The Skull Mantra (39 page)

“Have you ever treated any of them?”

“Healthy as yaks, every one.”

“Not even for a dogbite?”

“Dogbite?”

“Never mind.” Shan had not forgotten that the secret charms being bought by the
ragyapa
had included charms against dogbite. There was no logic to it, but something about it continued to gnaw away at him. Someone wanted to be forgiven by Tamdin but protected from dogs.

“Did Jao ever tell you he expected to be moving away? A reassignment?”

“He dropped hints. About how good it would be, back in the real China.”

“His words or yours?”

She flushed again. “He talked about going back. Everyone does. He said he would buy a color television when he got home. Said in Beijing they get stations from Hong Kong now. I guess he finally made it,” she added, as an afterthought.

“He made it?”

“To Beijing. Miss Lihua sent a fax from Hong Kong. Requesting his body and effects be sent back.”

Shan stared in disbelief. “Impossible. Not until the investigation is over.”

Sung turned with a victorious glare. “A Public Security truck came this morning. Took it all. Had a coffin ready. Left on a military flight out of Gonggar.”

“Obstruction of judicial process is a serious charge.”

“Not when Public Security requests it. I asked for it in writing.”

“Didn't it strike you as odd? Didn't you remember that
this investigation is under the direct authority of Colonel Tan?”

Sung looked at him with alarm. “Prosecutor Li forwarded the order,” she explained in a worried tone.

“Prosecutor? There is no new prosecutor. Not yet.”

“What was I supposed to do? Wire the chairman's office for confirmation?”

“Who signed it?”

“A major in the Bureau.”

Shan wrung his hands in frustration. “Doesn't this major have a name? Doesn't anyone ever ask him why?”

“Comrade, the one thing you never do with Public Security is ask questions.”

Shan took a step toward the door and turned. “I need to borrow a phone,” he said. “Long distance lines.”

She asked no questions, but escorted him to an empty office in the rear of the building. As she left, a figure appeared at the door. Yeshe's anguish was still evident but there was a glint of determination in his eyes.

“When they sent me back from university,” he announced as he stepped into the room, “I knew who put the Dalai Lama's photo on the wall. It wasn't even a Tibetan, it was a Chinese friend of mine who did it. For a joke, a prank.” He dropped into a chair. “They sent me back to labor camp because I was supposed to have been capable of it. But I wasn't. Never would I have had the courage.”

Shan put his hand on Yeshe's shoulder. “It is a mistake to think of courage as something you show to others. True courage is only something you show to yourself.”

“You have to know who you are to be able to recognize that kind of courage,” Yeshe said into his hands.

“I think you know.”

“I don't.”

“I think the man who stood up to the major and saved Balti's life knew who he was.”

“Now, back here, it feels like I was just performing. I don't know if it was me.”

“Performing for whom?”

“I don't know.” Yeshe looked up and met Shan's eyes. “Maybe for you,” he said quietly.

Shan shut his eyes. Strangely, the words made him think of his son, the son who was so remote that he was never an image in Shan's mind, only a concept. The son who probably assumed Shan was dead. The son who would always despise him, dead or alive, as a failure. The son who would never utter such words to him.

“No,” he said, returning Yeshe's stare. Not me, he wanted to say. There is no room on my back for another burden. “You did it because you want to find the truth. You did it because you want to become a Tibetan again.”

Yeshe's eyes did not flicker. He gave no sign of having heard Shan's words.

Shan transcribed the numbers from Jao's secret file. “If these are phone numbers I need to know where,” he said and extended the slip.

Yeshe sighed, and studied the paper. “We could do this at the 404th. Or the barracks.”

“No. We couldn't,” Shan said curtly. The Bureau would not be listening to the lines from some forgotten office of a forgotten clinic. “As far as the operator knows, you're just a clerk in the clinic. Trying to track someone due to a sudden death. Try Lhasa. Try Shigatse, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou. New York. Just find out.” He pulled out the American business card found with Jao's body. “Then find out about this.”

As Yeshe raised the receiver Shan left the room and moved to a window in the corridor. He could see Sergeant Feng in the truck outside, sleeping. He turned. The Tibetan orderly was nearby again, at an open door now, watching Shan as he mopped. Another orderly appeared at the opposite end of the corridor, pushing a wheelchair. The first one stopped and caught Shan's eye, then motioned urgently toward the open door. As Shan moved hesitantly toward him, he heard a metallic rattle behind him. The second orderly was approaching at a trot.

“Inside,” the first orderly instructed.

It was a darkened closet. In the dim light he saw a broom and cleaning supplies. An arm suddenly wrapped around Shan's chest and a cloth stinking of a strong chemical was clamped over his mouth. Something hard struck him behind
the knees. The wheelchair. The last thing he remembered was the sound of bells.

 

He woke on the floor of a cavern, a bitter taste in his mouth. Chloroform. The cavern was crammed with small gold and bronze statues of Buddha and hundreds of manuscripts stacked on shelves. By the dim light of butter lamps he saw two figures with hair cropped to the scalp. One of them stooped and began wiping Shan's face with a damp cloth. It was one of the orderlies. On his wrist hung a rosary with tiny bells tied to it. A match flared. The cave brightened as he straightened and the other one uncovered a kerosene lantern.

There was a low rumble, as of thunder. In the rising light Shan saw a door in a wooden frame. It wasn't a cave. It was a room carved out of the living rock, and the thunder was the sound of traffic passing overhead.

“Why are you so concerned about the costume of Tamdin?” the figure with the lantern asked abruptly. It was the illegal monk from the marketplace, the
purba
with the scarred face. “You asked Director Wen of the Religious Affairs Bureau about the costumes in the museum.”

“Because the murderer wanted to be seen as Tamdin,” Shan said, rubbing away a pain in his temple. “Maybe he felt he was carrying out the wishes of Tamdin.”

The man frowned. “And you think that someone has the costume?”

“I know someone has it.”

“Or did someone plant artifacts to make you think that?”

Shan weighed the possibility. “No, he has been seen. Someone wearing the costume was seen by Prosecutor Jao's driver. He wasn't lying. And not just at Jao's murder. At some of the other murders, too. Maybe all of them.”

The
purba
held the light near Shan's face. “Are you saying there has been only one murderer all along?”

“Two, I think, but acting together.”

“But showing that one of them was dressed in a religious costume will just make them think it was Buddhists.”

“Unless we prove otherwise.”

The
purba
gave an incredulous grunt. “Any minute the
knobs could open fire on the 404th, and you spend your time on demons.”

“If you know of a better way to save them, please tell me.”

“If it continues, Lhadrung will be lost. It will become a militarized zone.”

Shan's mouth went dry. “What are you going to do?”

“Maybe,” the
purba
suggested, “we give them the fifth one.”

“The fifth one?”

“The last of the Lhadrung Five. Put him in prison again. Maybe then their conspiracy has to be over. There will be no one else to blame.”

It was a very Tibetan solution. Shan saw something new in
the purba
's eyes. Sadness. “Just like that,” Shan said, “the last of the Five asks to go to prison.”

“I've been thinking. He could go to the mountain and conduct Bardo rites, get rid of the
jungpo.
The 404th could stop its strike and return to work.”

“Public Security would be furious,” Shan acknowledged. “Whoever conducted the rites would be sentenced to the 404th.”

“Exactly.” The
purba
shrugged. “There are other solutions. The people are angry.”

The words frightened Shan. “Choje, at the 404th, said once that those who try too hard to commit perfect goodness are in the greatest danger of creating perfect badness.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“It means that much evil can be done in the name of virtue. Because to many virtue is a relative thing.”

The
purba
looked into the flame of the lantern. “I don't believe virtue is a relative thing.”

“No. I don't suppose you do.”

The man sighed. “I didn't say we would use violence. I said the people are angry.” He picked up one of the small bronze Buddhas and pressed his hands around it. “The night the prosecutor died,” he announced, “a messenger came to the restaurant where he ate. A young man. Well-dressed. Chinese. Wearing a hat. He had a piece of paper for Jao. One of the waiters spoke to the prosecutor, who immediately
rose and spoke with this man. And the man gave something to Jao. A flower. An old red flower, all dried up. Jao became very excited. He took the paper and flower, then gave money to the man. The man left. The prosecutor talked with his driver, then returned to dinner with the American.”

“How do you know this?”

“You said you needed to know about what Prosecutor Jao did that night. Workers in the restaurant remembered.”

Shan recalled the Tibetan staff at the restaurant, cowering in the corner, afraid of him. “I must know who sent the message.”

“We do not know. But there was something about the messenger's eyes. One of them wasn't straight. One of the waiters recognized the man, he was a witness at the murder trial of the monk Dilgo.”

“Dilgo of the Lhadrung Five?”

The scar-faced man nodded.

“Would he recognize him again?”

“Certainly. But perhaps we could just give you his name.”

Shan's head jerked up. “You know his name?”

“As soon as I heard the description I knew. I was at the trial. It was a man named Meng Lau. A soldier.”

“The same man who now claims to have seen Sungpo,” Shan gasped. He stood excitedly, as if to go. The
purba
moved back to reveal a new figure in the shadows, who stepped in front of him to block his exit. “Not yet, please,” the figure said. It was a woman. A nun.

“You don't understand. If I am not back—”

The nun just smiled, then took his hand and led him down a short corridor to a second chamber. It must have been a gompa, Shan realized, the subterranean shrine of an ancient, forgotten gompa. It made sense. Once every Tibetan town had been built around a central gompa. The second room was brightly lit with four lanterns hanging from beams.

A small man was bent over a rough-hewn table, writing in a large book. He looked up, removed a pair of frail wire-rimmed glasses, and blinked several times. “My friend!” he squealed with delight, leaping off his stool to embrace Shan.

“Lokesh? Is it you?” Shan's heart leapt as he held the man at arm's length and studied him.

“My spirit soared when they said you might come,” the old man said with a huge smile.

Shan had never seen Lokesh in anything but prison garb. He gazed at him with a flood of emotion. It was like finding a long-lost uncle. “You've put on weight.”

The old man laughed and embraced Shan again.
“Tsampa,”
he said. “All the
tsampa
I want.” Shan saw a familiar tin mug on the table, half-filled with roasted barley. It was one of the mugs used at the 404th. Old habits died hard.

“But your wife. I thought you went to Shigatse with her.”

The old man smiled. “I did. Funny thing, two days after I got home, my wife's time came.”

Shan stared at him in disbelief. “I am—” I am what, he considered. Heartbroken? Furious? Paralyzed by the helplessness of it all? “I am sorry,” he said.

Lokesh shrugged. “A priest told me that when a soul gets ripe, it will just pop off the tree like an apple. I was able to be with her at her time. Thanks to you.” He put his arms around Shan again, stepped back and pulled a small ornamental box from around his neck. It was an old
gau,
the container for Lokesh's charms. He placed its strap over Shan's head.

“I can't.”

Lokesh put his finger to his lips. “Of course you can.” He looked at the nun. “There is no time to argue.”

The nun was looking back into the shadows, where they had left the scar-faced
purba.
Her eyes were wet when she turned to Shan. “You have to help, you have to stop him.”

Shan was confused. “He said he would not commit violence.”

The nun bit her lip. “Only on himself.”

“Himself?”

“He wants to go to the mountain, to do the prohibited rites and turn himself over to the knobs.” Her hand clamped around his arm as he stared back into the shadows of the underground labyrinth, comprehending at last. The scar-faced
purba
was the fifth, the last of the Lhadrung Five, and the next to be accused of murder if the conspiracy continued.

Lokesh gently pulled the nun's hand away and moved
Shan toward the table. “The 404th is troubled again. We need your wisdom once more, Xiao Shan.”

Shan followed Lokesh's gaze to the book on the table. It had the dimensions of an oversized dictionary, and was bound with wood and cloth. It was a manuscript, with entries in several hands, even several languages. Tibetan mostly, but also Mandarin, English, and French.