"But the rivers aren't navigable," Shan said in a puzzled tone.
"In the missile region they still use laborers to dig out mountains. Prisoners— Kazakh, Tibetan, and Uighurs, mostly. There's buses that take them, shuttle them in and out twice a month. Big project at the end of the road, past the main base at Rutog, in Tibet."
Shan knew about Rutog. About one hundred twenty miles from Xinjiang. Close to India. A nuclear zone, a missile command center.
"There's a village called Ramchang, on a lake about twenty miles long. The border with India, the real border, cuts right through the lake."
"Then the army must have surveillance."
"Sure. Electronic, it's so important. You know, in case the Indians launch a battleship at them. But we know a man there, a Tibetan hunter who was allowed to stay on the border because his daughter was in a special Party school in Lhasa."
"A hostage."
"Right. Except Lhasa forgot to tell the army that his daughter died in a traffic accident a few months ago. He's leaving, and he needs some money."
"Even if he takes you over the lake the army could detect—"
"He has stealth boats," Marco said with a hint of amusement. "Coracles, made of willow branches and yak skin. They can't be detected on radar. It works."
"You mean," Shan said, "that the purbas use them."
"A boy named Mao went too, with some scientific specimens. They have their own boats. We have the Panda boats."
"Panda boats?"
"That's what he charges. Four people in a boat. One gold Panda per boat."
Shan's hand clenched the stone wall in front of him. "Auntie Lau," he whispered.
"What's that?"
"Lau was going."
"It was for Nikki and Jakli. I arranged it. Part of my gift, for their new life."
"But Nikki and Jakli are going to America."
Marco sighed. "They weren't at first. But then they met the Americans. That Warp, she became like another aunt to Jakli. Warp was going out, with their son, back to start writing her book, to get him back in American schools. The Maos were working on it. Then Jakli spoke to Warp. Warp spoke to some Maos. Some Maos spoke to me. Before long they're getting a Panda boat too. Then Warp and Deacon, they offer for Nikki and Jakli to live with them. Nikki, he wants to go to Alaska, to build a cabin so I can come someday. But Warp says first come to their university, she will get them money to help with the translation and explain the research. The Maos want it too, now— they say Jakli can give speeches in America about what Beijing does in Xinjiang."
Shan told Marco about the gold Panda hidden in Lau's puzzle box. "Money for a boat," he said. "For Lau, to leave. Lau and someone else. Maybe Bajys and Khitai."
Shan looked at Marco, who stared with a frown at the moon. "What was it you said? I never stop? Like you never stop trying to hide things. She came to you at Karachuk, didn't she? She was frightened. She knew about Jakli leaving. And that night she asked to go out at the same time, because suddenly she knew she was in danger. But the killer had followed her there."
Marco made no reply. He seemed to be searching the moon for something to say.
Shan pulled the bronze medallion from his pocket. "This was with the gold piece. Half of a pair. I got it before Bao did." The light was too poor to show its details, so he pressed it into Marco's hand.
"God's breath," the Eluosi muttered, and sighed heavily. "No good, so many people talking about secrets. It's the ticket. That old Tibetan with the boats, he doesn't know anyone's face but mine. And I'm staying. He'll have the matching medallion from each set. They're unique, not available outside museums. Until Deacon found them at Sand Mountain. So the Tibetan is given the match to each pair, delivered to him by the Maos. Show the medallion, pay the Panda. No chance for him to be tricked."
The ticket. Lau had a ticket for freedom, for a new life. She had kept it in her office, before riding to Karachuk to be killed. "Where was Lau going? To America?"
"I don't know. I didn't want to know. She was a Tibetan nun, you said. Maybe Dharmsala. From the far end of the lake it's only two hundred miles away." Dharmsala, on the southern slope of the Himalayas, was the home of the Dalai Lama, the capital of free Tibet.
Shan found Lokesh in the entry chamber, sitting on the floor below the samovar, their blankets unrolled on the carpet. The old Tibetan was chanting his rosary, staring at a small mound of felt on the floor in front of him. Shan watched a moment, confused, then lowered himself beside his friend. He sat silently and soon realized that Lokesh was not chanting a mantra anymore, but a pilgrim's prayer, an invocation for the protective deities to watch over a pilgrim. Slowly, giving time for Lokesh to object, he raised the felt. Two blocks of wood lay underneath, two pieces of carved wood with cracked, dried leather straps fastened loosely over the top of each. With a flood of realization Shan recognized them.
"You brought them out," he whispered in surprise. "They're his."
"Yes," Lokesh said in a bright voice. "I am going to take them to Mt. Kailas. I am going to complete his pilgrimage around the sacred mountain, using his blocks, then leave the blocks as he promised."
Shan grinned at Lokesh's joke, then saw the strange excitement in Lokesh's eyes. "You can't," he protested as he realized it was no joke. "Even for a young man it would be difficult. Winter is coming. To circle the mountain on your hands and knees could take many days in the snow and wind." Perhaps weeks, he thought. Pilgrims sometimes took several days to complete the thirty mile circuit on their feet.
"I promised him," Lokesh replied in a serene voice.
Shan began to speak, but the protest died in his throat. Lokesh had made a promise to the dead pilgrim, to the thousand-year-old mummy. But as his hand closed around his gau and its feather he realized that somehow he had made a promise to the dead man too, to carry on the virtue. He fell silent and listened as Lokesh continued his prayer.
After a few minutes he moved to the kitchen table, and in front of two candles spread the meager possessions of Khitai. The strings of beads. The small length of chain. The pen case. The battered silver cup. He held each in his hands. Maybe it hadn't begun with Lau or the American boy. Maybe it had begun with Khitai. Lokesh and Gendun had come to find the Jade Basket, which had been entrusted to Khitai. Why? Because he was a bright, resourceful, Kazakh orphan, the last place an enemy would look? Or was the boy special for another reason?
He idly picked up the chain and saw that each of the small links had a tiny lotus blossom worked into the metal. Perhaps it was simply a random piece of treasure collected by a curious boy. Or it could be an artifact, he realized, like the twelve linked dorje chains sometimes depicted in the hands of Tibet's protective deities. He counted the links. Twelve.
He lifted the beads in his hand. Wood and plastic and one jade bead. Why was the string so long at the end of each set? What was the significance of several yellow beads among the brown ones? Why was one strand composed of ten smaller beads tied tightly together? He tied one strand to another and looked at it, trying to find a logic in the sequence of the colors or varying shapes of the beads. Then, more quickly, he tied the pieces together to make a loop, then fastened the smaller string of ten beads onto the string, so it hung down. With a tinge of excitement he counted the beads. The colored beads divided the strand into four equal sections. The smaller beads that dangled from the string were for marking tens and hundreds. In total there were one hundred eight on the loop. It was a mala. The dead Kazakh boy Khitai had a Tibetan dorje chain and a secret Buddhist rosary. He had found the waterkeeper's hidden student.
Chapter Thirteen
Prosecutor Xu offered no greeting to Shan when she took his call. "I don't usually speak with fugitives," she said in a voice tight with anger. "Fugitives are a matter for Public Security."
Shan had called the Ministry of Justice from the phone outside the highway station telling Miss Loshi that the prosecutor's friend from Beijing had to speak with her. "I told you I would return soon," he said. "That I would have more evidence."
"I never agreed," Xu shot back. "You made a suggestion. I suggested you should be in jail. Then you escaped from my custody."
"Three o'clock today," Shan said. He told her where the garage was.
"This is not a negotiation, comrade. You can surrender at my office. Or I can dispatch a truckload of uniforms to drag you to my office."
"Comrade Madame Prosecutor," Shan said patiently. "I told you children were being killed. You didn't believe me then. I thought perhaps you might have reconsidered the point by now."
After a moment Xu replied in a terse voice. "That particular message got through to me."
"Good. So perhaps you and I are working with a common goal."
"You and I have nothing in common. I have suspects in the boy's death."
"Meaning what?" Shan asked. Marco was ten feet away, pacing up and down the road like a sentinel. Jakli, who had been at the garage when they arrived, had found an orange soda for Batu, who kept looking toward the mountains. Malik had refused to leave the Kunlun and had ridden away to seek out more of the zheli. "That you and Major Bao struck a deal? Is that what justice is in Yoktian?"
There was a long silence on the receiver. Shan heard voices in the background. Perhaps the prosecutor was calling for her car. Perhaps she was calling for reinforcements.
"Fine," she said at last. "The highway. But not three. Three-thirty, perhaps. Four, maybe. You will wait."
Jakli frowned when he relayed the conversation. "It is what she would do, to spring a trap, buy some time to get others here first. Plant some enforcers. Get some in looking like truck drivers, maybe." She was obviously exhausted, having searched much of the night on horseback with the Maos. They had found another boy before dawn, cowering alone in a cave, and the Maos had taken him to the Red Stone Camp.
Shan shrugged. "Not so easy to do, this far from town."
Jakli gave him an impatient look that somehow seemed to fade into one of sympathy, the way a mother might look at a child. "Sometimes you make me think it's true what they say about Tibet."
"What's that?"
"That it makes people new, washes away all their prior experience. Sometimes I think you are so naive."
To be called naive was such a grand joke that Shan wanted to laugh. If someone wanted a word for all that was not naive, they could take his name.
Jakli stepped into the shadows between the garage and the smaller building that housed two old trucks, where Marco now stood with Sophie, Batu in her saddle. Jakli spoke hurriedly with the Eluosi and pointed to a large truck behind the buildings, where a man was laying long planks to form a ramp into the cargo bay. Marco gave a mock salute to Shan and turned toward the truck. In five minutes Sophie and the two camels they had ridden from his mountain home were loaded into the truck, and the truck pulled out, Batu waving from the window.
It occurred to Shan, as he surveyed the broken-down trucks, stacks of bald tires, the decrepit yellow tea shop and the cracked walls of the garage building, that all of Xinjiang seemed to be a series of ruins. Some were just newer than others. He stepped toward the wall of the garage, the largest building, feeling very tired. He had sat far into the night reading his notes and staring at the meager possessions of Khitai. They had mounted the camels before sunrise, taking a different trail out of the valley. Now he had over an hour to wait for Xu. He checked on Lokesh, who lay asleep on a blanket behind the garage, then sat down on a stack of tires by the wall and found them surprisingly comfortable. Leaning against the wall, he shut his eyes.
Images of the day's ride flashed through his mind. He and Batu had ridden beside Marco for hours and listened to long tales of Marco's youth, tales about vast gatherings of nomad clans, where scores of camels raced, and young girls shot arrows to win white horses. In the predawn light Marco had spoken about the stars, which he knew very well, a skill acquired over nearly thirty years of night caravans. Shan had been surprised to learn that Marco was his own age, and the Eluosi had mused how different their lives had been, living at opposite ends of the People's Republic. He drowsily remembered how Marco had taught them a song, a silly child's verse about camels flying like birds, and they had sung it until they reached the highway.
When he opened his eyes, it was after three. Somebody had been busy, rearranging the area between the buildings. Three tables, or a table and two upturned crates, had been brought out and two figures sat at each. Those at the table played chess, the other two, mahjong. Several more vehicles had appeared in the compound. They looked vaguely familiar. He studied them for a moment and realized they were the trucks he had seen in the motor pool. All of them, except the turtle truck that lay buried in the desert. He noticed the flash of gold teeth from one of the men playing mahjong. It was the Mao from town, who had brought him shoes. A woman in the long grey dress and cowl of one of the strict followers of Mohammed sat close to him, reading what might have been a prayer book. As he rose and stretched his arm, the woman also rose, then reached out and pulled his arm. It was Jakli.
