Mandarin Gate (18 page)

He looked down into his hands. “That I wasn’t sent to spy. That I was truly in prison to be punished.”

“Exactly.”

Shan opened his mouth to argue but hesitated. He could not fathom why he felt the need to make this woman understand the truth of his life. There was, in the end, no way to refute her. She wanted so badly to believe he was not real, that he was an agent, an informer. In the world she inhabited no one had to be real. There was no truth in her world, only greater and lesser degrees of propaganda. And there was a certain veracity to her words. He did live under cover, he did hide the most important elements of his life, he did keep his most important truths secret.

He rolled his sleeve back over his wrist. “I know how to survive,” he repeated in a tight voice.

“You’re a fool to think so. Survival in such a place is a cast of the dice. Lose the throw and it’s that hole in the ground for you. Not even a shroud. They toss you in the pit and maybe throw some lime on your face. The birds will pick at you until your end of the hole fills and a bulldozer shoves dirt over it. Bodies mean nothing in China,” she added as a bitter afterthought.

Shan studied her. She had been sitting in half-darkness, staring at her desk, before he arrived. “What happened, Lieutenant?”

She stared again out the window, into the night. “I wasn’t supposed to see. I didn’t want to see. There’s a shed behind the district headquarters by the cell block. The door was open. There were stacks of ice inside and it made me curious. If I had known the ice was for him I would have stayed away.”

“You mean the German. It was only two bodies that were stolen because Liang had already stolen the German’s.”

The lieutenant nodded. “But they had tortured him.”

A chill crept up Shan’s spine. “He was already dead, Meng.”

“They beat him, crushed the bones in what was left of his face, broke his arms and legs. There was a sledgehammer by the table.”

It was Shan’s turn to stare at the empty desk. “Has the major left?”

“No. He was gone for a day after his meeting with you. Now he’s furious at everyone. He’s sending more bulldogs in to stir things up here, says this is the price we pay for giving such a free hand to the Tibetans in the valley. He won’t leave until things are resolved.”

“You mean until they find the American.”

“If she has evidence she should come forward.”

“You call me a fool? You know they’ve decided what to do with the German. He was in an accident, probably a climbing accident, a fall off a thousand-foot cliff. Foreigners are notorious for secretly climbing forbidden mountains. Too bad about his girlfriend. She will probably be roped with him.”

“You’re making no sense.”

“The American girl who saw the murders. She’s dead but she doesn’t yet know it.”

*   *   *

Genghis had the stamina of his Mongol namesake. The youth was in obvious pain, pausing at his work in the park to clutch at his side or adjust the bandage on his head. He was after the big bolts that secured the planks to the benches, and had clearly done it before. With a wrench in one hand and a hammer in the other he moved with mechanical efficiency, leaving every other plank as if to disguise his theft.

Shan saw a motorbike leaning against a tree in the shadows. “The Jade Crows had the cameras of the dead foreigner,” he said to the youth’s back. “I bet you looked at the photos. “

Genghis spun around, raising the hammer. “You’re crazy, Old Mao. Dealing with stolen property is against the law.”

Shan grinned and gestured to his bucket of bolts. “A bold statement, all things considered.” Genghis waved the hammer as if to threaten him.

Shan pointed toward the darkened houses off the square. “No one in this town can afford to pay what those cameras are worth. Nor could they afford the risk. The cameras left on one of your trucks to Nepal. You drive those trucks sometimes. It must be boring. Surely you looked at the photos.”

Genghis’s grin revealed teeth stained dark red. Chewing betel nuts was one of the lesser vices of Yunnan natives. “You dumb son of a bitch. You want to take on the Crows over a few photos of Tibetans?”

“Tibetans where?”

Genghis shrugged. “Tibetans making that damned dried cheese. Tibetans blowing big horns. Tibetans on a yak caravan, working at that convent, saying prayers.” He raised his hand and mimicked the snap of a shutter. “Like you better pray if you try to fuck with the Crows.”

“I’m not the one with cracked ribs, Genghis. You can’t just go around stealing bodies and public property.”

“Just scrap metal for recycling.”

“There’s going to be some new police arriving soon. I told the constable outside the police post that someone was vandalizing the statue. They won’t be tolerant. At least you could have tried in the middle of the night. You’re rather conspicuous.”

The youth’s eyes flashed. “None of these damned egghead Manchurians are going to say a word about us. I could—” He paused midsentence.
“Cao ni mai!”
he spat.

Shan could see the blinking light of a police sedan reflected in the youth’s wide eyes. He forced himself not to turn around, not to evidence his interest. “What color are the uniforms?” he asked. He could hear the crackle of police radios now.

Genghis’s face tightened with worry. “Green apes,” he replied as he searched the square, looking for an escape route. He glanced back at Shan. “Does it matter?”

“It makes all the difference. Drop your bag and kick it under the bench.” Genghis did as Shan instructed. “Give me your hammer.” Another car pulled up at the opposite end of the square, Meng’s grey utility vehicle.

When the youth froze in indecision, Shan reached out and pulled the tool from his hand. “Now get your motorbike and walk away with it. Don’t run, don’t start the engine until the shouting starts.”

“Shouting?”

But Shan had no time to explain. He shoved Genghis toward the shadows then glanced over his shoulder to see the police moving up the square, two of the green-uniformed officers on either side, long batons in their hands. He marched deliberately toward the statue in the center of the square.

“Shan! No!” Meng called out as he pulled himself up on the plinth. She began running toward him. The police behind him were shouting now. He heard the pounding of their boots on the pavement.

Shan held onto the waist of the fiberglass Mao as he edged around the statue, then steadied himself by throwing his arms around the short thick neck. The police were cursing at him, running faster. He nodded into the empty face of the Great Helmsman.

“You did all this, you son of a bitch,” he spat at Mao, then lifted the hammer and smashed in his nose.

CHAPTER TEN

The gentle touch was like cool water over his burning pain. His arms and back throbbed from the beatings, his ears rang from the batons hitting his head. He sensed the trickle of blood from half a dozen cuts. But from the deep pit of his pain a voice called him upward.

“I am not afraid of demons,” came the whispered voice. “If I were afraid of demons there would be little profit in knowledge of things as they are.” It was not a prayer, but a poem from Milarepa, Tibet’s ancient poet-saint, about an encounter with evil gods. “How wonderful it is that you have arrived. Do not leave without making a nuisance of yourself,” the gentle voice recited, pulling Shan upward toward the light.

At last, with the gasp of the drowning man reaching air again, he awoke. The leathery, stubbled face that hovered over him smiled. He reached out and grabbed Lokesh’s hand.

“If I had known you would miss me so on my holiday I would have written,” the old Tibetan quipped.

Shan covered the leathery hand with his other hand, squeezing it as relief flooded over him. He tried to speak but only a parched croak came out of his mouth. Lokesh propped him up and put a wooden ladle of water to his lips.

“Are you well, my friend?” Shan asked after he drank.

“You know these government resorts. They tend to cut corners on meals and bedding.”

With painful effort Shan pushed himself back against the wall, leaning there so he could better look about. They were in a corner of what seemed to be a long open-fronted garage. Outside were rows of run-down barracks. “An army base?”

“Built as a camp for summer training,” came a soft voice behind Lokesh. A sturdy woman with a stubble of grey hair on her scalp appeared. “Abandoned years ago. Some of the buildings are only good for firewood.”

Shan had not worried about finding Lokesh and the nun amid the hundreds in the camp. He had known they would be with the sick and injured.

“My name is Shan,” he said to the nun.

The woman offered a hesitant nod.

“Ani Ama knows the healing ways,” Lokesh said. “They don’t let us have doctors.”

Shan turned back to study the building he lay in. The pallets of the sick and injured extended the entire length of the rear wall. A few of the patients, like Shan, wore makeshift bandages over external injuries. Most appeared pale and fevered. Some were shaking uncontrollably. Others wept.

He studied his friend, seeing now the patches of color on his face and forearms where bruises were fading. “Did they … are you—”

“I am well enough,” Lokesh said with a small grin, fixing Shan with a meaningful gaze. In their gulag barracks Lokesh had often been punished, usually for breaking discipline to aid an ailing prisoner, but he had never spoken of his beatings, never once complained. “You should not have come,” he added. “It is too dangerous. You have Ko to think of.”

Shan fought a new wave of emotion at the mention of his son. “Ko is not going anywhere. I missed your snoring in the night.”

Lokesh’s grin, made uneven by a knob boot years earlier, exposed his yellowed, uneven teeth. He gripped Shan’s arm tightly for a moment, then rose to help him to his feet.

Shan clenched his jaw against the pain in his shoulders and back, trying to push away the memory of the storm of batons after the police had pulled him off the statue. With Lokesh’s help he hobbled into the sunlight.

“There are too many here,” Lokesh said. “Twice the number the camp should hold. Not enough food. Not enough pallets and blankets. Not enough latrines.”

Shan saw only a few solitary Tibetans wandering around the compound. “Where are they?”

Lokesh gestured toward the largest of the buildings, no doubt originally built as a mess hall. “Classes.You’ve heard it before. Hours of lectures every day. Duty to the motherland. Beijing’s version of the history of Tibet. Learning magical chants from
The Little Red Book.
”

Lokesh led Shan toward the nearest barracks, pausing at the warped planks of the stairs leading inside. “Ani Ama convinced them to set up a quarantine, said the soldiers could all get sick otherwise. They aren’t real guards, just police.” Shan and Lokesh well knew the thugs who ran China’s hard-labor prisons. “Like a practice prison. Not even any roll calls. They don’t realize the sick rotate in and out every few hours. The worst of those who are really sick are in the old bunkers in the back fields. From there it’s a short walk to the graveyard. They’re just carried out in wheelbarrows, five or six a day since the typhus started.”

An old woman standing on the top step cast them a scolding look, then stepped aside at a murmured syllable from Lokesh. Shan pushed open the door to find more rows of pallets along the walls of the building. Except half the occupants were not lying on them, but sat with legs folded underneath, murmuring prayers as they worked their
malas
, their prayer beads. The end of the long hall was covered with the chalked images of deities.

“Ani Ama organized it the first day we were here. She calls it our secret army,” Lokesh explained, then pulled Shan back out of the doorway.

As harsh as it was, the internment camp was indeed not one of the hard-labor prisons Shan was used to, with strict regimens enforced with merciless brutality. He recalled what Jigten had called the place. Not a prison, just a cage with no way out. They paused at a hand pump where Lokesh worked the handle as Shan held his head in the stream of cold water, then found a seat in a decrepit lean-to, out of sight of the guards.

Lokesh spoke of his final journey with the dead lama as if Jamyang had been alive, recounting how the stars had danced overhead as they had climbed at night, how butterflies had often alighted on Jamyang, how the ragyapa, the flesh cutters, had shown him with great reverence a meteorite that had landed, glowing red-hot, in their yard of bones the week before.

Shan explained what he had learned since leaving his friend, though he could not bring himself to repeat Chenmo’s strange tale of seeing Jamyang on the highway.

“Did they get away?” he asked, “the ones with the abbess?”

“I am sure of it.” Lokesh nodded. “If they had been caught they would be here. The abbess is safe. That meteorite, it was a sign the boneyard is still protected by the deities.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward Shan. “Ani Ama told me there is a little hut at the hermitage where there are nuns at all hours, taking turns, always at least two, saying the rites for the full cycle.”

The full cycle. Lokesh meant the full forty-nine days that comprised the mourning period of old Tibet. “For Jamyang and the abbess. It will help them find the next step that is destined for them.” Lokesh straightened, then cast a faraway look toward the sacred mountain. “Up and down,” he said solemnly.

Shan realized after a moment that his friend was referring to the levels of the next existence, the next spiritual stage for the dead. The fact that Jamyang had taken four, that he was a suicide, weighed heavily on Lokesh. The traditional Tibetans believed suicides and those who killed suffered terrible punishment, then were reincarnated far down the chain of existence. It could take them hundreds of lifetimes to reach the human form again.

“They’re going to find the American, Lokesh,” Shan said after a long silence. “It won’t go well for her when they do. No one outside knows she’s here. They don’t have to account for her.”

“I have been thinking about that, about how many of the people here have not even recognized her as an outsider. Her complexion is dark. She cut her hair.” There was an odd pleading in his eyes as Lokesh looked back at Shan. “What if this was meant to be her path, what if she were intended to become a nun in Tibet? How many times have I heard you say you were transformed when you came here. Maybe this is just the passage she must endure to be transformed.”