The Skull Mantra (14 page)

Yeshe faced the corridor. There was something new on his face. Was it embarrassment, Shan wondered, or even fear? “Impossible,” he said nervously. “It is a violation.”

“Of his vows?”

“Of everyone's.” Yeshe spoke in a whisper.

Suddenly Shan understood. “You mean yours.” It was the first time Shan had heard Yeshe acknowledge the religious obligations he learned as a youth.

Shan placed his hand on Sungpo's leg. “Do you hear me? You are charged with murder. You will be sent to a tribunal in ten days. You must talk with me.”

Suddenly Yeshe was back at his side, pulling him away. “You don't understand. It is his vow.”

Shan thought he had been prepared for anything. “Because of his arrest? As a protest?”

“Of course not. It has nothing to do with that. Look at his file. He would not have been taken from the gompa itself.”

“No,” Shan confirmed from his memory of the report. “It was a small hut a mile above the gompa.”

“A
tsam khan.
A special sort of shelter. Two rooms. For Sungpo and an attendant. They seized him out of his
tsam khan.
I don't know how far he is.”

“How far?”

“Into his cycle. Saskya gompa is orthodox. They would follow the old rules. Three, three, three is the usual cycle.”

Shan let himself be pulled to the cell door. “Three?”

“The canonic cycle. Complete silence for three years, three months, three days.”

“He speaks to no one?”

Yeshe shrugged. “The gompa would have its own protocol.
Sometimes it is arranged that the abbot, or another esteemed lama, may communicate with a
tsampsa.”

Sungpo was looking beyond the wall again. Shan was not sure the accused murderer had even seen them.

While the southern claws of the Dragon had not yet been tamed, their northern counterparts had been contained by a rough gravel road along their perimeter. Sergeant Feng drove along it fretfully, cursing the rocks that occasionally blocked the road, pausing to puzzle over the map despite the fact that before embarking he had laid out their route in red ink as if he were conducting a military convoy. At first he had ordered Yeshe to sit beside him with the map, with Shan at the door, then after ten miles, stopped and ordered them out. He considered the seats as though they offered many confusing alternatives, then brightened. With a victorious grunt he moved his holster to his left hip and ordered Shan into the middle.

Shan ravenously consumed the map. The few times he had left the valley during the past three years had been in closed prison transports, exposing him to parts of the neighboring geography in a disjointed fashion, as if they were pieces of an unexplained puzzle. Quickly he tied the pieces together, finding the worksite on the South Claw where Jao had been killed, then the cave where his head had been deposited. Finally he traced their route through the mountains, circuiting one ridge until they nearly intersected the deep gorge that separated the North and South Claws, then looping west to circuit another ridge before dumping onto a small, high plateau labeled by hand in black ink.
Mei guo ren,
was all it said. Americans.

As Feng eased the truck to a stop to clear more rocks, Shan discovered they were beside the central gorge, known by the Tibetans as the Dragon's Throat. Centuries earlier a rock slide had tumbled into the Throat from this spot, leaving a small gap that dipped down toward the gorge, exposing an open view of the South Claw. There was a small annotation
on the map—three dots arranged in a triangle. Ruins. It was an all-encompassing term. It could mean a cemetery, a gompa, a shrine, a college. A path rose up the short slope of the rockfall and disappeared toward the chasm. Shan began to help Feng with the rocks, then paused and jogged up the path.

The ruin was a bridge, one of the spectacular rope suspension bridges that been constructed in a prior century by monk engineers who laid out civil works according to pilgrimage paths. It was battered but not destroyed. The path that led to the bridge, and away from it on the far side, appeared to be well traveled. Nearly a mile away Shan spotted a small patch of red, conspicuous in the dried heather of the steep slope.

“Should be there in thirty minutes,” Feng said as Shan returned to the truck. He started the engine, then barked in protest as Shan grabbed a pair of binoculars from the back seat and moved back up the path.

He was still focusing on the red patch when Yeshe spoke at his shoulder. “A pilgrim.”

Instantly Shan saw that Yeshe was correct. Although the distance was too great, he fancied that he heard the clump of wooden hand and knee blocks on the ground as the man kneeled, prostrated himself, and touched his forehead to the ground. Every devout Buddhist tried to make a pilgrimage to each of the five sacred mountains in his or her lifetime. When they traveled by the 404th, the prisoners would break discipline to call out a quick word of encouragement or snippet of prayer. Sometimes a man or a woman would take a year off just for such a pilgrimage. By bus one could travel from Lhasa to the most sacred peak, Mt. Kailas, in twelve hours. For the prostrating pilgrim it could take four months.

Sergeant Feng appeared. “The Americans! We are supposed to go to the Americans.”

“I am going across to the crest of the ridge on the other side,” Shan said.

Feng put his hand to his forehead as though suddenly in great pain. “You can't cross over,” he growled. He grabbed the map, then brightened. “Look for yourself,” he said with a triumphant grin. “It doesn't exist.” Years earlier Beijing
had condemned all the old suspension bridges. Most, because they eased the movement of resistance fighters, had been bombed by the People's Air Force.

“Fine,” Shan said. “I am going to walk across this imaginary bridge. You stay here and imagine I am right beside you.”

Feng's round face clouded. “The colonel didn't say anything about this,” he muttered.

“And your duty is to assist me in the investigation.”

“My duty is to guard a prisoner.”

“Then let's return. We will ask Colonel Tan to clarify his orders. Surely the colonel would forgive a soldier who was confused by his orders.”

Sergeant Feng looked to the truck in confusion. But Yeshe's expression was one of impatience. He took a step toward the vehicle, as though anxious to move on. “I know the colonel,” the sergeant said uncertainly. “We served together a long time, before Tibet. He arranged my transfer when I asked to come to his district.”

“Hear me, Sergeant. This is not a military exercise. This is an investigation. Investigators discover and react. I have discovered this bridge. Now I will react. From the crest of that ridge I think I will see the 404th worksite. I need to know if it is possible for someone to have climbed down, if there is a route other than the road.” Climbed down, Shan thought, and climbed back up, carrying a human head. From where they stood the skull shrine was perhaps an hour's walk, and only a few minutes' drive.

Feng sighed. He made a show of checking the ammunition in his pistol, tightened his belt, and started toward the bridge. Yeshe moved even more reluctantly than Feng.

“You can never help him, you know,” Yeshe said to Shan's back.

Shan turned. “Help him?”

“Sungpo. I know what you think. That you must help him.”

“If he is guilty let the evidence show it. If he is innocent, doesn't he deserve our help?”

“You don't care because you don't mind being hurt. All you can do is get the rest of us hurt. You know you can't
save someone who's already formally accused.”

“Who are you trying to be? A little bird looking for a chance to sing to the Bureau? Is that what you live for?”

Yeshe stared at him resentfully. “I am trying to survive,” he said stiffly. “Like anyone else.”

“Then it's all been a waste. Your education. Your gompa training. Your detention.”

“I have a job. I am going to get permits. I am going to the city. There's a place for everyone in the socialist order,” he said with a hollow tone.

“There's always a place for people like you. China is filled with them,” Shan snapped and pulled away.

Feng was already at the bridge, trying not to show his fear. “It's not—we can't—” He didn't finish the sentence. He was staring at the frayed ropes that held the span, the missing foot-boards, the swaying of the flimsy structure in the wind.

There was a cairn of rocks nearly six feet high at the foot of the bridge. “An offering,” Shan suggested. “Travelers make an offering first.” He plucked a stone from the slope, placed it on the cairn, and stepped onto the bridge. Feng looked toward the road as though to confirm there were no witnesses, then hastily found his own stone and placed it on the cairn.

The boards creaked. The rope groaned. The wind blasted down through the funnel of the Throat. Three hundred feet below, a trickle of water flowed through jagged rocks. Shan had to will his feet forward with each step, force his hands to relinquish their white-knuckle grip on the guide ropes to find their next purchase.

He stopped at the center, surprised to find a clear view of the new highway bridge, Tan's proud achievement, where the Throat emptied into the valley. The wind tore at his clothes and pushed at the bridge, giving it an unsettling rocking motion. He looked back. Feng was shouting, his words lost in the wind. He was gesturing for Shan to continue, not trusting the bridge with the weight of two men. Yeshe stood where Shan had left him, staring into the ravine.

On the other side of the gorge they walked up the steep slope for twenty minutes, with Shan in the lead as Sergeant
Feng, older and much heavier, struggled to keep up. Finally the sergeant called out. When Shan looked back the pistol was out. “If you run, I'll come for you,” Feng wheezed. “Everyone will come for you.” He pointed the pistol at Shan but then quickly withdrew it with a startled look, as if the movement scared him. “They will bring your tattoo back,” he said between gasps. “That's all they need. The tattoo.” He seemed paralyzed with indecision. He gestured with the pistol. “Come here.”

Shan moved slowly to his side, bracing himself.

Feng pulled the binoculars from Shan's neck and began moving back down the slope.

Shan surveyed the long slope of the ridge to the south. The patch of red that was the pilgrim was nearly out of sight. Above him, over the ridge, would be the 404th. He kept climbing. As he reached the top of the ridge Shan felt a surprising exhilaration, a feeling so unfamiliar he sat on a rock to consider it. It wasn't just satisfaction from his discovery of another route to the worksite, which was in plain view below. It wasn't just the awesome top-of-the-world view that stretched so far he could glimpse the shimmering white cap of Chomolungma, highest mountain of the Himalayas, more than a hundred miles away. It was the clarity.

For a moment it seemed he had not only reached the top, but entered a new dimension. The sky wasn't just clear, it was like a lens, making everything seem larger and more detailed than before. The clutter in his mind seemed to have been stripped away by the wind. His hand reached back and touched the spot where the lock of hair had been clipped. Choje would have said he was storming the gates of Buddhahood.

And then he realized: It was all because of the mountain. Jao could have been killed anywhere, certainly anywhere on the remote highway to the airport. He had been lured to the South Claw because someone wanted
a jungpo
to protect the mountain. Someone wanted to stop the road. Many had motives to kill Jao. But who had a motive to save the mountain? Or to stop the immigrants who would colonize the valley beyond? Jao had been with someone he knew and trusted. Those he knew and trusted would be interested in building,
not blocking roads. The murder had an air of violent passion, yet obviously the killer had painstakingly planned his act. It was as if there were two crimes, two motives, two killers.

He unconsciously ran his fingers over his calluses. They were already getting soft, after just a few days. The hard shell of the prisoner was wearing away, which scared him, for he would need an even thicker one when he returned. His eyes wandered back to the 404th. The prisoners were on the slope. And below them, deployed at the bridgehead, was something new. The grim gray hulks of two tanks and the troop carriers used by the knobs. The prisoners were not working. They were waiting. The knobs were waiting. Rinpoche was waiting. Sungpo was waiting. And now he was waiting. All because of the mountain.

But he couldn't wait. If he did nothing but wait, Tan would devour Sungpo. And the knobs would devour the 404th.

He followed the crest back to its abrupt dropoff into the Dragon's Throat. But the dropoff wasn't totally vertical. A steep narrow path, a goat path, led down in a series of switchbacks to a jumble of rock slabs a hundred yards below. Slowly, risking a fall to his death with any misstep, Shan moved down the path to the rocks. They had sheared off the mountain and collected on a small ledge, creating a barrier from the wind.

He climbed out onto a large flat slab and found himself looking directly at the new Dragon's Throat Bridge, close enough to hear the rumble of the diesel engines that had been kept running in the tanks, and even snippets of conversation from the guards on the slope.

Fearful of being seen, he began to push back when he suddenly noticed chalk markings on the slab. It was Tibetan script and Buddhist symbols, but unlike any he had ever seen. He copied them into his pad and stepped between two slabs which had fallen together in an inverted V to create a shelter. He froze. In the back of the enclosure a circular picture had been painted on the stone, an intricate mandala which had required many hours of work. In front of it was a row of small ceramic pots such as those used for butter lamps. They were all broken. But they had not been broken
casually. They had been arranged in a row and broken where they stood, as if in a ritual.