Tserung the mechanic laughed when Shan asked about Lokesh, saying that the old man had indeed immediately gone into the archives when they had arrived in Yangkar, as Shan expected, but had not stayed. Lokesh had recalled that Tserung had mentioned during their drive to town that Yara’s grandparents were visiting for the coming livestock market and had gone to find them. Yara reacted to the news with a nervous laugh and motioned Shan back into the truck.
The compound beyond the edge of town that she directed him to had once belonged to one of the most important of the farming families in the region and had sat abandoned for decades, except for the sheep and goats who found their way into the old stables during winter storms. Most of the local residents avoided the buildings because they were said to be haunted.
“The family was executed by the Red Guard,” Yara explained in a matter-of-fact voice as Shan parked the truck at the end of the rutted track that led to the farmhouse. “But my grandparents had been close friends and prayed for their spirits for many years after.” They began to walk up the overgrown track, which showed no sign of use in recent years. “They’re getting too old for the harsh winters. When I took them here my grandmother was frightened at first but bravely ventured inside, telling us not to follow, and prayed for nearly an hour. When she came out she was excited and said the old ones weren’t angry or vengeful, that they were just lonely and would welcome the sound of laughter inside the walls again. The first thing she did was make a little altar for us to revive the prayers the house had once known.”
As they reached the tall double-doored gate in the compound wall, each of its panels hanging on one hinge, Shan saw that the compound had clearly once been the center of a large and prosperous farm. A two-story stone house, wind-battered but still solid, formed the anchor of the weed-infested courtyard, with a second one-story house forming an adjacent side, probably where extended family or farm workers had lived. An open-fronted shed that included an old forge lined the side opposite the smaller house, and a sizable barn took up the entire side opposite the main house, completing the square.
“This place is big enough for a whole clan,” Shan observed as Yara led him toward the smaller house, the entrance of which evidenced a fresh coat of maroon paint and several carefully inscribed auspicious signs that looked like the work of Shiva. Inside, the air was tinged with a combination of incense and smoke from the cigars that were the primary vice of Yara’s grandmother Lhamo. A small dog yapped and bounded through an inner doorway to greet Yara, followed by Yara’s son, Ati. The adolescent boy excitedly introduced Shan to the dog, then sobered as a droning voice carried from the shadowed doorway at the far side of the chamber. Shan stepped through the passage and discovered Lokesh at a long, low table upon which the tattered clothing, shoes, and other belongings of Jampa had been laid out in the shape of the dead man. Lokesh was continuing the death rites.
“He helped us cut fresh juniper for the room where our sleeping pallets are,” came a familiar voice at Shan’s shoulder, and he turned with a smile to greet Lhamo. “He recited some prayers at our altar, even sang one of the old kitchen god songs he remembered from his childhood over our cooking brazier, then said he had a sacred duty to perform.”
“An old friend died,” was the only explanation Shan offered, and Lhamo gave a meaningful nod. “He’ll stay in there for days probably, and just take tsampa and water for nourishment.”
Lhamo nodded again. She had probably lost count of the number of death rites she and her husband had conducted through the years. “Except he wants to go to Shiva in the morning, he says,” the old woman explained, “to get a death chart started.”
Shan went to a window, several panes of which were broken, and gazed out at the compound. Despite the weeds that had overtaken the courtyard, the decrepit condition of the barn roof, and the faded paint on the walls, it still had the air of a sturdy, welcoming outpost. Undoubtedly the farm’s expansive fields had provided food for the monastery for decades, if not centuries, and pilgrims had probably slept in the courtyard, singing their songs of devotion into the night. The compound commanded a view of the rolling hills in each direction for nearly a mile and was obscured from the town by a low ridge that was ablaze with spring flowers. Yara’s grandparents, like Lokesh, were ferals, Tibetans without identity cards, and for most of their lives they had avoided towns. The compound was probably the safest place for them, at least for now.
“I will bring food later,” he said, then excused himself. Choden would be getting off duty soon.
Only two reports awaited Shan on his desk. Mrs. Lu had caught the incorrigible young girl with Meng’s companion throwing stones at the bust of Chairman Mao and the Committee of Leading Citizens had demanded that Choden arrest her.
“They’re still here? You arrested her?” Shan asked his deputy, who looked up with a sheepish expression.
“If I hadn’t, Mrs. Lu was going to thrash her with a belt.”
Shan opened the door to the back room. The cells were empty.
Choden shrugged. “She slipped out between the bars. She’s very thin. But I can truthfully report to Mrs. Lu that I did put her in jail.”
“And?”
“That woman with Lieutenant Meng was waiting at the back step. She seemed to expect it, as if it were not the first time the girl had broken out of jail. Buddha’s Breath! She can’t be more than five!”
“Meng wouldn’t stop the girl?” Shan was reluctantly reaching the point at which he was going to demand they leave town. Surely Meng understood the girl could not stay.
“She was feeling poorly, took to bed.”
Shan shook his head in frustration and read the second report, then looked up. “You can’t file this. An ‘obstruction of an emergency vehicle’? What does that mean? What ambulance? I’ve never seen one anywhere close to here.”
“I didn’t know how else to explain it. It was that old rescue truck they keep at the highway equipment station on the road to Lhadrung town for bad highway accidents. Someone called them and said a Tibetan herder had been hit on the highway and seemed to be close to death. When the rescue truck got there a herd of sheep surrounded it, so the driver and attendant got out and pushed through to the man who had been struck. But he had regained consciousness, said he was fine, and couldn’t leave his herd. So they treated a few scratches, gave him some medicine and left. Except later they called to say the medical pack was gone from the back of the truck.”
“Medical pack?”
“Like a big metal suitcase, they said, full of medical equipment and medicines. Except then the driver said the attendant was a damned fool and may have forgotten to put it in the truck. They have several and couldn’t find any inventory list to confirm one was missing.”
Shan read the report again then ripped it in half and dropped it in the trash can. A phone message had been underneath it, from Amah Jiejie. Lieutenant Huan, she reported, had been in Lhasa the night of the attack on Jampa. Shan wearily braced his head in his hands, elbows on his desk, feeling his exhaustion. He watched Choden, willing him to sign out and go home so he might nap in a cell. But suddenly his deputy was at the window, studying two figures in hooded sweatshirts who were now sitting on a bench in the square, watching a half dozen sheep who were eating one of the new flowering shrubs Mrs. Lu had planted. Shan was about to tell Choden to go disperse the sheep when his deputy pointed to a white utility vehicle parked on the square. “Lhasa plates. Everyone gets lost in Yangkar these days.”
Shan studied the two figures a moment. “Go home,” he ordered, then waited while his deputy disappeared down the street before venturing out on the square.
“I love this town!” Cato Pike exclaimed as Shan sat beside him. “I am a connoisseur of forgotten places, and this one looks like it has been forgotten in so many centuries it practically doesn’t exist!”
“Sometimes the only way to be free is to be forgotten,” Shan replied.
“In other words, Yangkar is a Chinese paradise. Hell, it’s not even on the road map. We had to stop and ask a herder.”
“The mapmakers are all from Beijing. They decided to call it Buzhou. There used to be a sign saying that, but a yak knocked it down.”
“And the constable chose not to put it up again. I imagine your Chinese residents didn’t much like that.”
“Staying forgotten requires sacrifices,” Shan said, choosing not to mention that the Committee of Leading Citizens had erected their own sign and Shan had knocked it down with his truck and blamed a yak.
Pike gave a quiet laugh. “My life story in four words,” he said.
Shan paused, studying the American, but decided not to press for an explanation. Pike was a strong bull of a man, and his eyes burned with a penetrating intelligence, but Shan had begun to also see a deep sadness etched on his countenance. He was a man who had experienced a great deal of the world and seemed to have given up on much of it. He was a loner who seemed to have left behind the anchors that kept most lives on track, and now had lost his daughter in a forgotten land.
A melancholy grin flickered on Pike’s face as he watched Cao climb up the steps of the tower at the end of the square, and Shan realized the student’s energetic curiosity probably reminded Pike of his daughter. He made a sweeping gesture that took in the square and the buildings around it. “There are layers of time here,” the American declared. “The scale is all wrong. Once something much bigger occupied this space.”
Shan nodded. “A gompa, a monastery. The tower was part of the gatehouse.”
Pike weighed Shan’s words. “A major gompa. One of the big regional ones,” he suggested.
Shan nodded again. “Hundreds of monks, and a medical college in the hills above town. The army left only the tower, because it was a convenient watch post.”
“More of the forgotten landscape.”
“The Tibetans haven’t forgotten it. Sometimes I think they believe the old gompa is still here, invisible to all but the devout. On still nights when the wind isn’t blowing people say they can hear the old horns that called monks to prayer. Some of the old ones walk around the square in a crooked path because they say they are avoiding the sacred chortens that stood there for centuries, as if they could still see them. More and more of the devout are coming back because of those stories. Sometimes I see them sitting and praying in front of the empty spaces. On Buddha’s birthday last year flowers and boughs of juniper appeared in the night, laid out in squares where the old chortens were.”
Pike gazed at the empty space with a strange longing. “My daughter Natalie found something special in Tibet, Shan,” he confided. “She wrote me about it. She said she now understood that her job was to bring old ghosts to life. She said that what people didn’t understand was that the ghosts are us.”
The words sent a chill down Shan’s back. It sounded like something Lokesh would say. He wished he had been able to meet such a wise woman.
They sat in silence, watching a ball of dried weeds blow down the square.
“You didn’t come all the way from Lhasa to philosophize about Tibet,” Shan said.
“I came because I know not to trust email or cell phones in this country,” the American stated, and produced a thick envelope from inside his sweatshirt and handed it to Shan. It contained copies of emails from the Five Claws.
Pike provided a commentary as Shan leafed through them. “The deputy director demands that the director put a halt to a visit by the Bureau of Religious Affairs, stating that they have no jurisdiction in the valley. Next the director is urgently requesting the public works office in Sichuan Province to send more Chinese workers but is told none would be available for several months.” Pike pointed to another message Shan was scanning. “The director asks Jiao where he is and Jiao says he had important meetings of his working group in Lhasa. The director asks what working group and Jiao just replies the one engaged in vital work for the motherland, that’s all you need to know. Then comes a series of messages about shifting funds from bridge and highway sites all over Tibet to the Five Claws project, which were odd enough to make me pause but probably just typical bureaucratic exchanges in China.”
Finally came a long exchange that Shan had to read in detail to fully grasp. Jiao was asking Huan to check on known associates of a troublemaking professor from Larung Gar, suggesting that Public Security review his colleagues at the university in Tientsen where he had once taught. Jiao reminded Huan that the professor had demanded a halt to the construction at the Five Claws pending further study, claiming the site might be too unstable geologically to support the dam. Jiao was worried that the professor may have sewn dissident seeds at his old university and that other associates might try to oppose the Five Claws.
Shan asked if Pike could search the name he had heard from Ko.
Pike laughed when he heard the name. “That’s the very man, Shan, the professor Jiao was complaining about! Professor Lin Fochow. Jiao told Huan to remind his colleagues in Tientsen that the professor had been such a problem at Larung Gar that he and five other hotheads had been sent directly to the 404th hard labor prison, on the grounds that they were a threat to national security.”
Shan stared at the last email, trying to understand. The dissident professor had become the prisoner who couldn’t remember his own name, the professor who had arrived at prison wearing a monk’s robe. Had he been beaten so badly he had suffered brain damage? Shan’s foreboding began to descend on him again. Every time he thought he had found one answer, two more questions seemed to rise. He wasn’t confronting a murder, he was tumbling into a black hole of violent intrigue and politics.
“You should go home, Pike,” Shan said. “If you stay, you’ll become another ghost.”
Pike seemed not to hear. “She was just getting a foothold on life,” he said in a distant voice. “She stumbled early on, raised by her mother. I was never there for her. Mostly sent to boarding schools. Then when her mother remarried, she suddenly had stepsisters who seemed determined to drive her out of their family. We only grew close later, when she moved to a college near my home. I started declining trips so I could spend more time with her. Then I introduced her to the son of an old army buddy, an officer in the Army Rangers, and months later they were engaged. When he was deployed to Afghanistan, he made her promise to finish her college work while he was away, and she made him promise they would get married as soon as he returned. But he didn’t return. Killed by an explosive device when driving some Afghan girls to a school on his day off. It took her over a year to recover. This trip to Tibet was her way of starting over, making a clean break. She was enrolled in graduate school, ready to start when she returned.” Pike clenched his jaw, as if choking down emotion.
“Before she left I told her she was the miracle of my life, my anchor that let me withstand all the storms that raged around me. She smiled and said then we had given each other a miracle and promised to write me every week. She did for the first month and wrote that she had discovered the importance of committing to something bigger than yourself.”
“You should go home,” Shan said again. “It’s what she would want. Stay alive.”
The American looked down into his hands with a weary expression then extracted a tattered envelope from inside his sweatshirt. “Her last letter. I must have read it a hundred times.” He handed it to Shan.
Dear Papa, Shan read. Professor Gangfen says I am learning to adeptly straddle the centuries as we dig, which I think he means as a compliment. This week I unearthed a nearly intact bridle with a bronze bit all on my own! The letter went on to describe how she had made new friends and spent the weekend in Lhasa, where she had gone to the magnificent Potala and the ancient temple complex.
“The last paragraph,” Pike said. “She added it later.”
Shan skipped to the bottom of the second page. I have seen something terrible, which I may not write about. It felt like a dagger in my heart at first, but I am learning Tibetan ways to resolve things. There’s no better place to learn that you can fight monsters without becoming one yourself. If you want to have a soul here, every man must be a monk and every woman a nun, and all must be outlaws. Lha gyal lo, Nat.
“Lha gyal lo,” Pike said.“I hear Tibetans say it.”
“It means victory to the gods,” Shan said as he handed the letter back.
“Is that a prayer or a war cry?” the American asked.
The letter had only increased Shan’s foreboding. “You need to go home,” he tried for a third time.
Pike gave a bitter grin. “You don’t understand, Shan. Natalie was one of the only people I ever cared about in all this big world, in recent years. She’s been the only thing in my life that has meant anything to me. And she died in an ancient cave trying to save gods. The bastards killed her. They murdered her. Did you really think I was just going to take some photos and fly home?”
“You can’t do anything by yourself,” Shan said.
“You can’t do anything by yourself,” Pike shot back.
The words hurt, not so much because they were from a foreigner, but because they were true.
“You and I aren’t much different, Shan,” the American said. “We hate what our worlds have become and the only way we can stay true to ourselves is to push back against those worlds. The only difference is that I push back more physically than you do.”
“What you did to that man in the crematorium was cruel,” Shan said.
Pike shrugged. “I didn’t light the oven.”
They silently watched a donkey cart filled with cabbages traverse the square. “A witness was killed in Lhadrung yesterday,” Shan said at last, and began explaining what had happened to the unlucky janitor.
“You don’t know for certain who did it,” Pike said. It sounded almost like an accusation.
“No,” Shan admitted. “It was not Lieutenant Huan. It was someone close to the colonel who is allied with Huan in Lhasa. Someone who knew about Jampa delivering Metok’s message, even though we thought only the colonel, Amah Jiejie and myself knew about it. They knew that Jampa could be a witness against them.”
“If you want to catch a fox, you have to set a trap,” Pike suggested. “But first you have to find the bait that will attract it.”
“I’m sorry?” Shan replied, with an eye on Cao, who had returned to the square. To Shan’s great surprise he was walking in the same patterns as the old Tibetans, as if the Chinese scholar also saw the phantom shrines. He knelt at one of the invisible stopping places, unfolded a pocketknife, and used its blade to dig. After a few moments he nodded, as if confirming a discovery.
Cao gave a self-conscious grin as Shan and Pike approached him at the third such stop. “An earth-taming temple,” the Chinese student declared, and gestured at a stone foundation he had uncovered six inches below the surface. “The gompa here must have been an earth-taming temple,” he said, referring to the ancient sites that had been constructed to subdue the demons under the earth.
“I don’t know,” Shan admitted.
“No, no, I am telling you. This was an earth-taming temple site, a very important one.” He pointed to smudges on the wall of the tower, then took out a small notepad and drew a series of symbols stacked one on top of the other. “A sun, a moon, an empty lotus throne to welcome the god, hovering over mountains. And a garuda bird, I think, though it is mostly a smudge. Earth-taming signs,” he explained.
Shan stared in disbelief. He had taken the patches of discoloration on the crumbling stucco of the wall to be nothing more than water stains, but now as Cao held up his drawing so he could compare it to the stains, he could see that indeed the faded patterns corresponded with the symbols in shape and placement.
Cao bent and scooped away more of the dirt, revealing cobblestones around the foundation. “There was a great paved courtyard, and the small foundations mark the pattern used for the old dances, the ritual cham dances done to honor the good earth spirits and discourage the evil ones. This was the courtyard of a great temple,” he said, pointing to the exposed cobbles. “The professor and I have seen this before. Religious Affairs and the army were in a great hurry to obliterate everything fifty years ago, so they just dumped a few inches of soil on top and called it a park.”
Shan recalled complaints from those who tried to plant in the square about the many stones they encountered. He extracted the paper he had taken from the mess hall bulletin board at the Five Claws project, the satellite photo embellished with new lines. It had some of the same signs drawn across the top.
“Exactly,” Cao said.
Shan stared at him, not comprehending. “It’s an aerial photo of the dam site with some lines drawn to suggest some kind of body.”
“No,” Cao said. “It’s more like the sketch of a thangka, a devotional painting. The ancient ones saw it as clearly as if they were flying overhead on garudas. It’s probably why the valley is so sacred, why your town had an earth-taming temple.” Cao saw Shan’s lingering confusion, so took out a pencil, laid the paper on a bench, and with a few quick strokes, embellished and extended the lines drawn on the photo, making the upper lake look more like a head, the cupping ridges at the top like arms, and the bottom ridges like legs. “Don’t you see?” he soberly said as he held it up. A chill went down Shan’s spine as he recognized the image from the drawings he had seen in the archives. “It’s the most terrible of the earth demons,” the Chinese scholar continued. “The grandfather warrior, they call him, those who are awakening him now to protect the earth. It’s Gekho the Wrathful Destroyer.”
While Cao continued his exploration of the square, Shan and Pike sat in the station, eating a meal Marpa had delivered as Shan explained what happened in Lhadrung.
“You say this started with an execution that was a murder,” Pike said. The slow fire of anger that always seemed to burn in his eyes had crept into his voice. “But it really started with the murder of my daughter and the professor.” Shan nodded his agreement. “And now we have the murder of a witness in Lhadrung and a suggestion that all this may really have started at this school, this Larung Gar place. You have an annoying habit, Shan, of identifying more crimes but never the faces of the criminals. It’s the story of modern China,” the American observed. “Feed the outrage but never aim at the cause unless the Party bosses so direct.”
“I know Huan’s face, and that of Jiao, at least. And if I were in the habit of kowtowing to Party bosses, I never would have gone to prison.”
“Still, you haven’t a shred of evidence against Huan or Jiao, against anyone.”
“I am open to suggestion.”
“Already told you. When you find the right bait, you can always trap a fox. We’re going to create an urgent problem that Huan’s contact in Lhadrung has to respond to. We’ll smoke him out. If it’s someone close to Colonel Tan it shouldn’t be so difficult,” the American suggested, and his eyes lit with a new excitement.
As usual, Amah Jiejie responded with cunning efficiency once Shan explained their plan. The memo he had just transmitted to Colonel Tan on the old fax machine, which he knew was safer than email, was only two short paragraphs, although he and Pike had taken an hour to compose it. The first paragraph reported that Shan had discovered a secret report prepared by Metok sewn inside the old janitor’s shirt. The engineer had reported that he was in touch with the Bureau of Religious Affairs in Lhasa about the astounding artifacts in the Valley of the Gods, and he believed the agency would soon declare the valley a major heritage site. Metok, Shan explained, knew that while Religious Affairs for the most part just collected and destroyed artifacts on the grounds that they belonged to the state and were counter to socialist imperatives, the agency was practical enough to understand the enormous economic benefit from the tourists who flocked to significant sites. Just as the Dalai Lama’s restored Potala Palace in Lhasa brought in millions in revenue, so too could the sacred valley. Metok had therefore taken several cartons of the valley’s best artifacts to the Religious Affairs processing center on Kunming Road on the outskirts of Lhasa, along with a file he had compiled with the help of a renowned archaeologist.
In the second paragraph Shan simply asked permission to go to the Kunming Road facility to interview Religious Affairs about their contact with Metok, which might reveal that the engineer had not been driven by corruption but simply by an inconvenient belief that the dam was being placed in the wrong valley. While doing so, Shan wrote, he would examine and memorialize the unique artifacts that might provide the basis for stopping the dam project. If he could verify Metok’s assertions, then Colonel Tan could contact the Commissar to address what was rapidly developing into a conflict between different arms of the government.
Shan had to admit that Pike’s plan was a clever ploy. Tan’s entire staff knew that in some more remote regions of Tibet, Religious Affairs had become the dominant government agency, with direct lines to Beijing. Adding a reference to the Commissar had been Shan’s idea. No one in Tibet needed an explanation, or a name added to the title, and nearly everyone shuddered at the mention of his name. Commissar Yang Chouzi had been in Tibet since the original occupation, and though he had had many titles, the one that had stuck was the one used for the Party counselors who shadowed high officials and often were the real decision makers. After decades of ruthless manipulation, the aged, retired Yang lived in a compound outside Lhasa and was still the unofficial Party boss of central Tibet.
Shan had asked Amah Jiejie to place a copy of the memo on the colonel’s desk.
“No, no,” Tan’s assistant said. “On the corner of my desk. His aides are always lingering at my desk with an eye for the colonel’s mail.”
Shan had listed the aides for Pike before dispatching their bait to Amah Jiejie. The quartermaster, the wardens, the administrative officer, Major Xun, and Lieutenant Zhu all reported to Colonel Tan. The quartermaster, Shan had explained, would have authority to order the drone that was delivered to the Five Claws. The administrative officer could have changed Tan’s recommendation on Huan’s discipline to assure the lieutenant went to a powerful position in Lhasa. And Xun as chief of staff touched every aspect of Tan’s operations.
“Which of them are in Lhadrung now?” Shan asked Amah Jiejie, wondering how they might narrow their list of suspected conspirators.
“Only Major Xun, Captain Chi the quartermaster, and Captain Bing of the administrative office. The colonel sent Zhu to Hong Kong and the others are at a conference in Chengdu. But I can guarantee you that if I leave it in plain sight, it will be seen before the end of the day.”
As they finished their plotting with Amah Jiejie, she volunteered that Metok’s poor widow, Lekshay, had called to ask if the government had any personal effects of her late husband. “She seemed so melancholy. I told her I had a brother who died in prison and I knew it would do her good if we could just get together and talk. She said it still felt too soon for her to put her pain into words but maybe in a few days. Poor girl, she suffers so, even though she did no wrong.”
Pike grinned as Shan put the phone down. If one of Tan’s top deputies was indeed Huan’s invisible ally in Lhadrung, then Huan would hear the news by the end of the day. Shan glanced at his watch. “If you are going to set up a camera to secretly watch that building on Kunming Road you’d better be underway.”
Shan watched the white car leave for Lhasa then turned reluctantly to the pile of paperwork at his desk. If he did not keep up with it, terse reminders would arrive from the judicial administration center and then auditors might arrive. He poured a cup of tea and settled into his desk. An hour later he was about to refresh his tea when a sudden groan then a crashing sound came from the cells. He pushed open the door, which had been left ajar, and turned on the light in the rear chamber to reveal Meng lying on the floor beside an overturned chair. When he rushed and knelt over her, she reached up and for a moment clung to Shan like a frightened child. Then she collected herself and let him help her up.
“Sorry,” she said. Her voice trembled for a moment, then she pulled away and straightened her clothes. “I came in the back door but heard you speaking with someone so I just lay down in a cell. I fell asleep and was still groggy. Sorry,” she repeated.
He hesitated, thinking of the pile of paperwork that waited for him at his desk. “I was going to eat,” he lied. “Come with me.”
Meng bit her lip and gave a small, shy smile that for a moment made her seem more like a young self-conscious woman than a stern Public Security officer. He realized that she had changed into blue jeans and a silk blouse and sweater and asked her to wait a moment as he went into the washroom, taking off his tunic and uniform shirt and replacing it with a simple white one.
She gave him another shy smile as he appeared. They were just another couple going out for dinner. Mrs. Lu, walking her terrier, stared in mute surprise as they stepped outside.
Marpa took one look at them at the kitchen door and held up a restraining hand. “No, no. Front door.”
By the time they had gone around the building he was spreading a cloth on the table at the center window then excused himself after seating them, darting into the kitchen then returning with the stub of a candle which he forced into a soda bottle and lit before disappearing once more. This time he returned with a dusty bottle of cheap rice wine. Shan had never before seen any kind of alcohol in Marpa’s establishment and knew that Marpa himself never drank any. The café owner filled two small tumblers halfway with the wine. “I had some wineglasses,” he apologized, “but I forget where they are.”
“It’s not like—” Shan began, meaning to say it was not the romantic event Marpa had inferred, but then he saw the anticipation in Meng’s eyes. “Not like we are connoisseurs,” he said instead.
They spoke of little things, of the occasional shifting of the wind that washed the town with the scent of wildflowers, of the vast high meadows above them where deer and wild goats grazed, of Meng’s journey from the Gobi, during which they had stopped at a camel market, and of the horse festival the local herders were planning for late summer. Shan let Marpa decide their menu, and the Tibetan brought out small spiced dumplings, then a rich fragrant stew. Meng seemed not to have much appetite and when she stopped eating altogether, Shan followed her gaze toward the square.
Meng’s traveling companion was shouting up a tree, dodging twigs being thrown down by the young girl, who had climbed to a remarkable height.
“I should go help,” Shan said. “Your niece could fall.”
Meng hesitated, glancing at Shan, then she nodded and turned back toward the window. “No need. She climbs like a monkey,” Meng said, sipping at her wine.
As they watched, the girl climbed down a drooping limb then slipped around it on her hands and dropped directly onto the bust of Mao, straddling it. She began beating the head of the Great Helmsman like a drum.
Meng shook her head in dismay.
“Negligent parents,” Shan suggested.
“I am certain of it,” Meng replied with a hint of a smile. “We had to wash paint off her face today.”
“Why paint?”
The old woman who makes those charts and horoscopes seems to enjoy the girl. She has a gerbil as a pet. The only time Kami was quiet all day was then, just like on our prior visits.”
“Kami?” Shan had not heard the girl’s name before.
“Kanmei, but Kami suits her. It’s funny, but when the gerbil looks at her, she gets very quiet. I watched them today. The gerbil and Kami just stared silently at each other, the gerbil with his head cocked at her as if he recognized her. Those big eyes of his must hypnotize her.”
Shan smiled. “The Tibetans would say they knew each other in a prior life. The gerbil is the reincarnation of a famous lama.”
“I thought famous lamas went on to some higher level of existence.”
“Some do. But most in this region had disturbances in their devotion at the end of their lives. They couldn’t prepare for death the way they should have, or even broke their monastic vows in their final days.” He saw the question in her eyes. “Some monks and nuns were forced to marry and then forced at gunpoint to consummate the marriage in front of soldiers. Some were forced to disavow the Dalai Lama. Some picked up a gun to resist.”
Meng sipped more wine and offered one of her melancholy grins. “What will we come back as, Shan?”
“I tend to think I’ll be a surly yak. And I recall someone in prison telling me that every knob would be coming back as a beetle,” he said, and immediately wished he had not spoken the words, for she winced, not seeming to take them as a jest.
Meng touched her glass to his and spoke in a whisper. “Then try not to step on me, Constable,” she said.
A warm meadow-scented breeze was wafting over the town as Shan guided Meng down the dusk-lit street to see the carpet factory, where the night crew was hanging brilliantly colored bundles of yarn, still damp from dye, on scaffolds. He introduced Meng as a friend to the old women who worked the looms, and one laughed and pounded Shan on the back with a mischievous wink. He realized he was enjoying the rare time away from his troubles and, as the sky turned deep shades of purple, asked if Meng would go for a ride. Without really knowing why he found himself parking at the end of the rutted track to the old farm compound. As they approached the buildings he cursed himself for thinking he could take a Public Security officer into a nest of ferals but as they reached the gate Meng gave a cry of delight and ran forward. Lokesh had found an old horn and was standing by a flaming brazier in the center of the yard, playing an old herder’s song.
As he passed through the gate, Shan was struck by how much work had been done. The weeds had all been plucked and the courtyard swept, revealing a surprisingly intact cobblestone surface. The front wall of the stable had a fresh coat of maroon paint, and two of its support posts had been replaced.
Yara was there, washing dinner dishes in a basin, and warmly introduced her grandparents. Her grandfather Trinle offered Meng some dried apricots. Her grandmother Lhamo offered a cigar, which Meng politely declined.
“You have a wonderful home,” Meng said to them, causing them to glance anxiously at Shan.
“We’re just settling in,” Yara interjected. “With Shan’s help, it may become a home.”
Shan hesitated over her words, for he had thought of the compound as just one more temporary refuge for the ferals. Then Yara pushed him away, toward Trinle, who led them inside to see the new altar, new kitchen alcove, and fresh pallets in the sleeping quarters, well-scented with fresh juniper.
When they returned to the courtyard, Yara had produced benches and they sat around the brazier drinking tea as night crept over the hills. Meng asked if she might borrow the horn, which reminded her of the recorder she had once played in a student band, and to Shan’s surprise she began an excellent rendition of “Beautiful Dreamer.” Stephen Foster was a favorite not only of Chinese schoolteachers but also of public-address systems in buses and trains.
Shan felt an unfamiliar tranquility, letting himself be immersed in the domestic warmth, and for a moment found himself thinking of the impossible, but beautiful, dream of Yara and Ko raising a family in such a home.
Meng leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked back to the car, and he prolonged the sense of leaving the world behind by slowing to point out Tibetan constellations to her. “Lak Sur,” he said, indicating Scorpio, then “Mindruk,” which was the Pleiades. “And there, a most important one,” he said, pointing to the Little Dipper. “Karma Pur Dhun, or the Seven Siblings. The seven stars are children racing but the little boy fell down.” He indicated the star at the end of the handle. “And fortunately, he could not get up, so he is stuck in the same place for all of time.”
Meng gave a girlish laugh and held onto his arm. “Polaris. I never thought it was just a clumsy Tibetan boy.” She abruptly clutched him tighter, then doubled over, clutching her belly.
“Meng?” Shan asked, helping her to a flat boulder.
“It’s nothing,” she said in a strained voice. “I just ate those dumplings too fast,” she explained, then reached into a pocket and produced a small jar of pills. Shan recalled that she had barely touched her dumplings. “I’ll be fine,” she said as she swallowed a pill. “Tell me more about Tibetan stars.”
When he finally parked behind the station and began walking her to her quarters, they could hear Kami singing loudly on the other side of the door.
Meng pulled him away, her grip suddenly tight on his hand. “Isn’t there somewhere we can go?”
“Not really,” Shan said.
“Yes, there is,” Meng replied and led him into the jail.
It was nearly dawn when the satellite phone on his desk rang. Shan slipped out of Meng’s arms and rose from the jail cot, wrapping a blanket around his body before going into his office.
Pike did not wait for greetings. “Our man is one of those Amah Jiejie mentioned. Huan got word from Lhadrung and arrived at the Religious Affairs building on Kunming Road just after midnight. The whole beautiful scene is on video,” the American reported. “Huan’s got balls, I’ll say that for him. He didn’t bother to search the building. He just burned it down.”