The long, winding trail glowed silver in the moonlight as the horses galloped down the mountain. Shan, swallowing his fear that his mount would stumble, pushed the horse harder and harder into the darkness. Zhu crouched low in his saddle at Shan’s side. Jaya sang a song to her horse and their khampa guide laughed with joy.
Shan had struggled to sleep when they had returned to the camp, then had suddenly bolted upright. “Amah Jiejie,” he gasped, then desperately shook Zhu awake. “We have to go, now!”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Zhu had protested.
“Amah Jiejie has to be warned! The satellite phone is in the truck!”
“Constable?” Zhu rubbed sleep from his eyes.
“Metok never had a wife! The woman pretending to be his wife is a spy! Metok’s wife is a spy. An imposter nun led Tara to be killed. It must be the same woman. The spy is taking Amah Jiejie into the mountains to kill her!”
Lhakpa too had awakened. “You are not making sense,” he said.
“Metok’s wife asked the colonel’s assistant to go with her to a remote shrine. I thought Tan was invulnerable. But there is a way to destroy him. They want to kill Amah Jiejie.”
Zhu cursed as he grasped Shan’s meaning, and began pulling on his boots. Jaya rose and began poking the embers of the fire.
“You’ll never find the trail in the dark,” Lhakpa warned.
“The moon is rising,” Shan said.
“No, wait,” Jaya said. “Get packed and wait here.” The Tibetan woman darted up the slope. Ten minutes later she appeared with the khampa and four horses.
They had not reached Amah Jiejie before she had left but the helicopter sent by Tan intercepted her before she met Metok’s widow, allowing her to call in with her apology for being ordered to a last-minute meeting and promising to set a date soon for their trek.
Twenty-four hours later Shan paused at the little shrine on the stone ramp he was climbing to once more give thanks that Amah Jiejie had been saved. He always entered the Potala Palace in the traditional manner, the way it had been done for centuries, up the long steep ramp that rose up to the south entrance. As he climbed he considered why Pike had insisted he tell Metok’s wife to meet him in the Potala. Halfway up, pausing to catch his breath, he recalled the photograph Pike’s daughter had sent to her father. She had visited the Potala with Professor Gangfen, and in the photo she had been smiling with great contentment as she looked out over the huge Buddhist palace. It meant that the Potala wasn’t so much a place of beauty for Cato Pike, it was a place of his daughter, perhaps one of the last places on earth where she had been happy.
The roof terrace of the Red Palace, the maroon-colored core of the complex, was nearly empty when he arrived, and he turned to the astounding view over Lhasa and beyond, gazing out toward the river, the train station, and the snow-covered mountains in the far distance. In the few years since Shan had begun visiting Lhasa, the city had become unequivocally Chinese, but here and there a few traditional neighborhoods survived, and the Jokhang Temple in the old Barkhor district stood like a defiant symbol of the Tibetans, surviving the onslaught of the centuries. The Dalai Lamas, whose personal living quarters had been only a few steps from where Shan now stood, doubtlessly had enjoyed this same perspective over a different, simpler world. At least here in the austere stone palace, some of that world endured.
The woman he had known as Metok’s wife appeared at his side a quarter-hour after he arrived. Her hair was pinned in a tail behind her neck. She wore makeup and gold earrings. She had become more stylish, even attractive, looking more like the tour guide that was her cover story. It could well be her work when not on special assignment, Shan realized, for appealing young guides were often used to troll for information from Western tourists, sometimes even tempting them into overnight trysts. Shan unexpectedly recalled a tour guide from when he had first arrived in Beijing years earlier as a naive twenty-year-old. She had not really explained anything of historical interest, only spouted scripted observations about the hordes of slaves who died building the structures and the unforgivable, wasteful greed of the aristocrats. Her name had been Jiang, he recalled now, remembered because it was the same as Mao’s ruthless wife, who then dominated the government as part of the Gang of Four. Now, staring out at Lhasa, Shan decided to think of the treacherous woman beside him as Madame Jiang.
“The Red Palace was started during the life of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century,” Madame Jiang abruptly declared, “though there had been fortresses and temples here for a thousand years before that.”
“Spoken like a savvy tour guide,” he observed.
The woman nodded and used the push of a crowd of tourists to press against him, apparently following the instincts of her training. “It was still under construction when the Fifth died, but the Regent kept the Fifth’s death concealed until the work was completed twelve years later. The fiction was kept up by saying the Dalai Lama was on a retreat or a pilgrimage or in spiritual consultations. A fraud on the Tibetan people, for twelve long years.”
Shan considered whether the words were part of an official script, and decided they were because it made the Buddhist leaders sound devious. “I always wondered about the reason for the lie,” he said. “A conspiracy by the Regent to maintain power? Perhaps by the builders’ union to maintain their contract? And where was his body all that time?”
The woman looked up and summoned the sad smile he had seen at Metok’s apartment. “Ever the curious investigator.”
“Tibet is built on layers of mysteries,” Shan replied. “More so today than ever before.” He turned to her. “Did they return your husband’s body?” he asked.
“Cremated him,” she said. “A box of ashes is all I have.”
Shan recalled the crematorium director who had cooperated with Huan. Had she actually been provided with a box of ashes to bolster her cover? He leaned against the half-wall of the terrace to watch as more tour groups arrived on the roof, one of them all Westerners. Cato Pike wore a long coat and had pulled a hat so low Shan barely recognized him among the tourists. Stay in the sun, the American had requested, for the camera’s sake.
“The Sixth Dalai Lama lived here as well,” Shan said. “The wastrel lama. They say there were brothels at the bottom of the ramp maintained solely for him. One night he disappeared, never to be seen again. Some say the gods took him away for punishment.”
Madame Jiang smiled. “My husband would have liked that tale. Except I would say the Sixth was taken to his just reward.” She looked out over the crowd, taking no notice of Pike, who now seemed to be very interested in the sculpture of a serpent. “Your message said you know where my husband’s things are.”
“With a friend he met at work.”
“You mean at the Five Claws.”
“At the mountain above Gekho’s Roost, yes.”
She weighed his words. “Are you saying his things are up on that mountain?”
“A backpack of his. With some papers, some engineer’s tools, a phone, and a compass. There’s a camp where he apparently met with his Tibetan friends, by a stone formation called the Talons.”
Shan saw a flicker of victory in the woman’s eyes, then she sobered. “I’ve been meaning to go see his place of work,” she said. “As a way of saying goodbye. Getting his things might give me some degree of comfort. It’s been so difficult.” Her voice cracked, and she put a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. “His phone would have his friends’ information. Maybe if I could speak with some of them it would ease the pain. I will go.”
“You mustn’t,” Shan said. “Too dangerous. Public Security is on the mountain, including Lieutenant Huan, who framed your husband. Now that I know where the pack is I can retrieve it when I go there next. It’s the kind of errand a constable does. Public Security will not suspect, I will just be retrieving the effects of a dead man for his family.”
Jiang slowly nodded. “Talons. Like the foot of a hawk.”
“Once a great garuda bird protected the mountain and the valley below. When the gods summoned him, he left behind his claws. The Tibetans say it means he is still watching, waiting for the right time to protect them.”
“But would you know how to find these bird claws, Inspector? It can be difficult to find your way on those mountain slopes.”
“On the western slope of the split mountain, above the big field of outcroppings,” he explained.
She repeated his words with a slow nod, then offered the sad smile again before pressing his hand and departing.
Pike waited to approach him until the woman could be seen on the steps below the wall. “Quite the conversationalist, Constable,” he muttered, then held up his phone, showing a photograph of the woman he had taken as she stood beside Shan. “Clever bitch. A versatile asset, as they would say in the trade.”
Shan shot him a quizzical glance.
“She was on the train that day. Sat beside him and struck up a conversation.”
The words slowly sank in. “You’re saying she was speaking with Sun before he died?”
“They seemed to hit it off. After a couple hours she went forward and brought back food for them both to eat. I remember because I had been watching from a seat three rows back, hoping the spot beside him would stay vacant so we might chat. But then at the last minute she appeared, just as the train was pulling out. Seats are assigned on the sky train. She had a ticket for that particular seat. So I had to wait until he got up then followed him.” Pike scrolled through the photographs he had taken of the woman. “Sun never came back. She stayed in her seat. When I got back to my seat an hour later, she was going through an overnight bag. Only later did I recall that she had arrived without baggage. It was his. She didn’t expect him to return.”
Shan turned toward the city and gazed out toward the squat fortresslike structure on the far side of the river, then glanced at his watch. “I have lunch with an aging cobra. The train arrives in four hours. Meet me at the station.”
The colonel hesitated as they reached the heavy iron gate of the compound on the outskirts of Lhasa. He was more nervous than Shan had ever seen him, and for a moment he thought Tan was going to tell his driver to turn around. But then Tan opened his door and, confirming that no one sat in the decrepit gatehouse, unfastened the latch himself and gestured the car inside as he pushed the gate open.
“There was a time,” Tan said when they began driving through a grove of trees, “when people called that a one-way gate, because so many visitors left in a van out the back, either dead or wishing they were dead. The Commissar had one of those wide-brimmed hats the Tibetans wear but he decided it was a cowboy hat, like in the American movies, and he got a long revolver with a leather holster that he liked to use. If you were one of his confidants and he wanted you to get rid of someone for him, he would talk about the intended victim in a disappointed tone then hand you a bullet. That’s all. He never said, ‘I want him dead’ or ‘get rid of him.’ Just the bullet.”
Shan sensed an unusual tension in the colonel’s voice.
Tan lit a cigarette, exhaling the smoke with a rasping breath. “Years ago, I went to see him here with the quartermaster from my regiment,” the colonel continued. He seemed to think Shan was not sufficiently fearful of the old serpent. “The Commissar had invited us to dinner. We had a good meal, just the Commissar and the two of us. Sat with cigarettes and brandy afterward. We finally rose to go and he walked a few steps from us and said, ‘I’m calling you out, you thief!’ and drew his pistol. He shot the quartermaster through the heart, right there, in his house. Then he laughed and offered me another drink. ‘Better this way,’ he said, and then, ‘You’ll sign a statement that it was a suicide.’ It was only the next day that I found out that a special investigative unit had sent him a report proving that the quartermaster had been selling army supplies on the black market for years. He was going to be executed in any event, though I always wondered if his real crime had been not sharing his takings with the Commissar. It was never corruption for him to get a piece. He just called it a gate fee because he was the gatekeeper of Tibet. That was one of his names for himself. The Gatekeeper, or the Avenging Dragon, for a while even Buddha’s Fist, when he was purging senior lamas,” Tan recounted as life-sized statues of Tibetan gods and saints began appearing on both sides of the driveway.
“He’s assimilated,” Shan said in a brittle voice. The figures were trophies, looted from temples and monasteries.
“He loves Tibet. They tried to send him to North Vietnam as senior adviser to Ho Chi Minh in the early years, but he chose to stay. He’s immersed himself in Tibetan culture, he likes to say.” Tan turned to Shan. “What’s that word for a senior teacher? Not lama, the other.”
“Rinpoche.”
“That’s it. Sometimes he calls himself the ‘Rinpoche with a sidearm.’”
Their car emerged onto a small flat plain at the base of a low mountain, with a shooting range on one side of the road and a lake on the other. The small marble pavilion at the base of a dock was badly in need of repair.
“It was built as the summer residence of the Chinese amban in the nineteenth century, then used as a retreat for the Dalai Lama’s officials for decades,” Tan said. “The Commissar had research done so he could have robes identical to those the amban wore. That’s his favorite title. He said the amban never ruled, that the amban’s job was just to strike fear in those who did publicly rule so they would obey him at critical times. ‘Tremble and obey,’ he would tell them, like it said in the decrees from the old emperors. That’s what he’s done for decades. I think he’s what they call in those movies a godfather. Even in Beijing they don’t implement a Tibetan policy without speaking to the Amban first.”
Suddenly Shan himself was seized with fear. Surely then the Amban Council must be led by the very man they had come to see. It was a terrible mistake. What had Tan said when Shan had first suggested the visit? The old man could only kill one of them. When the car stopped Tan had to pull Shan’s arm to get him to leave the car.
The house was built much like the residences Shan had seen at the imperial Summer Palace outside Beijing, with lacquered pillars supporting a portico centered around two enormous enameled doors, and a moongate on one side that appeared to lead into a garden. The slim, well-dressed middle-aged Tibetan woman who greeted them declared that the Commissar was very much looking forward to luncheon with them, then led them down a corridor toward the rear of the house.
The Commissar had been a dark cloud at the edge of Shan’s sky for years. During his life in Beijing Shan had known, and reported to, many tyrannical Party operatives who behaved more like members of the imperial court than representatives of the people. His loathing of them had not started immediately, only after he had recognized among a gathering of such Party bosses one of the men who had persecuted his own family and destroyed the gentle intellectuals who had been his parents. The fact that he had gradually withdrawn, declining to kowtow to them, was probably the biggest reason he had been sent into his gulag exile. They had been frightened by him, because he did not tremble and obey. He had thought he had left them all behind, that they could not harm him in remote Tibet. But then he had heard of the godfather of Lhasa and for years had felt the old familiar fear whenever anyone had mentioned his name. The Commissar was seldom visible, but he made his presence known, the phantom planet that affected the orbits of all the others.
Their demure guide led them past several opulently furnished rooms whose walls were hung with antique Chinese paintings. The corridor itself was lined with photographs of the Commissar with nearly every important Beijing official of the past six decades, including more than one with the Great Helmsman himself. They turned down another hall, this one lined with exquisite Tibetan thangka paintings. Some of the furnishings, like the decorations along the driveway, had obviously been provided by the Bureau of Religious Affairs. Shan did not even realize he had stopped before a breathtaking, vibrant image of Yamantaka, Lord of Death, until Tan tugged at his sleeve.
“He got himself appointed the head of Religious Affairs in Tibet for a few years,” Tan explained in a low voice, “and sent the best paintings to ministers and Party secretaries. Now he keeps the best for himself. He used to lecture at Party meetings, saying that Religious Affairs was the most important agency in Tibet, that the army might be Beijing’s hammer, but Religious Affairs was its precision scalpel.” Shan was well aware of how Religious Affairs ruthlessly used its policies to silence all dissent, since by definition any contrary word from a Tibetan was a form of Buddhist impertinence.
They emerged into the gardens enclosed by the high walls Shan had seen from the driveway. Bamboo grew in huge ceramic pots along the inner wall. Shaggy flowering shrubs and hedges, badly in need of maintenance, delineated several smaller enclaves. The closest held a small archery range with shredded targets at the far end and a table close to the entrance with several crossbows and baskets of the sharpened metal bolts used for ammunition. In the center of the row of targets was a post the height of a man. The wood of the post was heavily punctured and showed several dark stains.
They were admitted through a high wooden gate into a garden with a marble swimming pool beside which were a solitary chaise lounge, a bar, and a wooden hot tub on a platform. Two attractive young Tibetan women in nurses’ uniforms stood beside the tub with towels at the ready. The figure in the steaming tub had a small towel over his head, keeping his face in shadow. The man stayed seated, not moving the towel as he spoke.
“Fuck me!” His voice was like the cackle of a hen. “You stayed alive, Tan, you stubborn son of a bitch! Bullets, bayonets, cannons, cancer. Nothing can kill you! As indestructible as one of your tanks!”
“Almost as indestructible as you, you scrawny bastard,” Tan replied in an even voice.
“People have tried to chew me up for years,” the Commissar rejoined. “But they always spit me out.”
“Because you’re just a sorry sack of gristle,” Tan said.
As if to prove Tan right, the old man stood. His naked body was shriveled in every respect. One of the nurses reached out to help him from the tub as the other readied a towel. He pulled off the cloth covering his head as she dried him. He was as bald as an egg. His face was so devoid of flesh it seemed almost skeletal. His skin was like yellowed parchment, stained with age spots.
“You’ll stay for lunch of course,” he said as a nurse draped a robe over his shoulders.
They dined at a small table in a large chamber that emulated an imperial banquet room, with faux enameled pillars and murals of peacocks and dragons on the walls. The Commissar, now dressed in a stylish version of a Mao suit, with dragons embroidered on the cuffs, studied Shan as he poured wine. He nodded and turned to Tan. “This one’s been stomped on a few times,” he observed to the colonel.
“Inspector Shan started his career in Beijing and has served under me in Lhadrung for the past several years,” Tan replied, as if it explained much.
The Commissar’s stern face broke into a grin. “I never trust a man who doesn’t show a few scars,” he declared and leaned over to pound Shan on the back.
Shan pointed to a short line of raised skin above his eye. “That was the first, from the edge of a metal ruler swung by a teacher in a reeducation camp. I was seven. All downhill from there.”
“How did you earn her wrath?” the old man asked.
“I explained that the picture on the wall of the Chairman with a clear face wasn’t real, because the real Chairman had moles on his face.”
The Commissar burst into cackling laughter, then raised his thin brows, in mock alarm. “Reckless behavior! Stand for the truth at all costs, eh?” he said and raised his glass to Shan. “He’ll do,” he said to Tan. “He’ll do.”
More staff silently brought platters of spicy noodles, eggplant fried in pimentos, and chicken in peanut sauce, all dishes of the Commissar’s Hunan birthplace. Tan and their host chatted about old times as Shan watched the women who served the food. They were all Tibetan, all very young, very attractive, and very nervous. There was no evidence that the Commissar had a family. The aged tyrant lived alone with at least a dozen Tibetan servants, who seemed to be supervised by the older woman who had met them at the door. Tan had leaned into Shan’s ear while they had followed the old man back into the house. “Most of his staff are from transition families,” he stated in a low voice. It meant the women had members of their families in a prison and would be well aware of the old man’s power to send them to hard labor as well.
Tan had explained that the Commissar was particularly fond of public works projects and was still personally involved in the oversight of half a dozen bridge and highway projects, which the colonel now spoke of as they finished eating.
“Prodigious expenditures,” the colonel said. “No doubt a challenge to keep track of those millions.”
The Commissar’s instincts were still intact. He lowered his glass. “I have a small army of clerks,” he said with a question in his tone.
Tan slid an envelope across the table.
“Looking for a piece, Colonel?” the godfather asked. “Not like you.”
“Looking for a missing piece. This account,” he explained as the Commissar opened the envelope, “had over twenty million transferred to another project over the past ten months.”
“The infrastructure budget covers all my projects,” the old man said as he scanned the page Pike had printed out. They had been looking for corruption and found no unexpected accounts. Then Amah Jiejie had examined the messages with the eye of a seasoned bureaucrat and declared that a grave sin had been committed. “Sometimes adjustments are made between projects,” the Commissar suggested.
“Of course. But this was transferred outside. To the Five Claws project. Or more specifically, to certain contractors of the Five Claws.”
“The hydro project? Can’t be. That’s a Beijing project. Different pocket altogether. No one would shift funds from my projects to pay for that one. It would be stealing.”
Tan produced another piece of paper and set it beside the Commissar’s plate. “Comrade Ren, the director at the Five Claws, is a figurehead. His deputy does all the work. His project was in a budget squeeze, threatening the schedule for the Chairman’s visit in two years.”
The Commissar went very still. “What visit?” he asked in a simmering voice.
Tan offered a sympathetic shrug. “They didn’t consult me either. My own county.” Tan pointed out another page. “Here’s an earlier message. He says twenty million is enough out of the bridges, time to tap the highways.”
As the old man read the emails one side of his mouth curled up into a snarl. “How?” he demanded. “How do they do this without my knowing?”
Tan nodded to Shan. “We don’t know exactly,” Shan confessed. “We didn’t want to show up with forensic accountants. It would scare them off their game. We do know about a death warrant you signed. They needed to eliminate a man who threatened them, so they made a preemptive strike. Called him corrupt. We know the signature of the governor was forged but your chop appeared authentic.”
“Impossible!” the old snake hissed. “I gave no such order!”
“Religious Affairs tried to look into what they were doing at the Five Claws,” Tan added. “They seemed to resent the intrusion, so they burned down their warehouse in Lhasa.”
The Commissar’s breath grew rapid and his throat seemed to creak as he tried to form words. “That fire on Kunming Road?” he demanded. When Shan nodded, he seized a wineglass and shattered it against the wall.
Shan did not react, even though it felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “They are very clever, very sure of themselves,” Tan continued. “They scored a big victory at Larung Gar then moved on to the Five Claws. They call themselves the Amban Council.”
Another low hiss escaped the Commissar’s lips. He was the Amban, and Shan knew now that he had no council. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the copy of Metok’s death warrant. He stared at his chop on it for several long, rattling breaths. Murder and corruption were routine aspects of the political chess game the Commissar had played for decades. Far more grievous would be the sin of forging his personal chop.“Larung Gar, you say,” the old man said. “Give me the names on this so-called Council,” he ordered, then turned the envelope over and pushed a fountain pen toward Shan.
The staff began to retreat, as if sensing an imminent eruption. The older woman produced a bottle of pills and set it beside the Commissar, who swatted it to the floor. His lips curled and his hands began to shake. “Larung Gar!” he repeated. The woman began to rub his neck. He seized a fork and made a vicious swing toward her, but she easily dodged the blow, as if expecting it, and snapped at him to behave.
The Commissar took the list of four names. As he read it his face flushed and his entire body began shaking. “I have two men who take care of problems for me,” he said in a venomous whisper. “But they are away just now.” He pointed with a trembling finger at a wooden box on a sideboard, which the woman brought him with a despairing expression. He reached inside it and withdrew several objects, which he kept clasped in his hand. Two of the nurses appeared with a wheelchair. As they reached out to help him into it, he shook them off and extended his hand to Tan, who took its contents without a word.
As the nurses pushed the Commissar away, the woman lifted the list of names Shan had written, read it, and gave a long sigh before dropping it on the table. “He was with the Commissar for two years. A wicked boy. He was a bad influence on the Commissar. I finally convinced the master to send him away.”
“Who?” Shan asked.
“The Commissar finally agreed, but only if he could find him a good position. He was sent to run that campaign at Larung Gar,” she said as she pointed to the last name on the list. “Jiao Wonzhou.”
The woman spun about and disappeared in the direction of the wheelchair, leaving Shan and the colonel alone. Shan realized Tan was staring into his cupped hand at whatever the Commissar had placed there. After a long moment he turned his palm and the objects rolled out onto the table. The Commissar had given Tan four bullets.
The long sleek train was just pulling into the station as Shan met Pike at the entrance. Shan positioned Pike at a table of the tea shop where he had first seen the American, then, borrowing his phone, waited for the last passengers to clear the platform before approaching the knot of staff assembled by the dining car. The conductor sagged as he spotted Shan, then finished his instructions to the staff and motioned them toward the cartons of food being loaded at the other end of the car.
“I’m fairly certain no one died today, Inspector,” he said as Shan reached him. “No passengers who failed to rise up out of their seats, no corpse in the cargo car.”
“Congratulations, comrade,” Shan said. “But I’m interested in an old corpse, not a new one.”
The conductor frowned. “That was an accidental death, the doctor confirmed it.”
“There’s many kinds of accidents.” Shan held up the phone with the image of Madame Jiang. “Do you recognize her?”
The conductor stared at the photo, too long, before looking up. “I see hundreds of people a week, sometimes thousands. How would I remember one face?”
“Try harder. She was on your train. She’s quite attractive, the kind of woman who stands out.”
“Inspector, please. I can’t say.”
“Try harder. Or we can get a lie detector test. Yes, on second thought, let’s do that. I can probably have you back here by midnight or so.”
“Impossible!” the conductor protested. “I must ready the train for the return! We have a very tight schedule.”
“Perhaps you can make the return train tomorrow or the next day. Should I go find your boss and tell him the news? It would seem the courteous thing to do.”
“I don’t know her name!”
“Look it up. I can tell you the seat number. Right beside Sun Lunshi, the man who died.”
“I can’t look it up. She never bought a ticket.”
Shan saw how the conductor nervously watched a Public Security patrol walking down the platform. “Surely you don’t allow stowaways, even beautiful ones.”
“Surely we don’t say no to Public Security.” The conductor closed his eyes and shook his head. “Look, she ran into the station in Golmud and demanded we hold the train. She made me search my computer for Sun Lunshi and asked his seat number, then just darted on board.”
“And they stayed together the entire trip?”
“She read a magazine at first, and took a nap, or at least seemed to. I remember because it seemed odd that she seemed to have urgent business with the man but didn’t speak to him right away.”
She was working hard at doing nothing, Shan knew. It was a technique taught at police academies for not spooking informers. Show no aggressive attention, just be disinterested and casual, giving the target a chance to speak first. “But eventually they spoke.”
“I wasn’t there the entire time, but yes, about halfway through the trip. A lot of passengers were asleep by then but those two began talking.”
“Did they eat together?”
“Is that important? No idea.” The conductor took off his hat and ran his hand over his thinning hair as he tried to recollect. “Yes, something from the snack bar. Sandwiches and sodas, I think. The dining car was all booked, blocked out by tour groups.”
“You didn’t notice he was missing later?”
The conductor shrugged. “We dim the lights. People huddle down in their seats and sleep.”
“And she never asked you about him, never acted as though she might be concerned about his whereabouts when he disappeared?”
The conductor hesitated as he grasped Shan’s question. “No,” came his nervous response.
“As if she did not expect him to return.”
The conductor’s face clouded. “I’m not the detective here.” He retreated a step then paused. “She looked in his baggage when he left. The overnight bag and the tube.”
“Tube?”
“A long black tube with a handle on it, nearly as long as your arm. One of those cases used for charts and blueprints.”
“And maps,” Shan suggested. “It was not with the baggage collected after he died.”
“Because she took it.”
“And you didn’t stop her?”
“I was at the end of the car when she passed me with it on the way out. I said, ‘Maybe you should leave a receipt or something.’ She laughed and showed me her badge again,” he explained, turning to look down the platform. The engineer was shouting for him from beside the locomotive. Obviously relieved for the excuse, the conductor mumbled an apology and hurried away.
As Shan watched him retreat, a lanky figure stepped off the train. The conductor apparently muttered something to the man as he passed him, for his head snapped around in Shan’s direction. He seemed to groan as Shan held up a hand for him to wait.
“What good fortune to see you, Doctor,” Shan said in greeting.
The doctor did not share the sentiment. “I have to report to the office,” he said impatiently.
“Fine, we can go there together and I can speak to the train master, so I can explain that you can’t make the next train because law enforcement needs you.”
The doctor sighed. “What is it you want, Inspector?”
“The autopsy report for Sun Lunshi. You never sent it to me.”
“I gave it to the Public Security officer who followed up for you. Lieutenant Huan, Lhasa Division. He said he would get it to you. Hardly worth the trouble. It just confirmed my initial findings. We hand out warning brochures to every passenger. We can’t be responsible when people don’t read them.”
“I don’t follow.”
“He inadvertently killed himself. His levels of benzodiazepine were off the chart.”
“A drug?”
“A sleeping aid. It’s a long trip, a stressful and restless night for many. We tell passengers to never take such drugs on the sky train. It inhibits breathing, lowers blood pressure. Combine that with even a moderate case of altitude sickness and the results can be fatal. You saw his blue fingers, his cyanosis. The fool didn’t have a chance. He took too many pills, fell asleep, and never knew he was shutting his eyes forever.”
“Tell me something, Doctor. Could a few pills like that be mixed in with soda and swallowed?”
“Of course. They’re small pills, hardly noticeable in a swallow of soda. Or if given a few moments to dissolve, not noticeable at all.”
Shan glanced at a passing knob patrol and thanked the doctor. He willed the doctor to walk away, then gazed with new understanding at the shiny, serpent-like machine beside him. The sky train was a murderer’s paradise.
“It’s not your fault, Shan,” Pike said. They had been sharing a pot of tea as Shan explained what he had learned.
Shan looked up from his cup. “What do you mean?”
“Look at you, like you just came back from a funeral. I’ve seen it before. The investigator syndrome, the psychiatrists call it. My Irish grandmother had another name for it: ‘sin eating.’ But there’s so much sin here you’ll choke to death.”
Shan could not push the forlorn tone from his voice. “They were laughing together, you said. Then she gave him a soda knowing it would kill him. I should have known the first time I met her. I should have known before, when I saw that the front data sheet on the file about Metok had been replaced. I blinded myself. I saw her as a victim and only wanted to protect her. She helped kill Lhakpa’s niece. She single-handedly killed Sun.”
“They were both already dead when you met her,” Pike pointed out.
“But not Jampa, the old janitor. I told her, Pike. I told her Metok had got a message out from the jail. I was trying to comfort a grieving widow. Instead I gave the Amban Council the information it needed to find and kill Jampa. I should have known right away because all the framed photos in his apartment only showed Metok, no family shots. I was blinded by her grief. I responded with my heart and not my brain and it got Jampa killed. And I pushed my son under their boots. He could have been killed. Then they nearly killed Amah Jiejie.”
“You astound me, Shan. You have lived all your life in this fucked-up country, even survived a gulag prison camp, but you still have such naivete. It might be charming elsewhere, but here it is poison. Is it because you don’t see the evil or because you just don’t want to believe it?”
“You don’t understand, Pike. They don’t sense evil in anything they do. They tell themselves they are just doing their job, serving the motherland.”
Pike frowned in disappointment. “Then you are becoming one of them.”
“No. After all these years, I am finally becoming one of their victims.”
The American did not reply but withdrew several index cards from his pocket. They had small punctures in the top corners, as if they had been pinned to the wall. “The members of the Amban Council. Jiao is in charge. He spent his first ten years in Public Security, then went to a job with the Party. A troubleshooter. A fixer. He did a term as special assistant to some retired Party kingmaker here then was sent to Larung Gar, but not to construct new housing. He created a palatable plan to eliminate the politically unreliable crowds gathering there and snare a few of the more vocal dissidents in the process.”
The American tossed out another card. “Major Xun. Before Larung Gar he was in Kashgar, devising ways to smoke out Muslim rebels. For a year he was assigned to work with Jiao there, when Jiao was in Public Security. They created a team that dressed in black, with black ski masks. They snatched suspected dissident leaders out of their beds in the night, never to be seen again.”
“How could you possibly know this?” Shan asked, then after a moment answered his own question. “Amah Jiejie.”
Pike nodded. “Amah Jiejie may seem a sweet old aunt. But she is quite the cunning operative herself and knows people in key offices all over China. When she calls someone, it is as if the colonel himself is calling.” He tossed out another card. “Huan. He showed up in Larung Gar and made quite an impression on Jiao and Xun. After they destroyed the main classrooms, the teachers kept their students together for classes in makeshift locations. But Huan always knew where they were, to strike next.”
Pike tossed down another card. It didn’t have a name on it, only the numbers 404. “The Amban Council likes to meet in obscure places. Cao and Tink triangulated emails to fix several of their locations. A safe house run by Public Security. Once at a club reserved for senior Party members. Once at the arsenal in Lhadrung. That one surprised me, but then they found another location. The 404th hard labor prison.”
Shan took the card and wrote a name on it, the fourth name he had given the Commissar. “Captain Wenlu. The warden. He nearly beat my son to death. The Tibetans already knew,” he added and explained that the warden had received a Tibetan death chart. “Those from Larung Gar knew and never told us.”
“Christ, Shan, you work for Colonel Tan. It’s a wonder you haven’t received a death chart.”
Shan gave a bitter grin. “The astrologer who made the chart is a friend of mine. I think.”
“It all started at Larung Gar,” Pike said. “They had their female spy there. In emails Xun and Huan call her their ‘robed eyes.’”
“She was the nun,” Shan said.
Pike nodded. “A nun, a widow, a flirtatious train passenger. Like I said, a versatile asset.”
“And a tour guide,” Shan added. “A woman of many talents.”
They watched in silence as passengers began to board the next train.
“I keep watching that video that Zhu brought back from Hong Kong,” Pike said. “That knob officer said he had orders from Colonel Tan. He said it tentatively, like he wasn’t sure he believed it. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Too hard to resist.’ I keep asking myself why he added that. Did you see her today, I mean really see her? You had described a forlorn widow desperate to protect her family and restore her husband’s good name.”
“It was the same woman,” Shan said.
“Yes and no,” replied the American. “That’s not the woman I saw today. I saw the woman from the train. She was wearing a loose jacket today, but underneath were tight jeans, makeup, and manicured nails. She knows how to deliver the goods.”
“Goods?”
Pike rolled his eyes. “She’s trained to use her body, Shan. She was in Hong Kong, I am sure of it. She took that man to her hotel room, and in a few hours he was ready to give her anything she asked for.”
Shan looked with despair over the queue of eager passengers waiting for the next train. “Every time we think we have a lead, we slam into a stone wall. We don’t have the maps. We have no proof that this woman killed Sun. We have no proof that she was in Hong Kong. We don’t even know her real name or where she really lives.”
“Not for a couple more hours anyway,” Pike said with a dangerous grin. “Tink is tailing her.”
Shan was early for his rendezvous at the Jokhang Temple with Meng and so took advantage of the thinning crowds to get reacquainted with the thousand-year-old structure. He paused inside the entry to buy incense from a toothless old woman then walked slowly inside, letting his senses adjust to the dim light and the acrid scent of incense and butter lamps. A few pilgrims were still completing the interior circuit, pausing at each of the little low-doored chapels that lined the passageways. Shan ascended the nearly empty stairs to the second floor, where a more condensed ring of chapels encircled the hall. Shan sat on a bench near a shrine to a protector deity and closed his eyes, sensing the air of ancient devotion that seemed to permeate the temple. Here the afflicted and other seekers had come for centuries, lighting incense and lamps to converse with the gods. Lokesh said that if you tuned your soul just right, you could hear the echoes of the devout from across time. Shan looked down at a stick of incense in his hand and wondered if it would provide the cleansing he needed after spending two hours with the Commissar. The different mantras of the few pilgrims and monks still in the chapels flowed out into the hall and seemed to combine into one rhythmic prayer. He let the sound wash over him, let it become the salve he needed for his aching spirit.
After a few minutes, he rose and walked along the chapels, exchanging greetings with the monks and nuns who were beginning to sweep the floors, and pausing in a chapel to light his stick before the Historical Buddha. As he passed a chapel on the way to the stairs, he recognized the images of the Medicine Buddhas over an altar on which a solitary incense stick burned. The only occupants were two women murmuring in the corner beside the altar. He extracted another stick, intending to light it for Ko. He bent to pass through the low entry then froze and abruptly backed away. The two women were a nun and Meng.
Neither had seen him, and Shan edged into a shadow where he could study them without being conspicuous. They were facing each other, not the gods, and the nun was holding one of Meng’s hands while working the beads of a rosary, a mala, with her other hand. Shan found himself inching closer, trying to understand, then he saw the glass of water sitting between them. Meng wasn’t there as a tourist, wasn’t there because she had struck up a casual conversation with the nun. They were reciting a Medicine Buddha mantra, slowly, because Meng stumbled over the words. The mantra was considered to be a powerful antidote to disease, provided it was recited the traditional one hundred eight times over a glass of water, which the patient then had to drink. Shan watched until the nun squeezed Meng’s hand and gestured for her to lift the glass.
He left the temple, then the temple grounds, and walked around the adjoining block before reentering the courtyard a few minutes past their appointed hour. Meng waited for him on a bench. He sat beside her. They both looked up as a chorus broke out above them.
“From one of the roof chapels,” Shan said.
“It sounds like blessings drifting down from the heavens,” Meng observed, then after a moment pointed to the main gate. “There’s a strange fossil in the flagstones,” she said.
“It’s called the Amolongkha,” Shan explained. “The old ones have many different stories about it. Some say it was a demon trapped in stone by the earth gods. Some say it is a protector, sleeping there until it is needed.”
“It’s not needed now?” Meng asked after a moment.
Shan did not reply. “We should walk the pilgrim’s path around the temple,” he said instead.
“I have a long drive back,” she said. Her voice was weary.
“The Nangkhor Kora is the name of the path,” he said, and rose, extending a hand. “It’s been redeeming souls for over a thousand years. Lokesh says pilgrims leave tiny traces of spiritual energy along their paths, in which case this one must have the most energized air in all of Tibet.”
Meng hesitated, cocking her head toward a clip-clop sound at the main gate. An old woman was progressing along the path in traditional prostrations, rising, advancing a step then dropping her body to full length on the ground. The sound came from the worn wooden blocks strapped to her hands to protect them.
“The two-legged horse, some of the old Tibetans call it,” Shan said of the rhythmic sound made by the wooden blocks. “I was in a cell once with some old monks. It had a narrow window near the ceiling that allowed in a little light and sound. There was a shrine nearby, and every few days their faces would light up with joy when they heard that sound. Clip-clop, clip-clop. Some pilgrims travel like that for weeks, even months. Good for the soul, terrible for the knees.”
Meng gazed at the ragged, stick-thin woman. For a moment Shan thought he saw envy in her eyes.
They walked along images of deer and dharma wheels that adorned the outer wall then reached the long line of prayer wheels mounted along the kora path, huge brass drums embossed with auspicious signs and the mani mantra, which was offered to the gods with each spin of the wheel. Shan showed Meng the best grip for spinning the wheels, and they advanced down the line like eager pilgrims, setting each one in motion. Meng laughed as they spun the first one, Shan’s hand on hers, but her smile faded, and as they reached the last one it was replaced with a somber, almost desperate expression.
In the shadows behind the temple they sat on a bench and watched in silence as the old woman caught up and passed them, her passage marked by the fading, hollow sound of her wooden blocks.
When Meng’s eyes came back to him Shan turned over her hand and dropped something in it.
“What’s this?” she asked as she lifted her hand.
“My rosary, my mala. The beads are carved sandalwood. Lokesh thinks it may be two or three hundred years old, making it saturated with spiritual power.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want you to use it, not one of the cheap plastic ones I expect you bought here.”
Meng stared at the old beads. “Why would I need beads?” she asked in a tight voice.
“For your mantra. There’s more than one for the Medicine Buddhas. Om bhaisajy bhaisajye bhaisajye samugate svaha, that’s probably the one you were taught in their chapel. Once you start you need to finish all the beads, all one hundred eight.”
Meng seemed to sag. “Can’t we just pretend for a while longer?” she whispered. “Not everything in life has to be investigated.”
“Pretend?”
“Pretend that we would raise a beautiful young woman together.” Meng’s voice cracked as she spoke. “Pretend you and I would sit in her university graduation and laugh about being taken for her grandparents.”
“That day in the square when you told me about Kami, you said, ‘I know she will do well with you,’” Shan said. “It was only later that I realized it sounded like you meant you would not be there.” Meng did not respond. “That woman, the caretaker who always hangs back. She’s not with you for Kami’s sake.”
“Care for Kami is part of our arrangement. But yes, she is a nurse. There are days when I need special medicines, days when I can’t really function. I used up almost all my savings on the trip down here and to pay for her and my medicines. I’m sorry. The money was supposed to be for Kami.”
Shan found he could not speak. He took her hand and gripped it tightly.
“I was supposed to go for another treatment today, but they aren’t really doing any good.” Meng lifted the beads in her other hand. “I came here instead and found another kind of treatment.”
“There’s always other doctors,” Shan murmured.
“No. It’s too advanced. They said if we had caught it a year earlier, when the pains first started, I may have had a chance. But the nearest doctors to my station were a hundred miles away, and I couldn’t leave Kami by herself.” Meng shrugged. “But I got her to her father. Like one of those pilgrim journeys in a way.”
“How long?” he asked after a long silence.
“Five or six months, maybe as much as a year.” Meng leaned her head into Shan’s shoulder and gripped his hand tightly. Tears were streaming down her face. “I’m so sorry, Shan.”
“I’m so sorry,” he echoed.
A new clip-clop rhythm rose from the corner of the temple. Neither spoke, neither moved, as another pilgrim made her way along the ancient path in front of them and slowly disappeared around the next corner.