Beautiful Ghosts (33 page)

Shan stood and took a step toward the stable. Two of the men sitting there stood, blocking the entry to the building.

Shan turned back toward Surya. “What happened to Kwan Li?” he asked.

Surya made a strange spiraling motion toward the sky. “Something wonderful.”

Shan studied him a moment. His mannerisms had changed from the monk Shan knew, his face seemed to have new lines in it, his eyes even had a different, sadder, more callous glint. “What was hidden at Zhoka?” he asked.

Surya shrugged. “That is for the monks to know.”

“You are a monk.”

When Surya shook his head there was a new emotion on his countenance. Not sadness. Pity, as though he felt sorry for Shan. “He might have discovered it if he had stayed there. But,” Surya said with a sigh, “he died at the festival.”

Shan reached into his pocket and handed Surya the paintbrush he had kept there since the festival day. “The only one who died was Lodi,” Shan explained, fighting to keep his helplessness from his voice. “The one you saw in the tunnel. He was a thief. I think you saw him stealing. There was an argument, perhaps, an accident,” he ventured.

The old Tibetan stared at the old brush in his hand like he had never seen one before, then pocketed it and stood, supported for a moment by one of the children. “I have soil to bring back to earth,” he declared, stepping away toward the bicycles and carts.

It seemed to take a huge effort for Shan to reach the truck, as if a great weight had landed on his shoulders. By the time Yao eased the vehicle away Surya was pulling one of the handcarts down the road, filled with four oversize ceramic pots.

“Did he know that mountain deity?” Yao asked.

“Not any deity,” Shan said in a worried whisper.

*   *   *

Shan did not have to ask their next destination. Yao aimed the truck toward the highest building in town and pressed the accelerator hard, as if he were suddenly desperate to get to the government center. Because, Shan realized as Yao parked the truck near the front door, it was too early for the offices to be occupied, too early for any of the senior officers to be in their offices, the perfect time to find idle computers and telephones. They had to review the other letters, understand the two-hundred-year mystery that drove Ming.

The guard at the door nodded at Yao, glared at Shan, then waved them through. Shan protested as Yao pressed the elevator button for the top floor. “There are computers upstairs,” Yao explained as the elevator slowly climbed, “in the visitor’s room by Tan’s office.”

As the doors opened, Yao darted toward the central office complex. Shan stood in the corridor, fighting a strange weakness that suddenly gripped him. It was here where he had met Colonel Tan; here where Tan had begun the strange torture of forcing Shan to become an investigator again; here, too, where Tan had abruptly given him his freedom.

When he finally joined Yao in the office, Shan sat at a terminal and quickly typed in the codes Corbett had given him. It had been the middle of the day in Seattle when he had sent the prior message, and Corbett’s team had not been idle.

Hey boss, we were getting worried—glad to have you back on line,
the first reply opened.
We’ve been monitoring messages day and night just in case. Received queries, back soonest, Bailey.
The second message had been sent two hours later, and was captioned
Dolan travel to the PRC.
It spanned ten years and listed an average of two trips a year. Next came a message entitled,
Donations, Dolan to PRC.
It listed nearly a dozen in the past three years alone: to an archaeology project in Inner Mongolia, to three special exhibits in the Museum of Antiquities, computer labs in five cities, a restoration project for an imperial temple in Manchuria.
Ming archaeology expeditions were for the recovery of frescoes from old temples buried in the desert,
Bailey added.

Next came a report captioned simply,
D’s phone accounts/calls to PRC.
Shan called Yao to the screen. Yao began pointing to numbers as they scrolled through the long list of numbers. “The Museum of Antiquities,” he said in a tight voice, “the Minister of Culture. The Minister of Justice.”

As they stared at the screen a soft beep announced several new messages, each followed by Bailey’s name. A list of Dolan’s Chinese investments: Dolan’s private companies owned seven factories in eastern Chinese cities, interests in a dozen joint ventures. There was a hurried message Shan did not understand:
The boss found out you opened papers on the babysitter. He ordered it closed.
Then came two short lines on Elizabeth McDowell:
Art consultant to Dolan, part owner of Croft Antiquities, with offices in Seattle and London. Confirmed traveled on same flights as William Lodi to Lhasa. Neither McDowell nor Lodi reserved flight to Lhasa in advance.

The final message contained files of photographs and a compilation of articles on Dolan’s famed Tibetan collection. Shan silently pointed to several small images on the screen as he held up the catalog Liya had given them, including the fourteenth-century saint wielding his sword of wisdom. They were all in Dolan’s collection, but excluded from his report of lost property.

“Dolan could still have them,” Yao said in a hollow voice.

“No,” Shan said. “Corbett had records of the crime scene, saw photos of all the shelves and display cases. Every Tibetan piece was reported stolen. Lodi was carrying the pieces from the museum back to Beijing, because of the audit. Maybe they were all he really cared about in the theft. The rest was cover, the rest might have stayed in America. But something happened to change his plans. He unexpectedly came straight to Tibet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the saint with the sword that he was carrying, the one they destroyed at the fleshcutters, it was the original from Dolan. Lodi gave it to Liya for safekeeping. Lodi was planning to stay at a hotel in Beijing, but didn’t. He had no time in Beijing to exchange it for the copy.”

“But why destroy it?”

“Liya said because they were sending a message to Bumpari. But I think the message was for someone else. The one who would be most hurt by its destruction.”

“Ming,” Yao spat. He stared at the screen a moment, then typed in a new question. Verify Director Ming’s travel the week after the robbery. He exchanged a wary glance with Shan. It was a question he could not safely ask in Beijing, but the FBI could access airline records.

Half an hour later they had finished examining the old letters Ming had collected, failing to find any clue to the fate of the amban. But the letters made it clear that the amban had given up his career as a general and come to Tibet at the request of his uncle, not just to play the role of the senior Chinese representative, but to find lamas who would be willing to travel to Beijing to serve in the imperial court. In his first year the amban had not only sent a dozen lamas but, with the help of his powerful uncle, had arranged for the construction of Tibetan Buddhist temples in half a dozen eastern cities.

A clink of porcelain caused them to turn. Tan sat on a table by the door, sipping from a mug of tea. “Once,” the colonel said in a tight voice, “all my visitors from the outside were behind wire at the 404. Then last month two more came, Ming and McDowell. Now, at last count, there are a dozen, brought in by Director Ming. I received a fax from Central Command. I was instructed to provide maximum support to all of them. Now my general has called. He wanted to share a secret. Director Ming has been advanced two grades in the party during the past year. He will be of minister rank in another year or two.”

Yao stood and studied Tan, as if composing a response. Tan gestured to the thermos of tea and extra mugs on a table outside the office, and the inspector followed Shan to the table without speaking. When they had settled back into the chairs by the computer with their steaming mugs, Shan explained Ming’s interest in the long dead amban, and showed Tan the letters on the discs.

“There’s a report being sent to Beijing today about the amban,” Yao announced. “It’s called Political Assassination in Lhadrung County.”

Tan’s lips curled in a silent snarl. “A lie. No one gets assassinated in my county.”

“It was over two hundred years ago,” Yao pointed out.

Shan knew the date mattered little to Tan. Newly reported murder whenever it occurred, especially political murder, would bring unwelcome attention to the county, and to its chief official.

“A new martyr,” Tan said, gazing out the window. “There was talk of this Kwan Li four or five years ago, at a conference I attended in Lhasa. The dead always make for safer politics than the living. I thought they had dropped the idea. Someone must have decided the people needed new lessons on integration of Tibet with the motherland. Now we’ll have little buttons with his likeness. Speeches to schoolchildren, speeches by schoolchildren.” He paused and looked back at them. “But he can’t know the amban died in Lhadrung. It’s impossible. The Chinese ambans never had business in Lhadrung. It’s not on the route back to Beijing. Prince Kwan died in the north.” Tan lit a cigarette. “He’s here for the fresco. If he’s not finding the fresco he should leave.” He seemed to be talking to himself, staring out the window now. “I made some inquiries. His fieldwork was supposed to be back in Mongolia. He changed it to Lhadrung on two weeks’ notice, with a satellite project in the north. He said it was to research herding cultures. But I checked. It was where Kwan Li supposedly died two hundred years ago. He starting making arrangements too.” When he turned to face them his eyes were lit with a cold anger. “He changed his field project days after the theft of the fresco.”

Tan rose and disappeared down the hall, returning in less than a minute with a dusty folder from which he pulled a report bound between two clear plastic covers, extending it to Shan. “In the back,” the colonel said.

The final pages were a transcribed report from an imperial official sent by the emperor to find the missing amban. The high-ranking mandarin had delivered a report to the emperor a month before the emperor left the throne, explaining his frustration at failing to find the amban, alive or dead, but reporting that many witnesses had signed sworn statements that the amban had departed from tradition and left his regular Chinese bodyguards in Lhasa, to travel in the company of Tibetan soldiers as a sign of good faith. The party had been deep inside rugged mountains five hundred miles north of Lhasa when the amban had encountered two warring tribes fighting over the rights to pastureland. Confident that he could negotiate a solution, and without regard to his personal safety, the amban had ascended to the mountain battlefield. He had met with the chieftains and indeed negotiated a solution that provided for sharing of the pastures, but at the banquet celebrating the accord an angry warrior who resented the outsider’s intervention had shot an arrow into his throat. Kwan Li had died asking for the emperor’s forgiveness. The tribes, terrified of the emperor’s likely reaction, had slain the guard party and withdrawn deep into the mountains, taking the bodies with them, leaving a group of lamas who had appeared on the scene to conduct death rites.

The emperor’s investigator had traveled on to Lhasa to complete his work, finding no contrary evidence but that of a drunken tailor formerly employed by the amban who insisted that on the eve of the amban’s departure he had been asked to make Tibetan soldiers’ uniforms for several monks. The story could not be verified, and the tailor disappeared after the first interview. The investigator suspected a conspiracy of Tibetans against the amban, that there had been no soldiers with the amban but only disguised monks. He insisted the emperor should dispatch troops to find and destroy the mountain tribes since they had either killed him, or been part of the conspiracy. He requested to return to Tibet to find the monks who had conspired with the tribes. The report closed with an annotation by an imperial secretary, noting that the emperor had declined to send troops or authorize further investigation, and had sent the mandarin to a senior post in a southern province.

“I didn’t understand why after coming here Ming spent half his time on the phone with Beijing,” Tan said as Shan closed the report.

“Because it’s all about political opportunity,” Shan said. “What he’s doing is not how a scientist conducts fieldwork. But it is exactly the way you would do it if you were aspiring to become a minister.”

“There was one more document,” Shan added after a moment, gesturing toward the computer screen, “but it was encrypted by Ming.”

“Because it explains too much?” Tan suggested.

They sat in silence, Tan looking at the screen displaying the encrypted letter, Shan out the window. “The inspector knows you tried to hide me, Colonel,” he said in a tentative tone. “He knows I haven’t said anything about his failure to verify whether Director Ming and Lodi had a prior relationship.”

“What are you talking about?” Tan growled.

Yao sighed and stepped to the computer. “He’s talking about me. He’s talking about rough bargains being made, and how I haven’t reciprocated.” He began tapping the keyboard. “It is not a high-level code Ming used. He doesn’t have access to the most secret ones. There’s probably a thousand people in Beijing alone who have this one,” he stated, punctuating his remark with several emphatic strikes of the keys. Suddenly the image on the screen blurred, and the figures rearranged themselves. The text of the last document appeared.

It was not one more letter from the amban, but five letters placed together in the secret file, short missives drafted over the course of a year, letters not included in the official files of the Amban Project. They lacked the flowery prose of the early correspondence, had the air of communication between two old friends who no longer had use for pretense. The first thanked the emperor for accepting that the amban had embraced the Buddhist faith, thanked him likewise for speaking in the words of the sutras. He prayed his uncle’s forbearance in the amban’s delayed departure for Beijing, because the amban was using the time to accumulate the most precious treasures the emperor had ever beheld. The second letter indicated that the amban’s effort to gather Tibetan artists to create masterpieces to honor the emperor was proceeding, although the amban found it necessary to journey to some artists because they were so aged, had even gone to nearby caves to visit hermit artists, caves named Dom Puk, Zetrul Puk, Woser Puk, and Kuden Puk—the names that had been searched in Ming’s pilgrim guide database, the ones he had just that day identified with local landmarks. The third reported that the amban had discovered the source of the greatest art he or the emperor could ever hope to find, and was now in the old monastery befriending its lamas, and visiting the priceless Mountain Buddha. A wondrous mechanical mandala was being built of gold and silver, and in honor of the emperor an artist was dedicating a black stone statue of Jambhala, the protective deity, on which he had been working for two years. The fourth, the longest, months later, announced a still greater revelation. The lamas had discovered that Kwan Li was in fact the reincarnation of their greatest leader, their abbot, and he had been installed as the abbot of the old earth taming temple, a place where deities were grown the way flowers were grown in gardens. The fifth reported that the abbot had received the humbling offer of the emperor, which he dared not write of further for fear of the secret being discovered. Great preparations were under way, and the abbot needed to go on retreat before returning to the capital. Meanwhile the abbot would secretly arrange for the shipment of the emperor’s treasures. He would deliver to the imperial messengers in Lhasa half a thangka of the protector deity of the gompa, a special form of the Lord of Death. If anything happened to the abbot while on the arduous journey he would hide the treasures and entrust the other half of the thangka to a trusted lama, who would present it to the emperor. Once joined the two halves would tell the emperor where to find the treasures.
And later, like the sutras,
the last letter closed,
I will explain the rest of death.