Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation (2 page)

“
Lha gyal lo,
” Shan offered in a tight voice as he retreated.
Victory to the gods
.

A patch of maroon flashed among the rocks fifty yards away. He sprinted toward it, finding three monks hiding, trembling with fear. “Away from the road!” he shouted, gesturing them toward the maze of outcroppings on the slope above. The soldiers would return at any moment. They would have batons and electric cattle prods with which to deliver stunning blows. He grabbed the wrist of the first monk he reached, a young Tibetan with a jagged scar on his chin, whose eyes flashed defiance as he jerked his arm away. “These are prison guards, they will not stray far from the road,” Shan explained. “But they will call in border commandos in helicopters. Get to the high valleys,” he urged. “Get out of your robes. You can’t go back to your gompa. Stay with the shepherds, stay in the caves.”

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” the young monk protested. “Rinpoche is correct,” he said, using the term for revered teacher as he nodded toward the old lama sitting by the road. “There is just a misunderstanding.”

“There is no misunderstanding. You’re bound for years in a Public Security prison.” The other monks grabbed up the loose ends of their robes and began running up the slope.

The young monk took several hesitant steps toward the lama who was tending to the soldier. “I cannot leave him.”

“They won’t keep you together,” Shan said to his back. “Go to him now and all it does is guarantee you will spend the next five years in a Chinese prison. They’ll crush your prayer boxes, burn your robe.”

The monk turned, anguish on his face. “I have heard of a Chinese who was a prisoner himself, who helps our people now. How are you called?”

“You don’t want to know my name, and I don’t want to know yours. Go.” Shan insisted, pointing up the slope.

“But Rinpoche—”

Shan looked back to the lama, his heart rising in his throat. “The old ones in prison just consider themselves on a long hermitage. The best thing you can do for him is to flee, save yourself so you can keep being a monk. Spare him the pain of knowing he cost you your freedom.”

The monk mouthed a silent prayer toward the lama, touched his empty wrist where his beads had been before the knobs tore them away, then sprinted up the slope.

Metallic whistles screeched from farther down the road, followed by sharp commands and a long anguished moan. Shan, fighting the panic rising within, surveyed the scene, spotting arcs of color among the debris of rocks on the slope above. A thick red climbing rope, a sling of black and yellow rope. He had found the stolen climbing equipment. Something rattled by his foot and he bent to retrieve a steel snaplink carabiner used with climbing ropes. He was looking up at the debris again, trying to decipher how the ropes had been used, when three loud cracks erupted from the ridge above him. Gunshots. He ran.

There would be wounded monks, he told himself, there would be furious knobs. As he ran he made a mental note of what he had on him that he might turn into bandages. But when he emerged onto the small, flat plain at the top of the ridge it was not monks he saw but a traffic accident. A large dark gray sedan had veered off the narrow road. He reached the car gasping, leaning on the fender by the open driver’s door to catch his breath, realizing the car had not hit anything, had been pulled onto the shoulder by a grove of short, gnarled juniper trees. Watching for soldiers, he walked warily around the car and froze.

The two women leaning against boulders appeared at first to be having a quiet conversation, the middle-aged Chinese woman in a white silk blouse gazing inquisitively at the younger woman with close-cropped blond hair, her hands on her belly as if she had indigestion. But the older woman’s hands were covered with blood. Shan knelt, his fingers on her neck, finding no pulse. She was dead, though her flesh was still warm.

The blond woman gazed toward the horizon with a lifeless expression. But then he saw the fingers of one hand move, trembling, as if gesturing for him. She had been shot twice, in the chest. Blood stained her red nylon windbreaker and the pale blue shirt underneath, blood bubbled at one corner of her mouth. His heart wrenched as she turned to him, her eyes confused and pleading. He sat beside her, put an arm around her shoulder, wiping away a bloodstain on her temple.

“Stay still,” he whispered in Chinese, then repeated himself in English, stroking her crown.
Run!
a frantic voice inside shouted. He had to flee, had to help the monks if he could. But he could not leave the dying woman.

“Who did this?” he whispered.

The woman’s lips opened and shut. “The raven,” she whispered in English, and her hand found his, gripping hard as she looked back at the sky. Not the sky, Shan realized, not a bird, but the tall, fierce mountain to the south. She was gazing at Everest. She glanced at him with an apologetic, lopsided grin. “Is it me . . .” she began in the thinnest of voices, then more blood flowed out of her mouth, choking her words. She raised her hand, touching the blood at her mouth, smearing it on her cheek as she coughed.

“Help will come,” he said, his own voice hoarse now. “You will be fine.” When the soldiers came he would ask them to run back to the bus, where there would be a first-aid kit and a radio to call an ambulance.

Her weak grin returned, as if she had caught him in a joke, then she lowered her head onto his shoulder like an old friend resting a moment. With what seemed to be great effort she raised her free hand and touched an ornate box that hung from her neck, pulled out from under her shirt. A
gau
, a traditional Tibetan prayer box. She pushed it toward him, as if to show him, then her hand fell away. He stroked the dirty blond hair on her crown and whispered more words of comfort as the strength ebbed from the hand that held his and her frail, labored breathing gradually ceased.

He watched as if from a distance as his hand kept stroking her head, her lifeless eyes still aimed at the mother mountain, hearing his voice whispering desolate, useless assurance as he pushed the gau back inside her shirt. Too late he saw the shadow beside him, too late he noticed the gray uniformed leg at his side. The electric prod touched his hand, his neck, his spine, and he watched from an even greater distance as his body convulsed, pulling the dead Westerner on top of him, her blood smearing onto his face and chest. Then something slammed into his skull and he knew no more.

Chapter Two

WITH HIS ONE good eye Shan watched the dead prisoner’s hand twitch, disturbing the flies that fed on its oozing wound. He had seen this before, the reflex of a laboratory frog, in those who had recently died after torture from electric shock. The sinewy fingers kept grabbing at thin air, as if frantically seeking the rainbow rope that pulled good Buddhists to heaven. With a stab of pain he raised his head from his pallet high enough to follow the dead arm, in search of its owner. Then a deep, shuddering moan escaped his throat. It was his own.

With agonizing effort he pushed himself upright against the painted cinder-block wall, ignoring the numbness in his legs, exploring his blind eye with his fingers to confirm it was only swollen shut. The pain that erupted as he lifted his head was like none he had known for years. His head swirled as he tried to study his cell, noticing pools of fresh blood and vomit on the concrete floor below a filthy porcelain sink. The last thing he saw as he slid down the wall, losing consciousness again, was a faded political poster on the wall outside the cell, an image of workers with radiant smiles over the caption REJOICE IN THE WORK OF THE PEOPLE.

When he woke again it was night, the only light a single dim bulb hanging in the middle of the corridor of cells, over a metal table with a blackboard easel beside it. He rose onto unsteady legs by pushing against the wall and took a step forward. The cell floor heaved upward and his knees collapsed. Again he struggled to his feet and took another step, using the lessons of his Tibetan teachers to fight the agony of each movement, until at last he crumpled onto the floor in a front corner. He gripped the bars of the door to pull himself into the light to examine the work of his captors. His left arm was mottled with blood, the skin scraped away in several places. His lips were bloody and swollen, several upper teeth loose and bleeding. The prisoner instincts that had lurked within him ever since leaving the gulag took over, taking inventory of the instruments used on him. A baton to his jaw and shoulders. A club covered with coarse sandpaper to his arm, which lifted patches of skin wherever it touched, a favorite of rural garrisons. Steel boot toes to his shins. Boot heels on the top of his feet. He closed his eyes, collecting himself, then explored the inside of his cheek with his tongue. There was no lingering taste, no metallic tinge. They had not begun to use chemicals on him.

He pulled his legs under him, in the meditation position, clenching his teeth against the pain, and stared at a little oblong window with wire-reinforced glass near the top of the back wall. Stars made their transit across the window. He dipped his finger into the nearest pool of blood and drew a circle on the wall, then a circle within a circle, then patterns within the circles. As he worked on the mandala, his mind clearing, the hairs on his neck began to rise. He turned to see the glow of a cigarette from an open cell at the end of the dark corridor. Someone was sitting on a cot, watching him.

Shan twisted, grabbed another bar, and with an effort that sent stabs of pain through his shoulders pulled himself around to squarely face the corridor. He stared back at the moving ember of the man who watched, until a new tide of pain surged within, lighting a fire at the back of his head that left him writhing on the floor. He faded in and out of consciousness, his mind churning with memories and visions, his body rioting in pain, leaving him unable to discern what was real and what was not. The bodies of the escaped monks were stacked like firewood, with a knob officer pouring gas on them. His father, the professor, recited Shakespeare in short, gasping syllables as he was tortured with burning sticks. Shan stood at the summit of Mount Chomolungma with Tenzin and the blond woman, then the wind seized them and threw all three into a shaft where they floated with the bodies of dead climbers.

He became aware of dim light filtering through the small window. Hours had passed. He was lying on the floor again, sprawled in his own filth. A man paced along the front of the cell, his black officer’s boots glistening as they passed a pool of sunlight. The man paused, spoke to someone. A moment later someone threw a bucket of frigid water over Shan.

He did not react. Someone cursed. Someone murmured new orders. A metal door opened and shut, then opened and shut again. Shan watched through a fog of pain as the officer began emptying a plastic bottle into the bucket.

With the first acrid sting of the odor Shan struggled upward, clenching his jaw in agony, pushing himself forward, reaching for the bars. He knew from experience that some knobs liked to throw ammonia on prisoners.

“Risen from your nap at last,” the officer observed in a slow, refined voice with an accent that sent a chill down Shan’s back. He had been trained in Beijing, probably was from one of the anonymous disposal units that cleaned up embarrassments for the Party elite. New foreboding rose within him. Why would such a man be sent to deal with Shan?

Shan gripped the bars, his eyes drifting in and out of focus. Blood trickled down one leg. He could not take a deep breath without wincing from the pain. He closed his eyes, centering himself a moment, then fixed the officer with a steady gaze. “I need some tea,” he declared in a hoarse voice.

Though the officer’s eyes were still in shadow Shan could not miss his bloodless grin. He turned with quick, whispered orders and a jailer hastened down the corridor.

No one spoke again until Shan was ushered to the metal table in the center of the corridor and chained to a chair, a mug of tea in front of him. He held the mug to his nose before drinking, letting the steam burn away the cloud inside his head, then drained nearly half the near-scalding liquid in one gulp.

“My name is Major Cao,” the officer announced as he filled another mug from a tea thermos. “We will be working together to resolve things.”

“Traditionally,” Shan said in a ragged voice as the officer settled into a chair across from him, “interrogation begins before the torture. It might be—” he searched for a word— “counterproductive to incapacitate a prisoner before seeing if he is going to cooperate.”

“You misunderstand,” Cao replied. “What they did to you was just a going-away present. Every Public Security officer in this district, every soldier of that detail, has been reassigned because of what you did. Most to desert outposts where they won’t be heard of for years. They felt an urge to express their true feelings to you before they left.”

Shan watched in chilled silence as the officer opened a tattered, stained yellow file on the table with familiar characters inscribed boldly across the front. The man was a master of his craft. It would not have been difficult to ascertain Shan’s identity from the prison registration number tattooed on his arm, but he had thought his file had been buried so deep no one would ever find it. With a new, desperate realization he looked up. “What day is it?” It would have taken at least forty-eight hours to retrieve the file from distant Lhadrung.

Cao ignored him. “Reads like one of those operas written for the Party,” the officer observed dryly as he leafed through the file. “Tragic misjudgments lead a reliable cadre down an antisocial path, at each stage sinking him deeper among the criminal element until, in a last gasp of self-hate, he commits an assassination. His subconscious longing to be executed finally finds voice.” He spoke looking toward the empty cells as if to an audience before turning to Shan. “If the Party doesn’t decide to muzzle it your execution will make headlines all over China.”

Shan clenched his abdomen, resisting the threats in Cao’s words, finally piercing the chaos of pain and fear that welled within. “She was an official then? The one shot in the belly?”

“His rage was so blind it affected his memory,” the officer continued toward the cells before turning back to Shan. “You destroyed a paragon of society, severed the head of Beijing’s favored monument. You, Comrade Shan, assassinated the Minister of Tourism.”

Shan stared into the shadows, a new kind of pain surging through his body. Images returned, of the dead Chinese woman, of the blond woman who had died in his arms, her final mysterious words sounding like a question to the mountain. Finally he gestured to his mug and Cao refilled it with another icy grin. “What day is it?” Shan asked again, in a voice that quivered. “Is it Thursday yet?”

Major Cao produced a pencil and a blank sheet of paper from a drawer in the table and carefully drew seven blocks joined together, crossed off the first two, and shoved it across to Shan. “For the rest of your life this is all the calendar you will ever need,” he declared.

A wave of nausea swept over Shan. He bent over the steam of his mug again, closing his eyes. “A crime so important will require a real investigation,” he said when he looked up, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Forensic work.”

“You were found clutching one of your victims, soaked in blood. You had the name of the minister’s hotel in your pocket.” With new fear Shan’s hand shot toward his now empty pocket. He had forgotten the paper, could not afford to have Cao know why he had it. “The only other evidence we need,” Cao said, with a gesture toward the file, “is the pathetic story of your life.”

For the first time Shan gazed into the officer’s eyes. “No,” he said, his voice steadier now. “Otherwise they would not have sent for you.”

Cao sighed, as if already fatigued from his work. “A hundred million. That’s what the climbing trade is worth in one year. Beijing asked us to be certain it wasn’t Tibetan separatists or something else that might threaten this vital segment of the economy. An abundance of caution, you might say.”

“So it’s not about murder, it’s about foreign exchange.”

The major stared at Shan as though for the first time, with cool curiosity. “As you are well aware, Inspector Shan, we prefer the subjects of our executions to be conscious, so they can express their remorse in their final moments. But you can be strapped to a chair and still recite your sins. Do you know how many bones and nerves there are in the feet and ankles?”

Shan fixed Cao with a level gaze as he considered the man’s words. “Beijing asked you. So you’re not from Beijing. That means Lhasa. Provincial headquarters.”

Cao’s eyes flared. Shan had hit a nerve.

“When you were unconscious, you shouted out a name, again and again. Ko. Who is this Ko? Should we be seeking a coconspirator?”

Shan’s gut tightened into a knot. He feigned another spasm of pain to hide his reaction to the name. “A political parable might be enough to explain things to the public, Major. But in the end, in the final secret discussions about the death of a state minister, the State Council will expect proof. Forensic work. You seem to shy away from the topic.”

Cao lifted a another mug from beside the tea thermos, squeezing it so hard Shan thought it might shatter.

“I was only there by coincidence. I saw the minister’s wounds. She died of a shot at point-blank range,” Shan said. “I had no gunpowder residue on my hands. Did you even bother to check?”

“I arrived twenty-four hours after your arrest. Other officers were responsible for the initial fieldwork.”

“The ones lost in the desert now,” Shan observed.

“I believe some were also sent to oil platforms in the China Sea. The twenty-first century equivalent of Mongolia.”

“Sort of like Lhasa,” Shan observed, “for an ambitious Public Security officer.”

A ligament in Cao’s neck tightened as he stared at Shan. “Some of our country’s greatest security challenges are in Tibet. I am honored to serve the motherland wherever she sends me.”

It was, Shan knew, the code, and tone, of a man who had suffered disappointments in his career. “Did you at least search the rocks?”

“For what?”

“The murder weapon. The murderer obviously knew that Public Security had closed the road and was focused on that bus of monks. He apparently even knew it meant that Public Security had decided the minister didn’t need her usual security detail. He knew he could get close to her as long as he avoided that bus. He also knew he could not afford to be found with the gun.”

“What are you admitting?”

“I am admitting how incompetent Public Security has been. The pistol is in the rocks there, probably no more than two or three hundred feet away.”

“In twenty-four hours you will be begging to show us where it is.”

Shan returned Cao’s stare without expression. “Public Security interrogation is such an inexact science, Major. What you might have in twenty-four hours is either a dead prisoner with no confession or the murder weapon, fresh enough that the elements haven’t damaged its evidentiary value.”

Cao closed the file and covered it with a fist. “Who the hell are you, Shan?”

“I am the sour seed that Public Security always spits out,” Shan said in an earnest voice.

Cao lifted a new folder from the table. “A leading local Party cadre has submitted a petition. He reminds us that the bureau operates a hospital for the criminally insane not far from here. A famous hospital, at least in Public Security circles. The spa, we call it in Lhasa.”

“The yeti factory,” Shan murmured. “The Tibetans call it the yeti factory.”

“No doubt because the spa is producing superhumans.”

“Because inmates sometimes escape and are found wandering aimlessly in the mountains, usually naked, in the snow, with the mental faculties of a large ape.”

Cao’s thin lips did not move but his eyes lit with amusement. “This cadre suggests we owe a duty to the people to cure you before we shoot you, so you can explain to the inhabitants of this county why you shamed them so. I called him in. I asked him what proof he has of your insanity. He said every conversation with you is proof enough.”