Beautiful Ghosts (50 page)

“Stop you from what?” Shan asked.

“Pushing the right buttons,” he said, then turned and left the room.

“A distraction,” Corbett said as they climbed into the car. “The shots had to be a distraction,” Corbett said. “But for what? He didn’t take the thangka.”

Shan’s eyes stayed on the house. His skin crawled. He felt unclean somehow. “Dolan had it photographed,” Shan said. “That’s why he wanted it on that table, under that bright lamp. Probably that man in the blue jacket.”

They parked on the side of the road near the gate and waited forty-five minutes before another vehicle emerged. The man in the blue jacket was at the wheel. Corbett leapt out and flashed his identification, conferring briefly with the man before hopping back in beside Shan. “There’s a coffee shop down the road. We will meet him there.”

The little café had been a gasoline station, its pumps still in the islands, draped with vines. The stranger looked up nervously as Shan and Corbett sat at his table.

“I need to know what Dolan had you do in the library,” Corbett demanded abruptly.

But the man denied setting foot in the room. “I was checking in with Dolan about our project.” He paused, studying Corbett, then looking out the window. He shrugged. “Someone passed me in the corridor when I was going to the library. A kid in white coveralls, one of the ones who does art restoration for him. I didn’t see what he did.”

Corbett fixed him with an accusing stare. “Did he have a camera?”

The man nodded then produced a business card. Corbett glanced at it, handed it to Shan. It stated he was manager for a mechanical engineering firm. “We work on remodeling projects for Mr. Dolan.”

“What sort of projects?” Shan asked.

The man winced. “He’s very particular about secrecy. There’s provisions in all his contracts.”

Corbett extracted the little leather folder containing his official identification and laid it on the table in front of him. “I can be particular, too. What sort of remodeling?”

The man shot a nervous glance around the little café. “Look, he is always changing things around. He has a whole wing that’s a personal museum. We helped build it. He’s changing it, that’s all. Better security, things like that. Everyone knows about the big theft there.”

Corbett gave a frustrated sigh and returned the folder to his pocket. “I want the names of those art restorers.”

“I don’t know them.”

Corbett shifted in his seat as if about to rise.

“What sort of changes in the museum?” Shan asked.

“A dining room in the center, surrounded by another heavy security wall, with a little kitchen station outside it, a dumbwaiter connecting to the basement below. A dressing room where waitresses can put on Chinese robes. A climate-controlled closet to store the robes. A bedchamber, fitted with Chinese antiques. He likes taking friends into the museum, likes to live with his art, but he worries a lot about security now. Who could blame him.”

“What sort of dining room?” Shan asked.

The man looked at him. “I never saw your identification. Why would the FBI want to know about Dolan’s dining room?”

“What sort of dining room?” Corbett asked.

The man frowned, then pulled a napkin from a dispenser and drew a quick diagram, a large rectangle. “The main gallery,” he explained, then drew two concentric rectangles in the center. “The security wall, and the dining room. The dining room has two doors,” he said, drawing short diagonal lines, one in the center of one of the short ends of the rectangle, another near the opposite end of one of the long walls. “The whole room is twenty feet long, fourteen wide. Lots of unpainted woodwork, mahogany and cedar. No wires.”

“You mean hidden wiring,” Corbett said.

“I mean no electricity at all, not inside the dining chamber. Dolan is a perfectionist about atmosphere, about authenticity. He’ll use candles I guess, maybe old oil lamps.”

When Shan reached out and put a finger on the table his hand trembled for a moment. He asked for the man’s pencil and drew quickly, explaining as he worked. “A built-in cabinet for displaying ceramics at this end,” he said, drawing a box shape across the end without the door. He drew an arc over one end. “A curved ceiling, to be painted like the sky.” He drew a small circle at the edges of each door. “Four narrow pillars, enameled red.”

The man shot a resentful glance at Shan. “What kind of game is this? If you already know, what’s the point of asking? Yeah, sure. But remember I didn’t tell you if Dolan asks. And how the hell did you—”

The man didn’t finish the sentence, for he stopped in confusion, looking at the intense, excited way Corbett clenched Shan’s shoulder, then grabbed the napkin. Dolan was building a replica of the Qian Long’s dining chamber.

Five minutes later Corbett pulled the car over at the overlook where he had shown Shan the high, treacherous bridge, where the girl had died. The American walked to the edge of the cliff before speaking. “The bastard killed her because he wanted some plaster painting that nobody else in the world would have. He probably plans to put on a dragon robe and sit on some throne in there, gloating over his empire. And if I breathe a word of this officially, the painting will disappear for years.”

“Surely the FBI won’t—”

Corbett ignored him. “But we know that he and Ming arranged the thefts and he knows we know. Yao can keep up the pressure over there. I can provide enough evidence to make the insurance company hold back the check and start a fraud investigation. Wear him down.”

Shan didn’t believe it, doubted that Corbett himself believed it. “I need that piece of paper that lets me fly back,” he said to the American.

“No way. I need you here.”

“You don’t understand. I need to be there when he arrives.”

Corbett turned to face Shan. “Who arrives? Where?”

Shan returned his steady gaze. “I need to warn the hill people, get Dawa and Lokesh and Liya to a safe place. Dolan is going to Lhadrung.”

“Impossible.”

“I’m sorry,” Shan said.

“Sorry?”

“He already has his fresco, hidden somewhere. What he wants more than anything now is the amban’s treasure. A man like that moves from one obsession to the next. It has driven everything he has done since Lu and Khan discovered that secret compartment in the emperor’s cottage. Because only one person in the world can have the Qian Long treasure. It’s so secret, so old, so linked to the emperors. Never in his life could he hope to find something that would match it.”

“He doesn’t know where it is.”

“He does now. I told him. He knows the fact that I brought the thangka from Lhadrung means the amban never left his gompa. Because the torn thangka did not leave. He might have guessed but Lu and Khan don’t know exactly where to look, don’t know for certain that it really is in Zhoka. Dolan didn’t know for sure where to look, that was why he was supporting Ming and his field surveys, even the surveys in the northern provinces. Nowhere did the amban ever mention his gompa, for fear of compromising its secrets. But when Dolan translates the marks in his photographs, the ones on the back of the thangka he will know.”

“What marks? You never showed us marks on the back.”

“Handprints. Inside them were very faint lines done in charcoal, for a map that had been abandoned, the map that was supposed to tie to the other half of the thangka, to complete the amban’s puzzle. But his sickness changed everything. He let himself be taken north to stage his assassination, to avoid any search by troops in Lhadrung, but then he returned home to Zhoka. He never sent the treasure, because he died. There are tiny words in Tibetan written along one of the thumbprints, so small they are almost lost with the cracks in the cloth. He apologizes to the emperor, and says the abbot has gone to Zhoka to reside with the treasures of heaven.”

Corbett stared in disbelief, then turned back to the black water below. “You knew it, dammit,” he said in a hollow voice. “It’s why you came so easily with me, to lay the trap.”

“You know Dolan will never find justice in America.”

“You son of a bitch. You planned it.” His confusion seemed to give way to anger for a moment, then was overwhelmed with a hollow laugh. Silence returned, and they watched the tide ripping through the narrow channel.

“If there is no chance of justice for him in America, there’s an even slimmer chance in China,” Corbett said at last.

“He’s not going to China,” Shan replied. “He is going to Tibet.”

Corbett looked at Shan as if wondering if he had heard right, then he bent, picked a small pink flower growing near his feet, and tossed it over the edge into the water.

Four hours later, sitting beside Corbett, Shan watched out the window, yawning, as their plane lifted into the low clouds. During his entire time in America he had slept perhaps six hours, and he had never seen the sun.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Entering Lhadrung Valley at the end of night, after sleeping nearly the entire journey back, felt to Shan like entering a bayal, one of the hidden lands. Dawn wrapped the valley in a pink and golden glow, the lights of the distant town glittered like jewels, the shadowed mountains seemed like sentinels keeping the rest of the world at bay. Shan longed to stop, to fix the image in his mind, for soon the sun would be glaring down and he would not be in a secret land of saints but in the dry, dusty valley, facing tyrants and thieves and murderers, gazing into the haggard expressions of the Tibetans.

But something about the town had changed. As they reached the outskirts the boys who played in the empty riverbed were wearing crisp white tee shirts and played with a new soccer ball. By the shops on the first block a smiling teenager jogged, holding a small silver plane over his head. In the square in front of the government center a group of women were admiring shiny new keychains each of them held in her fingers, and an old man watched a boy playing with a toy helicopter that rose under its own power on a wire tether.

As Shan saw a familiar face, he motioned for Corbett to park the car, and jumped out.

“Tashi,” Shan said, putting a hand on the informer’s shoulder. “What happened?” The informer did not acknowledge Shan until he had asked his question twice.

“That famous American,” Tashi said in a disbelieving tone, “he stood on the steps with his hand on Mao’s head and gave a speech about how great the people of Lhadrung were, then passed out gifts from bags. His Chinese driver told me that at the airport the American bought everything they had in the gift store. Everything on the shelves, they just dumped it all into bags. He had his own jet plane.”

Shan stared, not wanting to believe the informer. Dolan had beaten them to Tibet.

“The American said he was Saint Nicholas, but no one knew what he was talking about. He’s crazy. The soldiers came to push him off the steps, and he gave them gifts, too. When he had no more gifts he passed out American currency.” Tashi pulled an American dollar bill from his pocket and waved it like a little flag.

“What are you doing here?” Shan asked as he surveyed the square. The informer could be watching for Surya, for purbas, perhaps seeking news of hidden artifacts.

“What are
you
doing here?” Tashi asked Shan in a reluctant tone, glancing toward the upper floors of the government center. He could, Shan realized, be looking for Shan himself.

“The prisoners?” Shan asked.

“Still at work by the cliffs in the lower valley. People say the Mountain Buddha is moving in the hills. A toolshed by the school was broken into. Ropes were stolen,” Tashi reported in a puzzled voice. “Ming paid a young herder for information about places a large statue could be kept.” When he looked up at Shan the informer’s eyes seemed hollow. “I’m scared.”

Shan stared at the informer so long Tashi turned away, looking at the ground. “Tashi,” Shan said, “I am going to give something to you, too, something perhaps no one has given to you in many years.” Tashi looked up. “There is never anything of you in what you say. You are only a conduit. But you can change that, starting now. Because I am going to give you trust. I am going to speak to you of things and then I am going to ask you to tell a lie, to help the Tibetans in the mountains.”

Tashi looked forlornly at Shan but said nothing. Shan continued, speaking for five minutes in a hushed, hurried voice. When Shan had finished Tashi broke away from Shan’s stare and gazed at the dollar bill. He pointed to the pyramid on the note. “Look at that. Why would the Americans have a temple on their money?”

“The American who gave you that had Punji McDowell killed.”

Tashi put his head closer to the bill as he replied, covering his lips, as if now trying to conceal their conversation. “Rumors of her death have not been officially accepted.” He cast a meaningful glance at Shan.

It was a warning. Yao had reported the events at Zhoka to Beijing, yet the authorities had not allowed the report to be officially filed.

“My grandfather used to tell me about foreign princes who came to Tibet, for a bride, for a special lama, for a special charm.” Tashi spoke to the longhaired man on the front of the bill now. “They would bring destruction wherever they traveled, but they would always leave when they found what they wanted.”

“How is your mother, Tashi?” Shan asked.

The informer sighed heavily, and leaned toward the man on the bill, whispering to him. “He carries a small gun, a pistol in a strap around his ankle. The driver saw it, when he was making things ready in their car.”

*   *   *

Two new vehicles were at the compound when they arrived half an hour later, shiny white Land Cruisers, the kind available for hire at the Lhasa airport. Shan followed Corbett through the gate slowly, surprised at the nervousness he felt about entering. Yao was inside, Corbett had explained, and they would need to discuss what had happened in Seattle. But Shan stopped in the shadows of the wall, studying the inner yard.

The purging of the altar figures seemed to be in the final stages. Only three of Ming’s staff were visible, languidly prying apart small statues with pliers and steel prybars, sitting near a small stack of artifacts on the plank table. A fire was burning in the barrel again at the far side of the yard, a single soldier sat on a bench nearby. Twenty feet from the barrel four Tibetan men labored at a pile of the shards that were not combustible, sorting pieces of metal into barrels to be shipped for recycling, throwing ceramic pieces into a pile near the wall where a man with a sledgehammer was smashing them.