Prayer of the Dragon (31 page)

Jiling straightened in her chair. “I am merely a low-level official,” she declared.

Good, thought Shan. The ones who crumbled immediately were usually the least helpful.

“Drango village is on the official list,” she added.

“But what is its official population count?”

“Thirty,” she admitted, her voice cracking.

Shan had seen more than double that number of people in the village. So Chodron could collect taxes from everyone and pocket the difference. The village might appear on the official rolls but half its taxes never reached the government. No one would have complained. The villagers who realized would have considered it protection money, a fee for keeping the government away. An antitax.

Shan studied the woman, refilled her glass for her, began casually asking about her office, about her superiors, about where she and Chodron kept their bank accounts, whether she traveled with Chodron at Party expense. These were tedious queries that Shan could propound by rote, and which any experienced bureaucrat would expect to be included in such an interview.

“Where do you sell the gold?” he asked abruptly.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Shan gave an indifferent shrug. “If you won’t speak about it then you just give him the opportunity to do so first, to use the information for negotiation. It will be an interesting dilemma for the prosecutors, who to make their primary target. The attractive, well-educated Chinese bureaucrat versus the Tibetan farmer. Except the farmer is a revered Party member.”

Jiling no longer fidgeted with her identity card. She was squeezing it so hard it began to dig into her flesh, drawing a thin line of blood. She calmly stepped to the sink and washed her wound.

“Who are you if you are not with Major Ren?” she asked from the counter.

“Perhaps you should look outside.”

Jiling studied him uncertainly, then went to the front window. She pulled the drapery cord, opening the curtain only a few inches. When she finally focused on the brown sedan parked outside she pressed a hand against her heart.

Shan approached the window. Gao was leaning against the car smoking, though Shan had never seen him with a cigarette before. The woman from the factory office now sat in the driver’s seat, strangely transfixed, eyes forward, hands on the wheel.

“Some people said he was dying in his castle in the mountains.” Jiling spoke in a whisper, as if fearful Gao might hear. “Others said he went back to Beijing to live in a palace. They call him the chairman’s chief sorcerer.”

“When Chodron is here, who is he exactly?” Shan asked.

There was another car, a black utility vehicle, parked fifty feet behind Gao’s. “Do I need to invite him inside?” he continued when Jiling did not answer. Then his mouth went dry. Two men in gray uniforms got out of the utility vehicle and began walking toward Gao.

“Chodron has offices in the county Party administration,” Jiling told him. “He used to be termed the chief Party representative for the rural proletariat. Now they call for ethnic diversity in the Party leadership. The last title they gave him was secretary for indigenous agrarian workers.”

That explained how Chodron managed to come and go as he pleased, an official without portfolio, though if he spent too much time in town with his Chinese mistress he might jeopardize his standing.

Jiling had gone silent. She was looking at his feet. Shan had forgotten his tattered boots.

“Undercover work,” he asserted. He motioned her toward the table. She hesitated, glanced from Shan to the men outside.

“If I need to summon them I will,” Shan said. “But I assure you I will try not to involve you further. Write down what you have told me. When Dr. Gao comes to the door, hand him the statement.”

“Where are you going?”

“To interview the groundskeeper,” Shan ventured.

“He’s nobody, some old Tibetan.”

Shan pointed to the table. She looked at his boots, then at Gao and the knobs outside, then retreated to the table and began writing.

Shan quietly slipped through the rear door and scanned the yard. The groundskeeper was sleeping against a tree, his chin propped on his chest. Shan removed his lanyard, pushed it into the pile of plucked weeds near the man’s feet, and entered the shadows at the back of the yard. The small strip of forest behind the row of houses gave him cover until he reached the street, two hundred yards from Chodron’s house.

His eyes stayed on the town’s tallest building but his feet, as if by an instinct all their own, went in the other direction. In a small park consisting of a derelict playground and a grove of trees, he settled onto a bench made of cinder blocks and weathered planks. His ribs were aching from his beating at Little Moscow. He lowered his head into his hands. He had not felt such despair since the early days of his exile and imprisonment in the gulag. His life was spiraling out of control. The lives of everyone close to him were threatened by dark destinies—prison, a firing squad, cancer. Murderers who hacked off hands were loose on Sleeping Dragon Mountain and he could protect no one. He needed to rest. He needed to meditate, to expunge the despair from his mind, to expel the pain from his body. He needed to do what Gendun called taking himself out of himself.

As if from a great distance he watched three children play on a broken swing, hanging on the side chains, chinning up the support poles. Once he would have been warmed by such a sight. He had spent years learning from the old Tibetans how to savor the simple joys of life. Now, after ten days with Chodron, Gao, and the faceless killer, the sight of the children only brought sorrow.

He did not know how long he stared at the cracked dirt at his feet, or when exactly he looked up at the children again. They had stopped playing and were gazing at a patch of sunlight in the trees in which a man stood. The man was at least twenty years older than Shan, a Tibetan, wearing clothes that were patched and threadbare.

His legs and arms were in constant, though very slow, motion, his hands like the heads of two swans on long graceful necks. He was performing a combination of Tai Chi and Buddhist meditation exercises. Shan found himself walking toward the man. Loose threads hung from his frayed pants over his bare feet. His serene smile showed he was missing most of his teeth. His thin wispy hair was mostly gray. He was oblivious to Shan, oblivious to the children who watched. They shrank back, awe in their eyes, as the man began to jump in great arcs until one of his leaps placed him under the swingset. He grabbed the overhead pole and propelled himself upward. He kept his grip, working his legs to gain height, so that soon he swung in nearly a half circle, his face lit with joy.

Shan watched as if in a trance. Though he could not explain why, as the old man swung, his despair lifted. Finally, he turned his gaze toward the government tower and began walking to it. At the edge of the park he turned for a moment. The serene old Tibetan was still swinging.

When he reached the building he studied it, walking circuits around it, noting the unmarked Public Security vehicles behind it, the steps at the rear that descended to a heavy metal door, the small slits of windows just above ground level covered with thick wire. As he watched, the rear door opened and a man was carried out on a stretcher, his feet in chains. From behind a truck, Shan dared a glance at his contorted, swollen face. Too old for Yangke, not old enough for Hostene.

He ventured into the reception area, searching for video surveillance equipment. Seeing none, he went to the building elevator. Public Security had offices on the third floor. There was no listing for the basement.

Out front he noted three gray utility vehicles, bearing license plates for Lhasa. He circled the building. A dented, unwashed van pulled up in back of it. The driver, a plump, middle-aged man in a white shirt, opened the back doors and began lifting out shiny metal buckets and plastic containers. The instant Shan smelled the steamed rice he emerged from the shadows. Then he extended one of the remaining gold nuggets to the deliveryman.

He carried two buckets of steamed rice, walking one step behind the deliveryman. The guard inside the door, more interested in the food than its porters, waved them toward a sterile-looking room at the end of a row of cells. At a table in its center sat another guard, working on documents. Shan set a small container of soup onto the table too close to the edge. Some of its contents spilled onto the papers.

“
Ta me de!
” the guard yelled, then launched himself toward a shelf on the rear wall that held bedding and towels. The door guard ran over to gather up the papers. The nervous deliveryman, backing up, upended a bucket of rice Shan had set on the floor behind him.

As the cursing guards bent over this new mess, the deliveryman shouted for Shan to bring rags from the van. Instead, Shan darted down the dimly lit row of cells. A teenage boy sat in the first, his arm in a sling. In the next cell was a Chinese girl, lying on the cement floor, a vacant drug-induced grin on her face. An overweight man in a sweatsuit slept in the next. The remaining cells were empty, except for the last, its door open, where another guard lay on a bunk, snoring. Then Shan saw the metal door at the end of the cell block and realized his mistake. As new prisoners, Yangke and Hostene would still be in the interrogation rooms. He opened the door and shut it behind him, leaning against it for a moment, gathering himself, bracing for the inevitable scents of urine, antiseptics, singed hair, and vomit.

Six more metal doors awaited him, three on each side of the corridor, each with small squares of wire-strengthened glass at eye level. The first two were open and empty. Shan flicked on the lights in the second, revealing a metal table, three metal chairs, and a large metal bucket. On the table were a pair of needle-nosed pliers, dental probes, a ball-peen hammer, and leather straps used for binding prisoners to chairs. In the air was a new odor, the faintest scent of cloves. The knot in his stomach tightened. It was an old trick from the gulag, one he had nearly forgotten. Pull out a tooth and offer oil of cloves to deaden the pain. Then pull out another and withhold the oil.

The next room was locked but lit, its sole occupant a man sitting on the floor in the shadows of the far corner, beating his head against the cement wall.

He found his friends in the last room. The door was open. Yangke stood behind Hostene, who sat at a table opposite a young uniformed knob officer. There were paper and pencils on the table on which were written half a dozen simple words in the Roman alphabet. Hostene was teaching the man English. As Shan eased the door shut, Yangke awkwardly gestured toward a table bearing two large thermoses and mugs with domed porcelain caps. “There’s tea.”

His friends were unharmed. A dozen questions sprang to Shan’s tongue but he choked them down, uncertain of the role he was to act in their little play. Strangely, he was more certain of how to address the knob officer. “Are you with the Lhasa team?” he asked.

The officer turned the papers over, then stood and retrieved his uniform hat. “Major Ren? Of course not. Those red-banner men are . . . He only comes when . . .” The young officer could not finish his thought.

“We have to go,” Shan ventured.

“I haven’t received instructions,” the officer replied. Shan studied him. He had a careful, educated air about him. He relied on instructions, not orders. On his collar was a small brass star in a circle, an emblem unfamiliar to Shan.

Another knob entered the cell, glaring at the younger officer, gesturing to someone in the corridor. A man in manacles, wearing a prisoner’s hood, appeared, followed by an officer in his forties, who gave the prisoner an unnecessary shove. Without thinking Shan went to Hostene’s side.

This officer had a cold, sleek countenance, his hair oiled and combed back, his thin, pockmarked face like a hatchet. Around his arm was a band of red and black. One side of his mouth curled upward as he examined first Yangke, then Hostene, and finally Shan.

“Where is he?” the officer snarled.

“Not—not here, Major,” the younger officer stammered.

The notorious Ren finally had a face.

Blood leaked from the bottom of the prisoner’s hood. The knob jerked the hood off. Hostene’s head shot up. Yangke gasped. It was Hubei.

“You fool!” the major snapped at the young officer. “Don’t you have sense enough to keep prisoners separate? Each man to his own interrogation room—now! No food or drink until I—” His words faded as he saw Hostene gaze over his shoulder.

“Surely,” came a refined voice, “you would not deny a meal to my colleagues?” Gao glided into the room, an expression of studied ease on his face. Behind him came one of the guards, carrying a tray of bowls heaped with rice, which he set on the table before scurrying away.

“This is not Beijing,” the major growled. “Nor one of your sacred research reservations. Here we are governed by the rules of Public Security.”

Gao calmly went to the tea table and then extended a steaming cup to Shan. “It has been a long day for us, Major. There have been unforeseen logistical difficulties requiring us to stop over in Tashtul and pursue different tasks. But now”—he indicated Hostene and Yangke with a sweep of his free hand—“now with the help of Public Security we have been reunited.”

Ren’s eyes narrowed. “Public Security?” he growled. “You mean with the help of these sniveling, ignorant babysitters?”