Bone Mountain (68 page)

“Please,” Shan said to them. “You should stay back. Soldiers may be coming—”

“Tenzin has an offer to make,” the American announced as Nyma approached and knelt in the grass. “The papers the colonel has been looking for. Tenzin wants to return them.”

As he spoke Tenzin lowered the dung bag from his shoulder, knelt, then accepted a pocket knife from Winslow, which he quickly used to cut the threads at the top of the bag. He ripped the double layer of thick leather apart, reached inside, and pulled out a thin sheaf of paper, perhaps ten pages in total.

As Lin stared at the paper a sound like a growl came from his throat.

“It’s a report on a disaster,” Tenzin said to Lin, as if he had to remind the colonel. “A unit of the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade was inside a mountain on the Indian border, a secret command center, still under construction. The mountain collapsed. Everyone inside was lost, with several million dollars of computer and surveillance equipment. Forty soldiers died. And the Tibetan workers who were being forced to hollow out the mountain. The last part is very sensitive. It says all the workers died. But one old monk survived for a few hours. He was laughing a lot. They thought he was delirious at first. He said the prisoners did it, that they had gradually dug away the support columns, that they had destroyed one of the army’s crack units. That none of them minded taking four because it had become the right thing to do.” Taking four. It was a gulag term, for choosing to commit the sin of suicide—and the incarnation as a lower life-form that would follow, a life on four legs—instead of continuing the misery of the gulag.

Winslow put his hand on the report and Tenzin released it to the American. Shan stared at the papers. “Old monks destroyed the army’s most advanced listening post. This is the secret that the colonel couldn’t bear the world to know,” Winslow said, looking with wonder at the pages. “Take the report, colonel,” he said after a moment, in a plaintive tone, “and give us the lama.”

It didn’t seem that Lin had heard. His eyes drifted back toward Anya. For a moment it seemed he wanted to ask the girl’s advice.

“The report for the lama,” Winslow pressed.

When Lin did not reply, Tenzin stood. “Not just the report,” he said to the colonel. “You can have the abbot of Sangchi, as well, if you wish. Just release Jokar.”

Winslow cursed under his breath, and put a hand on Tenzin’s arm as though to pull him away. Nyma moaned and reached out to hold Tenzin’s leg.

Lin’s eyes slowly shifted back to Tenzin. He seemed about to speak when Anya called out. She was waving at him with something in her hand. Lin leaned forward anxiously. Anya was climbing on the old chorten, as if maybe to better see the machines that were coming.

Beyond the chorten, perhaps half a mile from where they sat, Shan saw soldiers moving up the slope in a tight line. Suddenly there was a whoosh of air, a whining sound, and the slope above them, a hundred yards away, exploded. Shan turned in alarm. Had Somo been there, watching? Surely she would have gone over the ridge by now. Perhaps the tank was sending a warning shot for any Tibetans lingering in the hills, clearing the approach to the valley for the arriving officials. Or had the soldiers heard about the gathering in the high meadow, those waiting for the old lama to lead them in resistance?

Anya was standing now, facing the smoldering patch of earth in confusion.

“Damned fool,” Lin muttered, and slowly rose as another shell screeched through the air.

But this one was not aimed up the ridge. It connected with the chorten. There was a thunderous explosion, and the chorten was no more.

Nyma screamed and ran toward the ruins.

“Noo—ooo!” Lin moaned, and clenched his chest as if he had been shot. “No—ooo!” he repeated in an agonized voice. He rose, took a step forward and fell to his knees.

Shan, staring in horror at the smoking ruins, found himself helping Lin to his feet. The colonel, his face drained of color, lashed out at Shan with his fist, then stumbled down the slope. “Anya!” he called. “Anya come here! Xiao Anya, did they hurt you?”

Shan followed him, his feet leaden, his heart a lump of ice.

Nyma was first to reach the small, limp body lying on the spring blossoms. She seemed not to even notice when Lin pushed her away and knelt beside Anya. She was not bleeding much, Shan told himself, but then he saw the splinter of rock embedded in the base of her neck. The girl’s eyes were opened in surprise, but there was no light in them. She had died instantly.

“Xiao Anya,” Lin said in a feeble voice, stroking the girl’s cheek. “Little Anya,” he repeated, again and again. In her hand, clenched almost shut, was a piece of green stone, a tonde for Uncle Lin.

Soldiers approached, then halted a hundred feet away as they saw their colonel. One of them called out excitedly, and began running back toward the tank, which was now visible below. Lin seemed not to notice the soldiers. He lifted Anya’s shoulders, pressing her lifeless check against his for a moment, blood oozing out of her wound now. His eyes fixed on the green stone in her hand, and he wrapped his own hand around her limp fingers and the stone. He seemed to have trouble breathing for a moment, and he collapsed, his head buried in her shoulder, his back arching in a long, wrenching sob.

No one moved. No one spoke. Slowly Lin rose to his full height, stiff, his face sagging, and carried the dead girl cradled in his arms, down to his troops.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Who will sing for me when the songbird dies? Who will sing? The words of the oracle echoed in Shan’s mind until, numbed with pain, he realized Nyma was speaking them.

“Did she know?” Nyma asked again and again, then grabbed Shan’s arm and burst into tears. “Blessed Buddha, she knew. Our little Anya knew this would happen,” Nyma sobbed.

She would not leave the ruined chorten. Nyma planted herself in the patch of flowers where Anya had been thrown, scrubbing away her tears, reciting a mantra, not seeming to notice when the soldiers milled about, only staring at the spot among the flowers where the girl’s blood had mottled the blooms.

Shan watched, still paralyzed with grief, while the commandos searched the rubble as though looking for more bodies. Several seemed hesitant, looking at the anguished woman, or down the slope at their colonel who had refused to let go of the dead girl, whose blood now ran down his arms and legs. One soldier seemed to recognize Shan, and hung by him, as though waiting for orders to drag him down to the trucks.

Who will sing for me when the songbird dies, Shan heard again.

Then came the shrill call of a whistle, and the soldiers seemed to melt away, jogging down the slope as first the tank and then the trucks retreated in a cloud of dust.

“It may not be safe here,” Shan pleaded with Nyma. “I can take you to one of the caves at least.” But she gave no sign of hearing. Tears streamed down her cheeks again, and her invocation of the Compassionate Buddha grew louder.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nyma said in a brittle voice. “Don’t you see? Tibetans have no reason to hope. This is what happens to those who hope. We’ve been abandoned,” she said in a haunting tone.

“I have to go to Yapchi,” Shan said. He repeated the words, and when she did not respond he turned away and began walking toward the valley, feeling painfully alone, suddenly deeply regretful that he had left Lokesh. Tenzin and Winslow had fled. Perhaps they would reach Lokesh and keep him safe. He kept telling himself that as he climbed, until he stopped, his legs wobbling strangely, and collapsed onto a rock. No one was safe. The army was in the mountains and it was shooting at Tibetans. Gentle Anya, who spoke with lambs, lay dead, because she had wanted to find a charm to attract a deity to the leader of the soldiers who had killed her.

He emerged at the top of the ridge, at a high point between the oil derrick and the village, then found a game trail and began to descend into the valley. Five minutes later he heard someone conversing loudly and crouched behind a rock.

It was Gyalo, speaking with Jampa, briskly walking down into the valley on an adjacent trail, several steps ahead of a long single-file line of grim-faced Tibetans. It looked like a column of soldiers, Shan thought with a start, but then he saw that the implements they carried on their shoulders were shovels and axes and picks. There were at least forty men and women, some of whom he recognized as the refugees he had seen in the cave the night before. Some of them sang songs. Scattered among them were helmets of green, as though Gyalo had found defectors from the venture. Except that they were heading back toward the valley.

Maybe, Shan realized with a sinking feeling, they were soldiers of a sort. He stepped out of his hiding place and the monk greeted him with a warm grin. “The army is still down there,” Shan warned.

The monk smiled, and gestured the other Tibetans to pass around him as he stood with Shan and Jampa.

“Please,” Shan said, “there’s been enough suffering.” He explained what had happened to Anya.

The outlawed monk shut his eyes a moment, then looked at Shan and nodded gravely. “That oracle spoke of it.” The big yak, who had been studying Shan, gave a massive sigh and looked off into the distance. Gyalo fingered one of the braids twined with bright beads which Anya had tied at Norbu.

“Even if you could undermine the derrick,” Shan said, thinking he may have understood the purpose of Gyalo’s party, “they would never let you close enough to try.”

Gyalo gave Shan a long, slow look, then stepped off the trail toward a ledge that overlooked the southern end of the valley and pointed. Shan followed Gyalo’s finger, shielding his eyes with his hand, toward a place perhaps two hundred feet from where the painted rock had been. He pulled out his binoculars. There seemed to be movement in the shadows under the trees.

“We have to release the deity that’s trapped,” Gyalo explained in an earnest tone. He looked at Shan with a bright expression. “They say you found it, that you solved the puzzle,” he declared gratefully, and without another word continued down the trail, pointing out a bird to Jampa as they walked.

Shan looked after the monk and his yak in confusion. He had solved nothing, but he had no time to worry about the monk’s strange words. At least, he told himself, the Tibetans would be out of reach if they stayed on the upper slopes. The soldiers might not care if the displaced Tibetans wanted to pass their time digging out boulders from the mountainside.

The ruins of Yapchi Village lay silent as he passed through them, undisturbed except for a small work party that was ripping apart the burnt timbers of the houses and stacking them in one of the stable yards. The sheep that had journeyed with them from Lamtso were in a small pen, several of them gazing at one of their number that hung upside down, skinned and gutted, on a scaffold of timbers. The caravan sheep were being butchered for the oil workers.

As he continued down the path toward the derrick a voice echoed in his head again. You and the Yapchi deity are going to fix the land for us, you are going to make the Chinese leave, Nyma had said at Lamtso. The wave of emotion that surged through him was so powerful he had to stop again. He found himself fighting for breath, and sat again. Anya was dead. Yapchi Village was destroyed. Lokesh had been tortured, and was leaving, crippled, for Beijing. The old lama was a prisoner. Drakte had died. Lin, who alone had the power to take the soldiers away, had not been changed, only hollowed out, turned into a bitter shell of a man. The Tibetans were still going to resist, and lose, with more of them dying or imprisoned. Soldiers had died. The valley was slowly being destroyed. The oil was still going to flow. Not for a moment had they even cast a shadow of uncertainty over that outcome, not for a moment had there been any doubt that those who craved the oil would win. The deity would stay blinded forever.

He could not bear to look at the derrick as he walked past it. It was like a cold metal monster hovering at his shoulder. Workers crawled over it. It whirled and pounded and groaned so loudly that it seemed the machine was indeed fighting the earth.

Beyond the derrick, close to camp, a platform had been built, supported by raw logs taken from the slope above. Along the front of the platform hung a freshly painted banner, declaring in bright red letters, Serene Prosperity. On the far side of the platform workers bent over cans of red paint to complete one more banner, fastened along its top to a long rope. Victory for Lujun Valley, Shan read, painted on a long roll of cloth, with small derricks painted along the bottom, like the religious symbols sometimes arrayed along the borders of thangkas. Chairs and benches stood on the platform, enough for perhaps twenty people, and from its stairs Jenkins directed workers. The manager paused as a utility vehicle appeared in the camp, followed by two boxy black limousines. The convoy of dignitaries had arrived. Shan looked back in puzzlement at the northern slopes, again wondering why Larkin had taken her Tibetans there, not to the road, not to start an avalanche to block the convoy, not to the angry Tibetans who gathered on the mountain, waiting for the lama to lead them.

Shan saw no sign of Winslow or Somo as he walked toward the camp. Perhaps the American was back in the office trailer, arguing with Jenkins. Everything looked normal. The army tents were still at the rear of the camp, bristling with activity. Soldiers ran in and out of tents, shouting. Their lost colonel had materialized. Even Professor Ma continued his digging, with many more helpers now, racing against his deadline, although now they worked under the eyes of a stern sentry, with a heavy staff for a weapon.

But as he walked past the archaeology dig, two hundred feet off the trail, he halted abruptly. It wasn’t a soldier guarding Professor Ma, it was the dobdob. He studied the army tents again. No one seemed to have noticed Dzopa. Shan began walking hestitantly toward the dig, recognizing the workers as he approached. Lhandro was there, and his parents, and Jokar, all on their knees, digging earnestly in the square of open soil, now much larger than before. Dzopa stood erect, his staff at his side, a pile of blankets below him, his backpack and Jokar’s staff a few feet behind him.