Bone Mountain (51 page)

Winslow fixed Shan with a sad gaze. The fugitive abbot had been captured because an ancient medicine lama had asked for herbs to heal an ailing Chinese colonel. The thought somehow reminded Shan of someone else. “Did you go to that durtro like you said, with Gendun and Drakte?” he asked Somo.

Her face tightened, and she nodded. “Herders came, many herders, and said prayers, and talked about what a brave man Drakte was. Gendun stayed afterwards. He said Drakte was having a bad time of things, and he was going back with Shopo to continue the rites. I think they meant for the full ritual.” The traditional death rite period was forty-nine days. Somo watched a range of mountains recede in the distance. “There was something … I don’t think it meant anything really. But when I was leaving Gendun sought me out. He said we must all learn to understand the dead better. He said to give Shan something, that he had learned something about Drakte.” She reached into her pocket and extended a chakpa, one of the bronze sand funnels.

Shan stared at the funnel, struck dumb for a moment by the memory of Gendun teaching him how to use it, then slowly he lifted it from Somo’s palm. He examined it carefully, perplexed, then looked inside to see a small slip of paper resting against the inner wall. He slipped the paper out with his finger and read it. He looked up at Somo. “Drakte carried the deity in a blanket,” Shan read to his two companions, “but he was learning to unwrap it.”

Somo looked at Shan with apology in her eyes, as if she felt she had troubled him with a meaningless message.

“The eye was kept in a little felt blanket,” Winslow suggested.

Shan said nothing, but read the paper again, and again. Somo offered an uncertain nod to the American and looked back at the retreating mountains.

“So now what do you do?” Shan asked the woman after several minutes.

Somo did not shift her gaze from the mountains. “When I started from Lhasa three weeks ago, Drakte told me we were doing this to help a Chinese who was going north to help Tibetans. I didn’t know about the abbot then, just the stone.” She paused and looked at Shan with puzzled eyes. “The abbot and the eye of the deity, in a way they were the same thing.”

Shan nodded. “The purbas’ help with the eye was just a cover, a way to get Tenzin north in secret. Who would have looked for him on a salt caravan?” He looked up into the woman’s face and somehow knew they were sharing the same thought. Drakte had died to warn them, to make sure Tenzin stayed free. Somo was not giving up on Tenzin.

“I am going to the computer as soon as we arrive in Golmud,” Somo stated, “in the middle of the night. I will still make Tenzin an employee, under the false name we devised.”

“But he’s gone,” Winslow said.

“It’s still my assignment,” Somo said in a voice that had grown distant. “And after it’s over, whatever happens, I am going to find out about Drakte’s killer.”

“I think,” Winslow said, studying first Shan, then Somo, “it’s not over until you find the killer.”

They watched the landscape in silence again.

“You can get into the electronic records?” Winslow asked after a long time.

“At university, they made sure I had advanced computer training before returning to teach Tibetan children. With chalk and slate.”

Winslow explained about Melissa Larkin, and they spoke together for an hour about the mysteries that had been woven together at Yapchi.

“Did Drakte know that man Chao who was murdered?” Shan asked. Somehow he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Somo said readily. “He was a Tibetan. Many people don’t know that, because of the name he took.”

“And you knew him also?”

“A month ago Drakte and I were planning to spend two days together by Lamtso. We had been talking about making a family together,” she announced in a matter-of-fact tone that caused Shan to turn away, embarrassed, then she paused and looked out the rear of the truck. “But instead, he asked me to go with him to Amdo town, because he had discovered an old friend there we had to meet. He said there would always be time for us to go to Lamtso,” she said in a tight voice. “We met at an old stable being used as a garage, and we sat on a bench and ate cold dumplings with his friend, whose name was different when Drakte knew him as a boy. They had me sit in the middle, like a referee.”

“What did Chao do? How did he act?” Had it all been a trap to capture Drakte? Shan wondered.

“He was scared. He asked if Drakte knew Director Tuan, like he was warning Drakte. But Drakte just laughed about Tuan. They did not discuss things that were dangerous. Just talk about life on the changtang and things from when they were young. It was just old friends meeting again, that’s all. That Chao, he embraced Drakte when we parted and said he was sorry.”

“About what?”

“Just that he was sorry. About everything I guess.”

“Did Drakte have that ledger with him?” Shan asked.

Somo shook her head. “But afterwards he worked on it all night, because he said he was going to meet with Chao again. I thought at first it was something he was doing for the Lotus Book, to record how the district is so stricken by poverty. It includes every village, every farm, every herding family in Norbu district. Signed by the head of each family.”

“The district,” Shan said. “Not the township.”

Somo nodded. “The Religious Affairs district. The Norbu district that Tuan heads for Religious Affairs.”

From a pocket Somo produced a slip of yellow paper and handed it to Shan. “I nearly forgot. Drakte had this in his boot. I keep trying to understand it. I think it came from Chao, but not when I was with them.”

It appeared to be a payroll record, with one word handwritten at the top. Dorje, it said, followed by a dash, like it was an address, or person. The dorje was a Buddhist symbol, the small scepter-like object that was sometimes called the thunderbolt to symbolize the teachings of Buddha. Below the name were two columns of handwritten numbers, the first a list of twelve identification numbers, the second a group of twenty. Bureau of Religious Affairs, Amdo, someone had written under the first column, with a check by each identification number in the column. Beside the two top sets of numbers of the first column was written Director Tuan, and below it the single Chinese word
wo.
It meant I or me. It could mean, Shan realized, Deputy Director Chao. Under the second column was written Public Security.

“It’s not his writing,” Somo said. “Not Drakte’s. It must be Chao’s. I asked some questions,” she said pointedly. “The head of Public Security in Amdo town was reassigned months ago. No replacement was named. Since Director Tuan used to be the head of Public Security here, he offered to be the interim supervisor. He began to consolidate things. Including payroll.”

“You mean the knobs here are being paid by Director Tuan of Religious Affairs?”

Somo bit her lower lip as she nodded.

Gyalo had warned about knobs who did not look like knobs. It explained why the howlers in white, military-style shirts all looked like Public Security.

“And one more thing: it looks like payroll data for the knobs in the district. But only fifteen knobs are known.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the purbas watch the knobs in Amdo town. There have been fifteen stationed out of there for years. We checked with those who clean the barracks. Fifteen based in Amdo, traveling with Tuan sometimes. So there’s another five somewhere else. Working in secret.”

In secret. The five could be anywhere. They could be wearing robes at Norbu. He remembered the camp Dremu had found above the Plain of Flowers, after the meadow had been burned. Had it been knobs? Shan extended the paper back toward Somo, but she raised her palm to decline, as if the paper frightened her now.

The truck bounced and slid along the rough track until it finally reached the north-south highway and picked up speed, then climbed and descended, and climbed again, through rough, barren terrain, along what Shan knew was one of the highest roadways in the world. He slept, and when he woke they were traveling through a snowbound landscape. After dark, past the snow, the truck stopped at a cluster of rundown mudbrick buildings for gas. The driver filled a thermos with hot water, threw in a handful of tea, and left it in the rear of the truck with two tin mugs and a bag of apples.

Shan slept fitfully, starting awake each time a faster vehicle overtook them. Heavy trucks and buses frequented the road. Twice they passed army convoys which had halted on the shoulder.

Several hours after sunset the air became thick and acrid. Dim sulfur-colored streetlights appeared and the truck began weaving around men and women on bicycles, its horn blaring. They passed blocks of dingy grey buildings and factories belching thick smoke. Shan watched out the back of the truck, standing now, holding onto the frame of the cargo bay. It was China, or at least the China that hundreds of millions of Chinese knew.

“God-forsaken place, Golmud,” Winslow observed.

Shan said nothing. God-forsaken perhaps, but it was the closest he had been to China in over five years. There were other smells he noticed mixed with the factory smog. Sesame oil, chili peppers, coriander, fried pork, ginger. A woman rode past on a bicycle, holding a bamboo pole on which were skewered four roasted ducks. A man rode by in the opposite direction, balancing a long rolled carpet on his handlebars. An aged woman on a bench tended a brazier with little spits of roasted crab apples. For a moment Shan fought an urge to just go sit with her, and smell the intermingled diesel and spices, the scent of modern China.

Thirty minutes after leaving the city, under a brilliant floodlight mounted on a tall metal pole they turned onto a broad gravel road wide enough for four trucks. Idled vehicles began to appear on the right side, dozens of vehicles: dumptrucks, bulldozers, towing trucks, truck trailers, cement mixers. It was a huge parking lot for heavy equipment. More floodlights on poles appeared every hundred feet, and they entered what appeared to be a parking lot for trailers identical to those used at Yapchi. Dozens of trailers, over a hundred, Shan estimated, in orderly rows, a city of trailers. As the truck slowed he swung his head out and looked forward. There was nothing else except four enormous cinderblock buildings facing each other, creating a huge square of gravel perhaps two hundred yards on each side.

The truck stopped at the edge of the empty, open square and the driver, after rapping hard on the rear window of the cab, walked away, stretching his arms over his head, without a word to them. They climbed out cautiously, peering about the empty compound. Shan took a few hesitant steps toward the only building whose windows were lit, gravel crunching loudly under his boots. It was one o’clock in the morning.

In the dim orange glow of the sulfur lamps, with a gibbous moon rising over it, the huge yard had the air of a stark, sturdy temple compound in repose. There was a strange vibration in the air, a beating, as of a distant drum. Then suddenly one of the doors of the building he was facing opened and loud rock-and-roll music poured into the yard. Two men staggered into the night, holding onto each other to stay upright, waving energetically at the new arrivals then turning toward the huge complex of trailers.

Shan stood, exploring the strange, unexpected feeling that rose within. He had entered a different world, or at least a world he had not known for years. He had last seen drunken men, had last heard such music, had last walked in the night under such lights, in Beijing, in his prior incarnation.

Winslow tapped him on the shoulder as though he suspected Shan of napping on his feet, then pulled him toward the door the men had exited. They entered a short hallway, lined in unpainted plywood, illuminated by a single naked, intensely bright bulb. The walls on both sides held long bulletin boards which overflowed with papers of many shapes, sizes, and colors, and in several languages. Shan glanced at them in confusion. Monday Night, one said in English, African Queen, Bring your own Leeches. Another said, in Chinese, All Dogs Found in Trailers Will Be Donated to the Kitchen. Lost, One Monkey, the top of another said in English and French. A poster for the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Public Security Bureau reminded foreigners to strictly observe the terms of their entry visas. An announcement in the style of a banner stated that all unassigned workers would be expected to assist in assembling platforms for the upcoming May Day celebration. There was even a bulletin from the Bureau of Religious Affairs reminding venture workers that any religious artifacts found in the field were to be surrendered to the people’s government.

The corridor led to a darkened hall that ran the length of the long building, with many doors on either side. Directly across from them was a door marked Infirmary, in Chinese and English. Twenty feet away on the opposite side was a set of open double doors, through which red light flooded out, flickering in time to the music. The sound was almost unbearably loud to Shan, but no other door, no other place in the compound seemed to show any sign of activity. With a mock bow, Winslow gestured them through the doors. Somo stared at her feet self-consciously, and Shan saw her clutch at a piece of turquoise that had appeared in her hand, her remembrance from Drakte, then she swallowed hard and followed Winslow into the bar.

The room, nearly sixty feet long and perhaps twenty-five wide, was jammed with people. No one gave them more than a glance as they worked their way toward an empty table at the rear. At one end was a bar, constructed of unpainted timber, with two men standing in front of shelves stacked with bottles of beer and hard liquor—not just the Chinese mainstays, but Western whiskeys, Russian vodka, French brandy, British gin, and, conspicuously displayed under a small spotlight, a bottle of
hejie jiu,
lizard wine from Guangxi, complete with a dead lizard suspended in the bottle. Men and women, many in green jackets, were raucously ordering drinks at the bar. On a stage at one corner a huge machine with a television screen displayed video images of women in fields of flowers and English words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, with a small ball bouncing over the words. A stout Han man wearing a purple silk shirt sang into a microphone, standing close to the screen, swaying, staring intensely, expectantly, as if he were about to jump into the field to join the women. A small crowd milled about the stage, some jeering, some calling words of encouragement to the man.