"The second time I saw him…" Shan clenched his jaw until it hurt. "He had a piece of paper in his pocket, with English letters. I thought it was code. I thought he was American, he spoke English to me so well. But the paper was just about baseball. First base, second base, third base, written in abbreviation so he could remember all the places." The baseball game at the nadam had broken the code for him. Shan had been reading the abbreviations wrong— it wasn't rows of letters, it was clusters of one-and two-letter abbreviations in columns.
FB
was first base,
SB
was second base,
SS
stood for shortstop. He reached into his pocket for the slip of paper and unfolded it.
"In America," Marco said in his tiny voice, "he thinks he will be asked about baseball on his citizenship test. He tries to play all the time, so he will know."
"The second time," Shan continued, "it was that night at Glory Camp. I wiped off his hair. There was black boot polish in it. It was blond. I saw a birthmark, at his hip. He was dead, Marco." He dropped the paper beside the Eluosi.
"No," Marco insisted, with a flash of anger. "You can't know that. He's coming back. He's going to America to make babies with Jakli…." His voice trailed off.
Jakli had known too, Shan was certain. Her parting words had haunted him during the long ride to Marco's cabin. Nikki and I, that was like a dream she had said. It will have to wait for another time, she had said, and it sounded like she meant another life, another incarnation. And her eyes, before she had gone to surrender to Bao. It had not been fear he had seen there, or hatred, he realized later. It had only been emptiness, for she had already discovered in her heart what Shan could only prove later. In a way he had shown the terrible truth to her, when they had gone to the Tadjik camp. She had not responded, only ridden away later to her special place of mourning, when Hoof had admitted to Shan that his brother who rode with Nikki worked for the knobs.
"Bao killed him. I was sure he was an American. Blond hair and blue eyes. I never understood." Shan seemed able to speak only in short bursts. But it was his heart, not his lungs, that was gasping. "They had been closing in. Bao had the scent of the Americans. He was desperate to catch them, it would mean promotion for certain. He hatched a plan to catch them when they were leaving, a trap for the caravan that took them out. He captured Nikki, when Nikki was bringing in the white horse and silver bridle. He had to be sure only one caravan would go out with the subversives, yours, so he could track it and capture it with his helicopters. He paid one of Nikki's men to help, the Tadjik who brought the bridle to town, to make sure you didn't grow suspicious of Nikki's absence."
"No! Damn your eyes, no!" Marco shouted. His face seemed to collapse. "No!" Marco cried. There was no anger left. "He'll be here soon." The tiny voice returned. "I love my boy."
"It has been a season for losing boys," Shan said in a faltering voice. He pulled the steel ring from his pocket, where he had kept it since that night at Glory Camp, and placed it on the log table beside Marco, then left the room.
He climbed the tower, into the night. Five minutes later came an enormous, wretched sound that Shan hoped never to hear again in his life. It was the sound of the worm eating through the thin shell, burrowing into the man's soul. It was fury. It was misery. It was confusion and despair, all in one long inhuman howl. It was the sound of complete desolation.
Shan found himself trying to see the stars through the moisture in his eyes, desperately hoping for a distraction. The horrible sound seemed to echo through his mind, making his flesh crawl. For a moment he longed to be able to howl the same way, to give release to the agony in his own heart.
He stayed on the tower past midnight, trying not to think or feel. In the small hours of the morning he found Marco sitting in a corner of Nikki's room. The big man looked as if he had been fighting all night, as though he had been beaten, and broken, for the first time in his life. He let Shan help him into his bed, as feeble as an old woman.
The others were awake, in the kitchen, on the floor by the stove. A pile of dirty rocks sat in the middle of their circle, and a pot of water was beside Gendun. But they appeared to have stopped the exercise long before. They had heard and understood. Gendun and Lokesh were saying prayers. Jowa sat with a confused expression, looking into his empty hands.
Fat Mao was angry. "It's just this thing, this ugly cloud that gets bigger every day," the Uighur said suddenly, and looked at Shan. "And you know it can't be stopped. What do you do about it? You just make it more painful."
"The Yakde Lama. We came to help the Yakde Lama," Shan said quietly, looking at the rocks.
"To hell with the Yakde Lama!" Fat Mao snapped. "One little boy, is that all you care about? Nikki was a friend of mine, and Jakli. What about the clans that have to disband? The big investigator, you don't do anything! You didn't save the Yakde Lama, he's dead. The wizard from Lhadrung, come to solve it all. Four boys dead. You didn't save them. All you do is get involved. All you do is discover bad news." There was something close to rage in the Uighur's voice. "You have no logic! You have no rules!" The Uighur glared at Shan, who sat across from him in the circle, leaning forward, tensing his muscles as if he might attack Shan. Then he grew silent as he seemed to remember the others.
Shan returned Fat Mao's smoldering gaze for a moment, then looked into his own hands as the great tide of sadness surged through him again.
They sat without speaking, in the cabin, on the distant mountain, the wind moaning around the rock walls of the tower, the fire cracking. After a long time the lama moved. He raised a ladle and slowly poured water over the pile of stones. "These are Shan's rules," Gendun said somberly as the dirt washed away. "The properties of water."
They left when there was enough light to see the trail, with no words to Marco. Nearly an hour later Shan saw the smoke. He called to the others and began to urge his mount back, but Lokesh raised his hand. Marco was burning his cabin. There was no time to save it, no time to save him if he had gone into the flames. Shan dismounted and watched helplessly as the flames rose over the ridge, silhouetting the stone tower. Even from their distance he could hear the cracking of the big logs as they fed the inferno, and Shan thought he saw a figure on the top parapet. Then the wind shifted and fire and smoke engulfed the ancient tower and Marco was gone.
* * *
At the restaurant in town the stout woman was cooking a sheep's head while Fat Mao hit the keys of his computer at the kitchen table and yelled at Swallow Mao for not having the latest admission records for Glory Camp. It didn't matter, she said, Jakli had been seen twice on the road to Kashgar. The boot squad took her to the special processing center they operated in Kashgar. It was lao gai after that, the young Kazakh woman said, as if to deliberately goad Fat Mao. Glory Camp was like a hotel compared to where they would take Jakli, she added.
Fat Mao stared with venom in his eyes until suddenly a hard rap on the door sent the Maos scrambling for their cellar chamber. The woman admitted Ox Mao and another man, who pulled in a third man roughly, a burlap sack tied over his head.
They silently led the man down the cellar steps, past Gendun and Lokesh, who sat meditating in a pool of light by the front window. Shan quietly followed as Jowa rose from the table and disappeared down the stairs. The Maos sat the man in a chair at the table and wrenched the sack away. Their prisoner's face was badly bruised along one side, and a trickle of blood ran from his nose into his moustache and down his chin. It was Wangtu.
Fat Mao paced around the table in silence.
"I was released," Wangtu said quickly, in a voice full of fear as he searched each of their faces. "The prosecutor questioned me about Lau and I was released from Glory Camp. I didn't have a way to town. I knew they were rounding up horses. I said, Let me ride that horse to the sheds, I'll leave it there."
"No," Fat Mao growled. "They gave it to you for something. You paid for it. Told them something."
Wangtu looked at the floor. "I hate them," he said in a hollow voice. "They are my enemy. I was going to look for you, for the lung ma. I can help you. I hear things when I drive the cars."
Shan felt the Uighur's stare and expected Fat Mao to order him to leave or have the others take him away. But the Uighur turned back to Wangtu.
"Which is the lie?" he barked. "That you didn't cooperate with them or that you want to help?"
Shan rose, took a towel from a pile in the corner and wiped the blood from Wangtu's face. No one, not even Wangtu, seemed to notice.
The blank stare remained on Wangtu's face. "Sometimes I know when people are coming on the highway. Important people," he said weakly. "Sometimes I could make cars break down." He looked up at Fat Mao. "That horse was magnificent. Jakli loved that horse. I just wanted her to have it. In the old days, when I was a boy, friends would bring horses to weddings. Don't you understand?" he croaked. "It was the last nadam." He looked into the Uighur's grim face, then turned to Shan. "Did you see her face when I brought it? Like the old days…" His lips curled up as if he was trying to smile, but the effort ended in a grimace of pain. "He gives it to me, then he shoots it," he said in a desolate voice, staring at the floor.
"I don't think you told him anything," Shan said. "Because you didn't know anything. I think you agreed to do something for him."
"A stupid thing. A small thing. A lie to the prosecutor. Bao acted like it would be a good joke." Wangtu tried to smile again and grimaced once more.
"What kind of lie?" Fat Mao demanded.
Wangtu looked at Shan as he spoke. "About the boys. See that Xu got word tonight that another boy has been killed, high in the mountains."
"What boy?" Jowa gasped.
"Any boy. Not a real boy. Just say it, make her go to the mountains."
"An ambush against Xu?" Fat Mao suggested.
"Did Bao tell you where to say it happened?" Shan asked.
"No. Just a place in the Kunlun, on one of the bad roads where you have to drive slow. A place two or three hours away. Bao didn't care where."
"Not an ambush," Jowa concluded. "A distraction."
"Because," Shan said with a chill, "Bao doesn't want her anywhere near Stone Lake."
* * *
The Brigade compound on the south side of Yoktian was like a private club compared to the rest of the town. Its stuccoed walls wore a fresh coat of white paint, and its courtyard was covered with that peculiarly Western convention, a grass lawn. Red vehicles abounded, sedans, utility vehicles, and heavy trucks, all bearing the gold emblem of prosperity.
Fat Mao had refused to go, refused to risk any Maos in such a foolhardy venture. "Go home," he told Shan in a taut voice. "You found your old men. You're all still alive. You've done better than the rest of us. Quit before the knobs reach out again." It wasn't simply that Fat Mao was angry over Jakli's arrest, Shan realized as the Uighur watched Jowa and Lokesh join Shan. He was humiliated.
The compound seemed deserted. Shan stepped past the empty gatehouse. It had the feeling of a trap, but he could not stop. He quickly turned to Lokesh and told him to wait with Jowa across the street. The old Tibetan nodded agreement, but as Shan put his hand on one of the double doors leading into the office building, someone reached out and held it open for him. Lokesh was standing at his shoulder.
There was an unexpected noise from nearby. Shouts. Cheers. The sound of a crowd, but still there was no one in sight. They ventured into the lobby and saw an elderly Chinese woman sitting stiffly at a reception desk. As they walked by her she smiled and nodded repeatedly, and Shan saw she was wearing blue work clothes. A mop and bucket of water sat behind her.
There was no mistaking Ko's office. Its entrance consisted of a garish imitation of French doors, with red plastic grilles set over sheets of clear plastic. On one of the chairs near the entrance was a pile of American magazines, and above it hung a poster of a towering building, a nighttime skyline, over which was written
New York, New York
, in English. On the opposite wall was a banner, which Shan assumed held a political slogan until he glanced at it, then read it twice. Get Rich with the Brigade.
The office was empty. Shan rushed past a secretary station into a large room with a gleaming desk made of chromed metal and glass. There was nothing on the desk but a red telephone and a photograph of a red sports car.
Lokesh, at the large plate glass window behind the desk, made a quiet chuckling sound. Shan pulled the Tibetan back from the center of the glass and peered around the edge. The window opened onto the center of the compound, a yard framed on three sides by buildings. A baseball game was being played. Vehicles had been pulled to the side, and at least two dozen spectators sat on the hoods and roofs of the vehicles to watch the spectacle. Ko was there, running about the way Deacon had at the nadam field, directing the players to stand a certain way, showing them how to hold the wooden bat.
Shan stepped back to his search as the batter hit the ball and the onlookers cheered again. The enterprising Ko did not appear to be involved in the details of his enterprises. The two drawers in the narrow table under the window held paper clips and pencils. Bookshelves held an assortment of mementos and books on management, including several in English.
