The foundation for the control building on the upper slope had been laid, and a small arbor laced with flowers erected over a podium in its center. The ceremony for the chiseling of the pass, as the deputy director had described it in the invitations sent out weeks earlier, had been designed by Jiao long before his disappearance. The scene looked as if it had been staged for a Party poster. Young Tibetan women in colorful traditional garb and freshly scrubbed workers in helmets stood on either side of a four-foot-high model of a transmission tower. A public-address system played favorite hymns of the proletariat. The Commissar, wearing a once-stylish Mao suit, sat in a place of honor in the front row of chairs, tended by two of his nurses.
The director had protested loudly when Shan and the colonel had visited his office to report that they had sent Jiao away. His complaints had quickly faded, however, as Shan had begun explaining the conspiracy of the Amban Council.
“I didn’t know,” Ren had mumbled at first, but soon he was feverishly disassociating himself from the deputy director, calling Jiao “that arrogant young cub from Beijing.” He clutched his belly when Tan sternly described the misuse of army resources, and for a moment Shan thought he was going to be sick. “These issues were all about operations,” Ren nervously pointed out. “He was in charge of operations, not me.”
“Except” Tan said, “you were the director. Surely you knew something. The chain of command always bears responsibility.”
“This is a national project!” Ren cried. “We abbreviated procedures, yes, but for the good of the nation. Jiao had the full support of the bosses in Beijing!”
“Did you know that Xun and Huan blew up the cavern to kill the people inside?”
“Of course not! The demolition seemed the correct thing to do, from the engineering perspective.”
“They arranged the death of one of your engineers,” Tan pointed out.
“Metok was executed for corruption. A Public Security matter. There’s always a few bad apples on such big projects.”
“Metok was a good man, an honest man, killed by dishonest criminals,” Shan stated.
“It would seem logical to add you as a suspect to that investigation,” Tan suggested.
Ren was a man of few strengths, but one of them was recognizing the subtleties in the words of powerful men. He seemed to collect himself and squared his shoulders. “It would be a blow to the integrity of the government to have the head of the project accused as well,” he ventured. “Perhaps we could find another way. For the good of the people.”
“I can see you are a man of sound practical judgment,” Tan replied in a wooden voice. Shan had had difficulty talking him out of offering Ren up on a skewer to Beijing. The Amban Council had all been dealt with, the warden having been demoted and sent to a desert outpost. The Tibetans who had been detained by Huan had all been released from the Shoe Factory and transported back to their mountain homes. Tan had even reluctantly accepted Shan’s recommendation that each family be given a mule out of the prison stables. The Larung Gar prisoners at the 404th had also been given their freedom, and made a tearful reunion with Lhakpa, who had waited outside the gate for them.
Now, as his ceremony began, Director Ren motioned for his companions to stand as a banner was unfurled on two long stakes held by workers. Modern Tibet is a Chinese Tibet, it read, only in Chinese characters. Gathered all around them were Tibetans, from the work crews and from the surrounding countryside. Ren gave a short, tentative speech, followed by words from managers from each of the companies involved in the glorious endeavor. As they spoke, Ren looked forlornly at the little detonator switch mounted on the podium. Chiseling the pass, imploding the overhanging cliff walls, was to be the final step in preparing the dam foundations.
Colonel Tan sat on one of the folding chairs near the director, with Shan on one side and the aged Commissar on the other, nurses hovering behind him. Shan ventured a glance over his shoulder. On a ledge above them were more spectators, including Cato Pike, Jaya, Lhakpa, and the hail chaser who, true to reputation, was doing one of his strange dances, shaking a bundle of twigs toward the narrow mountain pass. A murmur went through the crowd as they saw him, and workers pointed upward to a long line of prayer flags fluttering down from the sky toward the opposite slope.
As the last of the speeches ended, Director Ren rose and placed his hand over the switch. “I present to you the culmination of all our work,” he announced, then hesitated. He fumbled in his pockets, then withdrew the little blue tsa tsa of the mountain god which Shan had given him. He positioned it on the podium, facing the mountain, and pushed the switch.
The massive four-hundred-foot-high ridge of jutting rock that was the final impediment to shaping the dam seemed to shudder as the buried charges detonated. It began to slide down the face of the mountain. Then suddenly there were more detonations, much larger, spewing rock fragments high over the valley, and a line of smoke and dust appeared along the upper slope opposite them. The entire face of the mountain bulged, groaned, and began to slide into the valley. The Commissar cackled with glee and clapped his hands. Director Ren stared stricken, clutching the podium as if he were in danger of falling.
Lhakpa and his friends had already known about the hidden fissures that had been part of the ancient shrine complex, but the seismic maps Sun Lunshi had died for had allowed Yeshe the demolition expert to lay more charges much deeper and higher than he could otherwise have done.
The ground under their platform began to shake. Two of the honored guests fell as they tried to step off the foundation. The slope along the foot of the valley began to collapse, then the destruction was lost in a massive cloud of dust. Tan turned and nodded to Zhu, who raised a hand to his chin and spoke into a small transmitter.
Less than a minute later Tan’s helicopter landed on the road above them and a soldier ran to the colonel with an envelope. The colonel solemnly read the contents then handed the yellowed paper to the Commissar, who read it, nodding. Propped up by his nurses, he stood and stepped to Director Ren, who still stood as if paralyzed, staring at the vast cloud of dust.
“A damned shame, Ren,” the Commissar declared in a dry, amused voice, then handed the paper to the director. “Beijing should have known better than to ignore us. We could have told them. Damned shame,” he repeated and looked back at Tan with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.
The challenge in their plan had been to find a way to detonate the fissures without having it blamed on the Tibetans. Cato Pike had at first refused to leave his daughter’s side, just as Shan would not leave Ko’s, but after two days the doctor had declared his patients out of danger. Ko would have an impaired but functioning lung and Natalie Pike, with therapy, was expected to regain full use of her limbs. Dr. Anwei was not as sanguine about her eye but was hopeful that doctors in America could find a treatment. Both patients had urged their fathers to go rest, and Cato Pike and Shan had joined Tan and Amah Jiejie at a dinner where Pike and Tan had finished a bottle of vodka, during which the American had learned of Tan’s own bitter attitudes about Beijing. It had been near the end, when Tan had poured fiery bai jin whiskey for all, that Pike had offered the suggestion that would put all the blame on Beijing.
It was, Shan had to admit, a brilliant strategy. The fabricated note, dated nearly forty years before, was a report from a quartermaster that addressed the problem of excess and aging munitions left from prior hostilities. He recommended that they be dropped into a fissure in a distant uninhabited place called by the Tibetans the Valley of the Gods. Amah Jiejie had artfully affixed old stamps reflecting its authenticity and had verified that the quartermaster had conveniently died years earlier. The finishing touch had been Pike’s inspiration as well. They had baked the paper in Amah Jiejie’s oven to age it, with Tan hovering over the oven with ebullient anticipation, clapping the American on the back as they waited. The unexpected explosion had not been the work of Tibetans, it had resulted from the arrogance of Jiao and his patrons in Beijing, who could now readily blame the fugitive deputy director for the catastrophe.
The wind on their backs began to rise, slowly clearing the dust cloud. The high V-shaped pass was no more, replaced by a wide, jagged opening with a gaping crevasse below it. There would never be a dam across the valley.
Shan went to the director’s side, who stood alone, still staring at his ruined project.
“There was no way for you to have known,” Shan said. It had the sound of a suggestion. “You were brought in after the project was conceived and its plans laid.”
“No way I could have known,” Ren repeated in a dull voice. “I was…” he seemed to have trouble speaking, “I was brought in later.”
“Jiao was a criminal who committed a fraud on the state. His friends Lieutenant Huan and Major Xun have also disappeared. No doubt they were part of the conspiracy.”
“A conspiracy against the state,” Ren mumbled.
“Against the people and their blessed motherland,” Shan suggested. “I will say you cooperated fully with my investigation, that we couldn’t have exposed them without your help. The colonel will confirm that. Everyone will soon recognize that as bad as this news is, it is better to receive it now than after billions are spent on a project that was always going to fail. Which means they will applaud your courage in speaking up.”
As Shan’s words sank in Ren seemed to regain some strength, though his voice cracked as he spoke. “You would do that?”
“You need to start clearing out the equipment and the buildings, immediately,” Shan said. “But yes, I will do that. It will be a secret report, of course, sent through Tan and the Commissar. But your superiors in Beijing will see it.”
Ren sighed. “They’re building lots of bridges in Manchuria. I like bridges. I’ll find a bridge project.”
“Excellent. The people of Manchuria will be the better for it.”
Ren nodded and began to step away, then turned and stared at the little blue god on the podium. He retrieved the figure and put it in his pocket, then left to return the valley to the gods. High above, a new line of prayer flags was drifting downward to settle over the debris field. Gekho’s mountain had been wounded but still survived.
When Shan reached them, Tan and Zhu were studying the far slope with binoculars. A small crowd of Tibetans were excitedly pointing to a shadow halfway up the mountain, beyond the new rubble field. “That Gekho is one cunning rascal,” Tan said with a grin as he handed Shan his binoculars. Shan aimed them in the direction the Tibetans pointed then grinned. A new cavern had opened on the side of the sacred mountain.