Jakli spun about.
"Kaju. I didn't know his name then, but I told her, maybe three months ago, about the Tibetan Director Ko was bringing for the zheli. She didn't know. I told her I heard Ko talking in a car one day, I said to her I guess they think you're leaving."
Three months ago, Shan remembered, was when Lau had begun explaining where she wanted her body taken. "What did Lau say?" Shan asked.
"She just smiled at first and patted my arm. Then she said yes I guess they do, and she sighed and said she never should have gone to Urumqi. She always talked with me, but that day she was just quiet until the end of the trip."
"Gone to Urumqi?" Shan asked. "What did she mean?"
"I never knew," Wangtu shrugged. "Some trip to the capital."
"What else did she say?" Jakli asked.
"When she left that day she said maybe she shouldn't bring me teas anymore, that later people would say we were friends because of it. She said we could still be friends in our hearts but that she wouldn't want me hurt because of it. I said I don't care what they say, and she said you have to care, because this is China." Wangtu looked back at the white horse with a pained expression. "After that she always seemed to be in a hurry, no time to talk. I didn't drive her much afterward. Haven't seen her for a month." He shifted his gaze toward the horizon with a thoughtful expression. "Where she died, who was there?"
"That's what we want to find out." Jakli said.
"No. I mean, who did she go see? It's important. Lau, she had only certain people she trusted. She would only stay where one was close. She moved from one to the other, like from one oasis to another. Where she went, you should ask them there."
Shan and Jakli exchanged a glance. Lau had died in the place in the desert which Jakli seemed unwilling to speak about, the place where Bajys had his nightmare vision of dismembered humans.
"The prosecutor," Jakli said. "The prosector doesn't know," she reminded him.
"All I know," Wangtu said with a forced grin, "is that she didn't know how to swim." He cast a hopeful glance toward Jakli. "I wouldn't tell all this to anyone. But I did to you, Jakli."
Jakli looked at him in obvious discomfort. "I am getting married, Wangtu," she announced quickly, then leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and stepped away toward another prisoner she seemed to have recognized.
Married. Shan gazed after Jakli, feeling foolish for not having understood before. The hushed, excited conversations at Red Stone camp. The dress being whisked away by the older women. Malik's secret gift for Jakli and someone else, whose name the boy was reluctant to speak. Nikki, the name Akzu had mentioned when parting from her at the garage. Other women would have joyously shared the news. But Jakli's marriage was wrapped in secrecy. Shan understood, for he too had grown up in a world where you said the least about the things that were most important to you, for fear that they would be taken away.
Wangtu stood, crestfallen, as he watched Jakli begin talking with a short plump Han man. "You have to keep her out," he said, then repeated the words more urgently, as if Shan might not have heard.
"Out?" Shan asked. Shan looked at her again. What an odd time to be getting married, when the clans were being disbanded, and children were being killed. But Shan had learned years ago how difficult it was to translate the language of another's heart.
"Out of Glory Camp. Out of prison. Some of the guards hate her because she talks back to them, because she resists. She's not made for a cage. Like the Mongol boy." His disappointment seemed to have turned to worry. His mouth opened again but no words came out. He looked to Shan and then to the ground. "I would have done her time for her if I could," he said quietly. "She belongs in the mountains, on a horse." Then he drifted away, as if he had forgotten Shan stood there.
"Comrade Hu," Jakli said as she brought the short Han toward Shan. "Chairman of the Educational Committee for the school in Yoktian."
Hu touched his thick-rimmed glasses and gave a shallow smile. "Former Chairman, I guess," he said.
"Not necessarily," Jakli said reassuringly. "It's just Prosecutor Xu's way, to intimidate witnesses."
"I told her," Hu said. "I witnessed nothing. Lau was not on our official staff. We had no official responsibility for her. Once she received a small stipend but that stopped years ago. We just gave her an office, let her know our schedules so she could coordinate. Let her use our drivers sometimes."
"So you spoke to Xu already?"
"This morning. She told me to think about it, after I said I knew nothing. Good jobs are hard to find in Yoktian, she reminded me. She looked at my file and reminded me that I have a family. I told her there were no secrets about Lau. She was an open book. Maybe too open. That's all it was, she was too blunt with the wrong person. Some of the herders have tempers, some still have one foot in the age of the khans, when there were blood feuds." He looked over the prison grounds. "I offered to instruct classes while I was here," he declared, as if he suspected Shan might be a political officer.
Shan's attention drifted away. Comrade Hu, he had quickly decided, was not the type that Lau would have confided in.
He sensed that Wangtu was right, that Lau was someone with great intuition about people, who moved from one she trusted to another she trusted. But what did she leave with them? Secrets. Secrets are what you give to those you trust. She had gone to the place in the desert, to the place called Karachuk, not to die but to share a secret.
He noticed another man, sitting in the shadows against the wall of the mess hall, facing the open yard of the camp but casting occasional glances toward Shan and Jakli. He was nearly bald and had so little flesh on his face that the contours of his skull were unmistakable.
His eyes made momentary contact with Shan's, and as they did so his eyelids seemed to droop and his fingertips touched the ground, as though the man had grown sleepy.
"A waste of time," Jakli declared as she followed Shan's gaze. "Go ahead," she said with a shrug, "but you'll make no sense out of what he says."
Shan cast her a puzzled glance as she continued to speak with Hu.
"The Xibo," she said in an aside to Shan. "The waterkeeper."
"What's his name?"
"I don't know. He's always just the waterkeeper. He just mutters nonsense and drools. He speaks only the tongue of the clans and the old Xibo words."
Confirming that Jakli remained occupied with Hu, he stepped toward the bald man.
The waterkeeper gave no acknowledgment when Shan squatted in front of him. He just shuffled sideways, as if Shan had blocked his view. Shan matched his movement, then sat on the ground. The two men said nothing. Shan stared at the waterkeeper. The man stared over Shan's shoulder as if not noticing him, sucking something, perhaps the shell of a nut, or a pebble. A thin line of drool hung from the corner of his mouth.
Shan had spent his childhood in Manchuria. He had known Xibos, and the man in front of him was no Xibo. Nor was he in his fifties, as Jakli had indicated. He was older, perhaps much older, though only his rheumy eyes and the rough yellow ridges on his fingernails showed it. The man looked down at the dirt in front of him and made a grunting noise, an old man's noise. But Shan believed none of it. Not the absent, drooping eyes, not the drool, not the muttering.
It was the fingers he had noticed first, while still standing by Jakli. The fingers weren't just drooping down, they were carefully aligned, with the left hand flat in the lap, the right draped on the right knee, palms inward, fingers aimed down, thumb slightly apart. It was a mudra, the Earth Touching mudra, invoking the land deity, calling it to witness. And between the fingers of the right hand was a small dried flower.
There was a connection Jakli had apparently overlooked. The waterkeeper was hired by the Agricultural Council. And Lau had served for years on the council.
Shan began arranging his own fingers carefully, in a fashion he had learned in Lhadrung, with his hands cupped, pressed together, the fingertips touching, the thumbs pressing against each other.
The waterkeeper's eyes drifted, passing over Shan again as if he were not there. The last of the bags for the kitchens was unloaded, and the men began to bunch up near the stairs, watching the loudspeakers as if expecting new instructions.
Shan did not move. He fixed his eyes on those of the waterkeeper.
Finally the man's eyes found Shan's hands. His head made a quick, trembling motion as if his mind itself were blinking. With one glance Shan understood. The man saw what Shan had made, a mudra, the mudra of the Treasure Flask, the sign of the sacred receptacle. He saw what it was, and he saw that Shan knew he had seen.
The hoods over the waterkeeper's eyes slid away. His eyes did not move in their sockets, but his head rose slowly until he met Shan's gaze.
"I have been to your cave, Rinpoche," Shan whispered in Tibetan. "I am going to help you. I am going to help the children."
The waterkeeper did not reply, but after a moment took Shan's hands and squeezed them slowly, but hard. "Even if you find the one, you can't take it back." The words came so suddenly, in Tibetan, and in such a low, whispered voice that Shan almost thought it was only in his head. But the man's moist eyes grew wider, and his mouth moved again. "You can only take it forward," he said hoarsely, and his eyes shifted toward the mountains, towards the Kunlun and Tibet.
The memory of Bajys's words flooded over him.
That was the one I loved
, he had said of Khitai, as if there were many Khitais.
That was the one I was to keep safe.
Bajys hadn't understood, or if he had understood, hadn't cared, that Khitai was still alive. What had broken Bajys, what had sent him fleeing, whimpering, raving, toward Lau was a broken trust. Someone had discovered a momentous secret, Bajys' secret, and because the secret was known, Bajys's world was ending. Now the teacher, the old lama who was the waterkeeper, was speaking in the same riddles. Maybe Bajys had not been speaking of a boy after all, but of an object.
You can't take it back. You can only take it forward.
Suddenly the truck engine roared to life. The old man rose, his eyes assuming their drowsy, half-wit glaze again. He stumbled over his own feet as he headed toward the mess hall. The prisoners at the door laughed at him.
An instant later the loudspeakers crackled to life again. The men gathered around the mess hall and straightened their tunics, then started moving into the throng of prisoners that began filling the yard. It was their turn to be blessed by the political priests.
Moments later Fat Mao eased the truck past the inner wire. But as they tried to leave Glory Camp they found the main gate secured with a chain and padlock, no guard in sight. They waited nervously for ten minutes, then Fat Mao inched their truck toward the administration building. A figure emerged, not a guard but a Chinese clerk in a white shirt frayed at the cuffs.
"You were told what to do," the man said in shrill voice. "The rest of the cargo is unloaded tomorrow."
"So we will be here tomorrow," Fat Mao said. "At dawn if you wish."
A sneer rose on the clerk's face and he unfolded a slip of a paper from his pocket. "We are authorized to receive one shipment a week," he squeaked. "You are authorized to be paid for one shipment a week. The full cargo was accepted by signature at the kitchen." He waved the paper near Fat Mao's face. "You think you'll come back tomorrow and be paid for two shipments? Not a chance."
"Don't be ridiculous. We only get paid for shipments we deliver."
"Exactly," the clerk said with a victorious wave of his hand. "And you propose to deliver only a half-loaded truck tomorrow." He raised his nose and seemed to point it at Fat Mao. "There are campaigns against corruption."
Shan watched the Uighur's jaw tighten as he tried to control his anger. "Then we will unload the bags on the dock. Tomorrow you can move them inside."
"Your payment is for delivery inside the warehouse. Cheating on labor is another form of corruption," the clerk snapped back.
"So open the warehouse."
"The warehouse is closed by order of Major Bao of Public Security. You have been permitted to use the repair bay tonight." He pointed to a tall structure beyond the office that was nothing more than a high roof supported by four posts, with a workbench at one end. "But I warn you," he added in his shrill voice, "we have a complete inventory of all tools."
"We are supposed to be back with our families tonight," Fat Mao protested. "Our people expect us in Yoktian."
"We all must make sacrifices. That is the essence of Glory Camp," the clerk said happily, as if grateful for the chance to offer political advice, then spun about and marched toward the office building.
Fat Mao stared venomously at the clerk, and then, with a glance toward Jakli, put the truck into gear and drove toward the repair bay. "Campaigns against corruption," he muttered. "How about a campaign against stupidity?"
