan treasures are never randomly deposited. Second, the State Domain Decree.” Ming seemed genuinely pleased at the confusion on the faces of Yao and Shan. “An artifact stolen by Tibetan resisters would not simply be hidden. They are chained to old traditions, to the reactionary culture of the old lamas who enslaved them. Artifacts would be hidden according to those traditions, not just in any cave or shrine, but very particular caves or shrines, one corresponding to the deity deposited.”

“With what deity would the emperor’s fresco be deposited?” Yao inquired in a chill tone.

“The most important, the most powerful shrine. The most sacred place in Lhadrung County.” Ming paused to light a cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke toward his aged prisoners. He leaned toward Yao and spoke in a low voice. “The Bureau has studies that show that spending one’s childhood in these high altitudes impedes brain development. They are all like children,” he added, gesturing with his cigarette toward the old Tibetans on the floor. “You have to know how to speak with children.” He directed a glance toward Shan. “Right, Comrade Shan?”

“You mentioned a decree,” Yao observed stiffly.

“The Domain Decree,” Ming confirmed. “One of the guiding laws of the Bureau. All religious artifacts are the property of the state. Enforcement has obviously been lax in certain parts of Tibet.”

“And these people?” Shan studied Yao. The inspector had turned his back on the old Tibetans, as if he did not wish to see them.

“They are the ones who cling most fervently to the old ways, and therefore know the ways of the old hidden shrines. Much more efficient than trying to gather intelligence through pilgrims’ guides.”

Ming rose and led them with a triumphant air back into the courtyard. “I am afraid people still keep artifacts in defiance of law. These,” he said, pointing to the dozens of altar objects on the makeshift table, “are just those confiscated in the valley.” He picked up a small bronze figure of the Future Buddha and turned it upside down, showing Yao a slit in the bottom of the hollow figure. “When these are made things are put inside. Messages. Writings from monks. Possible references to mountain shrines. We are cross-referencing them with the information in the pilgrim books and tracking the most frequent references. I have devised a matrix, and my assistants are integrating the data into our computers.” He gestured with obvious pride toward a team at the end of the table. A man wearing a leather apron, heavy gloves, and a gauze mask was seated at a bench saw. Ming handed the bronze figure to the man, who hit a switch with his foot. The saw screamed to life, the man deftly passed the figure over the blade several times, then handed it to a young Han woman with short, stylish hair seated at a table beside him. With a pair of pliers she pried back the metal from the gaping incision left by the saw. Half a dozen objects fell into a basket in front of her: several small rolls of paper tied with dried stems of grass, a small bar of black metal, a chip of bone, and a turquoise stone. She worked with chilling efficiency, tossing the stone, the metal bar, the bone chip into a trash bucket at her knee, then handing the rolled papers to another colleague, a well-dressed Tibetan woman seated beside her.

The Tibetan woman produced a pair of surgical scissors and cut the bindings that held the first paper together and unrolled it. She read it quickly then tossed it into a bucket below the table. She raised a scrap of cloth and examined it with a magnifying lens for a moment before discarding it as well. As she did so the oily young Han Shan had seen earlier at the barrow picked up the bucket and replaced it with another, empty. He clowned with the bucket full of prayers, amulets and relics, balancing it on his head a moment, drawing a laugh from one of the guards who leaned languidly against the wall, then headed across the yard.

With a chill Shan saw his destination, a steel barrel in which a fire burned. Two guards flanked the barrel. They were more alert than the other soldiers. They had obviously noticed how the Tibetan prisoners watched the barrel. Some stared in anger, some in fear, some with tears streaming down their faces.

Shan stared at Ming as he stepped back inside the building. Ming was not just destroying small figurines, he was destroying the place where, for many families, reverence and hope resided. Many of the altar figures, especially those packed with prayers and artifacts, had been used for generations. What was burning in the barrel were the prayers of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, the link of reverence that connected them directly to ancestors who had lived centuries before. In some families, there was a custom that each member contributed at least one prayer during their lifetime, secret prayers that sometimes took years to compose, like works of art. It was their chain of compassion, unbroken for centuries, an old woman had whispered once to Shan when, seated at their family altar, she had explained the custom. Unbroken until now, until Director Ming had arrived from Beijing in his strange quest for a fresco and an official who had been missing for two centuries.

The Han youth stopped ten feet from the barrel, lowered the bucket, and lifted a rolled prayer into the air, extending it overhead for all to see. Then with a quick, exaggerated motion, like that of a basketball player, he flung the paper in a long arc into the burning barrel. Some of the guards cheered. He repeated the performance, then he unrolled a prayer, waving the nearly three-foot-long paper into the air. Shan stepped forward, slowly maneuvering through the crowd as the youth took a second paper and unfurled it, waving the papers like streamers, mimicking the streamer dances popular in Chinese parades.