Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation (21 page)

“These things don’t belong to Western collectors, just as they don’t belong to the government,” Shan declared. “They belong to the reverent.” He lifted one of the bags from the floor and stuffed it onto one of the storage shelves carved out of the living rock at the back of the chamber. Kypo watched him without expression, then placed his hand on the bag Jomo had thrown over his shoulder.

“You’re a fool to trust him,” Jomo spat, but did not resist when Kypo took the bag from him.

“What he is doing he could be arrested for,” Kypo observed. “The restoration and distribution of such artifacts is regulated by the Bureau of Religious Affairs.”

“So what?” Jomo shot back, “he is already a criminal, already an illegal.”

Kypo stuffed the bag beside the first one then turned to Gyalo’s son with an impatient frown. “So now he has shown us his secret. He has put himself at risk of arrest in order to save the old things.”

Jomo’s protests began to fade away as he examined the work Shan had been doing. When they finished stowing the sacks, Kypo stood in front of a dirt encrusted painting of a ferocious deity with a horse head. “There could have been other hiding places,” he said. “Why show us this one?”

“Because it is the best of the hiding places I know. I don’t want it forgotten for another fifty years.”

“You sound like you are going away.”

Shan too gazed for a moment at the deity before replying. “I am always going away,” he replied. It was, he had realized years earlier, the only way he could survive, by not lingering anywhere too long, by living on the fringes, out of sight of the government.

Kypo reached into one of the sacks and pulled out a corroded sickle. “It is a symbol from the war,” he explained as he pointed to the marks on the blade. “The resistance didn’t have many weapons. They used farm tools when they had to. The army of Tibetan fighters had a name. Four Rivers, Six Ranges, it was called. The soldiers liked to scratch the name on their weapons. Some of the units had modern weapons but still carried the blades as symbols, like badges of honor.” He looked at the deity on the wall. “It’s just a sickle. Tools are in short supply. It was a just a blade they used to cut the ropes. Finding it at the ambush doesn’t signify anything,” he said to the horse-headed god on the wall, as if trying to convince it.

But it did signify something, Shan knew, and it was why the porter had been frightened when Yates described it. The sign on the sickle had been used by resistance fighters decades earlier, and the ambush on the Public Security bus had been an act of resistance.

HALF AN HOUR later, as Shan walked along the street outside Gyalo’s compound, weighing his growing suspicion that it could not have been Public Security who attacked Gyalo, a familiar red vehicle rolled to a halt beside him. Nathan Yates stepped out, wearing a haunted expression, and blocked Shan’s path.

“It was poetry,” the American declared in a hollow voice. “She carried a book of Buddhist poetry in her pack and would read it by candlelight up on the mountainside, because it is a Buddhist mountain. She would write out the poems sometimes and hide them under stones. It was one of her favorites, a death poem by a Japanese poet.” As he looked up toward the stars his voice dropped to a whisper. “Is it me the raven calls,” he recited, “from the world of shades this frosty morning?”

“She died well,” Shan said softly, realizing that Yates’s acknowledgment of her death was releasing his grief. But the American did not express his sorrow in silence. Shan leaned against the car and listened as Yates quietly spoke of climbing with Megan Ross, of mountains they had conquered together, of the great spirit that welled up within her when, in her phrase for reaching a summit, she touched the sky.

“Porters came in with the news of the murder at the gompa,” Yates finally announced, in a louder voice. He gestured Shan toward the front seat of the car.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Shan said, glancing toward the mountain road. He prayed that the Tibetans he had left at Sarma had taken his advice and stayed no more than another thirty minutes before leaving with their artifacts and returning the truck to Tsipon’s compound.

“If I don’t get my expeditions staffed they will pull my permits.”

Shan paused, trying to connect the American’s words.

“Those porters who returned when Tenzin’s body was found are disappearing, back to the village. No one will speak with me. If it was just about money I could go to Tsipon. They know Public Security will swarm over the slopes when they learn of Director Xie.”

“You should go to Tsipon in any event.” Shan began to back away.

“Not for this. One of the remaining sherpas says everyone is gathering in the village square, asking for the astrologer to read the signs. I saw Kypo speeding away, back toward the village. They are bringing things to use as weapons. They say what Tenzin is doing shows how angry the mountain is.”

A chill ran down Shan’s spine. “Tenzin is dead.”

“A villager came into my tent before he left. It scared the hell out of me. He said Tenzin keeps trying to rise up to serve the mountain and someone keeps killing him.”

THE SNOWCAPPED PEAKS were like silver islands, under stars as thick as pollen. Yates drove slowly up the treacherous, twisting road, slamming the brakes more than once as the small nocturnal mammals of the mountains hopped across their path. Shan began to urge the American on after one such stop when he saw that Yates was staring uneasily at the village on the slope above. Tumkot was strangely glowing, launching its own flickering stars into the night sky. A huge fire was burning in the square.

“What if it’s Tenzin’s funeral pyre?” Yates asked. “We’re not going to be welcome.”

“They wouldn’t place a pyre in the town square,” Shan said, though he still directed Yates to extinguish the headlights. For the last half mile he walked in front of the truck, guiding it forward with the American’s hand light. They left the truck a hundred yards from the village and approached on foot, Shan guiding Yates through the dim alleys and stairs. Twice they flattened against alley walls to avoid being seen, once for two men carrying pitchforks as they marched down the main street, then for a woman who hurried by with a length of white cloth and a bucket of steaming water.

Two ghosts waited at the rear of Kypo’s house, glowing in the moonlight. Neither the long-haired white goat nor the girl, who was wearing one of the white T-shirts handed out in expedition camps, uttered a sound, just watched with fearful expressions as the two men entered the back door.

Inside, beside the ground-floor stalls, Kypo stood at a makeshift table on which a body covered with a blanket lay. “Are you crazy?” he growled as they emerged from the shadows. “Do you have any idea what is going on in the square?”

“Public Security doesn’t know about Xie’s death yet,” Shan pointed out.

“It’s not about Xie, it’s about the original murders. Cao has decided he needs additional witnesses. A convoy is getting ready at the garage in town, with maps for Tumkot.”

Shan refrained from asking how Kypo had learned such a well-guarded secret. They both knew someone who collected secrets at town garages. Kypo and Jomo seemed to be forgetting the grudge that had stood between them for so long.

“They will seal off the roads in the morning, order every man, woman and child to assemble in the square. Anyone without papers will be arrested. But that’s not why the porters refuse to work,” Kypo added, pointing at the body. “That’s why. They say his soul is being beaten to a pulp. Every time the goddess tries to take him he is killed again.”

Shan stepped closer to the table. The incense that burned at each end traditionally was for attracting spirits. But Kypo had increased the usual measure because of the smell of decay. Though the body had been in cold storage much of the time, it had been more than a week since Shan brought it down from Chomolungma.

“I can’t be responsible for what they might do if they see you touching that body,” Kypo warned. “It’s been cleansed.” A shadow emerged out of the darker shadows. Kypo’s wife came to his side, her face tight with fear.

“What do you mean he is killed again?” Shan asked.

It was Kypo’s spouse who answered, her eyes flaring for a moment as Shan took another step toward the body. “Bones, heart, head,” she said, her voice heavy with warning.

Another figure appeared, silhouetted in the doorway to the street. The hulking blacksmith, the second husband of the household, cursed and made a quick lunge at Shan. His fist was blocked by Kypo’s raised arm.

“I was taking him on his passage,” Shan declared in a level voice, “before half the people of Tumkot even knew he was dead.”

The blacksmith shoved Kypo back and took another step toward Shan, his hand reaching for a hammer on his belt. “He is the one who brings them back when they die,” Kypo called out. “Shan knows the words to say. He wears a gau. He was a prisoner of Major Cao,” he added, struggling how best to explain Shan.

The big man’s arm swung up again, but more slowly. Shan did not move as the man pushed open the top of Shan’s shirt and pulled out the prayer amulet hanging from his neck. The blacksmith’s face wrinkled in confusion. He did not protest when the wife of the household pulled him away, back into the shadows.

“I explained already that his bones were broken in the fall, that the holes were put in his chest by the knobs,” Shan said to Kypo.“Those are the explanations for what happened to his body.” But what had Kypo’s wife said? Bones, heart, head.

The Tibetan just stared wordlessly at Shan, as if to say Shan did not understand.

Shan, more confused than ever, pulled the blanket back to expose the upper torso. “The body was given to me on the trail above the road to the base camp. I helped wrap him in canvas and tie him to the mule.”

Two Tibetan women appeared, carrying
torma
offerings, little deities shaped out of butter. As they positioned themselves beside the body, a teenage boy appeared, anger in his eyes, holding a staff before him as if to threaten the two outsiders

“Megan!” Yates suddenly exclaimed, then quickly lowered the pack on his back, extracted his small computer and set it on a half wall along one of the stalls. A moment later its screen began to glow and he started scrolling through lists of files.

Shan eyed the gathering Tibetans behind Kypo. There were more than ten now, all watching him with intense distrust, several holding objects that could be used as weapons.

Yates, oblivious to the hostile, expanding crowd, tapped on the keys of his computer. “Megan has . . . had a special technique she used to weed out the climbers she thought wouldn’t make it to the top. She kept a file in her computer of photos. On any expedition she was affiliated with she made sure everyone saw them before they climbed above base camp.”

“I don’t understand,” Shan said.

The American gestured Shan toward the screen with a grim expression. “The dead,” he said in English. “She collected the dead.” Yates began to scroll through a series of macabre photographs. “According to this, Tenzin was the twenty-fifth dead climber she photographed.”

With a shudder Shan recognized the sherpa. He had gone up to the advance camps himself only once, but it had been high enough to see three of the gruesome figures frozen to the mountain, slowly being covered with snow and ice. He glanced up at Yates in confusion. The image on the screen was simply Tenzin in repose, his body laid out at the base of the rock face from which he had fallen.

“I looked at it the day you took Tenzin away,” Yates explained. “My gut said there was something amiss, but I couldn’t find it.”

It took Shan a few seconds of silent searching to find the answer. With new foreboding he pointed to Tenzin’s feet.

The American sagged. “Damn it, no,” he moaned in an anguished voice. “Not Tenzin.” It was indeed as if Tenzin had just died again.

“What is it?” Kypo demanded over his shoulder.

“The boots,” Shan explained.

“They’re backward,” Yates said. “His climbing boots are on the wrong feet.”

“But what does it mean?” the Tibetan asked.

“It means he was murdered,” Shan said. “I should have seen it,” he said, anguish now in his voice. “If I had seen it I might have. . . .” His words drifted off. Done what? Shan himself felt like one more victim running before the deadly avalanche let loose the day the minister died. No, he chastised himself as he turned back toward the body, these villagers deserved the truth. He knew now the avalanche had started with Tenzin, not with the minister. “What it means,” he said, “is that it was not the hand of the mountain that killed Tenzin, it was the hand of a man.”

“Who here is his family?” Shan asked after a moment.

“A sister is here, with her son,” Kypo said, gesturing to a woman in her forties and the teenage boy who wielded the staff. “His mother is on the other side, in Nepal.”

“They must roll him over,” Shan said.

“He’s been cleansed,” the sister protested. “Purified for his passage on.”

“And what kind of passage will that be,” Shan asked, “if we cannot send him with the truth? I need to turn him over. You saw something when you cleaned him, evidence of the third killing.”

The woman searched the confused faces of her companions then gestured for Kypo, not Shan, to help turn the body over.