Beautiful Ghosts (34 page)

“It’s not just about politics,” Tan said in a low, frigid voice. They had discovered why Ming was so zealous about finding information on the deities, why he had demanded to know the word, the name of the protective deity, and what it looked like.

“Ming wants it all,” Yao growled. “The political treasure, for his public face. And the treasure of gold and silver, for himself and his partners.”

“What does it mean, the offer of the emperor?” Tan asked.

“It doesn’t say,” Shan said.

“What temple?” Tan asked.

Shan and Yao exchanged a silent glance. “It doesn’t say,” Yao said.

“But in Lhadrung,” Tan said, his anger rising again. “Ming is reporting that the amban was killed in Lhadrung.” He pounded a fist into his palm. “Why now? What happened?”

Yao shrugged.

“What happened,” Shan suggested, “was the robbery in the Qian Long’s cottage. In removing the fresco, I think they exposed something unknown to anyone before. The secret letters of the amban.”

There was a final screen they had not viewed. Shan pressed a key and a photograph appeared, an image of a torn thangka, the upper half of a blue deity with the distorted head of a four-horned bull. As they stared at it the adjacent computer chimed and Shan opened the FBI message screen. Director Ming, it said, had flown to Lhasa on the same flight as Lodi, returning on the very next flight to Beijing. Shan quickly typed a reply, as Yao printed out a copy of the image of the torn thangka. Search travel records for Lu Chou Fin and Khan Mo, arrived in Tibet during past month.

Suddenly boots pounded the floor of the corridor. The door flew open. A young officer, one of Tan’s adjutants, burst into the room. “Colonel,” the man said in an urgent voice. “Director Ming is calling troops out of the base. He’s talking with Lhasa and Beijing. He says they found bodies. Dead Chinese, a massacre,” he said. “Killed by Tibetans.” As he spoke phones began ringing at the desks outside and a siren rose from the street.

Thirty minutes later they stood at the edge of a field in the southern valley, surveying a chaotic scene. Ming stood in the middle of the field, fifty yards away, frantically directing workers with shovels and buckets, ordering soldiers onto the field. Two military police cars sat on the road, emergency lights flashing.

“By the time word spreads in Lhasa people will be saying there is an uprising in Lhadrung,” Tan growled. He called for a radio operator, with orders to reach army headquarters in Lhasa.

The troops had not known what to expect, Shan saw. Most were in combat gear, with grenades slung on their belts. Two dozen had formed a perimeter guard, establishing a square fifty yards to the side, while others were erecting a large military tent, a command post, near the center of the square, where Ming was assembling a field station of his own.

A heavy truck arrived from the direction of the guest compound and soldiers began unloading tables, chairs, and metal cases under the supervision of one of Ming’s assistants. Ming himself strutted along a trench, barking orders as soldiers hastily dug, pausing to exclaim excitedly to his assistants, or pose for a photograph, jumping into the trench, then jumping out again. The young woman with the close-cropped hair was at a folding table near the trench, several artifacts arrayed before her. A soldier presented her with one of the metal cases. She opened it and began removing small trays packed with brushes, lenses, and metal instruments.

A farmer had come to the compound the night before with a small jade object which he had plowed up in a low mound in his barley field, the woman explained in answer to Yao’s questions. She pointed to the farmer’s discovery, which sat on a towel in the center of the little table. It was the front half of a dragon, intricately carved of jade, part of what had been a handle, perhaps for a cane or fly whisk. With a needle-like probe the woman pointed to what had excited the museum team.

“The claws?” Yao asked.

“There’s five,” Shan said. “You found it in these trenches?” he asked.

The woman dropped a cloth over the jade, studiously ignoring Shan.

Shan met Yao’s stare. There was only one family authorized to use the five-clawed dragon in imperial China. “What have you found?” Yao demanded of the woman in a slow, simmering voice.

“The farmer’s family already had been digging when we arrived. Started the trench around the old foundation they had uncovered. Director Ming himself found the Chinese artifact,” she added. Jade was not commonly used in Tibet. “By the time the rest of us arrived he and the farmers had excavated a stone chest. Inside was a grand treasure. She bent and lifted the lid of a long metal case, revealing an elaborate silk robe, in yellow and blue, embroidered with cranes, dragons, pheasants, and other creatures, including one whose leg appeared around a fold, a leg bearing five claws. “It’s centuries old. Ching dynasty. And this was found with it, from the ancient reactionaries. Things unseen for two hundred years.” She uncovered an old piece of rice paper. “It removes all doubt.”

But Shan had seen the robe, only the day before at Fiona’s house. And Yao had a similar piece of rice paper in his room, given to them by Liya. The woman had another of the bounty posters, as if people in Lhadrung had collected them two hundred year ago, kept them for a special reason. Yao pointed to two lines of handwritten Tibetan script at the bottom of the poster. “Killed by order of the Stone Dragon Lama,” Shan read. The letters were faded, probably had been placed there two hundred years before. It would be the perfect closing to the political parable Ming was writing. A senior lama had killed the amban, and Tibetans had essentially admitted it. Shan leaned over the writing to better see the second line. “Conquered in Zetrul Puk,” he read. But to Shan’s eye it did not appear old. Someone had recently added the reference to the Miracle Cave.

“But you reported that people had been killed,” Yao interjected.

The woman pointed toward the far side of the mound, where a knot of soldiers stood. Yao and Shan stepped cautiously to their side. They were guarding several skulls, and the remnants of skeletons. Another, deeper trench had been dug nearby, exposing a stone wall and a small square portal, a doorway no more than thirty inches high. As they watched another skull was placed beside the others already in front of the soldiers.

The colonel had taken Ming aside and was speaking to him. Tan’s face seemed as tightly clenched as his fists. As they watched, a dozen soldiers climbed back into one of the trucks, which drove away.

After several minutes Shan stepped as inconspicuously as possible toward Tan’s car and the remaining trucks, leaving Yao making notes by the trenches. Perhaps he could slip onto a truck as it left. He searched the faces of the soldiers. There may be some who recognized him, who would be willing to help him leave, if only because they knew how much his presence usually upset Tan. He recognized a middle-aged sergeant who acknowledged him with a scowl. But as he approached the man a hand closed around his arm.

“We still need you, comrade,” an oily voice warned. Ming.

“Surely your work is done,” Shan said, after a long moment. “You can return to Beijing a hero.”

Ming acknowledged the comment with a pleased nod. “But I still will not have my thieves, or the American his killer. We have not changed the plans. The supplies are to be ready by noon at that prison. Four teams are going into the mountains, with scientists and soldiers, and trustees,” he added, staring pointedly at Shan.

For once Shan agreed with Ming. Shan needed to be in the mountains. “Nothing has changed,” he confirmed. Nothing, and everything. Yao and Corbett had not caught their criminals but now it was Ming who worried Shan the most.

Ming glanced at his watch. “Things are under control here. Now that we know what we have found, the tedious work begins. For professionals,” he said with a nod toward his white-aproned assistants. “I am leaving to supervise the departure of the mountains teams. Would you indulge me on the way?” he asked, gesturing toward his car. As Shan climbed inside he saw Yao standing with Tan. Both men were staring at him. Ming followed his gaze and waved at the two men.

“What’s that they say?” the director asked in a quick aside to Shan. “Ah yes. The gods will be victorious,” he called out in Mandarin to Tan and Yao, then started the car. “Tremble and obey!” he called out through the open window, and laughed.

“Look in the backseat,” the director said as he accelerated out of the field, spinning dirt and gravel into the air. There was another metal case lying on its side on the seat. Shan twisted and unfastened the latches, opening it as Ming gave a little sound of amusement. The bottom half of the case was filled with ice, which cooled several bottles of carbonated orange drink. Shan opened two, handing one to Ming.

“You and I started badly,” Ming said. “We had to overcome our natural distrust,” he suggested. “But now so much has happened. I never expected that this county hid so many opportunities. I will need someone on the ground who knows how to get things done among Tibetans. An operations director, let’s say.”

Shan lowered his drink halfway through a swallow. “You are offering me a job?” he asked in disbelief.

“It would give you a future. At least a way to build a future. We could do something about your status. Your current arrangement is little better than prison,” Ming added.

“You mean you want me to be in charge of recovering and destroying Tibetan artifacts?”

Ming frowned. “I run a museum, not a scrapyard.”

“I was there yesterday,” Shan pointed out.

“Those little ornaments? They were worthless. Political handicaps. Removing them from use was a service to the country. These people have to be shown everything. They are like children. It is part of their education about life in a new century.”

“I had a friend named Surya who told me once that art lies in the deity that beholds it. To those people those things were art. And more.”

Ming drained his bottle. “Deity this, deity that. It seems to be the excuse every Tibetan uses for doing nothing. A way to justify being lazy.”

Shan stared at the bottle in his own hand, remembering the anguish on the faces of the Tibetans in the courtyard as their beloved altar sculptures were ripped open. An old woman had held her belly, as though what was being ripped apart was in her womb.

He felt Ming’s glance and heard the director sigh. “I must be more tolerant,” Ming said. “I apologize. I salute you. No doubt it is your sensitivity that makes you so valuable.”

The words made Shan stare out the window a long time. He replayed the events at the field in his mind. The director had separated him from Yao for a reason. “I have no work papers,” he said.

“A phone call can fix that. I could arrange living quarters at the compound. A car, or at least a utility vehicle.” Ming slowed the car and began weaving in and out of the throng of bicycles that marked the approach to town. “I could authorize you to hire Tibetans,” he said in a careful tone. “Say five or six. I will negotiate with Religious Affairs to take over the compound in the name of the museum. You could restore it as you see fit, with money from Beijing.”

“There’s Colonel Tan and Inspector Yao,” Shan said, intensely attentive now.

“Tan is a dinosaur, easily disposed of when it is time. Yao can be recalled. It may be he misunderstood something, perhaps overreacted. There would be no shame in it, no mark on his record. He is just in danger of mischaracterizing the crime. You of all people know the damage that can be done. By helping him understand you help all of us, especially yourself and your Tibetan friends.”

Shan’s mouth was suddenly very dry. He fought the urge to retrieve another drink from the rear seat. “Perhaps,” he said slowly, “I could demonstrate that the thief was Tibetan, acting on a political pretext, that the thief is dead, perhaps after destroying the stolen art.”

Ming offered a respectful nod. “For a man with your instincts rehabilitation may come swiftly,” he said, then paused and cast an ironic grin toward Shan. “I read something about lamas,” he added after a moment, “how sometimes they help the dying find their new incarnation. Let me be your lama.”

They moved through the town quickly, Shan keeping an eye on the streets. For a fleeting moment he saw an old man in ragged black clothes, pushing a cart down an alley. It could have been Surya, hauling night soil, or just another Tibetan peasant carrying his meager produce to market.

“Someone who would help you would need a map of the sites you intend to study. The old gompa, the caves.”

Ming shrugged. “Every team leader already has one,” he said, and pulled a paper from a folder on the seat between them, handing it to Shan. “You can be my eyes. Something new has surfaced. A huge golden Buddha is somewhere in the mountains. I want it, Shan. Find it for me and you’ll get your new life.”

Was it his arrogance, Shan wondered, or just his political ambition, that made him so blind? “Before we are finished I will find it,” Shan vowed.

“Excellent. Our little secret.”

“Surely Miss McDowell knows,” Shan ventured.

“Our little secret,” Ming repeated.

It might be difficult to understand what was happening among the Tibetans in the mountains, Shan thought, but it seemed impossible to grasp what was passing among the strangers in Lhadrung. “All power is based on secrets,” he observed after a moment.

Ming shot him an amused glance. “Meaning what?”

“Secret prayers. Secret caves. Secret letters from the emperor. A lost secret letter implicating Lhadrung in the theft of the fresco in Beijing.”

Ming slowed the car and studied Shan warily. “Because of the incompetence of the Beijing police.”

“You’re the one who found it, who explained what it said.”

“Not so surprising. The cottage was my project. I was there within an hour after the robbery was reported.”

“But such a coincidence, to find that letter just then.”

“Not at all. There was some kind of old vault in the wall behind the fresco that had originally opened into the room on the far side, but it had been sealed in years ago.”